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S.520
Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 - Amends the Federal judicial code to prohibit the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal district courts from exercising jurisdiction over any matter in which relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government or an officer or agent of such government concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.

Prohibits a court of the United States from relying upon any law, policy, or other action of a foreign state or international organization in interpreting and applying the Constitution, other than English constitutional and common law up to the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
Provides that any Federal court decision relating to an issue removed from Federal jurisdiction by this Act is not binding precedent on State courts.

Provides that any Supreme Court justice or Federal court judge who exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of this Act shall be deemed to have committed an offense for which the justice or judge may be removed, and to have violated the standard of good behavior required of Article III judges by the Constitution.

Sponsors:
Sen Shelby, Richard C.
Sen Brownback, Sam
Sen Burr, Richard
Sen Craig, Larry E.
Sen Lott, Trent

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN005 20:@@@L&summ2=m&

Constitution Restoration Act of 2005 - Amends the Federal judicial code to prohibit the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal district courts from exercising jurisdiction over any matter in which relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government or an officer or agent of such government concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.
Prohibits a court of the United States from relying upon any law, policy, or other action of a foreign state or international organization in interpreting and applying the Constitution, other than English constitutional and common law up to the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution.
Provides that any Federal court decision relating to an issue removed from Federal jurisdiction by this Act is not binding precedent on State courts.
Provides that any Supreme Court justice or Federal court judge who exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of this Act shall be deemed to have committed an offense for which the justice or judge may be removed, and to have violated the standard of good behavior required of Article III judges by the Constitution.

Um, you mean the bill that died in committee?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:s.020 28:

"...many of Edison's films survive on printed paper reels submitted to a copyright office that at the time had no way of cataloging film."--Review of this DVD set

You designate "appealing to authority" as fallacious. This is an alias for "appealing to misleading authority."

Theological arguments aside, the Christian Bible IS a misleading authority when applied legal argments in the US. The law of the land is based on the Constitution of the United States, not the Bible. This country is most emphatically NOT a theocracy.

The issue at hand is whether or not the Constitution's guarantees of equal protection under the law (14th amendment) and free practice of religion (1st amendment), are being violated by refusing to grant legal recognition to the enduring relationships maintained by one segment of the population. All you accomplish by bringing the Bible into the argument is acknowledge that the prohibition of all marriages other than Christian ones is an establishment of religion, and is therefore explicitly unconstitutional. Invoking religion automatically invalidates your argument from a Constitutional perspective.

The legitimate authorities on Constitutional law are the Constitution and it's amendments, the Federalist Papers, and Supreme Court rulings. Other writings of the framers of the Constitution (such as the private papers of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Hamilton; as well as preceding documents (such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence) are legitimate authorities in the specific instances where they illuminate the mindset and intentions of the Constitution's authors.

The only legitimate place where the Bible can enter a Constitutional law debate at all is in the instances where the Founding Fathers cite it as inspiration; however, all this does is place the Bible on equal footing with other inspriational sources, the most important of these being the writings of Enlightement philosophers such as Hobbes, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

I'd remind you that when the Framers mentioned "God", they were not talking about the God modern fundimentalist Christians worship. The architects of the Constitution were predominantly Deists and Enlightenment scholars, not Christians as a modern Fundimentalist would define it. Their God was "nature's God" (as Jefferson puts it in the Declaration of Independence); this God was viewed a celestial clockmaker who created the Universe and set it in motion, and did not interfere in it's operation thereafter. When they spoke of the "laws of God", they were talking about the laws of Science and Reason as they understood them, not a mass of primitive superstituious gobbledegook.

To dissect your claim that the Christian Bible is a legitimate authority in the Gay Marriage debate:

Is this a matter which I can decide without appeal to expert opinion? If the answer is "yes", then do so. If "no", go to the next question:

Moral issues are not easily decided given the limits of human understanding, so an appeal to authority is useful

Two probems here. First, this is a CONSTITUTIONAL LAW issue, not a MORAL issue. Second, even if it were a moral issue, moral issues ARE easily within the limits of human understanding.

