Prosecutors aim new weapon at Occupy activists: lynching allegation

[Ideologue]

You're approaching it, I suppose, from the standpoint that protests are intrinsically evil.

[garbon]

You're approaching it, I suppose, from the standpoint that protests are intrinsically evil.

I'm approaching it from the standpoint that college students with their lives ahead of them aren't going to want to risk getting felony records. I don't see why one has to be anti-protest if one dislikes protestors trying to prevent cops from arresting people.

[Razgovory]

You're approaching it, I suppose, from the standpoint that protests are intrinsically evil.

I'm approaching it from the standpoint that college students with their lives ahead of them aren't going to want to risk getting felony records. I don't see why one has to be anti-protest if one dislikes protestors trying to prevent cops from arresting people.

The police have already show a broad interpretation of "resistance".

[garbon]

Yes, all cops are the same.

[Razgovory]

Yes, all cops are the same.

Well they do all dress the same...  But when you make a law (or chose to enforce it creatively), you should take into consideration the worst in people, not the best.  After all, laws are not meant to restrict the just.

[garbon]

Yes, all cops are the same.

Well they do all dress the same...  But when you make a law (or chose to enforce it creatively), you should take into consideration the worst in people, not the best.  After all, laws are not meant to restrict the just.

Seems like we'd have few laws then - seeing as how most could potentially be abused.

[Valmy]

I think it could be. Raise the deterrent and scare some kids off.

Huh?  What do kids have to do with this?  This was a 30-year-old school teacher.  I am pretty sure people are already cautious about assualting police officers...not that the story even says exactly what the guy did.

Surely you are not advocating enforcing laws in such a way to scare people, kids or no, from peaceably assembling since that is a basic Constitutional right.

[Valmy]

Seems like we'd have few laws then - seeing as how most could potentially be abused.

Um the reason we have many laws is because of the ones that are abused.  The basic ideology of this country is good laws are preferred over relying on the goodness of humans.

[Razgovory]

Seems like we'd have few laws then - seeing as how most could potentially be abused.

Opposite actually.

[Barrister]

I love it when people do stupid stuff knowing it is against the law, but not knowing how serious the crime is.  I love laying charges of robbery and/or extortion when the accused thinks he only committed a minor theft.   

[Admiral Yi]

I'm agin charging these dudes with lynching.

[grumbler]

Or "[object]--in some fashion."

Which you may do by accident, or more precisely instinct and without reflection; or simply be accused thereof.  At which point--assuming, for the sake of this argument, that a application of the lynching statute is correct and a conviction shall arise--you might as well engage in desperate street fighting with the cops, since your life is functionally over.

Look at the bright side; it will mean that the term "lynching" will lose its strong emotive context, and those KKK types who engaged in early 20C lynching will be rehabilitated from hate-criminals into mere protestors.

[grumbler]

I love it when people do stupid stuff knowing it is against the law, but not knowing how serious the crime is.  I love laying charges of robbery and/or extortion when the accused thinks he only committed a minor theft.    

I love it when government hacks admit that they love it when their faceless unthinking bureaucracy exerts itself to inflict unjust punishments on the people it nominally serves. 

[Valmy]

Look at the bright side; it will mean that the term "lynching" will lose its strong emotive context, and those KKK types who engaged in early 20C lynching will be rehabilitated from hate-criminals into mere protestors.

This is not the first state to abuse lynching legislation.  The ability it gives prosecutors to convict people merely for being present as part of the mob is too powerful to not to be tempting.

[Neil]

I love it when people do stupid stuff knowing it is against the law, but not knowing how serious the crime is.  I love laying charges of robbery and/or extortion when the accused thinks he only committed a minor theft.    

I love it when government hacks admit that they love it when their faceless unthinking bureaucracy exerts itself to inflict unjust punishments on the people it nominally serves. 

I love it when faggots think that punishing criminals properly is 'unjust'.