The alleged victim's testimony was the extent of the prosecution's case against Perry and Counts. There was no physical evidence linking them to the crime.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/05/07/convictions-vacated-26-year-old-rape/588406002/

It was Banks’ word against hers and she was not likely to change her story. After all, Gibson sued the Long Beach Unified School District claiming the school’s lax security provided an unsafe environment that led to the fraudulent rape. She would eventually receive a settlement of 1.5 million dollars.

Brian Banks was faced with an impossible decision at the time – either fight the charges and risk spending 41 years-to-life in prison, or take a plea deal and spend a little over 5 years of actual prison confinement. Although it would mean destroying his chance to go to college and play football, a lengthy probationary period, and a lifetime of registration as a sex offender, Banks chose the lesser of two evils when he pleaded no contest to the charges.

https://californiainnocenceproject.org/read-their-stories/brian-banks/


I'd look up more, but I have to go pick up my wife from work.

But it's not going to be 1% of the cost for a very, very long time. It probably takes a team of technicians to keep it going right now. 5-10 years from now you can probably get one of those for a hundred grand or so, but maintenance would run you around the same as a full-time drywaller. You're throwing a lot of numbers out there as if they mean something, but they don't. Also, the thing needs downtime to recharge, even once the technology becomes practical and affordable, so 24/7 is not an option. Either you need a worker to replace batteries every few hours, or it needs to plug in to a base station and go offline for significant periods.

I'm pretty sure that if the tables were turned and somehow Hillary ran as a Republican, the Democrats would have voted for Trump as well. We tend to overlook things like reason and sanity in the USA when it comes to people/teams/etc that we hate.

Plus Trump was selling a message that a lot of people bought into, that they were somehow going to go back to a time when factory and coal jobs were a thing for middle class union type people. People who didn't work in those fields knew it was bogus from the get go, but when you live in a shitty area and desperately want to scroll back progress so that you can get your guaranteed 30+ an hour job/lifetime pension without a college education, you tend to overlook small things like guys grabbing pussies.

You are right, in a sane country Hillary probably would have been elected. She also probably wouldn't have been eligible to run because she would have beaten out Obama in 2008. She didn't because people were so desperate for something, anything to change in our fucked up government that they went with Obama. Hell, I even voted for him the first time. But, we lost our sanity sometime around the period when elected an actor over a generally 'nice guy' kind of president. Said actor/governor then instituted the following amazing things:

* The War on Drugs - utter failure
* Reaganomics - depends on who you ask, but it pretty much fucked us for years to come.
* Wonderful changes and cuts to education - See previous. They are still trying to undo the fuckery that was done to education in the 80's.
* Increased military spending to astronomical levels - pretty much fucked anyone not working for defense contractors.
* Destabilized Nicaragua and pissed off Iran worse at us - yeah, that didn't work out for us.
* Largely ignored the AIDs epidemic - tragedy on multiple levels.
* Etc

That fucker is still viewed as one of the best presidents and Carter as one of the worst.

This. If you are a sex offender or killed somebody, you should get your rights back. For non-violent drug offences as soon as you are out, for theft and other crimes against other people, perhaps a period of time after if you got off early, but otherwise, there's no reason to hold off rights...

Movies didn't influence divorce rates. There were a series of events that led to them skyrocketing.

1. Birth Control pills. Women and Men were no longer forced to remain in marriages because of children.

2. Due to economic change and because of WW2, women became more acceptable in the workforce. This increased year after year due to varying factors and after a while, many women became less dependent on their spouses to support them. With this economic independence, women who were in unhappy marriages no longer HAD to stay in them. This also led to....

3. The rise of Feminism. With economic independence, women could start fighting for their rights. Rights that had been withheld from them for many years.

4. The Baby Boom after WW2. Most countries experienced it at some level and with a much high population, more people are going to divorce.

5. The importing and mainstreaming of new ideas in regards to relationships, spirituality, and sex. This didn't come from Hollywood, but from the East. The Kama Sutra, Mysticism, and more worldly takes on relationships.

