While everyone is still focused on the bright shiny objects of of Ahmad Khan Rahami, now in custody after a shootout with police this morning and Dahir Adan, the claimed by ISIL knife attacker killed by an off duty cop in St. Cloud, Minnesota, there are two other prime examples of leaderless resistance and self radicalization that aren’t getting wall to wall TV coverage. Carey Lee Ogborn was arrested in Houston on Friday and arraigned this morning for plotting to blow up a building and attempting to buy the explosives from an undercover Federal law enforcement officer. Last Wednesday Daniel Shiffmiller, a self proclaimed sovereign citizen, was arrested by the FBI. You will not be surprised to find that Ogborn and Shiffmiller look like this:
RaflW
Lone Wolf is for White Americans. Terrorist is for Mooslems and ferriners.
It has always sickened me that McVeigh (168 confirmed dead) got mostly a pass on the terrorism label. But when you see how insane the GOP gets over the whole “Obama won’t call it Radical Islamic Terrorism” you kinda understand that a wide swath of Americans can’t bring themselves to call homegrown white mass-killers, and wannabes, terrorists.
‘Cause then the magic hand of whooomp that they pretend will somehow happen to ISIS and other foes once we get the aloof, reticent (and other-ly!) Commander in Chief out of the WH would also somehow be unleashed on white guys.
trnc
New name survey for Danny-boy – Shitmiller or Stiffler?
Helen
Oh; Lawrence O likening Londoners during the IRA scares in the 70s with NYers. Londoners and NYers just Keep Calm and Carry On.
SiubhanDuinne
“Meth” is just “Mess” with a lisp.
Karmus
Captain Bleeding Obvious here, but if we (the government) are going to go after “terrorists” in a special way, then we (the government) need to treat all terrorists the same, including white ones.
Like I said, obvious :-/
Miss Bianca
Well, you all have fun with the bad craziness…I’m going to make a push to finish “Lexx” so I can pick up the shattered pieces of my life and move on from super weird sci-fi for a while…
Smiling Mortician
Thank you, Adam. I’ll take my reliable reporting where I can get it.
schrodinger's cat
@Helen: Also too Mumbaikars, after numerous bomb attacks since the 90s. They keep calm and go on. Here is how they celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the November attacks in 2008.
LAO
@Helen: frankly, UN week is way more irritating. I know, I’m a bad person, but damn the city was a parking lot today.
Omnes Omnibus
@Helen: @schrodinger’s cat: People in Paris were out in bars and restaurants throughout the city the night after the Bataclan shootings.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Big city pplz are nonchalant. When I called my peepz in Mumbai after the November attacks the very next day when the situation was still active, they had no time to talk to me because they were getting ready to attend a wedding reception!
humboldtblue
Today in being a black man in Tulsa who happens to have his vehicle break down means you get gunned down in the street by the same motherfucking men who look like the two assholes posted above, except she’s their fucking sister. The difference is that when you murder an innocent and unarmed black man you can just walk away with the simple explanation that he looks like a really scary dude and you’ll get away with it because you’re a cop.
Helen
@LAO: With you on that. There is NO decent travel in midtown east during this shit. I worked on 41st and 3rd for years. A fucking nightmare.
amk
Didn’t the media mantra in 80’s and 90’s used to be don’t give free publicity to terrorists?
debbie
@Karmus:
Profiling White guys?
Karmus
@debbie: Is that what I’m doing? And, um, FWIW, I didn’t specify guys >.>
debbie
@Helen:
The worst. I used to walk up Third from 53rd to 83rd to get home from work. Whether it was the UN or a president was in town, the cops would block off 57th for an hour or more.
Adam L Silverman
@amk: Up to a point. The British government had an official policy on it, that also covered when governmental or military officials/personnel were taken hostage or kidnapped. In the US less so because of the 1st Amendment.
Redshift
@schrodinger’s cat: More generally, people who are actually under threat (however small) from terrorism are mostly determined not to give them the satisfaction (and somewhat aware of how small the risk is.) It’s mostly the people out in “the heartland” who are pissing themselves with fear and demanding that someone else’s kids go kill furriners somewhere.
I saw a great exchange on Twitter a couple of nights ago. Some wingnut with “patriot” in his handle tweeted “This is it. We’re under attack!” This drew a reply from a New Yorker: “No you’re not. You’re in San Diego, and here in NYC we’re fine.”
