I see that Tom Friedman has a new hobby: Binge Drinking.

And also: muscling one out while thinkin' about China 'n stuff.

With so many societies around the world being torn apart, especially in the Middle East, it is vital that America survives and flourishes as a beacon of pluralism.Rebuilding our strength has to start with healing our economy. In that regard, it feels as if our budget drama has dragged on for so long that it has not only been drained of all emotional energy but nobody even remembers the plot anymore. ItÂ’s worth recalling: What are we trying to do? Â…

So what to do? We need a more “radical center” — one much more willing to suggest radically new ideas to raise revenues, not the “split-the-difference-between-the-same-old-options center.” And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.

Guy Benson has the right of it: The New York Times is a cartoon.

Pic thanks to @kbdabear.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (223)
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Before discussing the story, here's some background on what Miranda is, and what it's not.

Although we often say "Miranda rights," that's not technically accurate; there are no rights created by Miranda. "Miranda rights" are those rights of which an accused is advised per the formula announced in the 1966 decision Miranda v. Arizona, to wit:

You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you by the state.

The first warning informs the accused of his Fifth Amendment guarantee that he cannot be compelled to testify against himself at court, and the second informs him of the Sixth Amendment right to have the assistance of counsel in preparing a defense and at trial.

The point is, everyone has their 5th and 6th Amendment rights, at all times. (In theory-- of course, any unscrupulous cop may steal them from you, but as a Constitutional rule you do have them.) When we say we're not giving someone their "Miranda rights," what we mean is that we're not giving them the standard warning about what their rights are -- but they do retain all their rights. We're not taking the rights away, or denying the rights; we are merely (if I may use that word) deciding not to advise them of their rights.

Why? Well, the moment someone hears the word "lawyer" he might start thinking maybe that's a good idea. Power of suggestion and all.

When we speak of "not giving someone Miranda" we're not talking about stripping them of all rights-- we're not saying we've decided we will illegally and unconstitutionally compel him to testify against himself. A lack of Miranda warning does not equal waterboarding. It also doesn't mean we'll refuse to give him a lawyer if he affirmatively asks for one. It just means we're not going to suggest doing so to him.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is a standard penalty for not Mirandizing suspects: That penalty is that any incriminating information the suspect offers (confessions or other incriminating statements, such as false accounts of his actions, where his deception is used to infer guilt) cannot be offered at trial against him.

Makes sense -- if you don't Mirandize someone, and then that failure to Mirandize leads him to incriminate himself, then the incriminating statements he makes can't be used at trial. However, all other evidence you collected can be used against him; a suspect isn't cut free just because he hasn't been Mirandized. (Though it can lead to that if the only real evidence against him was his confession/incriminating statements. But if there's a mountain of physical and eyewitness evidence against an accused, then the loss of a confession isn't a grievous blow to the case.)

Orin Kerr discusses this at the Volokh Conspiracy.

The point is that Miranda doesn't even have to be read to a suspect -- it only has to be read to a suspect if the investigators have an eye to using his statements against him in court. If investigators do not plan on using these statements -- if, for example, they don't think they need a confession because their suspect is on video depositing the bombs and also confessed to a civilian who he carjacked and is also testified against by an eyewitness who looked him straight in the face -- then you don't need to give a Miranda warning.

You don't need his confession, so just take the penalty, in football terms-- intentionally take the safety. Exchange the minor loss of 2 points for the greater good. And the greater good here would be getting Dzhohkar to talk about third parties who may have been involved in the plot.

Here's Orin Kerr:

Miranda is a set of rules the government can chose to follow if they want to admit a person’s statements in a criminal case in court, not a set of rules they have to follow in every case. Under Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760 (2003), it is lawful for the police to not read a suspect his Miranda rights, interrogate him, and then obtain a statement. Chavez holds that a person’s Miranda rights are violated only if the statement is admitted in court, even if the statement is obtained in violation of Miranda. See id. at 772-73. Further, the prosecution is even allowed to admit any physical evidence discovered as a fruit of the statement obtained in violation of Miranda — only the actual statement can be excluded.

