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[Bouchart]

I've never understood why we are so delicate about national level shit. We keep doing screwed up shit to compensate for other screwed up shit, which in turn allows for more screwed up shit. If you screw up, rather than turning everything into this contorted mess, crash and burn and take another try. Really hope this guy gets torn a new one in the worst prison that can be supplied.

He'll walk.

[mainiac]

The level of nonyieldingness here rather surprises me.  Let me tie this into another hypothetical.  Suppose you can travel back in time and kill Hitler thus preventing the war and genocide?  Would you be willing to punish a man for sins he hadn't yet committed?  It's basically the same question I just proposed but here you are being punitive instead of lenient in order to prevent greater suffering.

[Vector]

Would you be willing to punish a man for sins he hadn't yet committed?

No.  I'd in fact be more likely to try to befriend him and keep him from getting kicked out of art school.

Violence is an easy answer but not the only one, and I refuse to align with rapists.

[Bauglir]

Well, the problem, in my eyes, with killing someone for crimes they've not yet committed is that you cannot be sure that they were actually going to commit those crimes. Given a means of time travel, that's no longer necessarily true, since you can observe the crime being committed and then prevent it from ever having occurred. I mean, punishment after the fact is not really ideal (it seems generally agreed that to prevent a crime in the first place is preferable to punishing it), but it's the only practical tool available given the rather harsh limitations on prescience.

Of course, you'd need some sort of extra-temporal records to document everything so that people aren't just travelling through time and murdering others on whims, claiming, "Oh, this person was going to commit genocide!" as an invulnerable defense. Not that many people would do that, but hell, even one would be enough of a problem. That's probably the primary objection I'd raise to assassinating pre-Nazi Hitler. That and the various arguments that could be made about actually making the world worse what with somebody more competent replacing him or technology not advancing due to a lack of such an effective stimulus or whatever, but those are pretty dubious, I've always thought.

EDIT: Although, I like Vector's answer better, since it's not merely morally neutral. I feel bad for not considering it before typing all that up.

[sonerohi]

I would let Hitler slide, but only because of just how huge of a historical figure he is. Small time criminals, I would temporal murder the hell out of, however. Punishment happens where punishment is due. Plus, why should we be obligated to prevent a greater suffering that was not caused externally? If a foreign power were just plain wrecking Greece then it is on us, but since Greece pretty well fucked itself (except for that thing with Germany) I don't feel like it is our job to save them from themselves, or save the man who would save them from themselves.

[ChairmanPoo]

and except for that thing of the ones providing the "pound of flesh" loans to the greek goverment encouraging them.

[mainiac]

I would let Hitler slide, but only because of just how huge of a historical figure he is. Small time criminals, I would temporal murder the hell out of, however. Punishment happens where punishment is due. Plus, why should we be obligated to prevent a greater suffering that was not caused externally? If a foreign power were just plain wrecking Greece then it is on us, but since Greece pretty well fucked itself (except for that thing with Germany) I don't feel like it is our job to save them from themselves, or save the man who would save them from themselves.

Greece didn't fuck itself.  Financial austerity is hard and means that some people go with less.  Financial austerity in the middle of the worst global economic event since the great depression is not only worse but stupid.  If greece cuts back, it's economy contracts and they have to pay off the debtors from a smaller economic base.  Normally export growth would be the saving grace but the combination of the global economy and European monetary policy have destroyed that avenue.

It's like if you shot yourself in the foot.  Nobody to blame but yourself and it sucks but you probably aren't going to die.  But imagine you shot yourself in the foot and then some asshole burns down the hospital and you bleed out and die.  Yes, you die of a self inflicted wound.  But the real murderer is the one who denied you the treatment that people typically receive.

The infuriating thing isn't the Greece is being forced into an adjustment.  Tons of countries get forced into adjustments after loose spending.  It's that it's being forced into an adjustment in the middle of an adverse climate not of it's own creation.  A climate, furthermore, that could be made easier at no pain to anyone if EU monetary policy.  Countries with unemployment rates of 14% shouldn't be given additional pain by countries with unemployment rates of 6% and a much wealthier population.

