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from the laugh-and-(some-of)-the-world-laughs-with-you dept.
'The Onion' filed a real brief with the Supreme Court supporting man jailed for making fun of cops:
When was the last time you've read an amicus brief? If you're not involved in the legal profession, chances are you may have never actually spent precious time reading one. This amicus brief (PDF) could change that. It was submitted by The Onion, which describes itself in the brief as "the world's leading news publication" with "4.3 trillion" readers that maintains "a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires." [...]
The Onion, of course, is the popular parody website that once named Kim Jong-un as the sexiest man alive. Its team has filed a very real amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Anthony Novak, who was arrested and jailed for four days after briefly running a Facebook page parodying the police department of Parma, Ohio back in 2016.
[...] Despite writing the brief in the same voice its publication uses, and despite filling it with outlandish claims and hilarious quips, The Onion made a very real argument defending the use of parody and explaining how it works:
"Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original. The Sixth Circuit's decision in this case would condition the First Amendment's protection for parody upon a requirement that parodists explicitly say, up-front, that their work is nothing more than an elaborate fiction. But that would strip parody of the very thing that makes it function.
I highly recommend reading the brief yourself [PDF]. [hubie]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2022, @08:19PM (10 children)
If people wanted more, they would vote them in. There is no law that says they can't. Following the herd is more convenient, enables people to absolve themselves of responsibility. "Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday October 10 2022, @03:01AM (9 children)
Yes, but: Ballot access requirements exist in a lot of states, and the other parties don't reach those a lot of the time, and in a lot of states if they get too close too often to achieving ballot access the major parties can work together to increase the ballot access requirements.
For example, in my district, I just checked my sample ballot for the upcoming, and there's exactly 1 candidate on the ballot not explicitly affiliated with one of the 2 major parties, and 2 offices where an option even exists to write somebody in. So I literally cannot vote against both major parties in 14 of the 17 offices no matter how much I might want to. In one of those races, a major party candidate is running uncontested by the other major party, so I cannot vote him out no matter my opinion of him. And if you're thinking "Well, then you need to vote in primaries to influence which major party candidates are on the ballot", you can only have so much impact when the national party leadership has met in a proverbial smoke-filled back room to determine who is going to have the big-money backing and mainstream media coverage and thus who is almost definitely going to win that primary.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2022, @04:33AM (8 children)
Well then, these are just some of the rules we have to change. Apparently, the ballot initiative is the only way that will be possible until congress uses its authority under Article 1 Section 4 in the constitution to put the rules in nationally. We also have to vote in the primaries more actively, not let the party decide who gets on the ballot. Passively following the herd will lead us over the cliff. Only the voters can fix this. Either we do it, or we don't. The politicians we presently nominate won't, for reasons that are crystal clear. The excuses have to stop.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 10 2022, @10:28AM
In my state, there was a newly passed redistricting ballot amendment that was aimed at preventing gerrymandering. The party holding control of the government in my state simply passed a gerrymandered district map as usual, and after 4 rounds of the state supreme court saying "that's not OK by the new rules, do it again" and them coming back with basically the same map, that's the map we're going to be using. Oh, and nobody involved in this blatant violation of the state constitution and the will of the people has paid any fines or gone to jail for contempt or anything like that.
Power never gives up power willingly, even if it means breaking the alleged rules to remain in power. And since they're the ones holding the power, they're the ones that decide what happens when somebody breaks the rules. Isn't that convenient?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 10 2022, @01:56PM (6 children)
We saw how that works for the two parties. The R party bowed to the wishes of the electorate, and accepted Trump as the populist candidate. The D party instead knifed Bernie in the back, and shoved Hillary down the electorate's throats. The populist candidate won, and THAT is what all the Jan 6 investigations are about. It's all about The Establishment vs Populism. No lie is too big, or too outrageous, Trump must be convicted of something and those who voted for him must be punished.
It's really pretty simple, when you've cut through all the bullshit.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 10 2022, @06:36PM (5 children)
First off, I find it absolutely absurd to claim Trump is a man of the people: The guy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to fancy private prep schools and an Ivy League graduate school, and has never done anything resembling an honest day's labor of any kind in his entire life.
Second, the Jan 6 investigations are pretty clearly about what happened when Trump's supporters attacked the US Capitol and briefly took over significant portions of the building by force with the stated intent of murdering the vice-president of the US and several members of Congress, all while Trump and his senior military officers were preventing the National Guard and National Park Police from doing anything to stop it for several hours. And there's evidence of direct contact between the people doing the attacking of the Capitol and people who Trump spoke to on a regular basis.
And if you don't understand why that warrants investigation and probably a bunch more criminal charges than we've already seen, replace the name "Trump" in the previous paragraph with, say, "Hillary Clinton" or "Kamala Harris" and tell me if your opinion would change.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 11 2022, @02:16AM (3 children)
I don't think that I suggested that, exactly. I claimed that he was the populist candidate. He does have a certain kind of charisma, that appeals to a lot of people. I'll repeat myself again: I certainly never liked him. I simply found him to be less repulsive than the people who ran against him, by orders of magnitude.
Yeah the scaffold. Have you really looked at that gallows? I challenge: You build one just like it, and try to "hang" any item weighing more than 150 pounds. Seriously, all they had was a stage prop, and not even a very convincing one. I wish some of you folk would get serious.
Meanwhile, Democrats murdered Trump repeatedly in effigy, but no one thought that was terribly offensive, now did they?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 11 2022, @02:45AM (1 child)
How silly of me to think that the guys roaming the Capitol chanting "Hang Mike Pence" were hoping to hang Mike Pence. I said "stated intent", and that's exactly what it was. Whether they were capable of carrying out that plan wasn't relevant to whether that was the plan.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 11 2022, @05:00AM
Yes, silly. Everyone laughed their asses off when Trump was killed in effigy - but you don't get the joke of a scaffold that MIGHT have supported a 100 pound weight. The ONLY difference was, location. The people were in the people's house. Oh, silly me, this time. To think that the people should be permitted to enter the people's house. "Citizens are welcome here, unless they're angry."
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @09:06PM
That is truly insane! Eh, whatever, says more about you than him. His supporters are where the real danger is
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @04:11AM
Fact and fiction are totally irrelevant. It just has to win attention and votes, animal psychology at work, and he is our alpha male?! How the mighty have fallen...