Slashdot Mirror

Notes:
If you're not sure what to write, you can start with my letter to my congresscritter.
If the bill link above stops working (Thomas doesn't seem to like direct-linking bills), just go to Thomas and enter bill number HR107.

looks like your typical slashdot geek :p
http://www.house.gov/boucher/pics/boucherpic.jpg

Looks like he also aided the early growth of the internet:

http://www.house.gov/boucher/docs/tbio.htm

looks like your typical slashdot geek :p
http://www.house.gov/boucher/pics/boucherpic.jpg

Looks like he also aided the early growth of the internet:

http://www.house.gov/boucher/docs/tbio.htm

I would like things to change in November, but I have two shitty choices for Senator. The House of Representatives don't look like they plan to change anything either.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But the corollary of that is obvious. Some things are not working so well these days.

Congress better think for itself and make decisions that are good for the people, and how to spend our tax money.

And states might want to start exercising their rights, especially if the federal government keeps things on this track for too much longer.

Unfortunately, the federal government can still control immigration, national funding of education and research, taxation, etc.

What are some solutions?

Personally, I spent Tuesday (local election) passing out the following flyer:

Will Your Vote Be Counted?

Diebold

• Produces the "Accuvote" touch-screen voting machines used in Virginia and at least 36 other states.
• Made over 40,000 internal company files, including passwords, encryption keys, source code, and user manuals, available to internet hackers worldwide.
• For a step-by-step guide on how to modify the votes in a Diebold-controlled election, see www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html
• Despite Diebold's promises to tighten up security after two independent investigations in July and September, a third investigation in March of yielded the following quote:

  Diebold

  "basically had no interest in putting actual security in this system," said Paul Franceus, one of the consultants. "It's not like they did it wrong. It's like they didn't bother."

• In the the recent California audit, Diebold's own lawyers admitted that their client had "probably broken the law." Frustrated investigators asked whether Diebold was lying, or only "trying to be misleading" in their answers. Here's what Bob Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems, had to say for himself:

  We were caught. We apologize for that.

Direct Recording Electronic "DRE" Machines

Though Diebold has gotten bad press lately, (it's costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign "contributions" to stay in business), their competitors are no better. Any DRE machine would be just as vulnerable to error, tampering, and fraud. Because they do not produce a permanent record of each vote, modern computerized systems are no better than the huge mechanical lever machines of 1890. Because there is no reliable way to even detect errors, the results of any election using these machines is open to question.

Voter-Verifiable Audit Receipt

For at least ten years, security experts around the country have recommended the use of a Voter-Verifiable Audit, or "VVA," to guard against these problems. If passed, Voters Confidence and Increased Accuracy Act would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper printout of each vote. This "VVA Receipt" must be made available for each voter to check before being securely deposited into a sealed container. The paper ballots would count as the actual votes, taking precedence over any electronic tallies in case of doubt.

Urge your Senator and Representative to support the Voters Confidence Act, also known as H.R.2239 (in the House), and S.1980 (in the Senate.)

How to Buy an Election

"How do I know if the machine actually recorded my vote?" The fact is, you don't.
Representative Rush Holt (NJ)

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

All this information is recorded somewhere on the House of Reps and Senate websites. I was scanning records hourly as S 1805 (Protection for Lawful firearms commerce) was being debated and voted on in the Senate. I'll dig up the links in a second -- it'll be easier to spot once you've seen them before.

Oh, and Thomas can be used to search for the EXACT text of pending bills in both Houses. They're a myriad o them though so you pretty much need to be involved with an activist group that'll keep you posted on what bills are in committee and which ones have a chance of getting of committee. Unless your reps are on the actual committee it's not much use to call them up and voice opinions on a bill that's not going anywhere. Well, that's my take on it. Seems like your position would have more "oomph" if you call them when you know it's out of committee -- shows that you're on top of the issue.

Yep, there it is: Congress voting records

Here's a better page I gathered up from the Senate's site:

http://thomas.loc.gov/r108/r108.html ... that's at least good for the 108th Congress.

Best way to learn how it works, IMHO, is to watch the NRA and other gun-rights groups. That's how I got involved with it all I guess.

