Talk:Arthur Andersen/Archives/2019

Apparently unstable sensitive-wording circularity
On May 31, 2005, in Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously reversed Andersen's conviction because of serious errors in the trial judge's jury instructions.

I was at first very confused by this, as the first URL links back to Wikipedia itself, seemingly oblivious to WP:CITEWIKI, and only later as I started to lather and froth about the unstable sensitive-wording circularity, did I manage to look closely enough to see that the second displayed hyperlink from the rendered template above is the formally cited document.

I can't be the only person this has ever confused (many of whom did not lather and froth long enough to finally sort this out in their own minds).

Having found the formally cited document, I still don't get the decision.

It is, however, quite another thing to say a proceeding need not even be foreseen. A "knowingly ... corrup[t] persaude[r]" cannot be someone who persuades others to shred documents under a document retention policy when he does not have in contemplation any particular official proceeding in which those documents might be material. Cf. Aguilar, supra, at 599—600. Pp. 9—12. So Enron—poster child for the black financial box of all black financial boxes—has flagrantly melted down, the investigatory arms of the government are clearly now rising to DEFCON 1—real money has been lost by the boatload by real campaign donors (and formerly wealthy state governments)—the investigatory silo doors have all opened wide, and thing remaining unclear to anyone occupying this pay grade is precisely which missiles will first be fired, and which missiles will remain siloed.

That strikes me as the underlying sense of the word particular in this legal decision.

At the Battle of Midway, Chūichi Nagumo was instructed to withhold half his strike force so as to retain a viable defensive posture. He wasn't told which half, because under this direction that was largely a tactical, not a strategic matter. So Midway doesn't know which particular planes will strike, only that is will be a jumbo platter of Nagumo's home cooking—but not the last bag of his favourite rice. And who knows which particular bag that might be? So shredders at dawn, with heads held high, and no oversight blowback, god forbid.

Apparently, it's not enough to foresee the weather, you have to foresee a specific cloud.&mdash; MaxEnt 20:28, 19 May 2019 (UTC)