An antifa group in Los Angeles celebrated May Day by holding a small march, hanging a Trump effigy, and advocating for “revolutionary violence” against the “capitalist state” in order to “create real political power.”
“We must carry out military actions against the enemies of the people!” a member of the L.A. cell of the Red Guards said in a speech published on the group’s blog.
The Red Guards is a Maoist group that hopes to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao’s Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The group also identifies as “antifascist” and has cells throughout the United States.
So progressive. Peacefull. Logical!
Mao is the number one mass murderer of all time, 50-80 million, depending on how it’s tallied. One may wonder what the LA Reds have in mind for us.
Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama claims a horde of GOP House members are quitting over assassination fears. He may only make an excuse for the swinging of the old pendulum. Or he may be on to something.
He also said the “socialist Bernie Sanders wing of society” was pushing for a revolution that would lead to Maoist level of violence.
“There are a growing number of leftists who believe the way to resolve this is not at the ballot box but through threats and sometimes through violence and assassinations,” he said.
If true, this is the result of a turning point Pat Buchanan says happened 50 years ago.
The great concern of the people is that Facebook violated their privacy and misappropriated their cherished personal information: email addresses, voting habits, cat pictures, etc. Zuckerberg admitted as much, roundaboutly. Hence, the popular clamor for regulation: if not from Big Social, then by Big Brother.
Now for my funny, impromptu thought. Remember Uncle Remus? Surely your parents read to you those beloved moral stories by Joel Chandler Harris. It seems to me that what I witnessed on the Tube was, literally, a meeting between a sly, elitist, globalist corporatist and a bunch of mid-witted, elitist, globalist statists. Allegorically, I saw an Uncle Remus tale unfold.
The American people played the part of Br’er Rabbit. Facebook and Zuck represented Br’er Fox. Uncle Sam was Br’er Bear. Play along here… The happy little rabbit, while busily posting meal pictures and juvenile memes, noticed the mean old fox was cheating him. Incensed, the rabbit angrily demanded action, either from the fox or from Br’er Bear. In other words the hapless bunny tattled on the small predator to the large predator. Seems risky to me.
This is a new, weekly feature column and the start of what will surely become National $yndication. You can help. Call or email your local fish wrapper and request demand they carry my column$. Thank$ a million.
That’s what I always called him: Professor Anderson. Not Congressman.Not Mr. Anderson. Not John. Professor. That’s how I knew him.
This continues by series of belated eulogies. (I always find out well after the fact). John B. Anderson, former Illinois Congressman, died Dec. 3, 2017 at age 95. WaPo did a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of his political career. The terms in Congress. The Presidential run in 1980. The issues he thought important and his college teaching.
I knew him from law school. His Constitutional Decision Making and Electoral Process Classes were two electives and two of the few classes I actually enjoyed. He was really into electoral politics, with ideas a bit strange – yet, really, no stranger than the effete system you currently “enjoy.”
The Con Law class was were my work on Posse Comitatus first took shape, outside of a progenitor thought during a G. Gordon Liddy show episode. He initially took the research concept with a grain of salt. The grain developed when the subject contemporaneously arose from the DC sniper case(s). He heard something on the radio and called me with invigorated excitement. The rest was superfluous legal history.
I recall a visit to the Anderson home in Washington one summer (2002, I think). Professor A. and Keke graciously received my wife and I one sticky afternoon. In Keke I believe I saw some of the genesis of that “independent” proclivity. In truth, it looked more like liberalism than rebelliousness. But it was civil and interesting.
Such was the relationship. And the education. The above classes, like most, provided less overt substance than one would have supposed. However it was the idea bouncing that helped, that mattered. One needs that from time to time: someone to bounce the thoughts off. Someone independent.
Yesterday, in a headline for FP, I celebrated the departure of Rex Tillerson, former Secretary of State and the man who ushered in the brave new age of the Boy Scouts of America. But it’s really a mixed bag.
Tillerson never belonged anywhere near government power. His firing is a good thing. A liberal friend rightly pointed out that Trump has the highest and fastest rate of administrative turnover in history. It’s does look like disarray. Oddly, by his own list, leaving aside some major points (Obamacare, the wall, locking HER up, etc.), Trump is actually accomplishing his agenda. If it works…
However, with the cabinet positions, aides, and so forth, the turnover is a mixed bag. We seem to lose one deep state, globalist idiot only to have another step right in to take his place. Seems like it spreads.
