
The Lawyer Who Defended Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - cwal37
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/14/the-worst-of-the-worst
======
NickHaflinger
What really puzzles me is why in the aftermath of the bombing, the Tsarnaev
brothers drove round Boston for three whole days in a car registered to their
home address and only got caught after being recognized by a police officer
and fellow gym member, less than a mile from the outrage. We could ask
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev except, he was shot in the throat/caused a self inflicted
knife wound and spent most of the trial in a drug induced haze.

~~~
hga
I'm willing to go with "young and stupid". And you've come up with an excuse
for license plate scanners; for all we know, one that since then has been used
to procure such systems.

~~~
hga
Amplifying on the "stupid":

It's stupid to screw around with improvised explosives, absent a _really_
compelling need. Lots of subtle dangers, like static electricity, lots of
people kill themselves trying it.

It's stupid to plant them in a venue with a zillion cameras in operation.

It's stupid to kill a police officer and not have the wherewithal to take his
gun because of its retention holster, without even using a knife to remove it
from his belt, or, hey, just undo the belt, to try harder later.

It's stupid to release the guy who's car you hijacked for a while.

It's stupid to attack a part of the country that's notoriously mostly on your
side (in the _National Lampoon 's_ General Alexander Haig Jr. Republican Map
of the World the Boston area was one of three that shared the color of the
Warsaw Pact). Not to mention enrage them enough so that the jury votes for the
death penalty.

Etc. The were not the smartest jihadists in the drawer.

Of course, plenty of the above depends on believing the Official Story, but it
does paint a consistent picture.

I'd add that I'm hardly resistant to government conspiracies, they just have
to make sense. E.g. the immolation of the religious dissidents in Waco sure
looks like it was pre-planned _by a very small number_ of members of the FBI's
Hostage "Rescue" Team. Means, motive, opportunity, all in alignment, and it
could be done by a small enough group that they could keep the secret to their
graves.

What is the claimed alternative Boston Marathon Bombing motive here? How was
it even vaguely commensurate with the consequences if discovered? What does
Occam's Razor suggest? Etc.

~~~
throwaway1967
> What is the claimed alternative Boston Marathon Bombing motive here?

It's part of the perennial efforts to control guns:

[http://www.examiner.com/article/lautenberg-introduces-
gunpow...](http://www.examiner.com/article/lautenberg-introduces-gunpowder-
control-legislation)

~~~
hga
Note, this is something I've been part of the fight against since the early
'70s.

To my knowledge, they scavenged flash powder etc. from fireworks, although of
course they could have bought smokeless powder. Although that would very
likely have looked a lot more suspicious or left a clear trail to them if by
mail order, not that they were at all good at OPSEC.

Ah, no other country in the world has a gun culture quite like ours, I suspect
our hobby of reloading is unique. So I'll bet the on-line recipes for these
pressure cooker bombs depend on fireworks, which are a nearly universal thing,
and the brothers didn't think of/wanted to take a chance on substituting a
smokeless powder.

Not that it matters for a POS like Lautenberg, but it's also the case that
anyone thinking such an event would result in real action against reloaders---
almost certainly a minority of gun owners---is not well connected to reality.

Not that this government didn't attempt a deadly conspiracy with this aim like
Fast and Furious, or hasn't in the past with a much higher body count, Waco,
but this doesn't seem to be one. If it was, why not e.g. have someone use an
"assault weapon" against a crowd attending an event in a stadium (which is the
beginning plot of a novel I've heard about).

~~~
throwaway1967
Hi, hga. Thanks for the very lucid response. I agree with you, this might be
nothing. I'll admit I don't know what I'm talking about when I mention the
"this is a drill" announcement and the Boston Globe tweet. I had heard of
those things but not researched them. I did research, however, on the two
unidentified individuals that I mentioned before, suspiciously not paying
attention to the race and sporting big black backpacks in the shape of the
bomb. I am to this day without answers as to what these two official looking
people were doing.

Yes, no other country is like the USA where people are free to keep guns and
we intend on keeping it that way. If folks don't like it, they literally have
every other country in the world as an alternative. But here, we are not the
property of the government and we reserve the right to react to it. Americans
used to be historical people, they understood that we shouldn't get involved
in "foreign entanglements". Do you at least agree this country has been taken
over by an elite intent on disarming citizens via piecemeal policy
implementations?

It would be interesting to hear your opinion on Sandy Hooks as well. Many
politicians and law enforcement officers had to be silenced and it was a more
obvious excuse to pass legislation.

