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US Politics: A Happy New Year .... Not!


Tywin Manderly

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Secret Service report: White House needs a taller fence and more, better-trained agents




An independent review says the agency’s next director must come from the outside



The Secret Service has too few agents, with too little training, assigned to patrolling a White House fence that needs to be at least 4 to 5 feet taller than it is to keep out intruders, according to a punishing report from an independent panel of experts.
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Way past time we repealed the Patriot Act, disbanded Homeland Security, and launched a series of third party investigations with serious clout into the NSA. As it is, between the three, we have the foundation for a very nasty police state.

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Not my opinion but they might argue we haven't because we have homeland security.

http://s1336.photobucket.com/user/Lumpy67/media/thatsthejoke_zps7ba9ba83.jpg.html

/It tied back to that Fox News critique article I posted, where a Fox News personality wondered why we bothered with Clean Air Acts and the like, because we no longer have acid rain and such.

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We haven't had a terrorist attack in ages, why do we still have Homeland Security?

When it comes to security issues, the incentive is always to assume the risk is worse than it is. If you overreact, people will say, "Well, at least he's doing his job, better safe than sorry, blah blah blah." If you under-react, people will roast you alive. So it's always better to assume that any potential risk is a likely risk, and to spend whatever time, money and trouble that risk assessment demands. It's a screwed-up set of incentives, but, well...

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Your 2015 Sarah Palin, who thinks that a six year old standing on the family dog is an inspiring example of perseverance.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2894035/Sarah-Palin-sparks-outrage-posting-photo-son-standing-family-dog.html



I mention it mainly because it's a shockingly apt metaphor for the Republican Party.


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Boston Is Eager to Begin Marathon Bombing Trial, and to End It



Ms. Clarke, who is preparing a defense that casts her client as having been manipulated by his older brother, Tamerlan, has made overtures to prosecutors about a plea bargain, according to a lawyer close to the case. But so far she has been rebuffed, and her frustration showed in court papers that she filed Dec. 29 seeking to delay the trial.


...



Even if the jury imposes the death penalty, the appeals process can go on for years. Of the nearly 500 federal death penalty defendants since 1988, only three have been executed.



Defense lawyers not affiliated with the case say that a plea deal for a life sentence could yield the same outcome as a trial, without the time and expense. Moreover, they say, it would spare everyone from reliving traumatic events, and the defendant could not appeal, meaning he would not keep cropping up in the news.



This is completely mind boggling to me. The apparent political necessity of executing this guy seems to outweigh avoiding the exorbitant cost and drawn out process it will take to do it. I'd like to think the political calculation is wrong, and the public wouldn't be very upset by a plea deal, but I'll admit that's probably wishful thinking.


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This is completely mind boggling to me. The apparent political necessity of executing this guy seems to outweigh avoiding the exorbitant cost and drawn out process it will take to do it. I'd like to think the political calculation is wrong, and the public wouldn't be very upset by a plea deal, but I'll admit that's probably wishful thinking.

After basically shutting down one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the country for a day over this guy, I think it is a little bit late to be worrying about costs.
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How does that follow?

The costs already incurred are orders of magnitude larger than anything that might result from any choice. Thus, it would be better to give him a proper trial rather than trying to save money on a part of the process with a tiny part of the overall cost, but a substantial effect on the overall result.
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The costs already incurred are orders of magnitude larger than anything that might result from any choice. Thus, it would be better to give him a proper trial rather than trying to save money on a part of the process with a tiny part of the overall cost, but a substantial effect on the overall result.

Capturing an at-large suspected terrorist and prosecuting/deciding punishment against that person are not part of the same process. Tsarnaev retains the presumption of innocence in our legal system, and retained it even as extraordinary measures were being taken to secure his capture and arrest, a process not aimed at a specific punishment outcome (if any), which we empower courts and juries, not law enforcement, to decide. Only without the presumption of innocence can we imagine that the process of capturing Tsarnaev was aimed at executing him. Thus the cost of securing his execution is wholly separate from and not part of any overall cost which includes his capture.

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