Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I guess that to an economist, that's a reasonable argument. Execution doesn't work against crazed psychopaths, but might for rational blue collar criminals.
Maybe they should shoot people in the street for minor but annoying opffences, like stopping on the motorway. Oh, wait..
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Also,in IPV6 "there's no place like ::1"
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As for shipping from the US - it's not that much if you know your postal shizz.
However, with the falling exchange rate, it's really easy to go over the $400 limit and be hit with tax and duty. I guess it's better with a back street eBay vendor who can be schooled to put "Gifts - $50" on the customs form.
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I was expecting he was going to ask why the cops hadn't used a flammenwerfer to immolate the gunman *and* his hostages. After all, it'd be the gunmans fault, the gunman would be dead, so that makes it all right?
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The Herald site may well look good and be very useful, but... it hangs my brouser
Try adblocking everything and/or uninstalling flash. A lot of those animated ads grab CPU.
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There were also compulsory Friday afternoon drinks which you had to attend and be all social and shit. You weren't allowed to go home early. You had to stand around and drink a beer, a wine or an orange juice with the accountant.
Such wank - that would get me looking for another job straight away. I have these *friend* people that I wish to socialise with on Friday afternoons, not the people I've wound up working with. If the boss was standing drinks in a pub after work on Thursday or at lunchtime, I'd be fine with that (as typically happened in my old firms in the UK).
Anyways, on TradeMe, I don't really see the difference between an Aussie corporation and an American corporation, or an NZ one for that matter. It's all still The Man.
But Fairfax would be dumb to sell it, as they'd basically be waving goodbye to personal/SME advertising. Of course, being a dumb corporate they've done nothing (AFAIK) to integrate the classy ads in the papers with TradeMe, which I'd have seen as a no brainer.
But maybe dumbness in the media industry will have an endgame of No (tory) Newspapers, which I for one would welcome.
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Plus, I note our Parliament seems to handle "no confidence" motions easily enough...
The US doesn't have no-confidence motions of course, because the executive doesn't have to retain the confidence of the legislature. In some ways the Clinton trial was a proxy for a no-confidence motion, though with the Republicans holding less than 2/3 of the Senate, it was always a bit of a sham.
If an NZ Prime Minister were to be accused (genuinely) of a crime, they would be tried through the normal court process. If convicted of a crime carrying a sentence over 2 years, they would be expelled from Parliament and hence would no longer be PM (although one would expect their party to have ditched them long before this).
our system is a bit more messy since we didn't get a fresh start in the 1700s
Or a bit more refined because we aren't stuck with the way things were done in 1800.
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The events were roughly this:
- Paula Jones, a state employee, sued for sexual harrasment, alleging that he invited her to his room and propositioned her.
- She called evidence that he had had relationships with other employees to support her case.
- Clinton denied this.
- the trial judge dismissed the case, on the ground that even if Jones' case was factually proven, it didn't amount to an actionable wrong in state law
- Jones' appealed, and as part of this Clinton was pressured to testify on his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, which he did, misleadingly
- The Republican controlled House impeached him on grounds of "perjury" and "obstruction of justice"
- The Senate acquitted him (conviction required a 2/3 majority)There are two things that were wrong with this process:
- Clinton was compelled to testify as to his legal, consensual and private sexual relationships. Since something that isn't an offence can hardly be part of a "pattern of offending", this was the abuse of the legal system to inquire into a public figure's morals.
- Clinton was "tried" by the legislature rather than the judiciary, who can hardly be expected to give a fair trial to a political opponent.McCarthyism was similar. Rather than prosecute people for being Communists (which would be unconstitutional), suspected communists were compelled to implicate others.
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Actually, perjury requires the evidence to be material in a trial.
The trial judge in the harrasment case at a fairly early stage ruled that, even if Clinton had behaved as alleged, he hadn't committed any offence. Consensual sex between adults is not a crime, or even a tort, in the US. It might be squicky, but it isn't illegal to poke the payroll.
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I think that the US abuse of compelled testimony, prosecution by politicians and the investigation of non-crimes (such as in the McCarthy and Clinton cases) has rather discredited the Grand Jury, at least under that name.
Has NZ ever considered having an independent prosecutor in the Scottish fashion? Or indeed going further and having an investigating magistrate after the fashion of Continental Europe? (In many European states, the judiciary is a career separate from private legal practice rather than a sequel to a career as a lawyer).