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from the lawyers-who-cheaped-out-on-tech-support dept.
The Center for American Progress reports
Prosecutors and defense attorneys have only just begun to wrestle over the facts in an unprecedented series of felony trials stemming from the mass round-up arrest of hundreds of protesters on Inauguration Day. The federal government is arguing that everyone charged was an active participant, provoking alarming notions of collective punishment, but video evidence and media reports indicate that many caught in the mass arrest were not organized Antifa disrupters but rather onlookers caught in a dragnet.
[...] Lawyers from each side struggled [November 21, the second day of the trial of 6 defendants] to work up any kind of rhythm in their questioning because of the repeated interruptions necessary to navigate the gigantic pile of video evidence the government is relying upon. One might expect a serious felony trial involving thousands of gigabytes of video data covering hours of chaos in the streets to have some state-of-the-art system for playback--or at least the kind of pre-cut clips common on sports highlights shows.
But the law and order playing out in Courtroom 203 of the D.C. Superior Court has no such handy facilitation.
"I'm just going to back it up and--oops too far", Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Rizwan Qureshi said while trying to examine one government witness Tuesday.
The system befuddled defense attorneys just as much during their attempts at cross-examination. When one of the six defendants' lawyers sought to play back video for a Metropolitan Police Department officer, her colleague's computer froze up and only played sound. As the team tried to figure it out, Judge Lynn Leibovitz leaned toward their table and suggested they all "might want to get a tech person."
Earlier in the day, defense counsel Andrew Lazerow began his questioning of a Customs and Border Protection helicopter pilot by saying he wanted to revisit a portion of video shot from the man's chopper.
"Do you know how to do that?" AUSA Jennifer Kerkhoff offered helpfully as Lazerow reached the examiner's console.
"Uh, no", Lazerow said back.
"It's okay. Here.", Kerkhoff said, rising to show her opposing counsel how to work the touch-screen system.
The interruption itself took about as long as Lazerow's brief, narrow questioning of the pilot.
The serial tech hang-ups gave the proceedings an air of farce.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 23 2017, @11:10AM (8 children)
Interesting times, that is.
Merely having more people is a poor reason for California to having more votes than another state in the US Senate which is about state representation not per capita representation. Let us keep in mind that this is just like the European Commisson [wikipedia.org] where each member state of the EU gets one vote. Should Germany get more than ten times as many votes as Holland?
Ignoring that you would need a big bribe to get state votes supporting this convention, we still have the matter of it being a poor idea. Those bad ideas are a common occurrence in discussions of constitutional conventions. It definitely doesn't make me inclined to want one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @12:35PM (4 children)
You could have just said "anti-democratic".
N.B. Nebraska's unicameral seems like a good idea by comparison.
...and Guy Fawkes had a pretty good idea when he wanted to blow up the House of Lords.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 23 2017, @06:21PM (3 children)
The US isn't a pure democracy. Here, the US Senate is built in as a counterweight to the House of Representatives which is based on per capita representation. Works fine as far as I'm concerned.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:22PM (2 children)
You're making my point for me.
USA isn't a democracy at all.
USA is an oligarchy.
It's the way it was set up.
N.B. In a democracy, the majority of the people rule; in an oligarchy, the majority of the money rules.
In the USA, the majority of the people want[1] [googleusercontent.com] (orig)[1] [popularresistance.org]
- their taxes to be spent on single-payer healthcare,
- their taxes to be spent on universal tuition-free education as far as the individual can take that,
- better labor relations,
- deep cuts to corporate welfare (in particular to dirty energy),
- less spent on militarism.
I don't think that I need to tell you how that works out.
[1] I recommend adding the filter ##div.widget to your AdBlocker before visiting that page.
.
Now, a place that was actually set up as a democracy is Switzerland. [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @10:14PM
You've got your work cut out for you finding someone in that bunch who isn't rich.
...and, again, there are a lot of USAians who are underrepresented in that disproportionate body.
You may remember a previous thread on this topic [soylentnews.org] where I linked to a map with proper Senatorial districts. [archive.li]
...and, per your comment there, state lines are VERY "arbitrary".
...and this doesn't even get into DC, which has no representation there.
...or the numerous colonial possessions of USA.gov where people hold USAian citizenship but have no representation in Congress.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by ewk on Thursday November 23 2017, @02:17PM (1 child)
"Should Germany get more than ten times as many votes as Holland?"
No... appr. 85 million versus appr. 17 million, so let's say about 5 times as many.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:22PM
(Score: 1) by mmarujo on Friday November 24 2017, @06:09PM
The EU has an "interesting" solution to this problem...
It used to be that a resolution had to be agreed by all the countries.
Now a resolution has to have 50% + 1 of both people and countries. The biggest 4 or 5 countries can't force the union to do something, neither can the smaller countries even if they banded together.
Always found it infuriating to read in the paper that "The EU is forcing us to do it" when it was approved by those supposed to represent me...