The universal, rational basis of moral behavior is exceedingly simple: do no unnecessary harm to others. Everything else derives from this simple concept. Judeism and Christianity acknowledge this, in a roundabout way (the 10 commandments are mostly just a list of specific ways of harming others, and the Sermon at the Mount Jesus says the s

Or even better, a TV series based on David Weber's Honor Harrington character, possibly back at Saganami Island.

Honestly, I think Honor Harrington would be best served by following the rather successful model of Horatio Hornblower from the series by C.S. Forester. With Battlestar Galactica doing well, I'd like to think that the SciFi channel would be willing to play the role of A&E.

Reverse-engineering for compatibility purposes is still legal under the DMCA. Reverse-engineering is OK as long as you don't do it to infringe upon copyright.

Source, The text of the DMCA, Chapter 12, Section 1201.f (find within page for "reverse engineering")

Check your facts:

We are at war.

Congress passed the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" on October 11, 2002.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HJ001 14:@@@L&summ2=m&

The PATRIOT provisions requires the Deparment of Justice Office of the Inspector General to collect and respond to complaints, when appropriate, and issue a report on its findings twice a year.

The March 11, 2005 report is here.

And from TFA:

Consider the stats from the latest report, released on Friday. DOJ received 1,943 complaints about alleged civil liberties abuses. Of these, 1,748 either did not warrant an investigation or were outside DOJ's jurisdiction:

Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example, some of the complaints alleged that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfere with a person's thoughts or dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs. The remaining one-quarter of the 1,748 complaints in this category involved allegations against agencies or entities outside of the DOJ, including other federal agencies, local governments, or private businesses. We referred those complaints to the appropriate entity or advised complainants of the entity with jurisdiction over their allegations.

Of the 195 complaints that did warrant investigation, 170 involved what the report describes as "management issues" rather than civil liberties abuses, such as reports by "inmates [who] complained about the general conditions at federal prisons, such as the poor quality of the food or the lack of hygiene products."

The bottom line is that PATRIOT, while not itself a "law", merely modified existing statutes, mostly to bring them up to date (e.g., dealing with cell phones, wireless devices, email, etc. in the context of "wiretaps") and expand definitions in others. The result is imperfect, like all laws, and should be watched for abuse. But there is nothing inherently evil about it. Interested persons would do well, at a minimum, to at least read the text of the act.

It's not fair that taxes are applied to a CD, but not applied to an iTunes download. Solution:

Repeal the tax on the CD and cut government spending.

A similar technique will solve all other cases of taxation that aren't fair.

No, if you want fair, you either tax nothing, or you tax everything the same across the board.

One such plan in the works is the Fair Tax. It is a plan to consolidate the federal income tax, Social Security tax and several other taxes into one federal sales tax. It also lobbies to have the 16th Amendment repealed so the government can't institute another income tax without another Constitutional Amendment. There is currently a bill in the House and Senate about this, HR25 and S1493.

All services and new goods would be taxed equally. Used goods would not be taxed to prevent double taxation. Every person in the country with a SSN would get a monthly prebate check to account for the sales tax on things up to the poverty level. Its a prebate check because its given in advance so low income households don't suffer. With that plan, everyone would pay their fair share. If you don't want to pay taxes, don't buy things you don't need.

People would finally be able to take home everything they rightfully make. The only exception would be people living in states that have a state income tax.

Spend the hour or so to read the FAQ on the Fair Tax site. It answers alot of questions people how about the plan and what it does. After that, write to your representitives with your opinions.

It's not fair that taxes are applied to a CD, but not applied to an iTunes download. Solution:

Repeal the tax on the CD and cut government spending.

A similar technique will solve all other cases of taxation that aren't fair.

No, if you want fair, you either tax nothing, or you tax everything the same across the board.