The newly nominated Sec. State, replacing T-Rex, in the former Director of the CIA. Do we really want the head of secret police/paramilitary force representing us to the world? Might that not send a mixed message?
The new, nominated Director of the CIA is the former Deputy Director, Gina Haspel. If you’ve never heard of her, that’s probably because you watch America’s mainstream, lamestream, report no real facts media. Stop that. Get all your news and entertainment here!
Anyway, Gina is a career employee of the company, a former honcho for NCS, perhaps the most dangerous and unaccountable part of the deep state. The woman is “quite literally a war criminal.”
She ran the notorious CIA “black site” in Thailand. You’ve probably not heard much about that. It was (is) only one of the many places where the USA, beacon of virtue, engages in illegal torture of enemy combatants (defined as whomever the President says is…). This has been standard operating procedure under the current and past two administrations (Duuuuuuh-wa, no hope and no change, MAGA).
This practice and those like would, if conducted by any other government, constitute actionable offenses against humanity. There has been limited legal action already. The international community has little sway over the US with its thousands of operable nukes. And there is NO justice left in America’s courts. So, what sent Nazis to the gallows (on trumped-up, ex post facto charges and no due process at all), the US gets a pass on. Exceptionalism or something.
And, even honest CIA killers admit this hideous treatment of prisoners doesn’t work. Abu Zubaydah, in US “custody” for something like 15 years, with no rights, and no hope, was horribly battered and abused only to have it discovered he knew nothing and was not a threat. Still at Club GitMo though.
“Thems tarr-ists,” the unwashed roar, “who cares?” What part of “whomever the President says” don’t they get. It can be and has been US citizens.
I’ve been asking of late why Trump doesn’t apply such Draconian “justice” to the globalists, deep staters, and treasoners. Why not release the tortured, no threat, know-nothings, and make room for bankers, Congress Critters, judges, and people like Gina? You know, real threats who’ve actually done harm.
Instead Trump does the opposite, continually appointing rather than prosecuting.
And, back to this sh!t not working: the real terror threats are here, not out there in the sandbox or some other exotic locale. ISIS-inspired Corey Johnson comes to mind, if you look through the alternative media:
A 17-year-old named Corey Johnson claimed his Muslim faith commanded him to fatally stab a 13-year-old boy during a sleepover and severely injured another 13-year-old along with his mother who was stabbed more than a dozen times.
Palm Beach Florida authorities said the attacker confessed to the killing, attempted killings, and the motive of Islamic Jihad. After killing one teen and stabbing two more people Johnson barricaded himself in a room when police arrived. He was taken into custody at about 8 a.m. by the city’s SWAT team.
Palm Beach isn’t located in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, nor North Korea. And Johnson looks like a shaggy, disgruntled American everyteen. We don’t have to look that far for our boogeymen.
Justice in Amerika. New Yorker.
Platonically speaking, we’re passing rapidly from Democracy to Tyranny. Could we at least get a decent tyrant out of it, someone “cool?”
White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn has resigned from President Donald Trump’s administration.
The former Goldman Sachs president and free trade advocate Cohn, whose departure date will come in a few weeks, decided to quit after Trump announced he would impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
In a prepared statement, Cohn said, “It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform.”
Don’t let the door hit you…
In November of 2016 I noted that Cohn (Gary) seemed made for a Pearls Before Swine panel. And I called him the “chief gangster President of Goldman Sachs.” I also feared he was on the short list for Fed Chairman. He was. I said then:
“I certainly support the concept of “make America great again.” However, my American allegiance is to freedom, not to any candidate or politician. I do not support the money changers.”
I also have no use for free-trading, globalist charlatans.
Good. Riddance.
Oooooh kaaay. The robots.
They want to kill and replace us. Seems some humans are waking up:
*See, Roy Cohn was one of Trump’s real estate attorneys or something back in the 70’s in NYC. Roy Cohn. McCarthy. Lavender? All 25-35 years before the Venona Cables and Ann Coulter’s Treason…. Get it? … Cohn? …. …. March Madness is coming…
Facebook has admitted it was a “mistake” to ask users whether paedophiles requesting sexual pictures from children should be allowed on its website.
On Sunday, the social network ran a survey for some users asking how they thought the company should handle grooming behaviour. “There are a wide range of topics and behaviours that appear on Facebook,” one question began. “In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook’s policies, how would you handle the following: a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures.”
