If I had said that all Sanders supporters were like Joe Rogan, I’d agree that was unfair, but that’s not what I said. 

I didn’t say the two of them were alike. I said Joe Rogan is like a lot of people who really like Bernie Sanders.

That was not my concern. I’m genuinely curious. In context, I assume you’re directing it at people who have a problem (for whatever reason) with Bernie Sanders accepting the endorsement of a guy basically anybody who stopped to think of it surely would have figured was probably a Sanders supporter anyway.

I honestly don’t get the uproar over the Joe Rogan thing. I mean, yeah, Joe Rogan sucks. But did anyone doubt that Rogan would be a Sanders supporter? I mean, Sanders supporters are not a monolith, but people like Joe Rogan pretty much are. And they’re all Sanders supporters.

Who’s this directed at?

Isn’t Gwyneth Paltrow in that movie for all of, maybe, 10 minutes?

Which recent polls?

On the topic of the Sanders poll. Three national polls have been released since then. One does have him climbing as high as 27, but that one also has Biden at 30. The other two have Sanders more or less where he’s been for weeks (upper teens to low 2os).

I’m not saying she only committed a crime if she didn’t mean to kill him.

I wasn’t “attacking” anybody. You perceive my observations as an attack because I don’t subscribe to any need to make believe political campaigns or candidates are what they want the world to see them as. This is all theater.

I see, now! Now you’re getting into the territory of things you quite plainly don’t believe. But for argument’s sake, the only thing keeping this girl from being tried for murdering (presumably first degree because malicious intent) a suicidal teen was that when she knowingly texted him to do it while he was doing it,…

Just so that we are clear, you’re trying to say that this crime you think she clearly committed is really only a crime if she didn’t really mean it? I genuinely don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I don’t think there’s another rational interpretation of what you said.

I get that you believe you’re right about causation. I happen to disagree, but I get your position. You don’t have to devote any more words to trying to convince me that you think you’re right about that.

Correct. Even putting aside the at least somewhat arguable “causation” argument, there’s no reasonable argument that in a world where her actions “caused” the death of this boy that they did not intentionally do it, and because this is “involuntary” manslaughter, the adverb “unintentionally” is pretty important.

It’s not “causing” them to do it. Moreover, in this case, it’s certainly not even arguably “unintentionally” causing them to do it.

What happened was he got out of the car, indicated he was having second thoughts, she encouraged him to do it, and he then did it right after. On those facts, that is sufficient evidence that she was the “but for” cause of his death, that but for her encouraging him, after he was expressing doubts, he would not have…

There were a series of acts that caused the boy’s death. He took...really...all of them. So, you know, that’s Problem No. 1.

Negligence isn’t the question. The question is whether it’s criminal negligence based on any statute under the laws of the state of Massachusetts. This is the actual text of the involuntary manslaughter statute:

Obviously, it is not that I do not understand the argument. And morally, of course she’s responsible. I also don’t have any trouble saying that she should be criminally culpable in some way that would have amounted to a “harsh” penalty and even prison time. But the statute she was convicted of requires that she cause…

The only real legal question of whether she was the “proximate cause” of his death, which is essentially asking the philosophical question of whether it is fair to hold her responsible for his death, given that it was his action that directly caused his death.