How about a brief refresher on federal bail, since everyone's got opinions on it this week? Yes?

Okay, here we go. In federal criminal cases, bail is governed by the Bail Reform

/2 Under the Bail Reform Act, a defendant MUST BE RELEASED ON BAIL unless the judicial officer (usually a federal magistrate judge) finds that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure (1) them appearing for trial or (2) the safety of the community.
/3 It's the burden of the government -- the federal prosecutor - to PROVE by CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE that the danger element applies, and no conditions can reasonably control it, if the government wants someone detained without bail. Preponderance burden for flight risk.
/4 HOWEVER there are certain statutory categories of crimes where there is a rebuttable presumption that no conditions will prevent flight or danger -- in other words, for those crimes, the burden shifts to the defendant.
/5 The Federal Rules of Evidence don't govern detention hearings and they can and do proceed by "proffer" -- that is, the government saying what they will prove if necessary.
/6 Here is a government-side description of the law and the process -- shaded towards the government but pretty reliable.

https://t.co/4qYabZo7St.
/7 Since bail is an entitlement unless NO COMBINATION OF CONDITIONS will prevent flight risk or danger, judges must and do consider measures like pretrial supervision, home detention, bail posted by the defendant or loved ones, restrictions on activities, etc.
/8 Before the bail hearing the Pretrial Services Office -- an arm of the court -- does a brief investigation, background check, and interviews (including of the defendant and family). Their recommendation tends to weigh heavily with the judge.
/9 The bottom line is that "why would someone accused of that federal crime be released" is, legally and practically, the wrong question.

/end

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I was right. "Lawyer" starts out with name-calling and an insistence that trial is "unconstitutional". He's saying Trump's 1/6 speech was rather bland, and pretending that was the only thing the House managers talked about, and the managers were "slanderous."

Bilious bullshit.


"Lawyer" is arguing that since there were objections raised by Democrats to some of the vote counts in 2016, that means Trump didn't engage in sedition.

I'm not sure how that logic works.

Now they're running a Trump campaign commercial.

A bunch of whataboutism, contrasting patriotic music behind Trump's racist dogwhistles about "law and order" against Democrats making firey speeches with dark music.

He went to the moronic Gym Jordan argument that Trump couldn't have instigated insurrection if the violence was gonna happen anyway (without acknowledging Trump had been encouraging and building up to that violence for close to a year).

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x