Dear God whenever 538 strays from sports or polling it is just a disaster and the legacy continues:
ONE IN SEVEN CHILDREN who run away from home are "likely victims of child sex trafficking" 538? REALLY? That would be 120,000 children a year.
You're a statistics and polling website, and you decide to run an article with EXACTLY ONE STATISTIC and you do NO WORK to ensure that it's accurate.
I appreciate that some accurate information snuck in here, namely that abductions are rare.
But you've got one big area of strength, which is that you're extremely good at explaining statistics and numbers and applying them to things people care about.
A piece that doesn't grapple with the numbers or even prove that Qanon has harmed anti-trafficking efforts ain't it.
And the thing is, I think Nate Silver is a tremendous writer and I have learned a huge amount from him. But there needs a better editor over there to ensure these other pieces are substantive and useful.
This looks thrown together in a couple of hours.
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There are some reports that Giuliani is distributing a video of Hunter Biden smoking crack and having sex. I think this may pose some problems under Delaware's revenge porn statute. /1
The statute makes it a misdemeanor to distribute images of someone engaging in sexual conduct without their consent if they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I haven't viewed the video, so I don't know if Biden had that expectation, but this does seem nonconsensual. /2
The statute suggests some aggravating factors that are present here, such as including the identity of the person filmed, distributing to "annoy" that person, and possibly that the images are distributed for "profit."
I feel like I could make some brave new law on standing if I sued for an injunction requiring judges to wear flannel pajamas and terrycloth robes for zoom proceedings
"But Mr. Fleischman how are you injured by black robes?"
"Your honor the word coziness does not appear in the Constitution but a semantic analysis of the Federalist papers reveals..."
It certainly might SEEM crazy that the governor of a state can arbitrarily limit access to ballot boxes based on vague, poorly articulated security concerns. It might seem like a lot of last-minute election changes geared at suppressing turnout are, in fact, corrupt. But really/1
Notice that @JonahDispatch does not argue that Barrett is crazy or stupid or bad. Instead he acknowledges the truth that she will likely make a big difference on the Court, and she is being appointed, along partisan lines, at the last minute.
Here's a model of the other way you can be an effective advocate: by actually talking about Barrett's record as a judge.
Sidney Powell alleges that Judge Flynn should be recused because he said unflattering things about her client while he was sentencing him for a felony.
She alleges that he said these things because of Rachel Maddow, and not because of the facts before him.