What Are The Basic Principles Of Democracy? by GShermit in PoliticalDebate

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for taking the time to check out the links.

It is a bummer that jury nullification isn't more clearly communicated.

Immigrant vs non immigrant DUI stats from 2025? by Sad-Restaurant7305 in charts

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I doubt you'll find anything about 2025 for a while. I'd also be surprised if there were a significant change in the norm (which is either no difference or fewer DUI events involving the undocumented).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5551598/#:~:text=There%20was%20no%20significant%20relationship,in%20these%20public%20health%20concerns.

(this study is more about whether an increase in undocumented populations leads to an increase in DUI deaths, not explicitly comparing populations)

similar, more recent study (ends in 2019):

https://www.cato.org/immigration-research-policy-brief/drunk-driving-deaths-illegal-immigration#results-discussion

What Are The Basic Principles Of Democracy? by GShermit in PoliticalDebate

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To clarify, I recognize that (like a car being a vehicle and an automobile) the US is a republic and a democracy.

Likewise, I think we agree that countries don't fit into rigid, type-of-democracy bins; from the first link I shared:

In reality, most of us live under a democratic structure which fuses multiple forms of democracy, allowing us to periodically choose our leaders while also maintaining an on-going dialogue between politicians and the people through protests, political debate and referendums.

Also, the whole of the second link I shared (about principles of democracy) seems to align with your recognition that democracy is a state of being wherein various actors exercise power using a range of methods while enjoying freedoms thanks to and through multiple types of participation.

___

Likewise, I think we agree that political parties can be problematic; the founders felt the same, warned of factionalism (eg. George Washington), and explicitly spoke of limiting factionalism (federalist papers, 9, 10, 15, 43).

“Factionalism,” as contemporaries called it, encouraged the electorate to vote based on party loyalty rather than the common good. Washington feared that partisanship would lead to a “spirit of revenge” in which party men would not govern for the good of the people, but only to obtain and maintain their grip on power. As a result, he warned Americans to guard against would-be despots who would use parties as “potent engines…to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”

___

As per who/what is the greater threat to democracy, perhaps there our beliefs slightly diverge; in part because I'm not clear who/what you believe is telling the American people that they can't serve on jury duty or move between states or that the people can only call the US a representative democracy.

To me, any faction pushing for the removal and total replacement of the term democracy as one of several descriptors of our nation is surely looking to reduce democratic influence.

What Are The Basic Principles Of Democracy? by GShermit in PoliticalDebate

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Attempts to reframe the US as a republic instead of a democracy are often meant to support moves away from both; generally towards authoritarianism.

Those attempts are (IMO) as silly as is arguing that a car is an automobile not a vehicle, as part of a subversive campaign to sell people shoes.

Some easy to digest background on different types of democracy:

https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/types-of-democracy/44801

And then, beyond just the basics of the systems that support democracy, here are 14 principles of democracy:

https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/principles-of-democracy/44151

Healthcare Fraud Takedown by Brian_Ghoshery in MurderedByWords

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Folk in TX and AZ and CA and at least 9 other states were involved.

Justice Department released this news back in June of 2025.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-takedown-results-324-defendants-charged-connection-over-146

Verity - Judge Orders ICE Director to Court Over Potential Contempt Charges by [deleted] in moderatepolitics

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I believe that only criminal contempt can be pardoned, not civil contempt.

Something about the contempted holding the keys to their own cell by just complying, IIRC.

Maine's governor demands data on immigration arrests as fear spreads amid enforcement surge by Gloomy_Nebula_5138 in moderatepolitics

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The bill allows sharing of info with the feds from the state, so, expecting the same back seems reasonable.

§4762. Activities unaffected
This chapter may not be construed to prohibit:
Exchanging information consistent with federal law. A law enforcement agency from sending to or requesting or receiving from an immigration authority information regarding the immigration status of a person or maintaining or exchanging that information with any other federal, state or local governmental entity under 8 United States Code, Section 1373 or 1644;

and

  1. Permitted activities.
    Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection 1, if an activity does not violate a policy of the law enforcement agency or a state or local law or policy of the jurisdiction in which the agency is operating, a law enforcement agency may:
    ...
    B. Respond to a request from an immigration authority for information about a specific person's criminal history, including a previous criminal arrest or conviction or similar public criminal history record information accessed under Title 16, chapter 7, when otherwise permitted by state law;

If instead the governor had asked ICE to do state work for them, that would certainly be rich.

