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Because you're a 52 year old man who's been assaulted by a 25 year old schizophenic who specifically threatened to kill you before attacking? Basically, it takes minimal training and physical fitness to defend yourself with a gun compared to a knife, blunt object, etc. Guns allow the otherwise defenseless to protect themselves when there isn't time for any other option.

I wanted to get the source for the "dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe," so I tracked it down to Tom Wolfe's "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America," republished in Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976). In the process, I found a more extended discussion that struck me as worth repeating. Here's the relevant excerpt, from pp. 115-17 of the hardcover edition; it reports on a panel discussion at Princeton in 1965, in which the participants included Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist magazine, Günter Grass, and Wolfe:

The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. . . . This was the mid-1960's. . . . [T]he folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy's body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester's book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights. . . .

Support [for Wolfe's view that fascism wasn't coming to America] came from a quarter I hadn't counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.

"For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."

Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals -- you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"

He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

I credit you that you didn't decend into the fever swamps.

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life." linky [cnn.com]

I take that as meaning Bin Laden was confident in his ultimate victory, which is to either turn the US into a Muslim nation governed by Islamic Sharia law, or to destroy it. It is spelled out in Bin Laden's Letter to America:

Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

Convert to Islam.

2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression,

"Do many institutions dedicated to higher learning engage in censorship?" and the answer is "No."

  Where

  have you

  been
  hiding?

There have been a series of posts over at The Volokh Conspiracy (a legal blog) from lawyers generally sympathetic to the view that the program in question was not legally authorized; they are not complimentary about the actual content and structure of the judge's opinion. Since this is a district court ruling of a single judge, it has a ways to go through the appeals process - first, to a 3-judge panel, then to the entire 6th circuit, and then to the Supremes. To use an american football analogy: we're at the end of the first quarter, and the anti-wiretapping folks are ahead by a field goal, because they weren't trying hard enough to score any touchdowns.

Eugene Volokh has a number of posts over on his group blog on this ruling:

http://www.volokh.com/

And yes, he IS a laywer.

Professor Eugene Volokh (who is more a symbiotic lawyer) has a reasonable translation at the Volokh Conspiracy that is lay comprehensible.

Merely shouting FISA doesn't cut it. In fact the case law as examined by knowledgable people and presented over at volokh.com shows that FISA could very easily run afoul of the Executive branch's enumerated powers especially with regards to war time and defense. (Note that the Clinton admin used the same reasoning to justify warrantly PHYSICAL searches performed INSIDE the US.)

Here's two rather detailed analyses from the site that come down somewhere in the middle with a big caveat that we lack sufficient details to draw conclusions one way or another (THAT being the significant point when someone from either side claims this is completely legal or obviously illegal):
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_18-2005 _12_24.shtml#1135029722
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_18-2005 _12_24.shtml#1135189430

Merely shouting FISA doesn't cut it. In fact the case law as examined by knowledgable people and presented over at volokh.com shows that FISA could very easily run afoul of the Executive branch's enumerated powers especially with regards to war time and defense. (Note that the Clinton admin used the same reasoning to justify warrantly PHYSICAL searches performed INSIDE the US.)

Here's two rather detailed analyses from the site that come down somewhere in the middle with a big caveat that we lack sufficient details to draw conclusions one way or another (THAT being the significant point when someone from either side claims this is completely legal or obviously illegal):
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_18-2005 _12_24.shtml#1135029722
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_18-2005 _12_24.shtml#1135189430

GET A CLUE about what many Libertarians believe regarding corporate rights before pulling your uninformed opinions out of thin air.

- jonathan.

The NAS domestic surveillance program violates the FISA act which was specifically enacted in 1978 to clear up some of the questions left unresolved by the Supreme Court. It allows warrantless surveillance of conversations between "foreign powers" (and their agents) only if "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party. In cases where a call was placed or initiated from a US citizen ONLY the part of the conversation from the foreign entity could be taped. Unilaterally deciding to extend the spying to a US citizen is an authorization of domestic spying and IS ILEGAL.

