Romney impersonated police officer

[Tamas]

This is going to be the downfall of your country.

Politics have become a no-compromise tribal contest between the two halves of the citizens. Right? Wrong? Acceptable? Not? All are a matter of tribal affiliation.

So me saying neither of them is anything to get worked up about is a "matter of tribal affiliation" while YOU insisting that only the member of the one tribe is somehow to be held accountable for their actions is...what?

I am along the line Marty said. Doing drugs is by default victimless. Dressing up as a police officer and stopping cars is not.

[Berkut]

The dog on the roof was the kicker for me. Dudes a nutjob.

Yeah, that is a lot more "WTF?" than pranks as a kid.

Hell, I did some pretty stupid shit in high school, but I don't think I would strap my dog to the roof of my car - that is just plain mean.

[Berkut]

This is going to be the downfall of your country.

Politics have become a no-compromise tribal contest between the two halves of the citizens. Right? Wrong? Acceptable? Not? All are a matter of tribal affiliation.

So me saying neither of them is anything to get worked up about is a "matter of tribal affiliation" while YOU insisting that only the member of the one tribe is somehow to be held accountable for their actions is...what?

I am along the line Marty said. Doing drugs is by default victimless. Dressing up as a police officer and stopping cars is not.

Right, so as long as your favorite politician engages in "victimless" crime, he is all good.

If some politician you don't like engages in a prank, then that is not "victimless" (since by definition a joke always has a victim) and therefore he should hang until dead.

Gotcha.

Democrats who break the law are cool, Republicans who break the law should probably be shot.

[Eddie Teach]

IMO, impersonating a police officer is a more serious crime than doing drugs, whether it's Obama, Dubya or Bubba doing them. YMMV.

[katmai]

Hell, I did some pretty stupid shit in high school,

And i wouldn't vote your ass for president either.

[Ideologue]

This is going to be the downfall of your country.

Politics have become a no-compromise tribal contest between the two halves of the citizens. Right? Wrong? Acceptable? Not? All are a matter of tribal affiliation.

Hard to say.  If someone told me Obama was impersonating police officers and nearly killing dogs, and those reports were substantiated, I'd think that'd be pretty fucked up, too, and I doubt I could vote for him, despite the need for party discipline in these dark times.

[Tamas]

WTF Berkut I don't like Obama at all.
He looks to be a decent prez in terms of not doing any major fuckups, but he sure as hell didn't even try to become that "change" person he pretended to be.

[Berkut]

I think there are far better ways to criticize Romney than to cite his idiotic pranksterism from 40 years ago.

Pretending you are a police officer is not a prank, it's a crime. And not a crime like smoking pot which doesn't affect anybody else, but a crime crime.

Doing coke is a crime. And not a crime like pretending like you are a cop as a prank, but a crime crime that people go to prison for a long time for.

You may want to reanalyze your position.

No, I think I am all good, thanks.

For one thing, yeah, impersonating a police officer is very much a "crime crime," dude,

If he had been caught, he would not have gone to jail. Because he was playing a prank. Context.

And if Obama had been caught, he WOULD have gone to jail. Because doing coke is generally kind of frowned upon, "victimless" or not.

and, yes, you can go to prison for a year in this state if you do it.  (And TBH, I'm shocked and appalled it's only a misdemeanor, given the tremendous danger someone impersonating a police officer can pose.  I'd be willing to bet it's a felony in at least some states.)

I don't doubt that it is, and if you impersonated a police officer for the purpose of getting away with something beyond fucking with your buddy, I am sure bad things could happen to you.

You guys are hilarious. The difference between Obama and Romney is what party they are in, nothing more. Both did dumb shit when they were young that means exactly fuckall in regards to whether they should be president.

[Ideologue]

I think there are far better ways to criticize Romney than to cite his idiotic pranksterism from 40 years ago.

Pretending you are a police officer is not a prank, it's a crime. And not a crime like smoking pot which doesn't affect anybody else, but a crime crime.

Doing coke is a crime. And not a crime like pretending like you are a cop as a prank, but a crime crime that people go to prison for a long time for.

You may want to reanalyze your position.

No, I think I am all good, thanks.

For one thing, yeah, impersonating a police officer is very much a "crime crime," dude,

If he had been caught, he would not have gone to jail. Because he was playing a prank. Context.

