[Joe_Stalin]

Quote:

Buckley Is Wrong

By Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Recently my friend Bill Buckley wrote a rude column about our mutual friend, Conrad Black, on the occasion of Conrad's conviction on three counts of mail fraud and one of obstruction of justice, a mere speed bump after the mountains of charges originally filed against him. Conrad is appealing. Friends should stand by him either in polite silence or by joining me in public encouragement. The case has been variously characterized as an example of "corporate kleptocracy" by those who insist Conrad is a scoundrel or prosecutorial zealotry by those who think that in building a great newspaper chain, he saved some of the finest newspapers in the English-speaking world and introduced a sophisticated conservative point of view into the dull drone of our liberal-polluted "Kultursmog." Michael Barone, one of the wisest political observers in the country and a lawyer, has asseverated that "the case should never have been prosecuted." That is about the way I see it, and Bill's column was ill-timed.

"I don't need you when I'm right. I need you when I'm wrong," the late Louisiana politician Earl Long allegedly said to a legislator when seeking his vote for a dubious tax measure. My rule of friendship is a variation of old Earl's maxim. "I don't need you in good times. I need you in bad times." And it is in bad times that many, particularly in the political class, take a powder. "The phone never rings," is how a former high official from the Reagan administration described his life immediately after being falsely accused of some vague malfeasance now long lost down memory's well. My friend from the Reagan years was innocent, but he was also a vigorous combatant. He cleared his name, but the abandonment he suffered has been on my mind through Conrad's long years of scandalous news stories and expensive prosecutions.

Friends stand by their friends in their times of trial. My friendship with Conrad goes back two decades, though it has not been an easy friendship. He is said to be a tough business bargainer, and I can tell you he is. In an extended negotiation with me, he was tough and wily. Never was he unethical, but in the end, I did not like the deal and I rejected it. Afterward we were perturbed with each other for a while, but my anger fizzled out. He is the rare media mogul who is pro-American, pro-Western and pro-Israel. He is immensely civilized, reads and writes intelligent books and has a sardonic wit. His indomitable character and cheerful resilience have been demonstrated throughout the proceedings against him. Eventually he forgave me for my independent streak, and we renewed our friendship. He may be indomitable and resilient, but he is not narrowly stubborn.

To return to the Buckley column, Conrad has been a major figure in the recrudescence of conservatism throughout the Western world that Bill and a handful of others began some 50 years ago. That is all the more reason that Bill should have stuck by Conrad. We should stick by our own -- certainly when they are innocent or even when their cases are in doubt. There will be plenty of others to attack them, some from political animus, some from ignorance, some from self-righteous egotism. Standing by a friend under fire is the obligation of friendship. Standing by a friend who shares your values is a defense of those values.

I have considered Conrad's four convictions, and I agree with his appeal. He has not done anything wrong intentionally. He is the victim of prosecutorial excess. If he had done something wrong, it would be for the most part a disagreement over bookkeeping, not the kind of thing that should yank a man of his immense gifts from society and deposit him for years in prison.

Conrad was our friend in good times, and it is his friends' obligation to be his friend during the cruel winds of bad times. If a friend of Conrad's disagrees with this, he should be gentleman enough to remain silent.


R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator and co-author of Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House.


Link

[Psudo]

martin14 wrote:

I am surprised about the fine.. 125k is hilarious.

the fine should have been the 6 mil they know was stolen,

plus something to slap his wrists.. another 15 - 20 mil maybe.

The Old Testament prescribes repaying 4 times what was stolen as the punishment for theft. That'd be $24.4 million for Black. That fits your range pretty well.

EmperorLiam wrote:

Conrad Black is not an American citizen, he doesn't get to go to a minimum security prison.

You're right, I stand corrected. I confused the terms "low" and "minimum". However, the low security is still not "a prison full of STD infected junkies and thugs that will rape and beat you, and often shank you with prison made knives." as you initially stated. A good article on the topic from The Star.

