That is a complete fabrication about the law; there is no such thing as "selective prosecution" in civil litigation.
There can be, kind of.
I am a landlord, and as such am subject to fair housing laws (specifically the Federal Fair Housing Act). It states that I cannot discriminate against several protected classes of people, including the handicapped in all areas of housing.
It could be argued that if I never sued disabled people who damaged my units, but sued others that I would be violating the act. In reality, nobody is going to bring a fair housing complaint for something like that, but it would be against the letter of the law if I treated disabled people differently.
Personally, I treat everybody the same. It's only fair. And yes, I have sued disabled people who have caused damage and won. In fact, I nearly always win when I sue because if I'm going through the effort to file, it's because a tenant really damaged a unit badly (as opposed to wear and tear). But whether or not a person is disabled doesn't enter into the equation.
How is it trolling to say, "Disabled people aren't immune from the law"? It's not like the RIAA is specifically targeting disabled people (to my knowledge, anyhow), which would, of course, be reprehensible.
You seem to have a "You're either for us, or against us" attitude. Why is it trolling to have a discussion? I mean, we're all happy that attorneys like you are fighting the good fight against the RIAA, but I don't think it's trolling to ask the good questions.
Here's mine: "Why do you think disabled people should be treated differently from those who are not disabled?" I don't like the RIAA's "settle or face being sued for $100 million dollars" any more than you do, but how is a person's disability or lack thereof relevant to the issue?
Sure, you have to "prove your innocence" as a civil defendant, but only to the extent that your "proof of innocence" is better than the plaintiff's "proof of guilt".
I see this all the time in one of my businesses: Landlording. If a tenant were to damage one of my apartments, I can sue him for damages, to the extent that his security deposit doesn't cover the cost of repairs. Now if I go in and say, "tenant made damages", and the tenant says, "No I didn't", then the judge will pretty much just toss the case.
On the other hand, I take pictures of each apartment on move-in, and I'll take pictures of any damage a tenant caused. So when I go into court with my before and after pictures, the tenant is pretty much screwed. Unless he can produce some evidence that is more compelling than my photographic evidence, then he's going to lose.
But that's not "proving your innocence" in the sense that I can make a wild accusation and it's up to you to prove beyond reasonable doubt that I'm a crackpot. Really, it's just "whomever presents the most compelling evidence in court wins".
preponderance of evidence in order to proceed with a case
No, preponderance of the evidence is required to win a civil case, not proceed with one.
Civil cases are blocked from proceeding only when there is zero possibility of the plaintiff winning. Like if I sued you for back rent for one of my apartments. Well, you never even rented one of my apartments, so that would get dismissed.
But if you had rented from me in the past, but just simply did not owe me any money, that wouldn't be grounds for dismissal. That would be the judge's decision after hearing the case. That you did not owe me any money.
I think NewYorkCountryLawyer included the medical information because it has a direct bearing on the interpretation of the RIAA's actions in this case.
With all due respect, the RIAA doesn't even know who they're going after until they either sue or otherwise obtain the accused's name from the ISP.
All they have is an IP address. They certainly don't know if the user of that IP has cancer, gout, or an irritable bowel.
Look, I don't appreciate the RIAA's tactics, either, but this article is definitely nothing more than an Appeal to Pity.
With all due respect, your boss is not doing his job. His job is to make sure that you can do your job, and you can't do your job without violating company policy. You could lose your job over this, and your boss can't/won't do anything to fix it.
You need to do the following:
Talk to IT and say, "I need to exchange large files with [insert important client here] in order to [insert good reason here]. How would I best accomplish this in accordance with IT policies?"
Talk to your boss and say, "In order to do my job, I need to exchange large files with [insert important client here] in order to [insert good reason here]. I spoke with IT, and they couldn't come up with a good solution. Can you please escalate this to the appropriate level that it gets worked out? This project is worth [insert large number here] dollars to the company, and we will all look like [insert stupid-sounding animal here] if we lose that client over this. Perhaps our VP needs to talk to the IT VP and get this figured out."
Blatantly violating company policy is dangerous to your career.
