I've had some dealings with the "sovereign citizen" nutcases before, but I hadn't heard that the concepts were being adopted in the "inner-city-drug-dealer" milieu. It's bizarre stuff-- almost like the Flat Earth Society, but these people actually believe the nonsense they are spouting. I had one guy try to argue, with a straight face, that the word "includes" is limiting, so that when the Tax Code says something like "For the purposes of this act, The United States includes the District of Columbia", it actually means that the United States is only the District of Columbia, and does not include the 50 States.
That sort of makes sense. Think of something like this. "The Blue Group will be performing in your home town tomorrow night. The Blue Group includes John the Juggler, Ryan the Rocketman, and Gina the Gorilla-fighter!" This seems to imply that John, Ryan, and Gina are the only members of The Blue Group. Comprises would probably be the better word to use here, but includes doesn't seem to out of place. Dictionary.com has more about the controversy: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/includes
Sorry, but no. The "controversy", if you can call it that, is whether or not it is proper to use "includes" with a list that is complete-- everybody agrees that it is the best choice for an incomplete list. Check your link again.
Seriously: if I said "The science faculty includes two Nobel Laureates", would you really think that there were only two professors on staff?
It's a nonsensical argument at best-- and when folks attempt to use it to argue against common sense (like stating that the United States does not include the 50 States), reason is left whimpering in the corner.
I don't know exactly what these thugs are claiming, but it's far from nut-job territory to claim the feds have no business in these local drug and murder cases.
The unmitigated contempt the author has for posse comitatus is a little disturbing. He can't even entertain the idea that perhaps there are good reasons the federal military should be barred from domestic law enforcement?
If that were the only thing they were claiming it would be different. But they are claiming that the person referred to on the federal documents isn't them because it's in capital letters.
This is incredibly fascinating, and not just because a bunch of killers avoided the death penalty by sprouting nonsense. I love to see cases like these put naked before the audience. You usually only hear of them indirectly, like "This-and-this guy who killed these-and-these was sentenced to death here-or-there"
The judge said "you're throwing your life away" and "you're commiting suicide in broad daylight" on numerous occasions. Do words like these really work on people who will almost certainly be killed anyway? Why doesn't the judge say "sit down and shut up" instead? It's a bit harsh and certainly destroys the illusion that the judge is there to help, but at least it's honest. And prosecutors using nonsense legal defense against the defendant, as if it were in itself a crime serious enough deserve a few years in prison? This smells like a rat.
I actually hope that this becomes a trend during trials for the death penalty or life sentences. Taking someone's life like this is a barbaric custom, but in today's legal system it seems almost legitemate. It's a good thing that "defendants" that have nothing to lose refuse to go peacefully. If all defendants have to be barred from the courtroom, it removes the illusion of a fair proceeding. Sentencing someone to death or fifty years of pain can almost never be justified.
Did you read it first? It was an awesome article. It isn't paranoid conspiracy-theory linkbait at all, despite what the title may imply. It's a retelling of the crimes and the ensuing trial of four African Americans who decide to use an obsolete legal defense that, once upon a time, legitimated chattel slavery to try to escape the death penalty. It's surreal. It may have themes in common with some very bad articles on reddit, but it is not one of them. It's a false positive. This belongs on Hacker News.
Yes, I read it first. It wasn't an awesome article: mostly just a depressing story about a few men who murdered someone and wanted to get away with it. Happens everyday. Its not surreal. Its definitely not hacker news.
After reading the article, I think it relates to News.YC in the terms of it is about individuals who are trying to hack the judicial system using obscure legal theories because they have nothing to lose (besides their lives - government was seeking death penalty). And, to give away the ending, their bold hack succeeded after 2+ years of the defendants' gerrymandering (government dropped death penalty case, now life in maximum-security prison). And these are the types of powerful individuals who will survive but might possibly thrive in the controlled world of prison.
Hackers are interested in more than just hacking. This is an interesting new phenomenon. The fact that the title has some words you'd see in a reddit title doesn't automatically make a story politicized flamebait.
If you think something is offtopic, flag it. It gets boring when people use the comment threads to complain about stuff they think is offtopic, just like it's boring when people complain about being downmodded.
This might qualify as hacking, for a very loose interpretation of the word: the defendants have stumbled across an input that the legal system is not prepared to handle. By neither cooperating with the system nor refusing representation, they maintained the case in an appealable state, which made the legal system move too slowly to make a judgment.
IANAL, but I'm surprised this worked. I assume a significant factor is the degree of rigor needed for death penalty cases.
I upvoted you but I don't think pg agrees with that flag philosophy. I think the goal of that feature is spam only.
The rule I use: If an article isn't interesting to me (user guidelines), then I don't upvote it or write a comment on it since both actions increase the attention other users would pay to it. Soon enough it will either pass out of sight or it will be interesting to other users. Even then, it will soon fade to the background archive.
For a flag: If it looks like spam - useless product link - and the user has no karma built up, I flag. Otherwise, I leave it alone.
If I knew what was and wasn't off-topic, I would. in this case there was something that smelled faintly of hacking the justice system, so I didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that this was inappropriate. But OTOH, it did seem irrelevant to hacking computers and starting businesses.
That's why I asked the question instead of simply ignoring it. HN is an evolving site, and many things that would have seem very out of place six months ago are on the front page today.
I'm not interested in retarding progress, I'm just trying to understand where we are going so I can play well with others.
Except I substitute "me" for "one's". If it gratifies my intellectual curiosity then maybe it will other users' as well. That said, I think it's personally important to use votes as community feedback for my future posts.
If anything, I worry about a community that becomes too homogeneous because interestingness involves variability. All I can do here is submit links. Whether it's interesting to the community is up to the community to decide (expressed in votes and comments). For instance, I'm often provoked by David Brooks (NY Times columnist). But he doesn't ever really talk about computers or business. Initially, I was skeptical about posting one of his columns. But it was received well and so I posted more.
This article was borderline for me. But what's the worst that can happen? It doesn't get votes? So I'd rather shade toward posting than not while still keeping the guidelines firmly in mind. I've often been surprised that the community appreciates some links that don't "belong" on a superficial analysis. Similarly, I've enjoyed science, law, art, and even political articles linked here (the last in small doses). I think that's a good thing. A uniform community is a boring one.
Because the legal system is as complex as any software or hardware specifications, and an attempt to break the system by using a bunch of valid but illogical statements, is very similar to actual hacking.
We don't want to learn about law, but we are just as interested in how people apply systems knowledge to bypass the security mechanisms of the system.
This article was all kinds of awesome. Very rare that I get to see hardcore gangster stories on hacker news. And how can you beat a story about a drug dealer named "Little Rock"? Upvote.
