When we go after CNN, Don Lemon is a ripe target, but it is important to remember how awful Erin Burnett is every single day. She just had Van Jones and some other lawyer on discussing the charges against the police in Baltimore, and stated she felt the charge of depraved heart murder for the driver was a bit much, and with ALLAH as my witness, stated (and I paraphrase):
“Won’t that be hard to prove depravity and indifference. I mean he’s been driving that van for years and no one else has ended up dead.”
I’d really like to see that line of defense used in a murder trial. “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, my client encounters hundreds of people every day, and he has never killed any of them.”
Authoritarian boot-licking jackass.
Baud
One free bite.
shell
Hey Cole. Earlier you mentioned Thurston. Hoping we might get an updated pic soon.
Schlemazel
Come on JC!!! Everyone should get one murder – at least every white guy. It should be our right as American’s!
BGinCHI
My client made literally thousands of withdrawals before he robbed the bank at gunpoint.
His percentage of armed robbery is very, very low.
RSA
@Schlemazel: First murder’s a freebie.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
That’s pretty smooth, I have to say. I can see his closing argument:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I think we’re overlooking the salient fact here. Almost nobody died in my clients’ care. You know? It was only that one guy died. Hell, that’s almost a perfect record. You think any of you could do any better? I mean, shit… Yeah, I mean, you know, somebody was bound to die sooner or later, you know what I mean? I mean, hell, the law of averages says that sooner or later, somebody was going to die in my clients’ custody, right?. That doesn’t mean my clients are responsible. Shit happens, you know? And, yeah, it is kind of a bummer that that guy died, but think about this: In all the time my clients have been driving around with people in that van, never once, not one time, did a pigeon get into the van. Not once did they have to call the animal control people to get a pigeon out of the van. So, yeah. Somebody died. I think that was inevitable. Find my clients not guilty. Thank you.”
Tree With Water
Q) “But speaking of rules, you’ve been arrested dozens of times in your life. Specific incidents aside, what’s common to these run-ins? Where do you stand vis-à-vis the law”?
A) “Goddammit. Yeah, I have. First, there’s a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don’t. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How’s that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.”
Hunter Thompson
Just Some Fuckhead
Asshole
Culture of Truth
Okay, it’s a pet peeve when people with no legal knowledge, *and* who happen to be morons, *and* pontificate to the point where, as Barack Obama said, it’s like they take pride in being ignorant.
Please proceed.
jibeaux
My crim law prof liked to hammer on the elements of the crime. If you didn’t meet the elements of the charge, you weren’t guilty of that charge. I don’t offhand remember the common law elements of depraved heart murder. But I don’t think any of them are “has also committed lots of other murders.”
scav
Does this also apply to abortions? So long as we don’t abort ALL the little snowflakes, no harm no foul no biggie, who’s counting? Or is the offer only good for Policewomen?
Tao of Nope
I once saw the CEO of an offshore oil company lambasting Obama’s response to the macondo gulf disaster.
There had been no respect for the history of “all the gulf wells that hadn’t had problems”.
The audience applauded.
Jimgod
A reminder: this ridiculous woman was heavily courted to be co-anchor of CBS This Morning when they relaunched it a few years ago with Charlie Rose. The Liberal CBS News we hear so much about….. I never want to hear a damn thing about the “liberal” media in this country ever again.
Lavocat
Well-propagandized sheep bleat the party line.
WTF did you expect?
Eric U.
I don’t like my bubble-headed newsreaders to inject their own stupid opinions into the news. I guess that’s why I can’t watch any of the news channels
AMinNC
Yes. She is odious. I was stuck in the Atlanta airport right as the Occupy protests were getting started, and the airport station was tuned to CNN. Burnett was apoplectic that the plebs would dare to make a noise against their betters. It was really astonishing to me the utter contempt she displayed for working class people and how far she had crawled up the rear ends of the moneyed class.
srv
And you people are always ranting about how perfection is the enemy of good.
Flip-floppers.
Arclite
Isn’t Erin Burnett married to some wingnut?
gocart mozart
gocart mozart
@jibeaux:
gocart mozart
@Arclite:
Close, David Rubulotta is an executive at CitiGroup.
chopper
wasn’t that Herman Cain’s defense? “what about all the women I didn’t harass?”
