I have a new legal term for you to fit into your vocabulary: “conspiracy”. Its illegal, just by itself, to plan to do something illegal.
At my last count, we have something like a dozen self-confessed lawyers hereabouts. Maybe one of them will explain it to you.
What happened (if it happened) in those training seminars is, above all, stupid. If those people followed the alleged directions, they’d be committing crimes for which they would be prosecuted. Setting up your own activists for jail time is, at the very least, counterproductive.
That’s the reason why I am taking those breathless reports with a huge dose of salt.
If there was a crime committed, then Democrats should file a suit, shouldn’t they? I am waiting…
Only if it is a civil matter. Voter fraud is a criminal offense.
Even more serious then… Where’s the prosecution?
Oh, for Heaven’s sake! I’m not interested in putting any one in jail, I don’t need to punish. These people aren’t operating like a Leninist cell, in darkest secrecy. They didn’t skulk into a hidden lair to do this stuff, it was almost public. They probably don’t think they are doing anything wrong, they probably believe that they will, in fact, prove to be the last bulwark against the Horde.
They have been lied to, hoodwinked. Very likely they were lied to by someone who believed it themselves. And the chain goes on, but sooner or later, you hit somebody who knows it isn’t true, but says it anyway.
Now that sumbitch oughta get good and slammed up. Some dank place where inmates play harmonica and sing “Old Man Ribba”.
I disagree. Doing wrong because you are stupid and credulous is just as bad as doing it because you are evil. It takes followers to implement evil, without them Charles Manson would have just been a failed musician, Obama bin Laden would have been an unknown disgruntled son of a billionaire, and there would be some more painted houses in Germany.
“I was only following orders” is not a defence. I agree that, somewhere, there’s someone higher up who’s ultimately responsible, and they need to be found and dealt with, but so do the individuals who did this.
Actually, while there are certainly several dupes out there in the world, I tend to think of Shodan as a willing participant, and not a dupe. He IS a Doper, after all, and as such, the default presumption is that he is a high-information individual, unlike most dupes.
I recognize that there are exceptions.
Remember Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell’s commitment “to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to [Bush]” in 2004?
Since they seem to have gotten away with it then, they feel emboldened, I guess …
Does Mitt Romney’s Son Tagg Have An Investment In Some Ohio Voting Machines?
“[PolitcolNews.com] … claims that [Tagg] Romney owns an interest in Hart Intercivic voting machines which will be used to calculate votes in Hamilton County, [Ohio].”
Can everyone turn down the shrill in here? I’m trying to sleep.
I can explain it to you, elucidator.
Typically, a conspiracy requires an overt act. It’s true that some jurisdictions define some offenses as not requiring an overt act, but that’s the rare case. In the majority of U.S. jurisdictions, it’s not illegal just by itself to plan to do something illegal. Typically, at least one conspirator must take some substantial step in furtherance of the criminal scheme.
That step need not be itself illegal, but it must be intended to further the crime.
What, perzackly, is the point you are trying to make here, Counselor? That you know the legal definiion of conspiracy, and wish to imply or insinuate something? Because that’s all you’ve given us here is the definition. Oh, wait, I see, its the word “plan”, isn’t it? Again, Bricker wins the internet with his mad vocabulary skills.
Meanwhile, as Bricker preens his semantic parsing skils, down in Ohio the real game is being played by Secretary of State John Husted, putting himself in contention for the Katherine Harris Civic Virtue Award. Having been spanked by the courts (you remember the courts, right, Bricker?..final arbiters of truth and justice…), he continues on his merry way.
As reported in The Nation, amongst others:
Boy, voter confidence is just brimming over down in Ohio, huh, Bricker! Its hard even to imagine all the voter fraud being symied! But many of us here see this as another effort to trim the ghastly prospect of undesirable voters turning out to exercise their so-called “rights”.
I’m sure you have another explanation, Counselor. We wait with bated breath.
Take this guy, for example:
Obviously, it won’t do all that much good to put Mr. Small in prison. It might, however, do quite a bit of good to take him aside, ask him if he’s heard stories about what happens to pasty skinny white guys in prison, and suggest that he might want to talk a bit about his superiors in this little racket.
Oh look, the Virginia State Board of Elections is pointedly refusing to pursue charges of voter fraud against Colin Small. Color me surprised that in spite of all their shrill insistence that voter ID laws are necessary to prevent imaginary voter fraud the GOP steadfastly refuses to prosecute ACTUAL voter fraud so long as it works to their benefit.
And in other news, civil rights groups haverequested the UN to monitor our elections. This is great, we’re officially Somalia now.
I hope your “bated breath” was just for poetic effect …
… because to grovel at the feet of Shodan or the Brickhead and await enlightenment is masochistic.
Not yet, and Intrade gives it only a 39% chance come November.
It is interesting that Doper [DEL]lunatics[/DEL] conservatives have never explained how their model of government differs from Somalia’s. I assume that America’s divinity (wasn’t it Jesus himself who said “America, God shed His Grace on Thee”?) means that our soon-to-be warlords, Rupert Murdoch, Koch Brothers, etc., are Saints sent by Heaven to bring Paradise.
Yes. I wish to insinuate that the definition you gave of criminal conspiracy was in general incorrect.
Perzackly.
Let’s see… in Virginia a Republican was found to have discarded voter registrations because they were from Democrats… in Ohio, billboards were put up (but later taken down) warning people that fraudelent voting was a felony and getting caught would put you in prison…Florida eliminates Sunday voting because of the tradition in the black community of going from the pews to the precinct on Sunday.
Looks like the slime is starting to ooze out, right on schedule.
Just for the record, the line you quoted was written by Katherine Lee Bates, who was on our side, as was her wife, and is in the h0rtatory subjunctive. Addressing America, it’s in the nature of a prayer that God – the God she believed in, who was open to science, scholarship, and social justice – that God might shed his grace on America, and crown its good with brotherhood. It was in effect a prayer to God FOR America,not a laudation of a divinely chosen America à la the modern Evangelical deity:
America, America!
God bless our theft of thee,
Equip our pricks
With Karl Rove’s tricks,
All for the G.O.P.!
i thought the Republicans found it cheaper to just have the candidate constantly switch positions.
today i found
Romney Family Investment Ties To Voting Machine Company
http://news.yahoo.com/romney-family-investment-ties-voting-machine-company-could-003209723.html
some machines that aren’t secure.