DebateGate

<<Of course I do [believe that the police force is already an armed menace which requires an armed defence by the citizenry]>>

<<Do you have unrealistic expectations of the Police?>>

I don't think it's unrealistic to expect that only a tiny minority will ever use their weapons or even their fists in an unjustified attack on innocent civilians.

<<A very strong majority of police are decent, and a very strong majority of soldiers are too.
<<A very strong majority of the public is also decent .
<<Of these three which should be helpless against the other two?>>

I see where you're headed, but I don't think a victim of police abuse is "helpless" as long as there are good lawyers ready to take on bad cops.

But I'd really like to you set me straight on this:  where's the difference between Second Amendment guys like you and sheer anarchists?

<<Oh the irony.>>

Oh, the emptiness.  Oh the failure to address even one argument, even one fact , in a post packed with both. 

Oh the hypocrisy of someone who claims time and again that the "facts" are missing, that the "facts" are kryptonite, but when presented with facts, runs from them as if they were . . . well, Kryptonite.

OTOH, sirs, maybe you SHOULD stick to your meaningless, pathetic, empty, transparent one-liners and spare yourself further embarrassment.

I didn't think it was either, but our disturbed friend sometimes has this knack of reading other posters' minds - - wrongly.

<<This isn't a court of law, Cain isn't on trial, criminally or civilly, the policy being referenced has a 95% success rate.>>

You must be smoking some powerful weed that is not available up here.  If that thing really had a "95% success rate," it would be accepted as evidence in every civil court in Canada and the U.S.A., where the cases are decided on a simple "balance of probabilities," which means only that the plaintiff, to win, must present a case that is more likely than the defendant's, even if his case is only 51% more likely to be true than the defendant's.

The device's "success rate" will obviously depend to some extent on the skill of the operator.  Also, "95% success rate" is a term that nobody has defined  - - does it mean that in 95 tests out of 100, it has successfully identified test subjects who were not truth-tellers, in which case, I would strongly suspect that anyone so claiming would be a charlatan?  Or, as is more likely, does it simply mean that in 95 tests out of 100, it is able to successfully identify certain questions as productive of far more stress and anxiety than other questions?

 <<And right on "q", in the fleetest of moments, you attempted to combine both the trashing of the messenger . . .>>

Believe me, it was no problem to trash THIS messenger.  A simple Google of the name, combined with my standard policy of "Go to Wikipedia first," produced all the trash I needed on this idiot, probably the ONLY lawyer, practicing or not, who has described the retiring Justice David Souter, of the U.S. Supreme Court, as a "goat-fucking child molester," and the only "journalist" I can think of who admits in writing that his public opinions are tailored to fit whatever his bosses' public opinions are.  The ease of my trashing this guy's credibility, plus the fact that he's the ONLY writer so far to treat this polygraph-like technique as determinative of the credibility of any witness, via TV no less! should indicate to you, if nothing else does, that this stuff is junk science without even having to consider why two systems of Federal civil Courts, fifty systems of State civil Courts and eleven systems of Provincial civil Courts, do not accept evidence from these machines even as something to be argued over in court, even where the balance of proof required is a mere 51%.  This "messenger" ("mouthpiece" is obviously the more accurate description) had already fully discredited himself, even before I had even heard of him.

<<  via the "junk science" retort, with a completely irrelevant point about this not being admissible in court>>

What's "irrelevant" about it not being admissible in court when the very basis of its inadmissibility is the unreliability of its results in the civil courts of fifty States, eleven Provinces and two Federal governments?  It's banned from ALL of those courts, just like the opinions of fortune tellers, tea-leaf readers and phrenologists.  Against the unanimous opinions of the courts of 63 jurisdictions encompassing ALL of the courts of English- and French-speaking North America, you have chosen to rely instead on the opinion of that schmuck Erick Erickson? ? ?  Good luck widdat.

<<Both tactics I knew would be attempted, and you were so happy to jump right on in.>>

That's hilarious.  You expected me to trash the junk science of a junk scientist whose "evidence" no court will accept AND you expected me to trash the reputation of some sleazy right-wing dipshit, who's already trashed his OWN reputation right out of his own mouth?  Gee, sirs, what kind of a crystal ball do you have, anyway?

