Pedantry warning, but I think this distinction is useful: The phrase “civil crime” doesn’t really exist. You can have a crime, you can have a civil case, or you can have both; but they are separate things.

Criminal court is where the government prosecutes someone for allegedly breaking the law (committing a crime). A pardon wipes out the government-imposed consequences of that crime.

Civil court is for legal disputes between parties. It’s not about punishing crimes but about one party seeking restitution from another. Sometimes that stems from a crime, but the civil case stands on its own.

So even if a crime is pardoned, the door stays open for civil lawsuits over the same event. (This is repeating your point. My beef was just the “civil crimes” phrase!)

Silicosis is typically caused by years of breathing in silica dust at work, and can worsen even after work exposures stop. In recent years, after decades of inaction, the federal government finally took several important steps to reduce the incidence of this ancient and debilitating disease. Under the Trump administration, all that progress is going away, in but one example of the widespread destruction now taking place across the federal government.

Silicosis first caught the attention of the federal government in the early 1930s, when hundreds of workers hired by the chemical company Union Carbide and its subsidiary to drill a tunnel through a mountain of almost pure silica died of silicosis. Most of the workers were Black, and many were buried in unmarked graves. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, issued a report on the widespread problem across factories and mines, informing businesses that control measures, “if conscientiously adopted and applied,” could prevent silicosis.

Or how God supposedly created all people in his image, but wait, no, not those people 🙄

I think your second point is fine, but your first point comes across as condescending and needlessly pedantic. The meaning was clear enough.

Ah, ok. Looks like West Virginia also had 100% of counties go for Trump, so “only” is still not right, but at least that makes more sense.

OK had 66.2% vote for Trump. Idaho, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming were all higher than that.

So what do you mean by “only state” and “100%”? I’m confused by your comment.

Alternatively, they do think of their loved ones but through the lens of, “their lives would be better without me.”

I can’t help but wonder if her bullies may have made this poor girl think she might be responsible if her parents faced repercussions from immigration policies. Regardless, it’s a tragedy that a life was lost so young and it’s inconceivable that the school took no action that may have prevented it.

Or heaven forbid something in the software allows it to print the right vote but record the wrong vote. I’m with you: no paper trail = not a paper ballot.

“simplejack” = “Jesus”? I’m not seeing it.

I know it’s possible for conditions to be tied to federal funding (like how interstate funds were withheld from Louisiana until they raised their drinking age to 21), so is it just that the Executive branch can’t impose that? (Genuinely asking since I’m not sure.)

I’m wondering if that may be the Mennonites? Like the Amish, they don’t have social security numbers so the tax code is definitely different for them. I can say with confidence that Quakers don’t have that exclusion.

You and I may know some of the same people! Does the name Max Carter mean anything to you?

Small correction though: the taxes thing isn’t actually true… there were (probably still are, but I’ve not been actively involved in enough years to feel justified making the claim) Quakers who chose to hold a percent of their income tax in escrow rather than give it to the government under the argument that their conscientious objector status should keep their money from going to the military.

It is not a legally recognized stance, and these people risk fees, interest, and legal action for their withholdings. And yet they choose to risk that as a form of peaceful protest.

Your comment dredged up all the memories of a workshop/talk I attended by one of these folks when I was in probably high school? It was not something done lightly or without effort.

It’s making me really happy seeing how many people in the comments here have nice things to say about Quakers!

I don’t remember the incident you’re recalling. Sounds like something my people would do though, lol. What I do think of in terms of Quaker activity at the time is a lot of protests and also Tom Fox, a Quaker taken hostage and killed in Iraq. He was there representing the org Christian Peacemaker Team, which goes to places plagued with violence to do service and good. Unlike missionaries and despite their name, they do not try to convert anyone.

I did not know Tom, but I know many people who did. And despite the very personal loss, the response was doubling down on the efforts to bring peace and stop the war. I think it was a pretty widespread assumption that most Friends organizations were on watch lists.

Leftist Quakers are pretty radical, and pretty awesome.

I mean, they wanted to cash in on the positive reputations Quakers had in business. While not being Quaker. And not implementing any of their business practices AFAIK. Plus their logo is of a traditional Puritan and has nothing to do with Quakers.

I think “deceptive” is a fair word.

There are also multiple branches of Quakerism. I greatly appreciate the person above speaking about it because they truly covered the way the Quaker meetings I was raised in are and the kinds of people I have spent so much of my life around.

However, there are other branches that don’t deserve the same praise. There are evangelical Quakers and while they aren’t as bad as what that word usually implies, they also aren’t exactly deserving of the description above. Nixon was born into one of the evangelical Quaker branches.

Source: grew up Quaker. Literally have a minor degree in Quaker studies, lol. (It’s been a while and I’m not active in any meetings or organizations these days, but I’ll always be grateful for the values it instilled in me and the community I found from it.)

More arbitrary but less abusable. One is applied evenly to all people, regardless of people’s opinions or views. The other can be changed and manipulated in a way that knocks out political opponents.

I agree that cognitive ability is more important to me than a person’s age. I live with that observation every day with my parents. They are both around 80, and I would argue my mom is almost as sharp as she ever was; I have no concerns about her decision making. However, my dad is struggling more and more all the time; he’s shown decline for many years now and is at the point we’re not comfortable with him making many decisions or taking on complex tasks. A rule applied to one would not be equally appropriate for the other.

However, if we implement something, I would rather it be a rule that we can apply to all. I don’t trust the government to consistently and reasonably apply cognitive tests that don’t introduce bias.

Edit: autocorrect typo

This cirrus-forming phenomenon could account for around 35% of aviation’s total contribution to climate change—or about 1% to 2% of overall global warming, according to some estimates.

I had absolutely no clue that they had an impact, much less such a significant one. Thanks for sharing!

Also interesting:

A small fraction of overall flights, between 2% and 10%, create about 80% of the contrails

Nah, he just saw the guy shake them midway through to keep them from sticking and retained the info that you shake them so they don’t stick, then ignored everything else the guy said.

Do you really think Trump has ever done that kind of work before? Trust fund babies aren’t exactly known for scraping by with food service jobs.

Based on the video, they shake them midway through then just drain at the end. I can’t speak from personal experience but it looked like it worked well for them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even worse than putting it on the hanger—which I could excuse as a first-timer mistake—he was told like 5 times that you don’t need to shake them when they’re done cooking, you just drain them. He took some out and shook, and the trainer corrected him and showed him again how to drain them, then just 10 seconds later Trump is shaking another basket and dumps it out without draining it.