🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <336df280.4834845@news.gmu.edu>,
John M Atkinson <jatkinso@ANTISPAMgmu.edu> wrote:
}
}Thus Spake russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto):
}
}
}%Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act.  A neat little
}%act where if the government asserts that an organization is
}%'racketeering influenced', they can seize it and all assets derived
}%from it BEFORE your trial.  There's also the variant known as civil
}%RICO, where they go and seize your assets but don't bother to try you
}%-- and you have to sue (paying your lawyer is your problem, and
}%there's also high bond requirements) to get them back.
}
}Oh, yeah.  The law under which they nail Mob dons.  Big deal.

The law intended to nail Mob dons.  It is used much more widely than that.

}%The question isn't whether I'm offering to start one, it's whether or
}%not such a massacre is just cause for starting one.
}
}OK, no.  I don't believe one (or even several) incidents of troops getting out
}of hand justifies armed revolt.  And if you look at the writings of the time
}(Thomas Paine, especially) the Boston Massacre is almost never mentioned-the
}causes for rebellion can be more accurately traced to a long-term British policy
}of denying the colonists the inherent human right to self-determination.  

It certainly wasn't the ONLY justification.  It was, however, one of
them.  The Declaration of Independence speaks of "protecting them, by
a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit
on the Inhabitants of these States". 

}%One who hasn't even heard of RICO, yet is willing to characterize it
}%as 'conspiracy-nut right wing bullshit' has a lot of nerve calling others
}%"ignorant jackasses".

}My statement was not that RICO is the above-mentioned bullshit, but that I was
}not always familliar with the buzzwords thrown around the conspiracy-theorist
}community.

RICO is a government buzzword, not a "conspiracy theorist community"
buzzword.

}%"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
}%of justice is no virtue." 
}
}I can't recall who said that.  Was it Barry "Nuke North Vietnam" Goldwater or
}the cross-dressing FBI chief who though Martin Luther King was communist?

Goldwater.
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."