"Sex work should not be a crime"
I agree completely about this and excessively long and expensive sentence for real crimes.

I do not have all that expertise, but I do understand the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."

What is the justification of having a compulsory school attendance law? Why can't child just decide not to go? Why can't a child just decide not to eat food he doesn't want to eat? Why can't a child just decide not to have a polio (or other) shot on the grounds that he doesn't like the pain? Because he's not mature enough to decide.--So why should all that change so that he (or she) can decide to have sex?--When an adult takes that kind of advantage of a child, the adult should definitely be punished.

It all has to do with the leftists attacking anything related to or close to Trump in any way. It is about "impeachment" by any means, legit (not likely) or not legit.
Did the left care anything about Epstein and ergo Acosta before Trump?
No.
So there is your answer.

I'm trying to understand Trump's statement about Acosta that we might all reconsider something we did 8 or 9 years ago, but he's not sure about the 'other things'? He feels Acosta has been a good Sec. of Labor though.

This rush to judgement is absurd. Wait until someone loos at the court records to react. Then ask why Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, each solo, both went to the island. Ask why the same Schumer, who is calling for rash decisions, has taken years to decide if he donemns the abuse of children in the Congressional run DC pdeophile ring, which has operated his entire career. Hillary reportedly oversaw it when in Congress. Bush Sr, Sununu, Barney Frank, Obama, all wre reported in an old news article to have been aware of how it worked. How long is long enough for ole Chuck to decide if that child sexual abuse is bad?

I have an unusual viewpoint in that I don't know if Epstein is contemptible. He's accused of paying people as young as 14 for sex. People as young as 14 are sometimes held accountable for their criminal behavior. This suggests to me they have agency and should have the right to enter agreements, including freely agreeing to disgusting or dangerous jobs. To see them as victims depersonalizes them.

It's a different matter if the perpetrator uses force or if the victim really doesn't understand what she's agreeing to.

I have two kids who are tweens. They clearly lack mental capacity to understand and enter agreements. I'm not sure at what point they will. Our society says 18. But I have seen clear examples of people under 18 who have capacity and people who are middle aged who can't understand the basics of agreements they enter. I loath to think of them ever voluntarily entering into an agreement to do demeaning, dangerous, or disgusting work. I probably will recent out of emotion if that situation ever arises, but right now I believe it would be denying their basic human rights to cast them as victims for knowingly entering into an agreement that I find disgusting.

Aha, I thought he was the Defense attorney. That changes things.

To a degree, I agree. There is a disparity between being mature and being an adult - one being merely a property of physical age and the other a state of mind. But insofar as societal laws have declared 18 as the age of "adulthood" (barring an actual aptitude test) and therefore the ability to be held personally responsible for one's actions, this is the legal standard - and it is a widely-known standard. Epstein was cognizant of this and pointedly ignored it.

As to the other point about prisons, I'm not really sure where you are going. When one commits crimes, one forfeits their rights to liberty insofar as one has committed acts of coercion against others. The time in prison is to isolate them from the very society they have offended/harmed and give them a chance to change their ways. (Admittedly, there is a question about whether or not prisons are efficacious in this last bit.)

That's why I could never be a criminal lawyer, they get little respect for doing their job under the law. If they don't act in their clients interest, they can be disbarred. This is the what the left seems to be trying to do to our police too, make their job look like the gestapo (negative) in the eyes of the public. Again I speak as a returning Vietnam veteran that had to hide my service to get a job, so to be sure I understand the ramifications of these deceptions. Acosta will only be able to step down to satisfy half the population that doesn't believe in the rule of law anymore.

The definition of who is an adult able to "... make mature associative decisions" is arbitrary. A large percentage of the so called adults never are mature enough to make even rudimentary associative decisions. Some so called juveniles are very capable of making such decisions.

Those who get their jollies about long prison sentences have no value for liberty. Their beliefs that somehow Taking away a peson's liberty is trivial with the person going to a modern prison not being punished enough in some of the the country club prisons of today for those with the right connections.

I could be wrong here but I don't think Acosta represented Epstein but he was involved in the sentencing deals.

