Slashdot Mirror

• Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (By me, criticizing the DMCA)
  
• Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining (By Harper, criticizing the NSA wiretapping program))
  
• The REAL ID Act: Ill-Considered (By Harper, testimony before the Utah legislature against a de facto national ID)
  
• Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush (By my colleagues Gene Healy and Tim Lynch, criticizing the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties)
  
• "Supreme Court Ruling Could Save Vonage" (By me, criticizing software patents)
  
• "Broadcast Flag Burning" (By me, criticizing the broadcast flag)
  

• Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (By me, criticizing the DMCA)
  
• Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining (By Harper, criticizing the NSA wiretapping program))
  
• The REAL ID Act: Ill-Considered (By Harper, testimony before the Utah legislature against a de facto national ID)
  
• Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush (By my colleagues Gene Healy and Tim Lynch, criticizing the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties)
  
• "Supreme Court Ruling Could Save Vonage" (By me, criticizing software patents)
  
• "Broadcast Flag Burning" (By me, criticizing the broadcast flag)
  

• Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (By me, criticizing the DMCA)
  
• Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining (By Harper, criticizing the NSA wiretapping program))
  
• The REAL ID Act: Ill-Considered (By Harper, testimony before the Utah legislature against a de facto national ID)
  
• Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush (By my colleagues Gene Healy and Tim Lynch, criticizing the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties)
  
• "Supreme Court Ruling Could Save Vonage" (By me, criticizing software patents)
  
• "Broadcast Flag Burning" (By me, criticizing the broadcast flag)
  

If you check out Cato's 2005 annual report, you'll find that Cato only received about 2 percent of their budget. We don't have a legion of lawyers, corporate-funded or otherwise.

I would be curious to know which industry sources funded my paper criticizing the DMCA. Or for that matter, their recent papers criticizing the Bush administration's civil liberties record and the NSA's wiretapping program.

It's also interesting that you don't cite any "false information." Are we supposed to just take your word for it that a lot of what we put out is false?

I would be curious to know which industry sources funded my paper criticizing the DMCA. Or for that matter, their recent papers criticizing the Bush administration's civil liberties record and the NSA's wiretapping program.

It's also interesting that you don't cite any "false information." Are we supposed to just take your word for it that a lot of what we put out is false?

I would be curious to know which industry sources funded my paper criticizing the DMCA. Or for that matter, their recent papers criticizing the Bush administration's civil liberties record and the NSA's wiretapping program.

It's also interesting that you don't cite any "false information." Are we supposed to just take your word for it that a lot of what we put out is false?

Like hell it is. Educational expenditures have never been higher, even on a per-capita basis. We spend more on education than almost any other country, and get less for our money than almost any other country.

What's more, the school districts that spend the most, like the District of Columbia, tend to be the shittiest at actually educating their inmates.

This country needs to spend less, not more, on our schools.

We need to get rid of bloated administrative overhead.

We need to increase class size, get rid of computers and other distracting frippery in the classroom, and jettison all attempts at building "self-esteem" among little delinquents who don't deserve a particle of it. Let them earn self-respect on their own, through hard work with plenty of drills and rote memorization.

We need to bring back paddling, dunce caps, and shame.

We need to abandon "mainstreaming". Students with severe behavioral problems are causing terrible disruption of classes. They belong in segregated classes and schools. Tough shit for them, but they can't be permitted to ruin the whole educational experience for everyone else. No more social promotions, either. Either pass the requirements, repeat the year, or get the fuck on with your life of digging ditches.

We need to break up the cartel that controls education. Someone with a degree in math or business is far more qualified than the dregs and losers and nitwits that the typical College of Education churns out. He shouldn't have to sit through months of educrat babble and bilge in order to teach in a school. Teacher licensing is nothing more than rent-seeking and featherbedding and guild-gilding. Tenure should be totally abolished. Vouchers should be implemented nationwide. Worthless teachers and administrators should be hounded out of the profession. Worthless schools should be boarded up.

Most of all, we have to CRUSH the teacher's unions. These lazy, stupid, greedy lard asses put the education of our kids about tenth on their list of priorities, far behind fattening their bloated salaries, gold-plating their lavish pensions, padding the length of their 3-month summer vacations, salting the calendar with "inservice" junkets, diverting public money to shiftless in-laws and mobbed-up vendors and left-wing non-profits, and working the phone banks for whichever Democrat makes the most promises to shovel even more taxpayers' money onto the gravy train.

-ccm

he's from Massachusetts (Greenfield)

he's loves free speech

he's the H. L. Mencken Fellow at the Cato Institute.

he's farking huge.

He can get people to see past their own biases and have a glimpse of the truth.

