Roy Moore, OJ Simpson, And why I don't believe you.

[kmoney]

Sometimes when you frame a guilty man all people can see is the frame job.
OJ Simpson might have done it and you might have convinced a jury of that based on the gloves and the shoe prints and left it alone. But they had to go spraying blood everywhere and then nobody believed anything they had to say that might have been the truth.

Now comes Roy Moore who might really be a creep but he was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court TWICE (after getting removed once) so nobody is going to convince me that they just crawled out from under a rock and realized that the Roy Moore that is running for Senate is THAT Roy Moore they dated in high school. If the allegations are true then all these women just happened to wait until one month before the election to come forward.

When it would do the most damage.

And there's no time to investigate the claims.

They are going to have to forgive me if I don't believe them.

I think your skepticism based on timing is understandable. One of my initial thoughts was definitely, why now?
But political motivation doesn't mean the allegations aren't true. And seeing how the story came about (the women didn't initiate it) helps with the skepticism.
And these women are more believable in our current environment where tons of women are feeling more empowered to speak up about what they've been subjected to. Maybe it was a combination of the MeToo movement and higher political stakes since this is a federal position.

On the flip side I'm also skeptical of the idea that women would completely fabricate stuff. Moore is under extra scrutiny, but putting yourself out there like this also makes you a victim of increased scrutiny. This can't be very fun for them either. Today I heard Tweeden, the Franken accuser, talk about how she's getting a ton of crap on social media, despite there being photographic evidence of her being groped while sleeping.

At the very least it seems clear that he dated high schoolers. Whether or not the sexual encounters (and I believe underage drinking) are true remains in doubt. And probably can never be proven.

One thing I can say for sure is that I feel bad for the Alabama GOP voters. It's not a fun situation to be in. At best you have a creepy dude vs a Democrat.

 

[fool]

I'd be surprised if he's not already toast. I wouldn't be surprised if something else came out before it's all over.

Maybe we'll get a preview of how the Senate gets rid of a member before Moore even gets there.

 

[fool]

I quoted that article because the mall banning appears to be based on more than a single girl.

The article you cited doesn't even establish that he was banned!

 

[kmoney]

The article you cited doesn't even establish that he was banned!

Banned, ran off, seems like mostly semantics at that point.

 

[annabenedetti]

Maybe we'll get a preview of how the Senate gets rid of a member before Moore even gets there.

I don’t know what happens with an ethics investigation but I remember reading somewhere that there’s no constitutional support for getting “rid” of a senator in Moore’s particulr situation once he’s been duly elected.

 

[kmoney]

I don’t know what happens with an ethics investigation but I remember reading somewhere that there’s no constitutional support for getting “rid” of a senator in Moore’s particulr situation once he’s been duly elected.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dont-be-so-quick-to-expel-roy-moore-from-the-senate

Over the last 48 hours, Republicans have been abandoning Roy Moore in droves. Last night on his Fox News show, Moore dead-ender Sean Hannity put Moore under a 24-hour deadline to prove his innocence or drop out of the race. In this climate it’s now widely assumed that should he be elected Moore either will be or should be expelled from the Senate over the multiple accusations of pursuing and in some cases assaulting teenage girls in the 1980s. .... But we’re dealing here with issues which must be given due weight and consideration apart from Moore’s alleged crimes. Our entire constitutional system is based on duly constituted elections for public officials. The ability for a house of Congress to expel one of its own members is a power so great that it contains within it the power to overturn our entire system of government. Our whole system of government is based on the idea that the people of individual states decide who will represent them in the Senate rather than the Senate deciding who will or won’t represent a given state. Yes, there are exceptions. And yes, the constitution explicitly gives the Senate the power to expel members. But the history is instructive. Fifteen senators have been expelled from the Senate in the history of the country. All of them were expelled for what amounted to treason and sedition. Fourteen of those were expelled in 1861 and 1862 for supporting the Confederacy. The one remaining was expelled in 1797 for conspiracy and treason tied to inciting the British to invade Spanish Florida. Each of the fifteen was expelled for treason, making war against the country itself, something that makes legitimately being a part of the government an impossibility. In fairness, twice in recent history, the Senate committee which reviews these matters recommended a senator for expulsion but the senators in question resigned before the Senate could vote. This was Harrison Williams in 1982 (bribery conviction in Abscam) and Bob Packwood for a long history of sexual harassment as Senator. I think proceedings may have also begun against John Ensign who got charged with financial crimes tied to an affair. But I’m not certain. In any case, he resigned. Packwood’s case is the most analogous. The Senate was preparing to expel him for a number of reasons. But they were all reasons rooted in a long history of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. I don’t remember every particular but I believe there were numerous instances that would now be classed as assault. (What happened in Packwood’s case was that he kept a diary in which he detailed it all.) But those were things he did as a Senator and more or less right up to the point he was about to be booted. As I noted above, Senators have only been expelled from the Senate for sedition. Others who resigned from the Senate under threat of expulsion did so because they had been convicted of crimes or were found by the Senate to have violated rules as a senator. ... Having said all this, I’m not saying definitively that it would be wrong to expel Moore. What concerns me is that it is being treated as a simple and obvious expedient when it is, in fact, a completely unprecedented move and highly questionable in terms of the precedent it sets regardless of Moore’s past crimes. The party at issue here isn’t Moore. It’s Alabama voters. The polls released since this scandal broke do not show them in a very good light at all. But voters have a perfect right to be terrible.