Brachiator
@Helen:
This is a bit of a lie. Let’s expand the picture to include Belfast. Let’s expand the picture to include the overreaction and abuse of civil rights in some of the more notorious IRA prosecutions. Let’s expand the picture to include the racist and exclusionary overtones of the BREXIT vote.
It is very hard to avoid tragic overreaction in the face of attacks like these. Here at home, we have Citizen Trump upping the ante on an appeal to fascism by demanding that the captured suspect be treated as an enemy combatant and stripped of his civil rights even though he is an American citizen. I think at least one Republican member of Congress agrees with this.
J R in WV
@trnc: ShiftlessMiller. That’s why they get that illness they all have… shiftless.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator:
Evidence that Londoners supported those things?
amk
@Brachiator: Londoners voted against brexit overwhelmingly.
bs
@humboldtblue: Remember in “A Clockwork Orange” when Alex has a reunion with his droogs, Dim and Georgie? They had found their perfect job, as police. They got to keep assaulting and murdering people, with the sanction of the state. And the #bluelivesmatter crowd always claim, “But most cops are good; it’s just a few bad apples.” But these “good cops” NEVER flush their turds. Instead they circle the wagons and defend any and every cop, which makes them….bad cops.
bs
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: Exactly, the people freaking out about Islam, about terrorism, which in their minds/opinions is only something done by Muslims, mostly live nowhere near where terrorists have and/or will target. No one wants to blow something up in a rural area – no matter how pretty the area or pleasant it is to live there. Why? Because its a poor choice as a target. You’re not going to get a high casualty count. You’re not going to get wall to wall coverage immediately. And because anyone not from the area is going to be easily recognizable and stand out like a sore thumb. When I was at UF I was the university’s terrorism specialty. I was on TV and radio, including public radio and PBS, all over north and central Florida for months (a clip of my terrorism seminar actually wound up on CNN from what one of my students told me – her mom called her when she saw her sitting in the second row…). I cannot tell you how many times I got asked about whether UF’s football stadium, The Swamp, was a target during college football Saturday. My answer was always no. And I always gave several reasons: 1) while the Gators may be a big deal in the SEC, if I was going to attack a college football game it would be Notre Dame. They’re on national TV every week they play no matter how crappy they are in any given year and 2) there’s only one good way into and out of Gainesville – I75 and that’s not when the city is crawling with everybody and their families that have pored in for a Gator game (the RVs start filling up the universities parking lots the Thursdays before the game), you can’t fly in and out easily, and the only other route in by car is through the three worst speed traps in the world – Waldo, Lawtey, and Stark, where you get pulled over for driving while driving. So no offense to Gator Nation, but we just don’t make sense as a target. Though, of course, the following season there was a terrible public brawl and riot at the Florida/Georgia game in Jacksonville. One of my students was badly beaten. Not terrorism, but mass violence nonetheless.
Helen
@Brachiator: Oh Hai. Are you new here? My mother was born in Belfast. My Grandparents got blown the fuck out of their house on Conway St. in 1969. And then they moved to Divis Towers of all places. Please do not lecture me about the Troubles. I know from where I speak.
hovercraft
@LAO:
About 10 years ago I made a terrible error, I forgot it was the General Assembly. I drove into the City because I knew I would be working late. I came out of the Lincoln Tunnel (40th and 9th Ave) at about 8.30 am and didn’t pull into the parking garage on 57th between 1st and 2nd till 11.45 am. It was one of the worst days of my life, I think I smoked an entire pack of cigarettes just in the city.
I hate General Assembly week.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
I will leave it to you to expand the picture beyond the stereotype of plucky Londoners thinking good thoughts and carrying on.
? Martin
That’s not helpful Adam. I don’t know how to demand that we deport/profile people that look like that. Can’t we focus on problems that I can invent solutions to that only impinge on the rights of others?
Emma
@Brachiator: I agree with you and yet disagree. What the British government did in Ireland may have triggered the bombings but the British public was not cowed into changing their lives. And none of it had anything to do with the BREXIT.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Never meaning no harm, beats all you ever saw been in trouble with the law since the day they were born.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU6mPYFtF8E
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Come on. The comment was about Londoners and New Yorkers. Not Brits and Americans. If you want to say the Londoners were responsible for Brexit, etc. I suggest that you offer some support for the assertion.
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman: In the arguments I got into about this years ago, the sheer enormity of 9/11 tended to give me no leg to stand on; they could just say “come on, the things white Christian lunatics do in the US is negligible compared to what Muslims just did to us.” It dwarfed even Oklahoma City.