"1. We are at war. congress' AUMF gave the Pres all the authority he needs to prevent another attack."

False. To be at war the Congress must make a formal declaration. The Authorization to Use Military Force is NOT a declaration of war. We are NOT at war. But even if we were the president's inherent power as commander-in-chief during wartime DOES NOT override the provisions of FISA.

The suggestion that Congress has no power to interfere in any way with the president's Article II commander-in-chief power is ludicrous. There's no case law to back this up and no reason to believe this except for the president's own apparent belief in his unlimited authority during wartime. (Which this IS NOT.)

I suggest you read: www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL30465.pdf
and http://volokh.com/posts/1135029722.shtml
and http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/12/which-is-it-mr- president.html
and http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/12/definition-of-a udacity.html

You may now consider YOURSELF informed...

For a real lawyer's opinion on this matter, go here.

The issues of law, however, are not so tenuous as you seem to think.

Erm, real lawyers and law professors disagree with you and Al Gore on that point. Try here and here, for example. I'm not saying either post is right on the money, but these are real fancy-pants lawyers throwing around real F. Ctr. Op. fnord. Cit. (3) legal citations. And when the professionals disagree so heatedly among themselves I'd say the legal issues are indeed unsettled, at least until such time as the Supreme Court weighs in on the issue.

This is hardly surprising: the exact point where the Executive Branch's Article II war-fighting powers trump the Legislature's power to make law has been argued for centuries. Did Lincoln have the authority to free the slaves by decree in the absence of any law whatsoever giving him that power? Could Truman seize steel mills hit by a strike during the Korean War to prevent disastrous steel shortages? Scholars still debate. Let us not even get into the delicate question of the famous War Powers Act, which every President, Democrat or Republican, has claimed to be unconstitutional since the day it passed.

In terms of spying on Americans, however, there must be a warrant. Article 4 of the constitution asserts this.

Nooo, the Fourth Amendment (not Article IV) just says there can be no "unreasonable" searches. That may or may not mean a warrant -- the definition of "unreasonable" is up to the Courts, ultimately the Supreme Court. For example, if a policeman sees you stuffing something that looks like a body in a trash bag or 50 pounds of marijuana into your woodshed, does he need a warrant to order you to unlock the woodshed and let him search it? Nope. In a case like that, the Courts have held that the value to justice of allowing the policeman to exercise his reasonable judgment on the spot, and collect evidence that you might otherwise hide, if given time, outweighs any danger to your civil liberties.

Furthermore, the Courts have generally held that the Executive Branch (that's the President, or his designees, like the NSA) has broad authority to search the effects, persons, and, yes, communications of US citizens when they enter or exit the country. You'll have noticed, I hope, that the Customs and Immigration people don't need a warrant or your permission to search your bags, papers, person or car when you enter or exit the country. They can even stop you within the US to search your bags or car for, say, illegal aliens or drugs, if you're near enough to the border. And the postal service can open up packages sent by you to international destinations, or from international destinations to you, to inspect them. They don't need your permission, a warrant or even a specific reason to do so. (The generic reason of making sure the Customs and Immigration laws are being followed is considered good enough.)

We can think of border control and inspection as something like a sobriety checkpoint. As long as the "borderline" over which, if you step, you get inspected, is clear, and as long as there is some reasonable law-enforcement goal served by the inspection, and as long as the inspection does not overly intrude in your daily life, then the procedure has been held to be Constitutional, even in the absence of probable cause or a warrant.

Modern communication, with the binging of messages back and forth across international borders, has made a bit of a mess of our expectations. Fifty years ago, the government read every international cable or telegram as a matter of course. But people expected that. It was an unusual thing to communicate internationally. Nowadays, and especially with the Internet, we tend to think of international communications as pretty much the same as intranational communications. But they're not. We expect the same privacy and legal rights as when we talk to our neighbors. But we shouldn'

You mean like this guy?