One such plan in the works is the Fair Tax. It is a plan to consolidate the federal income tax, Social Security tax and several other taxes into one federal sales tax. It also lobbies to have the 16th Amendment repealed so the government can't institute another income tax without another Constitutional Amendment. There is currently a bill in the House and Senate about this, HR25 and S1493.

All services and new goods would be taxed equally. Used goods would not be taxed to prevent double taxation. Every person in the country with a SSN would get a monthly prebate check to account for the sales tax on things up to the poverty level. Its a prebate check because its given in advance so low income households don't suffer. With that plan, everyone would pay their fair share. If you don't want to pay taxes, don't buy things you don't need.

People would finally be able to take home everything they rightfully make. The only exception would be people living in states that have a state income tax.

Spend the hour or so to read the FAQ on the Fair Tax site. It answers alot of questions people how about the plan and what it does. After that, write to your representitives with your opinions.

You hint at methods outside of the OS, like encoding the data in the file itself. I am going to google "EXIF metadata" after this post, but presently I think of things like XML and relation DBs. What exactly do you have in mind?

Various specific file formats have their own methods of encoding metadata, usually in fairly arbitrary ways (which can be a problem). For example, MP3s have their ID3 tags either at the start or end of the file, EXIF has photo-specific details, DOCs have all that microsoft authorship stuff. A great improvement might be if we could all fix on a standard for the actual metadata to store (Dublin Core, say) so we don't end up with completely different standards in each file format and lots of mapping to do.

There are sort of 'wrapper' XML formats, like METS, which are extremely handy for providing files with some sort of context (here's the official site). As it says on the site, The METS schema is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using XML.

Re: the second point, I think maybe people get carried away, as in the MS WinFS documentation, when they think about the information available in an image. There is some easy to collect information, depending on the source of a data file: if it's an image, maybe you know whose camera it comes from and when, maybe you can even guess what that person was doing or where they were when the image was taken; if it's from the Internet, you know everything about the process the user went through to find that file in order to download it (I'm looking at that one atm). I'd be tempted to look in great detail at the kinds of information that might be useful, and set up open standards for encoding and transmitting that information, not to mention gaining an idea of the privacy implications, before going for any filesystem embedding of it.

If you're interested in discussing this further I'm kaiidth at altern dot org.

The bill Here
(could go to thomas.loc.gov, type in anti-phishing into the search box) Here is what could be used:
(b) Messenger- Whoever knowingly, with the intent to carry on any activity which would be a Federal or State crime of fraud or identity theft sends any electronic mail message that--
(1) falsely represents itself as being sent by a legitimate online business;
(2) includes an Internet information location tool that refers or links users to an online location on the World Wide Web that falsely purports to belong to or be associated with such legitimate online business; and
(3) induces, requests, asks, or solicits a recipient of the electronic mail message directly or indirectly to provide, submit, or relate any means of identification to another;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned up to 5 years, or both.

Couldn't they argue (1) that they aren't a legitimate online business? (2) The e-mail seems to always have such links to their online web presence and they fulfil the last requirement by (3) asking for a donation and get info that way?
If you look below that you see where they bothered to define what they mean by the terms and "legitimate online business" is missing.
I realize that to most people this seems unreasonable, however there are a lot of unresonable people out there today.

I do think something should be done, however I think they could do better. Leahy isn't a new represenative after all.

Actually, SCOTUS already killed the First Amendment with respect to political speech, when they upheld the BCRA (aka McCain/Feingold, Campaign Finance Reform) back in 2003. But don't take my word for it. Here is part of the opinion from Justice Kennedy:

Although today's opinion does not expressly strip the press of First Amendment protection, there is no principal of law or logic that would prevent the application of the Court's reasoning in that setting. The press now operates at the whim of Congress.

In other words, we're screwed; Congress gave the FEC juris diction over these matters back in 1974, and SCOTUS says by 5 to 4 that almost everything about McCain/Feingold is kosher.

It's H.R. 550, and can be read from the Library of Congress. It has 102 cosponsors, all of them Democrats.