The surveys with optional answers:
Facebook/The Guardian.
“Facebook decides the rules with advice from external experts” is the only plausibly reasonable answer so long as the “external experts” are the police.
A better option would have been: “Said potential message(s) constituting (possible felony) criminal solicitation, Facebook should immediately freeze or lock out the offending account(s) and immediately report the interactions to the appropriate law enforcement authorities for prosecution. Failure to do so by Facebook, with actual knowledge of the message(s), would likely constitute criminal accessory support of child exploitation. All such activity is morally reprehensible to, incompatible with, and intolerable by any civilized nation or people.”
So interesting, telling, that they left off a criminal activity option. Even more telling they sent out the survey in the first place. Yes, a mistake (now that they’re caught). It all speaks to “the narrative,” which has now progressed to the normalization of pedos (and next: bestiality, necrophilia, and cannibalism). Diversity, you know.
For God’s or nature’s sake, Facebook, please reclaim a little dignity!
In the culture war, raging in this rather dark world, one would almost expect this from Facebook, one of the biggest socials, a group partly dedicated to allowing things like ISIS propaganda while banning, even supporting the criminalization of, those who would protest barbarism. Par for the course. One would suspect this evil progressivism from the left. One gets it, suspecting or not.
Yet such pathetic sickness also runs rampant on the other side:
An Italian archdiocese is embroiled in scandal as reports are surfacing of a gay priest on trial for allegations of blackmail, embezzlement and other crimes.
Father Luca Morini, known to his flock as “Don Euro” for his extravagant lifestyle, has recently been scheduled for a hearing in the Court of Massa, the medieval town in Tuscany where he used to run two parishes. The preliminary hearing is set to take place on March 8, where the judge will examine the evidence for accusations of fraud, drug distribution, embezzlement, extortion and self-laundering.
The case began when male escort, Francesco Mangiacapra, decided to go public about services he had been rendering to Fr. Morini, who falsely presented himself as a judge. When the escort found out that his prodigal client was a simple parish priest, he decided to inquire about the financial source for all the lavish dinners and expensive gifts. Mangiacapra suspected the money came from the faithful and decided to report Fr. Morini to the diocese of Massa Carrara-Pontremoli.
…
Last week Mangiacapra handed a 1,200-page dossier to the archdiocese of Naples with documents (including sexually explicit pictures) that prove the escort’s involvement with 60 priests from all over Italy. Explaining his motivations to newspaper Corriere della Sera, Mangiacapra said, “The goal isn’t to hurt the people I’ve mentioned [in the dossier], but to help them understand that their double life … isn’t useful to them or to the people who rely on them for guidance.”
He continued, “Their behavior is, in many cases, a result of the impunity that the high hierarchy of the Church has made habitual: that unjust tolerance that feeds the idea that it is possible to separate that which is lived from that which is professed, as typical of those who have a schizophrenic, double morality.”
Okay, Dear God, where to go with this? Factual confirmation to support a million stereotypes and anti-pedo-Catholic jokes. What, exactly, does it mean when a homosexual prostitute has more moral integrity, more conscious, than the Church, from top to bottom?!
In the name of Jesus Christ, Pope Francis, drive the freaks and criminals from the Holy ranks!!!
A suspicion generating culture drives rumors and nicknames like “Don Euro.” The Church did nothing. There had to be a financial paper trail. The Church did nothing. Somebody knew something. The Church did nothing. Someone wrote a letter. The Church did more nothing. An escort came froward with A 1,200 PAGE REPORT!!!! The Church did even more nothing. The police filed charges. The Church still did nothing.
When, finally, the story leaked to the press, the Church at last acted. They reacted with more Euros, a private villa, maids, and CYA excuses.
Christ promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church. Matthew 16:18. He did not promise that hell would not occasionally crash right up against the gates of the Church. Maybe, just maybe, instead of feeding the fires of communism and globalism, the Church could do a little pushing back against the crashing evil.
This particular story is in Italy. I guarantee it isn’t geographically limited to the one nation. And the Italian people, that fleeced, bereft flock, are more than ready to man and defend the gates.
The WSJ doesn’t even know what to make of this uprising. I see various possible combinations for coalition building – for Italy – not for the EU, nor the globalist usurpers, nor the foreign invaders. They may not have had such good news since the time they caught Benito at the gas station.