That being said, most cities have a natural monopoly with respect to cable. Most cities only have 1 provider because a second provider would take a loss if they put in the infrastructure.

Obviously if a city demands a high enough price for the contract, it will price all but one provider out of the market. From this page:

The typical municipal government will not permit wiring for cable television until it has solicited bids through issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFP), which establishes minimum prerequisites for all bidders (such as channel capacity and allocation, community access, and construction requirements). The bidders tacitly understand that they are bidding for the exclusive right to serve the community, and base their proposals on an expectation of monopoly profits. After submittinq proposals, the bidders battle one another through the use of such weapons as cocktail parties, media campaigns, and prominent community advocates known in the industry as "rent-a-citizens." The RFP process itself effectively excludes all but a few companies from offering services to potential subscribers, in that most companies do not have the financial backing to meet the city's articulated prerequisites or to engage in the political gamesmanship involved in nearly every contemporary franchise contest.

The Denver franchise, awarded in 1982, provides an example of this process. Of 53 companies expressing an interest in serving Denver's citizens, only 3 submitted proposals. Each of the bidders spent approximately $1 million in the political contest to win the franchise.[6] The massive regulatory scheme imposed on the winner is embodied in a permit and contract of over 100 pages that incorporates by reference a four-volume proposal. Among other requirements, the franchisee must

- pay 5 percent of its annual gross revenues as a franchise fee, plus an additional 2 percent for community programming;

- defray the city's expenses for the RFP process ($80,000);

- provide a $1 million construction bond and a $100,000 letter of credit;

- grant $1.5 million in loans and capital to small businesses and minority groups;

- wire the entire city according to a fixed construction schedule based on political rather than practical considerations;

- agree to pay $1,000 penalty per day for franchise violations;

- submit to rate regulation;

- allow the city to veto programming changes;

- set aside all or part of 22 channels for programming access, and cede editorial control over them !

- build studios and other facilities for access to selected special-interest groups at a cost of $7.34 million; and - provide an emergency override system that enables city officials to turn on subscribers' sets, adjust the volume, and broadcast "emergency" messages into their homes at any hour of the day or night.

In exchange, the franchisee receives a de facto exclusive 15- year franchise and is insulated from some of the effects of competition through a guaranteed rate of return.

I would like to send you some links to publications about my criminal case. I was forced to confess to the possession of internet digital pictures of porn in deleted clusters of my computer hard drive. My browser was hijacked while I was browsing the web. I was redirected to illegal sites against my will. Some illegal pictures were found on my hard drive, recovering in unallocated clusters, without dates of file creation/download. I do not know how courts can widely press these charges on people to convict them, while the whole Internet is a mess. This is my story in inquisition21.com. There is all information about case written by Irish writer Brian Rothery. You can see a lot of violations of law by police http://www.inquisition21.com/article~view~7~page_n um~3.html This is publication in Wired news http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,633 91,00.html This is publication in Theregester http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/13/browser_hi jacking_risks/ Article in Globe and Mail newspaper http://ctv.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20040617.gttwhijac17/tech/Technology/techBN/ctv-t echnology Article in ZDnet http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5344831.html This is article in Washington Times, May 22, 2004 There is information about my case. http://www.cato.org/cgi-bin/scripts/printtech.cgi/ dailys/05-30-04.html Article in Crime research center: http://www.crime-research.org/news/07.22.2004/506/ Article in Dallas, TX Newspaper http://www.crime-research.org/news/24.12.2004/862/ Child porn law was declared unconstitutional in Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA' http://xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=11750 "I came here to the US as political refugee from the former Soviet Union, and, now like many other people in the US, I feel shame that all of this can happen in the US - supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world."

Ten years ago this month, a controversial "concealed- carry" law went into effect in the state of Florida. In a sharp break from the conventional wisdom of the time, that law allowed adult citizens to carry concealed firearms in public. Many people feared the law would quickly lead to disaster: blood would literally be running in the streets. Now, 10 years later, it is safe to say that those dire predictions were completely unfounded. Indeed, the debate today over concealed-carry laws centers on the extent to which such laws can actually reduce the crime rate.

Suzanna Gratia Hupp remembers reaching for a butter knife as a madman shot her parents dead at a packed cafeteria one cold October day in 1991.

"I was looking for a weapon, any weapon, because my handgun was 100 feet away, outside in my car. I made an incredibly stupid decision to follow the law, and that cost my family's lives," she says as she reflects on the massacre that ended with 24 people dead inside the Luby's Cafeteria at Killeen, a military town in Central Texas.

You know, California didn't actually deregulate the power market. Just because California claimed they were deregulating doesn't mean they were.

