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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 12:09 AM
Original message
Circumstantial evidence (oh boy, people should do some research...
before posting)

Definition below.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE CAN SEND PEOPLE TO JAIL.

IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO HAVE THE FINGERPRINTS ON THE "BODY" TO CONVICT PEOPLE. ASK SCOTT PETERSON!

We have piles of evidence regarding the fraud. IS ALREADY PROVEN.

http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c342.htm


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unblock Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 12:29 AM
Response to Original message
1. as a rule, trials are ALWAYS about circumstantial evidence
Edited on Tue Jan-18-05 12:29 AM by unblock
first, circumstantial evidence is far easier to come by.
but more importantly, where there is direct evidence, there is usually either a guilty verdict or dropped charges. it's the ones without direct evidence that go to trial.
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Land Shark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 01:07 AM
Response to Original message
2. Good point on Scott Peterson convicted by circumstantial evidence
Motive and circumstantial evidence are guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt" sufficient to execute a man (in the Peterson case). Not only that, it's sufficient to make Peterson be given the name the country's "most hated man".

God, you'd think that a country raised on a diet of patriotism would be ready to defend democracy at the drop of a hat. Apparently not. We really need to be coaxed into defending our elections.

Maybe, if we are serious about election security, someone needs to get up at night and investigate the strange noise, even if it might just be the cat after all. Cause it's IMPORTANT to defend what we claim to love.

If people who think there is insufficient cause to investigate this election also think that there is insufficient evidence to convict Scott Peterson, I agree they are consistent. But I have a feeling too many people would be convinced of Peterson's guilt and yet decry the "weak" "circumstantial evidence" of election fraud.
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dbDESIGN Donating Member (47 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 01:40 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Faith and Belief
We are challenging some very dearly held beliefs about elections and democracy. I think that most people have faith in their democracy (rightly or wrongly). They will be very unwilling to question this faith at first. They will need two things to begin to seriously question the validity of Nov’04 or any other election. One, they need to keep hearing about suppression, bias, irregularities, and fraud. Secondly as they slowly assimilate this information they will begin to look for some leadership, some way out of the mess, some hopeful vision of how their faith can be restored if they take the big step of questioning it. For many (most?) people it is just too scary to question their beliefs about democracy and elections in America.

The effort to bring questions and information to the general public’s attention must continue and grow stronger and be relentless. But it will be for naught if there is no leadership willing to take on the fight and offer some kind of vision for its success. The posters here are critical thinkers; inquiring minds willing to ask hard questions and consider even more difficult answers to those questions. The general public is not. If they are to question their democracy and get on board comprehensive reform they will need leadership.

Kerry? I haven’t seen it yet but I am still hopeful.

Conyers, Boxer? Looking good to me so far.
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marions ghost Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 08:02 AM
Response to Reply #4
5. I concur with your assessment
Leadership is key, yes. Can we get a little more discussion on this? I think it's safe to say after Kerry's remarks yesterday that he is at least making promises to work on this, and we should hold him to that. Boxer, Tubbs-Jones, Conyers and Jesse Jackson are solid (as are several other members of the house). New media voices are rising slowly. A movement is growing. But it needs to come together quickly. When you imagine "leadership" what do you imagine?
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Democrat Dragon Donating Member (699 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 01:36 AM
Response to Original message
3. kick
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 11:30 AM
Response to Original message
6. Certainty about the commission of a crime
When you have a dead body, you can be very certain a crime was committed. With elections, this standard is not easily met.

There is a big difference between using circumstantial evidence to prosecute a crime AND to determine if a crime was committed.
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merh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 11:37 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. Thank you for this post!
That is one of the problems with prosecuting the election fraud and you make a very good distinction. The other is that the parties responsible for investigating and prosecuting the fraud have loyalties to the admin and not to the nation, or they work for folks that are loyal to the admin, the criminals.

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Land Shark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 12:27 PM
Response to Reply #7
31. Who is responsible for any "lack of evidence"?
In law (and BECAUSE of justice) those who are responsible for missing evidence have presumptions made against them.

I can't think of a single weakness in the evidence that is the FAULT of election activists. It is either a systemic problem (secrecy of the ballot confounds the situation a bit) a problem with elections officials confounding things because they don't want too many people nosing around their business and want to be thought of as running good competent elections, and those that have something to hide or something to fear.

Ask yourself the question: What specific evidence do I think COULD be find but hasn't, and is that due to inadequacies in my investigation or due to someone else's fault in making evidence unavailable?
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merh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 02:00 PM
Response to Reply #31
33. Yo, the issue is the lack of evidence that is sufficient enough to
(a) bring charges against someone for fraud (evidence that a crime has been committed); and/or, (b) survive a motion for summary judgment or motion for immediate dismissal for FAILURE TO STATE a claim.

