tvc184

And?

You seem to have an axe to grind with polygraphs and note that they do not detect lies. That is true but they work the way they are intended.    Remember that a person does not have to consent to taking one for a criminal investigation. I have known many people that "passed" in that they did not show deception so the idea that merely asking people a question of guilt will show that they are lying (false positive) because they are nervous is not correct, otherwise every person would show deception.    When I took a polygraph to get hired by the police department, they asked me all kinds of sensitive questions (some which they can't ask any more) that made me very nervous as they would exclude me from being hired if they could find out evidence that I was not telling the truth. That is also why all questions have to be asked multiple times and there has to be a certain amount of time between questions. The idea that some questions make people nervous even if they are telling the truth is a known factor.    I was watching an old Dragnet show last week from I think 1969 where a murder suspect was taking the polygraph (girlfriend was found dead). He showed "deception" but then Sgt. Friday asked about the interpretation of the "suspect's deception", the polygrapher stated that he did not think the guy did it. Of course it was television (claimed to be from actual cases) but when questioned the polygrapher stated that maybe the guy watched a recent movie where a similar event happened, maybe his girlfriend always did something a certain way or he could have merely guessed because of what is routinely thought of as a means of death like a shooting or strangulation. When asked specific questions about where the victim's car was located, where the body was found and other such details were asked, he showed no response. So even 45 years ago some television showed that even with a positive response in some areas, it does not show that a person lied or was guilty. As the polygrapher in the episode noted, a couple of deceptive answer did not show guilt and he thought that the cops had the wrong guy and in fact they did. The entire interview and test is the key, not a single "did you lie" question.    I can believe that was taken from a real case where the guy on the hot seat was very nervous about general questions because everyone thinks if a woman is found dead, there is a good chance the boyfriend/husband did it but in that case the details cleared him. And again, it is a tool that a person does not have to submit to. I can assure you that many criminal cases have been cleared by the polygraph and with completely different factual evidence as the use of the polygraph itself cannot even be disclosed in court. It takes real evidence both testimony and physical for a conviction, not a polygraph.    If the police had a lot of problems with false positives as you suggest, why would they still be using them? I never saw a point in wasting my time in an investigation and in the years that I was in detectives I only asked for a polygraph on a couple of occasions. One guy backed out and one confessed when I suggested it.    There are also other methods to solve cases and get confessions like kinesic interview techniques which are basically a person to person "lie detector". They are extremely effective if the interview/interrogation last long enough but like the polygraph, it is just a tool to get a confession or to find evidence and the technique itself is not evidence. We can't give up crime fighting because hunches, polygraphs, interview techniques, etc., can't be stated as evidence. They all play a big part is solving some crimes however. 

  No, I would be okay with them not being in the country. I don't want them here paying out of state tuition either.    None of that has anything to do with you trying to make (for several weeks) a correlation between the Obama Dream Act and the Texas in state tuition law. You are trying to make it show that if Perry does it, it is okay but if Obama does it, it is wrong. You have the apples and oranges problem of comparing two different things where one has almost nothing to do with the other. 

Those silly experiments are nonsense. The polygraph depends on a person having something to lose or as you say, the fear test. I agree that it is fear that drives them but it isn't fake. Telling me that it is a fear test doesn't negate the results, it shows what causes them.    A person that lies about a number on a test that he volunteers for has no consequences. I have watched some of those and they have no bearing. Have the person sign away his life savings or let him get hit with the Taser if they can discover the lie and see what the results are.    A polygraph is not a lie detector but a measure of blood pressure, pulse, respiration, etc. It doesn't flash that a person is lying, it tells you questions that cause a person problems in some kind of fear of being discovered or as you say, a fear test. You can bet that there are people in this forum that might have stretched the truth a bit on how big of a fish they caught, etc. Their blood pressure didn't sky rocket out of fear of being discovered, their respiration didn't get heavy and their pulse didn't quicken. It is because there was no one there to call them on it and there was no real loss because of the lie.    When a person is answering questions about a crime and you get to a question that makes his pulse rate go up, his blood pressure start rising and his breathing starts to get more labored and the previous 10 questions had no such response, there is a reason.    The instrument does not detect lies. It detects body responses. A person that "passes" a test does not mean that he is telling the truth (as the goofy numbers test shows) but he is a person that has no fear of what he knows or about someone else finding out. A person that shows deception might have other reasons for the elevated responses. It does not mean that he lied but something in the question is causing a different response than the other questions.   Like two people have said, it is a tool. If it was ever a definitive "lie detector" then it would be admissible in court and we could do away with juries. It is not nor is it ever claimed to be.   Does the general public know that? Probably not but many of them also believe that the police can get DNA results in 15 minutes and plug it into a computer of every living soul and come up with a suspect. Most of the public knowledge of law enforcement, laws in general and prosecutions comes from television and movies. 

