i'm not trying to justify cruelty to animals but i grew up in Manitowoc and it is about as rural an area as they come. and let's be honest: there are plenty of rural homes where cats are not considered an adorable part of the family but just one component of the living system that makes up a functional farm or…

that's because i actually believe a free and open press has an extremely important role to play in a healthy and functional democracy. it should be one of our most noble and highest callings, not a lowest-common denominator race to sell advertisements and slickly packaged pap.

well, i noted at the end of my post that those 50+ allegations were disquieting, so i don't know how that becomes an insult but this is the internet so i'm just going to apologize for any confusion and leave it there.

i need to stress once more that my concerns are driven more by the issues raised in the Making A Murderer documentary and have basically nothing to do with concern for bill cosby himself.

well, as the documentary lays out very convincingly, the courts are not immune to manipulation or bad actors - The State has an incredible amount of power and it is NOT always used wisely or fairly. humans are fallible and human institutions should have protections in place to guard against the biases and mistakes…

i felt basically the same way about his work on "I Spy" but, shit, it's hard to go back and watch those anymore without trying to convince yourself that he was taken over by a demon or something later in life.

there's plenty of time for that after he's actually been convicted of a crime, you know.

while i'm not defending Bill Cosby, i think one of the points raised during the recent discussion of the Netflix doc, Making a Murderer, is worth noting here: the defendant is, of course, presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

WTF dude, you're the one who just got done talking about hunting and now you're going to talk about violence towards animals?!

you know you can eliminate cell phone signals by taking out the battery or putting the phone in a foil bag, right?

you forgot "And then the old fat man did wine commercials and other crap until he reached the highest levels of phoning it in for a paycheck: the voice of a giant robot in a cartoon selling toys" but otherwise, i'd say you nailed the gist.

dude, he's probably the Star Wars Kid - keep it up and he's gonna use his golf ball retriever on yo' ass!

yeah, i think the Mary Sue complaints are a little over-stated: rey is shown screwing up more than once - she messes up when she releases the rathnarns (or whatever those monsters were called) and she tries to shoot a stormtrooper without disengaging the safety on her blaster, to name just two incidents off the top of…

There are only two explanations here that make any sense to me: Either
Avery killed Hallbach and the dirty-ass cops that put him away the first
time around wanted to make sure he was convicted, or those same
dirty-ass cops actually murdered an innocent woman and built a whole
frame-up around Avery.

i grew up in Manitowoc County - i left in 1998 but still have family there. i'm not related to either family or any of the principals involved in this case, although i guess full disclosure compels me to admit i worked as a reporter at the Herald Times Reporter in college as a paid intern.

but it isn't the job of the defense team to explain how the car got onto Avery's property - that's the prosecution's job! all the defense has to do is question whether it is reasonable to believe the version of events provided by The State.

determining who was guilty of killing this woman was the job of the police, though - and, based on the slipshod, half-assed evidence they presented, i am not confident they did that.

But if they are guilty, does that excuse all of the official wrongdoing that lead to their convictions?

i have a dog and i have four different cops who live on my street, so those videos of pets being shot by cops was more frightening to me, personally, but your point is a good one.

yeah, as someone who grew up in manitowoc and still has family there, this is the aspect most upsetting to me, since it means whoever did kill this woman is probably still walking free and able to commit other crimes, the same way the guy who actually committed the rape avery served 18 years for was free to rape at…