Who is responsible is not go into the equation and why you bring that into the discussion is beyond me.

You have yet to answer my question - have you offered your services to Mr. Arnebeck or any of the attorneys working on this or is pontificating enough for you?
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Land Shark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 03:54 PM
Response to Reply #33
34. Merh, I AM AN ATTORNEY WORKING ON THIS
in my own state of Washington, have written a 29 page report along with Dr. jeffrey Hoffman, have been on 3 radio shows and 2 tv shows and am considering my own lawsuit needed to get information. What the heck do you keep asking me to volunteer my services in OHIO for? This is merely "pontificating"?
www.votersunite.org/info/SnohomishElectionFraudInvestigation.pdf
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merh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 05:01 PM
Response to Reply #34
35. If you are working on this, then you must understand that
there has to be a forum for the legal proceedings. It is obvious that the "authorities" will not pursue "criminal" charges until a smoking gun or dead body is dropped on their doorstep. You continue to spout the sufficiency of the evidence, but that alone has nothing to do with a successful election fraud lawsuit, you have to have the proper parties and the correct forum and the parties have to have standing in the forum.

It is you who continue to try to impress upon others your expertise, yet you do not provide them with all of the information.

I have never doubted the fraud, I have posted how complex the issues are relative to ESTABLISHING the fraud and the forum to be heard in. You continue to reply to my posts as if I am some idiot, constantly discounting the contents of my posts.

Unless you are a part of every friggin lawsuit and litigation team that is involved in this through out the USA - then you should stop discounting the posts that are trying to explain to the instant gratification members on this forum that just because you say there is fraud, just because statistics may reflect that there was fraud, doesn't make it a legal reality and there are many things to consider when discussing the "PROOF" and the burden of "PROOF".

BTW: I thought it was the repukes challenging the election in Washington. Are you defending that action or partaking in the attack?
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NationalEnquirer Donating Member (571 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 11:59 AM
Response to Reply #6
8. You make a good point,
and I hate to agree with you.
No one I know, well, in real life, will even consider the evidence we have here.
Their eyes roll up inside their heads when they hear about statistics.
In my family of mostly Democrats, only my father is the least bit interested (he HATES Bush as bad as anyone here), but in the end he just shrugs, as if its a done deal and nothing can be done about it.
They DO listen about voting reform, although they like the e-voting (ugh!).
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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 03:51 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. That's their problem
And yours.

You are entitled to your own opinion and to refuse to see evidence. A privilege, indeed.
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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 03:50 PM
Response to Reply #6
9. Not in a court of law
We have the evidence of a fraud. Is up to the other side to PROVE THERE WAS NO FRAUD.
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merh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 04:50 PM
Response to Reply #9
12. Wrong, the election was legally called and the other side
legally won. The burden is on us! See post 6.
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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 04:52 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. You don't legalize crime
We'll have to disagree on this.

Regards
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merh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 05:02 PM
Response to Reply #13
15. That is why the burden is on us, to prove that there was a crime and
to prove that the election was illegal.

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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 12:07 PM
Response to Reply #9
29. If you have enough evidence, take it to a court. File a suit. n/t
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euler Donating Member (515 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 10:53 PM
Response to Reply #6
28. Nice
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Land Shark Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 12:22 PM
Response to Reply #6
30. Not so fast, wily Coyote

There are lots of dead bodies where there is no crime. In fact the vast majority of deaths are not crimes. ANd in the Scott Peterson case we were discussing, the death was suspicious but there was no "single gunshot to the head" evidence that would conclusively say a crime was committed.
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Pendulum Donating Member (29 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 04:27 PM
Response to Original message
11. Enough is never enough
(Disclaimer: I'm not claiming to be a lawyer)

There are different levels of "enough" evidence. There could be enough evidence to prove it to someone who tends to agree with you. For example, on Nov 3 someone said to me hey, look at these exit poll numbers. And I said holy crap, the election was stolen.

It takes much more evidence to be enough to prove something to the theoretical impartial judge or jury.

And it takes heaps and heaps to be enough for someone who tends to disagree with you.

Of course, for some, there will never be enough.

Now, around here, it looks like there are three corresponding goals. One is pretty much accomplished. Many and probably most of the people who hang around here are convinced that the election was stolen, or at least that there was fraud. Should we stop collecting evidence then? Of course not...

A second goal is to collect enough evidence for at least one judicial entity to reach the conclusion that the election was stolen (or at least that there was fraud). The fact is, we don't know how much evidence this will take. The needed body of evidence presumably varies according to which judicial entity (which particular judge, jury, congressional body, etc) is hearing the argument.

For this reason alone, we can never decide that we already have enough evidence, even if we've overkilled the first goal 100 times over.

And then, there's the insurmountable 3rd goal: we want everyone to know and believe there was fraud. This is impossible. So even if the court decision of our wildest dreams is handed down, we and our grandchildren cannot stop studying this case.

