RSS

May 2nd, 2024 - 1:21 am § in Misc.

Welcome to Steve’s blog

Dr. Steve Schwartz, a University of Washington medical researcher, created this blog to discuss campus issues, and it soon expanded to a wider range of subjects. Although he’s no longer with us, a contributor still posts articles that readers may find informative, interesting, or simply entertaining and funny (read statement of purpose here). Use the search term “handbill.us” to find this page on the internet. To scroll back to older posts, click on ←Previous Entries halfway down this page.

Comments are turned off

Suspicion doesn’t make something a fact

This is so obvious, and so basic, we all should be able to agree on it. Suspicion isn’t fact, and determining something is a fact requires proof. That’s how our legal system works, and that’s how nearly all of us conduct our day-to-day affairs.

A police officer may suspect you of drunk driving, but the arrest isn’t valid if you hadn’t been drinking and weren’t impaired. A retail manager may suspect you of shoplifting, but you’re not a thief if you paid for the items. A neighbor may suspect you of stealing his political yard sign, but the wind knocking it over and blowing it away doesn’t make you a trespasser. In all these cases, a third party’s suspicion doesn’t make a person guilty, and everyone understands that.

A partisan election board may suspect voting fraud, but bare suspicion isn’t grounds to reject an election result. There’s a well-defined legal process for conducting elections, disputing results, and finalizing a result by a statutory deadline. There’s also a very basic principle in our system that people don’t get to pick and choose which laws to obey; they’re bound by all of them, and the law applies to everyone, and all the time.

Along those lines, a Georgia state judge has ruled that county election officials “cannot delay or decline to certify election results, … dealing a blow to an effort by conservatives … to reject results based on a suspicion of fraud or abuse” (story here). The law requires that elections be certified by a certain date. Any challenges must be pursued within the legal framework of the election laws. And mere suspicion of voting fraud or irregularities is never enough to uphold a challenge.

How would you like it, if a judge found you guilty, based on nothing more than a cop’s, store employee’s, or neighbor’s suspicion? How would you like it, if the candidate of your choice was denied taking office, based on nothing more than the partisan opposition’s suspicion the election wasn’t fair? Finding a person guilty requires evidence. So does refusing to recognize and abide by an election result.


April 28th, 2024 - 3:40 pm § in Misc.

In memory of Dr. Steve Schwartz, who created this blog

Professor Stephen M. Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., the founder and proprietor of The-Ave.US, passed away from COVID-19 on March 17, 2020. Read local press coverage here and here. Steve joined the University of Washington Medical School’s faculty in 1967 and had taught there since 1974. He was world-f[...]


April 28th, 2024 - 1:00 pm § in Misc.

Selected Movie & Article Links

Below are links to a sampling of our most interesting, infuriating, or just plain funny movies, articles, and essays. Selections for this list are entirely arbitrary. The-Ave.US has over 23,000 posts, so this isn’t an index. ABOUT THIS BLOG Welcome to The-Ave.US, an introduction to this blog ([...]


October 15th, 2024 - 11:39 am § in Politics, Republicans

Vance claims there was a “peaceful transfer of power” in 2021

J. D. Vance, Trump’s 2024 running mate, is a prolific liar. He falsely accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of stealing and eating pets, which has caused real harm to innocent people (see story here); then he tried to justify this lie as “telling stories” to get media a[...]


October 14th, 2024 - 7:55 pm § in Donald Trump, Politics

Was there a third assassination attempt?

That’s what Riverside County, California, Sheriff Chad Bianco (photo, left; bio here) and a slew of rightwing media and propaganda outlets called it. But Vem Miller, the Las Vegas man arrested near a Trump rally on Saturday, October 12, 2024, for having a fake license plate and a pile of guns [...]


October 14th, 2024 - 7:26 pm § in Democrats, Politics, Republicans

The education divide in politics

Doug Sosnick (profile here) was Bill Clinton’s political director and is a Democratic strategist. After decades of observing American politics, he said on a CNN podcast, “The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is [...]


October 14th, 2024 - 6:48 pm § in Law and Courts, Politics

Is this free speech or trespassing?

This water town is property of the town of Hanson, Massachusetts. The light show is courtesy of a neighbor. Hanson officials have issued a cease-and-desist letter, and $100-a-day fines, to the resident (read story here). This absolutely is about free speech. From the town’s point of view, it d[...]


October 13th, 2024 - 6:59 pm § in Law and Courts

Should this man be executed?

Tremane Wood is on Arizona’s death row, and fighting for his life. Death penalty opponents and liberal media are also trying to rescue him from the death penalty. When trying to overturn a death sentence in the U.S., lawyers specializing in this work often focus on legal process arguments inst[...]


October 13th, 2024 - 4:33 pm § in Law and Courts

Covid-19 vaccine cards counterfeiter sentenced to prison

A federal judge sentenced a Salt Lake City man to 12 months in prison, 3 years of probation, and a $40,000 fine for counterfeiting Covid-19 vaccine cards. Nicholas Frank Sciotto, 34, pleaded guilty to printing and selling over 120,000 of the fake CDC cards during the height of the pandemic, when pro[...]


October 13th, 2024 - 3:03 pm § in Biden, Politics, Republicans

J. D. Vance’s word games

Sen. J. D. Vance (R-OH), depicted at left, is a Yale-educated lawyer and published writer who’s very good at manipulating the English language to make it look like he’s not lying when he is. Campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday, October 12, 2024, Vance called Biden’s inaug[...]


October 13th, 2024 - 2:18 pm § in Biden, Democrats, Donald Trump, Politics, Republicans

Vance defends Trump’s FEMA lies

In the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, Trump is peddling two big lies about federal aid to the devastated areas: (1) That FEMA aid has been diverted to illegal migrants, and (2) the Biden administration and Vice President Harris are withholding disaster aid from Republican areas. There isnR[...]