Kamala Harris is Biden's VP pick

Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for president, has chosen Senator Kamala Harris of California as the Vice Presidential candidate to run on the Democratic ticket in 2020.  Harris, a Black/Asian (Indian) woman, is a graduate of Howard University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law.  She is the former DA of San Francisco, Attorney General of the State of California, and 1st term Senator in the US Senate.



She is the person I most wanted to see in the role.  Given Biden's age, any person in the VP position stands a good chance of inheriting the presidency.  God forbid that anything befalls Mr. Biden, but she will have that contingency covered very well.  She has a razor-sharp mind, and the cool detachment of an incisive, unemotional cross-examiner (see clip ^ of her examining Wm. Barr).

I wouldn't feel comfortable if I were Putin.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she believes women who say they felt uncomfortable after receiving unwanted touching from former Vice President Joe Biden.

"I believe them and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it," Harris said at a presidential campaign event in Nevada.

The California senator added that Biden will need to decide for himself whether to run for president.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/437107-harris-i-believe-biden-accusers

Does she still believe them?

"Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.

Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly untruthful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence."


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html?fbclid=IwAR3-AaUIOSmIltIM0MYej-JvfOQ5uf9Cyc_NwhdAxwJWZA8l-pahHDq6tEQ

B

Maddog wrote:Does she still believe them?

Probably.  He is a touchy kind of guy.  I've met guys like that, and have had to brush their hands off my shoulders...sometimes tell 'em hands off. Even before the virus I was not a touchy, huggy type of guy, and I don't appreciate guys who are.

Harris was a very effective, convincing prosecutor. One thing I remember when she was SF DA, is she refused to ask for the death penalty. Conservatives who ran against her used to thump on that issue. But she stuck by her convictions.

We are going to need someone of Harris' caliber to put Trump autocrats in jail after the transition. Looks like the New York Attorney General has the handle on Trump himself...maybe the kids. But Trump sycophants were breaking all sorts of laws by taking gratuities and such, and eventually we are going to find Trump was a stooge of Putin's, committing espionage.

Espionage? Weren't the Rosenbergs executed for that? The United States Federal Bureau of Prisons did not operate an execution chamber when the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were transferred to New York State's Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, for carrying out their execution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

Sing Sing might the same place where Trump ends up. Poetic justice, eh?

According to the California Secretary of State's office, Donald Trump made contributions of $5,000 in 2011 and $1,000 in 2013 to Harris' re-election campaign. Ivanka Trump made a $2,000 donation in 2014.

Ivanka Trump now serves as a top adviser to her father in the White House.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/nation-world/trump-donated-kamala-harris-campaign/507-7d9445b6-6319-4a72-a9d0-bdb25637e114


I wonder if she should expect a contribution this election?

Maddog wrote:Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she believes women who say they felt uncomfortable after receiving unwanted touching from former Vice President Joe Biden.

"I believe them and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it," Harris said at a presidential campaign event in Nevada.

The California senator added that Biden will need to decide for himself whether to run for president.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/437107-harris-i-believe-biden-accusers

Does she still believe them?  

I felt him get closer to me from behind. He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. I thought to myself, “I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?” He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused. There is a Spanish saying, “tragame tierra,” it means, “earth, swallow me whole.” I couldn’t move and I couldn’t say anything. I wanted nothing more than to get Biden away from me. My name was called and I was never happier to get on stage in front of an audience.


By then, as a young Latina in politics, I had gotten used to feeling like an outsider in rooms dominated by white men. But I had never experienced anything so blatantly inappropriate and unnerving before. Biden was the second-most powerful man in the country and, arguably, one of the most powerful men in the world. He was there to promote me as the right person for the lieutenant governor job. Instead, he made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused. The vice-president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/an-awkward-kiss-changed-how-i-saw-joe-biden.html

Maddog wrote:According to the California Secretary of State's office, Donald Trump made contributions of $5,000 in 2011 and $1,000 in 2013 to Harris' re-election campaign. Ivanka Trump made a $2,000 donation in 2014.

Ivanka Trump now serves as a top adviser to her father in the White House.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/nation-world/trump-donated-kamala-harris-campaign/507-7d9445b6-6319-4a72-a9d0-bdb25637e114

I wonder if she should expect a contribution this election?  

Quite unlikely. But Trump always used to contribute to elections, in hopes of receiving favors. Remember, Trump was a Democrat before a black man was elected president. Hell, he invited the Clinton's to his wedding.

Hypocrisy everywhere.

Come on Maddog. Politics 101 is spewing dirt on your opponents when in contest then selling out when it's over. Cruz and the others did it in 2016, Clinton did it; this is more of the same.