David Goodstein, Vice Provost of CalTech on the collapse of the PhD pyramid scheme which drives science education in the USA and started to fail in the 1970s and, in his words: http://www.house.gov/science/goodstein_04-01.htm " In the course of a career, a professor in a research university turns out, on the average, about 15 Ph.D.'s. Many of these would like, themselves, to become in turn professors in research universities and turn out 15 more Ph.D.'s. After all, these were the gems that were selected at each stage of the mining and sorting operation. Becoming a professor seems to many of them the natural culmination of their successful educations. That is obviously one of the principal engines of the exponential growth that lasted for a hundred years in America. Those students are bitterly disappointed when they find out the jobs they want aren't there, and their disappointment seeps down through the ranks, turning younger students away from science. ... The problem, to reiterate, is that science education in America is designed to select a small group of elite scientists. An unintended but inevitable side effect is that everyone else is left out. As a consequence of that, 20,000 American high schools lack a single qualified physics teacher, half the math classes in American schools are taught by people who lack the qualifications to teach them, and companies will increasingly find themselves without the technical competence they need at all levels from the shop floor to the executive suite."

(5) the term ''Federal crime of terrorism'' means an offense that -

(A) is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and

(B) is a violation of ... 1030(a)(1) (relating to protection of computers), 1030(a)(5)(A)(i) resulting in damage as defined in
1030(a)(5)(B)(ii) through (v) (relating to protection of computers),

18 USC 1030a refines this:

(5)(A)(i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;

(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or

(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; ...
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused) -

(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $5,000 in value;

So if they're the government's and you say "do this thing or else I'll DDOS your computers", it's definitely terrorism.

The interesting question is, under this law, would it be terrorism for me to say "Senator Levin (our excellent senator from Michigan), if you don't vote against DMCA II, I'm going to have all of my friends email your office" if doing that results in crashing their mail server, forcing them to buy a new one for more than $5K? I guess ambiguities like that are what you end up with when you write a several hundred page law in a few days, as the Patriot act was written.

(5) the term ''Federal crime of terrorism'' means an offense that -

(A) is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and

(B) is a violation of ... 1030(a)(1) (relating to protection of computers), 1030(a)(5)(A)(i) resulting in damage as defined in
1030(a)(5)(B)(ii) through (v) (relating to protection of computers),

18 USC 1030a refines this:

(5)(A)(i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;

(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or

(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; ...
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused) -

(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $5,000 in value;

So if they're the government's and you say "do this thing or else I'll DDOS your computers", it's definitely terrorism.

The interesting question is, under this law, would it be terrorism for me to say "Senator Levin (our excellent senator from Michigan), if you don't vote against DMCA II, I'm going to have all of my friends email your office" if doing that results in crashing their mail server, forcing them to buy a new one for more than $5K? I guess ambiguities like that are what you end up with when you write a several hundred page law in a few days, as the Patriot act was written.

Near cyprus makes more sense to me. Even the theory that Cuba is the remains of Atlantis sounds more plausible than Antarctica.

The lone dissenting Senator was Feingold.

According to Rep. Bernie Sanders, 66 Members of the House of Representatives voted against the USA Patriot Act. So, not to take away from the importances of his vote, but Kucinich was not the lone dissenting vote in the House of Representatives.

I wonder, in some ways, if computing has been harmed by the removal of interpreters. Even when MSDOS came with QBASIC, BASIC programs became very much second class citizens in that environment. The fun and accessability has been removed from programming. Some of it is there in environments like Python under Linux, but even then there's a complexity and obscurity attached. It's not like the VIC 20, with its blinking cursor and "READY." prompt. You have to know the interpreter is there. You have to find it. You then have to go through a range of hurdles to know what it is capable of.

And in some ways, the lack of simplicity of environments like Python is harmful too. Much of the fun of programming was learning how to do amazing things at a relatively low level. Now languages are so complex, and libraries so relied upon, I'd venture to say most programmers do not understand how their programs will run, that something as simple as a change of data structure might make their program run 10,000% faster. Hashing? Sorting? Let the interpreter do it. That stuff's "too hard".

How do you make programming fun as long as we make computers complex? I'm not sure we can. And our computers will become steadily more complex, because increasingly the only people who program will be those with little love of the art. Those who think that a Python library is an adequate substitute for understanding. Just as society has moved to a "condemn, never understand" approach, so has programming moved to a "just get the job done, don't understand the results or the reasons" approach. This is wrong, but it's a vicious circle.

This quagmire of programming become more serious and more unnecessarily complex as the unnecessary complexities drives talented would-be "real" programmers out will not disappear by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that programming is important to you. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by Guido to create a more modern alternative to BASIC that is accessable to even the most Texan village idiot, but that if computers are not made fun again you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how the lack of a computer that boots into a READY prompt, ready for programming, harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on bringing back home computers.