But now? They’re going into 9/11 level war freakout over attacks in which the total injuries were comparable to a bad bus accident. The attacks were scary and terrible, and could have been much worse (like the Boston Marathon bombing). But the response makes no sense.
Felonius Monk
These guys are small potatoes compared to this idiot from our neck of the woods
.
Brachiator
@Helen:
Conversation, not a lecture.
We could talk about the Brazilian murdered by the London Metropolitan Police after the 7/7 attacks in 2005 because they mistook him for a fleeing terrorist.
Chris
@amk:
I’ve heard that it also used to be the policy of the government agencies involved in this to downplay the political content of this kind of thing as much as possible and treat the perps as common criminals. Reason being that 1) you don’t want to do anything that might feed into the narrative glamorizing them as idealistic revolutionaries and 2) it’s important, for the purpose of democratic legitimacy, that everyone see and understand that the reason they’re being arrested and punished isn’t that they’re racists or fundamentalists or communists or separatists but that they’re killers.
Don’t know if it’s true, as my direct experience observing this stuff comes from the post-9/11 world where any such notions have gone out the window.
LAO
@hovercraft: I would have killed myself. Luckily, my commute is a 20 block walk unless I have a court appearance. And I follow a strick rule no buses or cabs during UN week. If I can’t take a subway or walk, I’m not going.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Only Trump thinks that Londoners, and the Scots, supported BREXIT.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: That’s only because the airborne vehicular borne IEDS (AVBIEDs) that flew into the towers did far more damage than anyone, including bin Laden, expected.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Then why did you bring it up?
Macbethchick
@Adam L Silverman: That’s was a delicious read! I think I’m in love!
Chris
@Redshift:
That and people who actually live under the threat of terrorism and have experienced terrorism in their cities can also be somewhat more realistic in measuring the actual threat posed by terrorist attacks as compared to everything else in their lives (i.e. “ordinary” crime, or accidents).
Rural heartlanders winding themselves up with “24” reruns and Fox News coverage, not so much.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: I think the fact that the 9/11 attacks dwarf others is pure dumb chance. Just as the OK City bombing did more damage and took more lives than any other terror attack in living memory was pure dumb chance, up until the 9/11 attacks.
Whenever that wingnut argument comes up,I am reminded,and I remind others, that some sovereign citizens were arrested near Sacramento some years ago as they were nearing completion of a plot to blow up a large propane tank farm in a Sacto suburb. Who knows what that would have done if they had not been caught in time.
Adam L Silverman
@Macbethchick: Thanks.
Lyrebird
@Matt McIrvin: Agreed, with an edit…
In the same weekend, a bus crash somewhere in the Carolinas (?) left a few HS football players dead, I believe… Sorry not to have a link. I’m just echoing your point.
Emma
@Brachiator: So you appointed yourself Monsieur Contrary today? People are talking about ordinary Londoners at the time of the Troubles. Not the British government. Not the London police. The comparison is limited in both time and location.
Helen
@Brachiator:
So, on purpose I put a few “trigger” phrases in there. “Conway St.” and more importantly “Divis Towers.” Do you know, without Googeling, what those phrases mean? And how important they are?
burnspbesq
@humboldtblue:
Hold the phone. There are active Federal and state investigations, and a lot of video. It is far from a certainty that the cop is going to walk.
Chris
@jl:
The corollary to this is that from time to time, terrorist attacks are going to get through, no matter how good your security is. Like gang violence or drive-by shootings, terrorism can be reduced but not eliminated. It would be nice to see this acknowledged a little more in the general public when discussing these matters.
Lyrebird
@humboldtblue: Such a rotten shame. (There’s more on Raw Story for those who want to see dashcam stills. Thanks for finding a link that shows Mr. Crutcher in life!) I’m not sure this particular hasty shooter will get away with it, and I am so glad that the deceased’s twin sister has lawyered up. Of course, even if some justice can be done there in Tulsa, I’m quite sure she’d rather still have her brother than to have that as his legacy.
hovercraft
@efgoldman:
Interesting stat I saw today:
Personally Fear Attack Do Not Fear Attack
Trump supporters 68 % 32 %
Clinton supporters 28 % 72 %
What the hell is wrong with these people, they live in the ‘heartland’, no one’s coming out to east bumfuck nowhere to kill you. They’re going to kill all of us godless liberals in the cities. So chill out.