Part of the "deregualtion" law was that new owners of the divested power plants were forced to sell their juice to a state-managed "power pool." The price of that power was set by a daily spot market run by the state. (source, and more info here)

It isn't deregulation when private owners are forced to sell thier goods to the state, at a price decided by the state.

Unions are evil, just like business monopolies are evil. We tend to sympathize more with unions because they are suppose to be for the working man and not the fat cat executive. However unions are just the same as a business monopoly. Unions have a monopoly on wages just the same as a business monopoly has a monopoly on their specific business. Both screw with Adam Smiths "invisible hand".

The minimum wage is the worst form of socialism ever invented because it keeps low skilled workers from entry into the market place because they may not be "worth" whatever the minimum wage is. Further reading here.

What needs to be done is to eliminate both unions and business monopolies, and the minimum wage. Let rational people negotiate their own wage, and stop focusing on the AMOUNT of money one gets, but how much the money is WORTH.

I think you have your history backwards - perhaps whichever non-government school that left out the part about the "Robber Barons" when teaching you history also forgot to mention that bit about how the telephone industry only became so highly regulated because it was already actively abusing its monopoly status.

UNNATURAL MONOPOLY: CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BELL SYSTEM MONOPOLY

Regulation played a crucial role in [AT&T 1907 President's Theodore Newton] Vail's plans. Astute enough to realize that the kind of system he proposed--universal integrated monopoly--would stand little chance of gaining public approval without some form of public control, he embraced state regulation. In doing so, he broke with the company's long-standing opposition to what [AT&T] management had traditionally regarded as an unwarranted intrusion on its prerogatives.

But after years of unfettered competition, during which the firm's financial strengths had been sapped and its efforts to build an integrated system had been dangerously undermined, regulation became a much-preferred alternative. Thus, Vail obviously saw government regulation as the way to eliminate competitors: the one-way ticket, not only to universal service, but also to monopoly profits.

Neither US political party has much to brag about on tax an spend issues. They both are quite greedy.

Take a look at the CATO Institutes 2006 report card on state governors:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581/reportcard_tabl e.html

In case you are too blinded by ideology to even look, I'll post the scores of the governors above and below Washington :

Bob Riley (R) -- Alabama, 47, F
Christine Gregoire (D) -- Washington, 47, F
Mike Huckabee (R) -- Arkansas, 46, F

The full report, with analysis and discussion:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581.pdf

BTW, John Stossel had an interesting report on 20/20 last night about Senator Tom Coburn, who is fighting federal pork-- and taking on heavy fire from both sides.

He wrote about the story last year:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?Url Title=secrets_in_the_senate&ns=JohnStossel&dt=09/1 3/2006&page=full&comments=true

Neither US political party has much to brag about on tax an spend issues. They both are quite greedy.

Take a look at the CATO Institutes 2006 report card on state governors:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581/reportcard_tabl e.html

In case you are too blinded by ideology to even look, I'll post the scores of the governors above and below Washington :

Bob Riley (R) -- Alabama, 47, F
Christine Gregoire (D) -- Washington, 47, F
Mike Huckabee (R) -- Arkansas, 46, F

The full report, with analysis and discussion:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581.pdf

BTW, John Stossel had an interesting report on 20/20 last night about Senator Tom Coburn, who is fighting federal pork-- and taking on heavy fire from both sides.

He wrote about the story last year:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?Url Title=secrets_in_the_senate&ns=JohnStossel&dt=09/1 3/2006&page=full&comments=true

I would argue that focusing on the last few decades of law is the exact reason why we can't get serious reform. Once the American people wrap their heads around how much and how long they've been screwed over the years, it'll really put the problem into the correct context.

Both parties have given incredible powers to the government over the years, and "the lesser of two evils" mentality is to blame. Once you realize how terribly they both have systematically and deviously plotted and executed their plans to control you, you'll realize that neither of the two can be trusted.

Of course, this all sounds like alarmist melodramatic BS... until you see this.

I have insisted that Congress pass strong anti-terrorism legislation immediately -- to provide for more than 1,000 new law enforcement personnel solely to fight terrorism; to create a domestic anti-terrorism center;

...

This is about America's future. It is about your future.

We can do this without undermining our constitutional rights. In fact, the failure to act will undermine those rights.

...

I would like to say something to [those] who believe the greatest threat to America comes not from terrorists from within our country or beyond our borders, but from our own government.

...

I believe you have every right, indeed you have the responsibility, to question our government when you disagree with its policies. And I will do everything in my power to protect your right to do so. But I also know there have been lawbreakers among those who espouse your philosophy.

...

The people who came to the United States to bomb the World Trade Center were wrong.

