Quoting this entire post because I think it’s an important and relevant one. Sure, some of the reason that people argue with Bricker a lot is because he’s conservative on a liberal message board in a very divisive time in our national discourse. Nonetheless, this perhaps-slightly-silly analogy really clearly spells out the dyamic of the thread. A public figure who is known to have acted really horrifically in the past has the gall to act the victim in public because people say bad things about him. A bunch of people were ranting about that. And then Bricker jumps in and starts nitpicking the language of the ranting. Sure, there’s an extreme interpretation of the language they were using which might indicate that they were not just ranting but were in fact seriously calling for vigilante justice and ignoring the rule of law… and if someone was in fact literally seriously endorsing something like that, that would be the time for a serious discussion of the definition of criminal-vs-not. But Bricker just started that conversation even though no one else wanted to have it, and then acted all victimized when people responded negatively, and clucked his tongue at our general lack of precision in posts, etc etc etc.
With any luck, Bricker will offer to pray that God forgive us our sins because we’ve harassed him so much.
That’ll pretty much bring this thread full circle.
Well, now, its not likely to do many of us any real good, now is it? I mean, how many of us are so close that having the sin of hassling Bricker off of our Permanent Record will mean we will get our PIN number for the Pearly ATM?
On the other hand, who can say it isn’t true? God can be such a little bitch, sometimes.
I’ll accept the Kennedy one; got any more to point to?
These kinds of things aren’t really susceptible to search terms.
But from memory – and oddly – another Kennedy, Patrick this time:
Now, here’s an interesting situation. After then-Speaker Pelosi was accused of malfeasance for not flying commercial, I said:
I was fully prepared to grind out a battle, but interestingly… no real disputes arose on the SDMB.
In this thread, I defend Obama against charges that his job offer to someone constituted bribery:
There is plenty of evidence in the link I posted
You look at those examples and say, “Wow, when I offer legal information in defense of liberals, nobody gets mad!”
I look at those examples and say, “Wow, when you offer legal information without being a giant douche pseudo-socratic-dialoguer who poisons the well in his first post with a bunch of pre-emptive sneering self-martyrdom, nobody gets mad!”
Tomato, tomato.
“…and the duck said, ‘Just put it on my bill!’ Thank you, thank you, but enough of this. It is my honor to announce the winner of the SDMB 2013 Award for High Broderism and Utterly Non-Partisan Objectivity! May I have the envelope, please?..”
('luc opens the envelope, glances at the card, screams “WHAT the FUCK!” and faints dead away…)
So, theoretically, I help my brother cover up a crime, but the evidence shows that my intent was not to protect my sibling, but to save my parents from the shame of knowing their son is a criminal. Thus I could not be indicted?
Then the grand jury didn’t get to hear enough because its main concern should have been about protecting the kids. It doesn’t take much reading at all to know what lengths Mahony (no e) went to so that the perv could still continue on molesting and raping kids. It should have been about protecting them; not protecting a pervert or the diocese and worrying about litigation. At least that’s what a righteous man would do.
Not in California.
When the next school shooting spree happens and the defence proferred is ‘I was intending to empty the magazines of bullets’ I trust our response will be ‘well alrighty then. On your way, you little scam.’ We wouldn’t want to give him the chance to feel all butt-hurt with our baseless accusations.
When this guy started playing shell-games with child molesters his intent was that they got off free. That outcome is completely inseperable from any intent to get the RCC off scot-free as well.
Besides - it is by no means clear he’s not going to face criminal charges.
I’m reaching for my crayons to colour myself unsurprised that Bricker is devoting time, expertise and energy on defending the RCC which could be better used finding some way to nail these criminals.’
Meanwhile in other ‘what WOULD Jesus do?’ news; in the UK the RCC’s attempt to wash its hands clean by pretending that priests etc, being officer holders and not employees and therefore ‘nothing to do with us guv’ is laughed out of court.
Cite?