Jeffro
Twitter blown’ up over Trump Jr’s dumbass “Skittles” comment…as well it should…
LAO
@Chris: Years ago, I got called for jury duty in a terrorism trial in the SDNY. Since they were empaneling an anonymous jury, the first step of the process was to fill out a lengthy questionaire. One of the questions was, on a scale of 1-5, 1 being unlikely and 5 being highly likely, what did I think the chances of dying in a terrorist attack were. I answered 0 and thought, how fucking ridiculous that question was. Of course, I knew the case and 3 out of 5 of the defense attorneys, so I wasn’t going to be picked. But really, the likelihood of being killed in a terrorist attack is quite minuscule.
burnspbesq
@hovercraft:
Hindsight is always 20:20, and you probably figured this out while you were stuck in traffic, but drive to Hoboken and take the PATH.
Omnes Omnibus
OT: I seem to be be getting into a Twitter fight with a Neo-Nazi called Deplorable. Calling a coward seems to upset him.
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
Offshoots of the Dunning-Kruger effect: since they are so smart, they think the terrorists are almost as smart, and will go for less obvious targets (like a water tower in East Bumfuckistan, Heartland, USA) which just so happen to be right. next. to. them. Also ties in to paranoid mindset prevalent in US since last ice age…
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: aren’t all neo-nazi’s on Twitter now named deplorable? lovely people.
hovercraft
@Omnes Omnibus: @amk:
They had an America like vote for Brexit, with the cosmopolitan Londoners talking secession. Their map looked like ours will, with the big cities and university towns voting for stay, and the rural and industrial voting for leave.
Omnes Omnibus
@LAO: Come on. Neither you nor I will ever serve on a jury. Hell, I’d strike us.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: There’s a neuro-psych/bio-psych argument that it has to do with the size of the amygdala. Those with larger amygdalas (larger fear centers) gravitate towards conservative/traditional/authoritarian belief systems as they provide a promise of mitigating to eliminating things that are/could be scary. Those with smaller amygdalas don’t. So far the research sounds very interesting, but the sample sizes have been very, very limited.
Also, I’m pretty sure the people that do these studies are the people that have the pleasure centers of their brains light up when looking at scans of people’s brains showing different areas lighting up in response to different stimuli. So all of it may just be a strange form of self medicating by researchers.
rikyrah
Why show the mentally unbalanced lone wolfs of the right complexion?
Silly man (/snark)
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: I kind of want to, a short one, just to see how the sausage gets made.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
GIFs and clips from the original version of “The Producers” are made for those kinds of people, IMO.
Anoniminous
@hovercraft:
I think it is because deep in their “common clay of the West” hearts they know nobody gives two double damns about them or their insignificant silly little lives and their little doggy too. (Also.) Scaring themselves into thinking Islamic Terrorists are going to target their little town of West Cowshit simultaneously allows them to think somebody knows about them and cares enough to want to kill them.
Helen
@Omnes Omnibus: The second I say I have Masters degree I am struck. Every single time.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ran out of time in my previous reply, but here’s a good one.
hovercraft
@burnspbesq:
By the time I realized, I was already in the Helix. I consoled myself with a great deal of alcohol when I got home. Which was another miscalculation, since I had to drive home, I couldn’t drink till I got home. Like I said one of my worst days ever.
Omnes Omnibus
@hovercraft: Tell that to Brachiator.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
That second paragraph sounds like the kind of thing you contemplate when you’re high. When every thought you have seems so deep and profound. Wow dude.
Anoniminous
@Adam L Silverman:
The arrow of causality probably goes the other way. They keep scaring themselves, stimulating the 4F neuronal circuitry, and neural plasticity causes the amygdala to growth to handle the extra signals.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Did you know that you are one of the top 20 commenters on Balloon Juice, according M4’s research?
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: I talk a lot.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I made the list too!
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Here is the link
Chris
@Anoniminous:
Yes. I suspect there’s some part of them that’s offended as hell that when people want to make a symbolic strike against America, they hit New York and Washington, not Mayberry.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Its from a demotivator I once saw. Had a picture of a brain with an image lit up and the caption was along the lines of: “research shows that the pleasure centers of the brain light up for researchers that enjoy looking at imaging of people’s brains that are lit up” or something like that.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: I saw it in an earlier thread. I am apparently less angry than I thought I was .
