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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36585 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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What norm is being broken?

Arrest people who are in a political area illegally, release immediately on a tiny bond, don't bother tracking down anyone who "got away", quietly drop charges against everyone who isn't a ringleader down the line (or on video injuring a cop or causing greater than $5-10k in property damage), and sentence the ringleaders to light probation. That is how we mostly treat political protests that get uppity. This is despite the fact that there are plenty of laws that can be used at the discretion of prosecutors to ruin the lives of even entirely peaceful protestors. Basically every BLM protest was unpermitted. EVERYONE who attended could have been arrested, held overnight until whenever a judge "was available". Then you could comb their social media for their most egregious political positions, and you end up with 1/20 or whatever denied bail for being an extremist, if you so desire. But we didn't do that because that is un-American.

Are you saying that DOJ is making up reasons in their sentencing memorandum? Like what?

I am saying not dropping 90% of the charges is a huge departure from norms.

We already know that 70% of all J6 defendants were also released pretrial, so do you have any evidence to show that those accused of just trespassing/crowding were treated harshly?

Given the Kavanaugh protest precedent 70% is a tiny percentage. 100% of those were released pretrial, and only ~2% were in jail for a single night.

So to recap, your original claim posited that we reached Debs level of political persecution, and that original assertion was based on what you believed were instances of people held without bail just for wandering in. It appears that you are now shifting away from that original position and instead arguing that precedent is broken in part because the ringleaders of January 6th are not offered light probation and because 90% of charges are not being dropped.

Am I incorrect to say that your position has changed? If not, could you explain the thought-process that led you to this change?

Your problem is I was using one egregious case to illustrate the entire pattern of un-American behavior. Both things happened in J6, and both are very bad. There is both the non-central, but egregious case, and the central pattern of over-prosecution.

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