Jose Guerena

Except that you responded. Too bad you couldn't present an explanation about how it's ok for you to "hate loopholes" but take advantage of the loophole where you can regularly violate traffic laws but get away with it because cops are disinterested in anything but big-ticket fines. Pretty much everything is at the discretion of "LEO's", and everything after that is at the discretion of prosecutors. Of course, they turn around and complain about jury nullification. Funny old world, isn't it?

And here you go again. You're not really clear on the "taking my ball and going home" concept, are you? And I keep asking you, what's the level where it's ok to ignore the law? You refuse to answer, but I suspect I know the answer - the "level" is the degree to which a law is an inconvenience to you personally. Since it's pretty clear that there's no "these laws don't really count, it's ok to break them" exceptions in your big blue Book o' the Law. The law's the law, isn't it?And in point of fact - people don't get off with murder because of "technicalities", they get off with murder because police cut corners during investigations and ignore civil rights and rules of evidence, because they consider them "technicalities" that are for the lawyers to sort out and therefore beneath them.It's of a piece with the average policeman's general level of disdain for the actual law, when it becomes an obstacle to them being in control of the situation. That is, as I've said, the highest - perhaps only - priority of police. Oh, feeling a little outnumbered, are we? Did you think you could just come in here and tell us how it's done and why we shouldn't let our little heads be bothered by the epidemic of police murder we're experiencing? Didn't exactly work out like you planned, did it? It's pretty clearly driving you crazy that you're no longer in control of this situation.

You're right, and we should get rid of laws we don't need anymore.But surely you can see the slippery slope involved in personal judgments about what laws are supposed to be followed and what aren't? What's the practical difference between your judgment that traffic laws aren't "real" laws and, say, Smokey McPot's judgment that marijuana prohibitions aren't "real" laws? Seems to me that the level of harm is equivalent in both cases, so that's no recourse. What about the people, like you, who are breaking laws that they think shouldn't count? What about the people doing things they don't think should be against the law in the first place? Is that "mistake, absent-mindedness, or just plain stupidity"? For that matter, when you break the law by speeding, are you making a mistake, being absent-minded, or just stupid? Which of those excuses do you grant to yourself? You've made yourself into a hypocritical perfectionist by complaining about criminals who break the law and get away with it, in the very same sentence where you described how you only occasionally break the law and get away with it. So, laws only count when they're criminal laws? Civil laws don't count? Administrative laws don't count? It should be OK to dump toxic waste into the water because that's only an EPA administrative regulation?

Because it's for your benefit that he's been imprisoned, not his. We don't put criminals into jail as a favor to them, we do it as a favor to ourselves. Ergo we're responsible for feeding and clothing them while they're there. (You don't explain, exactly, how you plan to incarcerate someone in an area that isn't also a shelter. If there's nothing keeping the wind out, what keeps them in?)You don't understand the purpose of incarceration? Here's a hint - people don't want to be punished even if you decide they deserve it, so a considerable degree of coercion is required. And they have to be fed and clothed or else every sentence longer than a few weeks is an execution. Yup! Nobody forced you to put the guy in jail in the first place; presumably you did it, or took part in it indirectly by funding and supporting a society with laws and jails, because you stand to reap some benefit by not having rapists walking the street freely. I never claimed that. I'm continuing to ask you - because you won't say - where this line between "real" laws and "pretend" laws is.

On what basis? They're not in jail for their own benefit, they're in jail for ours. We're the ones that benefit, thus, we're the ones who pay the bill.Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Much more reasonable than charging prisoners for their own incarceration, which is a barbaric and idiotic practice. (After all, what do you do when they can't pay? Jail them some more?)

Sounds like you've never been to one, if you think they're like country clubs.Do you frequently get raped at your country clubs, bluescat? Did you acquire a hepatitis infection at Club Med?I think if you ever had the courage to actually visit a prison, and when you realized that about 60-80% of the people there are in for completely harmless drug possession crimes, you might experience a change of heart about whether prisons should be hell on Earth for those we force into them.

When I see you lifting even a single finger towards that end, I'll be more inclined to take your thoughts on the prison environment more seriously. In the meantime you may wish to consider some research on how less benighted nations such as Sweden approach their penal system.

Just so we're clear on this: you think the appropriate sentence for the sexual exploitation of children is "a fine, community service and counseling"?

It's still murder even if I hire it out; by the same token, "enjoying" the services of someone else producing child pornography seems, to me, to be taking part in the exploitation of a child.Let's say there were some naked pictures of you, taken without your consent or knowledge, that you then found out about. It's certainly the case that the degree to which you would feel you had been taken advantage of would be related to the number of people who had viewed the pictures.