The most requested demand is to allow employee's personal laptops or PDAs onto the coporate network. Each year this comes up, I make my pitch in front of the board and the policy stays in place. No personal electronic equipment allowed on the coporate network.
Next time you make your pitch, be sure to use the word VLAN.
I mean, seriously. Most clients of mine allow personal devices, but they VLAN them the heck away from the corporate network. Seems pretty sane to me.
The article states the former--that they analyzed her computer and found that she made those searches.
What bugs me about using this evidence is that the article states her husband was abusive. Given his history of violence, how can we be so sure she made those searches? Isn't it equally if not more likely that he, with his documented history of violence, was plotting to kill her?
Where the heck was her attorney when that evidence got admitted?
if your child is visiting the kind of sites that links to porn, or has porn banners, you are a BAD FUCKING PARENT for not bringing your kids up right, or not monitoring your kids properly.
Well, I think you should tone down your criticism until you've tried it. It's a little harder than it looks.
In the olden days, you didn't have to worry too much about your child coming into contact with violent and/or sexual entertainment. You could let them veg a bit in front of the TV after a long day at school and not worry about them coming into contact with Herr Goatse (I'm still having nightmares courtesy of that man). Now, with the breadth of information available on the Internet, there is serious danger that a child might come into content that is inappropriate for his age. Content that will give them nightmares. Content that will establish inappropriate and harmful ideals with respect to violence, relationships, sexuality, religion, hate, etc.
Your solution is "proper monitoring". I disagree with this notion. First, it is impossible for 2 parents to monitor 5 children 24/7 (I don't have 5 kids, but many people do). Secondly, are you truly doing your job as a parent if you have to hover over your children to that degree? Have you prepared them to enter adulthood? Are you allowing them to become their own individuals?
The problem with the Internet, is there is (as of yet) no good way to gradually allow your children more access as they get older are more able to handle it (to distinguish right from wrong, etc.), yet you are doing your child a disservice to never allow him access to the Internet at all. How do I protect my daughter from penis-enlargement spam? How do I protect my son from "rape fantasy" websites? How do I do all this while giving them enough space to be curious and learn and discover?
These are real problems that our parents' generation never had to confront while we were growing up. Nobody seems to have come up with an acceptable solution that works well in all situations, but every time something is proposed, much energy is spent shooting it down and much energy is spent criticizing parents. This is energy that could be spent coming up with helpful solutions to this new, but very real problem.
A ".kids" top level domain would be much more effective than ".xxx", toy stores and other businesses targeting children would make sure to get their site up in that domain to reach their audience.
Well, I think it's ok for my kids to read material debunking Christianity. I also think it's ok for my kids to read materials that state that homosexuality is ok. Do you want your kids reading that? Would Pat Robertson or Jesse Helms want their kids reading that? Hell, they don't want my kids reading material like that.
On the flip side, if your ".kids" domain is nothing more than a glorified Toys 'R Us ad, I'm blocking it at the router. That level of marketing is not appropriate for children.
The problem is that there is no universal standard on what is ok for kids. Furthermore, what is appropriate for an older kid would not be appropriate for a younger kid (but that older kid probably isn't ready to handle the wide variety of information on the full Internet).
By way of example, you wouldn't let your 5 year old watch Gremlins unless you want him in your bed scared poopless crying all night for the next 5-10 days. By the same token, your 11 year old daughter should be able to handle stuffed-animal violence (and anyway can internalize the difference between movies and real life), but do you really want to answer the question: "When I turn 18, will I get a webcam, too?"
Ahh.. but the so-called "lies" happened during an investigation, not a trial, and Libby wasn't being investigated at the time, and he certainly wasn't on trial at the time.
It was still a criminal matter, not a civil matter. The rules are different, like it or not.
I certainly understand why you're upset that the only one being punished in the whole Plame affair is someone who we know not to be the leaker, and you're right to be upset. But that's not really the point of the case, and it turns out that lying to investigators is a specific crime punishable by jail time. To me, this seems stupid. Investigators are allowed to lie all they want to you, but you are not allowed to lie back. Seems unfair. Anyhow, and Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart will tell you, your best defense when talking to investigators is to just say you don't remember (in the case of Libby) or just shut the fsck up (in the case of Stewart--she was being investigated and had the Constitutional right to remain silent).