Tough bill. All voting code must be available for inspection by anybody. Diebold will hate this.

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like an e-voting vendors' reliability moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like an e-voting vendors' reliability moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like an e-voting vendors' reliability moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

...then why aren't Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry supporting bills that would do just that?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, that would specifically add a permanent, voter-verified paper trail to every vote case, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005. The House version already had 102 cosponsors; the Senate version, 9.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like open source and an e-voting vendors' reliability or scruples moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

...then why aren't Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry supporting bills that would do just that?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, that would specifically add a permanent, voter-verified paper trail to every vote case, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005. The House version already had 102 cosponsors; the Senate version, 9.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like open source and an e-voting vendors' reliability or scruples moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

...then why aren't Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry supporting bills that would do just that?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, that would specifically add a permanent, voter-verified paper trail to every vote case, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005. The House version already had 102 cosponsors; the Senate version, 9.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like open source and an e-voting vendors' reliability or scruples moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

This is new. It addresses Diebold's famous conflict of interest.

No, it addresses a fantasy by conspiracy theorists that an e-voting vendor can rig an election - and apparently talk publicly about it! - even though it has no connection to the equipment once deployed in the counties.

Another widely-reported concern.

Hardly. You, and apparently Clinton, Kerry, and Boxer, would like people to THINK it's widespread. Sorry, but it's not. And voting fruad is already illegal, so this is just partisan pandering.

The Republican majority will never let this pass.

If that's true, then why load it down with all of this partisan hackery? And why not support the other two bills that already exist?

S.330 [loc.gov] and H.R.704 [loc.gov]/H.R.550 [loc.gov] are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like an e-voting vendors' reliability moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

This is new. It addresses Diebold's famous conflict of interest.

No, it addresses a fantasy by conspiracy theorists that an e-voting vendor can rig an election - and apparently talk publicly about it! - even though it has no connection to the equipment once deployed in the counties.

Another widely-reported concern.

Hardly. You, and apparently Clinton, Kerry, and Boxer, would like people to THINK it's widespread. Sorry, but it's not. And voting fruad is already illegal, so this is just partisan pandering.

The Republican majority will never let this pass.

If that's true, then why load it down with all of this partisan hackery? And why not support the other two bills that already exist?

S.330 [loc.gov] and H.R.704 [loc.gov]/H.R.550 [loc.gov] are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like an e-voting vendors' reliability moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

This is new. It addresses Diebold's famous conflict of interest.

No, it addresses a fantasy by conspiracy theorists that an e-voting vendor can rig an election - and apparently talk publicly about it! - even though it has no connection to the equipment once deployed in the counties.

Another widely-reported concern.

Hardly. You, and apparently Clinton, Kerry, and Boxer, would like people to THINK it's widespread. Sorry, but it's not. And voting fruad is already illegal, so this is just partisan pandering.

The Republican majority will never let this pass.

If that's true, then why load it down with all of this partisan hackery? And why not support the other two bills that already exist?

S.330 [loc.gov] and H.R.704 [loc.gov]/H.R.550 [loc.gov] are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like an e-voting vendors' reliability moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102. So the initial post is still 100% valid.

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102. So the initial post is still 100% valid.

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102. So the initial post is still 100% valid.

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors, and the House version 102.

Why not support these bills?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors, and the House version 102.

Why not support these bills?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors, and the House version 102.

Why not support these bills?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support this bills, instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, but features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support this bills, instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, but features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories?

S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.

Why not support this bills, instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, but features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories?

Well, S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102.

So I again, and now even more relevantly, ask: why are Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry trying to splinter and divide support for bills that add a voter-verified permanent paper trail - presumably the most important feature of any such legislation?

Well, S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102.

So I again, and now even more relevantly, ask: why are Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry trying to splinter and divide support for bills that add a voter-verified permanent paper trail - presumably the most important feature of any such legislation?

Well, S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102.

