StrangeSox

Okay? But if you follow the argument "they could come back in the future and kill me" to its conclusion, that means that someone who commits armed robbery should be permanently removed from society (LWP) or put to death. What if the guy in the home wasn't armed at the time and the robbers got away? Would he be justified in hunting them down and shooting them so they couldn't come back to "finish the job?" If not, where can you draw the line?

B&E and armed robbery doesn't (and shouldn't) carry a LWP or death sentence. You're no less safe tomorrow than you were yesterday.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 21, 2015 -> 02:14 PM) Nope, I absolutely wouldn't exit my home to get him, but while he's in my house, he's fair game...just as I was minutes before he realized I was 1) home and 2) had a gun, too. Ok, but in this case, the guy did chase them out of the house and into the yard and continued firing at them as they fled. The man he shot was two houses away. Still in the house? I'm going to be less forgiving than you guys depending on what, exactly, the actions were (think of this case and this case), but once they've fled and are still running away from your property? It's no longer self defense.

Following that logic to its conclusion, it'd be okay to hunt him down.

Seriously though how far is too far

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 05:10 PM) Two houses isn't that far. That's seconds of time after leaving the house. How far would it be okay to chase? If you give two yards, you'll want a mile.

A justice system based on how much we like the victim doesn't seem like a great system. How big of a scum bag the guy was doesn't change whether a crime was committed.

The guy was two houses away when he was killed. That doesn't sound like self defense to me.

If you're going to chase someone into your yard and shoot them in the head while they're fleeing, going to jail (or hitting an innocent bystander) is a risk you have to take.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 04:50 PM) But how can you say that if he had not given chase they would have hung out in the front yard or tried to come back? Again, that's the problem looking at these situations totally removed. We can't possibly know how he was feeling/thinking, and it's pretty s***ty to place on him the expectation of perfect judgment in such a situation. And not even perfect judgment - the potential life or death decision of letting the guys leave and then hoping they don't come back. Let's ignore the law and talk principles - do you really think this guy should go to jail for decades for killing this guy? If they try to come back, he is still armed. If the facts are that he chased them out of the house, into the yard and continued to fire as they were fleeing away from his house, yes, he should be imprisoned for killing this guy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 04:45 PM) But that's not a literal term. Are you saying if you take a step of one inch towards the person you're shooting you'd be in violation of the SYG law, because you're not literally standing on the same ground you were when you felt threatened? There's a grey area there, which is why this is an interesting case. To me just outside of your home and while still on your property - just after someone pointed a gun at you and could easily turn around and shoot you - is still SYG and not retreating. No, to me it's more about actually starting to give chase and following them. "Stand your ground" means you don't need to try to remove yourself from the situation before using deadly force, but it also doesn't mean you get to prolong the situation by chasing them after they're fleeing. Those guys can't easily turn around and shoot you if you're not following them out the door.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 04:41 PM) I'd understand an objection to him chasing them down the street and shooting then, but surely you're not suggesting he can't even fire as they're still inside his house, right? I don't know what the law actually is, but I don't *think* it'd allow you to chase them through the house shooting at them as they try to flee, and I don't think you should be legally allowed to, either. Once they're out of the house? Absolutely not. They're gone. They're leaving. edit: the Fox story isn't clear on whether he actually chased them out of the house and into the yard or not.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 04:32 PM) Yeah but they have guns and they already pointed them at you. What's to stop them from running way for a minute and then coming back? It's not like this guy waited 20 minutes or even shot at them 100 yards down the road. It reads like they run, he went after them, still on his property, and shot as they were running. This is a perfect example of heat of the moment decisions of this guy v. what we all think he should have done in hindsight. How can we really judge him when he's probably scared s***less, running on adrenaline after getting a gun pointed at him by two guys that invaded his home? Throw in this guys loser life criminal history and it's not like he killed a nun. When you commit an armed robbery, being shot before/during/shortly after the attempt should be an appreciated risk. That's where it's no longer "stand your ground" or self defense. He gave chase, including chasing them out of the house.

It's not retreating if they're the ones running away.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 04:11 PM) Assuming that by "they run out of the house" you meant they run out of the home and continue to run off/away from the property (as opposed to run outside the home, but stay on the property and continue to engage the homeowner), I convict. They were running away. The threat was over.

It's spread from his liver cancer that was announced last week, so I don't think the long-term prognosis is very good either way. Weeks/months.