Can't honestly say I know a whole lot about the Patriot Act, but Glenn Reynolds discussed it in his msnbc blog today. He quotes another blog which basically states that only about 1% of the Patriot Act is expiring due to the non-reauthorization. And that futher, much of the reauthorization would have put limits on the egregous non-expiring stuff. So, this is a mixed bag. Not sure if it's a victory or not. It's a symbolic victory, but perhaps not substantial...

FTFA: The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.

Additionally as a result of the NSA program, buried down in the 11th paragraph, we learn that the terrorist plot involving convicted al Qaeda operative Iyman Faris was uncovered--possibly saving untold lives, not to mention New York bridges and possibly Washington, D.C. trains.

As to the legallity, its murky. Though, Mark Levin offers this: The Foreign Intelligence Security Act permits the government to monitor foreign communications, even if they are with U.S. citizens -- 50 USC 1801, et seq. A FISA warrant is only needed if the subject communications are wholly contained in the United States and involve a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

Try reading this, or even better the Actual Study if you want to have the opinions the mass media prefer to feed you shattered. In fact for a great education just click on the study link and read all of the articles that referred to it, all linked on that same page.

I don't know about you, but counting gambling issues or death in the family as a "medical problem" does not seem to be playing straight. That was a study that already had an obective in mind before the writing began.

I know you will be reluctant to believe the real truth, but at least I can help countless others pull the wool away.

Actually yelling Fire! is the classic counter-example.
It is free speech to yell Fire!
The expression comes from a 1919 case, schenk v united states http://laws.findlaw.com/us/249/47.html
in which some guys were put in jail for passing out leaflets opposing the war and suggesting that the draft was involuntary servitude and thus unconstitutional under the 13th Amendment.
The case is taught not because it was right, but because it was wrong, to show how the modern view of the first amendment has evolved. It was brave wobblies (www.iwww.org) who took up the fight for free speech in the 1910s on the west coast, and gradually judges came to agree.

There are a number of reasons one might want to yell Fire in a crowded theater. It might be a line in a play, or the theater might be on fire.

Otherwise, I largely agree with parent poster.

For people interested in free speech and the FEC and blogging, here are a few resources:
http://www.electionlawblog.org/
http://redstate.org/
http://instapundit/
http://volokh.com/
http://electionline.org/
http://votelaw.org/
http://jamesmadisoncenter.org./
The supreme court currently has two cases about campaign finance. In one of them, wisconsin right to life v FEC, there are some signals the court will start to grant a series of narrow exceptions to McCain-Feingold as upheld in McConnell.
Assuming Alito gets confirmed by then, he might be a 5th vote for free speech, so this will be a case worth watching, as a signal for where things might be headed.
Meanwhile there's a lot of work to do in congress to pass the internet-exception-to-McCain bill,
we need to keep watching the FEC as it drafts new rules on blogging regulation-or-not, and in state courts under state constitutions to protect internet speech from state election authorities which continue to try to impose censorship.
Nobody reads my election law blog, http://ballots.blogspot.com./
Meanwhile, Fire!

To begin with, you're shifting your claims here. You started out with the claim that all the principal did was prohibit the students from posting information about the school. I quote:

Except if the kid posts information relating to school on his blog (his class schedule, what time he has lunch, etc.), it remains school business and thus the school has the right to regulate it. Thats what is being prohibited by this rule (for those of who just read the title or /. summary and not the actual FA).

Secondly, since your hypothesis is now that the principal banned the students from posting personal information but that is not what the handbook rule deals with, your account of the mention of the handbook falls apart. On the other hand, as far as I can see my analysis of why the article mentioned the handbook stands. Your argument that:

As far as your analysis of the mentioning of the handbook goes, that would be possible if not for the word "but" in there.

Turning now to the question of whether the principal prohibited the students from blogging or merely from putting up personal profiles, he certainly seems to have intended to include blogs since since it says "similar sites with personal profiles AND blogs". If he only intended to tell the students not to put up personal profiles of the sort that contain photos and contact information (as opposed to the sort that say "I'm a highschool student in New Jersey interested in math and baseball"..) there would be no reason to mention blogs.

