Idiot of the Day 2015: More stupid than stupid.

[SnowFire]

I saw a reasonably funny meme reusing a Seinfeld quote: You charged him with building a hoax bomb, but he never claimed it was a bomb.  And that's really the most important part of a hoax.

[Luther Lansfeld]

it seems like all the bigots have picked up on this story late and i've spent the last day facepalming

[Grefter]

Yeah I have watched people say he didn't achieve/do anything and doesn't deserve all the positive reinforcement he had been getting.

It is a special kind of vile that I didn't expect to see.

[NotMiki]

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/20/richard-dawkins-questions-ahmed-mohamed-motive-backlash

[Veryslightlymad]

^^^^
Pretty much zero respect for Dawkins. He gets off on being a shithead to as many people as possible, and he's unbending on his beliefs in things like Evolutionary Psychology, even though a lot of it is garbage science, with some pretty tangible Very Bad Things coming off of it.

http://news.yahoo.com/professional-imbecile-george-zimmerman-retweets-163810394.html

George Zimmerman tweets out a pic of the teenager he killed. Calls himself a "One man army".

Jim, what, exactly would Zimmerman need to say to make a viable perjury case against him?

[NotMiki]

Perjury?  He'd have to be under oath.  There's no law against being a sack of shit, regrettably.

[Veryslightlymad]

I mean in regards to his previous trial.

[NotMiki]

I'm not sure I see where the lie is.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

His claim wasn't that he didn't kill a defenseless kid, it was that hunting down a kid to kill him is okay under Florida law, which the court decided was true.

[Veryslightlymad]

There isn't one yet. He's just being a shit.

I'm saying, what would he need to say to indicate he wasn't acting in self-defense? Or would he need to directly say "Haha! Joke's on you, I wasn't acting in self defense.

[NotMiki]

Constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy prohibits Florida from retrying him.  In that circumstance, the federal government might try and step in, though.

(Fun fact: the prohibition against double jeopardy does not prevent the federal government from prosecuting on charges that include stuff you have been acquitted on at the state level.  go fig.)

[SnowFire]

Okay, Zimmerman is a bad example because see Mr. Stark, he didn't deny doing the killing on the stand, merely argued it was legal.  But I do presume that double jeopardy extends to forbidding perjury charges on general denials somebody did a crime, or even false alibis, if the State later gets more evidence the person really committed the crime and encourages the jury to use the perjury charge as a stand-in for re-charging them with the same crime.

That said, what about perjury charges for something different than general denials of responsibility?  e.g. Alice says on the stand that sure, she was at Bob's house, but she saw *Carol* shoot Bob, so she's innocent.  In a display of prosecutorial incompetence, the prosecutor doesn't closely probe into this accusation, and Alice is acquitted.  Carol later shows up, angry at being defamed, and has an iron-clad alibi of being in another state with lots of witnesses, so Alice was clearly lying.  Can Alice be prosecuted for perjury?  (I'd assume no, but.)

[NotMiki]

I don't know of any cases where a defendant has been prosecuted for perjury based lies relating to a crime they committed.  I believe it is possible; perjury is very rarely prosecuted relative to the number of verifiable lies made under oath.  Part of that is prosecutorial culture and discretion.  Part of that is that in order to successfully prosecute perjury a prosecutor has to prove not only that the information was inaccurate but that the person who made the misstatement knew at the time that it was incorrect.  Given, for example, the massive reliability problems with eyewitnesses, I don't think this is something prosecutors are eager to dig into.

I think perjury is much more likely where a witness lies about a fact material to a crime and that lie has negative consequences.  The only perjury case I can recall is where a woman was the victim of rape by a stranger, and she lied in court and said that the rapist was her ex-boyfriend.  The ex-boyfriend was convicted and sent to prison.  The woman later recanted her story to a friend of hers', the friend told the authorities, and she was prosecuted and convicted of perjury (and her ex-boyfriend's conviction was nullified).  I don't think you're going to see perjury outside those kinds of extreme circumstances.

[Shale]

On the other hand, people do get prosecuted for making false statements to a federal official investigating them for criminal activity, e.g. Martha Stewart.

[Veryslightlymad]

I don't know of any cases where a defendant has been prosecuted for perjury based lies relating to a crime they committed.  I believe it is possible; perjury is very rarely prosecuted relative to the number of verifiable lies made under oath.  Part of that is prosecutorial culture and discretion.  Part of that is that in order to successfully prosecute perjury a prosecutor has to prove not only that the information was inaccurate but that the person who made the misstatement knew at the time that it was incorrect.  Given, for example, the massive reliability problems with eyewitnesses, I don't think this is something prosecutors are eager to dig into.

