Hack of the Day - Lawyers, Guns & Money

MLAlienated

Did Mankiw get one too many nominations for HotD?

c u n d gulag

Austerian POV:
We must inflict pain.
We must bleed these anemic patients!

Oh, if only we had more proof that using leeches on anemic patients was the best cure, this would be an easier sale!

Doctor’s who?
Beavis and Butthead?
Oh, sorry.
I can’t hear you – did you say, Hardheart & Jackoff?
Ooops! Reinhart & Rogoff. Ok, got it.
Really? It says that?

RUN WITH IT!
What do you mean it wasn’t peer-reviewed, so there’s no real proof?

WE DON’T NEED NO STEEEEEEEEENKIN’ PROOF!

Manta

I think you are confused: the aim of austerity is not to cure the recession.
It is to get rid of the welfare state: making the people poorer is an ~~added benefit~~ cost worth paying to go back to the good old days.
The recession is the opportunity that the ruling class seized to grab more power.
- c u n d gulag
  
  Oh, I’m well aware of that!
  
  But you can’t “sell” leeching to anemic patients and their families if you tell them that your goal in leeching is to kill that patient.
  
  No, you describe the overall benefits of leeching for everyone – and leave the anemia and dying out of your story.
joe from Lowell

We must bleed these anemic patients!

Perfect. Just perfect.
- c u n d gulag
  
  Thank you.
  
  As the story goes – blind pig… truffle…
  - efgoldman
    
    Hey, even a Yankee fan can get something right once in a while!

oldster

Separate topic. AP is now reporting this:

“Dzhokhar was interrogated in his hospital room Sunday and Monday over a period of 16 hours without being read his rights to remain silent and have an attorney present. He immediately stopped talking after a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office entered the room and gave him his Miranda warning, according to a U.S. law enforcement official and others briefed on the interrogation. ”

So, whoever leaked this (“U.S. law enforcement official”) wants to register their unhappiness at having to read the guy his rights. Yeah, it’s hell living in a country where people have rights.

But doesn’t this also undermine the claim that there was no need to read him his rights to begin with, on the grounds that anyone who has lived in the US for a few years has watched enough cop-shows to know about them anyhow?

If something like this report is right–and it may not be, given its source–then it looks like the mere act of reading him his rights had a considerable affect on his behavior. It may even have told him something he didn’t know!

Both sides will spin this how they wish, of course, but I think it’s worth noting.

Manta

Did they arrest the whistle-blower and put him in solitary confinement yet?
cpinva

that he wasn’t initially read his rights, via Miranda warning, is kind of irrelevant. the rights exist, whether he’s aware of them or not, so anything he told them can’t be admitted to evidence in his trial. he should have been read them, first thing, gotten legal counsel, etc., then interrogated. where it really becomes an issue, is if he named anyone else as a co-conspirator, who was then arrested. their attorney would be forced to argue the “fruit of the poisonous tree” issue.
- joe from Lowell
  
  anything he told them can’t be admitted to evidence in his trial.
  
  Yes, it can, under the (expanded version of the) public safety exception, assuming the courts buy it.
  
  if he named anyone else as a co-conspirator, who was then arrested. their attorney would be forced to argue the “fruit of the poisonous tree” issue.
  
  That was my initial worry, too, but it turns out that the poison tree doctrine doesn’t apply to Miranda rights. I have no idea why this is.
  - rea
    
    it turns out that the poison tree doctrine doesn’t apply to Miranda rights
    
    Yes it does, but . . .
    
    if he named anyone else as a co-conspirator, who was then arrested. their attorney would be forced to argue the “fruit of the poisonous tree” issue.
    
    . . . it doesn’t work that way. Suspect B has no standing to complain that evidence against him was obtained by violating Suspect A’s rights.
    - cpinva
      
      “Suspect B has no standing to complain that evidence against him was obtained by violating Suspect A’s rights.”
      
      true, he would be arguing that, because suspect A’s rights were violated, anything gleaned from that violation is inadmissable. not being an attorney, i don’t know how much of a stretch this is, but if suspect B is arrested, based on unlawfully obtained info, it does affect their rights. no doubt, there is case law on this.
      - cpinva
        
        you know, it would be really, really nice to have an edit/delete function here! as i read that again, never mind.
    - joe from Lowell
      
      it turns out that the poison tree doctrine doesn’t apply to Miranda rights
      
      Yes it does
      
      Yes, it does when it comes to evidence that would further incriminate the suspect himself. What I meant was, it doesn’t apply to the admissibility of statements that incriminate others. The third person lacks standing to argue because the third person’s rights have not been violated. You have no right to have others remain silent.
  - Anonymous
    
    Could it be that Poisoned Tree concerns violations of search and seizure, while Miranda is a protection of the right against self-incrimination?
    