Nor is it true that the second mention of the word blog is not in the context of the ban. Let's look at it again:

The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

Given the wording, it is possible that he didn't intend to include impersonal blogs, e.g. that he would not have a problem with a student who was invited to join the Volokh Conspiracy, but what the article describes clearly goes well beyond telling the students not to post information about the school and it unequivocally does include blogs.

Re:Overhyped as always (Score:5, Insightful)
by justanyone (308934) on Saturday August 20, @12:52PM (#13362326)

All 4 basic forces: electromagnatism, gravity, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear (not Nukular; bite me, George)

Mixing politics with science; always a good idea (especially if you really really hate George Bush enough, which makes anything acceptable).

But seriously, if "nukular" was an acceptable pronounciation by Jimmy Carter -- who was one of the first nuclear engineers in the Navy (Academy class of 1946) -- and tens of millions of other Americans -- including Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton -- why single out George Bush?

See

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5468441

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473616

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473709

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473746

[Eugene Volokh, 9:53 AM] September 19, 2002

WHAT'S WRONG WITH "NUCULAR"? Today's Slate Explainer reminded me of this question, which I've thought about a bit in the past.

One common answer is that saying "nucular" is wrong because "nuclear" is spelled, well, "nuclear," and not "nucular." But the standard rebuttal (mentioned in the Slate piece) is: How do you pronounce "iron"? I actually remember pronouncing it "iron" as a kid (as in "irony" without the "y"), and being told that this is not the usual pronunciation -- "iern" is probably the best way of representing how you're really supposed to pronounce it. If this phenomenon (called "metathesis") is OK in "iern," why isn't it OK in "nucular"?

But this is just the tip of the objection -- the broader objection is that this is English we're talking about here. English, the language of "women," of "colonel," of "laughter" and "slaughter," of "get" and "gem." As reader Brian Dulisse points out, "forte" can be pronounced "fortay," "fort," or "fortee." "This pronunciation is wrong because it doesn't match the spelling" isn't much of an argument in English.

It seems to me that the only sensible answer to "What is wrong with 'nucular'?" is "This is not the standard way that high-class people say it," coupled with "This term is a shibboleth that high-class people, and those influenced by them, use to sort those they'll call 'high-class' from those they'll call 'low-class.'" That's all the "wrong" there is here. Yes, I know this sounds like a leftist cultural critic position; but sometimes, as here, the leftist cultural critics are right. One day, "nucular" might be treated the same as "ah" for "I" or "crick" for "creek" -- a regional accent that's not wrong, but just different. It might even become the "correct" pronunciation, with "nuclear" sounding archaic or affected. It won't flow from a change to logic or morality, only a change of attitude by enough people in the influential classes, or by a change of who counts as the influential class.

So what of it? Well, if you're teaching a child (or an adult) to speak, of course you should teach him to say "nuclear," simply as an instrumental matter -- sounding high-class is usually (not always, but usually) more profitable, especially where the shibboleths are concerned. If you're making a purely esthetic judgment, well of course you're free to say "'Nucular' sounds ugly to me," just like you can say "Picasso looks ugly to me" or "Broccoli tastes bad to me." And if you're tr

Re:Overhyped as always (Score:5, Insightful)
by justanyone (308934) on Saturday August 20, @12:52PM (#13362326)

All 4 basic forces: electromagnatism, gravity, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear (not Nukular; bite me, George)

Mixing politics with science; always a good idea (especially if you really really hate George Bush enough, which makes anything acceptable).

But seriously, if "nukular" was an acceptable pronounciation by Jimmy Carter -- who was one of the first nuclear engineers in the Navy (Academy class of 1946) -- and tens of millions of other Americans -- including Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton -- why single out George Bush?

See

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5468441

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473616

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473709

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473746

[Eugene Volokh, 9:53 AM] September 19, 2002

WHAT'S WRONG WITH "NUCULAR"? Today's Slate Explainer reminded me of this question, which I've thought about a bit in the past.

