Cut the BS--Mangione is going to trial with all the evidence being legally obtained.

 OK, My legal qualifications are: JD from the University of Maryland, LLM University of Exeter, England. Admitted to the PA bar in 1990, retired in 2023. Admitted to the DC bar,  EDPA (Fed), and MDPA (Fed). That said, I can give a legal opinion.

The picture is of the Blair County, Police Criminal Complaint, which can be found here:
https://www.pacourts.us/Storage/media/pdfs/20241209/233900-mangione12924.pdf

According to this document, the police were responding to a report of a male who resembled the person wanted for the shooting of Brian Thompson. 

 Mangione removed the mask and the police said they recognised him from the media. Then Mangione gave the police the fake ID used at the NYC hostel. Any searches according to this would be incident to arrest or an inventory search.

You get what the police will probably say in the clip of the press conference which starts at 10:50.

Unless the defence can come up with something substantial, Mangione's arrest appears to be legal based upon what I see here.

 More court documents can be found here:
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/luigi-mangione-court-documents-gun-charge-ME4VXEHIOFBK7FIO5STIXXWAPQ/

MAGA? This Railroad Could Cripple America's Economy

"The upgrades now rolling across this route will do a whole lot more than safeguard millions of journeys and a huge slice of the US economy. They could enable America to finally run truly high speed trains. An ambition which has harboured since forever."

You may be someone who doesn't understand how much railraods contribute to a country's economy: even the US. The US has neglected this segment of the tranportation sector to its detriment. But it's also been neglecting an even worse segment of the transportation infrastructure: the one that services the automobile (which includes trucking).

Was Luigi Mangione's DNA collected illegally?

Rosalind Franklin By MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

 OK, this is called touch or trace DNA since it is found on an object. It doesn't need to be something that the cops gave him, since someone leaves this DNA pretty much everywhere. Yes, the Fourth Amendment analogue in Pennsylvania law has a broader guarantee of the right of privacy, but how intrusive was this would be my question? The police could just as well  get this DNA from the food he was eating at McDonald's as well as from something they gave him.

His defence could question the science, but that requires Mangione providing a sample of his DNA. Also, PA law says:

§ 58.2 . Authority of law enforcement officers.
The General Assembly has declared that nothing contained in the act shall limit or abrogate any existing authority of law enforcement officers to take, maintain, store and utilize DNA samples for law enforcement purposes. See section 506 of the act (35 P. S. § 7651.506). Failure to comply with this subchapter does not
form the basis for suppression of otherwise admissible evidence.

And Pennsylvania's law on DNA evidence (CHAPTER 58. DNA DETECTION OF SEXUAL AND VIOLENT OFFENDERS ACT) specifically mentions 18 Pa.C.S. § 2502 (relating to murder) as a reason for collecting DNA.

It sounds to me like this may be an attempt to diminish the size of the mountain of evidence which incriminates Mangione.

I mean, he was caught with the ID used to stay at the NYC hostel, the murder weapon, and his DNA links him to the crime scene. Of course, the defence wants to see this evidence suppressed. 

My opinion is that it will be allowed unless the defence can discredit the science, which would probably require Mangione to submit a DNA sample.

Italian High Speed Rail: The Trains that Killed an Airline

I finally made it to Italy, despite having spent a lot of time in the French Alps, which happen to be literally next door. In fact, we were staying in Chamonix and went to Courmayeur, that happens to be in the Vallée d'Aoste someplace I've been wanting to visit for a long time.

Anyway, I was rather surprised that Italy is a leader in High Speed Trains. These two videos give you some ideas why I support HSR. 

So much for Making America Great Again if Italy is kicking the US's but in this regard. These trains leave Acela in the dirt.

 

Luigi Mangione's defence fund.

I was listening to an interview with one of the people from his "defence fund". She said that they wanted him to have the best defence possible,

That got me thinking because his best defence right now is to hope for a really good deal from the prosecution. Which isn't a very likely possibility from the Feds.

For those who don't know it, the feds have a 93% conviction rating. Mostly because they don't try cases they can lose. Federal practise can best be described as "Let's make a deal". In other words, you had better have something juicy you can offer the AUSA handling the case. They might knock down the charges so that Mangione gets life (which is indeed life since there is no time off for good behvaiour in the Federal system).

We used to get people to become cooperative when I worked for the US Attorney in DC by threatening to make the charges federal, since that would mean a "solid" sentence anywhere in the US Prison system.

But that's an aside since I was thinking that maybe some of those big, anonymous donors were health care companies who want to see Mangione have the best defence possible, since he is probably going to go down hard.

And the reality is that he's not as good of a defendant as people want him to be. As I have pointed out, even his mother thinks he could have done it!

To be honest if all of his supporters would shut the fuck up and work on this issue, I'm pretty sure that there would be change. But what have they done about this?  Have they supported serious health care reform?

Obviously not.

What don't you understand about "domestic violence"?

In the previous post, "Misinterpreting the Constitution", I mention the phrase "domestic violence", which has a drastically different meaning today from what the founders understood it to mean. While this video is fairly elementary (as in it's like my A level english course), it does make a few important points about language.
 

The major takeaway is that language of even a fairly recent time might be different from how we interpret it. And it's definitely different from what it was 240 some years ago. It's wrong to impose modern ideas on a text that old: especially if it is detrimental to modern society.

This next video gets into how when Shakespeare (Shakespear?) is heard in the original pronounciation, it makes the meaning clearer. Likewise, when the constitution is understood as a whole, it makes the meaning of the Second Amendment much more obvious that it relates to the militia, which is an institution that has changed drastically from how it was original conceived by the founders.

Another takeaway is that what people think pirates should talk like is the West Country Accent. I have to wonder if Shakepeare's English is coloured by his being from Warwickshire, which isn't exactly West Country, but it would have been signifiantly far away from London when he was alive. After all, the World's End Pub in Chelsea WAS way outside of London when it was built. Even where I live now wasn't as built up as it is now in the mid-1700s!

And people who have seen "Lost in Austen" will remember her visit to Regency period Hammersmith. I used to live in an area that was once farmland in the mid-18th Century and is now considered centre city.  But that's a lot of a digression other than life has changed quite a bit from the late 18th Century and we can't place modern ideas on texts written over 200 years ago. That probably even applies to something written 25 years ago.

Anyway, see also:

• Baron, Dennis, Corpus Linguistics, Public Meaning, and the Second Amendment, Duke Center for Firearms Law: https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2021/07/corpus-linguistics-public-meaning-and-the-second-amendment
• ___.    Guns and Grammar: the Linguistics of the Second Amendment, https://debaron.web.illinois.edu/essays/guns.pdf
• Amicus Brief NY State Rifle and Pistol Association, https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-843/193271/20210921155937883_Amicus%20Brief.pdf