Sad but true. Same story on a less explosive scale in UK leadership contests.

Eilzel wrote:Come on Maddog. Politics 101 is spewing dirt on your opponents when in contest then selling out when it's over. Cruz and the others did it in 2016, Clinton did it; this is more of the same.

Sad but true. Same story on a less explosive scale in UK leadership contests.

I don't have to like it. And there are politicians who are far more consistent and honest.  

They wouldn't appeal to someone like Quill though.

Hell, Sanders is far more honest and decent than anyone on the major two tickets.

I wouldn't vote for him,  but I can  respect him.

Biden and Harris represent what is wrong with politics.

Harris put thousands of young black males in jail for smoking pot and laughed about her drug use.  

She let an innocent man get convicted of child molestation. THATS NOT FUCKING TOO COOL.

She let a man languish on death row when she had evidence that would exonerate himl


I suggest that you "come on" and stop making excuses for hypocrisy.

Maddog wrote:

Eilzel wrote:Come on Maddog. Politics 101 is spewing dirt on your opponents when in contest then selling out when it's over. Cruz and the others did it in 2016, Clinton did it; this is more of the same.

Sad but true. Same story on a less explosive scale in UK leadership contests.

I don't have to like it. And there are politicians who are far more consistent and honest.  

They wouldn't appeal to someone like Quill though.

Hell, Sanders is far more honest and decent than anyone on the major two tickets.

I wouldn't vote for him,  but I can  respect him.

Biden and Harris represent what is wrong with politics.

Harris put thousands of young black males in jail for smoking pot and laughed about her drug use.  

She let an innocent man get convicted of child molestation. THATS NOT FUCKING TOO COOL.

She let a man languish on death row when she had evidence that would exonerate himl


I suggest that you "come on" and stop making excuses for hypocrisy.

No excuses here, but the Democrats and Republicans are no different in this particular regard.

Eilzel wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I don't have to like it. And there are politicians who are far more consistent and honest.  

They wouldn't appeal to someone like Quill though.

Hell, Sanders is far more honest and decent than anyone on the major two tickets.

I wouldn't vote for him,  but I can  respect him.

Biden and Harris represent what is wrong with politics.

Harris put thousands of young black males in jail for smoking pot and laughed about her drug use.  

She let an innocent man get convicted of child molestation. THATS NOT FUCKING TOO COOL.

She let a man languish on death row when she had evidence that would exonerate himl


I suggest that you "come on" and stop making excuses for hypocrisy.

No excuses here, but the Democrats and Republicans are no different in this particular regard.

Plenty flip flop. Some evolve.

Tell me, when is it OK to watch a man get sentenced to life for molesting his stepdaughter while withholding information that would exonerate him?

She was so worried about her success (we can leave Willie Brown out but folks can Google about their relationship) that she was willing to destroy lives to get there. This isn't the same as flip flopping on a budget amendment.

She's evil, and she will likely finish out Biden's term if he wins, which is fairly likely.

Let's just say in the being a decent human being department, the Republican and Democratic parties have nominated people at the bottom of the barrel. Anyone stating differently is an idiot or a liar.

Hahaha hahaha.

Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.

Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly untruthful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence.

That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.)


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html?fbclid=IwAR3vh5HjqQPkOMhymiHWW-lxApl14sAsZg2IM2VyvS2vDXn9hKSKA0FSO_Q


This is a power hungry human that has ruined lives to further her career.

One of the things I like about Ms. Harris is, she is not a lefty snowflake.  I was so angry with Obama letting Cheney walk away from his crimes, that I wrote a rather angry article about it.  If Democrats are going to keep turning the other cheek, they are going to keep getting slapped.

I like the mission and goals of the Democrats, but when it comes to actual political combat, they habitually run away.  The snowflakyness of the Democrats is the reason why they keep losing elections: the voting public is attracted to the strong, chisel-jawed, never-back-down fighter.  They like John Wayne, let the other wimps go.

What you are describing in Harris, Red, is a warrior.  Listen, law is an adversarial business.  Two combatants, each throwing their best punches at each other.  If Harris were to suddenly get all teary-eyed over a defendant, with some technical detail overlooked in his case, the whole system would fail.  That’s the job for the defense lawyers to argue, and the appellate judges to decide.  A prosecutor’s job is to pull for her side as hard as she can.

I view politics the same way.  When the other side goes out of bounds, nail ‘em on it.  Trump and the Republicans have broken almost as many laws as he has lied to cover them up.  Time to tighten the vise, and Harris is the right person at the right time.

