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April 15, 2013
Horrific crime with uncertain responsibility and uncertain punishment on Patriots' Day in Boston
I am listening now to the press conference concerning the latest news concerning the horrific crime that took place today, Patriots' Day, in Boston. According to the report, at 2:50pm there were simulataneous explosions resulting in casualties on the route of Boston Marathon. In addition, more than an hour later, there was some sort of (perhaps related) event at the nearby JKF Library.
This ABC News live update includes these critical (and perhaps unconfirmed) details:
3:43 pm ET: Trauma nurse tells ABC News that the race’s medical tent has become a makeshift morgue. Dealing with injuries including severed limbs and children with severe burns....
4:05 pm ET: Boston police confirm at least 22 injured, 2 dead....
4:21 pm ET: Boston police confirm they have found three more suspicious devices. One has been rendered safe....
4:24 pm ET: A Federal law enforcement authority confirms to ABC News this was an intentional bombing, using small portable explosive devices....
4:35 pm ET: Two more explosive devices have been found near the scene of the explosion, according to the Associated Press.
4:38 pm ET: “There is no sign of any radiological material involved in the explosion,” a federal source tells ABC News.
I will be off-line for the next few hours, and I sincerely hope the news only gets better and not worse in the hours and days ahead.
April 15, 2013 at 05:01 PM | Permalink
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Comments
All of us hope the victims can be helped. The criminals must be hunted, tortured, and shot on the spot. All collaborators,financiers, enabling intellectuals get the same. To deter. If any appellate court stands in the way, pistol whip them, drag them from the bench, and lash them at a tree outside the court.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Apr 15, 2013 7:29:22 PM
Supremacy Claus, I live in the Boston area, and we don't need or approve of your savage words.
I hope very much they find who did this despicable attack. I hope that they get tried and put away for a long time to reflect the scale of their crime. And I also hope very much that your McCarthyite rantings about torturing and shooting "enabling intellectuals" and whipping and lynching judges, are treated with the contempt that they deserve from every American.
Posted by: Alex Marthews | Apr 16, 2013 10:24:54 AM
Alex: The above comment is from the hidden history of Abraham Lincoln, our greatest President, a lawyer, "Mr. Please Do Not Sue Your Neighbor."
The arrest warrant with his signature, for Chief Justice Taney, may still be viewed in the US Marshall museum. A lawyer persuaded Lincoln to take it back from the hand of a US Marshall in the office. Lincoln's troops pistol whipped the Maryland judges that issued Habeases for accused Southern spies, and threw these judges in 19th century prisons, injuries untreated. No writs for these judges.
And these tactics worked.
You might say, war was on our land. How about the rapid success of eradicating the conspiracy that assassinated Lincoln, a crime, not a war act? How was that done so quickly? When it comes to any attacker on the lawyer hierarchy, there is no limit on the savagery nor on the speed of the investigation, nor any limit on the methods used. When ordinary citizens are the victims, procedure must be followed.
If the investigation is slow and stupid, it will invite more attacks, as surely as the sun rises in the East. The subsequent attacks will then be the partial responsibility of those advocating restraint.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Apr 16, 2013 1:20:53 PM
The lurking sentencing issue here is the one that's always present when you have: a) homicides in; b) a state whose prosecutors do not have a death penalty statute that can be invoked even in an extreme and high-profile case; and c) there is likely some basis for the crimes to be prosecuted federally rather than in state court and for DOJ to invoke a federal death penalty statute.
Posted by: JWB | Apr 16, 2013 2:12:09 PM
I do not excuse Lincoln's actions on the ground that it was a time of "rebellion or insurrection". Pistol-whipping judges is both repellent and always unconstitutional. However, suspensions of habeas in such circumstances, though repellent, are constitutional under the Habeas Clause.
They are not constitutional here. It is obvious that we are not in a situation of "rebellion or insurrection". And the Founders, along with the post-Civil War amenders of the Constitution, were wise enough to put in place a series of limitations on the speed and ruthlessness of the criminal justice system that still apply today.