~~~
hga
You're welcome.

 _Do you at least agree this country has been taken over by an elite intent on
disarming citizens via piecemeal policy implementations?_

Not exactly. The history roughly goes:

    
    
      Actions to suppress dueling
      Actions to keep guns out of the hands of freedmen/blacks post-Civil War.
      Actions for/against different immigrants, e.g. Sullivan Law for the Irish.
      End of discrimination, enforced against all, guns are icky!
    

Well, the first of the latter Federally was more against the non-wealthy, the
1934 NFA required a $200 "tax", at minimum $3.5K in 2015 dollars (owning gold
was outlawed around the same time, and the people's gold confiscated at $20
and change/oz was repriced to $35).

However:

 _It would be interesting to hear your opinion on Sandy Hooks as well. Many
politicians and law enforcement officers had to be silenced and it was a more
obvious excuse to pass legislation._

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but there's always been serious
pushback. E.g. the NFA originally proposed including handguns, and that was
zapped in a Congress that was generally giving FDR what he wanted.

I believe that the '70-80s represented the high water mark of gun US control.
Vicious enforcement of the GCA of '68 was spiked with the FOPA of '86 (albeit
with new machine guns banned to us), the nationwide sweep of concealed carry
started with Florida in '87, the gun grabbers had a lot of fun with "assault
weapons" bans, but they're now not an issue outside of "communist" states like
California and Massachusetts, etc.

Pretty much all the 21st Century "progress" in gun control has been in
traditionally anti-gun states, even post-Sandy Hook, with the notable
exception of Colorado. And that, and the new angle of laws that ostensibly
outlaw temporary sharing and renting of guns, are happening because it's a pet
cause of billionaire Bloomberg. Either through initiative in Washington, or
the legislature in Oregon, but the rest of the gun control apparat is on life
support.

However, the _Zeitgeist_ is such that the enforcement authorities are quick to
say they won't enforce the unconscionable parts of those laws. So who knows,
those Jim Crow laws weren't enforced against white until say the '50s or so,
'60s especially.

The situation mostly seems to be in mostly in stasis, with small gains and
losses in the various pro- and anti-gun states, the Supremes seem to have
decided we only have a right to keep arms, we guess that'll be the result of
the appeal of _Peruta_ to the 9th Circuit (California and Hawaii), but the 7th
Circuit ordered Illinois to go shall issue (!) which they did (!). Ah, this is
still be fought out in D.C., and that might put the Supremes on the spot,
we're currently winning the courts albeit not on the ground.

For the foreseeable future I don't see any major changes. Maybe California
will go from iffy to horrible (Jerry Brown is sane here (!)), but much of the
rest of the country thinks the state is generally going that way in all
areas.... Me, I feel the best I have since way back in the '70s when the BATF
was stamping out gun culture ... through atrocities which resulted in a fierce
reaction. I expect that pattern of attack and counter-attack to continue, and
in the meanwhile, Americans have been arming themselves like never before,
soaking up pretty much every rifle of military utility available. If worst
comes to worst, we're prepared.

------
jessaustin
Nancy Gertner's views discussed in TFA are interesting. When the prosecution
can suppress evidence of remorse on such specious "national security" grounds,
what can't they suppress? Do we really need federal prosecutors to have such
massive advantages? Again we see the folly of Guantánamo poisoning everything.
Oh, and here's Carmen Ortiz again!

