Someone made the excellent point that Trump is now complicit in murder. The funds and arms he withheld as a bargaining chip to extort the Ukrainian president were for the defense of their country from Russia, who is actively invading. Any Ukrainian who died in that war during the weeks he illegally kept those congressionally approved funds is blood on his hands.

Since you are ignorant of the law and incapable of finding it yourself, here is section 7214 ....read it and get back to me, I'll explain how it applies.



26 U.S. Code § 7214. Offenses by officers and employees of the United States

(a) Unlawful acts of revenue officers or agents
Any officer or employee of the United States acting in connection with any revenue law of the United States—
(1) who is guilty of any extortion or willful oppression under color of law; or
(2) who knowingly demands other or greater sums than are authorized by law, or receives any fee, compensation, or reward, except as by law prescribed, for the performance of any duty; or
(3) who with intent to defeat the application of any provision of this title fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment; or
(4) who conspires or colludes with any other person to defraud the United States; or
(5) who knowingly makes opportunity for any person to defraud the United States; or
(6) who does or omits to do any act with intent to enable any other person to defraud the United States; or
(7) who makes or signs any fraudulent entry in any book, or makes or signs any fraudulent certificate, return, or statement; or
(8) who, having knowledge or information of the violation of any revenue law by any person, or of fraud committed by any person against the United States under any revenue law, fails to report, in writing, such knowledge or information to the Secretary; or
(9) who demands, or accepts, or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly as payment or gift, or otherwise, any sum of money or other thing of value for the compromise, adjustment, or settlement of any charge or complaint for any violation or alleged violation of law, except as expressly authorized by law so to do;
shall be dismissed from office or discharged from employment and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both. The court may in its discretion award out of the fine so imposed an amount, not in excess of one-half thereof, for the use of the informer, if any, who shall be ascertained by the judgment of the court. The court also shall render judgment against the said officer or employee for the amount of damages sustained in favor of the party injured, to be collected by execution.


Edit: I'll save time, here's the other law he's violating which unambiguously states he had no choice but to turn them over immediately.

26 U.S. Code § 6103. Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information
(11) Disclosure of information regarding status of investigation of violation of this section
(f) Disclosure to Committees of Congress
(1) Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Finance, and Joint Committee on Taxation
Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.

Edit: allow me to save time again, by not following 6103 (11) (f) and furnishing the return requested in writing by the chairman of the Ways and Means committee, he undeniably violates 7214 (a) (3), which comes with a 5 year sentence. Understand now?

There are far more 'common threads' between Daesh and the Bakers than there are with Daesh and the left.

Did that guy just say the Soviet Union funded nuclear protests world wide in the 80's? When they were dead broke, starving, and the union was dissolving? I'm pretty certain that would be news to my aunt and uncle who have run an anti-nuclear protest group since the early 70's.

John Guanadolo?!? Really? "Foremost terrorism expert"?!? Don't they mean "disgraced and fired ex FBI agent caught having numerous affairs, including with witnesses he was protecting, among numerous other complaints, most notably his rabid anti Muslim stances and actions but including coercion and extortion"?

Not really a surprise from people who believe in talking snakes, tout incestuous communities (Adam, Eve, and their progeny), and who worship a zombie, but still disappointing.

Hmm. It’s an interesting story – it doesn’t seem that it’s 100% the typical patent troll mold, though it’s obviously still a shitty tale of bullshit patent litigation tactics. It looks like Pappas had his original idea and filed for a patent in 2000, basically trying to create a way to monetize the ad hoc markets that pop up whenever people are in line or reserving places for entertainment (probably based on his own restaurant experience). He filed a single, very broad, multiregion patent on this, and launched a company and online platform around it in 2008 (OptionIt) to provide an online service for trading ticket reservations / places in line. Braxton had a similar but more clearly defined idea in 2011, and filed his own patent.

Like I said – I don’t like this idea, I wish it hadn’t been granted patent protection, and I’m happy if it never reaches the market. However, for all that, I think Pappas original idea was a bit more inventive. Back in 2000 we didn’t have an app economy, and we hadn’t gotten used to these kinds of ad hoc, internet-facilitated temporary market places. When Braxton came up with it, it was pretty dull.

Either way, once Pappas started his business, I guess he instructed his law firm to handle litigation as aggressively as possible, which is fairly standard practice, and which is the unfortunate behavior described in the video. After losing the original suit and then losing the Rule 11 motion, they argued like aggressive assholes in mediation, and got Braxton to back down. I think their threat was fairly hollow – he says that they threatened him with their ‘patent portfolio,’ but this is the only patent family I can find for OptionIt / Smart Option.