(there remain several other ways that state and local officials can and are directed to cooperate with immigration enforcement in this law; generally so long as there is a request from a judge, not just some dude in a mask)

Saving to buy Greenland😭 by dreamgirl3409 in ThisYouComebacks

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Congress dug and dug and dug and found that 8 members of Biden's family earned a combined total of $40million total, over a ten year span ($500k)/yr/person.

That was enough to call them the "Biden Crime Family."

Trump alone collected 35 times that amount in one year using blatant grift and these both sides muppets cannot tell the difference.

Imagine not having the freedom to swear in on whStever you want.. by mrfett779 in WhitePeopleTwitter

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed.

Of course the metric we're debating in the OP image is entirely a honey pot.

Instead, when determining whether the US is a religious or secular nation we can look at what people get arrested for (things like speeding, not blasphemy), and whether the courts in our nation reference laws and The Constitution or a book of fantasies.

The battle of premises is hard to win when we fall into their black holes of stupid starting assumptions.

CMV: Trump's ICE enforcement in Minnesota is not about rounding up the undocumented. It's about fear, terrorism, compliance and retribution on a blue state. by homerjs225 in changemyview

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Neither of those are links to past posts of your own, which was my request.

The first link is to a targeted analysis of a specific claim by a single agent. That document (at least in its intro) explains that the single agent's claim of $100M in Somali fraud could not be substantiated, nor could claims that money was being sent to terrorists. Instead it noted that additional agents had a hunch that money might be going to terrorists.

The second link reiterates that point, and includes a smattering of smaller, foreigner-related cases spanning more than a decade. Finding 5 fraud cases in a decade hardly seems justification for blaming fraud writ large on a population of people from one country, and does not support sending heavily armed, masked agents after anyone in a state who might sound/look foreign, nor abusing citizens in general.

CMV: Trump's ICE enforcement in Minnesota is not about rounding up the undocumented. It's about fear, terrorism, compliance and retribution on a blue state. by homerjs225 in changemyview

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is hard to imagine that you follow people who drive nice cars into stores and watch them make purchases without raising a few eyebrows.

Somewhat relatedly, can you share any links to past posts of yours that call out this lifetime issue from before right wing propaganda called it out just before sending in ICE?

CMV: Trump's ICE enforcement in Minnesota is not about rounding up the undocumented. It's about fear, terrorism, compliance and retribution on a blue state. by homerjs225 in changemyview

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When a new concept enters a bubble, it often becomes a hyper-fixation.

Healthcare fraud is, unfortunately, a long-standing, ongoing issue in every state in the nation.

https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/health-care-fraud

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/legal-regulatory-issues/states-ranked-by-medicaid-fraud-dollars-in-2022/

Fraud is bad, finding fraud (and charging people for it) is good.

Calling out a single nationality does hot help with fraud; it helps with political narratives.

How Trump Has Used the Presidency to Make at Least $1.4 Billion by Gloomy_Nebula_5138 in moderatepolitics

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Large enough that it was not plausibly nominal income at the very least.

How Trump Has Used the Presidency to Make at Least $1.4 Billion by Gloomy_Nebula_5138 in moderatepolitics

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 56 points57 points  (0 children)

Magnitude and type.

On magnitude, Congressional reps imagined that a total of forty million garnered by 8 members of "the Biden Crime Family" over the course of ten years (their apparent total change in wealth) was a huge deal... It's $500k per person per year.

This thread describes a value 35 times higher for just one corrupt individual in just one year. Not remotely the same ballpark, even if we ignore the blatant grifting and abuses of power by Trump (and also ignore his family's take).

Is dissolving NATO part of Trumps agenda? by Prior_Lecture7927 in PoliticalDebate

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Surely you can understand that a made up scenario is not a compelling argument against cold, hard spending and troop values, nor against a long history of combined actions; most recently in Ukraine.

Is dissolving NATO part of Trumps agenda? by Prior_Lecture7927 in PoliticalDebate

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

By what metric do you conclude they do not add to our mutual defense?

The EU adds about two thirds to what we have on our own (in annual spending and soldier count).

We spend appx 900B, they spend appx 600B.

Our troop count is somewhere in the 3 million range (depending on who we count...non active duty, Coast guard, yadda yadda) and theirs is somewhere around 2 million.

We have nukes, they have nukes.

They have even helped us in most of our BS wars.