...

If you say that government is in a conspiracy to take your freedom away, you are just plain wrong.

...

How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in tyranny.

...

[T]here is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.

You're not paying attention.

Here's a cheerfully colorful map to help get you started on the road to enlightenment or some reasonable facsilime thereof: Botched Paramilitary Police Raids

Considering there are only THREE usable fully-separated channels in WiFi, 1, 6, & 11. If you DON'T grant a WiFi monopoly it will only lead to a frequency and amplifier war.

While there might be an initial airwaves war eventually those companies trying to get into the market will sit down and come up with an agreement. If there is no agreement then nobody makes a profit and they will go out of business. And it's not as though a company can pump up amperage because they'd then find themself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. I recall many years ago this guy across the street from us mounted an antenna outside his house which he used for the cb radio he had inside. We knew whenever he went on the air, we could hear him speaking through our toaster, and eventually because of all the interference he was shutdown. The same would happen to wifi providers if they tried to outpower their competition. As it is now some hospitals are banning cellphone use inside because of interference with electronic equipment, and if a wifi provider pumps up the power around one more than likely they'd have a lawsuit slapped on them quick. If not by the hospital then by someone who lost a relative because of the interference.

Also there's not really a scarcity of airwaves. The airwaves were divied up in 1932 with the technology available then. With today's tech more stations can be on the same bands than was possible then without interfering with each other A couple of years ago IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" had an article on this, the technical aspects. Then I think it was last year the CATO Institute commissioned another study which also concluded the airwaves should be redone using today's tech. Simply today's tech allows more efficient use of the airwwaves than the tech in 1932 did, yet we're still using the airwaves as lain out then.

The RIAA does this thing enough times, they're going to kill someone.

The routine use of paramilitary police raids for nonviolent offenders gets people killed on a routine basis. Three cops are now on trial for murder in Atlanta because they raided a house, killed an innocent old lady, and then lied after the fact to establish a bogus justification for the warrant. Police in Virginia raided a dentist's house for records related to illegal gambling, and one of the cops violated the two first laws of firearms safety and shot him dead when he tripped with his fucking finger on the trigger.

The steady flow of federal dollars for "homeland security" has exacerbated a problem which was started by the War on Some Drugs: incompetent, ill-trained paramilitary police forces who are both encouraged to "prepare for the worst" and given access to powerful weaponry. The result is a bunch of corpses. Corpses of innocent people, non-violent offenders, and even cops. The nature of unannounced no-known raids turns non-violent, low-stress situations into violent and stressful ones, with predictable results. In many of these cases (like the aforementioned dentist), regular cops showing up, knocking on the door, and serving a warrant, would be sufficient to perform the desired search. But when a dozen cops burst through the door with guns drawn, people get killed.

The RIAA instigates enough of these raids, the RIAA are going to kill someone. For copyright violation. It's just a matter of time.

Unfortunately, the tax-exempt organization has become so enmeshed with government it has nearly become a formal government agency. MADD gets millions of dollars in federal and state funding, and has a quasi-official relationship with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In some jurisdictions, DWI defendants are sentenced to attend and pay for alcoholic-recovery groups sponsored by MADD. In many cities, MADD officials are even allowed to man sobriety checkpoints alongside police.

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

A small, but very vocal, band of extremists have been hawking a doomsday scenario, in which Greenland suddenly melts, raising sea levels 12 feet or more by 2100. While this forecast enjoys no real support in the traditionally refereed scientific literature, it is repeated everywhere, and its supporters are already claiming that the IPCC -- the self-proclaimed "consensus of scientists" -- is now wrong because it has toned down its projections of doom and gloom.

But the integrated warming of southern Greenland (the region that sheds ice) was much greater for several decades in the early and mid-20th century than in the last decade. In fact, with the exception of one year (2003), Greenland's recent temperatures aren't particularly unusual, nor is its rate of ice loss.

As measured recently by satellite, and published in Science magazine, Greenland is losing .0004 percent of its ice per year, or 0.4 percent per century. All modern computer models require nearly 1,000 years of carbon concentrations three times what they are today to melt the majority of Greenland's ice. Does anyone seriously believe we will be a fossil-fuel powered society in, say, the year 2500?

In summary, what's not new in today's IPCC report -- that humans are warming the planet -- will be treated as big news, while what is new -- that sea levels are not likely to rise as much as previously predicted -- will be ignored, at least by everyone except the extremist fringe.

Texas is an "at-will" employment state. If you didn't sign any secrecy, non-disclosure or non-competition contracts, then you can quit any darn time you want by law.

The flip side to this is that you can be canned for darn near anything. There's a decent write-up on this here.