May the spirit of righteous resistance spread to the Church, the socials, and the rest of the West. Light unto the darkness; the surreal brought to bay.
“Normally the federal government takes the lead and the state authorities follow in these sorts of things,” he said. Now, “you have essentially an almost guerrilla movement by local authorities to try and undo federal law enforcement efforts.”
Asked whether it would be possible for charges to be brought against the mayor, Litman said he thought it was not likely.
“That would be extraordinary,” he said.
[Mayor] Schaaf and her supporters say she did the right thing.
“My statement on Saturday was meant to give all residents time to learn their rights and know their legal options,” Schaaf said Tuesday in a statement. “It was my intention that one mother, or one father, would use the information to help keep their family together.
“I do not regret sharing this information. It is Oakland’s legal right to be a sanctuary city and we have not broken any laws. We believe our community is safer when families stay together,” she stated.
She may regret the decisions when she’s indicted for violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324. If so, then I’d expect to see associated conspiracy, obstruction, and public corruption charges too. Or maybe not. It would be, as Professor Litman says, “extraordinary.” But it is technically possible.
Also possible is Trump pulling ICE out of California and leaving the State to enjoy the company of the illegals, 81% of whom appear to be convicted criminals. Also possible, if unlikely, would be the declaration that all of these people are engaged in enemy activities against the United States and dealt with, militarily, as enemy combatants. There’s actually more precedent for the latter possibility.
President Trump will face an obstruction of justice charge from special counsel Robert Mueller, former Attorney General Eric Holder predicted.
“You technically have an obstruction of justice case that already exists,” Holder, who served under then-President Obama, said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “I’ve known Bob Mueller for 20, 30 years; my guess is he’s just trying to make the case as good as he possibly can. So, I think that we have to be patient in that regard.”
Trump’s critics have speculated about an obstruction charge ever since he fired FBI Director James Comey in the midst of an investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The president said he was frustrated that Russia-related allegations had become “an excuse for having lost an election,” and he was also apparently annoyed that Comey refused to say publicly that Trump himself was not under investigation, although Comey had made such comments in private.
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” Trump told the New York Times in December 2017.
Selling, and then giving, illegal arms to known terrorists, actions which led to the murder of at least one American citizen, would seem to also qualify for E.C. treatment. On the fantasy front, an absolute defense against obstruction exists in the President’s absolute authority to terminate any executive official, at any time, for any reason or for no reason. That’s settled precedent, as is black-siting American citizens engaged in hostilities against America – that or just droning them away.
All of this is rancorous, depressing, and more than a little ridiculous and speculative. So … here’s a happy balance piece:
“It’s quite possible that the Bush political dynasty, at least for this generation, could end in the spring of 2018 because if George P Bush fails to win the GOP nomination for land commissioner it’s tough to see him coming back from that any time soon,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. The dynasty began with Prescott Bush – George P’s great-grandfather – becoming senator for Connecticut in 1952.
Though Democratic turnout for early voting has soared this year compared with last time, no Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, making the primaries all-important.
The last stand of Bush’s political career could be the Alamo. His predecessor and main rival, Jerry Patterson – a history buff who used to carry guns in his cowboy boots and cultivated a relationship with the pop star and leading Alamo artefact collector, Phil Collins –has made Bush’s supposed failure as a steward of the historical battlefield site into a key campaign issue. Bush has also drawn criticism for the slow pace of disaster recovery efforts following Hurricane Harvey.
Praise be to God Almighty! Now, after G.P.B. loses, maybe there’s some way to justify deporting the whole Bush Clan back to wherever the hell they came from. Or anywhere else. Germany! I think the Reich still owe Prescott’s descendant’s a little favor for the Union Banking gold deals, no?
This may be all for the weekend. Tomorrow starts a new week. Maybe with some cigars or music or something.
With the highest gun ownership per capita in the world – by far – the US is only number 111 (of around 200 nations) in per capita murders. The left’s assertion that over-armed America is the murder capital of the world is a ridiculous lie. And, dear God, let’s NOT get into the statistics of who commits the largest measurable percentage of murders in America (hint: it’s not the Amish).