[Virex]

The level of nonyieldingness here rather surprises me.  Let me tie this into another hypothetical.  Suppose you can travel back in time and kill Hitler thus preventing the war and genocide?  Would you be willing to punish a man for sins he hadn't yet committed?  It's basically the same question I just proposed but here you are being punitive instead of lenient in order to prevent greater suffering.

I don't see what you're getting at? If there's even a clear chance that someone's going to commit genocide I'd say it's better to be safe then sorry and put a bullet in his head lest you do nothing and then find out he does go on a murderous rampage. If it's certain that he's going to commit genocide, then it'd be immoral not to kill him.

[mainiac]

The level of nonyieldingness here rather surprises me.  Let me tie this into another hypothetical.  Suppose you can travel back in time and kill Hitler thus preventing the war and genocide?  Would you be willing to punish a man for sins he hadn't yet committed?  It's basically the same question I just proposed but here you are being punitive instead of lenient in order to prevent greater suffering.

I don't see what you're getting at? If there's even a clear chance that someone's going to commit genocide I'd say it's better to be safe then sorry and put a bullet in his head lest you do nothing and then find out he does go on a murderous rampage. If it's certain that he's going to commit genocide, then it'd be immoral not to kill him.

Where I'm going is if you are willing to bend the law to punish someone who isn't guilty to avoid pointless destruction, why shouldn't you be willing to bend the law to not punish someone who is guilty.  Some of the replies made me think that people weren't considering both sides of the hypothetical so I was trying to restate it from a different direction.  I'm not really trying to push any moral position, just had a question pop up and I wanted to see where it would lead.

[Phmcw]

The law is the law : that's the basis of a democratic society. If you renounce this principle, you open a royal path to dictatorship.
No matter what the consequence are, justice follow it's course.

Anyway, in this case, I will wait for more information : we don't have it's version yet. A lot of people could have wanted him out, and the advantage of the timing and of the accusation is that he's out for the presidential run and that's Greece is in trouble now.

[Aqizzar]

Somewhere in New York, Eliot Spitzer is laughing his ass off right now.  He broke the law the classy way by paying a woman to have sex with him.  No muss, no fuss, no cries of evil or moral dilemmas, just an immediate resignation and maybe a fine, then heads right back to work as a financial-law expert for hire.  These guys could learn a thing or two, there's plenty of perfectly discrete prostitutes out there that you don't have to rape a cleaning lady.  What the Hell man.

[nenjin]

I got so many bad jokes piling up for this one, but I'm gonna take the high road.

[Virex]

The law is the law : that's the basis of a democratic society. If you renounce this principle, you open a royal path to dictatorship.
No matter what the consequence are, justice follow it's course.

Problem is that in our world, the justice system doesn't have anything to do with justice. It's more about money and the political orientation of the judge/jury and of course whoever's best at bribing.

[Phmcw]

His defence say he have an alibi. Well it seems that all we have to do is to wait for the materials proofs.

[Zangi]

The level of nonyieldingness here rather surprises me.  Let me tie this into another hypothetical.  Suppose you can travel back in time and kill Hitler thus preventing the war and genocide?  Would you be willing to punish a man for sins he hadn't yet committed?  It's basically the same question I just proposed but here you are being punitive instead of lenient in order to prevent greater suffering.

I don't see what you're getting at? If there's even a clear chance that someone's going to commit genocide I'd say it's better to be safe then sorry and put a bullet in his head lest you do nothing and then find out he does go on a murderous rampage. If it's certain that he's going to commit genocide, then it'd be immoral not to kill him.

Except there may be another that would take his place.  You are putting all blame on 1 person. 
He could not have done all he did alone.  He could not have been the only one that carried idea.  Someone else could have been the one that sparked that idea in him and others, he was just the one that stepped up first/'made the most sense'.

This was after WWI, when the Germans were non-too happy about the state of affairs placed upon them after their defeat.  What makes you think this 1 person is the catalyst that sparked the Death Camps?