    In other words, Miranda violations and search violations concern related but distinct rights, so the remedies of any violations can be distinct as well.
  - the original spencer
    
    it turns out that the poison tree doctrine doesn’t apply to Miranda rights. I have no idea why this is.
    
    As a non-lawyer, my first guess would be that perhaps this is because Miranda is seen as protecting suspects from self-incrimination, and that naming an accomplice would have nothing to do with directly incriminating one’s self?
    
    Again, I have no idea. I’m just a guy, trying to apply logic to the law here. If I’m way off, I will accept corrections gracefully.
    - the original spencer
      
      Or maybe I should have seen rea’s comment before posting my own. Since he *is* a lawyer an’ shit.

cpinva

robert samuelson has been an economics hack, since he first started writing his column. no surprise, given his utter lack of any kind of actual background in economics (other than the required 6 hours he took as an underclassmen, if that). the surprise is that the nyt’s, or any other decent publication, actually publishes the swill he offers. it would be mighty entertaining, to watch him debate krugman.

snarkout

Not-Paul Samuelson toils in the vineyards of the Washington Post, where a three-car pileup can’t happen on I-95 and a high school football team can’t win a game without it indicating that we need to slash entitlement spending and bomb the crap out of a country Fred Hiatt doesn’t like.
- JKTHs
  
  If your QB can’t throw, your offensive line can’t block, and your defense can’t stop anybody, the obvious solution is to cut entitlements.
  - firefall
    
    not to invade Iraq?
mds

it would be mighty entertaining, to watch him debate krugman.

It would be entertaining if Krugman were more of a down-and-dirty debater. But while he writes some hard-hitting articles and blog posts, his television appearances are usually much weaker, because he’s too polite, reasonable, and flabbergastable (even after all that’s happened). All Samuelson would have to do is keep hitting his same already-refuted horseshit points, the sympathetic moderator would leave him unchallenged, and Krugman would be relegated to sputtering ineffectually.

An academic debate at a non-hackhole establishment? Yeah, that would be awesome. And Samuelson would naturally never agree to it.
- snarkout
  
  Robert (Not-Paul) Samuelson isn’t an academic; he’s got a bachelor’s degree (not in economics) from Harvard and his entire career has been spent as a journalist and whatever the hell he is now.
  
  *Paul* Samuelson, if some enterprising grad student with a copy of the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan wanted to summon him from the dead and sit him down for a debate with Krugman, would be interesting, but I’m not sure how much Krugthulu and the most prominent American Keynesian for the 20th century would find to disagree on.
  - DocAmazing
    
    Samuelson isn’t an academic; he’s got a bachelor’s degree (not in economics) from Harvard
    
    The Yglesias Principle at work.
    - IM
      
      Yglesias at least tries. That said Y. first tried to be a pundit on foreign politics, so he his choice of area to pundit on seems almost arbitrary
  - mds
    
    Robert (Not-Paul) Samuelson isn’t an academic
    
    Yes, I know; that’s one of the reasons he wouldn’t agree to an academic debate. Though not the only one; I presume that nowadays John Cochrane is also unlikely to agree to a debate that hasn’t been stacked in his favor.
- cpinva
  
  “It would be entertaining if Krugman were more of a down-and-dirty debater.”
  
  i ascribe this aspect of krugman’s personality to the fact that he works in a mostly civilized, academic environment, and he just can’t believe (after all this time) that there are really people who will ignore actual facts, for political gain. or something.
Davis

I used to assume that he was related to Paul (I still have his textbook!), and that he was an economist. He’s neither. James K. Galbraith is both related to John Kenneth and an actual economist, so where’s his column?

JKTHs

Shorter Samuelson: “One side of the economic argument has been clearly right while the other side has been clearly wrong. Why does it all have to be so confusing??”

STH

Blech. There’s just been more Republican stupidity lately than I can deal with.

I prefer to listen to this Samuels(s)on.