That's the weird part of including Libya. What's the other option, stand behind a dictator we've had terrible relations with for decades during an internal uprising? Who exactly was Obama supposed to take a hardline stance against if not that guy?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 12:06 PM) No, but they rely on the world for their food. That'd hurt after a while. And their people are already dying and living horrible lives. But yes, that's why assassination would have been a better solution. The people would be the ones suffering from even-tighter sanctions, not the leadership. Assassination means that Seoul and probably a few millions South Koreans are gone in short order.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 11:43 AM) Not talking isn't exactly a hard line. I totally agree though, Bush didn't do enough. I would have enacted crippling sanctions and ok'd some assassination attempts. 1) The DPRK is already subject to strong international sanctions. 2) Yes, as we've seen, as soon as Kim Jong Il was out of power, the DPRK stopped its aggressive stance and normalized relations with the world. Also, too, they removed the hundreds of missiles pointed at Seoul that definitely wouldn't have been launched if their god-like leader was assassinated.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 11:39 AM) And those numbers have been roundly criticized. http://cis.org/ICE-Illegal-Immigrant-Deportations But even if true, you can’t deny the influx of immigrants that have come into the country recently and his pretty lax attitude towards illegal immigration in his 2nd term. The point here is that even with that lax attitude, immigration supporters are still b****ing about the problem. The whole premise of the article is if you give an inch, they want a mile. That’s exactly what’s happening with immigration. X is never enough. Immigration is still a huge problem regardless of what side of the issue you're on. Why should immigration activists (and anti-immigration activists) stop working for their cause just because Obama has made a few executive policies? The leader of a country whose government was essentially founded on hatred of the west in general and the US in particular claimed victory over the hated enemy. Why should we take that at face value as a evenhanded assessment of the agreement and not the political speech that it is? And nobody pretended or thought that this agreement would lead to immediate normalization of relations with Iran. When we signed the nuclear test ban treaties with the USSR, nobody pretended that it meant the US and the USSR were suddenly good friends. It's part of his whole narrative and the problem with it. He's deliberately misstating historical events and leaving out glaring omissions of others. The US is on a path to normalizing relations with Cuba, something the rest of the world did long ago. What did the US achieve from its decades of belligerence? How did that benefit the US? How would "tough new sanctions" from Rubio benefit the US? He didn't? I seem to remember a shooting war between Georgia and South Ossetia while Bush was still President. And you're still stuck with post hoc ergo propter hoc. Using this definition, pretty much any action can be classified as "appeasing" someone. Seems uselessly broad. The US also explicitly did not lead that coalition. ISIS would probably not have taken over as much territory, but it's not like the US had a perfect track record of putting down insurgencies, sectarian violence and civil wars in Iraq anyway. And what's VDH's solution, keep a large enough force to control Iraq indefinitely? I know you love any slippery-slope argument you can get your hands on so it's not surprising that you liked this, but really, most of his claims are either ahistorical or logically incoherent.

The AP's controversial and badly flawed Iran inspections story, explained

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 11:20 AM) You guys remember when Clinton was appeasing North Korea too much and then Bush came in and we broke off communications to make it so much tougher on them and then they had an atomic bomb. They really respected the harder line. Yeah, well, look what happened when we put Iran on the "axis of evil" list and stopped negotiating with them! Sure, they went from something like 700 centrifuges to over 6,000, but that hardline policy got results!

basically there wasn't a single thing in there that wasn't bulls*** and there were some pretty glaring omissions on top of that.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 20, 2015 -> 09:12 AM) So you basically didn't read it. He brings up other examples (immigration and immigration supporters), Castro and his brother, Putin, Libya, etc. His mention of Nazi Germany was pretty short. Give me an example of when Obama "played nice" and the situation has dramatically changed for the better in terms of US interests. Are things worse with Cuba? Obama "played nice" with Libya? And most of it is just nonsense, anyway. "It was often said" means "here's a chance to bash liberals with no evidence, wee!" On immigration: Deportations have increased under Obama. on Iran: Uh, yes? That's what they've been doing for decades even with American threats of military force. I can't imagine why VDH thinks that Congress blocking the agreement would suddenly make Iran cower with fear. On Iran, 1980: President-elect Reagan negotiated a deal with Iran that released several billion dollars in frozen assets (something like $25B in today's dollars) in exchange for the hostages. President Reagan also illegally dealt weapons to Iran in order to illegally funnel money to right-wing juntas in South America a couple of years later. On Cuba: (man, VDH sure loves to hear himself talk) It would seem that VDH would prefer a never-ending and ineffective embargo of Cuba over normalized relations. Why continuing the failed policies of the last 55 years would be better going forward is left unexplained. Possibly? Or are we to take VDH's international mind-reading abilities as a given? On Russia: Putin didn't react to 2009 diplomatic overtures from the Obama administration by invading anyone. He reacted to the Russian-friendly government in Ukraine getting thrown out about 6 years later. VDH seems to have a very weird sense of causality. Would mean words from the US President have prevented his actions? At least Obama didn't look into his eyes and see that he had a good soul. Nobody would respect a world leader who said something like that. How does this even fit in with his "appeasement" narrative above? He really seems to have lost his train of thought. Because of the Syrian civil war (oddly unmentioned) and an inept and dysfunctional Iraqi government that used the political space provided by "the surge" in order to continue sectarian purges rather than unify and rebuild the country. And, again, VDH seems to be falling for post hoc ergo propter hoc.

There doesn't appear to be any editor's notes indicating that the story has been changed, either. Quality work.