Also, to my knowledge, the law doesn't distinguish between lying to protect oneself and lying to protect somebody else.
You also completely skipped over the paragraph about Sandy Berger.
Didn't seem relevant, so I skipped it. Berger is accused of mishandling classified materials, not perjury. I agree with you that he should be punished for his crimes, but what does his crime have to do with Scooter Libby's? Nobody is accusing Libby of mishandling classified materials. Everybody knows that he was not the leaker.
I guess my only point here is, while I agree that Libby got screwed, his perjury and Clinton's lying, were both punished correctly under the law as it is written. I also agree that Berger should have been punished, but I don't see that injustice's relevance to the conversation. If we're trying to right every injustice, please let me register that I feel a 5 day work week is an injustice. I should get 3 day weekends, for great justice.
Who codes search algorithms anymore? There are perfectly good libraries for that kind of gruntwork.
Write your own and you are likely to write something that is buggy and O(god only knows what).
Your example was funny, though. Wouldn't a Computer Science grad wonder why a simple program (You replaced a O(n) algorithm with one that was O(log n), so roughly 88 minutes of the time the original program was running would have been spent in the search) was taking 1.5 hours to complete?
Well, a jury of his peers considered the matter. They considered that Libby could have remembered his facts wrong, but they didn't buy the defense's explanation. They considered that Libby was the fall guy (the juror that kept talking to the press said the jury felt he was the fall guy). All of those other facts you pointed out are irrelevant since Libby wasn't on trial for leaking, he was on trial for lying.
It sounded to me like the jury considered the important points and explanations, and concluded that Libby lied to the grand jury, to investigators, and obstructed justice.
It also sounded to me like the defense was very weak. They didn't bring in any memory experts to testify about how Libby could have forgotten or what could have been going on in his head that would make it not intentional lying. They didn't bring in Cheney to testify or any other important players. Not sure what that was about, but you now see the results.
At any rate, the jury says he lied and did not misremember, so he lied. A jury's findings are not open to appeal ("jury decided the wrong thing, so I appeal!" Heh heh. No.). Only if something improper happened at the trial.
I see Clinton being grilled before a grand jury because a case was brought AGAINST HIM on sexual harrasment (ok, it was White Water which subsequently led to sexual harrasment), and then he clearly committed perjury in an attempt to avoid being found guilty, and basically got a slap on the wrist, despite the fact that republicans are in charge of the legislative branch.
I didn't pay much attention to the specifics, by my father in law, who is an attorney, explained to me why what Clinton did was not perjury (Clinton is a lawyer, for pete's sake. He should know when he is or is not committing perjury). IIRC (this was a long time ago), Clinton did lie, but he lied during a civil trial about an immaterial detail. For whatever reason, this is not considered perjury, and to punish him for it would be to hold him to a different legal standard.
In other words, if an ordinary citizen did what Clinton did, there would be no consequences. At any rate, it would certainly not qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors".
Like I said, the details are shaky in my head, but I can ask him to explain it to me again if you really want me to.
I see Scooter Libby being questioned in a case where he hasn't been accused of a crime, has no reason to cover anything up since he hasn't been charged with anything and knows he isn't guilty, and giving a couple of wrong dates or times because he couldn't remember, all questions asked during a case that never had any merit (and this was known by the prosecuter on day one), and this is the guy that gets jail time,
This, of course is a criminal trail, not a civil trial, so the rules are different. Also, the facts he was accused of lying about were material. He was also convicted of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice, so he did more than Clinton did.
Of course, you make it sound like Libby just had a poor memory. Perhaps you are right. But a jury of his peers disagreed. They considered that Libby simply had a poor memory, but eventually found that the defense's version of the story "too hard to believe". From comments, it sounded like the jury wanted an excuse to acquit since Libby seemed like a fall guy. Nevertheless, the defense failed to convince the jury that Libby's false statements were the result of poor memory, and that he deliberately lied.
Like it or not, lying to a grand jury in a criminal trial and lying to investigators are both crimes in the country that are punishable by jail time. On the flip side, lying during a civil trial about something that is immaterial is not a crime. That is why Clinton walked and Libby will likely do jail time if he is not pardoned. It has nothing to do with political influence.
