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Comment: Why is such an incorrect post "insightful" (Score 2) 94

by HBI (#46440325) Attached to: A Dispatch From Outside the Prison Holding Barrett Brown

First Amendment rights don't extend to threats and trafficking stolen financial instruments
Fifth Amendment rights are clearly satisfied; the motion practice described above indicates he was charged and habeas corpus is not an issue.
Sixth Amendment rights are muddied by the aforementioned motion practice - I am positive that if he had wanted a trial by now, he'd have one. I think the point is that he'd get convicted of something, hence the delay.
Eighth Amendment - someone with a bunch of stolen credit cards available has resources, so evaluating 'excessive bail' ...please.

Woodward and Bernstein weren't instrumental to the Watergate case, they were simply public relations arms. The case was proceeding without them, and would have ended up in pretty much the same place if they'd been run over by a bus. Despite the mythology, the principals would have found some other reporter to feed data to. The independent prosecutor was the key to the case beyond February 1973, initially Cox and later Jaworski. It is important to remember that initially, the press reports of Watergate were not considered a large issue by the White House. The potential testimony of the burglars themselves was the primary issue initially, hence the hush money delivered until after the 1972 election.

Comment: Re:US jobs depend on cartels (Score 1) 323

by HBI (#45900739) Attached to: Cartels Are Using Firetruck-Sized Drillers To Make Drug Pipelines

The fact that the US has a higher proportion of its population incarcerated than most other nations is well known.

The reasons why are less well-known. Mandatory sentences play their part, but blaming the war on drugs for this is a little shortsighted. I see the US at war with an insurgency within its borders, except the government has chosen to combat it with a criminal justice approach. This approach does not work - and note that the enforcers look more and more like an army every day, with every little municipality having a SWAT team with automatic weapons, and people being summarily executed in their homes by supposed law enforcers for little to no reason. The insurgency started when the government chose to intrude on matters that had previously been left to individual liberty and the best judgement of the population. It is a very low-intensity sort of conflict, but the signs are all around us. The war on drugs is just one slice of the entire problem. The totalization of state control is the problem.

I am not offering solutions, as I doubt any of the possible ways out would be paths taken.

Comment: Re:US jobs depend on cartels (Score 4, Insightful) 323

by HBI (#45897583) Attached to: Cartels Are Using Firetruck-Sized Drillers To Make Drug Pipelines

It appears no one has answered this question, so I will. Why are people on the right so resolutely anti-drug?

If you spent your whole life working - regardless of the delivered value to society - the idea of paying an able-bodied person's way in life is antithetical. Those on the right perceive drugs as a certain way to turn an able-bodied person into someone who requires social welfare. No one on the right trusts the individual to make logical choices in the presence in the corrupting influence of a mind-altering drug. They correctly identify the number of people who would remain productive members of society while consuming drugs as very small.

Legalizing drugs would amount to at least removing society's disfavor from the consumption of same. The right expects that an ever-increasing crop of wastrels who do not work will be the result, increasing their tax burden and further damaging the perception that work is the correct pathway to life success. To the right, there is no upside to legalization.

Wresting alcohol and marijuana from this perception goes far to explain why blue laws are still prevalent in many areas and that the first commercial legalization of marijuana happened this year.

Comment: Re:Minimum Security? (Score 2, Insightful) 199

by HBI (#45857409) Attached to: Losing Aaron

It was an over-reaction, but the guy wasn't willing to pay the price for civil disobedience. So now the hipster crowd wants to redefine civil disobedience as something that should never inconvenience you.

This, luckily, is something that will never fly with the public at large, who will continue to think he's a criminal forever.

Comment: Nice straw man (Score 0) 903

by HBI (#45837921) Attached to: US Justice Blocks Implementation of ACA Contraceptive Mandate

Couldn't resist the chance for the dig, could you?

Granting cert on the case in question required more than Sotomayor's concurrence. One imagines the decision to issue an injunction also resulted from consultation with other justices. You have no idea who she talked to, nor what the content of the justices' discussions are.

Nonetheless, let's rip on the conservatives, because you don't like what they think. This pretty much defines "being an asshole". Which you are.

Comment: Re:Off-topic question (Score 2) 108

by HBI (#45831857) Attached to: No Question: Snowden Was 2013's Most Influential Tech Figure

I don't think there is that much more to the Snowden story. The guy seems to be an idealist. Snowden is at risk in Russia, but he's at risk anywhere in the world. The US would like nothing better but to take him into custody. That's the sum total of his protection - his freedom amounts to thumbing a nose at the US government and pointing out its powerlessness. Same as the Soviet defectors back in the Cold War era.

Comment: Re:Off-topic question (Score 1) 108

by HBI (#45831295) Attached to: No Question: Snowden Was 2013's Most Influential Tech Figure

Snowden was interested in leaking to somewhere that wouldn't turn him over to the FBI instantly, and was out of the subpoena/no knock warrant power of the United States government. That's why the Guardian. It would be idiotic to give anything harmful to US interests to a US newspaper. Even if they wanted to play ball, the feds would be all over them with "National Security" letters.

Snowden played this excessively smart, and that's the only reason he's sort of free now.

You're already carrying the sphere!