I’m not sure I would call this a textbook case of patent trolling – usually patent trolls file or acquire patents for the sole purpose of extorting legitimate businesses, but here it looks like Pappas was actually trying to make a go of this (shitty) app idea, but used intimidation to try to protect that idea. It’s one shitty business trying to intimidate another upstart shitty business, and the courts ruling against the first party. On the whole we all lose – OptionIt wins the mediation through shitty intimidation, and Braxton’s shitty patent gets added to Spangenberg’s portfolio of shitty troll assets to keep the cycle going.

Wait...you don't vote for corruption, but you'll vote for Trump? That does not compute. Trump has been involved in 3500 lawsuits over the last decades and often doesn't pay his bills, so often he had to address it and actually said 'if I don't think you did a good job, I don't pay'...that's theft of services, a crime of moral turpitude. You think he doesn't have experience placing obstacles to his adversaries? That's an insane hypothesis, he's shown thousands of times that he does know, and he wrote a book about it. EDIT: In fact, it seems that, in large part, he's made his money by extortion, making it far more difficult and expensive to fight him than it is to just let him rip you off and walk away.
He has clearly and repeatedly said HE is one of the people that paid off politicians to make laws that favor him (he said this in an effort to paint Clinton as corrupt for taking his money). HE is the ROOT of corruption in Washington....how on earth can you convince yourself he's not corrupt.

Trump will absolutely make an unfair system worse. He's a megalomaniac, and will do everything in his power, legal or not, to grab as much power as possible and put it into the hands of the president with no thought to what that does after he's out of office, and no one will stand up to him in any meaningful way out of fear of certain disproportionate reprisal.

Yes, maybe eventually the damage he does could be fixed, but that damage is FAR worse than you seem to imagine. The rest of the world sees him as a completely unstable, unpredictable person, and if he's the president, there's absolutely no question that world markets would fail due to that uncertainty, causing another world recession at best just from his election without a single act. As was mentioned, our standing on the world stage will also be destroyed, as it would be a clear signal to the world that America is not a partner, but an adversary to cooperation and reason.

Most non republicans would certainly disagree with your description of Scalia's record, as would many republicans. Some progressive laws got past him, yes, but the more progressive ones were usually stymied by him for completely insane reasons.

True, a smart corrupt person could do more damage than an upstanding idiot, but a bullying corrupt idiot with power can do the most damage of all without even trying...and holy shit are we all doomed if he gets upset and tries to do damage.

Au contraire, a patriot would not enable the State by funding its superfluous wars, banksters, and State cronies.

A patriot would do what he can to starve the Leviathan monster, not continue to feed it.

A patriot would help productive fellow citizens avoid the State's plunder altogether.

A patriot doesn't define "fair share" by whatever random numbers some self-serving politician and other government kleptocrats come up with. And only victims of the "public" education would think that patriotism is somehow equated with the desire to subject fellow citizens to such arbitrary theft extorted through violence or the threat thereof.

Not at all from my read.
To me, it's like trademarking the word "news!", forcibly removing any videos labeled "news!", and insisting anyone that posts one pay them 1/2 the revenue they might make...and probably taking it too far and going after those making 'news' claiming they're also infringing and forcing them to pay or defend themselves in court.
It's not at all as specific as you claim.
I see the difference in your analogy, but I totally disagree with your characterization. It's far more like trademarking 'news!' than trademarking 'news filmed and broadcast from a window of a bathysphere sitting in your swimming pool'. If it were that specific, there would be no outrage.
If they didn't come up with it, it's not their idea...and 'humans react to' videos is NOT distinctive enough by far, IMO, and in the opinion of MOST people. If they actually limited it to videos with the exact format of people watching unseen videos at an angle, and the exact same title of "Kids React!" they're still over reaching to control something they did not invent and should not own. Kids reacting was a genre of video/photograph LONG before they started making them, and if the reaction is exciting, using an exclamation point is normal English, as is capitalization of all words in a title.

They have no right to 'protect' something they didn't invent by taking other people's money, first that's not protection, it's simple extortion, second, it's theft, since it's not even their idea in the first place.
They don't have to be the first, possibly, but they certainly shouldn't be able to trademark a common phrase that existed before their company, or a format that existed long before their company, which is what they did.
If they want to 'protect their brand', they need to re-name it something that's not already a common phrase, otherwise they're trying to co-opt a commonly used phrase (that they didn't come up with in the first place) and extort money from those who commonly use it under threat of lawsuit. They also need to steer FAR away from attempting to enforce it against ANY video not in their EXACT format, including font, capitalization, punctuation, stated video format, content, etc. It a video doesn't meet EVERY standard there, they should leave it alone. I'm fairly certain that's NOT their intent, as it would make it impossible for them to extort money and make this move useless.