  You keep pushing the claimed TX dream act like it is the same as the proposed federal law and Perry supports one but not the other. In truth one has nothing to do with the other than a made up name.   Under TX law, an illegal alien that lives in this state, can pay in state tuition. Hmmmm..... any person that lives in this state can claim that he lives in this state for tuition purposes when applying to college.    Wow.... that is almost the same as the federal Dream Act where if you go to college you become a citizen.    NOT!

  Sure. But we get a guy in his second DWI and the feds will not touch him no matter that he can get a year in jail and has endangered lives.    Under former administrations (including Democratic), that was a ticket out of the country. Not so today but being illegal does not exempt them from state or city laws. 

  As a governor he had no authority as many on the left point out when states try to enact laws dealing with illegal aliens.   I can tell you from a law enforcement standpoint that when i arrested an illegal alien for anything (even a traffic citation) we could put a immigration hold on them for deportation. I stopped a couple of guys one time working at a local chemical plant after someone thought that they were suspicious. I had no crimes to arrest either of them but called INS (now ICE) and spoke directly to a local federal agent on my cell phone. Both had been in country for a few years and had been working at the plant. Both were arrested for immigration violations and brought in for processing and deportation.    Today we can catch an illegal alien in even fairly serious crimes and cannot put a hold on them. The local agents cannot makes such decisions and have to call Houston and ask for permission to investigate them. Previously any INS/ICE agent could detain a person for up to 24 hours to determine his status. Now they can hardly even talk to local law enforcement about illegal aliens because the current administration has changed the rules of enforcement.... not the law but merely how it is applied or more correctly, ignored. To put it simply, under Bush or even Clinton, we could get illegal aliens deported or at least investigated. Under Obama that is simply not the case. If they aren't being held for at least a felony, they are free to go. They readily admit that they are illegal as they have no consequences. 

  I would guess fishing.    PA just hired a new superintendent so that it out and I doubt that their head guy wants Chargois for an assistant. They could be taking applications for principles or other admin types or even merely a teacher. Whatever it is, I think that it is not likely to be someone in actual financial control over anything significant. While looking for a new job, he might have put an application in at several places and someone might have seen on in PA and it all of a sudden became an event. 

  And there you have it.   If a person blows it off of the charts then he is likely involved in whatever you are looking into. If not them he probably isn't your guy. As westend states, it is a tool.    Many people will blow a polygraph so bad (and they know it) that they will confess or sometimes confess before they take it during the pre-test interview.    In any case it helps law enforcement have an idea if they are likely on the right trail or not. Doing good doesn't mean that you aren't involved and doing bad doesn't mean guilt but it is accurate enough most of the time to help with the investigation. 

  Belize

  Yes, off topic is a rules violation. Almost everyone throws in a tidbit from time to time that is not exactly on topic but when the entire thread turns into nothing but bashing and not only bashing but for something that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, it is time to lock it or be removed. 

If you are referring to the thread on blacks having crime genes or predisposed to committing crime, I removed it.    Not that the topic wasn't stupid enough however it could have stayed but when about 8 posts were about calling other members sexual preference into question. In fact 13 of the first 20 posts had nothing to do with topic but calling other people gay or loony. That not only violated the rules of this forum it also went way off topic...... which is also a rules violation.    I didn't feel like deleted 75% of the posts in a single thread so I chose to delete it. Apparently that was not good enough for some members as the offending posts were repeated. 

It looks like he will not have a complicit school board to cover his tracks this time. 

  But if you are much as slapped one without leaving a single mark, some would claim that is child abuse. 

All child abuse cases are subjective. What appears to be abuse to some people is not to others and the facts may or may not comply with the law in that state.    In TX law it says that you cannot create serious bodily injury to a child even for discipline but someone has to sit in judgment what is SBI according to the definition in the law. It is the same way with all laws. 

I thought they were building a fishing pier there. 

  Actually the state has organized crime laws also similar to the federal RICO laws. They are seldom used however.    Under TX Organized Crime Chapter 71, whatever the most serious crime that was committed by the conspiracy (even if they did not all know each other), the entire group can be prosecuted for the next highest crime of the most serious offense committed.  For example, 10 people conspire on various levels to commit theft, burglary or forgery (there are lots of other crimes listed) and the most serious crime committed by any one person is a 2nd Degree Felony Theft (more than $100,000), it then goes to or is enhanced to a 1st Degree Felony Theft or up to 99 years for everyone in the organized crime.  Even if one of the participants only stole $400 but it was part of the big scheme, he/she gets the same charge as the most serious crime committed. A $400 theft alone carries a maximum of 6 months in the county jail but if it is part of organized crime as my example, that same person would be facing up to 99 years instead of 6 months.    With this new DA, something like that is entirely possible. 