Radley Balko has been doing a great public service highlighting the rise of paramilitary force by police. And the harm it does to innocents, non-violent offenders, and police officers themselves.

These SWAT teams are coming to more and more localities and for all kinds of non-violent crimes and could become the face of local policing for everyone for every offense if we don't stop it.

RIAA sponsored kick downs are just the beginning.

Radley Balko has been doing a great public service highlighting the rise of paramilitary force by police. And the harm it does to innocents, non-violent offenders, and police officers themselves.

These SWAT teams are coming to more and more localities and for all kinds of non-violent crimes and could become the face of local policing for everyone for every offense if we don't stop it.

RIAA sponsored kick downs are just the beginning.

Throughout all this, there is a perspective on terrorism that has been very substantially ignored. It can be summarized, somewhat crudely, as follows:

• Assessed in broad but reasonable context, terrorism generally does not do much damage.
• The costs of terrorism very often are the result of hasty, ill-considered, and overwrought reactions.

A sensible policy approach to the problem might be to stress that any damage terrorists are able to accomplish likely can be
absorbed, however grimly. While judicious protective and policing measures are sensible,extensive fear and anxiety over what may at base prove to be a rather limited problem are mis-placed, unjustified, and counterproductive

The notion is incorrect, based on false data and false conclusions. See http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6875

I can't find the reference anywhere either. Pat Michaels is still spewing half-truths, myths & canards. Ironically, he is also saying that we should take no action because new technologies will soon replace those that emit greenhouse gases [which aren't a problem in the first place].

Patrick J. Michaels - SourceWatch
Patrick J. Michaels - Cato Institute

I think the worn-out funding source "argument" needs to be given a rest and the science objectively evaluated instead.

Their opinion pieces are objectively evaluated and found to be nothing more than half-truths, myths & canards wrapped in a good amount of politicizing and hype.

The funding sources are very relevant. Would you trust the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company to give you an accurate report on the health benefits of smoking cigarettes? How about Microsoft-funded studies on the security of *nix OSes?

Yet another thing that Congress made illegal and which law enforcement makes no meaningful attempt to enforce. Which means it will go the same way as most of the rest of the US legal code: Never actually enforced until the cops (or the ones holding their leash) really, REALLY want to get someone (for reasons good or for bad); Then a careful search of the legal code is all but gauranteed to reveal something that makes you a criminal.

For more information on this, there is a fantastic Cato Book Forum on this subject.

Here's a great quote from FDR's attorney general, Robert Jackson (mentioned in the video):

With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm--in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

Keep in mind, he made that speech, the body of federal criminal law was less than half the size it is today.

If you don't believe that FOX news might be spinning one line from the report that has a different meaning in the greater context of the report than you really need a reality check.

Oh, you mean the way all of Fox' competitors did with the Working Group I IPCC report (1990) where they ignored the report itself and focused sensationalism on the report's summary which not only wasn't written by scientists, but actually contradicted the report itself?

THAT, my friend, is how Fox News can get away with claiming to be "fair and balanced", because they really ARE, compared to their competitors.

If you're going to complain about media bias, why not leave the least offender (i.e., Fox News) alone and go after the worst ones?

Thanks for your input... I'll have to give this some thought. You raise good points, even if I don't necessarily agree. Here are my immediate reactions:

What we need is a way to not cripple legitimate things, like SWAT teams, and yet still prevent a police state.

Read the first couple pages of this: http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/balko_whitepaper _2006.pdf

I don't think the militarization of police is a good idea. In fact, it really is a large part of what makes a "police state." Community police should be good enough; SWAT teams which are trained and equipped as military forces, especially when taught to view the public as "the enemy," should violate the Possee Comitatus rule.

Not good enough. If the law isn't clear enough, it should be void, which means I get to keep my fully-automatic weapon until they fix the law.

That works... except then everyone will try to find some way to mis-interpret laws in order to be able to break them.

A person should be able to read everything their elected officials do. They should be able to read it in the morning newspaper, over breakfast or coffee, and understand it. The only problem is, how do we word this properly?

I don't know... heavy restrictions on the bills that may be passed would help. For example place strict restraints on the interstate commerce clause, which is often horribly abused. Or remove it entirely.

Or is there some other angle we can attack this from? Because the problem with what I just said is, anyone can bring in a retarded person and say "This person can't understand your Constitution; therefore, it's void.

That won't work, because a "reasonable" person must be able to understand the meaning of the law. I've seen this sort of thing work, but you're right - it could be subject to abuse. There must be a better way, probably involving various measures to restrict the length of laws, and the types of bills that may be passed.