So, absent a Miranda warning, you can obtain all the statements you like. You just can't use them in court against the suspect. You could, however, use that information to develop a case against other suspects. (Note that you can't plead the violation of someone else's rights as a reason why evidence against you should be suppressed. Your right to have information excluded is based on your own rights being violated, not some third party's.)

So, why was Miranda read to this guy? Even if you don't buy the Public Safety exemption (which I allow, is sort of bullshit), we don't really need a confession from Dzhohkar, given that we have all the evidence in the world against him, and will only collect more and more from his apartment and computer.

What we wanted was to get him talking about other jihadis, trainers, perhaps, who taught Tamarlan, and perhaps this "Mischa" person who encouraged a radical Islamist philosophy, etc.

Why do anything that would make him stop talking?

And yet that's what's been done. Because a lot of people think "Miranda" equals "Your rights under the Constitution," and if there's no Miranda then it's Torture n Stuff.

Including judges, apparently.

Two officials with knowledge of the FBI briefing on Capitol Hill said the FBI was against stopping the investigators' questioning and was stunned that the judge, Justice Department prosecutors and public defenders showed up, feeling valuable intelligence may have been sacrificed as a result.

The FBI had been questioning Tsarnaev for 16 hours before the judge called a start to the court proceeding, officials familiar with the Capitol Hill briefing told Fox News. Moreover, the FBI informed lawmakers that the suspect had been providing valuable intelligence, but stopped talking once the magistrate judge read him his rights.

And so we lost potentially important information about third parties.

Like, for example, this tidbit about Mother Tsarnaev:

The mother of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev knew as early as 2011 that her son had been radicalized and sent text messages to family in Russia suggesting he was willing to die for Islam, the FBI told lawmakers this week according to two officials with knowledge of the Capitol Hill briefing.

I don't know this woman's citizenship status, but I know what I'd like it to be, if it could be altered.

And speaking of that: A majority of the public would like to reduce immigration, including legal immigration, and I think it's time for some real Immigration Reform.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (199)
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In response to Drew's post:

There's a whole 'nother side to the story about how conservative members forced House GOP leadership to pull the bill defunding HHS' Obamacare implementation slush fund.

Former guestblogger Ben Domenech wrote about it in this morning's Transom and he's given me permission to excerpt it here:

The Cantor-sponsored shift wouldÂ’ve accomplished a couple of political goals: it wouldÂ’ve bolstered a high-risk pool based approach to pre-existing conditions, which has generally been favored on the right, and it wouldÂ’ve hampered SebeliusÂ’s ability to shift dollars around at whim without going back to Congress for approval. ...

As they tend to do, however, fiscal conservatives split on Cantor effort. It was opposed by the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, and “Tea Party leader” Brent Bozell. Redstate announced it would be scoring the vote. They described the step, in insulting fashion to anyone who understands the policy involved, as an Obamacare “fix”. This is absurd at best and outright false at worst, and it is unsurprising to see that the tactic had its largest fandom among those most likely to be knee-jerk anti-leadership in every respect. The federal high risk pool is already a temporary measure which expires in 2014: “fixing” it by shifting these funds around is like putting a larger bandaid on cancer.

This type of strategic idiocy has been the mark of conservatives throughout the process of Obamacare’s passage and implementation, so expecting them to be smarter now is probably too much to ask. Whatever the motives of the conservatives who opposed this measure, they have accomplished the following ultimate goal: they’ve made leadership less likely to take up any possible wedge legislation on implementation; they’ve missed an opportunity to bolster the argument that Republicans care about pre-existing conditions; and, most importantly, they’ve made it easier for Sebelius to implement the law, protecting her flexibility to pour money into signing up more young and healthy people into the exchanges to mitigate premium shock – which, as I’ve explained before, represents the final opportunity for at least partial repeal.

I agree with Ben. Conservative health policy used to recognize that there is a problem getting health coverage for high-risk health care consumers with preexisting conditions. The old idea was to let everyone else get insurance through the market, with a small, subsidized high-risk pool for the limited number of folks with preexisting conditions who can't find or afford insurance in the market. Now, I'm not sure what conservatives want.

