Free Republic

You can have victimless crimes. An action that otherwise might be disruptive to society (such as drunk driving) can be made criminal to discourage others from doing it. Victimless crimes still receive criminal trials where defendants are presumed innocent and must have guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury.

But that's not what this is. This isn't a victimless crime. It's a victimless tort, which is even more nonsensical. A tort, by necessity, requires a party that has had some demonstrable wrong committed against it. That Trump was accused of committing a tort is evidenced by the fact that he was given a civil trial instead of a criminal one.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd argue that Trump was deprived due process here. He was slapped with what amounts to a criminal fine via a civil process (along with the lowered burden of proof that entails). A law that allows criminal penalties to be applied under the guise of civil jurisprudence (but without a "wronged" party) is on its face unconstitutional.

This strikes me as a criminal proceeding masquerading as a civil one, complete with the lowered burden of proof expected in the latter.

I'm not a lawyer, but let's call this for what it is: it's a $355 million dollar criminal fine being levied by the State of New York, in a kangaroo trial where the verdict was decided ahead of time without a jury on a conviction based on preponderance of the evidence instead of the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" usually expected in a criminal proceeding. Trump was hit with what was effectively a criminal fine without the due process of a criminal preceding.

Criminal cases are concerned with crimes and the penalties pertaining thereto. Civil cases are concerned with torts. You can have a victimless crime but not a victimless tort. It would be one thing if the state were acting on behalf of banks that had complained about Trump's actions. As it stands, the state is acting on its own behalf to enforce a "public good", not to right a civil wrong.

I don't know. Like I said, I'm not a lawyer and maybe some lurking lawyer will call my reasoning idiotic. All I know is that this seems to be a grave miscarriage of justice.

It would not surprise me to see the fact checkers label Blinken’s claim as “True” on the basis that Kabul is, in fact, around 1400 miles away from Saigon and thus manifestly not Saigon.

I haven't posted on FR in a good long time and so I don't feel quite right starting a thread of my own, but I'll just leave this here for anyone still lurking on this one:

Is The Blaze’s Glenn Beck Suing Himself?

This article adds a few interesting details that, according to my sources, are 100% true.

An interesting article, but a slight correction — this particular post was about Thomas Cranmer, not Thomas Cromwell.

Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More... seems almost everyone in that whole bloody affair was named “Thomas.” ;)

If they’re going to play dress up and pretend to be Catholic priests, the very least they could do is learn how to wear the vestments right.

Crooked political games in Chicago? I don’t believe that for a second.

... c**p. Just broke my sarcasm tag.

Belated Happy Birthday, Mr. Robinson. As someone who has been visiting this site off and on for going on fourteen years (usually lurking), I cannot begin to express my appreciation for all that you do.

Here’s looking forward to many more!

I seriously just love how our idiot president’s first impulse in dealing with this potential crisis is to set someone up to blame in case things go to hell.

It’s all about setting up point men to blame when everything goes to hell for this lousy president.

What part of, “some parts are literal, some parts are not,” are you not quite getting? How can one be an “anti-literalist” when one believes large chunks of Scripture are indeed to be understood literally?

Your insistence on putting words in my mouth and your implications that I hold beliefs that I don’t is getting quite dull.

I’m sorry to hear that... you’ve been on FR for quite a while.

I really hope you’ll be able to be back soon. :-\

I never argued that there is no “patristic consensus” on creation vs. evolution. That would indeed be nonsensical historical revisionism. I actually don’t care much about the “evolution vs. creation” argument — all that matters to me in that regard is that God created the world and everything in it and man betrayed Him. I’m otherwise rather agnostic on the matter. My response was aimed more at what appeared to be an assertion on your part that one either accepts all of scripture literally or none of it. Parts of it are literally true, other parts are metaphor, still others allegory and poetry. You responded earlier in a manner that led me to believe you understood that, so I dropped the matter. I only respond now because I don’t care to be accused of making arguments I didn’t make.

Also, just to be perfectly clear, I certainly don’t look down my nose at you or other brothers and sisters in Christ who accept creationism. Any Christian who believes his brother to be “trailer trash” due to a non-essential belief deserves the latter title more than the former. I came to Christ as a result of my loving grandmother, who certainly believed in creationism herself. I never saw a need to argue with her about it. I simply take issue with the assertion that one MUST embrace it or one is not a faithful Christian; whether you accept it or not is between you and God as far as I’m concerned.

Everything within the Bible is God-given Truth. Some of it is expressed literally, some metaphorically, some allegorically, and some of it is poetic. It is all “literally true”, but it is a mistake to interpret everything literally. We interpret the Virgin Birth literally because it has always been understood to be so; we are not bound to understand the creation account in a literal sense because, from the earliest Christian centuries and before, there has never been consensus to that effect even among the most orthodox of believers. The notion of, “The Bible Says It, I Believe It, That Settles It,” without a firm and extensive understanding on a wide variety of scholarly subjects relating to the Scriptures, its languages, and its historical contexts is fraught with the potential for grievous error.

