I guess this kinda leads back to my original point. Any other criminal ISN’T fair game. Society sees and KNOWS the US Justice System on it’s best day, is broken af. It’s hard to get people to care about enforcing these laws when the powers that be clearly don’t give 2 shits about enforcing all of them.
The root of the problem is probably sensationalist media always shining a spotlight on high profile jail avoiders, but the point still stands. It’s just so hard to convince people that it’s suuuuuper important to enforce X law when the people screaming for it don’t give 2 shits about Y law yet they claim “the law is the law and should be enforced.”
Again, I’m on board with deporting illegals, but GL with the rest of society while the system remains this broken.
The libertarian solution to all of this would be to have way less laws, less and more focused un corrupt government and more liberty.
In a truly free society you should be able to import labor easily and hire whoever you want. But when you have one group trying to follow the law and they have a government siphoning off trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of regulations to comply with. Then there’s a group who just skirts the law and gets to avoid a huge chunk of that. No bueno.
That’s why libertarian arguments annoy me when they argue their solutions on single issues. Yes free people should live in a utopia, where they can hire anyone regardless of borders or immigration law. But we are not free citizens of utopia damnit.
Seems you are having a difficult time understanding the difference between an actual police state and the enforcement of laws.
Let’s take these left wing street “gatherings” for example. Getting a permit and marching up and down with signs in a designated area is freedom of speech and is allowed. As soon as said crowd pick up baseball bats, or other blunt instruments and begin to break store windows, turn over cars or light things on fire and perpetrate other nefarious activities that crowd suddenly become rioters. And rioting is a felony punishable in most states by 10 years in jail.
Granted Obama and company leaned on the governing bodies at the time of the Ferguson riots and other such incidents so that there were either no felony arrests or very few. Many of the arrests were only for disorderly conduct. But now that Obama is gone we must turn back to reality.
Regardless of the color of someone’s skin, or political persuasion, when people are rioting they should be arrested for such. If enough of these left wing lunatics get bagged for felony rioting there will magically be less of it.
It’s bad logic anyway. "I don’t like Trump so therefore I will now break the window of this jewelry store harming the business of a person who voted against Trump. As I have said many times it’s the left punishing the left
I feel like ideally you just have to take away 100% of judiciary discretion. Not only does the legal code need to be simplified (much like the tax code), but it needs to be something akin to a calculator when it comes to crime/punishment.
Commit X crime, insert crime, insert number of offenses, insert minor/adult, punishment is Y. End. That’s it. None of this Lindsey Lohan caught driving under the influence of coke after crashing into another car and going to rehab while people get jailtime for an ounce of pot bullshit.
Giving the judicial system ANY level of discretion is probably, historically, the biggest problem with the entire branch of govt. Wiggle room is a root of corruption and injustice.
Likewise, it seems you have difficulty distinguishing between peaceful protests (of the sort in AZ, and to which @Tyler23 was referring) and rioting.
@Tyler23’s comment was on-point. Putting peaceful protesters in jail for 10 years in order to have a “chilling effect” on peaceful protesting is exactly the sort of thing that characterizes a police state.
But the only problem with your simplistic solution is that it eliminates all extenuating circumstances. Should a Judge not be allowed to give any leniency to someone based upon the exact circumstances of their crime?
For example an abused and battered wife who after being beaten by her husband 40 times defends herself with the family gun and kills the man. As opposed to a wife who gets mad at her husband for cheating and blows him away. Should they each get the same sentence? No.
One can also see that there are differences in drug cases as well. For example, a 16 year old who was basically forced to go along with the crowd and snort cocaine for the first time. As opposed to the 30 year old who is caught for the first time but has been a user for a decade.
I don’t think it’s wise to take away a Judges ability to discern.
I couldn’t disagree more. The justice system is least likely to mete out justice when we tie judge’s hands with inflexible sentencing rules. Witness the terrible effects (still reverberating through the black community) of the ‘3 strikes’ component of the Clinton Crime bill in the 1990s.
They’re called ‘judges’ for a reason, that being, we empower them to judge.
Edit: Just saw @zeb1’s comment. He and I are in agreement! Wonders never cease.
First of all I was giving an example of protesting vs rioting as an example of people crossing the line.
Secondly, according to the poster these folks were interfering with a federal officer and attempting to free a prisoner. That IS a felony and putting someone in jail for 10 years for such a crime IS a fair sentence and a far cry from a police state.
The protesters surrounded a vehicle and passively prevented it from moving. They engaged in no violence, assaulted no public-safety officers, and did not try to break into the van. To suggest such behavior warrants a 10-year bit is frankly ludicrous.
On a happier note, now that @zeb1 and I are back at loggerheads, we can rest assured that our previous agreement was an anomaly, not a sign of the impending apocalypse.
It’s a crime, yes. But this ‘it’s a crime–end of story’ attitude represents an inflexible approach to jurisprudence. A wise TNer noted that such ‘simplistic solutions eliminate all extenuating circumstances.’ Specifically, he said “Should a Judge not be allowed to give any leniency to someone based upon the exact circumstances of their crime?” I’m sure if you were to ask that guy, he’d say that the circumstances of the crime committed in AZ clearly do not warrant a 10-year jail term. (I hope he will chime in for himself and chastise you for espousing such a mindless, inflexible approach to law enforcement. He’s a rather blunt fellow, and has never been shy about coming in guns-hot when someone makes a comment he considers obviously incorrect.)
Agreed. The law is a human endeavor and it isn’t mathematics and can’t work with that level of precision, so it can’t work with zero wiggle room. And it never has - equity is as much a part of our jurisprudence as anything and has been since before we even founded the country. Context - for example, mitigating and aggravating circumstances in sentencing - matters, and should always matter.
The kindness shown by Reagan in 1986 lead to California being lost to the Democrats forever.
Don’t make the same near fatal mistake twice…
HTH
edit: If amnesty is granted I bet we’ll see illegals come out from all over the place only soon to realize the number of invaders in America is well above estimates by experts.
Not that it make much difference but one hooligan did tie himself to the wheel of the van. I’m not sure what the penalties are for interfering with law enforcement… but I’ll bet they are grave. I think most punishments for crimes should be community service anyway.
Locking people in cages just helps people become hardened criminals. Lets have them fill in pot holes and pick up trash, we could hire out convicted felon work teams to do jobs americans won’t do. Like pick fruit. The government could maybe even earn a return on their labor instead of giving every two bit felon three hots and a cot. Make them work.
As for judicial discretion I say keep it. The scales lady may be blind but judges shouldn’t be. Everyone hates discretion when it looks bad. But oh well. The solution is have better laws and less of them.
Oh and stop getting along you two. I heard twighlight zone music playing.
I think this sounds great on paper, and I’m really spitballing here more than disagreeing with anything - what would you do with people who refuse to work? Are you suggesting a system where people could work to “earn” their freedom back. but hotheads who won’t actually do the work they are “sentenced” to then get sent to a slammer?