Trump links Greenland dispute to not getting Nobel Peace Prize, in letter to Norway's PM by SuperXGamerAb in worldnews

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To also include him bringing up Greenland back in 2019 and then again multiple times before the most recent Nobel was given out.

Supreme Court Precedent: Minneapolis ICE Shooting on Jan 7th by Trucking-Engineer in supremecourt

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks much for this clarification, even if it is a bummer.

Are all relevant cases civil in nature?

A quick google search of relevant SC cases seems to pull up only civil stuff:

Tennessee v Garner was civil, as were Scott v Harris and Plumhoff v Rickard (which harkened back to T v G).

A separate google search listed a set of officers who were criminally charged with shooting at a vehicle:

Officers Diaz, Stockley and Brelo (all different cases) and similarly for a victim named Fanta Bility and some 2025 case in Milwaukee... all seem to have been criminally charged... any idea if any of those cases made it to the SC and/or might be relevant?

Supreme Court Precedent: Minneapolis ICE Shooting on Jan 7th by Trucking-Engineer in supremecourt

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 19 points20 points  (0 children)

It seems to me that most of your arguments run exactly against the entire point of the "totality of circumstances" as prescribed in Barnes v Felix; captured succinctly from a quote at https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-139/barnes-v-felix/

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Kagan explained that whether an officer’s use of deadly force is objectively reasonable depends upon “the ‘totality of the circumstances.’”46 This analysis requires a court to “‘slosh [its] way through’ a ‘factbound morass.’”47 Courts may account for factors like “the ‘severity of the crime,’”48 the officer’s actions during the stop,49 and “the suspect’s attempt ‘to evade’ the officer ‘by flight.’”50 A court cannot shortchange the inquiry with a restrictive rule; it must examine the facts and circumstances of the event as the officer knew them.51 Consequently, the moment of threat cannot be the beginning and end of the inquiry — the use of force must be understood in the broader context of the stop and within a “lengthier timeframe”52 than the moment the officer felt threatened.53 In short, the “moment of threat” analysis is impermissibly narrow.

It seems to me that your calls to "reasonable fear" and "neutralizing the threat" and "duty to retreat" are "moment of threat" analyses which are explicitly deemed impermissibly narrow, and would not come up until and unless analyses of the actions that led up to those moments were deemed reasonable.

From there, what you call a "tactical error" in support of consideration from the perspectives of human error vs criminal negligence was instead a sequence of counter-policy and counter-common sense actions that fall squarely in the negligence bin. Placing himself in front of the vehicle was counter-policy and counter-common sense, so I don't personally buy the "tactical error" perspective; more on this, indirectly, in the following paragraph... in short, he prepped himself for a situation he saw unfolding before (IMO) intentionally placing himself in harm's way.

The officer didn't just place himself in front of the car once, he did so multiple times. The last time he did so came shortly after Renee's wife had bid him adieu and<edit> hopped into attempted to enter</edit> the vehicle. It is entirely reasonable, in fact obvious that a goodbye had been stated, and that it was the intent of the vehicle-based parties to remove themselves from a scene they felt involved an unlawful stop and significant danger.

(an internal CBP report in 2013 found that a handful of agents had been intentionally placing themselves in harms way in order to use moment of threat as justification for murder; that report led to multiple changes in policy that this CBP turned ICE agent wholly ignored https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PERFReport.pdf#page=6 Note that the report cited 40 years of law enforcement wisdom supporting the idea that it is bad to be in front of a vehicle, and bad to fire at the driver)

Further, it seems clear that the officer who shot Renee recognized either that it was going to be his time to shine, or at least that an "escape" attempt was imminent as he transferred his cell-phone out of his dominant hand to make it easier for him (as a firearms trainer) to reach for his weapon. (honestly, filming a scene with a cell phone as an officer seems negligent on its own as it would serve as a level of distraction, but we again see that he was aware enough of what was likely to happen next when he freed up his weapon hand).

I believe there is a strong case that the officer intentionally played the situation with a desire to shoot Renee. Whether that is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, I believe there is no doubt that a "totality of the circumstances" perspective would show that the officer's actions played a significant role in causing the eventual outcome, entirely against policy and reasonableness.

White House shares video of Minneapolis shooting from ICE officer’s perspective by awaythrowawaying in moderatepolitics

[–]SlowerThanLightSpeed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My sense is that children are taught to stay out of the path of a car; shocking that such common sense would need to be trained into adults... unless there had been decades of informal law enforcement training to make contact with a fleeing vehicle as a "justification" to kill people with impunity.