So I again, and now even more relevantly, ask: why are Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry trying to splinter and divide support for bills that add a voter-verified permanent paper trail - presumably the most important feature of any such legislation?

S.330 and H.R.704 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.

Why splinter support for this bill - the most important part of which mandates a permanent, voter-verifiable paper trail - with partisan pandering about voter intimidation (which is ALREADY illegal) and rhetoric that echoes of conspiracies about Diebold's CEO?

S.330 and H.R.704 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.

Why splinter support for this bill - the most important part of which mandates a permanent, voter-verifiable paper trail - with partisan pandering about voter intimidation (which is ALREADY illegal) and rhetoric that echoes of conspiracies about Diebold's CEO?

[1] In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony. It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide. In short, a shameless pandering publicity stunt, which ignores the completely legitimate bills already proposed two years ago above by respected members of Congress that would have addressed the two very topics discussed by Kos and noted in the article summary (namely receipts and open source).

[2] Before anyone decries HAVA: a frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and progra

[1] In fairness, this bill does have a couple of minor differences: it proposes that election day be a federal holiday, and makes doing things that liberals would like to make people believe are routine and widespread, like intimidating minorities and passing out fliers with incorrect voting dates, a felony. It also prohibits executives at voting vendors from being politically active, likely to pander to the people who think Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush, completely ignoring the impossibility of actually executing on such an allegation statewide. In short, a shameless pandering publicity stunt, which ignores the completely legitimate bills already proposed two years ago above by respected members of Congress that would have addressed the two very topics discussed by Kos and noted in the article summary (namely receipts and open source).

[2] Before anyone decries HAVA: a frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.

After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):

To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and progra

Want a primer on the issue of the pledge of allegiance? Read The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. The "under God" phrase. Note that "Under God" was not added to the pledge until 1954. If you don't believe that phrase endorses Christianity, you don't understand the way the language works. If you don't understand what is wrong with endorsing an individual religion in the national pledge, which schoolchildren have often been forced to recite even in California, then you fail to understand what Thomas Jefferson, himself a religious man, had a firm grasp on. I don't fault you for not being as smart as Jefferson but probably you should read Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists. The following is the meat of the letter:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

This makes it pretty clear what was intended - keep government entirely out of everyone's religious affairs, because if you meddle just a little bit you screw everything up. The government covers actions, so you can believe whatever you want but you still can't, for example, perform human sacrifice because it's illegal to kill people even if they want to die. It recognizes that the human mind is somewhat fragile, and so is the conscience.

My mother and father were both raised Catholic. Both recovered; my mother is now either atheist or agnostic (I'm not sure which) and my father is Lutheran. My mother gave me the option to go to church if I wanted to, and I went to a Christian day care because it was inexpensive. Thus I learned the usual children's bible stories. However, I never developed a belief in God and as it was a day care and not a nursery school no one ever tried to force religion on me. In sixth grade I informed my teacher that I intended not to say the pledge due to its religious content and was informed that I would be saying the pledge. Is that at all appropriate? First of all, it really doesn't accomplish anything to say a pledge, and it means even less when you are forced to do it. However, it is nothing less than the shoving of religion down young throats. If there is no Law that respects an establishment of religion, then you simply cannot be forcing people to perform this public worship.

I would have liked to see it written "any establishment of religion" because then we could take the tax-exempt status away from the religions. Why should they get a break? Because they supposedly help people? Religions are a means of control, you can have spirituality without ever visiting a building with stained glass windows.

Anyway aside from snarkiness, it is clear (and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agrees) that the phrase "under God" promotes a specific group of religions, essentially those religions attached to the specific meaning of the word "heathen": "One who adheres to the religion of a people or nation that does not acknowledge the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam."

If you want to smack Newdow around over trying to amend the problem of an unconstitutional change to our pledge of allegiance that occurred in the fifties, then you'll find a whole lot of other people standing in your way.

American Memory I do believe the French are trying to do the same but it's a matter of funding. I don't see it as an attack on Google but perhaps the wording got lost in translation?

