The problem with consensus and grand coalitions was that if one centrist party screws up, there’s no way for the electorate to express its disapproval without letting the neonazis into power.
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A better representation would make the hammocker more Mitch McConnell-like. Or just say “Senate”.
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The sentence, which came after a plea agreement, actually encompassed three crimes to which McDowell pleaded guilty: Larceny and two counts of sale of narcotics.
[…]
She sold drugs to an undercover police officer on at least two occasions, and she admitted doing so in court.
[…]
At the time of the sentencing, McDowell said in court, “I have no regrets seeking a better education for him, I do regret my participation in this drug case,”
However:
the police “set up an elaborate scheme where they had some undercover cops … come up to the shelter and start targeting her because would [sic] would not plead guilty to the school case.”
A mess on multiple levels, for sure, but not as simple as the headline.
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This was the reason I left Engineering. I never had a colleague slap my butt or try anything inappropriate. But lots of times these nice guys made it clear that they liked their women nice, were proud of having stay at home wives, and excluded me from activities where I could have networkEd.
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Police in Kenosha had said that Mr Blake was in custody for previous warrants and the handcuffs were policy.
His attorney told US media that these warrants had been cancelled and that officers guarding Mr Blake had left.
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Sounds like Kenosha is the kind of place where anyone can magically “have warrants”.
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Before this week the only thing I only knew about Kenosha was The Kenosha Closed Crotch.
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here’s the test of Washington General Rule 37, which the article mentions as a model for this one.
http://www.courts.wa.gov/court_rules/?fa=court_rules.display&group=ga&ruleid=gagr37
(h) Reasons Presumptively Invalid. Because historically the following reasons for peremptory challenges have been associated with improper discrimination in jury selection in Washington State, the following are presumptively invalid reasons for a peremptory challenge:
(i) having prior contact with law enforcement officers;
(ii) expressing a distrust of law enforcement or a belief that law enforcement officers engage in racial profiling;
(iii) having a close relationship with people who have been stopped, arrested, or convicted of a crime;
(iv) living in a high-crime neighborhood;
(v) having a child outside of marriage;
(vi) receiving state benefits; and
(vii) not being a native English speaker.
The rule gives guidance on how to discern if a peremptory challenge is improper; the examples listed are simply the obvious ones that the Washington State judge should now dismiss out of hand.
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Of course, that’s what “a jury of your peers” is about. It’s not about protecting the lower classes from being judged by an out of touch upper class, but the upper classes not being judged by their “lessers”. To the point where criminal courts literally did not have jurisdiction to try a member of the House of Lords – only his buddies in the House did, even if it was murder. That’s why it’s called a “jury of one’s peers” – from the peerage. So the little people get a jury that can be overruled by a judge, but the “important” people are tried by their friends.
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The people who wrote the constitution incorporated their ideas about the Magna Carta from Blackstone (1765-1770), and not from cynics, or from original research. On the subject of juries, he wrote,
Hence it is that we may traces of juries in the laws of all those nations which the feodal system as in Germany France and who had all of them a tribunal composed of twelve men and true boni homines usually the vassals or of the lord being the equals or peers of the parties and as the lord’s vassals judged each other in lord’s courts so the king’s vassals or the lords themselves judged each other in the king’s court In England find actual mention of them so early as the laws of Ethelred and that not as a new invention.
A straightforward American interpretation of this is that all persons are created equal-- and the class of potential jurors is therefore equal to the class of potential litigants. That’s what we should work for, cynics be damned. And yes, we have work to do.
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And they should keep dangling that threat. Regardless of the interim negotiations.
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