I think this election is all about getting people in office who actually know what the job is and how to do it. Outsiders have proven incompetent.

When we get competent leadership in place, then we can set about holding their feet to the fire. That's the American way.

Trump got appointed on the basis of an argument that only outsiders can "drain the swamp".  All we have found is that outsiders are worse than the 'deep-state insiders'.  At least the deep-state insiders know what one cannot do.

There's a lesson in this: unravel the threads of government institutions and protocols at your own risk.  What Trump has shown is that such anarchy leads to men with worse appetites than those already there.

It is a lesson to be learned particularly by those who think Libertarianism is the path: Be careful what you wish for.  Things could be worse.

Ben Reilly wrote:I think this election is all about getting people in office who actually know what the job is and how to do it. Outsiders have proven incompetent.

When we get competent leadership in place, then we can set about holding their feet to the fire. That's the American way.

This election is about one side saying their shit sandwich tastes better than the other sides shit sandwich.


Do you have anything to say about Kamala's past, or is that just to be forgotten?

It's a pleasure to begin to see tough, determined candidates emerge from the ranks of the Democratic Party.  For so many years they have been soft snowflakes, ever on the forgiving end of politics.  The Republicans just winked and said, thank you, I'll take that, and then reached out for more.  It was so disappointing that I was beginning to look around for another party.

Just in time, too.  The Trump's will be ripe for the dock as early as January 21st, 2021.  Whomever Biden appoints as Attorney General, Kamala Harris should be in there, orchestrating things.  Lock 'em up, indeed.

Maddog wrote:Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases…. This is a power hungry human that has ruined lives to further her career.

What is curious about your argument is you are complaining when in fact the system worked! If these convicts were innocent—and I have my doubts—it is not the prosecutor’s job to plead for the defense. In our adversarial system, the prosecutor pleads for conviction, while the defense pleads for acquittal. What you are really saying is that Kamala Harris is superior at her job…she won, despite the odds.

The system relies on appellate judges to be impartial and correct any injustice. You misunderstand the role of the Attorney General when you presume that a prosecutor should be looking out for “wrongful convictions”. That’s the defense attorney’s job to plead, and the appellate judge’s job to correct…if necessary.

You might pick up a book on criminal procedure. I’m absolutely thrilled that you are standing up for the rights of a convicted child molester, but the mistake you are making is elementary.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases…. This is a power hungry human that has ruined lives to further her career.

What is curious about your argument is you are complaining when in fact the system worked!  If these convicts were innocent—and I have my doubts—it is not the prosecutor’s job to plead for the defense.  In our adversarial system, the prosecutor pleads for conviction, while the defense pleads for acquittal.  What you are really saying is that Kamala Harris is superior at her job…she won, despite the odds.

The system relies on appellate judges to be impartial and correct any injustice.  You misunderstand the role of the Attorney General when you presume that a prosecutor should be looking out for “wrongful convictions”.  That’s the defense attorney’s job to plead, and the appellate judge’s job to correct…if necessary.

You might pick up a book on criminal procedure.  I’m absolutely thrilled that you are standing up for the rights of a convicted child molester, but the mistake you are making is elementary.

Good prosecutors drop charges all the time when the evidence points towards innocence. They don't put innocent people in jail because the defense isn't competent.

Stop defending the incarceration of innocent people because they can't afford the best legal defense.

Makes you look like more of a dick than you already are.

In the cases you mention, the system is working fine.  In football, you don’t blame the other team for your team’s loss.  They were doing what they are paid to do.  Likewise, don’t blame a prosecutor for winning; s/he is doing what is expected.

Evidence in the Gage case sounds like police misconduct, not prosecutorial misconduct.  The last thing that a miscreant police officer would do is advise an Attorney General—highest legal officer in the state—of his wrongdoing.  He’d be arrested forthwith.

In the Larsen case, you admit that it was inadequate assistance of defense counsel.  How is that a prosecutor’s problem?  The prosecutor has enough to do with handling his/her own case.  Are you suggesting that, in an adversarial system, the prosecutor is also responsible for the handling of the defense case?  Isn't that a conflict of interest?

As far as the Cooper case is concerned, it sounds like one of those ancient DNA cases, where technology is just catching up to modern times.  I’ll admit that these are tough cases.  Changing circumstances present difficult questions.  I know that as Attorney General, Ms. Harris has granted retrials in such cases, when the facts warranted it.  However, if there are facts to support the conviction, a prosecutor has an obligation to go forward and argue the case.  You never know…even the prosecutor might be hoping the judge will throw the case out.  But, it’s not the prosecutor’s call.

