Crime & Federalism

I have been saying for years, guys, that you simply must record your sexual exploits. Women will falsely accuse you of rape, and having sex without a video is more dangerous than have sex without a condom:

The attorney for a San Francisco lawyer accused of sexually assaulting women who responded to his ads for rough sex dropped a bombshell in court Wednesday: a videotape of one accuser that he says contradicts her claims the sex was nonconsensual.

Robert Michael Hoffman, 51, has been in custody since Aug. 5, after three women told police he raped or sexually assaulted them in his apartment after they responded to his online personals.

Attorney Stuart Hanlon says the women consented to the encounters. And after one woman, age 19, testified Wednesday at Hoffman’s preliminary hearing, Hanlon told a judge that he will provide a videotape of their encounters.

“This witness lied blatantly about what occurred,” Hanlon later said.

It's a dangerous world out there for young men. Your odds of being falsely accused of rape are far greater than the odds that a woman will actually be raped. Conduct yourselves accordingly.

If you haven't already read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, you should put down whatever you are reading, and read it immediately. I truly believe a man needs to must read three things to understand life - Franklin's autobiography, The Nicomachean Ethics, and pre-2009 Roissy.

Anyhow, here is Franklin on the Socratic Methods use and abuses: 

While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method.

I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.

I continu'd this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.

This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.

If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire. 

Note that Franklin's language patterns are similar to NLP. "Can you make room for the possibility that x, y, z are true?" is far superior to, "You are wrong for the following three reasons."

Imagine a woman tells you she has a rape fantasy. In order for the fantasy to work, you are told, you must ignore her screams and pleas. After all, it wouldn't be rape if she could stop you. 

Sound outrageous? Consider a case involving San Francisco lawyer, Robert Michael Hoffman.

Hoffman posted ads seeking out women with rape fantasies:

An ad posted in June stated, in part, "I want you, I want to hit you, I want you to cry," court documents show. "I want you to be scared of me sometimes." 

Women answered his ads by appearing at his apartment, even though:

Other ads told women who agreed to meet him they would be pulled to the knees by their hair, slapped, degraded and humiliated.

In other words, the women wanted to be fantasy-raped, and they knew they would be fantasy-raped upon entering the apartment. There's more:

Hanlon said two of the victims who came forward to cops had more than one encounter with Hoffman. One of the victims wrote an email to Hoffman stating, "I read your ad and sounds so hot," court documents show.

Even though the woman consented to be fantasy-raped, prosecutors contend that a lawyer is a rapist because he didn't take no for an answer: 

But prosecutors say the women became victims as soon as their demands to stop the sex acts went unheard. Hoffman became rough with the women as soon as they reached his apartment door, court documents show.

Yet the entire point of the encounter was for their demands to stop the sex to remain unheard. They had  rape fantasy. They wanted to be taken against their will. That's why they showed up to the guy's apartment.

This is going to be an interesting case to watch, especially considering the allegations:

Victim: 36-year-old East Bay woman 
Date: March 
Charges: Two counts of forcible oral copulation, one count of sexual battery

Oral copulation charges never impress. If a man told me to suck his dick, I would bite it off. Why can't a woman do the same thing?

The West Memphis 3 are going to be released, proving humanity hasn't evolved one iota since the Salem Witch Trials.

If you haven't been following this story, don't miss the documentary, "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills." Incidentally, the release comes after DNA evidence cleared the boys, who had been wrongfully convicted:

(Reuters) - Newly tested DNA evidence in the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old Cub Scouts in Arkansas has failed to link the crimes to the men convicted in the murders, including one on Death Row, advocates for the men said on Wednesday.

Well, now you see the problem. The DNA evidence didn't exonerate the boys. It merely estalished that no DNA of the boys was found at the crime scence. The unethical prosecutors who convicted the boys would argue, "Maybe the DNA was washed away. That inference alone does not justify a release."

Thus, the state is going to release the boys from prison if they falsely confess to the crime. The conviction remains a total outrage, although I'll wager the young men who were wrongfully convicted are pleased that their lawyers didn't go on strike.

From Rob, in response to this post:

Most everyone seems down on the London protests. Look at the very language we use when discussing the London events. Riots. Contrast the discussion of the aggressive political protests occuring in London with the language we use when discussing the massive destruction of British private property, over 200 years ago:

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea coming into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. 

The Boston Tea Riot was undertaken by the have-nots against the haves:

As Europeans developed a taste for tea in the 17th century, rival companies were formed to import the product from the East Indies. In England, Parliament gave the East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea in 1698. When tea became popular in the British colonies, Parliament sought to eliminate foreign competition by passing an act in 1721 that required colonists to import their tea only from Great Britain. 

That sounds similar to the concentration of wealth that has occurred in the United States and Britain, countries where there is no such thing as a free market, as governments choose winners and losers through bailouts and pork and entitlement programs.

Were the Boston Tea Rioters nihilists? Were they justified in destroying property? 

The Declaration of Independence was an act of treason, and the Constitution was enacted only after the death of Englishmen and the destruction of British property.

Opposing riots is unamerican, and any of you opposing the riots would have sided with the British. Perhaps we should call you the neo-loyalists.

Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain (and the British monarchy) during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. 

Aggressive political protests are needed in a world where elections no longer have consequences.