You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

The major issue is one of choice. Given the choice between not paying anything towards the creation of music, and paying something to an organization like the RIAA, clearly most people would rather do the former. If a non-governmental agency is to be put in charge of handing out grants to artists, it must have the ability to compell payment. There are multiple ways this can be achieved, currently we only provide a limited mechanism through copyrights. But if copyrights were to be reformed, we could institute this kind of compulsion while giving people their fair use rights back. This would suit everyone.

As you say, community values must also play a part in the creation of music, we can't allow rappers to advocate murder and receive funds that people have no choice but to pay. I would add to that the use of swearwords, and, for obvious constitutional reasons, bans on religious or speech content. These can always be funded through other means, rather than via compulsory contributions.

The real issue is getting there. Most people have no objections to such a system being instituted as long as they receive something in return, for example the free redistribution of content itself. But unless we can persuade the current content producers to accept such terms, something that cannot be done without also providing the means for them to receive money via the compulsory payment system evisaged above, they will not accept such a radical proposal.

This quagmire of artists and consumers being unable to accept a better environment for the funding of arts unless both are dealt with at the same time will not disappear by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that free and open music is important to you. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by the libertarians to create an infrastructure that will support truly free - as in liberty - music, but that if the chicken and agg problem inherent in a sideways reform of copyright is not resolved, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how the lack of a mechanism whereby a private company can compell people to pay money to be ridistirbuted amongst artists harms all three. Tell them you will only accept such a system as long as strict limits are placed upon the type of content that can be funded, owing to the compulsory nature of the contributions. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on private music funding.

You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

While some degree of importation is allowed per 602 and 109, this doesn't qualify

Let's go to the code, shall we?
US Code Title 17, Chapter 6, Sec. 602 Infringing importation of copies or phonorecords

(a) Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to -
(2) importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage;

MAI SYSTEMS CORP. v. PEAK COMPUTER didn't involve importing for personal use, so hardly applicable here.

And, as we learned from RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia (regarding the Diamond RIO MP3 player), facilitation of personal use gets broad protection under fair use.

So, is downloading MP3's from Russia importation or not? If it is importation, then personal use is covered under section 602. If it is not importation, then the duplication in the U.S. should still be covered under personal use; i.e., you legally bought the right in Russia to duplicate the copyrighted work to your Diamond RIO MP3 player for your personal use in the U.S.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

In other words, constitutional law is coequal with treaties. Under the rules of "statutory construction", all else equal, more specific recent rules trump more general older ones.

Now, the treaty, as I understand it, calls on us to make laws, which presumably would be trumped by the Constitution, but I wouldn't be sanguine -- we came very close to losing privacy for our encryption keys before 9/11 (at least on exported items) and it is now "a different world" to hear some of the pessimists talk.

It seems that this whole notion of using treaties for anything other than marking out jurisdiction over the lands and seas, or codifying who gets what at the end of a war is a huge threat to a nation's sovereignty, and, in a democratic country, the ultimate sovereignty of a country's citizenry.

The Kyoto treaty, NAFTA, and all other economic treaties are ways of sneaking in through the back door (in the United States) laws that would never be passed through legitimate means. The House of Representatives is totally left out of the loop, bypassing our most democratically representative body.

Now, apart from economic treaties, the U.S. will play handmaiden to the enforcement of foreign criminal statutes (while other countries do likewise).

This is bullshit!

Politicians are at a loss to know what to do in the face of a world rapidly being transformed by technology, and international communication and commerce; but, in an effort at being seen as "doing something about the problems of today's world" are rushing to pass laws, the consequences of which can neither be foreseen nor easily undone.

And we're the ones who are going to have to live with it.

Want to know who the guy is?
Cybersecurity & Consumer Data: What's at Risk for the Consumer?
Oh.. and the lameness filter is annoying...

The working link is http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/11192 003hearing1133/Thompson1799.htm (no space in the middle).

Wrong. Try 150,000 I'd be interested in seeing the stats to back up your other numbers...

You mean like the Universal Service Fee, which seems to be prone to abuse.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized[ 1].

Whoever modded this as flamebait might want to learn about the concept of irony...

On the other hand, it's not that far fetched! Last year the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property held a hearing into International Copyright Piracy: A Growing Problem With Links To Organized Crime And Terrorism. In the 50s it was communists. These days it's people taking camcorders into cinemas who are the enemy.

No tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. US Consitution
The states have no right to, it unconstitutional to, claim taxes on items you purchase from another state either via internet , mail order, or any other means.. It is in the constititution from day one because it was abused back under the articles of confederation when states put tarrifs on goods coming into their state from another.

what makes you think China wants to put weapons in space?

China's actions

oh yes- racism.

Governments don't have races.

According to the US Constitution, the federal government has no power to fund things like education or do anything else which the Constitution does not explicitly give it the right to do (see the tenth amendment).

There are plenty of Democrats in bed with the movie and music industries. Howard Berman, a Democrat from California is probably their biggest backer in Congress.

S106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Yup. It can be read right here Computer Security Report Card

Is this a case of the blind leading the sighted?

It depends on the intended purpose, really. There's places like Mt. Weather, the 'Diefenbunke', in Carp, Ontario, etc. which were built as long-term emergency govt. shelters in case of nuclear warfare. The Russians have been building a facility at Yamantau Mountain, which has been of some interest to western intelligence agencies (among other things).

Then there are the urban facilities. London, Washington, Moscow, Tokyo all have emrgency shelters deep underground. These are periodically kept stocked with pharmaceutical/first aid items, food, water, etc. There's one under the Bank of Canada in Ottawa, for instance.

See my post to your parent for some info.

How about the constitution? Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution guarantees that every state in the union has a Republican form of Government. In order for a state to even join the union, it must be of the Republican form of government.

You've probably heard this before, but did you notice the word republic... "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands..." Perhaps you have, like many others, wrongly associated the word 'republic' with 'republican' and likewise, 'democracy' with 'democrat'

Wasn't it the imminent threat of WMD attacks?

I'm sure someone mentioned something like that.

I refer you to your own government.

Sen. Ron Paul

He is a Libertarian in a Republican's cloths. He is my very last hope for the american system.

Weinberg's opinion is no news. Bob Park already said it in his book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud and in his testimony before the Commitee on Sicence, Subcommitee on Space and Aeronautics (April 9th, 1997)

..Liberty Alliance project, which so far has produced just a large amount of PDF files...

Yep, the last time we had a liberty alliance, they only produced one document. But don't worry, politicians are doing their best to take care of it.

I agree. I know and communicate regularly with several residents of multiple countries in Western Europe. Every single one of them dislikes and fears Bush. He is seen as a loose cannon.

All politicians lie, but our current leaders have raised the bar to a new world record. Read Congressman Waxman's document analyzing the systematic lying taking place re: Iraq in the current
executive administration.

The ease of wiretaps coupled with the ability for any government official to read the results makes the Patriot Act the strongest tool the government has ever had to monitor the population.

Check out the EFF Analysis Of The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act for some more detailed information. Blame your Senators and Representatives who rushed this through to the president.

This ship has sailed. And it took away with your freedom, citizens of the U.S.!

The FBI is starting to come forward to claim its spoils...

Heh - I was about to submit this story. I can add a link to the actual bill, though: H.R. 2735. And, if you happen to be a US voter reading this, go here, find your representatives, and tell them that you support the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act of 2003. Perhaps hint to them that the same rationale could be applied to other things that consumers buy, and might want to fix at some point. Perhaps suggest that, really, some sort of comprehensive Consumers Bill of Rights could be in order. Just a thought.

Saying that "I don't have an obligation to my country" (like many of the people in this discussion have) and comparing the draft to slavery is disgusting.

I was in the military and I'm 100% against the draft. The only point of a draft in this day and age is to avoid paying a fair market value for the labor. The whole point of this nonsence is to avoid increasing taxes. Here's some food for thought, quoted from a statement by congressman Ron Paul (Republican):

Mr. Speaker, the most important reason to oppose reinstatement of a military draft is that conscription violates the very principles upon which this country was founded. The basic premise underlying conscription is that the individual belongs to the state, individual rights are granted by the state, and therefore politicians can abridge individual rights at will. In contrast, the philosophy which inspired America's founders, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is that individuals possess natural, God-given rights which cannot be abridged by the government. Forcing people into military service against their will thus directly contradicts the philosophy of the Founding Fathers. A military draft also appears to contradict the constitutional prohibition of involuntary servitude.

During the War of 1812, Daniel Webster eloquently made the case that a military draft was unconstitutional: " Where is it written in the Constitution , in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine had no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that the instrument was intended as the basis of a free government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free government. It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the provisions of our government."