I’d offer, in fact, that this is a large part of the reason why the Church traditionally limited authorization to read the Scriptures among those who otherwise might have had access to read them. Even the original Protestant Reformers did not view the Bible as a simplistic and literal work to be read without extensive knowledge of language, history, and traditional interpretations. The idea of Book, Believer, and Holy Ghost arose somewhat later.

Even Sola Scriptura, properly understood, does not reject the role of tradition in this sense.

Modernism itself is not the rejection of the notion that the entirety of Scripture must be interpreted literally. Indeed, the idea that the whole of Scripture must be interpreted literally is a modern innovation by noble souls who wished to counter the errors of modernism but who were not fully aware of its nature. Modernism, at its core, is the rejection of tradition as the primary lens through which Scripture must be viewed. It is tradition that teaches us which parts of Scripture are literal and which are metaphor. Tradition has never insisted the creation narrative to be literally true, at least not in terms of the particular details it lays out. That the world was created in seven literal days is far less important than the overall message — that God created the world and all that is in it, that God created Man in His Image, and, perhaps most pertinent to our current condition of all, that man repaid God by sinning against His Command and, as a result, has lost God’s amity and is repaid with the wages of suffering, death, and further sin.

I’d offer that to embrace Biblical Literalism, while certainly well intentioned, is to accept the Modernist world view implicitly because, in essence, it plays by Modernism’s rules.

All this said, while Catholics are at liberty to believe in evolution, Catholics are absolutely not at liberty to embrace a purely atheistic model of evolution that allows for no role of God in the creation of Life or in the special creation of Man in His Image. Christians are not at liberty to deny the reality of the fall, even if they interpret the narrative of the snake and fruit as something emblematic of something more mysterious and profound. Acknowledgement that a story might simply be a finger pointing at the moon is not permission to ignore the finger or not to ponder the object of its attention.

I think that’s an excellent counterpoint. I do think, however, that I’d be a lot more inclined to do something about Bob much quicker if I’m directly paying him $10 hr/ 20% of sales than I would be if I’m only directly on the line for a couple bucks an hour. True, he’s hurting business both ways, and under either system he’ll probably get the axe sooner or later if he doesn’t shape up, but Bob is far more directly accountable to me if I’m the only one paying him for what he does.

Very true. My point was merely that I see movement away from tipping culture as being less about acquiescing to Eurotrash and more about embracing something that was traditionally American and reflective of our better times.

I will add, however, that, considering the fact that it IS the current custom and waiters DO depend on their tips for the livelihoods, I think that people who refuse to tip (and to tip well when warranted) are the absolute scum of the earth.

I’d offer that, under a system without tips, poor waiters would be far more likely to be fired than is currently the case.

I don’t run a restaurant, but if I did, I would probably be willing to pay a couple dollars an hour to a waiter who did the bare minimum. The lack of tips would (hopefully) send the message that the waiter needs to shape up or move on. I’d probably also be less likely to hear about it, as customers who feel they can take their frustrations out directly on the waiter will probably be less likely to register a complaint. Most people like to avoid confrontations when such is possible. They’re probably less likely to blame the restaurant quite as strongly as would otherwise be the case — it was the waiter at fault, after all, and the waiter had already been punished.

Without tips in place, however, I’m put in a position where I have to treat my employees exactly the same as any other business with untipped workers. If a waiter is of a particularly poor quality, I’m more likely to hear about it as customers have no alternate recourse. It’s probably only going to take a few complaints until I’m less than thrilled about paying that person $10 an hour. I’m thus put into a place where I’d be more inclined to let them go ASAP. It also potentially will cost me more business, as if customers can’t take their grievances out on the waiter, they’re probably more likely to take it out on the restaurant directly by not coming back.

Hey, I could be (and probably am) wrong but it’s food for thought.

As I pointed out already, tipping is actually the innovention here in the US and was avoided for a long time precisely because it carried connotations of old world aristocracy. It only began being practiced in America around the time of Prohibition, where a reduction in booze sales made it necessary to suppliment waitstaff earnings.

I'm suspicious that this is just another way to get more European.

Oddly enough, that's actually backwards. Up until the 20th Century, tipping was generally rejected here in the US, largely because it was considered an old world custom. It was introduced in large part as a way to suppliment the incomes that resulted from the loss of revenues due to prohibition.

The Europeans are actually emulating the practice that was common here for the best chunk of our history.

A pitiful attempt by the administration and its apologists to change the discussion.

The issue whether six lives were lost as a result of Bergdahl’s desertion, while certainly important, is not central to the discussion at hand. The key matter here is that Obama illegally traded five top Taliban officials for a low ranking deserted and broke the law in the process, all to appear a “hero” and change the subject from the failures administering the VA. There is reason to believe that a CIA operative was outed as a direct result of this.

Obama and his cronies keep parroting the line that we have a principle in this country that we don’t leave soldiers behind. They seem to be forgetting that we have an even more fundamental principle which trumps even that — we don’t negotiate with terrorists. We also don’t, for that matter, support so-called “leaders” who commit treason to cover their backsides.

That sounds like a great plan.

I really do wonder what brilliant idea these geniuses will come up with next. What a wonderful use of our limitless resources at a time when money is plentiful and the country is more united than ever.

This is definitely shaping up to be the greatest administration ever.