Gun murders and deaths, including those related to rifles (including “assault-style” rifles) are but a near microscopic fraction of total “unnatural” or “preventable” deaths in the US. From 2014:
248 people killed with rifles (all types including … assault rifles);
435 people killed with baseball bats and hammers;
660 people killed with punches and kicks;
8,124 people killed with guns of all kinds (offset by 1,000,000+ lives saved by all guns);
14,249 murders of/by all weapons sources (and unarmed murders);
32,744 killed by automobiles;
Approximately 200,000 killed by doctors and medical professionals;
Approximately 365,000 killed by obesity and fat-related causes;
652,639 killed by “legal” abortions.
One, if one is blind, deluded, and perhaps mentally deficient, or possibly evil, can easily see the way to best save lives in America is to ban the scary AR-15. (Better raise taxes while we’re at it).
And no one ever uses an assault rifle to prevent crime or save lives … except that they do.
Yesterday I ran a rather incomplete, but illustrative, list of current and historic gun control proponents. Show me a tyrant, a dictator, a mass murderer, a genocidal maniac, or an active war-monger, and I’ll show you a loud and proud supporter of disarming the locals.
All of this figures largely into today’s Prepper News Weekly, which you should watch on a regular basis:
Perrin Lovett/FPTV/YouTube.
Yet and still, otherwise decent people, whether they be “average”or “ordinary” or powerful celebrities, continue to mindlessly (no thought, just emotions) clamor to be disarmed. To disarm you. It’s as infuriating as it is embarrassing.
The impressionable youth, students who will walk out of classes to support gun control, are almost understandable. Some (very few) of them are subject to being killed, in schools or without, by bad people armed with guns. Sure, they’re more likely to be killed by bees, lightning, and swimming pools, but those facts are … facts and not really governed by easily manipulated feelings. (Ever hear someone decry “assault-style” ionized plasmatic electricity from the sky?) No.
The kids are far more likely to be killed by incompetent doctors, sugary drinks and starchy carbs, and autos. And many millions of their cohorts never even made it to the schools thanks to Planned Parenthood (aka, Rehashed Nazi Eugenics, Inc.). On that last note, an interesting, telling political cartoon:
Andy Marlette, Pensacola News Journal (via the Tampa Bay Times).
That’s good and bad rhetoric all in one, Mr. Marlette. There’s a vague truth behind it: “conservative” Republicans types, like Rick “Make it 21!” Scott, will claim to be anti-abortion. They’re not. For all the claims, there’s been remarkably little (read: NO) action since 1973 to curtail abortions. The slight numerical decline is more attributable to contraception, lifestyle changes, and the antics of the … um … Junior Anti-Sex League.
The young cartoon lady is well-instructed that the well-dressed, well-fed elephant does not care about her in or out of the womb. His only concerns are: appeasing his corporate overlords, and; getting reelected. (Yes, these are most similar to the real desires of his goofy-looking jackass “opponent”). The rhetorical truth evaporates. Then, mathematically considering the 80:1 and 2,600:1 ratios from 2014, above, the real truth interrupts with force.
For the politicians, especially the currently-in-charge GOPers, there can be no understanding, no sympathy. “Mindless shits” comes descriptively to mind.
“The schools are terrible because the teachers are incompetent, but arm the teachers.”
“No, don’t arm the teachers. Raise the gun-buying age and put a SWAT team in every school. Metal detectors! More drugs!”
“Okay. Let’s ban bump stocks (unnecessary to bump fire anyway)”.
“Take the guns first, due process second.”
Gibber. Gibber. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Stupidity to make Democrats look sane by comparison. (One notices that, largely, the Dems are silently hanging back now, allowing the fat, stupid elephants, the kids, and the corporations to fight this one – a wise strategy).
The due process thing is really alarming. Not many of ye old Rights of Englishmen still exist in dying America. DP is kind of important. And it’s kind of under siege. And not just from The Trump. He says a lot of things, many of them unwise sounding:
President Trump on Wednesday voiced support for confiscating guns from certain individuals deemed to be dangerous, even if it violates due process rights.
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Trump was responding to comments from Vice President Pence that families and local law enforcement should have more tools to report potentially dangerous individuals with weapons.
Giving the orange man the benefit of the doubt, which I tire of doing, I’m sure he means what he says in limited, emergency circumstances. There are actually times when a situation sort of dictates dispensing with the technicalities of formal due process.
For instance, if a police officer sees someone committing (or about to start committing) what the officer reasonably believes to be a crime or dangerous activity, then the officer is lawfully authorized to use force, up to and including lethal force, to stop said crime or activity. No need to trouble a judge up-front. It happens all the time. And it many times doesn’t even involve the police; see the linked example of the armed citizen of Illinois, above.