One common answer is that saying "nucular" is wrong because "nuclear" is spelled, well, "nuclear," and not "nucular." But the standard rebuttal (mentioned in the Slate piece) is: How do you pronounce "iron"? I actually remember pronouncing it "iron" as a kid (as in "irony" without the "y"), and being told that this is not the usual pronunciation -- "iern" is probably the best way of representing how you're really supposed to pronounce it. If this phenomenon (called "metathesis") is OK in "iern," why isn't it OK in "nucular"?

But this is just the tip of the objection -- the broader objection is that this is English we're talking about here. English, the language of "women," of "colonel," of "laughter" and "slaughter," of "get" and "gem." As reader Brian Dulisse points out, "forte" can be pronounced "fortay," "fort," or "fortee." "This pronunciation is wrong because it doesn't match the spelling" isn't much of an argument in English.

It seems to me that the only sensible answer to "What is wrong with 'nucular'?" is "This is not the standard way that high-class people say it," coupled with "This term is a shibboleth that high-class people, and those influenced by them, use to sort those they'll call 'high-class' from those they'll call 'low-class.'" That's all the "wrong" there is here. Yes, I know this sounds like a leftist cultural critic position; but sometimes, as here, the leftist cultural critics are right. One day, "nucular" might be treated the same as "ah" for "I" or "crick" for "creek" -- a regional accent that's not wrong, but just different. It might even become the "correct" pronunciation, with "nuclear" sounding archaic or affected. It won't flow from a change to logic or morality, only a change of attitude by enough people in the influential classes, or by a change of who counts as the influential class.

So what of it? Well, if you're teaching a child (or an adult) to speak, of course you should teach him to say "nuclear," simply as an instrumental matter -- sounding high-class is usually (not always, but usually) more profitable, especially where the shibboleths are concerned. If you're making a purely esthetic judgment, well of course you're free to say "'Nucular' sounds ugly to me," just like you can say "Picasso looks ugly to me" or "Broccoli tastes bad to me." And if you're tr

Re:Overhyped as always (Score:5, Insightful)
by justanyone (308934) on Saturday August 20, @12:52PM (#13362326)

All 4 basic forces: electromagnatism, gravity, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear (not Nukular; bite me, George)

Mixing politics with science; always a good idea (especially if you really really hate George Bush enough, which makes anything acceptable).

But seriously, if "nukular" was an acceptable pronounciation by Jimmy Carter -- who was one of the first nuclear engineers in the Navy (Academy class of 1946) -- and tens of millions of other Americans -- including Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton -- why single out George Bush?

See

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5468441

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473616

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473709

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473746

[Eugene Volokh, 9:53 AM] September 19, 2002

WHAT'S WRONG WITH "NUCULAR"? Today's Slate Explainer reminded me of this question, which I've thought about a bit in the past.

One common answer is that saying "nucular" is wrong because "nuclear" is spelled, well, "nuclear," and not "nucular." But the standard rebuttal (mentioned in the Slate piece) is: How do you pronounce "iron"? I actually remember pronouncing it "iron" as a kid (as in "irony" without the "y"), and being told that this is not the usual pronunciation -- "iern" is probably the best way of representing how you're really supposed to pronounce it. If this phenomenon (called "metathesis") is OK in "iern," why isn't it OK in "nucular"?

But this is just the tip of the objection -- the broader objection is that this is English we're talking about here. English, the language of "women," of "colonel," of "laughter" and "slaughter," of "get" and "gem." As reader Brian Dulisse points out, "forte" can be pronounced "fortay," "fort," or "fortee." "This pronunciation is wrong because it doesn't match the spelling" isn't much of an argument in English.