If anything, if Libby gets pardoned, that would be a better example of political influence being abused than Clinton walking.
Eliminate PE from the required school cirriculum. Every since it was made mandatory under (IIRC) Kennedy, Americans have only gotten fatter.
Correlation vs. causation. C'mon. Lots of things have changed since the 60s, many of which are much more likely to explain why Americans are getting fatter.
Try this one on for size: since women's lib in the 60s, most families are dual-income. When both mommy and daddy are working, no one has time to cook so the entire family eats garbage (fast food, Kraft mac 'n cheese, "TV dinners" (highly-processed foods), Pizza Hut, takeout, etc.). My wife and I both work, but we refuse to eat garbage, so we make the time to cook. No one in the family is overweight--not even the dog. Also, everyone in the family either was, or is, required to take PE. So we are also convenient counterexamples to your idiotic conclusion that PE makes people fat.
If other diets haven't worked, try putting Little Tubby on Atkins.
Please, please do not put a child on the Atkins diet. It is unhealthy enough for adults--do not malnourish your child's developing body. If your child (or you) are fat, please do the following:
Drastically curtail refined sugars and flour from your diet by doing such things as:
Switch from sodas and fruit "punch" to water. Be sure to drink enough water.
Switch to whole-grain breads with no "enriched" flour.
Don't eat low-fat foods. Low fat means high refined sugars. The taste has to come from somewhere, and what tastes good to humans are fats and sugars.
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. The reason your body keeps telling you it's hungry is because you aren't giving it the nutrition it needs. There is no nutritional content in wonderbread.
Don't eat highly-processed foods. All of them have way too many refined ingredients.
Don't eat out so much. You have no idea what's in that food, and the portions are enormous!
Don't eat hydrogenated oils. Your body is not evolved to process them.
Go on family hikes, bike rides, etc. Even if you don't enjoy sports, that doesn't mean a kid should be sedentary. Walk around the city and go to museums if you want an outing that stimulates your mind and body.
If you do things like this, you will have better nutrition and will lose weight. You'll be eating more nutrition and less food (so fewer calories).
If you eat an unbalanced diet like Atkins, you aren't getting the nutrients you need to develop, and it's hard on the kidneys. For adults, it's a calculated risk. For kids, it's just folly.
The article makes no mention of strenuous sports. It's just talking about PE in school.
All it's saying is that those kids who are active in school (like in PE) are less active outside of school.
Those who do strenuous sports, as I did in high school, are going to be in great shape. How many morbidly obese people do you see wearing high school letter jackets? None.
When I was in high school, I ate about 3500-4500 calories per day and weighed 125. I'd come home from school and eat a pizza (not a slice of pizza, an entire large pizza) for a snack. That's just how many calories I was burning. If I ate that much now, I'd weigh 300.
But this study was on all kids, not just athletes. They do PE in school? Then they sit at home and eat cheese-its after school. No activity in school? Then they burn off a little energy after school by running around a bit.
Have you tried talking to them about it? Grandparents were created to spoil kids, so if you give them other suggestions for what your kid considers a treat, they just might listen. For instance, when my oldest was a baby, she absolutely went crazy for raspberries.
All the grandparents want to do is make your kid super-happy. As long as what you tell them to do works (elicits the intended happy dance or other reaction), they should be fine with it.
Incidentally, I've never heard of people giving a child food without asking the parents first. Allergies what they are these days, that's a risky proposition.
You missed the keyword there: approximately. Did you even bother to ask the guy what the variance was? I mean, 3500 closely approximates 300 for sufficiently large tolerances...
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Isn't that what he'll be demonstrating on his day in court? That he's innocent?
I am a landlord, and as such am subject to fair housing laws (specifically the Federal Fair Housing Act). It states that I cannot discriminate against several protected classes of people, including the handicapped in all areas of housing.
It could be argued that if I never sued disabled people who damaged my units, but sued others that I would be violating the act. In reality, nobody is going to bring a fair housing complaint for something like that, but it would be against the letter of the law if I treated disabled people differently.