 

[fool]

I think your skepticism based on timing is understandable. One of my initial thoughts was definitely, why now?

That's all I'm looking for. In these forums minds are rarely changed. The best we can get most times is to understand why people think what they think.

But political motivation doesn't mean the allegations aren't true.

Framing the guilty man.

And seeing how the story came about (the women didn't initiate it) helps with the skepticism.
And these women are more believable in our current environment where tons of women are feeling more empowered to speak up about what they've been subjected to. Maybe it was a combination of the MeToo movement and higher political stakes since this is a federal position.

Understandable, the timing sucks but that should only speed the investigation yes?

On the flip side I'm also skeptical of the idea that women would completely fabricate stuff. Moore is under extra scrutiny, but putting yourself out there like this also makes you a victim of increased scrutiny. This can't be very fun for them either. Today I heard Tweeden, the Franken accuser, talk about how she's getting a ton of crap on social media, despite there being photographic evidence of her being groped while sleeping.

So far no evidence on Moore though.

At the very least it seems clear that he dated high schoolers. Whether or not the sexual encounters (and I believe underage drinking) are true remains in doubt. And probably can never be proven.

The drinking was relating to a girl that was in College.

One thing I can say for sure is that I feel bad for the Alabama GOP voters. It's not a fun situation to be in. At best you have a creepy dude vs a Democrat.

I think Moore is going to win if it gets to election time. We already had the Duck Dynasty thread around here and in the South the age difference isn't a big deal. When Moore finally did get married he was 38 and his bride was 24. She was a classmate of one of his accusers.

 

[fool]

Banned, ran off, seems like mostly semantics at that point.

So, the police have a trespass order against an assistant DA and there's no documentation?
Sorry, I need documentation.
There's no documentation that he was banned or "ran off".
So it's not semantics, it's there's no evidence that any of this ever happened.

 

[musterion]

Has Mitch McConnell said anything about Franken?

 

[commonsense]

It's gonna hit the fan now, This is a former D.A. and a former Judge, and a former Chief Alabama Supreme Court Justice, twice.

He's had a good run, up until now...

 

[fool]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dont-be-so-quick-to-expel-roy-moore-from-the-senate