EDIT: Can we at least agree that, if a company is going to do something like this that COULD be a huge over reach and could easily be abused to both extort money and remove any competition, and their spokes people do such a piss poor job of explaining what they're doing that it sounds like they're using the law to steal property and money from actual content creators and erase those they can't control, while creating absolutely nothing themselves, and offering nothing for the money they forcibly take, that that company deserves ALL the ridicule and losses that follow, and their best move left would be to drop the entire thing rather than continuing and making numerous failed attempts to explain themselves?

Historically Islam didn't really engage in forced conversions, partly because under both the Caliphate and the Ottoman empire the tax break given to Muslims would've been problematic if given to the entire population (this tax break is the flip side of the "extort money" that you refer to).

Also speaking historically, Jews were much safer in Muslim lands than Christian since Christians tended to massacre them on a fairly regular basis until 1945 and despite what you've heard most Muslims are fairly tolerant. The same applies to minority Christian sects, the Nestorians for instance had to flee to Persia in 489 AD, and I seem to recall another minority group who fled England to Holland and then to the Americas (perhaps you've heard of them?).

I used to think that Buddhists and Hindus were more tolerant than the Abrahamic religions, but unfortunately I've since learned that I only thought so due to ignorance.

@Lawdeedaw

No.

Muslim is the only religion who tenents is to force you to convert, if not then extort money from you if not then kill you.

Christians would just call you sinners and go about their day.

>Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told Action News that Internal Affairs is investigating the incident involving the officer, 32-year-old Matthew Zagursky.
He’s a nine year veteran of the force.

Extortion, homophobic slurs...
How long do you think it'll take this shitface to work as a cop in another city?

Please explain how this 'enhanced oversight' works please. Since bribery is legal in your scenario, there's no reason victims of extortion would even bother to report it, because it's their word against the cop that will simply say 'it's a gift', case closed. Now they have the ability to extort any amount from anyone at any time, and like this cop they don't even have to follow through, they can simply demand payment then screw you a second time.
The incentive structure you describe is the incentive to extort money AND still screw people over because then they get paid AND have a good arrest record. There's no incentive for cops to act better t all, only worse in your scenario.
This story is proof that they are not free to extort today...he's fired isn't he? In your scenario, he's done nothing wrong.

It doesn't seem to me that your fringe scenario is likely to have a whit of positive effect, and only allows the worst kind of behavior to continue unhidden and unprosecutable. If you somehow believe that will cause bad cops to miraculously become good people, I've got some swamp land in Southern Florida to sell you. ;-)

It doesn't seem to me that these fringe scenarios of yours are any the more likely to occur in the realisation of my carefully considered reforms. Indeed, there's no apparent mechanism by which they would increase.

Cops are no less free today to engage in extortion than they might be under even the sloppiest implementation of my proposal. Whereas, I claim that the enhanced oversight and incentive structure of this enlightened, progressive model does more to counter bad baviour and encourage good baviour than your own rather lazy and hidebound adherence to the status quo.

There's an obvious distinction between bribery and extortion.

Really the whole practice of discretionary law enforcement is an appalling one. What we want is an army of impartial, emotionless automata.

So, if a cop stops you, tells you you're getting a ticket and offers you to forget about it if you blow him, that's ok?
Because he could do that if what you suggest would be accepted. He could extort those things out of you and claim you offered it and as long as you can't prove it, it'll be ok. No problem here, move along.
And now imagine you couldn't afford a ticket. Imagine you really, really couldn't get a ticket for whatever reason. Then it would be fine if a strange man forced you to choose between sexually pleasuring him or getting that ticket?
I want you to picture yourself unzipping the pants of that man in the video and tell me you're fine with that mental image.

Net neutrality is not bureaucracy, any more than "not allowing organised crime to extort people" is.

Obamacare obviously has some significant overhead to it, but as the system beds in, people will streamline it and make it more efficient.

The majority of the world has found that some bureaucracy is a reasonable price to pay for the benefits of socialised medicine. It's never perfect. The question is whether you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

No-one is arguing for "large, unwieldy debt-ridden monstrosities", if that is happening, then measures should be put in place to deal with that. But in a country of 320 million people, some bureaucracy is inevitable.