So, your criticism on the bases of cases is completely misplaced.  In an adversarial system, the prosecutor’s job is to pull for his/her case.  In all of the cases you raise, the prosecutor was doing his or her job.

As I say, you are complaining when the system works.

Maddog wrote:Makes you look like more of a dick than you already are.

It's not about me. It's about the facts. Don't blame the messenger when the message is clear: Kamala Harris was an outstanding prosecutor, both as District Attorney of San Francisco, and as Attorney General of the State of California.

Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.

Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly untruthful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence.

That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.

Maddog wrote:Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.

Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly untruthful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence.

That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.

See, in all cases you raise, the system worked. The system always works when all participants do their job properly.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:Worst of all, though, is Ms. Harris’s record in wrongful conviction cases. Consider George Gage, an electrician with no criminal record who was charged in 1999 with sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who reported the allegations years later. The case largely hinged on the stepdaughter’s testimony and Mr. Gage was convicted.

Afterward, the judge discovered that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter had been repeatedly untruthful with law enforcement. Her mother even described her as “a pathological liar” who “lives her lies.”

In 2015, when the case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, Ms. Harris’s prosecutors defended the conviction. They pointed out that Mr. Gage, while forced to act as his own lawyer, had not properly raised the legal issue in the lower court, as the law required.

The appellate judges acknowledged this impediment and sent the case to mediation, a clear signal for Ms. Harris to dismiss the case. When she refused to budge, the court upheld the conviction on that technicality. Mr. Gage is still in prison serving a 70-year sentence.

That case is not an outlier. Ms. Harris also fought to keep Daniel Larsen in prison on a 28-year-to-life sentence for possession of a concealed weapon even though his trial lawyer was incompetent and there was compelling evidence of his innocence. Relying on a technicality again, Ms. Harris argued that Mr. Larsen failed to raise his legal arguments in a timely fashion. (This time, she lost.)

She also defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial. She relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office.

And then there’s Kevin Cooper, the death row inmate whose trial was infected by racism and corruption. He sought advanced DNA testing to prove his innocence, but Ms. Harris opposed it. (After The New York Times’s exposé of the case went viral, she reversed her position.

See, in all cases you raise, the system worked.  The system always works when all participants do their job properly.

No, it didn't.

And that NY Times article spells it out quite well how bad it didn't work with Harris at the helm.

Maddog wrote:No, it didn't.

And that NY Times article spells it out quite well how bad it didn't work with Harris at the helm.

Yes, the system did work.  The New York Times article by Lara Bazelon is using the same slip of logic that you do:

New York Times/Lara Bazelon wrote:Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors [emphasis added].

A District Attorney/Attorney General is only responsible for that which s/he controls.  Yet, here Ms. Harris is being criticized for all “official misconduct”.  That includes police misconduct, such as you saw in the George Floyd murder, or in the police death of Breonna Taylor.  In this case it even potentially included ‘judicial misconduct’ insofar the judge allegedly had a conflict of interest.  Is a District Attorney responsible for unlawful cops, or wayward judges?  I think not.

Unless Ms. Bazelon has specific, knowing misconduct by Ms. Harris herself, it’s all vicarious, abstract accusation for the sake of argument (Ms. Bazelon is director of the Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles).  That is hardly relevant to personal qualifications.

Being a lawyer, I know how the adversarial system psychology works: one typically assumes everyone is ‘against me’, and they ‘are all responsible for all evil in the system’.  So, I understand and forgive Ms. Bazelon in how she treats the District Attorney/Attorney General as the whole criminal justice system.  However, it is not.  The prosecutor is only a participant in a process that we all accept as the best yet devised.

The system works if you consider innocent people being unnecessarily imprisoned as working.

I imagine you would consider the gulags if the Soviet Union as a system that worked.

Maddog wrote:The system works if you consider innocent people being unnecessarily imprisoned as working.

I imagine you would consider the gulags if the Soviet Union as a system that worked.

A gulag in the USSR worked, if you mean by their ideological standards.  It served their purposes.

By our standards of innocent until proven guilty, the best way to determine that is by one side, the State, bringing charges based on predicate facts, and the other side, the Defendant, defending those charges.  It's called an adversarial system because both sides get to pull for their own side equally, with a Jury that will listen to the evidence, and render a rational judgment and verdict.

It is in totalitarian states like the USSR where one side has all power and control.  It is to them that you would make your argument that the State should make an independent, unilateral decisions about the fate of the accused.  Of course, that never happens because they decide for political reasons who should go down.

