Slashdot Mirror

Do you think that COINTELPRO and spying on civil rights activists was worse than an administration that has said they don't believe in habeas corpus

Bush wasn't the first US president to deny habeas corpus. Though another president may have before him, the first president I know of that did deny habeas corpus was President Lincoln. And just as this Supreme Court ruled, the Supreme Court in his day ruled suspending habeas corpus was unconstitutional.

Falcon

This whole list is a damn abomination to the constitution. I hope King George W. Bush is proud of the way he tore our freedoms up like one would a piece of paper.

Yup Bush is the only one who could ever consider abolishing personal freedoms. The US presidency has been dominated by tyrants

Lincoln was justified, even if he agonized over executing it, in suspending Habeas Corpus in some cases during that war.

Except the Supreme Court, well the Chief Justice, ruled against Lincoln when he suspended Habeas Corpus.

"I'm not sure I understand the distinction you appear to draw between saving money and investing. Return rates from even very low risk savings instruments avaiable to even the smallest investors exceed the rate of inflation by a significant margin."

This only is true because every time the "official" inflationary figure exceeds 5-6% the formula calculating inflation is CHANGED. For example, a better gauge of inflation could be something like this based on postal rates.

If you stop to think about it, with greater automation and improved efficiency it should be cheaper to mail a letter. Since the postal rates keep increasing for essentially the same service much of the change in price should be due to inflation.

"Nor do I think it's reasonable to describe inflation as a stealth "tax". Nobody takes the value you lose to inflation; it's just gone."

No, value does not just evaporate. You lose value to inflation because of supply and demand. The government prints money (essentially creating value from nothing) but this means there are more dollars out there, hence an increase in supply and thus a decline in value.

Originally (until 1913) the government could only print money based upon gold reserves. The notes were US notes, and were redeemable in "lawful money" Because the government was limited by law, the value of a dollar stayed relatively stable for long periods of time, so savings (either in a bank of the mattress) was viable. You knew the value of a dollar would still be a dollar 10 years hence.

Inflation is a stealth tax because now the government can print a virtually unlimited supply of new dollars to pay for whatever it wishes. These dollars are created out of thin air, backed by nothing, and when they are put into circulation the reduce the value of notes already in circulation e.g. "inflation".

The government is essentially taking value away from the dollars you and everyone else owns when they print additional ones. What else can you call this transfer of value from an individual to a government but taxation?

It hurts the poor disproportionately because they cannot afford to have a hedge against inflation (which the rich can do).

There are many examples throughout history of the same scenario as we are on, and they ALWAYS have ended badly.

http://www.civil-liberties.com/pages/dead.html

Will you hear or see that happening ? With jay walkers not being able to face their accusers in court, because their right to habeas corpus is suspended ?

Like we haven't heard about Jose Padilla?

Of course, we all know that once it gets suspended (not that it has), we'll never EVER get it back. Good thing it has NEVER happened before!

You are aware, I hope, that during a significant number of those conflicts we lost a lot more of our freedoms than we are currently discussing even the potential of losing right now...

I'm not defending the current administration's policies, but I just think that you should be careful drawing historical comparisons before you know where they're going. President Lincoln -- who history has treated quite favorably -- declared and imposed martial law, suspended habeas corpus, and arrested people that today would probably be termed "political dissidents," including a few members of Congress. (The anti-war Democrats known as the "Copperheads" were the common target.)

When the arrests and courts-martial were declared blatantly unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (under Taney), Lincoln simply ignored the ruling until the conclusion of the war. You can Google this, just type in "John Merryman" or check out Ex parte Merryman (the ruling that was ignored).

That's one of the more well-known and egregious violations, but there are others; the persecution of the Germans in World War I, the Japanese in World War II, and a host of other things, any of which can and were argued to be necessary at the time owing to extenuating circumstances.

So by drawing a historical parallel between 9/11 and any other "war period" in our history, you can quite easily play into the hands of a pro-oppression argument, because there is ample historical evidence for periods of relative oppression (or at least, of substantially reduced civil liberties) during conflicts, followed by a return to normalcy afterwards.

linky

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or publishing, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, and declared, That if any person shall be prosecuted under this act, for the writing or publishing any libel aforesaid, it shall be lawful for the defendant, upon the trial of the cause, to give in evidence in his defence, the truth of the matter contained in the publication charged as a libel. And the jury who shall try the cause, shall have a right to determine the law and the fact, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

According to the Tennessee Laws (1715-1320, vol. II, p. 774), in the 1794 Jay Treaty, the United States agreed to pay 600,000 pounds sterling to King George III, as reparations for the American revolution.

Abraham Lincoln once said "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I don't know about you all, but I think that Abe was a pretty wise man with a great idea. I sure wish that our government was like that...

