>
> >jks. No, my point is that some of your ideas are
> impractical anywhere.
>
> Which ones? I didn't realise I was suggesting
> anything new. Or anything that wasn't already
> established practice.
For example, having an independent forensics commission vet all forensics evidence. Or having judges somehow take over charging decisions. Lots of things.
>
>
> >jks. The FSG are complicated. They are a
> complicated grid that gives a range of months for
> certain crimes with various factors such as criminal
> history taken into account. They largely eliminate
> judicial discretion. They no not reduce the ability
> of prosecutoers to leverage ploea bargains with
> their charging policies. They result in much longer
> sentences for a wide variety of crimes.
>
> So they eliminate judicial discretion, but afford
> unlimited discretion to the prosecution to determine
> sentence. What part do judges play in these trials,
> they seem superfluous?
Sentencing isn't all there is to a trial. It isn't even all there is to a plea. Application of the FSG is very intricate, Judges hate it because it strips them of discretion,
>
> And when you refer to prosecutors leveraging plea
> bargains, I assume you mean extorting guilty pleas
> by threats of disproportionate punishment otherwise?
>
No, the guilty pleas are prety much taken for granted. I mean in the plea process, the prosecutors try to extort pleas to worse and nore crimes that can be more severly punished.
>
> > >Yours in support of totalitarian represssion,
> >
> >I'm not sure a police state, which you seem to be
> defending, i
> >
> >I won't bother to ask you to stop puting words in
> my mouth.
>
> Your words, above, were to the effect that you are
> in support of totalitarian repression.
You are irony-deaf.
I was
> defending you against your own self-accusation,
> pointing out that though you seem to be defending
> some aspects of a police state (the undermining of
> an independent judiciary) I didn't think it was fair
> to characterise this as support for totalitarian
> repression.
Last time I'll say this. I am an extreme, kneejerk, raving, foaming-at-the-mouth civil libertarian. I defend no aspect of anything that I would call a police state. We seem to disagree on what would qualify, so let's not trade insult on this point, it's not productive.
>
> Texans are just cowboys, as thick as two short
> bricks, some of them. (In a loveable sort of way.)
> But I don't know if they are deranged psychos as
> well. Though it might just be that, unlike
> Californians, they don't go out of their way to
> boast about it, so I haven't noticed.
>
Califonia doesn't have cowboys any more, and Chicago has no more gangsters in fedoras. As for failing to notice Texan psycho boasting, where the f** have you been since the Supremes appointed the Cowboy in Chief as our Fuhrer?
jks
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