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Archives for June 2017

Miranda Warning for Trolls

June 18, 2017 by Pops Leave a Comment

For anyone who spends much of their time on the internet, you are forced to endure the incessant tirade of obnoxious, offensive, profane, demeaning and otherwise mindless drivel posted by perverted website trolls. If it was up to me, I would have them paraded naked in public, and flogged with a cat-o-nine tails made from USB cables.

No sanctuary for trolls

However, in the interests of justice, everybody should get one chance to reconsider their self-induced demise before the pronouncement of sentence. Hence, a formal warning is provided for use by internet enforcement authorities..

Miranda Warning for Trolls

“You have the right to remain stupid.

Anything you post can and will be used against you in the court of internet opinion.

You have the right to delete an asinine comment. If you cannot delete an asinine comment, it will be flagged for you.

Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?

With these rights in mind, do you wish to continue to show your ass on a public forum?”

And if they don’t shut up after that? Well, then its time for the Walk of Shame…….

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Filed Under: Other Stuff

Witch Burning 2.0

June 15, 2017 by Pops Leave a Comment

A cornerstone of American jurisprudence has historically been the concept of the presumption of innocence. It has always been the burden of the government to prove, beyond a “reasonable doubt,” before a jury of fair-minded citizens, that an accused individual has actually committed a crime. Then, and only then, may a citizen be punished under the law. The societal and legal protections afforded by the “innocent until proven guilty” baseline is an immutable individual right that has served our nation well since the infancy of the republic.

For two hundred-plus years, the citizens generally held the rights of the accused to be sacrosanct. Of course, people always have held their own personal opinions as to the probable guilt of an accused, and will certainly continue to do so, but they have honored the criminal legal process. With the exception of some rare cases of vigilante justice, it was the criminal trial that determined guilt or innocence, and those findings were respected, notwithstanding public opinions as to the culpability of the person sitting shackled in the dock.

But things have slowly changed – if not in the strict letter of the law, certainly within the mindset of the populace. Presumed innocence is no longer the baseline.

People began to make their own conclusions, and stick with them, regardless of what the juries decided. The trial of O.J. Simpson is a perfect example. Found to be legally innocent, yet half the country just “knew” that he was guilty. And they refused to budge from that position.

At some point, public conclusions of guilt began to be forthcoming even without the filing of criminal charges. People were prone to conclude that if a person was “under investigation,” they must be guilty. “Of course they did it…. Why else would they be under investigation?” Look at the Clinton email debacle as an example.

And now people have morphed into making presumptions of guilt for anyone who was is not a suspect at all. If someone happens to be designated as a “person of interest” in an investigation, then they must have done something wrong.

Hunt the Witch, Burn the Witch

Amazingly, in the latest state of affairs, neither a criminal accusation or indictment is required, nor is an investigation necessary. An anonymous leak, an inference of misconduct, or a bald-faced fictional account is sufficient to cast an impenetrable shadow. Out-and-out lies, repeated often enough, will destroy a person’s personal and professional life.

In our pre-colonial history, opinion-justified executions followed literal “witch hunts,” a term that survives to this day to describe the extralegal process of establishing guilt by mere accusation. Mob rule has slowly supplanted the rule of law, and every citizen is made less secure.

Indeed, in the prescient words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

These are dangerous times for America.

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Filed Under: USA Politics

Congressional Purple Heart

June 14, 2017 by Pops Leave a Comment

Purple Heart for Congress?

A gunman believed to be a supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sprayed a hail of bullets at a GOP baseball practice on June 14, 2017, critically wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and injuring four others before U.S. Capitol Police took down the rifle-wielding assailant.


On January 8, 2011, just a week into her third term, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was a victim of an assassination attempt near Tucson, at a supermarket where she was meeting publicly with constituents.


Who would have ever suspected that becoming an elected state representative would result in you being shot in public by a disgruntled citizen?

Perhaps it is time to formally recognize those who are wounded or killed while serving in that combat zone otherwise known as the Congress of the United States.

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Filed Under: USA Politics

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