In our system, politics does (or, should) not play a part.  The judge decides the law, and a jury decides the facts, and truth meets justice in the result.  A prosecutor who simply gives in—as you would have it—is cheating the public.  The public hired him or her to do a job, and to just give up is to commit malpractice.  S/he should pull for the public until a judge, or appellate judge if need be, makes the final ruling.

The leniency that you are asking for, is what pisses people off.  How many times have you heard Nicko or Syl complain that the law is too mollycoddling, just letting rapists and murderers walk away with no consequence?  That's the public speaking!  It’s an adversarial system.  Let the system work…if someone is innocent, a judge or a jury will make that determination.

When Kamala Harris was DA, if someone was innocent they may wind up in prison anyway. And it didnt bother her or you in the least.

Maddog wrote:When Kamala Harris was DA, if someone was innocent they may wind up in prison anyway.  And it didnt bother her or you in the least.  

That's not true. When Kamala Harris was DA, she brought compassion and logic to the position and office.

I was a member of the City Advisory Committee, of the Bar Association of San Francisco. Up until Kamala Harris, the position had been filled by hacks and political leftovers. Kamala brought intelligence and morality to the office, and put it on the right track.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:When Kamala Harris was DA, if someone was innocent they may wind up in prison anyway.  And it didnt bother her or you in the least.  

That's not true.  When Kamala Harris was DA, she brought compassion and logic to the position and office.

I was a member of the City Advisory Committee, of the Bar Association of San Francisco.  Up until Kamala Harris, the position had been filled by hacks and political leftovers.  Kamala brought intelligence and morality to the office, and put it on the right track.

The NYT says something different.

Whom shall I believe. Them or Walter Mitty?

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/29/the-accuser-s-mom-called-her-a-pathological-liar-nobody-told-the-defense

Pretty sure that George Gage would agree with me (from his prison cell of course) that Harris is an evil bitch and you're an idiot.

Maddog wrote:https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/29/the-accuser-s-mom-called-her-a-pathological-liar-nobody-told-the-defense

Pretty sure that George Gage would agree with me (from his prison cell of course) that Harris is an evil bitch and you're an idiot.  

No con likes the authorities who put him there.  You can bank on that maxim, just as you can bank on them inevitably claiming they are innocent.

No one likes paedophiles.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/08/29/the-accuser-s-mom-called-her-a-pathological-liar-nobody-told-the-defense

Pretty sure that George Gage would agree with me (from his prison cell of course) that Harris is an evil bitch and you're an idiot.  

No con likes the authorities who put him there.  You can bank on that maxim, just as you can bank on them inevitably claiming they are innocent.

He is innocent. And it doesnt bother a heartless fuck like you are Kamala in fhe least.


If I was your kid I wouldn't return your calls either.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

No con likes the authorities who put him there.  You can bank on that maxim, just as you can bank on them inevitably claiming they are innocent.

He is innocent. And it doesnt bother a heartless fuck like you are Kamala in fhe least.

Everyone in prison claims they are innocent.  What's new?

He's a paedophile.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

He is innocent. And it doesnt bother a heartless fuck like you are Kamala in fhe least.

Everyone in prison claims they are innocent.  What's new?

He's a paedophile.

He's not the only one claiming he's innocent.  Does the Marshall Project protect pedophiles?

And Jesus, spell the fucking word like the American you claim to be.

"None of this gives me any more confidence that the conviction was valid,” the appellate judge admonished. “And the prosecutor’s job is to do more than secure convictions...You’re ultimately trying to do justice.”


Justice wasn't served, which is fine by the probable next VP and possibly President of the US.

Not that the run of the mill piece of shit Democrat gives a shit.

Maddog wrote:And Jesus, spell the fucking word like the American you claim to be.

That is the correct spelling.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/paedophile

The etymology of the word is Latin. It requires an æ̃ (Latin diphthong ae), which my keyboard does not have. So, I spell it as 'ae'.

But you're a southerner.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Everyone in prison claims they are innocent.  What's new?

He's a paedophile.

He's not the only one claiming he's innocent.  Does the Marshall Project protect pedophiles.

Everyone in prison claims to be innocent. Lying is the least of their sins.

Maddog wrote:"None of this gives me any more confidence that the conviction was valid,” the appellate judge admonished. “And the prosecutor’s job is to do more than secure convictions...You’re ultimately trying to do justice.”

We can't assume that the prosecutor didn't do his job.  He probably looked into it, after the judge wrote that, and concluded 'justice requires a conviction'.  

I mean, the jury obviously believed the prosecution case. You or I may have a separate opinion, but it's obviously the jury's decision.