From: jimmy_kickoutthespams_bleeder@aol.com   
      
   An interesting thing happened over Horizon--the blog that Alan Allport   
   started after he and his friends found this newsgroup infra dig.   
      
   Alan posted this:   
      
   Not Proven   
   From the following (December 1946) week's New Statesman: I quote this not as   
   the set-up for some hang-'em-and-flog-'em rant, but out of genuine   
   curiosity. Without touching upon the principle of presumption of innocence   
   (which has powerful merits in its own right), is the following observation   
   nonetheless empirically true? [Note: without getting into an argument about   
   what 'practically impossible' means, exactly, I would point out that   
   anecdotal counter-examples would not, in themselves, invalidate the general   
   claim.]   
   "Most people with long experience of the criminal courts believe that it is   
   practically impossible for an innocent person to be actually sent before a   
   jury. Before it gets so far, a case encounters too many hurdles for that.   
   Somewhere in the chain of preliminaries, the fact that the man is innocent   
   must become unmistakably clear. A Magistrate can discharge a man accused of   
   murder (though this is no bar to his being charged again on fresh evidence);   
   and so can the officer in charge of a police station. A Judge can stop a   
   trial at any time after the case for the prosecution is completed and direct   
   the jury to say 'not guilty'. But manifest innocence is so different from   
   inadequately demonstrated guilt. Cases of wrongful conviction, which usually   
   achieve notoriety, are generally cases of conviction on inadequate evidence,   
   not of people condemned for something they have not done."   
      
      
   Since I am the only contributor who takes an outspoken, shall we say,   
   non-liberal, approach to law and order, and, since we'd been recently   
   discussing that very subject, I took his 'set-up for some   
   hang-'em-and-flog-'em rant' as being directed at me. So, I posted this:   
      
   'Alan A wrote:   
      
   'hang-'em-and-flog-'em rant'   
      
   Ooh! A tabloid cliche! (Hehe: liberal tabloid cliches are always just   
   *above* the pale though aren't they?...) From you! Show me where I've   
   indulged in your 'hang-'em-flog-'em' rant.''   
      
   Which he studiously ignored. So I then posted:   
      
   'Yes Alan, that's right. 'Hang-'em-Flog-'em' *is* an abuse of Politics and   
   the English Language.'   
      
   Which censored and I reposted and he censored. So I then wrote:   
      
   'You may prefer it this way:   
      
   So, Alan, you don't like your name being associated with an affirmative   
   exclamation indicating that I believe it generally correct to observe that   
   the lazy, pejorative epithet 'hang-'em-flog'em' that you used to describe   
   someone who is critical of liberal law and order policy, is actually an   
   abuse of Orwell's word philosophy propounded in his essay 'Politics and the   
   English Language' and is on the same level as the lazy pejorative language   
   of the past: 'iron heel', 'lackey' and 'jackal' for instance. Since you are   
   evidently an Orwell fan and certainly admirably pedantic about language, I   
   think it fair comment to point this out and not be censored for it. Don't   
   you?'   
      
   Which he has so far censored six times.   
      
      
   --   
   'If you called Abortion the Death Penalty, liberals would be against it.'~   
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)