Personally, when I read in someone’s argument that “whenever I tell the truth, They call me an anti-semite”, or “whenever I tell the truth, They call me a racist”, I know I can stop right there.
I should have quoted rather than let you figure out what the hell I was on about. At any rate, this (my emphasis):
suggested to me that you think this idea is somehow unique to the adversarial system of criminal prosecution. I realize now that that is clearly not what you think.
[quote=“BigT, post:21, topic:539989”]
I have seen what they are talking about in the court system. I just found out recently here that, even if a criminal confesses to a crime to their lawyer, the lawyer will still try to defend them. Apparently winning the case is more important than serving justice.
Wrong wrong and wrong. If my client tells me his is guilty, do you really think I can walk into a Courtroom and put on evidence (that I know to be false), that my client was in Paris at the time??? Ridiculous.
If my client tells me he did possess marijuana… well I can still challenge the probable cause of the officer’s stop, and the legality of the search and seizure. I can still force the prosecutor to prove the case. My client has the constitutional right to remain silent, challenge his accusors, and force the state to prove the case against him.
If the state fails at that point, and the case has been dismissed, well then JUSTICE has been served!!!
Quite possibly because Iran has said they will do that.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12914.htm
http://hftm.org/blog/?p=797
I can’t speak for you, but when I hear someone threatening to kill someone else, I tend to take it seriously. Especially when religious fanaticism enters the picture.
Unfortunately I tend to agree with you. Most Americans rely on the media to tell them what to think, or they rely on science, religion, or some other organization. There are not a lot of free thinkers, although everyone would claim the label. Skeptics are not really skeptics except in one narrow way. I don’t think a lot of the people claiming religion actually follow the core beliefs. But we are a young country compared to the rest of the world, and we will catch up in time on honoring truth, tested through experience, rather than what some authority tells us to think.
You start a debate based around assertions from a ludicrous website filled with lies and you’re accusing Americans of being hard to debate with?
:rolleyes:
“Americans have a problem with the truth.”
I expect every ethnic or national group in history has had someone say that about them.
You know, if every American disagrees with you about America, maybe you’re the one that’s wrong about America, not them.
If you replaced “Americans” with “human beings”, maybe I’d agree.
Also, if you get most of your information about America by watching American TV shows, maybe you should consider that these TV shows are what we in America call “fiction”. For instance, Vampires aren’t any more common in America than they are in China or the Netherlands, or Egypt, it’s just that you never see TV shows about Chinese vampires. Our vampire problem isn’t any worse than any other country, despite what you see.
Marge, there’s “the truth”…:(…and, “the truth!” 
Now I want to watch a movie about Chinese kung fu master vampires…
It’s not about winning the case. A defense attorney gets paid whether they win or lose. Someone who wants to win all their cases shouldn’t become a defense attorney, because most of their clients are going to be convicted.
But a criminal defendent, even a guilty one, deserves a defense. If it violated a defense lawyer’s professional ethics to defend guilty people, then most of the people accused of crimes would have no one to help them defend themselves. The fact is, most of the people accused of crimes are guilty. Most, not all. The defense attorney’s job is to advocate for their client. It’s up to the judge and jury to decide what should happen to the defendant, not the attorney.
If only innocent people deserved a defense, we’d have to have some sort of procedure to differentiate between the innocent people who deserve a defense, and the guilty people who don’t. Except we already have such a procedure, it’s called a trial.
It is certainly true that a defense attorney has an ethical obligation to not allow perjury, or to say things they know to be untrue. If their client admits guilt privately, they can’t ethically argue to the jury that their client was in Paris at the time. But they certainly can argue against the foundation of the evidence that the prosecutor brings, and argue that the prosecutor hasn’t established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
And the reason for this is not out of duty towards their scumbag client. It is irrelevant whether their client is a scumbag or not. The rest of us deserve to have a legal system where people can’t be sent to prison on the bare allegation of the state. The fact that most people alleged to be guilty by the prosecutor are in fact guilty is a consequence of the fact that they have to prove to a jury that the guilty are guilty. If they could just round up anyone they like, then we’d have a lot more innocent people in jail.
Only sometimes. All federal prosecutors and judges are appointed by the president. (Their assistants are civil service employees.)
Many state governments have elected prosecutors, others have appointed, some have a combination. Same with judges. Law & Order is based on the New York state system, wherein district attorneys are elected officials. It’s worth noting that the guys who actually try most cases (the assistant district attorneys) are apolitical hires chosen by the DA.
Seriously? SERIOUSLY?
Being an American I have a reason to say that debating with an American can be tiresome. It is just like debating with -most- Christians. We believe we are right and you are wrong no matter what evidence you bring before us.
I should rephrase that seeing as I am not a Christian…however, the point is that yes that can be true and it is more true in the States. There are people all over the world that think they are right no matter what but most of them gather in the States.
Maybe it is our lack of…I mean right to free speech. >.>
By the way Alessan that was the best vamp movie ever!!! 
Yeah, I laughed when I saw that.
Next he’ll be saying The Hurt Locker is an accurate representation of war.
What evidence do you have that Americans are more likely to be sure they’re right than people of other nationalities?
It seems to me a pretty bold statement.
I kind of doubt that these alleged problems debating Americans come from the US media. We have (to say the least) quite an open media culture in the US, and indeed throughout much of the West.
I would expect bad debaters to be found more in some ignorant, backwards hick country that practiced censorship.
How can anyone expect a country whose media spreads nasty, hateful lies not to be filled with idiot debaters?
Regards,
Shodan
Cuz we win. 