Nah, he would not have gone to jail because he was playing a prank and his father was the governor.  I'm pretty sure if I'd dressed like a cop when I was a kid in order to pull over some of my pals, and I'd been intercepted by a real cop, I'd have gone to jail.  (Especially if I was also a minor in possession of alcohol, like in the story.)

And if Obama had been caught, he WOULD have gone to jail. Because doing coke is generally kind of frowned upon, "victimless" or not.

No doubt about it.  That said, the jailability of an offense is not a very good metric to determine how immoral it is.  The reasons behind turning coke possession into a felony do not necessarily have anything to do with the harm of the offense, but instead serve a deterrent purpose; the higher sentence for snorting coke is equally plausibly (and in fact is) the result not of the act being morally worse than impersonating a police officer but rather a result of snorting coke being something normal people would more often do if they were not dissuaded by its illegality.

So your logic of "misdemeanor vs. felony" suffers from two problems: 1)a reliance on the patchwork legislation of a criminal code as a stand-in for morality and ignoring its use by legislatures as a policy tool; 2)an assumption that the same people with the same beliefs wrote those two separate criminal laws for the same constituents and for the same reasons, which, as you know, they did not.

I don't doubt that it is, and if you impersonated a police officer for the purpose of getting away with something beyond fucking with your buddy, I am sure bad things could happen to you.

Fwiw, the guy in the article also states that Romney was using the stolen uniform to pull people over, suggesting it was more than just one prank on a couple of pals (and two unsuspecting, "terrified" young women, lest we forget about them).

You guys are hilarious. The difference between Obama and Romney is what party they are in, nothing more. Both did dumb shit when they were young that means exactly fuckall in regards to whether they should be president.

I'll concede that if this were the only negative thing Romney ever did when he was a kid, I wouldn't give a shit.  However, while it's probably the closest thing to an actual practical joke Young Romney pulled that's made the news (sorry, I don't consider hate-inspired aggravated battery all that funny), it fits into a pattern of behavior of a serial criminal and, separately and more disturbingly, a complete asshole.

Anyway, I hope when I run for office you'll be at the forefront saying that that time I got a DUI shouldn't be held against me because I was just a dumb kid.

[Martinus]

The bottom line is that we all do stupid shit as kids/young adults but the kind of stupid shit we have done speaks something about our character, especially if a pattern can be discerned.

One kid may be smoking pot, another may be setting cats on fire, and yet another may be leaving bags with burning shit on someone else's porch - while each of these is "bad", each tells us something different about the person.

[Tamas]

Yes Marty.

Altough I wouldn't worry about Romney that much. Everything about his campaign screams "status quo puppet" to me.

Obama is also that, but he campaigned as a peaceful revolution, and was everything but.

[Martinus]

True. But I find it hypocritical for BB (of all people) to say this is "not a big deal", considering the borderline-insane take he usually has on following the law.

[CountDeMoney]

Actually, the legal term is personating a police officer, not impersonating.  And, yeah, it's a serious crime.

But it's par for the course for a country club goof that would gang attack homosexuals and cut their hair, abuse the family dog, call the San Diego police on his neighbors for drinking beer on the beach, and saying he "longed" to serve in Vietnam while at the same time accepting 4 deferments as a "Mormon missionary" and going to France to recruit for his cult. 

The guy's a complete caricature.  A cardboard cut-out of the Monopoly Guy would have a more compelling personality.

[DGuller]

Was it a one-time prank to fuck with buddies, or was it a regular pattern of behavior, of which the prank was only one instance?  I think Berkut has danced around this issue a bit.

I think the second interpretation is much more damning, and gives insight into the immutable personal trait.  Someone who impersonates a cop on a regular basis because he gets his jollies from pulling people over is a pretty unique kind of a creep.  Not as big of a creep as someone practicing his surgical skills on shelter cats, granted, but still a pretty eye-popping creep.

[mongers]

The dog on the roof was the kicker for me. Dudes a nutjob.

Yeah, I can see your point, but I wouldn't call him a nutjob, just indicates someone who doesn't have a lot of common sense and doesn't think through the immediate consequences of their actions. 

Which is quite a disadvantage for the most powerful country in the world, that he's hoping to lead.