I’m not “missing it”. It is just irrelevant under common law for the reasons I explained.

Apparently second degree murder is called murder and first degree murder is called capital murder in Texas. 

Self-defense is considered from the subjective perspective of a reasonable person in the same exact situation as the defendant, not an objective perspective. Based on the instructions that the jury received, it seems likely that Texas law would hold that someone who reasonably believed that they were confronting an…

It does not “destroy firearm based defense”. Self-defense is a complete defense. If the jury found that the defendant reasonably believed her life was in danger, then her intent to kill is irrelevant because the killing was lawful.

That would only be correct for first degree murder (and even then, a prosecutor might try to argue that it was premeditated because she made the decision to kill whoever was inside before she went into the apartment).

Given that Texas Castle Doctrine lets you legally shoot anyone you reasonably believe is an intruder in your home, my hypothesis is that the jury wanted to convict her of voluntary manslaughter (imperfect self-defense) but felt that the castle doctrine prevented them from reaching any other verdict than perfect self-de…

The only one that can start the process of issuing warrants for arrest would be the US Attorney for DC. Congress would have to refer a criminal contempt charge to him, he would have to decide to prosecute it, and then he would have to go through the normal process of bringing an indictment. He ultimately works for…

Yeah, not to mention that even if congress somehow managed to arrest Barr, they don’t have a jail to hold him in. 

To be fair, I’m pretty sure that anyone who doesn’t want their eyes pecked out would jump back if it looked like they were about to be attacked by a six foot wide eagle. Still, it’s symbolism at its finest. 

Another gem from the press conference, which had nothing to do with Pelosi BTW:

It’s a pretty good bet. I would put any of the Presidential candidates of both major parties in my lifetime in the “not-terrible” category. The bar is pretty low; Trump is the only major party candidate who cannot haul his corpulent frame over it.

Fortunately, Trump is a terrible candidate and hopefully 2020 will be a regression to the median election where the terrible candidate loses to the not-terrible candidate instead of an outlier election. 

Guys exercise and eat right all their lives and drop dead of heart failure or cancer when they are 40.

This is why the founding fathers put in such an extreme form of checks and balances. Virtually no other society has anything like our system because fairly small minorities has awesome power of political obstruction.

Maybe in England. It is protected speech in the US. 

Flash is already disabled by default in Chrome and most other browsers. It’s a huge security risk.

I agree. It is one thing to do it on the 13" ultrabooks (most PC manufacturers do that as well), but on the 15" laptops it is just such a waste. The SSD and RAM should be fully upgradable, like on the Dell XPS 15

Considering that on a lot of laptops, upgrading RAM means swapping out the motherboard or even soldering new chips directly onto the motherboard, I would say it is relatively difficult on those modern ultrabooks.

During the election, I thought he was smarter than people were giving him credit for. I thought he understood how to manipulate people and give them a scapegoat to go after, like Hitler did.

The President suggested to the Spanish foreign minister to build a fence across Africa to keep migrants out of Europe. It does not surprise me at all.