It seems to me that the only sensible answer to "What is wrong with 'nucular'?" is "This is not the standard way that high-class people say it," coupled with "This term is a shibboleth that high-class people, and those influenced by them, use to sort those they'll call 'high-class' from those they'll call 'low-class.'" That's all the "wrong" there is here. Yes, I know this sounds like a leftist cultural critic position; but sometimes, as here, the leftist cultural critics are right. One day, "nucular" might be treated the same as "ah" for "I" or "crick" for "creek" -- a regional accent that's not wrong, but just different. It might even become the "correct" pronunciation, with "nuclear" sounding archaic or affected. It won't flow from a change to logic or morality, only a change of attitude by enough people in the influential classes, or by a change of who counts as the influential class.

So what of it? Well, if you're teaching a child (or an adult) to speak, of course you should teach him to say "nuclear," simply as an instrumental matter -- sounding high-class is usually (not always, but usually) more profitable, especially where the shibboleths are concerned. If you're making a purely esthetic judgment, well of course you're free to say "'Nucular' sounds ugly to me," just like you can say "Picasso looks ugly to me" or "Broccoli tastes bad to me." And if you're tr

Re:Overhyped as always (Score:5, Insightful)
by justanyone (308934) on Saturday August 20, @12:52PM (#13362326)

All 4 basic forces: electromagnatism, gravity, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear (not Nukular; bite me, George)

Mixing politics with science; always a good idea (especially if you really really hate George Bush enough, which makes anything acceptable).

But seriously, if "nukular" was an acceptable pronounciation by Jimmy Carter -- who was one of the first nuclear engineers in the Navy (Academy class of 1946) -- and tens of millions of other Americans -- including Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton -- why single out George Bush?

See

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5468441

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473616

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473709

http://volokh.com/2002_09_15_volokh_archive.html#8 5473746

[Eugene Volokh, 9:53 AM] September 19, 2002

WHAT'S WRONG WITH "NUCULAR"? Today's Slate Explainer reminded me of this question, which I've thought about a bit in the past.

One common answer is that saying "nucular" is wrong because "nuclear" is spelled, well, "nuclear," and not "nucular." But the standard rebuttal (mentioned in the Slate piece) is: How do you pronounce "iron"? I actually remember pronouncing it "iron" as a kid (as in "irony" without the "y"), and being told that this is not the usual pronunciation -- "iern" is probably the best way of representing how you're really supposed to pronounce it. If this phenomenon (called "metathesis") is OK in "iern," why isn't it OK in "nucular"?

But this is just the tip of the objection -- the broader objection is that this is English we're talking about here. English, the language of "women," of "colonel," of "laughter" and "slaughter," of "get" and "gem." As reader Brian Dulisse points out, "forte" can be pronounced "fortay," "fort," or "fortee." "This pronunciation is wrong because it doesn't match the spelling" isn't much of an argument in English.

It seems to me that the only sensible answer to "What is wrong with 'nucular'?" is "This is not the standard way that high-class people say it," coupled with "This term is a shibboleth that high-class people, and those influenced by them, use to sort those they'll call 'high-class' from those they'll call 'low-class.'" That's all the "wrong" there is here. Yes, I know this sounds like a leftist cultural critic position; but sometimes, as here, the leftist cultural critics are right. One day, "nucular" might be treated the same as "ah" for "I" or "crick" for "creek" -- a regional accent that's not wrong, but just different. It might even become the "correct" pronunciation, with "nuclear" sounding archaic or affected. It won't flow from a change to logic or morality, only a change of attitude by enough people in the influential classes, or by a change of who counts as the influential class.

So what of it? Well, if you're teaching a child (or an adult) to speak, of course you should teach him to say "nuclear," simply as an instrumental matter -- sounding high-class is usually (not always, but usually) more profitable, especially where the shibboleths are concerned. If you're making a purely esthetic judgment, well of course you're free to say "'Nucular' sounds ugly to me," just like you can say "Picasso looks ugly to me" or "Broccoli tastes bad to me." And if you're tr

Hey, Cleveland did this years ago! let's give credit where credit is due - the "mistake on the lake"!

No, really, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. That's a miracle if i've ever heard one. some info. Cleveland's main river caught on fire in 1963 due to excessive waste dumping and allegedly a lit cigar being thrown onto the surface of the river.