I think perjury is much more likely where a witness lies about a fact material to a crime and that lie has negative consequences.  The only perjury case I can recall is where a woman was the victim of rape by a stranger, and she lied in court and said that the rapist was her ex-boyfriend.  The ex-boyfriend was convicted and sent to prison.  The woman later recanted her story to a friend of hers', the friend told the authorities, and she was prosecuted and convicted of perjury (and her ex-boyfriend's conviction was nullified).  I don't think you're going to see perjury outside those kinds of extreme circumstances.

Yeah, in the case SnowFire brought up, no one's gonna really be brought up on perjury. Because it'd be impossible to prove that the person Alice saw wasn't merely a person who looked like Carol. It makes Alice look a lot less credible, but it doesn't actually directly disprove Alice's initial story.

I dunno where I was coming from on the Perjury thing, honestly. If he were to write a book, and claim "I was out cruising around looking for a person I could provoke and kill." and then just spent thirty chapters detailing a bizarre, depraved bloodlust and a generally racist attitude. I guess there's nothing that could be done, even in this hypothetical terribly-written movie scenario.

I understand that with any kind of law, you need to basically handle everything with a scalpel. On the one hand, posts like "The Z-man is a one man army. Look at this guy I murdered." are despicable, but if you give authorities carte blanche to detain an idiot merely because he's "a threat" that leads to... uh... something bad. Hold on.

Oh right, stuff like this.

We all joke around about the NSA or "being put on a list somewhere" or whatever, but, uh, this asshole is probably monitored somehow, right?

[Hunter Sopko]

I understand that with any kind of law, you need to basically handle everything with a scalpel. On the one hand, posts like "The Z-man is a one man army. Look at this guy I murdered." are despicable, but if you give authorities carte blanche to detain an idiot merely because he's "a threat" that leads to... uh... something bad. Hold on.

Oh right, stuff like this.

[NotMiki]

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/05/politics/lindsey-graham-flooding-federal-aid/

Sen. Lindsey Graham is asking for federal aid for his home state of South Carolina as it battles raging floods, but he voted to oppose similar help for New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2013.

"Let's just get through this thing, and whatever it costs, it costs," Graham told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" on Monday of the devastating floods in his home state.

Graham was among the Republican senators who opposed a federal aid package in January 2013 to assist states hit by Hurricane Sandy, but now he doesn't remember why.

"I'm all for helping the people in New Jersey. I don't really remember me voting that way," Graham said.Pressed further, he said: "Anyway, I don't really recall that, but I'd be glad to look and tell you why I did vote no, if I did."

[Grefter]

I am straight ripping off a sub reddit here, but holy fuck

This is what happens when you mix Reddit sexism with tech "meritocracy" bullshit (ie reasons to be jerks because you are good at one thing and it isn't people).

Enjoy reading how objectifying women doesn't involve any level of inherent dislike because everyone likes icecream.

The logic chain worked backwards is it is okay to like an object -> treating women like objects means I like women them because I like other objects -> there is nothing wrong with objectification, good job icecream!

[NotMiki]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-news-guest-charged-cia

*ahem*

lollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

[NotMiki]

http://mashable.com/2015/10/15/walmart-stocks-gun-counter-with-lube/#FyvRE9MzJEqk

I want this to be true

[AndrewRogue]

A lighter idiot of the day that I think only a few people here will understand.

Player has rules question about Hanabi. Turns out he and his group have been playing it as a competitive game. Much confusion ensues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/3oyfen/hanabi_rules_question/

[Hunter Sopko]

A lighter idiot of the day that I think only a few people here will understand.

Player has rules question about Hanabi. Turns out he and his group have been playing it as a competitive game. Much confusion ensues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/3oyfen/hanabi_rules_question/

You see, Laggy had a 5...

[Cotigo]

A lighter idiot of the day that I think only a few people here will understand.

Player has rules question about Hanabi. Turns out he and his group have been playing it as a competitive game. Much confusion ensues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/3oyfen/hanabi_rules_question/

You see, Laggy had a 5...

You leave my waifu outta this

[Grefter]

It is a shame that print media is dying.

http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-erskine-20151010-column.html

Because this belongs in a dumpster fire.

[NotMiki]

Just another old guy jerking off to telling those young people what to do.  Remain calm and he will die decades before you.