>>>>>Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something
>>>>
>>>>Anglosaxon, by construction. "Have to" means "must" in English only.
>>>>
>>>>>Useless laws weaken necessary laws.
>>>>
>>>>Anglosaxon, by observation :). Just yesterday we discussed the cases where teenagers would end up branded as sex offenders and on Megan's list (or whatever the name) for just minor infractions - a girl puts her own topless photos on facebook and gets branded forever for peddling child porn; a guy takes a girl to dinner with their common friends, and someone's parents report them and he ends up branded as an offender. Whereas the Duke guys got off.
>>>
>>>I thought the Duke guys were Anglo Saxons. No?
>>
>>And so was the legal system by which they flew free. No matter if at least one of them was perhaps Asian-American by origin, or had such a lawyer.
>
>Then I don't understand your comments. A guy takes his girl to dinner with friends and gets branded - not an anglo saxon?

I veered off the subject here and commented the lines from different perspectives... on the subject of the current line, of useless vs necessary laws and the watering down of pretty much anything important, which is only loosely tied to the U(S+K) cocoon theme (by being such a type of legal system based on common law and induction, vs. deduction of all laws from Constitution), but more on the general practice, which is, I guess, typically American, described as "pushing the envelope" somewhere, "that's what we do, whenever we get a new law or liberty, we go on stretching it to see how far will it go". Which usually gets the good intentions thrown through the window within a day, and various finer points of comma or parenthesis placement in the text of the law get extended, so the elephant law suddenly somehow catches the unsuspecting mice, while actual elephants have good lawyers and are beyond reach.

Back to the subject... don't know whether the two cases I mentioned ever got to the news - they were local here. Which probably means that they aren't news anymore. Kids getting branded for life for an indiscretion? Or none at all, for just being accused - I mean, a girl doesn't tell her parents she's going out to dinner, gets home immediately after, they weren't alone at all, and he still gets branded for life as a sex offender because she was a few weeks below 18 because her parents sued, and he didn't have a good lawyer, because he (and his parents) didn't realize he'd need one? Kids' lives are being regularly destroyed here, for all of your gods' sakes. And if anyone tells me that religion isn't influencing laws... malo morgen.