Personally, I treat everybody the same. It's only fair. And yes, I have sued disabled people who have caused damage and won. In fact, I nearly always win when I sue because if I'm going through the effort to file, it's because a tenant really damaged a unit badly (as opposed to wear and tear). But whether or not a person is disabled doesn't enter into the equation.
Why do you think it should?
How is it trolling to say, "Disabled people aren't immune from the law"? It's not like the RIAA is specifically targeting disabled people (to my knowledge, anyhow), which would, of course, be reprehensible.
You seem to have a "You're either for us, or against us" attitude. Why is it trolling to have a discussion? I mean, we're all happy that attorneys like you are fighting the good fight against the RIAA, but I don't think it's trolling to ask the good questions.
Here's mine: "Why do you think disabled people should be treated differently from those who are not disabled?" I don't like the RIAA's "settle or face being sued for $100 million dollars" any more than you do, but how is a person's disability or lack thereof relevant to the issue?
GP use a poor choice of words.
Sure, you have to "prove your innocence" as a civil defendant, but only to the extent that your "proof of innocence" is better than the plaintiff's "proof of guilt".
I see this all the time in one of my businesses: Landlording. If a tenant were to damage one of my apartments, I can sue him for damages, to the extent that his security deposit doesn't cover the cost of repairs. Now if I go in and say, "tenant made damages", and the tenant says, "No I didn't", then the judge will pretty much just toss the case.
On the other hand, I take pictures of each apartment on move-in, and I'll take pictures of any damage a tenant caused. So when I go into court with my before and after pictures, the tenant is pretty much screwed. Unless he can produce some evidence that is more compelling than my photographic evidence, then he's going to lose.
But that's not "proving your innocence" in the sense that I can make a wild accusation and it's up to you to prove beyond reasonable doubt that I'm a crackpot. Really, it's just "whomever presents the most compelling evidence in court wins".
Civil cases are blocked from proceeding only when there is zero possibility of the plaintiff winning. Like if I sued you for back rent for one of my apartments. Well, you never even rented one of my apartments, so that would get dismissed.
But if you had rented from me in the past, but just simply did not owe me any money, that wouldn't be grounds for dismissal. That would be the judge's decision after hearing the case. That you did not owe me any money.
All they have is an IP address. They certainly don't know if the user of that IP has cancer, gout, or an irritable bowel.
Look, I don't appreciate the RIAA's tactics, either, but this article is definitely nothing more than an Appeal to Pity.
You need to do the following:
- Talk to IT and say, "I need to exchange large files with [insert important client here] in order to [insert good reason here]. How would I best accomplish this in accordance with IT policies?"
- Talk to your boss and say, "In order to do my job, I need to exchange large files with [insert important client here] in order to [insert good reason here]. I spoke with IT, and they couldn't come up with a good solution. Can you please escalate this to the appropriate level that it gets worked out? This project is worth [insert large number here] dollars to the company, and we will all look like [insert stupid-sounding animal here] if we lose that client over this. Perhaps our VP needs to talk to the IT VP and get this figured out."
Blatantly violating company policy is dangerous to your career.I mean, seriously. Most clients of mine allow personal devices, but they VLAN them the heck away from the corporate network. Seems pretty sane to me.
There is a fine line between skepticism and paranoia.
FYI.
The article states the former--that they analyzed her computer and found that she made those searches.
What bugs me about using this evidence is that the article states her husband was abusive. Given his history of violence, how can we be so sure she made those searches? Isn't it equally if not more likely that he, with his documented history of violence, was plotting to kill her?
Where the heck was her attorney when that evidence got admitted?
In the olden days, you didn't have to worry too much about your child coming into contact with violent and/or sexual entertainment. You could let them veg a bit in front of the TV after a long day at school and not worry about them coming into contact with Herr Goatse (I'm still having nightmares courtesy of that man). Now, with the breadth of information available on the Internet, there is serious danger that a child might come into content that is inappropriate for his age. Content that will give them nightmares. Content that will establish inappropriate and harmful ideals with respect to violence, relationships, sexuality, religion, hate, etc.
Your solution is "proper monitoring". I disagree with this notion. First, it is impossible for 2 parents to monitor 5 children 24/7 (I don't have 5 kids, but many people do). Secondly, are you truly doing your job as a parent if you have to hover over your children to that degree? Have you prepared them to enter adulthood? Are you allowing them to become their own individuals?