6. Changes to existing laws, possibly one of the biggest reasons. Prior to the time period listed, divorce was a PAIN IN THE ASS to accomplish. Fault was usually required - one of the spouses must have committed a crime or 'sin' that justified the divorce. A long separation before the divorce used to be mandatory. Around the 50's, states began relaxing many of these laws, swapping to a no-fault style divorce and decreasing the separation period. By 1970, almost all states had laws allowing no-fault divorces. These laws had a great effect on the divorce rate. From 1940 to 1965, the divorce rate remained near 10 divorces for every 1,000 married women. By 1979, the rate had doubled.

7. Divorce also became more acceptable. The guilt and fault of the old divorce laws were gone. As more couples separated, divorce gradually became a normal part of life.

8. Children of divorced parents are more likely to get divorced. As the number of divorced parents increases, so will the number of their children that get divorced.

These are the root factors, not movies. If you believe movies lead to divorce, you probably also think video games lead children to violent acts. We all know how wrong that is.

Seems reasonable as i assume after a period of time it can be removed to see if the problem still exists. The sooner the better (in hours hopefully, not days) as it's a daily annoyance that is frustrating to deal with. As is now half (my one page 12 of 30) the comments in the recent comment thread are bans. It doesn't make for a good experience when using it.

Not going to ban you for your opinion. But saying a veteran should have been kia is pretty goddamn low. You are, as all the dumbass motherfuckers on the interweb who have been calling him a traitor are, referring to the fact that he broke during his POW incarceration.

Here is a brief excerpt of the new techniques that came out right around the time he was captured. Techniques that were so insidious that the military had to REWRITE the code regarding breaking under torture.

"Some were physically tortured, some of them succumbed to the pain and broke, some did not, but there was also a new technique employed, and it took time.

Put into a dark box, not large enough to even stretch out, it is called sensory deprivation, and along with other enhancements, it turns a person insane, malleable, and open to the most ridiculous suggestions. like confessing to the war crime of being ordered to bomb hospitals and orphanages, and doing so.

Some of those who broke under this new kind of interrogation feared to be repatriated, thinking they would be tried for collaboration upon their return. American psychologists and psychiatrists, after interviewing some of these ex-POW’s, determined that, given enough time, anyone, if not everyone, could be broken.

John McCain made them start all over on him a number of times, until his Vietnamese interrogators finally gave up, and threw him into a miserable cell, and not back into his horribly, miserable dark box. His conduct, during his interrogation period, and thereafter, was nothing short of heroic."

Now, if you ever go through enhanced interrogation techniques, please feel free to report back to us how you managed not to break or suffer mental damage from them. Until that time, I find your opinion to be ill informed and lacking weight.

EDIT: Before you go saying I am a fanboy, I didn't care for him as a senator or presidential candidate. He was gullible enough to get sucked into the Keating Five mess and I didn't feel he would be a good president, so I voted democrat in 2008, even though I generally vote republican. I can still recognize him as a war hero and for his service though. The man was not a traitor.

Poorly said and dead wrong.

You accept Trump, a consummate liar with an agenda determining their message rather than the protesters. That's your main mistake.

They are not protesting against the flag, anthem, or nation.
They are using their access to their own audience to spread their message that police misconduct must be addressed. If that's unseemly somehow, tell Trump to stop it first, because he's using OUR platform. When he hasn't tweeted for a full year, and hasn't used his position to personally attack citizens for the same time period, come back and we'll discuss what private citizens are obligated to do in America.

It bears noting, taking a knee is how service men often respect fallen soldiers and is clearly designated appropriate flag behavior, but wearing the flag as clothing is insanely disrespectful and totally not allowed by national flag rules, yet you never hear draft dodging Trump froth at the mouth over the mouth breathers surrounding him draped in the flag like a toga.

Only when you wake up to reality and stop letting a bad liar with no connection to the truth determine reality for you will your problem of constantly being ridiculously wrong be solved.

You've gotta be fucking kidding me. You're seriously trying to imply that the police have no alternative if someone runs but to shoot them.