WereBear
@gocart mozart: Citigroup is Of the Devil. Close enough.
Betty Cracker
Ye fuck ONE goat…
ETA: Damn it! Gocart Mozart got there first…
Cacti
@Baud:
Pretty much.
The boys in blue get “one free homicide”.
Also, “one free homicide” for self-appointed neighborhood watchmen who feel threatened by teens wearing hoodies and armed with sidewalks.
srv
@WereBear: No exaggerating there:
scav
I think there’s also a clear glimmer of why so many good-hearted hearthsoil ‘mercans think of themselves as not racist. Unless they are actively and personally contemptous to each and every person of color without exception, it’s not racism, just as it’s not a depraved heart until every single person you suspect or arrest ends up dead and spine-snapped.
Sm*t Cl*de
How does she know?
rikyrah
we will see how the vote comes out
……………………
Mike Madigan schedules vote on right-to-work, urges Rauner to give details
Posted: 05/07/2015, 03:28pm | Natasha Korecki
For months, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has toured the state trying to sell his “Turnaround Agenda,” largely centered on a push for right-to-work zones in Illinois.
Now Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan is essentially telling Rauner to put up or shut up on the anti-union plan.
Madigan, D-Chicago, announced Thursday that he scheduled a vote for May 14 on whether Illinois should adopt right-to-work laws and invited the Republican governor to provide specific language for his legislation.
It was the second shot across the bow from Madigan this week, targeted at neutralizing issues Rauner has pushed lawmakers to approve as part of budget negotiations.
One Republican accused Madigan of trying to cause “chaos” by singling out the issue.
In a statement released on Thursday, Madigan’s office said it urged the governor to “file formal legislative language for his measure,” then needled Rauner for beginning to talk about right-to-work “100 days ago” but offering up no specifics to lawmakers.
As part of his tour, Rauner has urged local municipalities to adopt right-to-work laws for their own communities, which take aim at the power of unions. In those zones, workers can opt against joining unions or paying union dues as a condition of employment.
During his $60 million election for governor, Rauner repeatedly decried Illinois unions as corrupt and castigated lawmakers as contributing to the state’s economic “death spiral.” Rauner urged for local adoption of right to work in the face of the improbability of it passing statewide.
Putting the explosive issue to a vote creates a dicey political choice for Republican lawmakers who want to support their governor — particularly those who have union-heavy constituencies.
……………..
Madigan used a similar tactic by calling Rauner’s proposed $2 billion in human services budget cuts for a vote this week. With House Republicans saying they were caught off guard, they voted “present” and Democrats voted “no.” The ultimate tally for Rauner’s budget cut proposal: zero “yes” votes.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/586649/mike-madigan-schedules-vote-right-work-urges-rauner-give-details
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@srv:
That’s one of the reasons I really don’t want Hillary Clinton as the next president. She’s going to go with the same old crowd in her administration that’s helped fuck things up for years. She’s an institutionalist, as Chris Hayes put it, in Twilight of the Elites. I want an insurrectionist, somebody who doesn’t trust the “elites” whom so many people just naturally defer to, but who have fucked so many things up so badly for years now. We need a housecleaning.
tk
Now I got my defense ready when I meet Bloody Bill Kristol, Darth Cheney or any of the rest of the Evil Fuckstain Squad, face to face. that’s all that was holding up my rampage. Thanks Erin!
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@rikyrah:
Yeah. Giving the new governor’s policies a vote is “chaotic”… Jeez. I guess he wanted to run this shit through without anybody ever really hearing anything about it, the way they did in Wisconsin in 2011. If ever anybody wondered whether it’s worth it to give a shit who’s in the state legislature, well, here’s why. Shit went through in Wisconsin; looks like it won’t get through in Illinois.
fuckwit
@Tree With Water: I want to name a band “Lords of Karma”
Tao of Nope
Sweet merciful Jesus.
