Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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@fraudguy
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If one separates what was radical from what was centrist in the Radical Republican proposals, or what they really wanted vs what they packaged it in to win elections:
Centrist: the goal of incremental ending of racism and civil rights, were mainstream goals, though only if they were done incrementally allowing the culture time to evolve away from racism gradually.
Radical: The desire to loot the South was always a radical goal to serve a small minority, and could only be sold to the general public under false pretense. Mixing them together served their short-term interests of looting the south, but actually produced long-term blowback against egalitarianism and civil rights, by association.
If you consider the implementation, the over-reach on civil rights actually served the radical goal, not the centrist goal at that time, and the duplicity and over-reach had long-term blowback.
Their Radical over-reach prompted the reactionary creation of the Redeemer Movement in the South primarily, but also across America. The blowback was actually to further crystallize and entrench the especially Southern Conservative values we still know today: low taxes, small Federal government, supposedly against debt, anti-Northern/urban/elitism, and the tendency to legislate Christian morality. Which again the Republican party is manipulating rather craftily.
Lincoln and other centrists were acutely aware of the popular mandate, the risk of going against centrist goals, and tried hard to avoid that.
People often imagine Lincoln was really out on a limb on the Civil War. Not really. He knew there would be a mandate and the North would win, so long as goals were obtainable and he didn’t over-reach.
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What principled centrists, like Lincoln, know profoundly, is that any attempt for a fringe to trick, manipulate, or coerce the public into supporting an unpopular agenda, or otherwise manipulate it towards an eventual destination before it is ready, will tend to backfire and create more reactionaries, disruption, and harm than it does good in the long run.
(Note: WWII and the rise of the Nazis was in large part due to the excessively putative Treaty of Versailles ending WWI, which is why we ended WWII more wisely with friendlier reconstruction of Japan and Germany, including the Berlin airlift to win hearts and minds. And why they're great allies today.)
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court procedures
[Read the article: The word "rape" banned from courtroom]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Flory thinks you're an idiot. Why? Because procedural legal standards are supposed to be universal, meaning the worst criminal who is most clearly guilty gets the same treatment as an innocent person. Yet, she chooses this horrific case to prejudice her readers into thinking perhaps a guilty person will go free, or something terrible has been done.
Not so.
It's perfectly reasonable to ban "rape" and "victim" from the court room during trials, which I hope I don't have to remind people, are supposed to presume innocence.
Why are they being banned? Because they're loaded and prejudicial terms, and inexact.
Calling the accuser the "victim" is clearly prejudicial and presumes guilt.
Allowing a person to emotionally claim they were "raped" or a prosecution to repeatedly claim that, is inexact, has different meaning to different members of the jury. Even with counsel from the judge, is a loaded term which is also prejudicial.
Allowing the prosecution to repeatedly say "rape rape rape" throughout a trial is also battering a jury to rule emotionally, rather than looking at the evidence.
All three of the above tactics are in common and deliberate use, and have been repeatedly complained about by legal experts and watchdogs.
With those words banned, trials will be more fair and precise. Nothing is stopping a complete presentation of the evidence, and if the accused is proven guilty (which sounds likely) he will be convicted all the same.
What this procedural ruling is designed to protect is a falsely accused person from being railroaded by a "victim" whose testimony in composed primarily of emotional claims of being "raped" then repeated by the prosecution, resulting in testimony which is more emotional than factual, prejudicing a jury emotionally towards conviction of innocents.
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repost David Schlaefer
[Read the article: The word "rape" banned from courtroom]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Really, both SLATE and SALON should have lawyers comment on legal proceedings--or at least their journalists should speak to someone with a legal background--before opining on such cases.
The SLATE article says that it is "not unheard of" for a judge to bar the use of inflammatory conclusory language like "rape" from testimony; that's a tremendous understatement, it's common practice. If a prosecutor began a line of questioning with the phrase, "So, when you raped Ms. Smith...," any defense attorney worth his or her salt would object, and absent prior admission or introduction by the defense, the judge would uphold. If the prosecuting attorney persists, the judge will take action similar to that in the trial in question. In a case where the issue is not IF sex occurred--consensual or not--between the accuser and defendant, but WHETHER admitted sex was consensual or not, this is to be expected.
It doesn't stop the alleged victim in any way from describing her (or his) experience in graphic terms.
Exactly. People like Flory are incredibly opinionated about such matters, but clearly doesn't know anything about them or the law.
For some people ignorance is bliss. For paranoids like Flory, ignorance is an opportunity to freak out and write another column for Broadsheet.