My own view is that cops shouldn't be shooting people who weren't shooting first, period. Obviously that's not what the law says in many places, or we'd be seeing a lot more cops convicted of murder.

@newtboy,
"Yeah, that's honest, move to a profession where one single specific type of performance is the entire job..."

Take any highly competitive field and you've got similar professional grading based upon excellence in the field. Legal, Medical, Engineering, the same kind of professionals can be found hunting for top tier talent in any of these, no different than the NBA. Their criteria can be every bit as colour blind and there is strong economic incentives to do so to boot.

"Side note: there have been some who suggested affirmative action in sports, requiring a certain number of white players on teams. Indeed, there were white leagues that fought tooth and nail to not let even the most talented non whites participate. Just sayin...."
And that would be racist, and it was wrong, and it's something we should be glad to be rid of.

Just sayin....

"Race is considered, period."
Reasonable, non-racist people are going to disagree with you. They are going to, correctly, call your policy racist.

Can you really not see the other side that thinks fighting racism with racism is the wrong approach?

You mentioned SAT scores, no? They clearly DO benefit one group, rich whites.
You said "If one has a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates, how do we most fairly use that score to choose candidates." I pointed out that we don't have any such method, offered some of the reasons why the SAT is biased, and made suggestions of some things that must be taken into account to create one.

Edit: any method that ignores the exceptional efforts required in overcoming the pitfalls of being non white in America in order to be color blind, by definition, cannot be used fairly.

Yeah, that's honest, move to a profession where one single specific type of performance is the entire job, then claim it's possible to rate other jobs the same way. If the job can be boiled down to something as simple as how many times you can score a basket in one hour and NOTHING else matters, that works. There are very few professions like that, and educational opportunities should be nothing like that, especially when there's no unbiased test to determine intelligence, educational ability, and work ethic.

Side note: there have been some who suggested affirmative action in sports, requiring a certain number of white players on teams. Indeed, there were white leagues that fought tooth and nail to not let even the most talented non whites participate. Just sayin....

Race is considered, period. The argument is that being non white should be considered as a positive, an obstacle being overcome, rather than a negative, a biased excuse to deny opportunity.

@newtboy
Short sighted tribal reasoning was electing a lying cheeto with anger issues because it wore red.
Fair enough

"Objecting to using race as one of many criteria for admission in favor of a single test that clearly benefits your group..."
I see the misunderstanding, I specifically did not ask for a test benefiting a group, but instead specifically asked for one that did NOT. I'll quote myself again:"a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates."

Since the school admission examples seem to be encouraging misunderstanding, let's change fields. The NBA draft doesn't come down to a single score, but it does have a best effort by professional experts to select the top candidates based upon ability and projected ability at the sport of basketball. By all appearances, that process could be said to "clearly benefit 'a' group", but because I am confident the process is color blind and selecting candidates based upon ability I like it.

To introduce race as a consideration instead is racism, period. You can argue that fighting racism with racism is justified or even desirable, but at least have the honestly to call it that.

They all went through a period of that shit.

However religions have always been this way.
Good for you going to Church. Warm and fuzzy feeling. Some, I'm sure, include ok folk who are just misguided.

Just like all religions or groups its the 5% core that drive them. And those 5% of religious zealots of all faiths are murderers and are still causing grief ALL AROUND THE GLOBE.

FTFY

They all went through a period of that shit.

However the Muslims have always been this way.
Good for you going to Mosque . Warm and fuzzy feeling. They are ok folk.

Lust like all religions or groups its the 20 % core that drive them. And those 20% Muslims are murders and causing grief ALL AROUND THE GLOBE.

Don't talk to me about abortion you dumb prick. Laws preventing abortion in my state are keeping me from having a family.

That's right. If my wife and I could have abortions, our family would be bigger now.

Some people need to be able to have abortions. It's not murder any more than me jerking off and my wife having a period. Laws against fatricide are wrong. You don't get a fertilization certificate, you get a birth certificate.

It's like I'm talking to a Putin sock puppet.