Suppose the Supreme Court "interprets" the Constitution to still have the 3/5ths rule (or whatever it was) in effect, or something bizarre like that. Or suppose they simply decide that any new laws, especially laws which attempt to reform the Supreme Court, are "unconstitutional" or "illegal".

Yeah, judicial reform... I don't know how to tackle this one directly. Congress could always impeach the justices, but that hasn't ever happened. The courts don't always make the right decisions, and when they make wrong decisions they stick with them; uniformity with precedents is given priority over correctness (a bad idea IMO).

For that matter, you said "illegal" -- are you honestly saying a new law can't break any existing laws? We could never get rid of laws, then -- any new law attempting to replace them would be "illegal".

I'm saying that in the event a law is unconstitutional, it's thrown back in the face of Congress. If Congress wants to repeal an old law, they can do that directly; however, judicial review (preferably before a bill is passed) could be useful to avoid unintended consequences when laws conflict. Also, a law could be "illegal" if, for example, it violates a treaty.

I suppose one could claim that I'm trying to devise an idiot-proof Constitution, which of course would cause even greater idiots to be elected to Congress.

Guns do not turn ordinary citizens into murderers. Significantly, fewer than one gun owner in 3,000 commits homicide; and that one killer is far from a typical gun owner. Studies have found two-thirds to four-fifths of homicide offenders have prior arrest records, frequently for violent felonies.[28] A study by the pro-control Police Foundation of domestic homicides in Kansas City in 1977 revealed that in 85 percent of homicides among family members, the police had been called in before to break up violence.[29] In half the cases, the police had been called in five or more times. Thus, the average person who kills a family member is not a non-violent solid citizen who reaches for a weapon in a moment of temporary insanity. Instead, he has a past record of illegal violence and trouble with the law. Such people on the fringes of society are unlikely to be affected by gun control laws. Indeed, since many killers already had felony convictions, it was already illegal for them to own a gun, but they found one anyway.

For further reading, here's a great whitepaper from the Cato Institute with a lot of facts on the militarization of U.S. police.

The comment being attributed to Gingrich is outlandish enough that I'm a little skeptical that's what he actually said, but, unfortunately, these days it doesn't seem impossible that he did make comments to that effect. Either way, I'll respond to the idea, because even if Gingrich doesn't actually feel this way there are plenty who do (in fact so many that I can grab some parts from previous posts). I'm also going to leave aside for a moment the point that we probably don't have the ability to effectively squelch free speech world wide.

The freedom of speech is one of our most fundamental liberties. It is this (and arguably the right to bear arms) that underlies all other liberties. In order for a democracy to function properly, the people must be able to criticize the government and discuss all the different courses of action. If the government itself is allowed to regulate speech, this ceases to be possible. Without the freedom to speak out and rally support for ideas, all other freedoms can be taken away. At best, taking away the freedom of speech means that the only control the people will truly have over their government is the threat of violence. A principal virtue of democracy is that it allows us to peacefully settle our differences and protect our freedoms.

Over time, many Americans have died to protect our liberty: American revolutionaries fighting the mighty British empire, soldiers who stormed the beach at Normandy, or civil rights protesters during Jim Crow who were beaten by police and sometimes killed by the Klan. Now it seems circumstances have called upon us to make a sacrifice, to take a risk, in defense of liberty. Terrorists seek to use our freedoms as a weapon against us, be it our freedom of movement or our right to privacy or our right to free speech. So now we are faced with a choice, do we abandon those liberties in order to deprive these terrorists of this weapon, or do we stand up for liberty and accept that with it may come risks?

If you think about it rationally, the statistical chance of you dying in a terrorist attack is quite low, by any reasonable estimate. You're far more likely to die from any number of causes, e.g. a car crash. The government and media have played up the threat and gotten people into an irrational frenzy over the matter, but really the threat is quite small for most of us. See, for example, this paper on the subject. If you say that the threat of terrorism is a good reason to give up freedom of speech, then what you are saying, rationally, is that you are willing to accept a larger risk for the privlege of driving a car than for having your fundamental liberties.

I live in the suburbs of Washington D.C., just a few miles from the White House. I often go into the city, ride the subway, etc. I am probably at a statistically greater risk of being the victim of a terrorist attack than 99% of Americans. I'm still a young man and in no hurry to die. However, there are a few things worth taking a risk for, and one of those is liberty. That was actually one of the few points I thought almost every American could agree on. If I have to accept these small risks to my life in exchange for my liberty, then I say it is a small price to pay, and I pay it gladly.