The problem with the Internet, is there is (as of yet) no good way to gradually allow your children more access as they get older are more able to handle it (to distinguish right from wrong, etc.), yet you are doing your child a disservice to never allow him access to the Internet at all. How do I protect my daughter from penis-enlargement spam? How do I protect my son from "rape fantasy" websites? How do I do all this while giving them enough space to be curious and learn and discover?
These are real problems that our parents' generation never had to confront while we were growing up. Nobody seems to have come up with an acceptable solution that works well in all situations, but every time something is proposed, much energy is spent shooting it down and much energy is spent criticizing parents. This is energy that could be spent coming up with helpful solutions to this new, but very real problem.
On the flip side, if your ".kids" domain is nothing more than a glorified Toys 'R Us ad, I'm blocking it at the router. That level of marketing is not appropriate for children.
The problem is that there is no universal standard on what is ok for kids. Furthermore, what is appropriate for an older kid would not be appropriate for a younger kid (but that older kid probably isn't ready to handle the wide variety of information on the full Internet).
By way of example, you wouldn't let your 5 year old watch Gremlins unless you want him in your bed scared poopless crying all night for the next 5-10 days. By the same token, your 11 year old daughter should be able to handle stuffed-animal violence (and anyway can internalize the difference between movies and real life), but do you really want to answer the question: "When I turn 18, will I get a webcam, too?"
That kind of puts a crimp in his strategy of (ab)using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to issue takedown notices, no?
I certainly understand why you're upset that the only one being punished in the whole Plame affair is someone who we know not to be the leaker, and you're right to be upset. But that's not really the point of the case, and it turns out that lying to investigators is a specific crime punishable by jail time. To me, this seems stupid. Investigators are allowed to lie all they want to you, but you are not allowed to lie back. Seems unfair. Anyhow, and Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart will tell you, your best defense when talking to investigators is to just say you don't remember (in the case of Libby) or just shut the fsck up (in the case of Stewart--she was being investigated and had the Constitutional right to remain silent).
Also, to my knowledge, the law doesn't distinguish between lying to protect oneself and lying to protect somebody else.Didn't seem relevant, so I skipped it. Berger is accused of mishandling classified materials, not perjury. I agree with you that he should be punished for his crimes, but what does his crime have to do with Scooter Libby's? Nobody is accusing Libby of mishandling classified materials. Everybody knows that he was not the leaker.
I guess my only point here is, while I agree that Libby got screwed, his perjury and Clinton's lying, were both punished correctly under the law as it is written. I also agree that Berger should have been punished, but I don't see that injustice's relevance to the conversation. If we're trying to right every injustice, please let me register that I feel a 5 day work week is an injustice. I should get 3 day weekends, for great justice.
Who codes search algorithms anymore? There are perfectly good libraries for that kind of gruntwork.
Write your own and you are likely to write something that is buggy and O(god only knows what).
Your example was funny, though. Wouldn't a Computer Science grad wonder why a simple program (You replaced a O(n) algorithm with one that was O(log n), so roughly 88 minutes of the time the original program was running would have been spent in the search) was taking 1.5 hours to complete?
Well, a jury of his peers considered the matter. They considered that Libby could have remembered his facts wrong, but they didn't buy the defense's explanation. They considered that Libby was the fall guy (the juror that kept talking to the press said the jury felt he was the fall guy). All of those other facts you pointed out are irrelevant since Libby wasn't on trial for leaking, he was on trial for lying.
It sounded to me like the jury considered the important points and explanations, and concluded that Libby lied to the grand jury, to investigators, and obstructed justice.
It also sounded to me like the defense was very weak. They didn't bring in any memory experts to testify about how Libby could have forgotten or what could have been going on in his head that would make it not intentional lying. They didn't bring in Cheney to testify or any other important players. Not sure what that was about, but you now see the results.
At any rate, the jury says he lied and did not misremember, so he lied. A jury's findings are not open to appeal ("jury decided the wrong thing, so I appeal!" Heh heh. No.). Only if something improper happened at the trial.
