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TwiceHorn

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by TwiceHorn

  1. On 4/4/2018 at 3:59 PM, Chewbacca said:

    Anyone notice that the lead Chechen guy is Axe's lawyer from Billions?

    That guy has played a "heavy" in quite a few things in the last 5-10 years.  I never noticed him until Billions, though, but have seen him in a number of things since noticing him.

  2. It's the concept of sovereign immunity, which holds that governmental functions would grind to a complete halt if actions of officials and officers could be subjected to suit and liability for every tortious or potentially tortious act committed in the course of carrying out their duties.

    Judges and prosecutors have complete or absolute immunity from suit for actions taken pursuant to their duties.  Cities, counties, states, and the federal government, as entities, enjoy nearly absolute immunity from suit.  There are statutory exceptions in, for example, the Federal and Texas Tort Claims Acts, that permit suit and limited recovery of damages for specific tortious acts carried out by governments and government officials.

    Cops have "qualified immunity, " which is immunity from suit (not just damages), unless and until their actions are shown to be a violation of clearly established constitutional law.  It is a wholly "common law" (judge-made, not statute) doctrine, thus it would be difficult to modify or change it by legislation at either the state or federal level.  However, special crimes and civil causes of action that waive immunity could be established by the state/federal legislatures.  

    Also one notable thing about claims against police.  The normal tort doctrine of respondent superior, whereby an employer is liable for torts committed by employees acting within the scope of their employment, does not apply.  It is also very difficult to make city/county/state police entities liable for the constitutional torts of cops (the entity must be shown to have a policy of doing whatever bad thing the cop did).  That means, in the usual case, the cop found liable for a civil rights violation under 42 USC 1983 (applies to state/county/city cops)  or Bivens (applies to federal officers) doctrine, usually has nothing but personal assets to satisfy any judgment.

  3. Baylor may truly suck big GREEN (and yellow) donkey dicks, but getting the sweep is nice.  Sustaining some timely hitting over more than one or two games is nice.  Getting more than 5 innings from a couple of starters is nice.

  4. On 3/28/2018 at 11:19 AM, Biff Tannen said:

    Yep.  Elon is a strange bird.  I love my Model 3 and think that Tesla's main purpose as a disruptive force in the energy world has been a good thing.  It will be fascinating to watch how it all plays out.  I don't think they'll ever totally go under, but I also think the big guns, in the automotive world at least, will catch up in a few years and probably take over.  Glad he poked them in the ass and got them moving though.

    Actually, I think it was the consumer that he poked in the ass more than big automakers.  Electric cars have gone from a geeky tree-hugger oddity (Prius, Volt, etc.) to a status symbol.

    • Like 1
  5. 14 minutes ago, scottsins said:

     


    Bad lineups and witness coercion could be viewed as deprivation of Due Process, but I haven’t seen any case law in that regard.

     

    Yeah, I did some quick looking and there's nothing real apparent, which would probably be necessary (like wikipedia apparent) to establish "clearly protected constitutional right."  I'll be interested to see an appellate opinion on this.  Tried to find the QI opinion, but couldn't.

  6. Since the Copyright Act of 1976 and the international Bern Convention (and the Sonny Bono subsidy to Disney) extended copyright terms to life of the author plus 70 years, the copyright to many classic works will lose protection and enter the public domain on January 1, 2019.  It will be an annual event thereafter.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/copywritten-so-dont-copy-me/557420/?utm_source=feed

    • Like 1
  7. You could do better, but you could also do much worse.  For a big group of Texas fans, not much better place.  Solid texmex and they have been doing it solidly for a long, long time.

  8. 7 minutes ago, SHOOTER12 said:

    I have had more than one physician tell me this exact same thing. When I first had my leg injury back in 96 I thought taking pain medication with everything I had due to fear of addiction. Granted I have been on and off of various strengths of hydrocodone ever since. However when I did not have pain I didn't take it. When I was working for myself I realized that when the pain got too bad for me to bear that hey I'm the boss I'm going to go sit down until I'm not hurting. That work wonders as long as I was working for myself. When I first got home with the leg injury I was on 10 mg Norco for 36 straight months and when I got done with it I put it down never had one physical or psychological problem with it. Unfortunately as my body falls apart as I get older I have been back on and off of them for years now. I have a doctor's appointment this past Friday and she asked how long it was going to be until I retired. I told her about five to six more years and she asked what I was going to do about pain relief then. I replied frankly if I start to hurt I'm going to go sit down in my damn recliner until I don't.