Adam L Silverman
@Anoniminous: Could be. That’s my problem with most of the bio-psychology stuff, especially of crime. Trying to figure out the direction of causality. For instance, we know that there is a difference in the brains of serial killers than those of non-serial killers. Here’s the problem, we don’t check until we’ve caught a serial killer. So is the difference part of what drives one to become a serial killer or does being a serial killer have an effect on the structure of the brain? Same thing with serial killers and psychopathy. All serial killers test high for psychopathy. Of course we don’t test for psychopathy unless we have a reason. So is there something about psychopathy that contributes to one becoming a serial killer or is their something about being a serial killer that contributes to one becoming a psychopath.
hovercraft
Poppy Bush is going to vote for Hillary.
Not endorsing , but still. Damn.
pseudonymous in nc
FWIW, I once ended up in an exclusion zone near an IRA incendiary bomb that fizzled but didn’t detonate. This was during the campaign of 1993. We were stuck in a tight inner cordon, then there was an outer cordon. We spent the rest of the day in the one pub within that cordon.
Arsehole Pressure Cooker Boy was more Four Lions than anything else. Could have been worse, of course, but twentysomething male arseholes do shitty violent arsehole things in America every day, and there’s a support network that helps, in terms of providing the raw materials.
(I noticed pedantic gun enthusiasts whining that tannerite can’t be detonated with a fuse, because they don’t want their happy fun shoot-shit-blow-shit-up powder — see YouTube — to become scarce. I’m sure they’ll have been stocking up on that shit over the past few days.)
Felonius Monk
@hovercraft:
By tomorrow morning this will be dismissed by both the media and the repukes as the ranting of a senile old man.
J R in WV
@LAO:
My two murder juries were pretty interesting and good decisions. We acquitted both defendents, one for self-defense, one we believed they couldn’t show it wasn’t an accident, and the only verdict allowed was either first degree intentional murder or not guilty. The deceased had holster bits all over him, the gun was in an Uncle Mike’s shoulder holster when it discharged.
Set to a hair-trigger, like ounces. A Thompson Contender 7 mm magnum hunting pistol with a hair trigger. We all got to try the trigger pull in the jury room. There was ammo too, I was tempted to open a window and try it out at a distance, but thought better of it. Would have been my last jury call, for sure. I argued til nearly midnight on my birthday for that acquittal. At least there was a cake waiting when I got home. Greasy left over burgers for dinner, in the jury room.
My civil case was depressing, the state road offered people something like $300K in damages, then reneged, after they had spent some of that money they were no longer going to receive.
In the trial, we were never allowed to know that the settlement offer was for that much money. We had to fight to get them something like $150 or $175K from a juror who acted like that money was coming out of her kitchen budget. When I learned about the offer that wasn’t followed through on, I was really pissed at the judge, who made that call. They won, but were still bankrupt.
Bad decision all the way around.
hovercraft
@Felonius Monk:
That or it will be because he’s a bitter old man who resents Trump trashing two of his sons.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: As a juror, your job is to determine the facts based on admissible evidence. That is all. You are aren’t being asked to decide what is fair.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: You and I need to work on the anger thing. We are both nicer than we thought – If one ignores context and shit.
ETA: You demented monkey person. Does that help?
NotoriousJRT
@LAO:
I don’t believe you will come away uplifted (based on my two anecdotal experiences).
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Shit.
Anoniminous
@Adam L Silverman:
There’s a very good NOVA episode “Mind of a Rampage Killer” that gives a Quick and Dirty Answer.
Original Lee
@Omnes Omnibus: Original Mom has never sat on a jury, because the only ones she ever gets summoned for are the local drunk driver trials, and her uncle was killed by a drunk driver when she was 16. These cases are so common that the Clerk of the Court schedules them all in a block every month and has a checkbox on the jury summons form for “close family member killed by a drunk driver” so that people like my mom don’t have to come in and be struck immediately. I don’t know why she never gets summoned for anything else, though.
Eric U.
for some reason, our county has decided to make jury selection day as unpleasant as possible for potential jurors. Why do all the plea bargain negotiations take place while the potential jurors sit in an overcrowded, overly hot room? Maybe they could do that the day before and pretend there are jurors being inconvenienced? Last time I was there, I’m pretty sure I would have had a hard time being fair in any of the trials. I was really disappointed with how stupid the trials were. Only one defendant had a case at all, and he was an obvious scumbag up on trespassing charges so I figure his odds weren’t too good.
JR in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
And Omnes:
You two are the nuts! And I mean that in the good way, nuts are great. No, not wing nuts!
I’m probably the 234th most common commenter, but my posts are extra long and full of wisdom!