[hr]Good crap, Stalin! Did you really need to quote that whole thing, reader comments and all? I can click a mouse, thanks.

I bet Emmett Tyrrell's friend in the Reagan Administration was Press Secretary Lyn Nofziger.

[Kjorteo]

On one hand, seeing shady white-collar criminals get low sentences in general is a very sad thing. (The "culture of corruption," as Psudo mentioned, seems like it more or less applies well here.)

On the other hand, I really would have hoped that we as a society could have risen above getting our advice from the Code of Hammurabi and the Old Testament by now.

[martin14]

On the other hand, I really would have hoped that we as a society could have risen above getting our advice from the Code of Hammurabi and the Old Testament by now.[/quote]


hmm.. maybe thats the problem with society nowadays.. we have moved too much away

from the Code and the Testament....

[Kjorteo]

Good Lord, no. The thought of living in an actual Old Testament-style society quite frankly terrifies me. Even ignoring the over-the-top rules (slavery, stoning kids to death, women can't go to church until x weeks after their period,) the general harshness of the law--from how many things it controlled to how severely it punished infractions--was overwhelming. Sharia law has nothing on Leviticus.

[Psudo]

One thing society under Leviticus had that I'd like to see again was an extremely high standard of proof required for conviction. Though I'm not all that found of it's invasiveness and harshness, I'm also rather fond of the clarity of that law; a given crime had a very clear punishment associated with it. In our system, the sentence for a given crime may fluctuate between 29 months in low security prison to 30 years in high security. This puts far too much of equality under the law subject to human biases in judgment, such as the belief in a "culture of corruption" that necessitates "making an example" of someone. (This did not seem to happen in Black's case, but easily could have; it's happened before.)

American secular law and sharia law are both lacking somewhat in those two virtues.

[EmperorLiam]

Code of Hammurabi was a beacon of justice for its time... don't insult the ancients by comparing them to the religious rags of the young mono-theist religious empires of today.

All prisons in USA are virtually max occupancy or over max occupancy, junkies, rapists, are in all levels of all different prison systems, Conrad Black may very well get a cellmate thats in jail for robbery, who likes raping on the side for fun. No one can make any absolute claim about what will or won't happen, but we can agree the odds of Conrad Black being raped by a man, has skyrockted. Unless you think being locked in at night with two strange men that statistically speaking are most likely not white collar criminals.

Even Canadian minimum security prisons have rapists, we've had guards raping prisoners, we've had it all... so don't pretend your American jails are a beacon of good treatment, the guards beat the prisoners etc, we know it goes on, its not a secret.

[CanadianJeff]

"You think that jail rehabilitates people... stop drinking the bong water. "

I am not refering to prisons. I am refering to community outreach and drug education programs now in place being used on those with charges in these areas and otherwise.

Your darn right prison does not rehabilitate people which is why I personallly despise some of the sentences handed down. Frankly if your going to lock up a murder, pedophile or rapist you may as well just throw away the key because if anything Prison is likely to make the problem worse.

I think a good example of that would have to be Philip Zimbardo's experiment of the "Standford County Prison". He bascially put out an ad asking for paid help for a social experiment. After he hired enough people he randomly had people split into two groups. One took on the role as prisoners and the others as guards. Basically they had them all live in the basement of a facility they redesigned to be as acurate to a prison setting as possible. Basically put all hell broke lose and the guards who were everyday normal people began to hate and resent the prisoners for almost no good reason. They did things like make them clean out toliets with their bare hands.

The prisoners resisted of course and after a week the experiment had to be cancelled because of the extreme tention of the enviroment.

All the subjects were normal everyday people. It's just madness how fast the prison enviroment caused a massive breakdown into a dismal setting.

And honestly Liam...your listing a blog as a state of evidence compared to studies done by various scholars over the issue. No dice sorry. Please try a scientific journal or a few newspaper articles and I'll be more receptive to reading it all. It's a very interesting subject for me personally speaking but I'm more prone to weigh valid sources.