This plan was to take Sec. Sebelius' implementation funding, which she's been using as a slush fund to pay for all kinds of things (remember those TV ads) to make the Obamacare rollout happen smoothly. That funding would be moved over to the high-risk pool that expires in 2014. I thought seeing that the Obamacare rollout is a disaster is something conservatives would want.

This was a good plan. It showed that Republicans were serious about addressing actual healthcare problems and it was another step on the way to repeal, which conservatives claim to want. Now the GOP has egg on its face, and I can't help but wonder if conservatives want that more than they want Obamacare gone.

The Transom is Ben's daily email newsletter. It is absolutely worth the price of subscription. A sample can be viewed here, if you'd like to take a look.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:30 AM | Comments (232)
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Oh boy.

BREAKING:SenMcCain says he received letter from PresObama saying Syria HAS used chemical weapons

— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) April 25, 2013

There are also reports that Secretary of Defense Hagel (oh dear Lord) is saying the same thing.

So...now what?

Personally my Give a Damn Meter is pegged at Zero, it's not even twitching.

More:

Hagel says he's "confident" that chemical weapons have been used.

The White House however sounds less sure.

White House: U.S. intelligence assessments on Syria chemical weapons are not enough; credible and corroborated facts needed #breaking

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 25, 2013

Well, it sounds like the first international security crisis of the Hagel era is going as well as we expected.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:26 AM | Comments (268)
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They just don't get it.

House Republican leaders suffered a humiliating legislative setback Wednesday when a large faction of GOP lawmakers rebelled against a leadership proposal that had drawn the opposition of powerful outside activists.

The mutiny forced House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) to abruptly pull from the floor legislation to shore up a program that allows people with preexisting health conditions to buy into an insurance pool for high-risk patients before they are able to transition to coverage under President ObamaÂ’s health-care law.

...

“Fiscal conservatives should be squarely focused on repealing Obamacare, not strengthening it by supporting the parts that are politically attractive,” Andy Roth, a vice president of Club for Growth, wrote to lawmakers last week. Heritage Action, the political arm of the the conservative Heritage Foundation, joined in the opposition.

...

Cantor pulled the bill after trying to push his rank-and-file members to support it during a closed-door huddle on Wednesday. He argued that “helping the sick people” was a worthy conservative cause. “This is the right thing to do,” Cantor said. “We’re trying to find solutions here.”

Boehner couldn't use his usual trick of letting the Democrats do his dirty work because they all were set to vote against the proposal because it would have funded the program with money from an existing ObamaCare slush fund. So the GOP leadership needed almost all Republicans on board but those crazy right wing conservatives wouldn't play ball.

Where to start with this?

On a tactical level, the House GOP leadership is incompetent. They keep trying to push things without having an accurate read on their caucus. This is legislating 101 and Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy keep failing it.

On a policy level, the GOP has always supported the idea of subsidized high risk pools (a dubious idea at all but play along for a minute) but at the STATE level. Now with Cantor's infatuation with resurrecting "compassionate conservatism" everything is a federal issue.

Most importantly though is the political considerations. If the GOP game is now to win over "moderates" by "fixing" ObamaCare with a different basket of goodies, the game is over. The GOP won't be an opposition party, it will simply be the right wing of the Democrats trying to make the messes the liberals make work a little better.

This is my problem with the notion that if we do amnesty than the GOP can try and win these "natural conservatives" over. The problem, aside from the fact that Hispanics aren't conservatives (natural or otherwise) is the GOP hasn't shown the ability to win anyone to conservationism since Reagan. The main reason for that is the GOP isn't a very conservative party. As I've written before, that's understandable since the country isn't very conservative.

Now that the House Republican leadership has been smacked down again but conservatives, does anyone doubt that Boehner will bring immigration up and pass it with Democratic votes if need be?

Will THAT finally be enough for conservatives to realize that their interests and those of the Republican party are too divergent to continue together? I'd hope so but until I see it, I have my doubts.

