Your response to me makes way more sense now. Thank you for clarifying. It happens!

Yes.

This is where I’m at as well, but I’m assuming there’s another angle here of which I’m ignorant if so many insiders and wonks are worried.

If she already has millions of followers, that may just not be practical.

Hadn't thought of that, but you're right. That's a heck of a brand she's trying to drop.

I don’t think it occurred to me that Joe Manchin had cache or appeal with Democrats or Democratic voters outside of WV; the guy is more or less a Dixiecrat/DINO. Is he even pro-choice? What’s the argument for him pulling votes away from Biden?

“She’d like you to please call her by her real name now: Alana Thompson.”

“...so her boyfriend was already an adult when he started dating a teenager.”

I think I misread one of the original statements you made in your 7/13 reply; I think I read the “who do think no crime should warrant 53 years in prison” and somehow missed the immediately following part that says “because nothing should warrant prison”, so I should not have answered “No” to that statement.

I don’t even have a problem with his boundary if I’m being honest—I think it’s small, petty, and shows he’s a DEEPLY insecure little man, but he’s entitled to be all those things, frankly. The problem is that he could have easily said “I can’t handle being with you/we have different lives/I’m not going to ask you to…

Free-A-Rod understands what I’m saying.

I hate that every discussion about anything like this is basically a two-tiered discussion in which you discuss the legal merits of a given claim, or the jurisprudential basis for why it will or won’t fly—and then you basically say “but, hey, these people could literally do anything these days.”

Yes, they do. But that’s very different than actually have a say in actually determining the sentence. What sentences go with what crimes are written into the law.

Is it your position that people who think that and have argued for that are particularly silly or absurd?

I understand the moral arguments against prison as a concept, and really, punitive justice generally speaking, though I don’t quite share it all the way. Having said that, some people need to be restrained—it’s not necessarily a lot of people, and certainly nowhere near the number actually incarcerated—but…

I will typically give people the opportunity to walk back absolute statements (especially when they’re particularly silly or absurd,) rather than take them completely literally.

Victims, or in some cases victims’ survivors, are permitted to address the Court (whether Judge, Jury, or both,) during sentencing. The literal and actual purpose of this is so that their words will influence sentencing—whether (as in most cases,) the Judge’s decision about the length of a sentence and eligibility for…

That’s a weird rationale to take. Victims of crimes have a very specific place in the legal framework. Blood relatives and acquaintances do not.

Victims literally are excluded from being part of the criminal justice process

By that rational, victims should also be excluded from the process of determining the appropriate punishment or penalty for trespasses against them. They’re pretty far from impartial too.