The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Alex

Extremely relieved that Scott Roeder's justification defense was so thoroughly dismissed by his jury with about the minimal possible amount of deliberation.

Whoops, I'd missed that yesterday the judge had decided to not give the jury the possibility of returning a manslaughter verdict meaning the option was just guilty of murder or not guilty.

So I don't know if they would have soundly rejected the justification argument.

[Ghoulish Delight]

But does that mean that the judge did?

[Alex]

Yes, which is good but I wouldn't might having seen it come from jurors as a better side of societal sense.

Though I'm a bit confused about things. The judge ruled yesterday, after Roeder's testimony that he would not give the manslaughter instruction to the jury.

Isn't that a bit of a trap? To make that decision after means that first he got up on that stand and said essentially "I did it, I'm not sorry I did it, and here is why you should go easy on me for doing it." Not that I have any sympathy for him or thing the verdict unjust, but I assume the defense would have been different with the

But I'm sure there's some element I'm not getting in a five paragraph AP wire article.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Yeah, I'm a little confused too since I seem to recall there being a big deal made out of the fact that just a couple of weeks ago, the judge said he would allow the defense to use the justification defense. Why would he do that, then rule out the successful conclusion of said defense?

But that seems to be exactly what happened, I can't find any account that says otherwise. "Yes, you can argue for manslaughter...no the jury can't rule manslaughter." Weird.

[Strangler Lewis]

It sort of depends on what happened a few weeks ago. If the judge said, "Yes, there is a recognized justification defense, and he is welcome to try to establish it," that would be one thing. Then, his decision that the evidence introduced did not merit an instruction would not be puzzliing. If, prior to trial, the judge said, "I don't want the trial to bog down in nonsense. Give me an offer of proof about your defense," then the decision not to send it to the jury could mean that the defense didn't present its entire theory prior to trial and then didn't flesh it out at trial. Or it could mean that the judge never had any intention of sending the issue to the jury but wanted to let the guy have his say.

As far as the jury goes, I assume everybody knew that an abortion doctor had been killed, so regardless of the instructions, if someone wanted to hang the jury, they could have so long as they kept uttering the magic words that they were not refusing to deliberate.

[JWBear]

Corporate "person" runs for Congress

[Ghoulish Delight]

Heh, nice.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Wow. Somehow I had remained blissfully ignorant of the term "anchor baby" until today.

I'll never understand the masochistic impulse that drives me to read the comments at ocregister.com.

[Alex]

While I can imagine the comments being made and how awful they are, I would not necessarily be opposed to changing things so that citizenship is not granted simply for having been born in this country unless to a citizen or permanent legal resident.

I'm not super bothered by the way it is now, but it also doesn't make sense (and it is a bit of an oddity in the world) to me to continue operating in this way. There's a reason that pure "jus soli" (citizenship by where you are at birth) rather than "jus sanguini" (citizenship by blood) is pretty much a western hemisphere thing and those reasons don't really extend into the 21st century.

But it would probably take a constitutional amendment to change it (though there is a little bit of wiggle room for the Supreme Court to do it through slightly different interpretation of the 14th Amendment) so it will never happen. And it isn't such a horrible thing that I'll be bothered by that.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Believe me, the people making the comments I read weren't bothered that they were given citizenship by birth, they were bothered that they were brown and given citizenship by birth.