Added: The "strategy" behind this was to put Democrats in a tough spot. Since there will be a gap in the implementation of the exchanges, some high risk insured will have a gap in coverage. The idea was to get Democrats to take money from the slush fund and put it to a "good cause".

A number of influential activists, including Independent Women's Forum CEO Heather Higgins, Americans for Tax Reform's Ryan Ellis and others vigorously defended Cantor's bill.

Following the bill's defeat, Eliis wrote bluntly. "Now nothing will happen. I'd rather have tried than made the perfect the enemy of the good. Longer term, this makes this entire coalition decidedly unserious and a liability rather than an asset. But don't fret — now we don't have to worry about seven months of a federal risk pool tainting our ideological purity."

..

"There really isn't a difference. This repeals part of the bill in a particularly-painful way politically [for Democrats], he argued. "It does so in a way that cripples Obamacare's ultimate success. That's exactly what we did with 1099 Â… This vote is all about political pressure. If the vote were simply to repeal a slush fund, that creates a discomfort level of X for vulnerable House Dems. But to vote to repeal a slush fund AND use the money to get sick = people health insurance? X on steroids. Which version would you rather vote against if you were a Blue Dog?"

Here's my problem with this. Conservatives should not accept the underlying principle that as George W. Bush put it "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.". This may well be good politics for Republicans but does anyone believe that any pool would have been "temporary" even if had no purpose going forward?

Once we concede an inch, even a made up one, the Democrats will comeback for a very real mile.

Again, I get why the GOP wants this but that's not the same as what conservatives want. The battle for conservatives can't be about this or that detail in ObamaCare, it's about it's underlying principles.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:43 AM | Comments (131)
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• Boston Globe Asks Readers: Do You Feel Empathy For Dzhokhar
  
• God Bless Jeff Bauman
  
• Rubio Worried Boston Will Make Immigration Reform Tougher
  
• As Bush Stays Silent, His Reputation Steadily Gains
  
• Meet Nine Recovering Boston Bombing Victims
  
• Obamacare's PR Problem, Not Just A Flesh Wound
  
• IRS Issued Billions In Improper Refunds
  
• The Euro Is Ripping Europe Apart
  
• GE Capital Cuts Off Lending To Gun Shops
  
• Don't Bring A Baseball Bat To A Shotgun Fight
  
• China, France Push For Multipolar World Order
  
• Tamerlan Vowed To Die For Islam
  
• The Chechen In The Rye
  
• Feds Spend $890,000 On Fees For Empty Accounts
  
• Barbara Bush Doesn't Want Jeb To Run
  
• The Aaron Sorkin Model Of Political Discourse Doesn't Actually Work
  
• Gabby Giffords Taking A Job As A Full Time Prop
  
• Bush Reflects With Dana Perino
  
• Pain Catches Up To Super Bowl Winning QB
  
• Cool Evian Commercial
  
• WTF Is Going On At CNN?
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:25 AM | Comments (276)
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Happy Thursday.

Lawmakers from both parties are in talks to exempt themselves and their staffs from having to join Obamacare health exchanges. Being forced to use the Obamacare exchanges would lead to a "brain drain" on Capitol Hill, these lawmakers say, because they're too expensive. I believe the first part of any rational response to this proposal has to begin: "Fuck you, you fucking fucks."

Officials say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev confessed before he was informed of his rights. Whether or not those statements are admissible at trial is going to depend on several other factors. Also, the statements would be admissible if Tsarnaev repeated them or expanded upon them after he was Mirandized. No one's really worried about getting a conviction in this case.

Animal rights "activists," accurately referred to as terrorists, ransacked a lab in Italy and set back research for treating autism and other disorders by years. I believe the first part of any rational response to this act has to begin: "Fuck you, you fucking fucks."

Ron and Rand Paul are reportedly pressuring Rep. Justin Amash not to run for the Senate. Apparently, they see a bright future for him in the House. In semi-related news, the Democratic AG of Kentucky, Jack Conway, who lost to Sen. Paul, says he won't run against Sen. McConnell, blames Puffy McPuffyface for the Democrats' trouble finding a candidate to run.

