From the Boston Globe:
US Representative Katherine Clark and her husband were watching “Veep” Sunday night, when police lights engulfed her Melrose [Massachusetts] home.
Clark went outside, assuming something was wrong with one of her neighbors. But she said she was alarmed and frightened to see cruisers blocking both ends of her street and “multiple officers, some with long guns, on my front lawn.”
An officer told her they had received a report of an active shooter at her house, where her 13- and 16-year-old boys had just gone to bed.
But of course.
As the Globe notes, Clark is the sponsor of a bill that would make swatting a federal crime. Swatting, of course, is the practice of maliciously making false reports in order to send swarms of police and/or SWAT teams to the home of your target.
It’s not a hypothetical worry: several Gamergate critics have been swatted. And it goes without saying that it’s pretty dangerous to send a small army of heavily armed cops to a home where they think an active shooter is barricaded.
If Clark’s swatters intended to intimidate her, they seem to have failed. The Globe again:
Clark acknowledged that the experience Sunday night was deeply disconcerting.
But asked if she would be less vocal about the issue now, she laughed and said no.
“If that was the intent of calling in this event,” Clark said, “I think they have underestimated my commitment to making sure that we do stop this practice.”
Clark said she had been very sympathetic to people have been the victims of swatting before Sunday night but now fully understands what it’s like.
“It will,” she said, “really cause me to double down.”
Targeting a politician with what is essentially terrorism? Doesn’t seem like a particularly smart choice on the part of whoever was behind this.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
I have to say, Alan is the first attorney I’ve know who trusts juries. Maybe that has a lot to do with my being American. I’m not sure what the jury selection process is in the UK, but the US voir dire process is basically designed to help the attorneys find the people they can most easily manipulate to accept whatever BS argument they can come up with. The jury will come to whatever conclusion the attorneys are able to convince them of, and the biases of all parties involved will heavily influence that decision.
@ kupo
Over here they (literally in some cases) stick a pin into the register of local residents to get a pool of enough jurors to cover the cases for a two week period. Then they draw names out of a hat. First 12 go to courtroom 1, next 12 to courtroom 2 etc.
No jury selection and were not allowed to challenge jurors (although the defendant is told if he recognises anyone on the jury to let the court know and they’ll get another one). We just go with the ones were given. Sometimes causes problems on a trial of it turns out a juror knows a witness, but in that case the juror withdraws.
Probably not a perfect system but the best we can do.
ETA: I’ve been at conferences with US and UK judges. The US ones say they’d like our jury selection process and the UK judges say they’d like the US thing of alternate jurors. If more than 3 jurors have to withdraw or get sick we have to start again
@nicknamenick
the hate Anita Sarkeesian gets is really not justified–her feminism and criticisms aren’t that radical (with a lot of her criticisms I feel like cracked.com has made practically the same criticisms as she has) and most of counter arguments I’ve seen don’t even address her core arguments which is just annoying
with Bernie–I like him, he’s the candidate that is closest to my political beliefs, but I agree with you that I don’t thing him getting elected will create a utopia–I’m mostly just hopeful that the fact that he is a strong contender will be beneficial to the overall political climate but I just really don’t his hardcore supporters — I feel like they’ve built to much of a cult of personality around him and the friends I have who are hardcore Bernie Sanders supporters keep posting all of this problematic stuff on facebook like that meme and how they hate Hillary and how Hillary supporters are dumb and don’t know what’s best for themselves and while I don’t love her policies I do think that she has the skills and experience to make a decent president and it’s frustrating because I feel like they’re giving me a reason to dislike a candidate that I actually like
@wwth
I have also heard stories of roving radfems yelling at men for being chivalrous and yelling at feminine women for being feminine online and I have seen neither of these things in person (and as a very feminine woman who spends a lot of time in feminist spaces in real life, I feel like if there were radfems running around screaming at people who conform to gender roles I would have been screamed at by now) and I kind of feel like when people say that they’ve been screamed at for holding doors open or being feminine what I think happened is someone made a feminist critique and they took it as a personal attack against themselves because I’ve seen a lot of people take a feminist criticism of something they like as something that’s meant to shame them or police their behavior which is annoying because I think there are issues with chivalry and traditional femininity that feminists should talk about regardless of whether or not I personally like those things
A happier politics topic: Apparently Martin O’Malley supporters are called O’Malleycats?
I’ve never yelled at anyone for being chivalrous.
I have had friendly “you know, you really don’t need to try and carry all the heavy things when I’m right here and also have arms and can be more useful. I’d really rather you not kill your back to keep me from breaking a sweat” discussions with people.
Does that count?
@contrapangloss
Does that count?
I’m sure it does because mansplainers and MRAs are always eager to exaggerate real incidents if it gives them an opportunity to rant about the man-hating radical feminists who have opinions different from theirs.