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[Phmcw]

I never said that. I just said that being lax isn't much better. Being just and promoting rehabilitation is good.

[Phmcw]

It's all a matter of scale: letting someone go with community service for thief is lax, but doing nothing is lax too. On the same way, life imprisonement for murder recidive is harsh as is the three strike law of America. In either case, one is still justice and efficient, while the other is neither.

[10ebbor10]

The Belgian Justice system is quite broken. And if the person has psychological issues/ psychiatric issues, it can even be dystopian.
 
See, if the person is, due to psychological issues, judged to not have acted voluntarily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense), he can, and for reasonably bad crimes, will be forcibly interned without trial, and for an indefinite time. Often, due to a shortage of places in the psychiatric institutions, such a person just ends up in a regular prison with minimal to no therapy. It's gotten so bad that some of these patients have requested euthanasia, as that is seemingly their only way out. (They might even get it, actually.)

[Sergarr]

The Belgian Justice system is quite broken. And if the person has psychological issues/ psychiatric issues, it can even be dystopian.
 
See, if the person is, due to psychological issues, judged to not have acted voluntarily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense), he can, and for reasonably bad crimes, will be forcibly interned without trial, and for an indefinite time. Often, due to a shortage of places in the psychiatric institutions, such a person just ends up in a regular prison with minimal to no therapy. It's gotten so bad that some of these patients have requested euthanasia, as that is seemingly their only way out. (They might even get it, actually.)

I thought locking people in psychiatric institutions was a USSR-only shtick?

[Darvi]

Which is why they put them in prison instead, natch.

[Frumple]

I thought locking people in psychiatric institutions was a USSR-only shtick?

No? From what I understand, similar things are... pretty common, insofar as it approaches "common". Crazy folks don't get treated particularly well at the best of times, never mind when legal issues are involved. And that's assuming they're crazy at all, and not just being put in an institute because someone didn't have the evidence to put them in jail but did have enough influence to convince a few doctors to say the right things.

[10ebbor10]

The difference being that the USSR was honest in it, and changed it's definition of schizophrenia to include disagreeing with the state as one of the main symptoms.

But no, forcibly interning crazy people is a thing that happens.

[Truean]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/g-trial-witnesses-central-cast-012054413.html

AIG massively screwed up and threw the whole world into essentially Hell. We gave AIG a bailout they made $22 Billion on. Not enough, it seems? AIG was "singled out" and picked on.... They should've gotten more and are suing the government for it...?

So we paid for the bailout they profited from and now we're going to pay for this farce of a trial. If the government is so big, bad, and out of control, perhaps it shouldn't contain the protestors who would like to voice their opinions against this?

[Graknorke]

How can you sue for not getting a bailout? That's... phenomenally absurd.

[Frumple]

They did get a bailout, to the tune of around 180 freaking billion dollars, and ended up netting a 22b profit. Now the bastards want more.

I'll give 'em this much. Balls the size of Jupiter. Need to be taken out behind the shed and put down, but they're damn sure audacious.

[andrea]

at a glance, it seems they are suing because they got much higher interest rates than everyone else  (14% vs 3-4%). That is a much more reasonable claim to make.
Not that it should make them eligible for anything, government didn't have a duty to bail out anyone and therefore could dictate whatever conditions it wanted, as far as I know. They accepted and profitted from the bailout as is.

However, if their claim is true, it might raise a question or 2 about who got the best deals. But the trial should answer them if answers aren't already available.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

This rub anyone else the wrong way?
http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/secret-service-chief-grilled-over-white-house-security-breach-n215341
"One of the persistent questions (...) why shots weren't fired?"
"Tremendous restraint isn't what we're looking for (...) overwhelming force should be the message"
Yes, because gunning down an unarmed man on the lawn of the whitehouse would be such a desirable headline. Totally.

This smells like grandstanding bullshit.

[Frumple]

... can't tell because PoS website est. Transcript of some sort?

Though yes, that does sound like the only way they could be grandstanding more would be if they were shouting it while riding on top of an elephant, that is itself balancing on top of a giant spiked ball, with all of it being on fire.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Ha, hand-written transcript that. From ~1:25 in the video.

[SalmonGod]

Basically, a guy jumped the fence on the white house lawn, in the front door, and around the first corner into the building, before an agent tackled him.  He was carrying a pocket knife.  People are outraged that anyone would be able to make it that far, and saying the guy should have been shot or had dogs released on him as soon as he jumped the fence.

Also, your standard "the next time this happens could be a planned and organized terrorist attack" bullshit.