Over the last 48 hours, Republicans have been abandoning Roy Moore in droves. Last night on his Fox News show, Moore dead-ender Sean Hannity put Moore under a 24-hour deadline to prove his innocence or drop out of the race. In this climate it’s now widely assumed that should he be elected Moore either will be or should be expelled from the Senate over the multiple accusations of pursuing and in some cases assaulting teenage girls in the 1980s. .... But we’re dealing here with issues which must be given due weight and consideration apart from Moore’s alleged crimes. Our entire constitutional system is based on duly constituted elections for public officials. The ability for a house of Congress to expel one of its own members is a power so great that it contains within it the power to overturn our entire system of government. Our whole system of government is based on the idea that the people of individual states decide who will represent them in the Senate rather than the Senate deciding who will or won’t represent a given state. Yes, there are exceptions. And yes, the constitution explicitly gives the Senate the power to expel members. But the history is instructive. Fifteen senators have been expelled from the Senate in the history of the country. All of them were expelled for what amounted to treason and sedition. Fourteen of those were expelled in 1861 and 1862 for supporting the Confederacy. The one remaining was expelled in 1797 for conspiracy and treason tied to inciting the British to invade Spanish Florida. Each of the fifteen was expelled for treason, making war against the country itself, something that makes legitimately being a part of the government an impossibility. In fairness, twice in recent history, the Senate committee which reviews these matters recommended a senator for expulsion but the senators in question resigned before the Senate could vote. This was Harrison Williams in 1982 (bribery conviction in Abscam) and Bob Packwood for a long history of sexual harassment as Senator. I think proceedings may have also begun against John Ensign who got charged with financial crimes tied to an affair. But I’m not certain. In any case, he resigned. Packwood’s case is the most analogous. The Senate was preparing to expel him for a number of reasons. But they were all reasons rooted in a long history of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. I don’t remember every particular but I believe there were numerous instances that would now be classed as assault. (What happened in Packwood’s case was that he kept a diary in which he detailed it all.) But those were things he did as a Senator and more or less right up to the point he was about to be booted. As I noted above, Senators have only been expelled from the Senate for sedition. Others who resigned from the Senate under threat of expulsion did so because they had been convicted of crimes or were found by the Senate to have violated rules as a senator. ... Having said all this, I’m not saying definitively that it would be wrong to expel Moore. What concerns me is that it is being treated as a simple and obvious expedient when it is, in fact, a completely unprecedented move and highly questionable in terms of the precedent it sets regardless of Moore’s past crimes. The party at issue here isn’t Moore. It’s Alabama voters. The polls released since this scandal broke do not show them in a very good light at all. But voters have a perfect right to be terrible.

So, he's gonna win and be seated.

 

[musterion]

Good article on how these scandals are selectively lensed in the media.

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=372557

 

[musterion]

Comment 34 is correct.

 

[fool]

Has Mitch McConnell said anything about Franken?

Did he have time? It seems like that whole thing was less than one news cycle.

 

[kmoney]

So, the police have a trespass order against an assistant DA and there's no documentation?
Sorry, I need documentation.
There's no documentation that he was banned or "ran off".
So it's not semantics, it's there's no evidence that any of this ever happened.

My response was based on your focus on a ban. The semantics is that if store managers were unofficially trying to prevent him from hanging around then it's effectively the same thing as a ban. He was a problem and wasn't wanted around.

There wouldn't be any documentation if it was unofficial.

 

[fool]

My response was based on your focus on a ban. The semantics is that if store managers were unofficially trying to prevent him from hanging around then it's effectively the same thing as a ban. He was a problem and wasn't wanted around.

There wouldn't be any documentation if it was unofficial.

So was he banned from the mall as the article implies or was he run off of select stores?

 

[The Barbarian]

The fact that a number of merchants were creeped out by him hanging around high school girls is just one more confirmation of the accusations.

 

[rexlunae]

30 sources but no proof. Where's the proof? Give me some proof. You're not going to get rid of this guy without proof.

I don't think any amount of evidence would convince you. You can always choose not to believe someone. If this were a court of law, one reliable witness could constitute "proof". We have 30. What you have to balance is the credibility of the witnesses against the accused.

The 14 year old is the most compelling, phone records? that should be easy. Phone records showing Moore called her house on these occasions that she claims?

Phone records from the 1970s? Are you nuts?

Sorry, but you don't always have the luxury of smoking-gun evidence.

 

[musterion]

Did he have time? It seems like that whole thing was less than one news cycle.

He's the head R in the Senate, 2nd most powerful R in the country (sadly), as such never more than a spit away from mic and camera. Let's see him bloviate over this the way he did over Moore.

 

[rexlunae]

Roy Moore has been in office for years and the Washington Post has know about his background for years.

He's been in state office, and I don't know what makes you think WaPo sat on a story for years. But if so....so what? Does that make it ok?

It's not his background that is suspicious (they already knew), it is the timing of bringing it to national attention that smacks of politics.

Ok. Not sure what the actual objection us supposed to be.

Fool is not questioning whether one that is a child molester should be prosecuted.
Fool agrees with that.
Fool is questioning, as many others are, the timing of their concern for political gain.
We all know how folks will keep information to themselves until there comes a time that revealing that info will benefit them and hurt the other side.
Silent for years UNTIL it can be of use politically.
Politics is being questioned, not child molestation.

Actually, he questioned the motivations of the women coming forward. I pointed out that that isn't what happened.