A Blog doesn't rate high on that list.

[Psudo]

Liam, a past occurrence doesn't mean it's likely. There's no evidence that he's likely to be raped in a low security prison. It's a baseless suggestion.

Jeff, can you recommend some peer reviewers of prison research?

[CanadianJeff]

Well I have read a few of them at this point but that was the one that most stuck out in my memory.

Tell you what though since I have access at this point in my life to a giant library of reserach (*glee) I'll see what I can dig up on prison reserach of this kind and possiblily of the opostie point of view.

[EmperorLiam]

CanadianJeff:

"he should be getting 15 (years) at least."
"In this day and age we try and rehabilitate theives and people like Conrad Black"
"prison does not rehabilitate people which is why I personallly despise some of the sentences handed down."

Consistency... you lack it.

Do you think he has kleptomania? Do you actually beleive there is some sort of 10 step program for recovering thieves? There is no rehabilitation necessary or possible for thieves. The only thing a society can successfully do to decrease theft is to punish them as a deterrent to others. Eye for an eye, you steal, are found guilty, then society steals back from you, case closed.


Anyone that thinks any conclusions could be drawn from the wildly unscientific Stranford prison experiment done by Philip Zimbardo needs to learn the scientific method. During the experiment Zimbardo ordered the guards to demean the prisoners, thus destroying what little scientific credibility it had left. I am already well aware of Zimbardo, he actually defended one of the men that tortured people at Abu Grahib, the Judge disregarded his testimony, then Zimbardo wrote a book about it.


"I'm trying to find the source as I was sure I've read it before (hate it when that happens) but I did read a sutdy that concluded after Mulroney got rid of the death penalty in Canada crime did not increase at all but rather slighly decreased a small precentage"

Mulroney tried to bring back the death penalty, not get rid of it. Last time capital punishment was carried out was 1962, murder since 1962 is much higher per capita today. Correlation does not guarantee causation, but if we consider it, then capital punishment deters the crime (only the crime that can get you a death sentence):

http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/200 ... anada.html


My link was perfectly acceptable, had you wanted to read the long version of the article that the blogger was summarizing, all you had to do was click the link right there at the top. Either way, here it is again:
http://libertycorner.blogspot.com/2004/ ... icide.html



Me: " Hopefully hes rich enough that he gets special treatment"
CJ: "So if a rich man breaks the law he deserves special treatment?"

No, I simply acknowledge that special treatment occurs, and that I hope he receives it because his penalty is excessive.


The only compensation I get for this service I'm providing you is a small glimmer of hope that you will become wiser, but at the very least, do me a favour and don't 'tangle' with me unless your throughly educated on the subject. I learn for a living, so I have way more free time and knowledge than is healthy.




Psudo:

Baseless suggestion? The basis is that he is going to a jail, and statistically the odds of him being raped have increased, do you dispute this? The ONLY way to prove me wrong, is to show statistical evidence that rape among males is equal or lower in prison. If you can do that, I will concede. Also, STD infection is highest in prisons. I mean really Psudo, saying my claim is baseless, is itself baseless if you don't back it up with evidence.

[Psudo]

Liam, I don't have to prove your statement false because I didn't claim it was false. I claimed it is baseless. It is baseless because you have provided no basis in fact. That's what "baseless" means; no basis in fact.

The common myth of rape being common in prison is not a factual basis. It's a rumor. The existence of a rumor neither proves it true nor false.

There are statistics claiming rape is common in prison. Human Rights Watch claims it's about 7%, based on a poll of inmates. Surprisingly, the inmates of prisons overwhelmingly complained about the conditions of their incarceration. Some might even be lying in order to argue cruel and unusual punishment in their appeals or to their parole boards.

That same article mentions official reports of rapes in prison are more like 50 per state in a nation of 2 million inmates. 2,500 / 2,000,000 = 0.125% (1/8th of 1%). That's not "likely". Sure, prisons have motivations to lie, but so do prisoners. Both sources of evidence are based on the unverified reports of people with motivations to lie. They're both ridiculous together.