Finally, for anyone who against all logic is STILL determined to believe in this kind of poppycock, I suggest that you simply Google this question:  "Can you beat a polygraph" and you will get an overwhelming response, the gist of which is, "Yes, dummy, yes."  Selecting just one quote from the avalanche, I choose this little gem:

<<To determine whether polygraph exams have any validity, the National Research Council conducted a major study that was released in 2002. The 398-page report is easy to summarize: Polygraphs are baloney. The report found that lie detector exams are so subjective and undependable—are they really measuring deception, or just fear, for example—that they are inherently untrustworthy.>>

(from an article in Slate, found on the first page of the Google search that I just suggested)

<<Wern't you pointing out earlyer that this isn't in cort and the standards of Jurisprudence don't appl;y?>>

NO.  I think it's important that we try to be accurate in representing what is said in this forum.  I did not refer to "standards of Jurisprudence" but to the standards of the criminal law.  I was referring in particular to one standard of the criminal law, which was the presumption of innocence.  I said, or meant to say that the presumption of innocence does not apply in the civil courts and should not apply in our non-court settings, such as the campaign trail, the so-called "court of public opinion" or the way we arrive at daily decisions in our own lives.   To apply a criminal standard of proof in any such instances would be evidence of sheer insanity.

<<This is evidence, whether weak or strong, here it is.>>

Yes, you are right.  It IS evidence.  It is evidence so weak that no court, criminal or civil, in either Canada or the U.S.A., will even look at it, so prone is it to error.  They don't even want to have it introduced for lawyers and experts to argue over, because they know that even under expert scrutiny, it will be unable to produce any trustworthy conclusions.  This is not MY opinion, but the opinions of our respective Federal Courts, of fifty U.S.  State Supreme Courts and of 11 Provincial Supreme Courts here in Canada.  That's a pretty huge body of judicial opinion.  As evidence, polygraphs and similar machines are only one step above reading tea leaves.

<<In the court of Public opinion is the $15,000 software more convincing than the $40,000 woman?>>

Actually, it is the $40,000 woman who was the more convincing, since any court in our two respective countries would unhesitatingly admit her as a witness, whereas none of them would allow the evidence of that quack and his $15K software.  If the public were so abysmally ignorant as to be unaware of these facts, then the 15K software would indeed be the more convincing, but I am firmly convinced that not even the American public is that fucking dumb.  (That was an easy question to answer, although clearly the answer was not what you were expecting to hear.)

<<And yet 70 law enforcement agencies use this technology. . . . >>

Well, now that is the problem.  The law enforcement agencies are not entrusted with the determination of guilt or innocence in our respective countries' criminal courts nor with the determination of any issue in our respective countries' civil courts.  The courts and not the agencies of law enforcement are entrusted with assessing the reliability of all evidence, from the testimony of witnesses to the results of mechanical and other tests of all kinds.  And in their wisdom, they have decided that while they will listen to, and consider, the testimony of law enforcement officers and eye-witnesses and experts, they WILL NOT EVEN CONSIDER the results of polygraph tests or less-established techniques like this quack and his machines. 

Why not?  Because it's been shown time and again to be unreliable evidence.  End of story.

<< . . .  as a tool. >>

Sure, as a tool.  There are many examples of how this stuff could be useful as a tool.  Suppose a guilty suspect has told a hospital nurse named Emma Smith that he killed his wife.  Suppose the operator is reading off a list of names to the suspect and the needle goes haywire as soon as Emma Smith's name is mentioned.  The operator might not know why the needle went haywire, but he knows now that it might be a good idea to concentrate the investigation on Emma Smith for some as yet unknown reason.

Being useful as a tool does not translate into proof of guilt or innocence.  It's just a useful tool that can produce leads or close off dead-ends before too much time is wasted on them.

LOL.  Neither did your totally non-responsive response.

How would you feel if you were on trial for capital murder, and three eye-witnesses had already put you at the scene with a smoking gun in your hand and the victim's unarmed body still falling, and the D.A. asked the judge if he might just bolster his three eye-witnesses' testimony with an analysis provided by this quack  and his machine?