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[nenjin]

It is a court and trial presided over by the Honorable Captain Kangaroo.

[Shadowlord]

In non-Australia news,
http://radaronline.com/celebrity-news/slain-american-sniper-chris-kyle-embellished-his-military-record/

[Frumple]

I... have no idea who that is. Having read the article, I still have no idea who that is. I don't think I've ever actually seen reference to him before this day. Anywhere. Ruddy media.

[TheBiggerFish]

That guy they made American Sniper about, probably.

[Frumple]

... made what? I guess I could look it up, but that's literally the first time I've seen (or heard) those words put together as a proper noun, is more the point.

[TheBiggerFish]

It's a movie.

I think it's a movie.

They made a movie about some sniper and I think this is the guy.

[smirk]

Said movie came out... 2 years ago? It wasn't great but was max patriotism and a huge hit here in fly-over country. IIRC, his embellishment of his own record has been known (or at least solidly rumored) since almost before the movie came out. Old news, but it's good to know there's actual proof I suppose.

[Guardian G.I.]

Trump is now at a petroleum industry conference in Bismarck, North Dakota. During the press conference he said he will debate Bernie if he collects enough money for charity, something 10-15 million USD. He had calls from several television networks already.

He also spoke in support of coal mining and fracking (if I'm not mistaken), bald eagles, dodged loaded questions from journalists, mocked The Huffington Post and severely triggered a journalist by calling Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas".

[nenjin]

Just another day in the life of the Donald.

In non-Australia news,
http://radaronline.com/celebrity-news/slain-american-sniper-chris-kyle-embellished-his-military-record/

That's not quite the whole story. His discharge papers state the number of medals that he reported in his memoirs. So technically he didn't inflate the numbers. But apparently the awards of those medals were still recorded on paper? And those papers can't be found, since they originated in a war zone. So no one is really sure how and when he went from one silver star and three bronze to two silver stars and five bronze. (Or whatever the counts were.)

[Reelya]

Haven't paid much attention to it, personally. Stuff was pretty low key in the schools I went to, and I had other things on the mind.

There are a bunch of articles around going into what a crock the college arbitration system is, especially for sexual assault claims. Usually they cite that the police looked into the matter and dismiss the charges, but the college system runs it's own tribunals on the assumption that the charges are true, then the defendant must disprove them.

Slightly related, but there was a Title IX case. I'll link the Jezebel article, though there are other sources, because a feminist site talking about extremist feminism is pretty ironic:
http://jezebel.com/feminist-students-protest-feminist-prof-for-writing-abo-1707714321
"Feminist Students Protest Feminist Prof for Writing About Feminism"

Basically, this one feminist professor wrote an article about "sexual paranoia on college campuses" which basically indicted the campus activism movement. The result was that two students claimed to have been triggered by her article, and took out Title IX complaints against her. This dumped her into an arcane "guilty until proven innocent" system. She was allowed to have a colleague for support in the arbitration sessions. This colleague was then also hit with Title IX complaints, just for being her support person.

Then, during the Title IX investigations, the investigators noted (paraphrasing here) "hey, this Title IX investigation is really creating an unsafe environment for you, and you're a woman, why don't you take out Title IX complaints against your accusers?" At which point she basically told everyone involved to go fuck themselves.

Note, that the case had been ongoing for several months, then the story hit Washington Post on May 29th last year, spread to other news sources in the next couple of days. By 6th June, all charges were suddenly dropped. So this professor was lucky that her treatment in this case became a national disgrace, thus getting her off the hook. Other victims of ludicrous college tribunal processes aren't necessarily going to be so lucky.

[Strife26]

Basically, after the Dear Colleges letter from the Department of Education to every college, they must be supes tough on sexual assault or face threats of any sort of Federal funding. The usual result is that colleges have a full time sexual assault employee running private pseudo-courts to conclude that all accusations are accurate. God help any student who get under that set of crosshairs.

http://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/04/03/the-irony-of-brandeis/   

Out of the court opinion of a judge in Massachusetts about a specific case where a gentleman decided to
level an accusation against his former boyfriend a significant time after their relationship ended

the accused was not entitled to know the details of the charges;
the accused was not entitled to see the evidence;
the accused was not entitled to counsel;
the accused was not entitled to confront and cross-examine the accuser;
the accused was not entitled to cross-examine any other witnesses;
the Special Examiner prepared a detailed report, which the accused was not permitted to see until the entire process had concluded; and
the Special Examiner’s decision as to the “responsibility” (that is, guilt) of the accused was essentially final, with limited appellate review—among other things, the decision could not be overturned on the ground that it was incorrect, unfair, arbitrary, or unsupported by the evidence.



. . .

Again, this was not a criminal proceeding, and Brandeis is not a governmental entity. Nonetheless, the stakes were very high. John was charged with serious offenses that carry the potential for substantial public condemnation and disgrace. He was required to defend himself in what was essentially an inquisitorial proceeding that plausibly failed to provide him with a fair and reasonable opportunity to be informed of the charges and to present an adequate defense. He was ultimately found “responsible,” and received a penalty that may permanently scar his life and career.

[Strife26]

Also, any time some cries TRIGGERED they're full of shit. The onus of avoiding unwelcome speech is on the individual, not on society to turn the marketplace of ideas into a room of snuggies and puppies.

[mainiac]

It's only fair that people immediately start talking about the problems with the justice system anytime someone wants to talk about the rape epidemic.  After all, every time someone in these treads talks about cracking down on wallstreet everyone leaps to point out that people are innocent until proven guilty and how you shouldn't generalize.  It's nice to know that we have principled advocates of equality before the law here.

Also, any time some cries TRIGGERED they're full of shit. The onus of avoiding unwelcome speech is on the individual, not on society to turn the marketplace of ideas into a room of snuggies and puppies.

Yes, anyone who ever asks you to be polite is literally hitler.

[Orange Wizard]

The onus of avoiding unwelcome speech is on the individual.

+1

Yes, anyone who ever asks you to be polite is literally hitler.

Being polite is polite, not some divine mandate. Nobody has any obligation to be polite.

[MarcAFK]

American sniper was definately inflated with extreme war movie propaganda.  It did have the now standard message that war is really fucked up, but was very biased towards the American perspective. Regardless of the inaccuracy of the actual film it was still fairly based on fact, just ignore every specific incident and character in it as you probably should for virtually any war film. The biggest issue about Chris Kyle isn't the number of people he one-shotted, the amount of medals he received, or even the whole absurd idea that he had a personal grudge against a specific 'terrorist' who was killing innocent civilians whom he heroically takes out in the most dramatic fashion. No the message of his memoirs is that war is terrible and soldiers have a shitty experience after returning home, loads are mentally scarred and sometimes children loose their father to PTSD or depression.
Chris started giving therapy to returned soldiers in the form of trips to a shooting range with their peers, one guy he took to a range flipped out and murdered Chris and another discharged soldier. Rip.
Edit: college arbitration is a witch hunt. My sister has run afoul of a similar system for anti-bullying in
high school. Basically the school has a policy where if a student breaks the code of conduct they are required to exclude the self from the school.
It's bullshit, the school basically trying to absolve itself from any responsibility if there's complaints of harrassment, basically "oh well the bully didn't drop out of school so it's not our fault, we have a policy!"
And it's a witch hunt, if the student tribunal is just a bunch of teenage girls that don't like you anymore good luck with that.