Further, these stats apply to all prisons, ignoring the differences between, say, minimum and maximum security prisons, male-only and female-only prisons, prisons with large populations of sex offenders vs. prisons without, etc. I have no reason to believe a low security prison has an equal share of inmate sex crime as a maximum security or super-max prison. I have no reason to believe Black's prison will be typical in that regard. I have no reason to believe inmate sex crime would target a rich, influential man who presumably has the political connections to call in favors for or against other inmates.

Any number of claims can be made for or against the likelihood of Black being in danger of rape, but none of them have any validity beyond the random whims of the judgment of the speaker.

Thus, I call your assertion "baseless". If it happens to be right, it would be pure coincidence, utterly disconnected from any kind of factual logic. It would be ridiculous for me to believe any assertion under those conditions.

If I'm wrong, then somewhere there's a study based on, say, medical evidence or court convictions, something with a relevant standard of proof. Find that study, and I'll concede it's argument to be based in reality. I've already mentioned that I'd like more info to CanadianJeff; I'll be looking too. Until and unless such a study is found, though, I stand by what I said.

[EmperorLiam]

Psudo: Thats a whole lot of rabble that is disproved with a mere google search with plenty of FACTS about prison rape. The individual Conrad will be taken from his 'rich famous free person environment', to a jail cell with one/two cell mates. Simply putting him in that room with another male increases the odds of a sexual assault.


There is nothing coincidental about making predictions.


Applying logic to human behavior is in itself illogical, are you qualified to explain why prisoners rape on another?

If you don't beleive more 'evil' shit occurs when a human is given power over another, than you are a zealous optimist.

If prison rape wasn't an issue Psudo, Bush wouldn't have signed the Prison Rape Elimination act of 2003. Keep in mind many of the rape allegations are also against guards, are you going to correlate prison security with the likelihood of a guard raping a prisoner too?


Dismissing this as 'baseless' is a absolutist position, a fools errand. Nothing is absolute, for all we know Conrad will actually rape his cell mate first.

[Kjorteo]

Whether being in prison technically makes him more likely to be raped or not, the question becomes this: so?

EmperorLiam, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be using the increase in likelihood as an objection for the man's fate, as if putting him in a more-dangerous-than-before environment satisfies our current definitions of cruel and unusual punishment.

The problem with counting things like that is that there are very few alternatives that don't increase the likelihood of something. If someone stole several million dollars, was caught, and the only punishment was that he had to give it back, even that makes it more likely that he will starve to death. It's a laughable notion to consider, but I said more likely, not likely. I think it's fair to say that every person on these forums could consider their personal likelihood of starvation, no matter how low it already is, and concede that it'd be even lower still if they had an extra several million dollars. Sentencing a man to starve to death for theft is clearly excessive; it's capital punishment, and it's a particularly long and painful way to die. It would clearly be cruel and unusual, so does that mean it's unfair to take the stolen money back in this analogy? Apparently it does, applying EmperorLiam's logic.

Conrad committed and was convicted of a crime, and astonishingly enough, being convicted of a crime usually means going to jail. Now, if you want to talk prison reform, that's fine, but that's a completely different argument.

[CanadianJeff]

And honestly Liam Conrad is likely to get special watch by the guards to ensure nothing does happen to him while in jail. Frankly they would likely lose thier jobs if he comes to harm while in prison.

He won't just be any old prisoner. He will be watched and his safety will likely be ensured moreso then most inmates. Yes his odds of being raped have increased but it's so silly to point that out when his odds of MANY things increase by being in jail. That's part of commiting and being caught doing a crime. You have to spend time in a not quite so nice enviroment.

That's just bloody common sense. Get off the "rape" train already. Yes it's a real and serious issue in the criminal justice system and it deserves to have attention brought to the mattter. But that is a topic very much seperate from Black and why he does or does not deserve his sentence.