We’ve been over the wording of the statute and the Hardin case, and there is nothing in either that restricts a defendant to only having one intent. As I already pointed out, your opinion that people somehow only have one “intent” doesn’t hold true. The fact the Cardinal’s motive was to protect the church does not mean that he didn’t intend the priests not to be arrested or prosecuted. They simply aren’t mutually exclusive.
Now if there is a case in California that holds that a wife lying to police to cover up her husband because she loved him, not because she didn’t want him to be arrested, or a gang member disposing of a murder weapon because he had a crush on a gang member not because he wanted the shooter not to be arrested, I am all ears. But in my little bit of research, there is nothing to support your claim that the Cardinal can only have one intent.
Don’t sweat it. Bricker just pulled that ‘intent’ thing out his ass. I can find nothing about the Grand Jury outcome other than the statute of limitations, which in the case of obstruction of justice is only 3 years, ran out on these crimes.
‘Intent’ was no more than the first thing his fingers clutched at when ‘his side’ (which happen to be nothing more or less than an international criminal cabal of child-molesters) came under fire.
It’s one of his prime hand-waving tactics - spout off some legal sounding bullcrap and set the thread scrambling off down the false trail.
If there was a political will to hold the RCC accountable for its many and varied crimes against humanity, a way would be found.
There isn’t so all we can do is continue to keep its crimes in the public eye, even if it’s something as petty as threads like these.
Besides, Bricker’s self-serving, smoke and mirrors interpretation of intent is what is known in legal circles as ‘bollocks’.
Mahony and his co-conspirators intended that those who had committed felonies escape punishment as that would lead to the goal of the conspirators. To say they did not ‘intend’ the felons to escape detection (and as it turns out, continue raping on their merry way) is as absurd as saying a whole bunch of kids were murdered just because you only ‘intended’ to empty the magazine.
No jury in the world would buy that. It’s just that there is still not a political will to go after the RCC, to the extent that people who have clearly conspired to allow felons to conceal and continue their crimes, feel it’s okay to act all butt-hurt when called on it.
Not to mention that people even join in to help them out.
Nor do I say he can have only one intent.
What I can say is that there’s no evidence – certainly no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt – to support his having that second intent.
Now, a jury could certainly infer that second, criminal intent from the evidence – no doubt of that. But they’d be doing so for precisely the reasons I decry above: he’s a bad, bad man and we want to get him on something. That’s the kind of thinking that I despised when I was a defense lawyer. It’s one thing to have your guy get tagged for the bad stuff he did. But occasionally I’d run into prosecutors who were perfectly comfortable in saying, at least to themselves, “I know this guy isn’t technically guilty, but I can convict him anyway, and he deserves it because of the other bad shit he’s done that I can’t convict him on.”
tagos’ post about the SNAP organization shows that sort of thinking too. ‘Let’s be creative – let’s find some way to snag that sonovabitch!’ I know everyone’s cheering for that kind of approach now, because it lets us punish a guy who needs punishing.
But can’t you see what a wrong and dangerous idea that is?
No. All I can see is a many decades long conspiracy between church and state the world over to give the RCC a pass. There are clear laws concerning accessory after the fact, conspiracy and for all I know, the good old federal ‘conspiring to deprive’ or something. They seem to have no problem finding something to deal with civil rights crimes from the 60’s. Or RICO.
What I see as dangerous is if an international conspiracy can keep its crimes concealed for a few years it gets off scot-free.
I completely reject your unsupported premise that the law is powerless. I maintain it hasn’t really even tried and then there are the ‘useful idiots’ like you, ever willing to wring your hands and shed those crocodile tears.
The law is not an ass. It just attracts jackasses.
For this disgusting scumbag to actually “ask God to forgive” people who tell him he is actually a disgusting scumbag…
Well that’s just par for the course for this supposed “man of God” who actually enabled child molesters to get more children for themselves. Yes, that’s right. He HELPED child molestors. He assisted them to continue to molest children, when he knew what they were doing.
ETA: Sorry - hope I’m not highjacking this legal education thread of Bricker’s.