And there is, in such emergency situations, a built-in due process anyway: people know or should know not to commit or attempt to commit crimes! At least not where others might see them. And with the expectation that they might be resisted if they proceed. It’s as much common sense as it used to be common law.
You know, the common law with the due process specter floating around?
“No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …” (5th Amend., U.S. Const., as amended, 1791)(See also: Amend. 14).
If there is to be formal legal action, then it needs to take place before any subsequent state taking action. Before, first, Donald, not second. And a gun would seem to fit the description of “property.” Of course, explaining this to a man who will use executive, administrative action, in defiance of Articles I and II, to ban superfluous rifle accessories, seems tenuous. Then again, the man says a lot of things; sometimes he rationally clarifies afterwards. Time will tell, time permitting.
It’s odd, given The Trump’s hasty pronouncements and the quasi-legal developments of the past 20 years, that he does not (yet) take a similar approach to the deep state, the treasonous lukers, the pizza-lovers, the banksters, and the Dreamers. Would not a delayed due process, say via Enemy Combatant proceedings, benefit the stabilization of whatever remains of this political mess? Dunno but, the fact that I, a anarcho-libertarian type, would even ask such a question speaks to where we really are in the here and now…
This article runs a little long but it is worth considering the whole of the fallen government and how it reacts to the law. Joe Bob Briggs considers the TeeVee-ification of the Third Branch:
The genius element of the English justice system is the invention in the Middle Ages of the state prosecutor, or, in its original incarnation, the king’s prosecutor. His purpose was to keep vengeance out of the courtroom. Before that you had the aggrieved-kinsman system. The suffering family brought charges against the alleged offender, so that if a Hatfield killed a McCoy, it was up to the McCoys to file charges, and if the Hatfield was found guilty, the McCoys were allowed to take vengeance in the form of executing the offender themselves. Eye for an eye, family member for family member, murder for murder, rape for rape. This is the system that, in various forms, still exists today in many Muslim cultures, and it’s the system that we supposedly got rid of 800 years ago after agreeing that eye-for-an-eye is not what we wanted. Henceforth the only person allowed to bring criminal charges was an unbiased public official representing the state and the people, and that person had to be emotionally uninvolved with either side of the case.
Then, as the court system developed in England and America, we became strict about excluding from trials anyone who had any kind of bias, even if he otherwise qualified as a witness. In fact, bias caused by friendship or blood relation is one of the principal ways that witnesses are impeached.
…
*Please read the whole original at Taki’s, via the above hyperlink.*
Our courts, judges, and prosecutors are every bit as out of control as their legislative and executive counterparts. It’s a very good article as are most that pass through that source. Still, I will note that there was a time and place for private prosecutions, ones involving really process and decorum. The Romans, for example, ran a system of private felony proceedings similar to those used in their major civil cases. The aggrieved party, usually of Patrician class, brought charges and prosecuted them before the whole Senate or before a large jury of the accused’s actual friends, his peers.
We don’t do that anymore … to our detriment. We still, to a degree, use the Roman system of magistrates to quickly resolve minor cases. But the felonies are now handled by self-serving government agents, before government judges, with government witnesses, all before a jury carefully selected so as to favor the government. In short: you are screwed.
Maybe the Romans, like the ancient English, were a little more civilized. More honest. More intelligent. “We” certainly tend to be none of those things.
Also, to partly answer Joe Bob, the changes (to due process, equal protection, etc.) may have started prior to the 1980’s. It might have come through the example of 1945-46 and the Nuremberg Trials, which essentially threw out hundreds, thousands even, of years of legal refinement. Threw them out for temporary expedience and feel-good-isms. And with ramifications for the future.
And so we are left with a system based on: ignoring facts, ignoring history, emotionally driven nonsense, collectivist actions, always geared towards taking the maximum amount of freedoms away from the maximum numbers of innocent or disconnected persons.
248 bad actors (calm down CNN, Google – not those actors) kill people with rifles, some of them surely “assault-ish,” while 100 Million good actors remain armed, responsible, peaceful, and vigilant. The solution is to disarm the many over the actions of the few?
That’s the “thought.” The thought of today’ do-good grabbers and of Hitler, Himmler, Mao, Stalin, Amin, Hussein, and Pot. A somewhat disconcerting truth and conundrum.