I can hope we get another David Souter.

How can you hope for another David Souter after his recent ruling on eminent domain??? People don't seem to understand that both the Democrats and Republicans are now statist parties. Just b/c the Democrats oppose the Republicans doesn't mean they're suddenly libertarian good guys.

And to set the record straight, it was the conservative, Republican-appointed judges who opposed this decision - three of Reagan's four judges (Rehnquist, Scalia, Connor, but not Kennedy) and one of Bush Sr's two judges (Thomas, but not Souter) opposed the ruling[pdf]. Furthermore, it is Congressional Republicans introducing legislation to mitigate its damage, while Congressional Democrats state both their opposition to that legislation and support of the Kelo decision. Of course, there are plenty of examples of people on both sides of political spectrum opposing this, even socialists, so it's much more complex than the typical dumbed-down Democrat-vs-Republican football match. So enough of the uninformed, knee-jerk reactions please, and we'll take two more Rehnquists President Bush, thank you very much.

Well, that sounds sensible, except that inconveniently, our heritage comes mainly from a particular time and place that happened to believe in particular religions.

Take, for example, this case. The Los Angeles county seal, containing various symbolic and historic pictographs, displayed, among other things, a cross to represent the historic fact of the importance of catholic missions in the county's history. The ACLU threatened to file suit to have the small cross declared unconstitutional and erased from the county seal.

This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that the ACLU is taking its position too far, to the point that it demands that governement understanding of history be sanitized in the name of protecting people from seeing a tiny cross on a historic county seal.

In response to the threat of litigation, the county erased the cross.

I dunno. What would have happened if you had done that in the 1980s, when the courts first interpreted existing stautes to allow sneak-and-peek searches? Searches the Patriot Act merely codified and did not expand

Time to go read up on the subject, and not from a box of cheerios.

That provision has A) been struck down and B) was simply a slight modification of existing authority from the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which no one complained about at the time. See here.

Your other complaints are similarly misinformed. I'm sorry, but I have to suggest that you read the actual law.

[Orin Kerr, February 27, 2005 at 1:56pm]

ACLU Approves Of Overwhelming Majority of Patriot Act: One of the odd things about debates over the Patriot Act is that even its harshest informed critics actually only oppose a very small part of the Act; the overwhelming majority of the statute is uncontroversial among the fairly small number of people who understand what's in it. As best I can tell, this has been a well-kept secret for the last 3+ years mostly for tactical reasons: If you want to get the public very worried about a topic to help advance your cause in future legislative debates, you can't very well admit that your objections are actually quite limited.

In light of that, it's good to see that ACLU President Nadine Strossen apparently has admitted that the ACLU approves of more that 90% of the Patriot Act. As live-blogged at Ex Parte, from a recent address by Nadine Strossen at the annual Federalist Society student symposium: "[ACLU President Nadine Strossen] notes that the ACLU only has a few objections [to the Patriot Act, covering] about 12 of the 160 elements of the Patriot Act." While it's too early to know whether this live-blogged report is exactly accurate, note that the statement echoes the view of ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romer in early 2004 that "much of the Patriot Act is neutral legislation for civil liberties," and that only "about a dozen provisions" are objectionable to him. If anyone has a transcript of Strossen's remarks or a video, please send it on to okerr [at] law.gwu.edu.

Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

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.

The key bit is that there are exceptions. And those exceptions gain renown. Recently there was some commentary by Orin Kerry on this subject. In particular, he was discussing how blogs run by law professors have displaced scholarly journals as the point of first analysis on new court decisions.

Now who is Oran Kerr? He's an Associate Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. What is he blogging about? Law. Is his well informed? yes. Does he offer opinions and analysis? yes.

The real trouble is that there are so many blogs written by the run-of-the-mill person who has little claim to experience in the topic.

Who reads those blogs though? Probably not many people--until some reporter does a google run and then comments that such and such blogger had such and such opinion.

Maybe people just need to be more picky about who and what they believe.

