It’s a blunt instrument that exists mostly to destroy people, not to help them, and that’s a terrible way to deal with adolescents.

If you think it’s bad because it’s too harsh then you should feel sorry for her for receiving a too-harsh sentence.

It’s always been possible to send people to jail for words: conspiracy, fraud, solicitation, incitement, even espionage. I’m OK with the precedent that aggressively urging someone to an act of violence can be criminal if they carry it out. It’s just this case, where the defendant is a mentally ill teenager, that sets…

She’s a teenager - she was a younger teen when she did this. Normal teenage personalities would be absolutely pathological in adults, yet most of them grow out of it. The assumption should be that her life is salvageable in the absence of quite compelling evidence otherwise.

I’m pretty sure she’ll be at least inconvenienced by spending another year+ in jail.

I tend to think jail time is basically never an appropriate sentence for minors. Of the purposes of punishment, the only one incarceration does better than release with strict supervision is retribution, and if we as a society are intent on exacting retribution on teenagers then fuck us.

Worst case scenario is we criminalize less egregious adolescent bullying, a very real problem that absolutely should not be dealt with by the criminal justice system.

Or she’s slotted into the black widow/femme fatale role, so we expect her to be treated like a hardboiled Soviet spy rather than a stupid kid.

The troubling thing for me is that she was, what, 15? when this happened. Minors should get punishment that looks like a slap on the wrist, because minors do incredibly dumb shit for no reason all the time. Obviously you need to punish bad behavior, especially when it has horrific consequences, but a teenager doing…

But if you think it’s a bad verdict you probably should feel bad for her!

some other schmuck they signed in his place named Josh Woodrum, who most recently played competitive football in college at Liberty University.

It just screams THIN YOUR PAINTS.

I’m not sure there’s anything he’s not dumb enough for, particularly if his ridiculous self-regard is steering him in the wrong direction. “Prenup? Please. No woman would divorce The Mooch.”

A reasonable universe doesn’t contain the New York Knicks, so that hypothetical isn’t very useful.

Why yes, of course I remember Hillary Clinton’s nonstop racist abuse of her rivals throughout her career.

I 100% agree with you here, but I realized that this position only works if you recognize a sharp distinction between physical- and rhetorical violence. Like, if beating a woman is worse-than-but-on-a-continuum-with calling her a bitch, then we start having to do some calculus on how much harm McGregor’s…

With the volume of racist abuse and sea-lions they get, it makes sense. I mean, who wants to wade through every seemingly-sincere criticism to determine whether this will finally be the one that doesn’t end up talking about gun violence in Chicago or can you prove Charlie Murray is wrong?

Hang ourselves immediately!

They have to resign Embiid after this season, right? They’re going to have to choose between a max+ deal for hopefully a cumulative whole season and letting a maybe all-time great walk. I hope the choose terribly.

The owners are hoping to use the menace of “superteams” as an excuse to screw players whether it makes sense or not.