CNN: JEB says Dubya is his top foreign policy advisor.
http://cnn.it/1KnO6Fx
Emily68
@Tao of Nope:
When I was in college in ~1970, there was a canned soup company that got botulism in the soup and killed two customers. The woman who owned the company complained in an interview I read that it was a family owned business and they’d been in business for 90 years or so and they only killed two people. It was no fair that their sales had plummeted.
wasabi gasp
It’s not even a crime to be depraved and indifferent, yet there they go prosecuting him.
fuckwit
@gocart mozart: IANAL (and I love that acronym, because I ANAL!) but I do love nitpicking language. So let’s have a go at this one for fun!
Depraved Heart Murder:
“Where an individual ”
Yes, it is an individual we”re talking about here
“under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, ”
The circumstances of having an injured man in the back of a van,
indifference in that he was not seatbelted in, in that the driver may have known he was injured (depends on prosecution proving that), and Gray’s was a human life, though it appears the cops don’t think of citizens as human.
“recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death to another person,”
Driving like a maniac with an unbelted handcuffed injured citizen in the back is kinda reckless. I think the recklessness might be proved by the prosecution if they have evidence the driver was speeding, burning turns, brake checking, etc. And it did create a grave risk of death, if the van wasn’t padded or otherwise made safe.
“and thereby caused the death of another person.”
Gray is deceased. As for the cause of death, it’s up to the prosecution to prove that the death was caused by the van drive, i.e. he was alive when he went in, dead when he came out. Otherwise, maybe he was already dead before?he got in etc.
Anyway that’s my layman’s amateur attempt to parse that out. Maybe a real lawyer can have a go at it and give us a better ANALysis.
Betty Cracker
@Tao of Nope: Goddamnit, Jeb! STFU!
I think Jeb would match up best (for defeat, I mean) against Hillary Clinton, so I wish he’d shut his yap long enough to allow the money boys who run the party to haul his carcass across the primary finish line. Otherwise, we’ll get a wild card like Walker, and things will get murkier.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Hey, we’ve got yr wonkette on the sidebar instead of Newsmax! That’s an improvement.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Citing Dubya as an adviser on anything more complicated than mountain bikes is like wandering into the hyena exhibit with a porkchop necklace. Can he really be so stupid as to think the mention of his criminally moron of a brother helps his cause? What’s next, Bar for secretary of edukayshun?
David Koch
Jon Stewart exposes Burnett as a dimwit and trash.
David Koch
@trollhattan: I wouldn’t cite Dumbya as an expert on bikes, considering he can’t ride one without falling off and smashing his face.
Tao of Nope
@Emily68: yikes. Disgusting how obtuse people can be – when they’re responsible for deaths, no less.
If it makes you feel any better, the oil company from my story went bankrupt. (And blamed Obama)
Omnes Omnibus
Number one
You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a crime
Unless it was done
By a policeman or aristocrat
Oh, know your rights
Eric U.
@trollhattan: dubya really isn’t that great of a cyclist. He almost crippled himself by crashing on his ranch and landing on his neck, and then he ran down the cop in Ireland
Tao of Nope
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I can’t figure out what game he’s playing. Is he just trolling?
What’s the over-under for Bolton at State?
Baud
@Tao of Nope:
Next, Jeb! says he consults with Michael Brown on disaster response.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m disappointed that doesn’t rhyme.
jl
Is there a Wolfie award for that kind of thing?
SiubhanDuinne
@Eric U.:
Was that before or after the pretzel incident?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
The only quality journalist to come out of CNBC is Liz Claman, who’s now at Fox Business Network, of all palces.
jl
@Tao of Nope:
” CNN: JEB says Dubya is his top foreign policy advisor. ”
Hence, the exclamation point in Jeb!: if he becomes president, more foreign policy excitement and drama in the offing.
Amir Khalid
@Tao of Nope:
Maybe there is no game. Maybe ¡Jeb! really does believe W gives good foreign policy advice. Or at least that W’s foreign policy is a winner with American voters.
Bobby Thomson
@jibeaux: a depraved heart murder means you didn’t mean to kill anybody, but you were doing something with an unacceptably high risk of killing somebody and luck was not on your victim’s side. One example would be drag racing through a playground.
I think the point she was trying to make was that the risk can’t have been that high if he did it to hundreds of other people and none of them died – but that confuses luck with probability.
WereBear
@Tao of Nope: Whatever it’s called, it appears to be a family trait.