This is why I love the bickering that's going on around here. Sure, it gets a little heated sometimes, and namecalling won't help much. But if we're ever going to prove anything to people from the so-called "real world", it can't hurt to have some (friendly?) practice hear first.

Cheers everyone, and keep those arguments evolving! :toast:
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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 04:53 PM
Response to Reply #11
14. Indeed!
Thanks! :toast:
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Joe Chi Minh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 06:51 PM
Response to Reply #11
16. Agreed
enough is never enough. We want it *all* to come out! But you seem uncommonly pessimistic in the light of the latest report on the public's perception of the election.

Was there not a report out today to the effect that some 60% of Americans believe there was something seriously wrong with the election? Or does my memory play me false?
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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 06:53 PM
Response to Reply #16
17. You're right "Tuco" (n/t)
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Joe Chi Minh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 07:26 PM
Response to Reply #17
21. If we're not careful,
Edited on Tue Jan-18-05 07:31 PM by KCabotDullesMarxIII
Tuco, companero, we can help the trolls in their dastardly ploys.

It's good for John Kerry and the likes to be aware of all the angles, but it grieves me to read so many posts to the effect that .. well... they've got all the judiciary, the FBI, etc., what chance do we have...?

Think it by all means, but always allow from being mistaken, and never give comfort to the enemy by voicing such fears as if they were already set in stone. We just don't know. But we make it easier for the enemy, I believe, by expressing such unshakeable confidence in the failure of the current legal set-up.

There have already been indications that two judges on the bench of the supreme court may have been giving some kind of consideration to their immmoral souls, and the Chairman of the Congressional Hearing gave a very fair hearing to Democratic inquisitors. It's just not the time for self-pity, however pointedly accusatory. Anger, yes. Anyway, tuco, I know I'm preaching to the converted in your case. You and others could have written the same points.

Arriba, arriba los Estados Unidos verdaderos, compadre!

Manco minimus (the County Killer .

PS: This very point about circumstantial evidence should have been brought up repeatedly and emphatically, while those clowns were drivelling on about there being no evidecne of fraud.



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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 08:54 PM
Response to Reply #21
26. Agreed, companero (n/t)
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Laura PourMeADrink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 07:11 PM
Response to Reply #16
19. I wish it was 60%. I thought is was somewhere around 20??
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Joe Chi Minh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 08:04 PM
Response to Reply #19
23. No, it's been
increasing for some time, now. Relentlessly, I believe.
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Laura PourMeADrink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 08:48 PM
Response to Reply #23
25. Great !!! Glad I was wrong !
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Laura PourMeADrink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 07:10 PM
Response to Original message
18. I think someone needs to write a book. Actually, I have been
thinking about doing it. We need public knowledge/support before we can pursue an effective case, IMHO. Since we have no media support, I was thinking that a book might do it.
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RaulVB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 07:12 PM
Response to Reply #18
20. I had a similar idea...
And WE HAVE JOURNALISTS/WRITERS in the house...;-)
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Laura PourMeADrink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 07:58 PM
Response to Reply #20
22. My thought was to include a cd in the back and load with all the
precinct data. For all the students and numbers people to play with. Maybe offer part of the royalties for solving the puzzle of how they did it. Then, instead of becoming obsolete on our websites, it becomes part of the historical record. I also have a name, WRIGGED!
Whatta ya think. (The W is printed in whatever the font is that he uses all the time)
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KnowerOfLogic Donating Member (841 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 08:04 PM
Response to Original message
24. Correct; there is enough evidence to prove that *a crime occurred,*
and to justify a legal investigation and prosecution, if the guilty party can be determined. It is crazy to think that guilt must be proven *before* an investigation can take place or it can be concluded that a crime has occurred.
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KingoftheJungle Donating Member (355 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-18-05 10:09 PM
Response to Original message
27. There is also enough circumstantial evidence to implicate those involved
I know I haven't been very forthcoming regarding this, but every day something new turns up and we are frantically in the process of collaborrating and streamlining the whole ugly mess into something tangible for public consumption. If you want a little teaser, check out that last Madsen article ( http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=31&contentid=1753 ), as it kind of touches on the basics, minus the big connections to elite religious sects, standard oil, etc. However, when it is all said and done, the main entity who was responsible for the entire facist plot against the American people was none other than PRESCOTT BUSH...one evil nazi motherfucker. Oh and a whole lot of money and support from our favorite Saudi, Adnan Khashoggi.
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rdmccur Donating Member (622 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-19-05 12:45 PM
Response to Original message
32. DNA evidence
is statistical (probability of 2 or more people having identical enough DNA is very, very small). Insurance rates are based on statisitics.
But then our election process can't be validated by similar statistical arguments. Come on, what's this, doublethink?
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