Honorentheos and Barr

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_EAllusion
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _EAllusion »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
moksha wrote:I can't remember all of your defense of Attorney General William Barr. Can you remind me again why this criminal Attorney General should not be investigated for his role in subverting justice?


Who, uh, would investigate, prosecute, and then sentence him?

- Doc


Two possibilities. For the immediate route, Congress would have to force an inherent contempt situation and use its powers for an arrest, which would then precipitate a (further) Constitutional crisis between the people with the guns. Or, he'll have to be tried once out of office ala John Mitchell.

Both seem unlikely, so you have to take Moksha as arguing what ought to ideally happen rather than a pragmatic strategy.
_honorentheos
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _honorentheos »

EAllusion wrote:When Moksha wrote that post, Barr was in open violation of the law. No investigation was needed to know that was the case.

You really are quite the anarchist aren't you? Democracy is under attack, except when democratic institutions get in the way of summarily executing your opinions into action I guess.
Last edited by Guest on Thu Feb 13, 2020 4:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_EAllusion
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _EAllusion »

honorentheos wrote:One of the terrible effects of Trump on our nation is that he has normalized attitudes that are fundamentally anti-democratic. When I replied to moksha I disagreed with his OP, I specifically noted an investigation of Barr seemed warranted to which he replied as if I was defending Barr. As he did again in this OP. It was a reminder that he misremembered how it went.


I jumped in that conversation because it was clear you were arguing that we needed an investigation to determine if any wrongdoing occurred when we absolutely had enough information at that point to know that it did.
_honorentheos
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _honorentheos »

Ok.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_EAllusion
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _EAllusion »

honorentheos wrote:You really are quite the anarchist aren't you? Democracy is under attack, except when it gets in the way of summarily executing your opinions into action I guess.


Your view that we cannot know if something happened unless a particular investigative process is done is both naïve and also something there is zero chance you are consistent on in your day-to-day life. In fact, it's too naïve for you to operate as if that were true on a consistent basis.

It's possible to have cogent evidence of wrongdoing independent of specific investigative processes and you know this. When Donald Trump, for example, confesses to an egregious abuse of office on live TV, we don't need an investigator to review the footage and tell us that, yep, Donald Trump confessed to an egregious abuse of office. We can have epistemic confidence independent of that and I think you have a deeply misguided view of what investigations do and don't do to inform our judgments.
_honorentheos
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _honorentheos »

You think it's about just knowing? I thought you had a political science degree or something.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_EAllusion
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _EAllusion »

I'm an investigator in a professional capacity due to my expertise with people who have cognitive disabilities. As you would expect, for investigations I complete, I have to write a detailed investigative report. This report concerns allegations, background information, witness testimony, other evidence examined, etc. At the end, I write conclusions about what can and cannot be determined concerning the underlying investigative questions - in my judgment - according to a given standard of evidence. My report is then used by the people it is created for to determine what kind of steps needed to be taken. The cadence to writing these conclusions is usually something to the effect of, "It can be concluded that it is more likely than not that X did Y by Z based on the following..." where the following then is verbatim quotes of lines of witness testimony and related evidence such as documentary findings (or the lack of it) with some connective tissue of argument.

I write in this style no matter how obvious the conclusion is. This includes if the person confessed to the offense in front of a bunch of people, was recorded doing the thing, etc. So, I will write, "It can be concluded that there is clear and convincing evidence that Person X physically abused Person Y by hitting her with a tire iron based on the following:

Person A said, "Yeah, I saw Person X hit Person Y with tire iron."
Person B said, "Yeah, I saw Person X hit Person Y with tire iron."
Person C said, "Yeah, I saw Person X hit Person Y with tire iron."

Person X said, "Yeah, I hit person Y with a tire iron, and she deserved it too."

And so on. I've done investigations where I watched the alleged offense occur on a recording. And I still write a report describing what is on the recording and include the recording itself as supplementary evidence. It would be absolutely absurd for me to believe that sans my report, no one would be reasonable in concluding that physical abuse occurred. There's a reason an investigation has to happen and the process must be universal, but anyone saying the object of my investigation deserves to be arrested for assault prior to my results isn't some lawless tyrant. They just have seen enough to know where a just process is going to go and are expressing what they think ought to happen.
_EAllusion
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _EAllusion »

honorentheos wrote:You think it's about just knowing? I thought you had a political science degree or something.

Psychology and Biology.
_Res Ipsa
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _Res Ipsa »

When our esteemed feathered friend used the word “ultimately” in his OP, I assumed that implied “after due process.” Was I wrong, my flightless friend?
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_honorentheos
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Re: Honorentheos and Barr

Post by _honorentheos »

EAllusion wrote: There's a reason an investigation has to happen and the process must be universal, but anyone saying the object of my investigation deserves to be arrested for assault prior to my results isn't some lawless tyrant. They just have seen enough to know where a just process is going to go and are expressing what they think ought to happen.

Unless it's you deciding to circle file the report because everyone knows what's just and right, so why waste the time...

The point made before is precisely that process matters, and matters a lot. Moksha misremembering my position as arguing against Barr being investigated was laughably wrong. But whatever. We haven't argued in at least a week, so why not a sloppy February straight to DVD sequel, right?
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
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