One of the characteristic intellectual failings of leftists is an inability to draw distinctions. Hence, they are constantly accusing their intellectual adversaries of inconsistencies where none exist. I could explain the difference, but some arguments are too stupid to respond to.

No, it’s that we think that the only way to get rid of a bad law is by its ruthless application to Black people.

The first few seconds of the first video you link to is dispositive about the Rosenbaum shooting: it was self-defense. You can see that Rosenbaum is charging Rittenhouse with Rittenhouse’s back to him. Rosenbaum gets within a few feet of Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse turns around and shoots him.

I should qualify what I said. If there were no videotape and no witnesses, then the criminal records of a shooting victim in a case where the defendant is alleging self-defense might be relevant. For example, if a defendant shot someone in a back alley and then claimed that his victim attacked him, then the victim’s criminal records might be relevant to the issue of whether the attack actually occurred. In this case, the legal point of contention will not be so much what happened–the videotapes and witnesses will leave little doubt about that–but whether Rittenhouse acted reasonably under the circumstances. And for that, what Rittenhouse knew and saw at the time will be decisive. Most judges are reluctant to allow in the criminal records of victims where these are only slightly probative, as a not unnatural reaction for a juror upon hearing a victim’s past felony convictions is to think the victim just got belated justice for his prior offenses. In a politicized trial, like the Van Dyke case, all bets are off regarding the rules of evidence insofar as the admission of evidence serves the purpose of convicting a disfavored defendant. As a disfavored defendant, himself, however, Rittenhouse won’t get the benefit of any departure from the normal rules of evidence.

Of course, even in this case, a prosecutor could leave the door open to the admission of the victims’ criminal records by putting the victims’ characters at issue, e.g., by opining in his opening statement about the great tragedy that befell two innocent young men who were only there to protest racial injustice. But short of something like that, Rittenhouse won’t be able to get the victims’ criminal records into evidence if the judge follows normal evidentiary practice.

I’m a lawyer and no the records of the two guys killed would not be admissible as they would be deemed to be irrelevant. Rittenhouse would not have known that the two had criminal records at the time he shot them, so their records would not be germane to Rittenhouse’s state of mind. Grosskreutz’s record might be used to impeach his testimony if he testified at trial.

If the 15 point gap between whites and blacks, who are about 80% black, is purely genetic in origin, then the gap between whites and biracials (who are 1/4th genetically as black as self-identified blacks) should be around 3.75 IQ points.

This doesn’t follow. Male IQ is more closely correlated with the mother’s IQ than with the father’s. This is because intelligence genes are more likely to be derived from the X chromosome, which a male only receives from his mother, than other chromosomes. A biracial couple is far more likely to be black male and white female than the reverse. Thus, the IQs of the male offspring of such couples are more likely to approach the average for whites than the average for blacks or the midpoint between whites and blacks.

Let’s see what happens if the pattern of blacker male/whiter female biracial couples holds up over two generations and we assume that all genes associated with intelligence are derived from the X chromosome.

Black father (85 IQ)-White Mother (100 IQ)
Biracial male offspring (50% white-50% black): 100 IQ
Biracial female offspring (50% white-50% black): 92.5 IQ

Biracial father (50% white-50% black) (100 IQ)-white mother (100 IQ)
Biracial male offspring (75% white): 100 IQ
Biracial female offspring (75% white): 100 IQ

If all biracial individuals had such ancestry and all genes for intelligence were derived from the X chromosome, you would see no IQ difference between 75% white biracial individuals (less white than the 80% white biracial group in the study) and 100% white individuals. Of course, life doesn’t perfectly follow this pattern: Not all biracial couples involve the black male/white female or blacker male/whiter female arrangement; white women who mate with black men may have a lower IQ than the average white; and not all genes associated with intelligence are derived from the X chromosome. However, it doesn’t follow from the discrepancy between the 2-point IQ difference found between the 80% white biracial group and the white group in the study and the 3.75 IQ difference you would expect to find by multiplying the black percentage of each group that the differences in IQ found between the white group, the biracial group, and the black group in the study are anything other than 100% genetic.

No, that explanation wouldn’t fly even if the writers wanted to avail themselves of it, because the clause that ends that sentence says that the immigrant rights movement is “lacking in billionaire benefactors and financially outmatched by ideological rivals like the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation of American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA.” The claim that the immigration rights movement lacks billionaire benefactors is factually false. And the claim that it is “financially outmatched” by ideological rivals is also factually false. If the writers merely wanted to mislead in the manner you suggest and not outright lie, they would have had to content themselves with saying something like “relative to other progressive special interests, the immigrant rights movement is poorly funded vis-a-vis its ideological rivals.” In the same vein, I’m not shorter than my mother whether it’s relative to Wilt Chamberlain or Mount Kilimanjaro.

Your confidence is exceeded only by your cluelessness. You can’t perjure yourself merely by presenting yourself in a misleadingly favorable way. That’s what lawyers coach their witnesses to do and what Ford’s lawyers were doing when she was supposedly driving from California. You have to testify falsely to some specific material fact. In that regard, Kavanaugh didn’t deny that he often drank to excess when he was younger. He merely denied that he ever “blacked out” as a result of drinking or got so drunk that he woke up the next morning having forgotten what had happened the previous day. So you’re wrong both as to the law and the facts. On the plus side, I see a future for you as a panelist on virtually any network other than Fox.

If one were to divide the amount of invective by the amount of intelligent thought in this comment, with the invective being the numerator and the intelligent thought the denominator, the result would approach infinity.