Thanks for replying and for trying, but nope. It may explain why gun-totin’ Republicans are happy that he was acquitted, but it doesn’t explain the breathless hero worship.
Explain this – what did he actually do that was so outstanding?
In a world where people are told that there’s something wrong with defending oneself, he defended himself. What he actually did is the sort of thing that gets described as being tantamount to murder — or, in this very thread, as murder — and he defended himself anyway, instead of letting himself be a victim. I’d gladly shrug and nod and limit myself to saying that, as far as I can tell, he did nothing wrong; but to the exact extent that people want to loudly argue that, no, he did something wrong, well, then, something something laudable applaudable, I guess.
The judge, who appeared in a number of different instances to be biased in favour of Rittenhouse, and whose instructions to the jury to assess the evidence “through Rittenhouse’s own eyes” may have helped to significantly influence the jury, is apparently thrilled with the verdict: 
What about marriage? Is that a constitutional right? Not mentioned anywhere in the text but everyone agrees it is. There is/was a disagreement over whether SSM was part of this right but nobody disputes this right exists.
Judges say that to juries after every case. Your side is really grasping.
From my POV as a Canadian, without the same gun philosophy as our neighbours down south, some guy just showing up at at a protest/riot (or even one of our Stanley Cup riots) with such an obvious and visible weapon, regardless of whether it was being pointed anywhere in particular, would likely be seen as a threat.
Was the right to marriage ever challenged prior to the SSM challenges? When challenges finally reached the Supreme Court, it was settled by reference to the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. And the ruling was split right down the usual ideological lines.
The 14th would have been interpreted very differently on this issue 20 or 40 years ago; go back far enough, and homosexuality itself was a criminal offense. Think aboujt it: how would the 14th Amendment have been interpreted regarding SSM in 1868 when it went into effect? How about in 1950? And even today, the conservative side of the court dissented on SSM, and it was the liberal side with the Kennedy swing vote that won the day.
IOW, vague and non-specific amendments like the 9th or 14th that don’t really say very much that is objectively tangible cannot justifiably be dredged up as “proof” that the Constitution says something it actually doesn’t. What it’s interpreted to mean very much depends on the social zeitgeist of the times and one’s ideological values. Pointing to one of those amendments and saying that you see how it supports, say, the right to SSM or the right to self-defense, is like pointing to a cloud and saying “I see a bunny rabbit”.
He’d be arrested on the spot and charged with some pretty serious firearms violations.
You would know better than me, but my impression is that judges routinely thank juries for their service, but that was not like that. This judge was positively ebullient, as if, you know, the jury had just brought him some very good news and he was real proud of them. That’s why the damn thing was newsworthy.
Loving vs. Virginia.
Thanks, I should have known as that’s another famous one. And … settled by reference to the 14th Amendment, again. They were sentenced to prison on the basis of a Virginia law dating from 1924. That law survived for 43 years until the Supreme Court ruling. Not a lot of doubt how the Supreme Court would have interpreted the 14th Amendment with respect to interracial marriage 100 years ago.
Either the auto correct or I, have had a stroke.
On the other hand the jury also wasn’t allowed to hear about the violent and criminal past of the named victims. There are even (what I consider unconfirmed) reports that prosecutors knew who jump kick man is but he wanted immunity from other pending charges to testify. When you start allowing past actions into the case it takes away from an impartial view of the act itself.
That was Canada but there have been several similar cases in the US. They don’t completely equate with the Rittenhouse case. When dealing with police shootings they use a reasonable officer standard not a reasonable person standard. It’s a higher standard for police taking into consideration their training. It also takes into account that police are authorized at times to use force to do their job, don’t have the same duty to retreat, etc.
I have seen judges thank witnesses, which is much more iffy. No biggie frankly.
Rightly so. Since that was irrelevant. At the time of the transactions, the accused did not know about their prior violent history so they were not probative or disprobative of a whether he had a reasonable apprehension of a threat to his life or person.
I hope they are false, since otherwise it seems the prosecution lawyers were trying to get disbarred.
My guess if that the right believes the left wants riots and many more as a means to anarchy and then martial law. So someone supposedly trying to bring law and order is seen as a hindrance to that.
As others have said, the details obviously matter, and in this case the initial provocation is pretty weak. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with someone currently taking a severe beating defending themselves, especially over a mere word.
But to adjust this hypothetical somewhat, does the provocateur in this case need to take a beating? After all, a single punch could incapacitate him, and then who knows what could happen. Should he be allowed to use deadly force before the other person gets within arms reach?
I think this is where it gets thorny, and most people would say no – you shouldn’t be able to use deadly force against a hypothetical threat. And yet that’s the situation we’re seeing. People using deadly force against a hypothetical, specifically “if he reaches me he might take my gun, therefore I can’t let him reach me.”
By your logic, the right to self-defense (and others not explicitly enumerated) didn’t exist until the 14th Amendment. That simply isn’t correct.
I agree that it should not be allowed. Just pointing out that the past actions of the victims were not allowed in and they don’t have the same level of due process protection that the defendant has.
I’m guessing that jump kick man story is true even though it’s only being reported by Fox and some local sources. Too much detail. Apparently the defense confirmed it to Fox and they had a lot of reasons to not lie in the last days of the trial. One of the local sources interviewed his estranged wife. Pictures are compared. It looks like him. I wish a more neutral party would confirm.
That’s not my logic at all. These various amendments, including the particularly nebulous 9th, were brought up by others in an effort to show that the Constitution guarantees the right of self-defense. No one has been able to show that it does, except via those vague wishy-washy amendments that can mean whatever the Supreme Court wants them to mean, as I’ve already demonstrated I think pretty plainly. And of course our old friend Antonin Scalia, who hallucinated that he saw that right in the 2nd Amendment.
The right to self-defense exists as a matter of law, in different ways in different times and places, but it has a long history virtually everywhere. As a matter of law, of enacted statute. I did bring up the 14th myself in one post, only to refute UltraVires’ hypothetical about some draconian law that tried to totally ban the right to self-defense. I suggested that a rational SCOTUS would probably use the 14th to overturn such a law, but of course in reality no such law has ever been enacted and no such ruling was ever necessary.
On a different note, I’ve been pretty active in this thread since I started chiming in, but I’m going to be pretty busy for part of the morning and most of the rest of the day so I won’t be responding much more today.
No, it existed prior to, and outside of, any enacted statute.