Sorry, my mobile keyboard ate that. The NYT got the emails for the crowdsourced investigation through a FOIA request and a court order.

In fairness, the son-of-a-Deomcrat-politician 4chan hacker didn't publically release the emails. The NYT got the emails for tge crowdsourced investigatio. through a FOIA request and a court order.

Well, these are Hillary's emails from that time period. If they show her and her advisors discussing how it had to be a YouTube video, we'll know they were giving us the best information they had at the time. On the other hand, if they're talking in the emails about how it was an al Qaeda terrorist attack at times when they were claiming to the American people that it was a YouTube video, we'll know it was a coverup.

Hey dumbass. While you're on your journalistic high horse, you forgot to mention that David Carr, the guy who wrote the piece you quoted, ISN'T A REPORTER. Carr is an opinion columnist and the Times presents the story as a column (from a WSJ competitor) rather than actual news.

You're also an incredibly stupid liar. If anyone clicks through the link, they will see that you are lying about the Carr piece. You left out the first five paragraphs of the piece. These are the first two:

In 2009, Carr was worried that the WSJ MIGHT be used by Murdoch as a conservative weapon, but in the two years he had owned the WSJ to that point, Murdoch hadn't started doing so.

I'd imagine that if the WSJ had started down that path, you'd have something more recent than 2009.

A 4chan hacker (whose father JUST HAPPENED to be a Democrat state-level politician in Tennessee) hacked Palin's email and couldn't produce any evidence of wrongdoing because she was only using the private account for private communication and not state business.

A judge later ordered Palin's emails released to the New York Times in response to a FOIA request they filed. The Times crowdsourced their investigation by posting the archive online (which is exactly what the WSJ is doing, by the way.) Neither the Times' professional investigation nor the crowdsourced investigation show any evidence that she conducted state business over the private emails.

I'm all for keeping the government out of people's bedrooms, but why would you need to possess ANY dildos in a public school? Leave that shit at home.

You said you "got a headline." That reads to me like it's a newspaper headline, i.e.something that's already published. Now you're "not authorized to release it."

I am incredibly suspicious of this anecdote.

You're wrong here. The NFL standard of evidence is looser than that used in American criminal courts ("beyond a reasonable doubt") or American civil courts ("preponderance of evidence") but once the standard of evidence is met, punishments can be levied off of it.

Wells' investigation is independent of the league. (It was commissioned because the league has been accused of being too lenient on the New England Patriots and associated figures.) But the Wells report tells the league that by the league's standard of evidence, Brady and the other two did it. If the league accepts these findings, which they will, they don't need any further investigation to levy punishment.

The league has a defined standard of evidence needed to punish someone for violations of the playing rules, just like there is a standard to establish guilt in American criminal proceedings ("beyond a reasonable doubt") and a standard to establish liability in civil proceedings ("preponderance of evidence.")

"More probable than not" is actually a looser standard than "preponderance of evidence," but it's the standard that the NFL has decided on for its internal discipline rulings.

The reason Wells only looked to the "more probable than not" standard, rather than the stricter legal definitions used in civil or criminal courts, is explained on the first page of the report: That's all the league needs to be sufficiently sure that Brady (or whoever) did it to assess punishment.

That would be a lot more interesting with the link to the article and the actual data.

This isn't true. "More probable than not" is the standard that the NFL judges violations of the Playing Rules by. It approximately means "we've proven guilt sufficiently for us to impose punishment."

In the American legal system, the analogous state is "guilty."

Wells didn't have to get to "beyond a reasonable doubt," the standard for a criminal investigation, because that would be gilding the lily. The NFL can impose punishment at "more probably than not."

This is all explained on the first page of the Wells Report.

That's abusing the terminology a little bit, but used as a slur against a "centrist Republican" I guess it gets the point across. I see "So-and-so insufficiently conservative Republican is so far to the left, he may as well be a Democrat." That's pretty much the same thing.

Normally the position refers to someone who is a little to the left on economic issues and pretty far to the left on social issues. Think about where Hillary Clinton falls, compared to Elizabeth Warren on the left and Ted Cruz on the right.

I know, but that isn't what I said. Neither the stated philosophies of the Democrats nor the Republicans are the center point. You can be a little to the right of the Democrats and still be left wing. (That philosophy is called "Classical Liberalism.") Similarly, you could be a little to the left of the stated position of the Republicans and still be right wing. "Failure to advocate for out and out socialism" isn't the dividing line for right wing versus left wing. If you talk like it is, you're being deliberately unclear.

Also of note, the guy who started this whole argument off wants to vote** for Bernie Sanders, who is a Democrat in the sense that he's running for the Democratic nomination, but who is not a Democrat in the sense that he's been registered with the Socialist part for most* of his career.

*I assume that you need to register as a Democrat to run in the Democratic primary, and thus Sanders is registered as a Democrat now. If he doesn't, he's probably still registered with the Socialists. I haven't actually checked, mostly because "Bernie Sanders is a Socialist" is a well known fact.

**The guy says he wants to vote for Sanders twice. So he may well be a Democrat, just one of the ones on the left wing of that party.

I didn't call the Democrats socialists. I just pointed out that neoliberalism is to the left of classical liberalism, and thus is a left wing philosophy. (See the example I gave to the other guy about how it's wrong, generally speaking, to call Democrats communists.) Socialism is a different left wing philosophy. It falls to the left of neoliberalism and the far left of classical liberalism. But the existence of socialists doesn't make liberalism "not a left wing philosophy."

Also, if you think there aren't left wing authoritarians making decisions in the American public square, you're not paying attention.

Sorry, you're wrong. Classical Liberalism is pretty much the closest to Centrist of the left wing ideologies. Neoliberalism, as practiced by the Democratic party, is to the left of that. So they're on the left hand side of the spectrum. They're not terribly far left... For example, if you were to randomly select a registered Democrat, call them up, yell "COMMIE!" and slam the phone down, you'd probably be wrong.

You're telling me I'd have a better batting average with British Tories? I'd buy that, as there are more leftists per capita in Britain. But the existence of a party further to your left doesn't make you a centrist, and certainly not right wing.