Rhode Island will become the 10th state to legalize gay marriage. Yesterday, the state senate passed such a law, with all of the state's GOP senators voting in favor of it. The law goes back to the House for technical corrections (the House already passed it last month) and then on to the Gov. Lincoln Chafee's desk. If you want to know how the law came about in spite of opposition from the president, majority leader and Judiciary Committee chairman of the state senate -- all of whom could have stopped the bill from proceeding to a vote -- Josh Barro explains.

They just opened a hundred-year time capsule in Oklahoma. Here's photos of what was inside.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (435)
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I want to say I'm shocked, but I'm really not. After all, it IS Baltimore.

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant.

White had sexual relationships with numerous prison guards and got four pregnant, prosecutors allege. Two of the guards had his name tattooed on their bodies — one on her neck and another on her wrist, according to the indictment.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:42 AM | Comments (51)
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Yea, its come to that. Cartoon pron gets you sent to prison.

A man has been jailed for watching cartoon videos of elves, pixies and other fantasy creatures having sex...

...Anti-child pornography group ECPAT Child Alert director Alan Bell said the images were illegal because they encouraged people "to migrate from there to the real thing".

Disney officials say the problem is so bad they're having problems hiring people to wear the Elf costumes, even at a lavish $250/hr rate.

"Hey, $250 an hour isn't enough for people to risk almost certain death, but we just can't justify anything higher without charging $500 to get in, and that would put us out of business." said Eugene Storpenflesher head of HR at Disney World.

Storpenflesher added, "We may have go to robotic Elves if this ghastly cartoon pron problem doesn't get resolved soon."

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:07 PM | Comments (51)
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You wanted stats - well you're gonna get stats baby!

Announcing the 2012 AoSHQ Commenter Standings

Well we were saving this for a special occasion but I guess this is as special as it's going to get.

Give all of these Morons a hand for their daily unpaid labors during 2012 on Breitbart's favorite part of the blog.

Top 20 commenters:

1 [19125 comments] 'Vic' [52.45 posts/day]

2 [14937 comments] 'AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart'

3 [13610 comments] 'soothsayer'

4 [13581 comments] 'toby928?'

5 [13351 comments] 'Niedermeyer's Dead Horse'

6 [12606 comments] 'Robert'

7 [11645 comments] 'steevy'

8 [11321 comments] 'sven10077'

9 [11176 comments] 'kbdabear'

10 [9668 comments] 'wheatie'

11 [9630 comments] 'garrett'

12 [9545 comments] 'Jane D'oh'

13 [9185 comments] 'tasker'

14 [8415 comments] 'chemjeff'

15 [8248 comments] 'Y-not'

16 [8179 comments] 'willow'

17 [7759 comments] 'alexthechick - SMOD 2012'

18 [7748 comments] 'MWR, Proud Tea(rrorist) Party Hobbit and ABO Supporter'

19 [7657 comments] 'Nevergiveup'

20 [7509 comments] 'ThePrimordialOrderedPair'

Top 20 sockpuppeteers:

1 [1567 names] 'Cicero' [4.30 unique names/day]

2 [1239 names] 'JDP'

3 [1165 names] 'Adam'

4 [1150 names] 'ACE Union Member'

5 [1114 names] 'kbdabear'

6 [862 names] 't-bird'

7 [837 names] 'Truck Monkey'

8 [788 names] 'fluffy'

9 [785 names] 'Romeo13'

10 [757 names] 'Islamic Rage Boy'

11 [733 names] 'The Political Hat'

12 [679 names] 'Robert'

13 [590 names] 'nickless'

14 [580 names] 'Soap MacTavish'

15 [568 names] 'toby928?'

16 [553 names] 'Mallamutt, RINO President for Life'

17 [550 names] 'Scobface'

18 [549 names] 'Meremortal'

19 [521 names] 'beach'

20 [518 names] 'joncelli, heartless Con and all around unpleasant guy'

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:11 PM | Comments (875)
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