And I want a pony. So what?
I still say she’s a criminal even if she broke no laws. See post #43.
Also, if you’ve been following this thread at all closely you’ll know Harris might well turn out to be a criminal in the narrower sense, thought that has nothing to do with the 2000 election. Several of her top campaign staff resigned because Harris got a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury and kept it a secret from them. The matter being investigated is her dealings with defense contractor Mitchell Wade, who has pled guilty to bribing another congressman.
Well, see, you may WANT a pony, but there’s still the question of whether or not you DESERVE one. Whereas Harris RICHLY DESERVES to get up close and personal with the inside of a jail cell.
Most people (99%?) use the word criminal to mean something that breaks the law. If you want to define the word differently, I suppose you can, but then there’s no point in talking with you on this subject.
In that case, I’m sure you’d have no problem with people using the term to describe someone who is alleged to have committed criminal acts but who has not yet been charged, tried, and convicted thereof. After all, the issue is, by your definition, whether or not the law has been broken, not whether or not duly convicted.
In that case, I assert that Ms. Harris is in fact a criminal, just one who has not yet been convicted of her crimes.
What happened to the concept of innocent until proven guilty?
Pre 9/11 thinking
“The public may reason according to its wits, but this court must reason according to the law.” – Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons.
This board is not a court of law. We are free to regard Harris as a criminal, and call her one, if we wish. After all, we don’t have the authority to lock her up or strip her of her civil rights.
Well, Carol, I used your definition. Of course she’s not a convicted criminal at this point. Neither, of course, are Lee Harvey Oswald, Adolf Hitler, Richard M. Nixon, or William J. Clinton, to take four public figures never convicted of a criminal offense (other than Hitler’s early jail term for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch) but some or all of whom most of the public would hold to have been guilty of one or another crime.
Submitted: For purposes of debate on this Internet message board, there is adequate evidence to show that Ms. Harris in fact broke the law. That makes her a criminal by your definition. That she has not yet been accused, indicted, tried, and convicted keeps her from being a convicted criminal by the official standards – but no one save you in your hijack is alleging that the question of whether she has yet stood trial is at issue.
The issue is whether or not she has broken the law. If she has, by your own definition, she’s a criminal.
Now review the evidence above and demonstrate that she has not broken the law, to the standards generally accepted around this board for reasonable proof of an allegation. Or discontinue this hijack and apologize to Brain Glutton.
We are also free to express our shock upon reading a post from a lawyer that says:
Even if she broke no laws? What do we call people who, you know, actually break a law? Good thing someone in the Bush administration didn’t say that, otherwise there’d be a Pit thread 15 pages long already. We do take care of our own, don’t we? 
So long as they’re useful, it would appear…
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This is the Pit, not GD. The rules are looser here and I’ll call KH a three-headed goat if the humor strikes me.
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Any technical term – what lawyers call a “term of art” – in any specialized field of human endeavor might be, and often is, used in a much less precise sense (and perhaps to mean something entirely different) in discourse outside that field – even by an expert in said field.
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“Crime” is a legal term of art with a precise definition; “criminal” is not, except in conjunction with particular statutes dealing with “habitual criminals,” etc.
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Katherine Harris is a criminal traitor to the republic. May she die in prison.
Harshing my buzz, dude. Nothing more than an entirely ordinary dipshit, dazzled by her moment in the spotlight. While her actions are clearly suspect, I sincerely doubt she made any real decisions. It was Barzini, all along.
Oh, by the way, there is no such thing as “innocent until proven guilty.” The proper phrase is “presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
And that’s an important distinction. Every court case has to start somewhere. That somewhere is found in the legal maxims relating to presumption.
If SCOTUS is debating constitutionality, its principle is that a law is constitutional until proven otherwise. If two people are involved in a civil suit, the assumption is that the respondent is not obliged to pay the sum at issue until the plaintiff proves that he is, and the respondent is unable to rebut that proof.
And in a court of law trying a criminal case, you start with the presumption that the accused is a free citizen who has been accused of a crime, and the prosecution is obliged to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did in fact commit acts that constitute a crime under the definition at law. It’s not that he is innocent – it’s that his innocence is the presumption that the onus is on the prosecution to overcome.
Of course. That doesn’t make it true, or make you right.
Not in my experience. But when in doubt, consult the dictionary:
That’s the one and only entry.
Tell us how your really feel.
And fuck her with W’s and Cheney’s bloody thighbones!
Definitely reflective of a deep-seated hostility. Yes, that’s pretty clear. Is it because she is so obviously transgendered? Or that she rises at night to feast on the blood of the living?
As is or sharpened?
As is . . . we wouldn’t wanna seem vindictive or anything. 