    Really sorry to hear of your struggles.  Glad addiction hasn't compounded it.

  9. You are absolutely correct about the news outlets dumbing down the weather and weather tools. 

     

    And the panicked, clickbait reporting is insufferable. 

    I mostly stick with NWS and rainy days for that reason. 

  10. 14 hours ago, XYZ said:

    Why weren’t the cops criminally charged? 

    From what is reported, above, the cops didn't do anything criminal. Bad lineups, suggesting a suspect to a witness, and failure to investigate other suspects is fairly SOP.

     

    It's bad police work that a defense attorney should have teed off on, but not illegal in a criminal sense or constitutionally unlawful. 

  11. On 4/3/2018 at 11:26 PM, Patrick Bateman said:

    Sean Astin was originally slated to portray Roosevelt and had even done some pre-production but scheduling difficulties with Stranger Things got in the way and they had to replace him with Geraghty rather late in the process.  Apparently, getting this story adapted was quite the challenge and took a number of attempts.

     

    Interesting. The moostache kind of makes the character, I guess, appearance - wise. I like Astin, but can't really picture him in the role. Guess I couldn't have pictured Geraghty, either, and I like him too. 

  12. 13 minutes ago, SDG said:

    I have a small brain; will Bernard ever see a dime or not?

    great post btw. I post these things because the Shaggy Surly legal eagles always do such a great job of breaking them down for us uninformed. 

    Based on what is reported, no.  Seems like an aberrational jury verdict that may go down on appeal.  But, there could be more to the story.

    However, the judge should know what she's doing.  She graduated UT Law, apparently in my class.

    • Like 1
  13. 2 hours ago, SDG said:

    In a ruling Feb. 27 that allowed the case to go to trial, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers cited evidence that Johnson, one of the inspectors, questioned the eyewitness shortly after the killing, pointed to a clipboard and asked, “Are you sure it wasn’t Jamal Trulove?” The witness replied that she didn’t know, the judge said.

    Later, Gonzalez Rogers said, Inspector D’Amico showed the witness a single photo of Trulove rather than the usual police practice of presenting photos of different people and asking the witness to identify the perpetrator. Johnson, the judge said, showed the same witness a suggestive photo array consisting of Trulove and others she had already discounted as being the shooter.

    The reason I say this presents qualified immunity problems is that cops have it until it is proven that they violated a clearly established constitutional right.  While bad lineups, coercing witnesses, and failing to investigate other suspects are bad police practice, they tend to go to admissibility of evidence (bad lineup) and credibility of the investigation, issues raised at trial before the jury for their evaluation.  They are not of "constitutional dimension," as far as I know.  There were also some claims of Brady violations (withholding exculpatory evidence), and those are clearly constitutional and if attributable to cops and not prosecutors, would pierce sovereign immunity.

     

    Judicial reporting is horrible, though.

  14. 4 minutes ago, DanRydell said:

    If the goal is reducing sex trafficking and prostitution, reducing supply and demand by shutting down craigslist, backpage, and eccie will be far more impactful than arresting individual johns and hookers.

    True, it is a step above that, but still relatively low-hanging fruit that does little to apprehend the perpetrators.

  15. How does this draft thing work in these leagues? We had Y leagues where the teams were divvied up by elementary school and with an eye to parity. 

     

    The Chamber of Commerce teams were similarly divvied up (school if feasible or groups of nearby schools). 

    Seems harsh to subject preteens to cuts/drafts/talent evaluations. 

  16. Again, I think this is a high profile, high publicity, very low impact bust and prosecution all in the name of "sex trafficking"!! 11!

     

    Let me know the next time they uncover a container full of young women or arrest an Eastern European kingpin. 

  17. "Playbill" is a guide, a program, a play bill given out at plays and musicals, to wit, Broadway musicals.  Hamilton is a big Broadway play.

    This is the Playbill for Hamilton:

     

    Screen-Shot-2016-12-08-at-12.44.48-PM.pn

     

    It is kind of a weird juxtaposition of a redneckish sport and culture.

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