The only way I would have a drop of sympathy for Epstein is if he was 17/18 and messing around with younger girls. As an adult he is a bottom feeder and deserves to go down hard and I sure hope he takes a bunch of these other Pedos with him.

"Sex work should not be a crime, and the laws about underage sex, while debatable, are at least excessive."

I completely disagree. What is particularly egregious in Epstein's case is that these were juveniles. Juveniles by definition can not make mature associative decisions. This is nowhere more important than in the use of one's procreative powers and the powerful emotions invoked. To pretend that such can be merely playthings of happenstance and indulgence is to trivialize all such.

I understand it but I don't accept it. As David Friedman explains, plea bargaining not only likely increases total punishment, but does it in a way that blows away all of the rights in the Bill of Rights. Once Congress so over-criminalizes a lot of behaviors that something deserving 5 years in prison can get you 20, all the prosecutor has to do is threaten you with 20 and you'll accept a plea bargain for 10. Result: cases don't go to trial, defenses don't matter, and whomever the prosecutor chooses to charge is in effect convicted.

As for Epstein, I am unconvinced that he ever did anything actually wrong. Sex work should not be a crime, and the laws about underage sex, while debatable, are at least excessive.

I don't want to sound like I'm defending the plea bargain practice, but I do understand it. If a prosecutor takes a violent criminal to trial and wins, maybe the bad guy goes away for 20 years. If he takes it to trial and loses, the bad guy goes free. I don't want to say it's a crap shoot, but any time something goes to trial, one outcome is a not guilty verdict.

So maybe the prosecutor says to an attorney "If your client pleads guilty to a lesser charge, we'll recommend a 10 year sentence."

If the plea is offered, at least this person is guaranteed to be out of society for a long time. I can see instances where that guarantee outweighs the risk of him going free.

In ancient Rome, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, Dictator of Rome for two years, used proscription to refill the treasury of Rome. He confiscated property even belonging to families.

This sort of thing is a reinvention of that practice--even though forfeiture on the part of anyone other than a particular convict, even for treason, is unconstitutional.

Not a fan of gossip or gossip journalism, I didn't understand what this story was all about until reading Ann Coulter's opinion on the matter this morning. How to become a billionaire? Get pretty, under age girls to have sex with the rich and powerful. Videotape the trysts and receive payments.
http://www.informationliberation.com/...

Prosecutors often accept horrible deals, for a variety of reasons. In the Epstein case, it avoided putting very young women on the stand to be persecuted by an aggressive defense attorney.

Violent crime also springs awful deals by prosecutors. There are laws on the books that direct harsh penalties for the use of firearms in a crime, but they're darn near useless, because prosecutors use the threat of those charges as a bargaining chip for a confession to a lesser charge.

From the perspective of the libtards, reparations for slavery are perfectly fine. For reparations to make sense, then you (general you) have to believe that a "son" can be held accountable for the sins of his "father"; put another way, because some of my ancestors probably owned ancestors of people I know, I should be required to pay those people for that.

From the liberal perspective and all their white guilt, that position makes perfect sense. So it doesn't seem all that much of a stretch for them to believe an attorney should be liable for what his/her client does.

Ding ding ding! Changes the entire conversation right there...

Acosta was the PROSECUTOR -- which changes things! There is an interesting question as to why he agreed to such a protective deal.

It is defense attoney's job to defend his client whether that's about cutting deals or telling his client to cop a plea. A future appointment that lawyer may move on to have has nothing to do with, say, his helping O. J. Simpson to be found not guilty of double homicide, though I know he was guilty as all hell.
It's the prosecutor's job to defeat the defense, the jury's to determine guilt or no guilt and the judge's to run the trial and sentence those found guilty in accordance to some "book" he may decide to altogether throw.

I must admit here, I always assured my attorney friends I felt they were 'paid liars'. I wish I hadn't said that to them! Hindsight is 20/20.

You definitely have the credentials. I was struggling with this when I heard people were calling for Acosta's resignation because he represented Epstein. It didn't sound right. If Acosta himself was involved okay. But if not, it seemed odd.