I think the common theme is dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Estimates are that 6-12% of Sanders primary voters voted for Trump in 2016. The specific ideology of the candidates was likely less important than the promise to dismantle the establishment.

I’m still of the belief that 2024, Biden beats Trump.

I don’t think so. In each case, there was significant dissatisfaction with the losing candidate prior to the election.

• In 2016, it was because people saw the DNC as having subverted the democratic process to give the nomination to Clinton when Sanders might have won in a fair race.
• In 2020, pick any of Trump’s many faults, or the various impacts of the pandemic. He was terribly unpopular and would have lost to any mainstream candidate.
• In 2024, it was mostly economic concerns, for which many blamed Biden. Harris positioned herself as a continuation of Biden when Biden was terribly unpopular.

The government has sabotaged its purported objective by not taking the opportunity to deport him to Costa Rica when it had the chance. I suppose a country that has offered him asylum and residence, which he has indicated he would prefer to go to isn’t cruel enough.

The underlying theme is dissatisfaction with the political establishment.

The author seems to be viewing the state as the first line of defense and neighbors helping each other as a last resort to be used only when the state has failed. An alternate view is that neighbors helping each other is the first line of defense, and the need to rely on the state is a sign there isn’t a functioning community.

In fairness to Boebert’s son, the news stories I’m finding say he was 17 at the time. We probably shouldn’t condemn teenagers as pedophiles for having sex with other teenagers close to their own age. Exactly how much age difference to tolerate is tricky, and something I’m glad not to be tasked with deciding.

This distinction is useful to a mental health professional treating someone for those conditions. It is not useful in the context of the public condemning adults for sexually abusing children.

Why Don’t the Survivors Name Names?

Several of them have, and none of the offenders have faced serious consequences. No, Andrew Windsor’s mild public shaming doesn’t count.

Oh, sure, her views are very concerning and totally unsuitable for a therapist. Invoking Satan and calling trans acceptance demonic should get some serious attention from the university outside of her grade for this particular assignment.

Sadly, I fear that’s not likely in the current political climate, at least not in a red state.

I read the assignment, the paper, and the instructor comments. The instructor is correct to give this a failing grade, however a zero was probably too harsh.

The criteria were:

1. Is there a clear link back to the assigned article? Can the reader assess whether the student has read the assigned article? (10 points)
2. Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than a summary? (5 points)
3. Are the main ideas and thoughts organized into a coherent discussion? Is the writing clear enough to follow without multiple re-readings? (5 points)

These are not particularly tough criteria. It’s an easy assignment aimed at ensuring students read a particular article and think about its contents. Here’s how I think I’d grade it:

1. I skimmed the article myself. In 2020, I would have been pretty confident the student read it. In 2025, I can’t be sure an LLM didn’t summarize it for the student. I would expect more discussion of specific details from the article rather than a general overview of themes, especially now. 5/10.
2. The student definitely has plenty of her own reactions to the article in her paper, but all of them are based on religion rather than psychology. If she wrote that there’s substantial reason to believe certain gendered behaviors are based on biology and instinct, and that going against those instincts causes stress, that’s fine. In a more rigorous paper, she’d need to cite sources for that, but not here. She could even use the presence of gender norms in religious texts to argue that multiple cultures have discovered something similar to what she believes. She didn’t though. She talked about her religious beliefs regarding gender. 4/10.
3. It’s easy enough to follow her writing. 4/5.

13/25 (52%) is not usually a passing grade.

Capping the luxury features and size of passenger vehicles would do a lot more to bring down costs than removing safety features.

The average cost isn’t the problem; the base cost is.

There are good arguments for limiting vehicle size and weight for safety reasons, but that’s a separate issue.

calling her a “ranting lunatic”

He’s not wrong in general. She’s a ranting lunatic.

He’s wrong in the current context though, and she’s right about the Epstein files.

This was charged as a misdemeanor. No grand jury this time.

I’m on the protestor’s side here, but in general, it probably ought to be illegal to throw sandwiches at people. Some jurisdictions have a separate offense of harassment for offensive or even merely nonconsensual intentional physical contact that presents no risk of injury.

I’d have voted not guilty if I was on that jury, but guilty for the same conduct under different circumstances, such as throwing food at a fast food worker over a customer service issue.

He probably can’t. Absurd as it may sound, he was actually guilty.

Here are model jury instructions for the charge, which include:

There is a forcible assault when one person intentionally strikes another

It doesn’t say that the victim must be struck with something very likely to injure them. Looking at the statute, it turns out that actual physical contact (rather than making a threat without contact) elevates it to a felony - the charge a grand jury previously rejected.

Of course, prosecutors normally apply common sense to charging decisions and don’t prosecute everything that technically qualifies under the strictest reading of a statute.

It’s easy to say “Well, they shouldn’t have sent that in the first place”

The fact that kids don’t make good decisions when placed in adult situations is exactly why we have laws to punish adults who exploit them.

The article’s first example of a case that will convince me the death penalty isn’t used for the “worst of the worst” is a man who raped a 15 year old girl, then stabbed her to death. The article implies his recent diagnosis with autism diminishes his responsibility for those crimes.

From Wikipedia:

Roy Lee Ward, who claimed he was looking for a missing dog. He then forced himself inside, cut the phone lines, and attacked Payne with a knife and dumbbell. Payne was then raped and mortally wounded by Ward, who stabbed and battered her multiple times.

The Wikipedia article goes on to describe her injuries in detail; they’re horrific.

What I’m taking from the Boston Globe article using this case as an example of the death penalty being applied to someone sympathetic is not that but a false and defamatory portrait of autism. Autistic people know as well as anyone else that it’s bad to rape and murder children.

I’m against the death penalty in practice because it’s often applied to those least able to defend themselves in court rather than those whose crimes are most vile, but I won’t be shedding any tears for Roy Lee Ward.

can the SC please pick a lane and stick to it with the precedence that they themselves create?

A normal Supreme Court? Yes. This Supreme Court? I think we all know the answer to that.

If even 2% of the population would never vote for a women or a person of color then it was enough to have mattered

I suspect the majority of that 2% would also never vote for a Democrat.

Have you seen the man work a crowd?

His antics don’t work on you, or on me, or likely on most people you or I would be friends with. They clearly work on a huge swath of the population though, or we wouldn’t be where we are today.

I am still skeptical if this country will EVER elect a woman for POTUS.

I’m not sure that’s a reasonable takeaway from the last two times a woman was a major party nominee.

Hillary Clinton was not especially charismatic, which is arguably what wins general elections in most cases. She was also unpopular with progressive Democrats, and widely seen as having secured the nomination unfairly when Sanders might have been both more popular with the party and a stronger general election candidate.

Kamala Harris was severely handicapped by the combination of being nominated without a primary process, starting her campaign very late, and positioning herself as a continuation of Biden at a time when Biden’s popularity was very low.

If AOC were to win the nomination, she would be in a much stronger position for the general election than either Clinton or Harris.