Rob's House

There's no link because it's not something I read about. And it came up in the Jared thread because it happened to Jared. If they took Jared out behind the court and broke his legs with a cro bar I'm guessing you'd be okay with that too and would think it crazy that others were concerned that such treatment, if allowed, might befall others less deserving who somehow ran afoul of the law.

So if someone commits a crime then !@#$ em? Let em burn? That's bull ****. I often think the people enforcing the law are just as bad as those breaking it. I understand it's not clearly fixable, but it's not as simple as innocent or guilty. There are a whole lot of people who may be guilty of a crime that don't deserve to have their lives and/or livelihoods destroyed for it. But "tough on crime" sells to an audience that sees "crime" only in the abstract. You know I'm not a bleeding heart. I'm speaking about checking the power of the state to take the freedom of citizens. What good is due process if the process is a sham? And a system that allows, and even embraces, bait and switch tactics by the government to imprison people is not something I'm okay with.

The written submission is optional and there is no recourse. The fact that the defendant knows there's a chance he might get !@#$ed isn't the same as knowing he will get !@#$ed, especially when the alternative means a significant portion of his life in prison. The fact that you guys are incapable of seeing this outside the prism of Jared !@#$ing Vogel is depressing. The power given to prosecutors and judges is obscene. Most of the time you get no meaningful appeal. You get one shot and that's your life. And the public doesn't give a flying !@#$ if your life is flushed away.

I'm not "all up in arms" over this instance. This is something I've had a problem with long before this case ever came to be. I would (for starters) require the judge to submit a written explanation, specifically stating the criteria upon which the deviation was made, to a higher court. I would also allow a defendant the right to withdraw his guilty plea if the judge deviated from the guidelines.

That's where I am. If we're up 3 scores with 30 seconds left in the 4th I'm still going to expect a loss until about 15 seconds after the final whistle. But a win would be absolutely amazing.

Real life non-famous guy had a case where he could have potentially won at trial but ran a very significant risk of being convicted of a charge with guidelines that ran up to 8 years. The prosecutor understood that she could lose at trial so she offered a plea deal for a charge with guidelines that run ~1.5-3.5 years. He took the deal and forewent his right to trial to avoid the long sentence. Judge gave him 7 years on a first offense. He has no recourse. It happens all the time. Perhaps you should be less opinionated about topics you are painfully ignorant of. And nowhere did anyone suggest that one judge making one decision about Jared from !@#$ing Subway would be the catalyst that brought the system crumbling down. I'm a little disappointed to see you taking a page out of the book of gator with that dishonest/Dumbass ****. I disagree. I don't think the appeals process is an adequate check, and if you ever found yourself in the defendant's seat you would quickly have a deep appreciation for the problem.

The hypo I gave you was loosely based on a real world scenario. Your argument seems to be that Jared is a POS and so therefore it doesn't matter how the system works, and you've alleged this error by the DA on ? with minimal knowledge of the evidence. Your position here is weak. Somehow I think you'd have a different take if the judge had used his discretion to deviate down and gave him a much shorter scentence than the DA asked for. FTR, I'm not completely opposed to SOME discretion by the judge. I just think it should be more structured, subject to stricter review, and require some concrete reasoning as to why a particular case falls outside of the normal guidelines.

You don't get to shop for DAs. And it's entirely likely a non-famous guy would have gotten the same deal. Less likely, but still possible, that the judge decides to give him a sentence outside the accepted realm because he feels like it. With the millenials who view financial success as on par with child molestation becoming adults and infiltrating the work force you should be concerned too. Imagine 15-20 years from now one of your accountants makes an error and you're on the hook for a white collar crime. You didn't know anything about it, but they've got enough evidence that they have a good chance of getting a conviction. You're offered a deal by which you forfeit your right to trial and plea guilty to an offense that calls for 2-4 years under the guidelines, because the DA is going to up the charges and go for one that calls for 10 years. So you take the deal, but your millenial judge thinks fat cats driving around with Bentley's and Googlebots are hoarding all the money so people in the projects can't have any and thinks your deal doesn't call for enough time so he gives you 8 years. You decide you'd rather withdraw your plea and go to trial. Too Late. Yeah, except it does. Again, you're missing the bigger picture. And what they call it its a horrible basis for determining how something should be handled. The fact that people are pressured into giving up their right to trial and then have to hope that a basically unaccountable judge doesn't decide to deviate up from the guidelines is not any kind of system I would ever choose to be subject to. We as a society are too short-sighted to see the problems it poses. And I'll never understand why otherwise intelligent people who are rightly skeptical of the government are so quick to give unaccountable judges unfettered power to imprison people.