In other words, if an ordinary citizen did what Clinton did, there would be no consequences. At any rate, it would certainly not qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors".
Like I said, the details are shaky in my head, but I can ask him to explain it to me again if you really want me to.This, of course is a criminal trail, not a civil trial, so the rules are different. Also, the facts he was accused of lying about were material. He was also convicted of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice, so he did more than Clinton did.
Of course, you make it sound like Libby just had a poor memory. Perhaps you are right. But a jury of his peers disagreed. They considered that Libby simply had a poor memory, but eventually found that the defense's version of the story "too hard to believe". From comments, it sounded like the jury wanted an excuse to acquit since Libby seemed like a fall guy. Nevertheless, the defense failed to convince the jury that Libby's false statements were the result of poor memory, and that he deliberately lied.
Like it or not, lying to a grand jury in a criminal trial and lying to investigators are both crimes in the country that are punishable by jail time. On the flip side, lying during a civil trial about something that is immaterial is not a crime. That is why Clinton walked and Libby will likely do jail time if he is not pardoned. It has nothing to do with political influence.
If anything, if Libby gets pardoned, that would be a better example of political influence being abused than Clinton walking.
Try this one on for size: since women's lib in the 60s, most families are dual-income. When both mommy and daddy are working, no one has time to cook so the entire family eats garbage (fast food, Kraft mac 'n cheese, "TV dinners" (highly-processed foods), Pizza Hut, takeout, etc.). My wife and I both work, but we refuse to eat garbage, so we make the time to cook. No one in the family is overweight--not even the dog. Also, everyone in the family either was, or is, required to take PE. So we are also convenient counterexamples to your idiotic conclusion that PE makes people fat.Please, please do not put a child on the Atkins diet. It is unhealthy enough for adults--do not malnourish your child's developing body. If your child (or you) are fat, please do the following:
- Drastically curtail refined sugars and flour from your diet by doing such things as:
- Switch from sodas and fruit "punch" to water. Be sure to drink enough water.
- Switch to whole-grain breads with no "enriched" flour.
- Don't eat low-fat foods. Low fat means high refined sugars. The taste has to come from somewhere, and what tastes good to humans are fats and sugars.
- Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. The reason your body keeps telling you it's hungry is because you aren't giving it the nutrition it needs. There is no nutritional content in wonderbread.
- Don't eat highly-processed foods. All of them have way too many refined ingredients.
- Don't eat out so much. You have no idea what's in that food, and the portions are enormous!
- Don't eat hydrogenated oils. Your body is not evolved to process them.
- Go on family hikes, bike rides, etc. Even if you don't enjoy sports, that doesn't mean a kid should be sedentary. Walk around the city and go to museums if you want an outing that stimulates your mind and body.
If you do things like this, you will have better nutrition and will lose weight. You'll be eating more nutrition and less food (so fewer calories).If you eat an unbalanced diet like Atkins, you aren't getting the nutrients you need to develop, and it's hard on the kidneys. For adults, it's a calculated risk. For kids, it's just folly.
The article makes no mention of strenuous sports. It's just talking about PE in school.
All it's saying is that those kids who are active in school (like in PE) are less active outside of school.
Those who do strenuous sports, as I did in high school, are going to be in great shape. How many morbidly obese people do you see wearing high school letter jackets? None.
When I was in high school, I ate about 3500-4500 calories per day and weighed 125. I'd come home from school and eat a pizza (not a slice of pizza, an entire large pizza) for a snack. That's just how many calories I was burning. If I ate that much now, I'd weigh 300.
But this study was on all kids, not just athletes. They do PE in school? Then they sit at home and eat cheese-its after school. No activity in school? Then they burn off a little energy after school by running around a bit.
Have you tried talking to them about it? Grandparents were created to spoil kids, so if you give them other suggestions for what your kid considers a treat, they just might listen. For instance, when my oldest was a baby, she absolutely went crazy for raspberries.
All the grandparents want to do is make your kid super-happy. As long as what you tell them to do works (elicits the intended happy dance or other reaction), they should be fine with it.
Incidentally, I've never heard of people giving a child food without asking the parents first. Allergies what they are these days, that's a risky proposition.