"No, it does not, because as soon as you press the "burn CD" button, you've got the exact same thing you would have had if you'd bought the CD in the store."

Actually not quite, because of course you're buying digital music that has been encoded in a lossy format, so the quality of that burned CD is lower than if you'd bought a CD in the store. Then, if you rip it again into mp3 it's even lower. So yes, you can get around it if you're willing to waste the CDs (though there may be a clever way to simply "burn" ISO images) and time and loose a bunch of quality, again all for music you payed to have. All this compared to an mp3 you can get from a true download service (Emusic or others) that you can move around to any computer and burn as many times as you please, one that plays on any portable digital music player.

"'I have known people who had difficulty moving music they bought on their work computer to a their home computer where they wanted to listen to it' That's vague, and sounds bogus to me."

It's vague because I haven't tried it myself, so I can only relate what I've been told. I haven't tried iTMS, Napster, etc. because I object to the entire idea that my computer should police what I do with the music (or movies) I buy, and it is in that sense that I see it as an invasion of privacy. Apple's scheme doesn't seem too bad, for now, but it is a small step down a road to making your devices police your actions and repealing the fair use rights of users. It's unethical and I won't have any part of it if I can help it.

"'you're saying that I can get proper use out of the product I payed for if I'm willing to illegally break into it, because I believe this would violate the DMCA.' Well, no, it wouldn't violate the law (there is no DMCA; it's Title 17), but don't sweat that."

You mean H.R.2281 -- Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the one that's referred to as the DMCA on copyright.gov? Seems fair to me to refer to it as such. Anyway, we ignoramuses out there generally believe that the following clause prevents anyone from circumventing the DRM features on a digital music file:

"`Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems `(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

Now I'll admit freely, IANAL, but it seems like a reasonable interpretation of the law. Here's some further info on DRM and the DMCA, and here is a story from a few months ago when Apple was talking about going after Real for just this sort of thing.

• "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section."
• "Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision."

So in a couple paragraphs, they've given the Department of Homeland Security (executive branch) the power to ignore laws (legislative branch) and not be held accountable in court (judicial branch) for it. Now, I may have been asleep in government class, but that sounds like you're disregarding the system of checks and balances which underpin our government.

Sure, they say it within the context of border security, but on the subject of rule of law and constitutional separation of powers, I can't see how anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution could vote for a bill including this provision in good conscience.

• (c) Waiver-
  • (1) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.
  • (2) NO JUDICIAL REVIEW- Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction--
  • (A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
  • (B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.

Very good observation. Atta et al. all had perfectly legal, good IDs. Mohammed Atta's license read "Mohammed Atta" along with his true home address, DOB, etc. My ID is valid. It has my name and my away-from-school home address, SSN, and all other relevant information on it. This does not stop me from carrying out a terrorist attack.

This then raises the question:
Are the congressmen who voted for this legislation simply ignorant or are they trying to make it look like they are doing something about terrorism when they are really just trampling all over states' rights? Perhaps there were some nice "riders" tacked on to the bill

I don't know why I did this either. But Google Calculator is very cool :)

The term "separation of church and state" comes from a letter from Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists. It is generally thought that Jefferson was a Deist (along with John Adams), and would generally fear a theocratic state. Although it is not in the Constitution directly, it is considered to be the desire of a variety of influential founding fathers (although .. that link seems to rely on some hearsay and may be a bit propagandist).

There is NO "preamble" to the Bill of Rights.

Actually, in a manner of speaking, there is. The OP's quote is taken from the original proposed amendments to the Constitution, said list being drawn up by Congress an approved on March 1, 1789. As a note, there was a preamble to said list, it did include the quote as cited by the OP, and there were twelve proposed amendments, of which one was never approved and one was approved in 1992. The First Amendment was originally "Article the Third".

The U.S. Government has been pursing an XML based National File Format (NFF) for some time. This has currently morphed to the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS 1.0), a subset of ANSi/NISO Z39.86 (DAISY 3).