Tao of Nope
@Baud:
Jenny McCarthy for Health and Human Services!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I’d suggest that you take it up with Joe, but he’s dead.
Baud
@Tao of Nope:
Obviously, Inhofe for the EPA.
scav
More than mere reckless driving, there is also the sheer amount of time they drove before asking for medical assistence. They supposedly checked on him repeatedly, but nevertheless took another stop picked up somebody and drove that nice little indirect path. I personally find that sustained, repeated indifference to someone under their care. Would we be having this discussion if a rowdy kid collapsed on a bus and the busdriver completed his route and picked up coffee before going to the ER?
trollhattan
@Baud:
And Phil Gramm for Treasury. He’d have been Peepaw McCain’s, BTW. (Shudder)
Amir Khalid
In the British general election, Labour’s national campaign coordinator Douglas Alexander has lost his own seat to the Scottish Nationalist candidate, 20-year-old college student Mhairi Black. She will be the youngest British MP in some 350 years. Ouch.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Policeman or aristocrat?
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
The heaval seems to be sky high in the UK right now.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Rand for Fed Chairman!
Or Glenn Beck.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Heart attack. So, aristo, I think.
trollhattan
@Baud:
That would be great, because Rand could then “audit” himself. Or hire a $cientoIogist to do it.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Those assets were just begging to be monetized.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@efgoldman: On that note; yesterday’s. I am absolutely loving the original ones. Current story arcs on Sundays.
Tao of Nope
@trollhattan: Andy Fastow is out of jail – young, rested, ready and creative.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
Off topic: You can tell me I wasn’t paying enough attention to even ask the following question or raise the issue, and it would be true! — but I must say I was confused by your comments last night re anti-Semitism. Did I really understand you to say, for example, that it’s unfair to ask civic leaders in Community X to lead by speaking out against bigotry expressed by members of their community? Or indeed by anyone? Perhaps I misunderstood your objection? In any event feel free to ignore the question if you are so inclined at the moment. I can always ask you if it comes up again when I am paying more attention!
Have a great evening.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Without seeking to open a whole cans of worms, my objection to the comment last night was rooted in my distaste for the habit some people have of conflating Jews and Israelis.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
If that’s what it was, then fair enough — on both counts.
Thanks.
Calouste
@Amir Khalid: Labour is blaming the SNP for the Tories staying in power. Before this election, the Tories had 1 seat in Scotland, and after tonight they probably have none. Milliband just couldn’t work out how to handle the Scottish referendum and the subsequent popularity of the SNP. Him siding with the Tories on the referendum was the kiss of death for Scottish Labour.
john fremont
@Arclite: I thought her husband sat on the board of directors for Citibank.
gwangung
@scav: Is the rowdy kid white?
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Well, your people have enough burdens what with killing Christ and all that. ;)
scav
@gwangung: There is always that. But these actions were repeated, were taken with a cold heart and head (no covering tinge of fear for their lives) and communal. Protect and Serve? Sure, unless we decide you’ve looked at us funny and then all oaths are off.
Gex
@scav: I find the fact that the driver didn’t initially report a stop that was later revealed by a private security camera to be relevant as well. Hard to assert you were doing your best when you started out lying about what you did.
SarahT
@efgoldman: HAHAHA !
Debbie
@efgoldman:
It was the same in New Hampshire. We ended up driving to Boston for supplies.
AnotherBruce
@Jimgod: I do, I want them back. But in the past, they weren’t called “liberals” they were called “journalists”.
SarahT
@Debbie: @efgoldman: Hey, my Mom was an army brat, & in Arkansas her classmates actually asked to see her horns !
Gian
@fuckwit:
it strikes me that proving what the driver actually knew is critical. Was he told that he had a guy in the back who was unsecured and needed a rough ride? Did he have a camera or a window to see Mr. Gray was unsecured?
Without proving that he knew, it’s a tough hill to climb. But if there was a window, or he was told (and you can call the guy who told him) the hill gets much lower.
chris9059
If anything the fact that no one else ever died while this guy was driving indicates this time the driver did something wrong. It’s bad enough that Burnett spoutes off about the the law when she clearly has no idea what’s she’s talking about, but she also is incapable of thinking logically.