Due process, limitations on warrantless search and seizure, forbidding of cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a trial by jury, the right against self-incrimination: these are rights that it's despicable for you to oppose. As for whether slower justice will invite future attacks, I can assure you that swift and unjust vengeance without any process of law will create ten more people angry with the United States for every one that it destroys.
We should consider the model of the response of the government of Norway to the murderous spree of Anders Breivik. After his attack, the government asserted that the proper response was "more democracy, more openness", not less. Your murderous suggestions are not appropriate to a free state.
Posted by: Alex Marthews | Apr 16, 2013 5:34:30 PM
Alex: You are one of the good guys, in my book. I have no dispute with you, and respect your opinions, supporting a soft Scandinavian approach. My dispute is with the criminal cult enterprise that is the lawyer profession. They have feminized the American male and were a major, never stated factor in 9/11. That attack could not have succeeded on the airlines of other nation where men are still men. As an immigrant, you know this is true at the gut level. During the Virginia Tech massacre only immigrants moved to resist the massacre. Only immigrants filed complaints against the mass killer. He was actually involuntarily committed to treatment. The PC clinic said, he didn't want any, and that his feeling must be respected. To this day, these feminists maintain this view is correct. I spoke with the Virginian Governor's chief investigator of this episode, and he is outraged, not being a lawyer. It was not 100% the fault of the lawyer, since the system worked and committed him. However, all PC comes from case. All PC is the fault of the lawyer and serves to generate lawyer jobs.
The lawyer consumed 1000's of hours of Clinton's time on an impeachment driven by revenge for a tax increase on the rich. They established pro-enemy political correctness inside the FBI that coddled developing terrorists taking aviation lessons, instead of killing them before they killed us. The Supreme Court said, GITMO prisoners must have lawyers, generating delays in their summary executions, and $billions in cost of worthless government make work jobs. These are illustrations that our criminal law system is worthless, contemptible, and the cause of all crime by its permissiveness for the sake of generating lawyer jobs. They are really stealing tax dollars, and using them to destroy our nation.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Apr 17, 2013 12:19:12 AM
No, what you're saying is revolting from beginning to end.
What you denounce as political correctness is little more than the notion that we should treat all people, men and women alike, as fully human. 9/11 was planned and executed by terrorists, and neither lawyers nor political correctness contributed to it. Your rhetoric strongly resembles Breivik's, who would rant at length about the feminization of Norwegian culture.
Let me explain this very simply to you. Governments do not have the right to kill people summarily (i.e. without due process) unless the person is part of the uniformed military of a nation against which Congress has declared war. In all other circumstances, no matter what a person has done, the person must have a fair trial and all the protections of the Bill of Rights. And particularly, if a person hasn't done anything yet ("killing them before they kill us"), they can't be summarily killed, or even arrested. Guantanamo is a systematic offense against this, holding many prisoners who have never even been charged, let alone convicted of anything, and against whom the evidence has repeatedly been shown to be extremely thin. The prisoners there desperately need proper legal representation.
I know that the US government has often struggled with and tried to weasel out of these commitments. Even now, its use of "signature strikes" in nations with whom we are not at war is unwisely breaking these rules. But these rules exist for a reason: to force the federal government to act wisely and soberly and in defense of freedom, not as an offender against it.
Posted by: Alex Marthews | Apr 17, 2013 6:56:00 AM
I"m going to have to give Alex this one SC. I've been amazed that none of the country's we illegal killed people in have not struck at this country some way.
I know i would have.
Posted by: rodsmith | Apr 17, 2013 2:33:28 PM
Alex: I know you can do better than a list of ipse dixits mixed with personal remarks. The meter counting your errors of critical thinking was whirring there.
You want to generate government jobs. So the standard lawyer propaganda has a bad faith, self dealing hidden agenda. Not defending the constitution, just lousy government jobs. I suggest the facts are too horrendous, 3000 lives, $7 trillion economic loss for such crass motivations.
I want you to look up the Law of Necessity. It trumps all constitutions, all ratified treaties, never mind mere laws and regulations.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Apr 18, 2013 7:58:00 AM