Our current government is like Lincoln's in many ways. In the Union (the North) Lincoln was considered very controversial, hated by a large percentage of the population, and his handling of the war was frequently criticized (in New York there were Draft riots). Lincoln was one of our greatest Presidents and truly believed in liberty in general but in his day-to-day handling of a major war liberty was put aside. As it is with today's war. Don't get fixated on Iraq, think War on Terror in general, this will be a multi-decade multi-generational war like the Cold War with Communism.

"With Congress not in session until July, Lincoln assumed all powers not delegated in the Constitution, including the power to suspend habeas corpus. In 1861, Lincoln had already suspended civil law in territories where resistance to the North's military power would be dangerous. In 1862, when copperhead democrats began criticizing Lincoln's violation of the Constitution, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus throughout the nation and had many copperhead democrats arrested under military authority because he felt that the State Courts in the north west would not convict war protesters such as the copperheads. He proclaimed that all persons who discouraged enlistments or engaged in disloyal practices would come under Martial Law."

http://www.civil-liberties.com/pages/did_lincoln.h tm

"In pursuing victory, Lincoln assumed extralegal powers over the press, declared martial law in areas where no military action justified it, quelled draft riots with armed soldiers, and drafted soldiers to fight for the Union cause. No President in history had ever exerted so much executive authority."

http://www.americanpresident.org/history/abrahamli ncoln/

One might argue that never before in history has a father's presidency been used as a springboard for a son's.


Yup. Never before

Interestingly, there was a proposed amendment that would have automatically stripped the citizenship of any American who accepted such a title. Some conspiracy theorists claim that the amendment was, in fact, ratified in 1819; however, that notion has been pretty thoroughly debunked.

Can anyone think of a time when the freedoms of the average American were more at threat from their own government?

How about when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus?

Bush may be a knucklehead and a megalomaniac, but he hasn't yet declared that war protesters must be arrested under Martial Law. Lincoln did.

Do you still think he's spinning in his grave?

Ahem, the key word here is "citizen". Please give links to articles talking about those two citizens. I'm not saying they're non-existent, I just want something to reference instead of "JoeBuck said so on /."

(score: +1, obvious troll)
tee hee

You Americans get pissed off when terrorists blow your buildings and their occupants to bits, and then you get pissed off when your government tries to protect you. You can't have it both ways.

I'm not asking the government to "protect" us, especially not the way they think they should. In fact, the best thing the government can do is to stay out of everyone's way. The government's "protection" just gives the shee^H^H^H^Hpeople a false sense of security.

And no, you can't have a better solution because your politicians are all smarter than you.

Care to back up that statement???

That's why they lead and you follow.

A very common misperception about the USA, among Americans and non-Americans alike. An American Citizen (state Citizen) is a sovereign above the federal government and ruled only by other sovereigns, at least until he or she is duped into claiming to be a "US citizen", a status that did not exist prior to 1868. One claims to be a US citizen via birth certificates, Socialist^H^H^H Security Numbers, 1040 Forms, etc. That does mean that almost everyone there is affected, I admit, but there is a way out.

Reclaim your sovereign status ASAP

> What I'm saying--and I'm a game developer--is that a Voodoo 2 could be pushed about 5x farther than anyone has pushed it, but we're so busy playing catch-up with new cards and bad drivers that there's no incentive.

I'm a game developer too.

And you're partially right, but you're forgetting about fill-rate and transforms. There are only so many triangles the Voodoo can draw per second. The GeForce has raised this number considerably. 15 Million vertices per second (don't have the numbers for the Voodoo 2, but it is considerably less. 3Dfx FAQ lists 80 million pixels/sec, wheresa the GeForce 2 can hit 1 Gig pixels/sec)

What are the short comings of the Voodoo 2?
a) Unfortunately (or fortunatly) us 3D game programmers don't want to be locked into a proprietary API like Glide, we'd rather use OpenGL or even D3D.
b) max textures sizes are only 256x256
c) and only 16-bit. Gotta have 32-bit all in the name of realism ;)
d) 16 megs of texture memory
e) no resolution above 1024x768
f) no full-scene anti-aliasing
Yes, all of these are "non-essential", but customers are wanting all of them.

I agree, that the Voodoo 2 is still a sweet piece of hardware.

> But everyone in the game business knows that you don't need to optimize too much on the PC, because everyone will upgrade.

Again partially correct.

But there are 2 main reasons not to optimize.
a) It's time to ship the dam game (and start making some money off of it.)
b) It's costing a lot of money (programmer's time) just to get another few % increase in speed out of the game.

Of course the main argument to optimize is
a) Lets people with slower computers have an ejoyable experience, which means more people will buy your game since they don't have to upgrade (just yet)

I do agree, it is sad, that we just "pass-the-buck" via "get a faster computer"

Cheers

--
uSA != U.S.