......... and if anyone cares, TX laws says the actor (parent or guardian) can use any force other than "deadly force" against a child for discipline to the degree the actor believes it is necessary. 

  You are trying to make a straw man argument by comparing small government to a possible Fourth Amendment violation. What does one have to do with the other?    If the NSA metadata collecting is legal and can keep us safe, what does small or large government have to do with it? That is like saying we should get rid of our nuclear deterrent or our super carriers because they are expensive or it constitutes big government.    On the other hand if metadata collection is illegal, what if its cost was minuscule? Would it be okay to violate our rights because it is really small government?    I see the big/small government argument as a non-issue on whether we should spy to protect the country whether any collecting data in the USA is illegal or not.    Most people consider big government the myriad of agencies that have too much control over our lives in both prohibitions and giveaways, not the cost or size of protection. 

I read both decisions (not the news media's version or opinion) and "IF" the DC court ruling is allowed to stand, it will be the final nail.   Of course that is a big IF.    Strangely in the dissent from the DC court, the dissenting judge gets political which usually does not come out in the rulings. He starts out his ruling that is supposed to be based on law and not political leanings with "This case is about Appellants’ not-so-veiled attempt to gut the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".   To me that sounds political by complaining that they are trying to undo a law. Hmmm..... isn't that what constitutional challenges always do.... attempt to undo a law?    From the Fourth Circuit  I am not saying that they are wrong but I didn't notice where they went against the DC Court's opinion. They seemed to answer a different question in the law. Assuming that the DC Court ruling from one part of the law is valid that it is unconstitutional and the Fourth Circuit's ruling from another part is also true, the DC decision still stands because even if one part of the law stands (Fourth Circuit), the other decision still dismantles the law. In effect, both could be correct but it only takes on to disqualify the law.     

Silly NY laws that have no bearing in TX anyway. 

  Corruption is interesting and when many people see what they feel is corruption, it is great to see the monster fall.    Why were so many people hung up on a jury trial with millions of people being ecstatic at the outcome for a local crime that didn't happen in 49 states? Many felt that Zimmerman was being railroaded and it was great to see the verdict. On the opposite side, many felt that he was guilty of murder and would have jumped with joy with a conviction..... and again, for something that had nothing to do with this most places in this country.    When we see corrupt public officials (or anyone we think is corrupt) being held accountable, it is awesome. Look at the councilman being arrested in Kountze for felony theft a couple of days ago. There were plenty of comments on the various news sites and Facebook and none seemed favorable to the councilman and said how great it was that he was caught. Most of those comments came from communities that are bigger than Kountze and not even in the same county, so why should we even care?   What all of these have in common is a vindication of people's feelings. It has nothing to do with Beaumont (as much as many Beaumont people want it to be) but the feeling that corrupt people are actually about to pay the piper.    In my opinion.

You have been hung up on this TX dream act for days. It has nothing to do with federal control of immigration. The. TXDA allows people living in this state to pay in state tuition. Stunning right? If you live in the state, you get to claim that you live in the state. It has nothing to do with the proposed Dream Act where it grants citizenship to illegals based solely on attending college. It also does the same for illegals that join the military and I agree with that. If you serve 4 years minimum in the US military and get an honorable discharge, you get a permanent resident card/status (which my wife has) and can then apply for citizenship. All of which (again) has nothing to do with Texas allowing people living in the state to claim they are a resident of the state. Great attempt at a smoke screen though.........

Sounds like a federal government problem, not a state which us trying to enforce federal law.

  It might not be a true indication of actually "making up lies". Maybe it comes from getting opinions that a person takes as facts from sources such as MSNBC.    I am sure that all knowledgeable people knew that there was no requirement for a birth certificate and they weren't deporting people. In fact the detention of a suspected illegal alien is still legal under the contested AZ law and the SCOTUS upheld the right of local officers to detain and check for immigration status with the feds. Of course that is a meaningless point at the moment with Obama and Eric Holder running the show as they refuse to uphold the law but the law was allowed to stand. The part of the law that was thrown out was the making of a federal crime, a state crime also. In fact federal law requires aliens to carry documentation to this day. I have arrested aliens for not doing so but was required to call ICE and letting them confirm what I already knew and approving the arrest, which I made.    Of course that will again fall on deaf ears for those ignoring the truth and it is currently a moot point as the current administration will not even enforce immigration laws even after the local police make a lawful arrest such as for DWI, assault, etc.