JR in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, but after serving when I learn facts not allowed into the trial, I’m allowed to have an opinion about that, and it’s impact on the jury’s deliberations.
Mrs J served on a jury about a car wreck. The plaintiff was hurt due to no fault of her own, and the insurance company had already paid all her medical expenses. She was seeking damages for scars on her legs that “would never allow her to wear a mini-skirt again!”
Wife reports that plaintiff was also vastly over-weight, which wasn’t part of the evidence. Plaintiff slowly lifted her skirt from the witness stand, to show the jury the very real scars. The jury awarded her $28,000 (IIRC)!
The next time Mrs J was to the court house, she learned that plaintiff was offered $50K before the trial started by the insurance company, and turned it down. I share this because it is interesting and reveals human nature.
Mrs J found it interesting, as rumor holds that juries in rural WV routinely award very high payments to plaintiffs. Our experience in our rural county shows the very opposite to be true. Not at all what the tort reformers would want to be true.
JR in WV
Also, Omnes, I didn’t use the word “fair” in my comment about the case. Further, when deliberating about a cash award to someone a jury has already determined is due something, fairness, as part of trying to make the plaintiffs whole, seems to be the largest part of the jury’s responsibility when deciding on the actual number of dollars.
In this case, the highways department had already taken their property and we were attempting to award them the proper amount of money. If the state has already offered them a specific sum, that seems extremely relevant and to the point.
They were able to discuss what they had spent, which wound up sounding irresponsible, not knowing they were operating on the assumption that the government was going to pay them far more than they spent on the new farm, after their existing farm was ruined.
Lots going on there. It was harder to reach what I thought was a proper verdict than in the two murder cases, which would have been quickly decided but for a single juror who had decided before the case started not to acquit defendants, ever. Now there’s a good juror.
11 people, tried and true, and 1 bigot, trying to ignore 11 other people telling him what is reasonable and what isn’t reasonable. Til midnight, on my birthday. Which I never mentioned to not influence anyone.
No offence, OO. Really!
Steeplejack
@efgoldman, @Omnes Omnibus:
Fuck you both. Fuck you up your stupid asses.
Prescott Cactus
@JR in WV:
and humility !
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus:
Easy prediction to make, considering there won’t be any juries after January.
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman:
Part of the reason they can do that is that for every summons you get one free postponement, no questions asked. If the date really doesn’t work for you for any reason, you can reschedule and you apparently have some control over the date. If your postponement is used up or you don’t exercise it, hardship excuses have to be pretty extreme.
But though I’ve been summoned five times and had to go in four times, I’ve never actually been on a jury. The last time a couple of weeks ago was the first time I got as far as being called up for questioning, and whatever I said, it caused one of the lawyers to nix me real fast. It was a sordid and unpleasant case that promised to go on for over a week, but I later found out the defendant pleaded guilty after just a couple of days, so I guess it wouldn’t have been that bad.
Matt McIrvin
@Eric U.:
What they always tell you is that the presence of the jurors helps them along. I’m not sure I really appreciate that, though; it’s a messed-up system when it’s really not possible to give the vast majority of defendants an actual trial, so they have to rely on pressuring a plea deal out of almost everyone.
The last time I went in, they kept us waiting almost all day, but the judge said it had nothing to do with that particular trial; there was only one criminal judge at the courthouse that day and she spent the morning issuing emergency injunctions and such in unrelated cases.
daveNYC
@Chris: The fun bit is that there are piles of tasty soft targets around the country. Texas fertilizer plants, high voltage transmission lines, various pipelines, 20 screen megaplexes, various refineries and chemical plants. Hell, even blowing a tailings dam or manure pond woudl massive mess things up in the area. So yeah, technically there’s lots of reasons that people in BFE should be concerned about terrorist attacks.
We’re just lucky that the various home grown terrorist types have zero imagination when it comes to what they want to do.
Matt McIrvin
@daveNYC: Yes, but there are also just not that many willing terrorists. I mean, James Holmes strolled into a movie theater, shot the place up and managed way more death and injury than this bomber guy, but most people understand that there are a huge number of movie theaters and really not that many movie-theater shooters, so they kept on going to movies.
JAFD
@daveNYC: Don’ tell anyone I told you this, but….
If I were trying to do serious damage to the US economy, without having to kill or hurt anyone, just leave a big mudpuddle, the most critical / vulnerable piece of infrastructure would be the Los Angeles aqueducts.