Hmmm, worth looking up...

Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony):

A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious.[1] The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie") to describe an offense that resulted in the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods, to which additional punishments, including capital punishment, could be added;[2] other crimes were called misdemeanors. Following conviction of a felony in a court of law, a person may be described as a felon or a convicted felon.

In many common-law jurisdictions, such as England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, crimes are no longer classified as felonies or misdemeanors. Instead, crimes are classified by mode of trial as indictable offenses, triable by jury, and frequently requiring a grand jury indictment, which are usually more serious, and summary offenses, triable by summary procedure without a jury and are usually less serious.[3]

In some civil law jurisdictions, such as Italy and Spain, the term delict is used to describe serious offenses, a category similar to common law felony. In other nations, such as Germany, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, more serious offenses are described as "crimes", while "misdemeanors" or "delicts" (or délits) are less serious. In still others, such as Brazil and Portugal, "crimes" and "delicts" are synonymous (more serious) and are opposed to contraventions (less serious).

Surprisingly white/Europe centric, but still interesting.

I appreciate you apologizing on that, thank you. I can probably be less harsh, too, so sorry for that.

Pointing out a technically true but similar but different issue that waters down the original message - it absolutely does.

I'm certain this wasn't their actual intent, nor did they mean anything remotely like malice, more just to, like they responded, make a joke.

But my pointing it out I think is important, to correct our own problematic language, which heavily influences how we think and affect others. My correction was harsh, and could definitely have been clearer. But I do stand by the notion and the correction.

Felons should be allowed to vote, otherwise it would be trivial to lock your opponents out of eligibility through lawfare.

I just realized that this is exactly what the Republican war on drugs was. Not only was it a way to criminalize their political opponents, it was a way of completely politically disenfranchising them. Probably so is a lot of other things in our legal system.

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

So they've got "FBI Hiring Candidate" written all over them.

Must have been a sick bear

Well that's between those two men, what was the sex crime?