Another eloquent opponent of the draft was former President Ronald Reagan who in a 1979 column on conscription said: "...it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state -- not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers -- to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea."

President Reagan and Daniel Webster are not the only prominent Americans to oppose conscription. In fact, throughout American history the draft has been opposed by Americans from across the political spectrum, from Henry David Thoreau to Barry Goldwater to Bill Bradley to Jesse Ventura. Organizations opposed to conscription range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, and from the National Taxpayers Union to the Conservative Caucus. Other major figures opposing conscription include current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to stand up for the long-term military interests of the United States, individual liberty, and values of the Declaration of Independence by cosponsoring my sense of Congress resolution opposing reinstatement of the military draft.

America's system varies from the Europeans' only cosmetically. They form their coalitions after the vote, and we form them before.

Look at Greens, look at Libertarians. THEY'RE different, and where are they?

They're in two places. The ones that joined the coalitions before the election are either serving as Senator from Massachusetts or Congressman from Texas.

The ones who tried to buck the system are serving as Jay Leno punchlines and the target of sentences that have the word "spoiler" in them.

The poll shows Bush losing to both Kerry and Edwards in hypothetical matchups. Kerry would beat Bush 53-41 percent among registered California voters, while Edwards would defeat the president by a margin of 51 percent to 42 percent.

Voter disapproval was highest on Bush's handling of the budget deficit -- 67 percent said they disapproved of the job he is doing, while just 27 percent approve. A majority also disapproved of his handling of other key areas, including illegal immigration, health care, the economy and the war in Iraq.

Remember that Ah-nold is a quite different political beast than Bush, for one thing, Ah-nold is not an extreem right wing kind of guy. Beside, the guvenator came to power because the guvenor didn't manage to handle the budget, and who trusts Bush to manage any budget?

But if you want to insist on guns for a riot, are you trying to say Democratic supporters don't own guns? What about the criminal element, they own guns right? Even illegal weapons. Criminals likely don't vote, but they sure as hell favor liberals over tough-on-crime conservatives.

This is just stupid. So criminals support democrats so that they don't end up in jail? If there is a correlation between criminals and democrates, isn't it more likely that people from poor and neglected areas vote for someone who actually wants to improve their lifes instead of someone who cutes taxes for the rich and cut programs that have negative effect on the inner cities.

Please oppose HR3261. This bill will have the sad effect of making facts private information. This bill makes it very easy for sports leagues to sue those who provide statistics from the game, would allow race organizers to prevent 3rd parties from listing a collection of winning times, and may even prevent publication of stock quotes. This law will have a chilling effect on free speech, and will encourage frivolous lawsuits against those entities which do such a wonderful job of providing information, including internet search engines and public libraries. This law wil not help consumers, and will make it more costly for citzens to access factual information. Please oppose this bill.

That will take you quite some time:

Sounds like a good scam, though. I think the Rep who introduced it has been secretly downloading the internet, so when it passes, he can sue everyone. My god, this man looks older than time.

In the current system, every vote cast leaves a permanent, tangible, undisputable (unless some kind of hole punch is involved, anyway) record.

>> Group it into: ( 2 * 3 ) * 2/3$

Dang, they've thought of EVERYTHING.

US Code, Title 18 Sec. 484. Connecting parts of different notes

Whoever so places or connects together different parts of two or more notes, bills, or other genuine instruments issued under the authority of the United States, or by any foreign government, or corporation, as to produce one instrument, with intent to defraud, shall be guilty of forgery in the same manner as if the parts so put together were falsely made or forged, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

US Code, Title 18, Section 331: Mutilation, diminution, and falsification of coins

Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or

Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

There's a ton of great things in the US Code if you know where to look.

US Code, Title 18, Section 331: Mutilation, diminution, and falsification of coins

Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or

Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

There's a ton of great things in the US Code if you know where to look.

US Code, Title 18, Section 331: Mutilation, diminution, and falsification of coins

Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or

Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

There's a ton of great things in the US Code if you know where to look.

It is illegal in the United States too.

It is against the law. Men with earpieces and black suits could come knocking.

Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. This comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service.

Here's the relevant bit of the US Code:

Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note,or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Insourcing (the opposite of outsourcing) is actually increasing more quickly than outsourcing is. Over half of all Americans own equities (i.e. stocks or mutual funds). So either you have a better source for your facts than I do, or you don't. But the information I have flatly contradicts your concerns.