OK. So what happens to the guys who aren't child molesters who get wedged in a position where they basically have to forfeit their trial rights because the system's been rigged, and then get shafted with a bait and switch with no recourse? Because when you can do this there is nothing that confines the practice to just child molesters or just people who actually are guilty.

I would say if the judge is going to act as such that the defendant should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. The issue has Jack **** to do with Jared; it has to do with the fundamental operation of the criminal justice system.

Of course he CAN. That's the problem. He has discretion and he abused it. I think you're missing the bigger point. People often forego defenses and plead guilty to crimes because they're willing to make that sacrifice to avoid the penalties they might face of they lose at trial. For the judge to then give them the same penalty is a miscarriage of justice and a threat to our justice system as a whole.

A judge shouldn't base the sentence on concerns about facts that were neither plead to nor proven.

Prosecutors are looking to please their political bosses by being tough on crime. I'd be surprised if the prosecutor wasn't either asking for the high end of the guidelines, or if asking for less did so as a condition of the plea agreement. In either case, I'd like to know what about Jared's case was so unique that it warranted deviating from the standard or agreed penalty range - You know, other than Jared being famous.

Syrian refugees are the new Mexican border hoppers. If you have any concerns with rolling out the red carpet for them you're a bigot and a xenophobe.

I haven't followed the case beyond knowing Jared !@#$ed some teenage bookers, but anytime a judge goes beyond what a prosecutor is asking for it should give everyone cause for concern. It sounds like less of a legal ruling and more like a pompous judge showboating in a high-profile case.

I stopped reading after he used head to head matchups as a primary reason for giving Brady the nod over Manning. I can see giving him the edge on postseason success, but judging QBs against each other based on head to head match ups is mind-numbingly moronic. Seeing as how both QBs play against a completely different defense it doesn't make much sense to use that as a measuring stick. It's like judging two golfers by who had the better score when they weren't even playing on the same course.

It is a good story, but I think you overstate his fall and athleticism. He was never projected to go high, and despite being possibly the most athletic QB in the league at the moment, he's never had the elite speed or arm of Vick. I actually think seeing him perform as an arguably better all around QB despite having less flashy talent makes it an even better story.

I'm not only sure, I'm HIV positive it doesn't work that way.

The Redskins haven't even started negotiations with his agent. This is just people discussing what they think may happen.

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/tyrod-taylor/ He dug them out of a deep hole in TB. The NE game is worth watching to showcase the distinction between his play and his stats. One of the reasons people are high on Cousins is not so much that he's been dominating but because he shows steady improvement. He's learning how to read defenses and is making better decisions. He's basically what we've been told EJ was: a guy with all the physical tools who needs to develop. The main differences are that Cousins does appear to have the tools and does appear to be developing.

His stats are misleading. Plus, he's made steady and substantial improvement over the course of the season. If he keeps playing the way he has over the last few weeks he'll be highly sought after.

I think it's funny how the thread about the Bills way of winning being unsustainable has become a punchline despite the fact that it ultimately proved to be true.

I was thinking about this the other day and realized that it's the perfect example of how you can never make everyone like you. I can't think of anyone that doesn't draw the ire of someone. I never understand why people hate Chris Carter. Of course, people wonder why I hate Bob Costas, so...

Over the course of the 6 years I've been posting here I've gone from being a dreamy eyed homer to a bitterly jaded "realist". I want to be optimistic but through operant conditioning I've come to expect disappointment.

I'm going to talk a bunch of **** to our players on Twitter and hope in motivates them.