I am not trying to claim to be any sort of great patriot here. On the contrary, my point is that the sacrifice most of us are being called upon to make to uphold our liberties is so small that it is basically ludicrous in comparison to those that have been made by the patriots that came before us. So, I just can't see how I could possibly refuse to make that sacrifice and still have any respect for myself. As I said, I would have thought any American would feel the same. I'd like to continue to be able to think of America as, "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

I'll close, as I have before, with the famous quotation by Patrick Henry:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

The government should NOT be in the business of education.

Private schools educate people for about HALF (on avg) the cost of government schools. And typically the private school students tend to receive a higher quality education for lower cost.

http://www.cato.org/research/education/testing.htm l
http://www.theadvocates.org/ruwart/questions_list. php?Category=7

Right on the money. For the benefit of others: Wickard v. Filburn

Look also at the recent decision about CA's medicinal marijuana law -- essentially what they said was that the Feds could control it because they have a legitimate interest in so doing.

For the benefit of others: Gonzales v. Raich. Yeah, the people got a semi-surprise fuck on that one. One would think that Lopez and Morrison would've made Raich a winner but IMO the Supremes screwed us three ways from Sunday. I blame Kennedy (if it was anything but drugs he'd would've voted for Raich) and Scalia with his total bullshit opinion about fungibility. He basically set the stage to allow the US Govt to regulate anything produced that is "non-unique" (a vegetable garden or two copies of a picture from your printer).

If Filburn was a bad dream about a government that has gone too far then Raich is a really bad LSD trip (the kicking-and-screaming-and-drooling kind). At least there's some hope*.

* They're not perfect but they've got some worthwhile ideas that need to be at least discussed.

Reason #1. Halliburton is far more efficient than the US government (even though Halliburton is commonly seen as inefficient, it still takes 2 to 3 Government employees to do the amount of work 1 Halliburton employee does.). #2. Halliburton does have a reasonably good company, the Left-Wing (and the media is left wing, 40% of reporters are liberal, while only 15% are conservative) media just overplays every tiny mistake they make.

That should read Unsubstantiated Assertion #1/#2 surely? I couldnt find anything to back that up, can you?

Actually, Saddam did have WMDs. Few people heard about this, but there were hundreds of canisters of sarin and mustard gas artilery shells found in Iraq. Not as impressive as the WMDs we suspected him of having, but still WMDs none the less.

As someone else has already pointed out the few found were left over from the 80s, I can tell you as I have read the U.N. inspectors report on Iraqi WMD that their sarin was of such low quality it was only usable 4-6 weeks after production, after that it had broken down so much it was useless. Want a link, how about the US government-

SUMMARY: IRAQ HAS BEEN UNABLE TO PRODUCE HIGH
QUALITY CHEMICAL AGENT IN ITS PRODUCTION PLANTS DUE TO
POOR OPERATING PRACTICE.

TEXT: 1. SOURCE REPORTS THAT NERVE AGENT
PRODUCED AT SAMARRA IS OF POOR QUALITY. ESTIMATED SARIN
AGENT PURITY IS BETWEEN 20 AND 50 PERCENT. [ (b)(1) sec
1.3(a)(4) ]

2. [ (b)(1) sec 1.3(a)(4) ]

3. SOURCE ESTIMATES THAT STORAGE LIFE FOR SARIN
IS BETWEEN 4 AND 6 WEEKS WHEN PRODUCED IN THE IRAQI
PLANTS AT SAMARRA.

To a limited extent Saddam did provide some aid to AQ (though not much, it was mostly that Saddam knew AQ was there and offered them protection) and look who we are fighting in Iraq right now, AQ. Oh, but wait, there are no AQ in Iraq.

From the Cato Institute

Bin Laden, who views the rigid Saudi theocracy as insufficiently Islamic, has long considered Saddam Hussein an infidel enemy. Before Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bin Laden warned publicly that the Iraqi dictator had designs on conquering Saudi Arabia. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bin Laden offered to assemble his mujahedeen to battle Hussein and protect the Arabian peninsula.

So you see these are what we call known knowns as Rummy would say.

Indeed, but they also have a short term (3 years) cooling effect from the particulates (sulphur mostly). Think nuclear winter. These things are included in the models, and are significant, but not as significant as the anthropogenic CO2.

This sort of thing has been sorted for several years now, I suggest you read up on the basics, paying particular attention to the attibutions from the models.

It might be a bit tiresome for you to have to do some research before contributing to discussions, but trust me, its nowhere near as tiresome as seeing the same old misunderstandings and misrepresentations go past again and again.

