Yeah, because people often donate money to Edwards’ campaign to be used to hide his mistress and his baby rather than actually, oh I don’t know, campaign. Sure the prosecution’s case is much tougher with Bunny Mellon being unable to testify and Fred Baron being dead and all. But it stretches the bounds of credibility to buy the “he didn’t know” defense. I’m not saying the case was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but I have no problem concluding for myself that he’s guilty as hell.
What is not to get about that statement? The charge of 2nd degree murder still stands. Meaning, it hasn’t been dropped.
Which is quibbling of the exasperating Bricker variety. Having an opinion is not mutually exclusive to expressing certainty. You seem awfully certain yourself that the prosecution’s case is too weak for conviction. This is as much of an opinion as believing with equal confidence that Zimmerman is guilty. It takes as much “blindness” to make either statements.
I think he’s guilty, but i’m far from conservative. So which kind of bias is blinding me, causing me to reach this crazy opinion of mine?
Is it possible, in your view, to simply look at available evidence and draw conclusions from it without necessarily being blinded by bias? As long as the thought process which leads to conclusion is rational and logically sound, that’s all that should matter.
Again, if being certain about something was enough to discredit someone’s supposed objectivity, then you are not the guy to be diagnosing other people as blinded. Only people expressing confidence in their beliefs would be willing to place money on something as uncertain as a jury’s verdict when we don’t even know what the State knows.
He knew he was getting money. But he regarded the money as a gift from wealthy friends to help him hide his infidelity, not a campaign donation. I have no trouble believing that even if he had not been the VP nominee, he would have taken that money, and that it would have been offered to him.
Maybe I am wrong, but I can’t believe you see it as so completely obvious as to have only one answer in your mind.
OK. But that doesn’t speak to his guilt. It only says that he’s going to trial. Lost of people are found not guilty during a trial.
No, I’m not certain at all, and I don’t know how you’d get that from what I posted. I just said that if I had to bet, I’d bet for not guilty. If you want me to put percentages on it, I’d say 80/20 in favor of not guilty.
I think what you’re really saying is that he should be guilty. That the law should have been written so that what he did was a criminal act. I might even agree with you on that. But the law wasn’t necessarily written that way. It’s got a lot more wiggle room in there for him than I think you’re acknowledging.
ALL of us are.
None of us are in a position to say whether there is sufficient evidence to convict him in a court of law of the crime he is charged with.
But he is motherfucking guilty of killing a kid who he had no need of killing, and who certainly didn’t deserve death or anything close. That much is certain as the sunrise.
And if the state of Florida hadn’t enshrined a statute in the law that all but makes murder legal, none of us would doubt that he’d be looking at 20 to life, either.
Uh no. I think you need to go back and read what I wrote, because this bears no relationship to what I’m saying.
OK, fine. I didn’t want to do that, but go ahead and back that up with cites from the law in question. And tell us what evidence we have to support it.
I am agreeing with John Mace and Bricker on this page.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Spooky!
How about all y’all talking about the Treyvon/Zimmerman case TAKE IT TO ONE OF THE FIVE THOUSAND THREADS ALREADY DISCUSSING IT?
Nope. ATMB is just a circle jerk.
Not that I give a shit either way. I get as mad as Shayna – whom I happen to love – I’d get a boot up my crack I night not notice for a while. Specially from from such a small-timer as whats’ her name. Fuck, beyond their SDMB “title”…who gives a flying shit? And if they do, what the fuck is wrong with some people? Ass-likkers by nature?
Briker? Not worth it. Wingnut troll. Not sure why you engage him.
Exactly what he wants/expects…
Party on.
Why do I have to cite law just to justify my belief that Edwards used his campaign donations to hide his affair?
I also think OJ killed his wife. Is it necessary that I cite statutes for that opinion too, or will you just concede your argument is fatally ridiculous?
Trying to get John Mace to concede a point is sorta like trying to get a puppy to crap where you want him to crap–it takes a real long time, and you have to put up with crap all over the house for that long time, sometimes in the most amazing places.
The two situations are different.
With OJ, the disagreement surrounds a factual question: did OJ, take a knife and stab his ex-wife and her friend to death? If you believe he did, you would be justified in saying he’s guilty; if you don’t, then you’d be equally justified in saying he didn’t.
But in the case of Edwards, there’s much less question about what happened. That is, even the Edwards defense agrees that Fred Baron and Bunny Mellon gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Andrew Young in order to help Edwards conceal his affair with Rielle Hunter and his paternity of the offspring of that affair.
But that’s not against the law. If I were to give you hundreds of thousands of dollars to conceal your affair with Andrew Dice Clay, as long as I paid gift tax on it, it would be legal.
The problem comes because at the same time, Edwards was engaged in a somewhat well-known election effort to become the Vice-President. So the prosecution contends that Mellon and Baron donated this money to Edwards to help his campaign – after all, public knowledge of that affair would have seriously damaged, if not ended, his campaign.
He says, in effect, that the money was gifted to him to help him conceal the affair from his wife, who was then battling cancer – in other words, whether or not he was the candidate for VP, he would have been the recipient of those funds.
So this is not quite the same as reaching a decision about OJ. In this case, the facts are more or less undisputed. The big question is – what do they mean under the law?
Of course there are disputed facts – that’s why there’s a trial. But the case doesn’t resolve itself like the OJ case does. And while I can appreciate someone saying, in effect, “I agree with the prosecution’s theory,” I don’t understand the absolute certainty that would support “guilty as hell.”
Further to what Bricker posted, you have to know how the law defines “campaign contribution”. After that, you have to understand how Edwards handled the money in question. As I said earlier, Edwards is “guilty” of having the affair, father the child, and taking money to keep the whole thing private. But none of those things is illegal, unless they involve campaign funds.
In this particular case, I would not bet on Edwards being found not guilty. In fact, I’d bet the opposite. But I wouldn’t mortgage my house and cash out my 401k to do so. I’d have to be certain of a conviction in order to do that, and I’m not as prescient as you seem to be.
You’d only have a point if I said he’d be found guilty.
No, that’s *your *“big question”. But forget all that, whats this about you with the face and Andrew Dice Clay?
That’s so 2 hours ago. We’ve moved on to John Edwards. 
Perhaps prescient is the wrong word then. I don’t have mind reading abilities on par with you, as I don’t know what went through the minds of the deceased people who gave him the money.
But you’re willing to bet money Zimmerman walks even though you know nothing about the State’s evidence. So I have to wonder why Edwards causes your gift for clairvoyance to shut down.
If I were clairvoyant, I wouldn’t be citing odds. And we all know more than “nothing” about the State’s evidence.
Except he did the same in 2004. He wrote a fairly infamous memo that was blasted by conservatives as an example of media bias when he attacked the media for “false equivalence” when covering Bush and Kerry arguing that Kerry may have made distortions but that they weren’t central to his attempt to win but that the media’s desire to appear “impartial” played into Bush’s hands and did the country a disservice.
http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2004/10/09/20041009_195805_mh.htm
Anyway, claiming Obama is “a dick” and complaining that the media fawned all over Obama in 2008 hardly marks one as a conservative.
To give an obvious example, lots of Hillary Clinton supporters felt the media coverage of the Democratic nomination was horribly biased.
I don’t think anyone would consider Tina Fey a conservative.
http://www.theutubeblog.net/my_weblog/2008/02/barack-obama-hi.html