A quick search on Google turns up:

'Conservative' Bush Spends More than 'Liberal' Presidents Clinton, Carter

The United States is *so full* of people who refuse to make political decisions based on intelligent thought - it's why this country is going downhill so fast. It's why our political system is a shambles and our representatives are a joke. Your comments illustrate exactly the thought process that is the root of this problem. As an example - your implication that because Democrats now control the House and possibly Senate, that taxes and spending are going to get "worse". First of all, higher taxes are not necessarily worse if they significantly improve the standard of living of those who pay them (which they do if they are spent on sensible, meaningful government programs instead of useless wars). Secondly, it would virtually be IMPOSSIBLE to spend more than the current administration. My wife and I are currently making arrangements to move out of the USA. I was born and raised here but I am so sick to even be a part of the idiocy that is the American public that I just can't take it anymore. By the way, there are PLENTY of intelligent and honest Americans - in sum total probably more than the entire populations of many countries - but they are unfortunately drowning in a sea of idiots here.

"The remarkable centrality of carbon dioxide means that dealing with the threat of warming fits in with a great variety of preexisting agendas--some legitimate, some less so: energy efficiency, reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil, dissatisfaction with industrial society (neopastoralism), international competition, governmental desires for enhanced revenues (carbon taxes), and bureaucratic desires for enhanced power."

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html

The objective was to illustrate the broad range of possibilities in the ignorance of how forcings would actually develop. The extreme scenarios (A with fast growth and no volcanos, and C with terminated growth of greenhouse gases) were meant to bracket plausible rates of change.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-22-04.html

One of the big headlines that it generated was that polar bears are going to go extinct because of climate change. the Washington Post quoted Lara Hansen of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who expressed serious concern that populations will stop reproducing as climate warms.

In 2002, the WWF published a huge report on polar bears and global warming, called "Polar Bears at Risk." The organization found 22,000 polar bears scattered in 20 somewhat distinct populations around the Arctic. According to the WWF, 46 percent of the populations were stable, 17 percent were in decline, 14 percent were increasing, and the status of 23 percent was unknown.

Red flags waving on bad math! Any number divided by 20 yields a multiple of 5 -- 5, 10, 15, etc... An accompanying map only showed 19 populations, but no whole number divided by 19 yields 46, 17, 14, or 23.

The WWF did not map out the regions where the polar bear populations were changing. They left that to enviro-curmudgeons like me. And what I found was this: Where the polar bear populations are in decline -- around Baffin Bay (the region between Canada and Greenland), temperatures are also going down, big time. And the area where temperatures are rising the most -- in the Pacific region bordering on Alaska and Siberia, polar bear populations are increasing.

Not even CLOSE to what was reported.
And environmentalists wonder why people don't believe the nonsense they spew?

Also, the contract signed between the city and the cable company may not necessarily be exclusive--it may be that there are just significant financial barriers to entry in the market that have created a kind of constructive monopoly

From this page:

"Nearly every community in the United States allows only a single cable company to operate within its borders. Since the Boulder decision [4] in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that municipalities may be subject to antitrust liability for anticompetitive acts, most cable franchises have been nominally nonexclusive but in fact do operate to preclude all competitors. The legal rationale for municipal regulation is that cable uses city-owned streets and rights-of-way; the economic rationale is the assumption that cable is a "natural monopoly.""

Do you disagree? If so, please provide a link.

I don't follow your math - I see federal debt at ~$6T at the start of Bush's term, projected to wind up at ~$10T. That's a 66% increase, hardly "identical" to Clinton's increase. Not chicken feed, indeed. Grossly irresponsible, one could argue.

And you seem determined to pooh-pooh Clinton's elimination of the Reagan/Bush deficit while making (at least partial) excuses for Bush. The fact is that Clinton controlled federal discretionary spending AND didn't start any unnecessary wars of aggression. Bush, OTOH, presided over the largest growth in domestic discretionary spending in the last 40 years AND drove massive tax cuts for the rich AND started an unnecessary war that has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Domestic spending growth (warning, PDF): http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0510-26.pdf
More on Bush the Big Spender: http://www.slate.com/id/2095237/

Honestly, your assessment is so slanted it's laughable. 'Clinton was just lucky, but it mostly wasn't Bush's fault!' It just kills you conservatives that the only fiscal responsibility of the last 25 years has been that hippie Democrat Clinton.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/

-dt

The American people must recognize
these odious tactics for what they are and
remain vigilant about our Constitution and
individual liberty. Too many people seem to
think that the Constitution will automatical-
ly check the government from overstepping
its authority and running amok. That simply
is not true. The Constitution is incapable of
enforcing itself. The ultimate limit on the
power of government has always been the
patience of the people. As Judge Learned
Hand warned many years ago, Liberty lies in
the hearts of men and women; [if] it dies
there, no constitution, no law, no court can
save it.70

http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp98.pdf

Read the whole thing.

--
BMO