While it's near-impossible for an encyclopedia to be completely objective, i really do believe that the people editing Encarta are still far more objective than many of those "editing" Wikipedia -- ie less likely to use it to express their own political views, etc. For more information on Wikipedia bias, see here, here, or here. The list goes on, but i'm not going to list any more links -- that's what Google (or MSN search, for that matter) is for.

As one law professor points out (only half-seriously), the MPAA may need to worry about contributory copyright infringement.

UPDATE 1/23/05, 2:44pm, by Ian: Professor Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy argues that this case is inconsistent with existing doctrine, and will likely be overturned on appeal.

"Professor Orin Kerr at the George Washington University Law School, a member of the Volokh Conspiracy

I know of exactly ZERO people who get their news from blogs.

You should get out more :-)

People rarely get their world-event type of news from blogs, true. But for news about latest gadgets, weird stuff, or a niche area blogs can't be beat.

The following is from Volokh:

Quebec's Human Rights Commission has ordered a man to pay a $1,000 fine because he referred to another man as a "fifi," the French equivalent of "fag." Worse yet, the comment wasn't made to the complainant (which would at least raise red flags about an implicit threat or true harassment of the individual), but to his "traveling companion." According to the CBC, the "Rights Commission ruled that the term was an inappropriate way of referring to homosexuals and adds to the disgrace and lack of respect of human dignity people are entitled to."

Now, it's obviously not nice to call someone a "fifi." But when the State can punish individuals for "inappropriate" comments they make in private, noncommercial contexts, the slippery slope towards authoritarianism is steep indeed. This, of course, is not the first example of the growing Canadian intolerance of freedom of speech.

Thanks to Professor Moin Yahya for the tip.

Any Canadians offended by most post should read this before emailing.

End of post from Volokh

So as long as your speech is politically correct, you are fine. Otherwise, the State will fine you big bucks for speaking out.

The following is from Volokh:

Quebec's Human Rights Commission has ordered a man to pay a $1,000 fine because he referred to another man as a "fifi," the French equivalent of "fag." Worse yet, the comment wasn't made to the complainant (which would at least raise red flags about an implicit threat or true harassment of the individual), but to his "traveling companion." According to the CBC, the "Rights Commission ruled that the term was an inappropriate way of referring to homosexuals and adds to the disgrace and lack of respect of human dignity people are entitled to."

Now, it's obviously not nice to call someone a "fifi." But when the State can punish individuals for "inappropriate" comments they make in private, noncommercial contexts, the slippery slope towards authoritarianism is steep indeed. This, of course, is not the first example of the growing Canadian intolerance of freedom of speech.

Thanks to Professor Moin Yahya for the tip.

Any Canadians offended by most post should read this before emailing.

End of post from Volokh

So as long as your speech is politically correct, you are fine. Otherwise, the State will fine you big bucks for speaking out.

The following is from Volokh:

Quebec's Human Rights Commission has ordered a man to pay a $1,000 fine because he referred to another man as a "fifi," the French equivalent of "fag." Worse yet, the comment wasn't made to the complainant (which would at least raise red flags about an implicit threat or true harassment of the individual), but to his "traveling companion." According to the CBC, the "Rights Commission ruled that the term was an inappropriate way of referring to homosexuals and adds to the disgrace and lack of respect of human dignity people are entitled to."

Now, it's obviously not nice to call someone a "fifi." But when the State can punish individuals for "inappropriate" comments they make in private, noncommercial contexts, the slippery slope towards authoritarianism is steep indeed. This, of course, is not the first example of the growing Canadian intolerance of freedom of speech.

Thanks to Professor Moin Yahya for the tip.

Any Canadians offended by most post should read this before emailing.

End of post from Volokh

So as long as your speech is politically correct, you are fine. Otherwise, the State will fine you big bucks for speaking out.

While it's surely a good thing that people will soon have the option of receiving foreign (i.e. States) programming, we need to look at the big picture.

What a lot of people don't realize is the gradual demise of free speach in Canada.

Want to be fined for calling someone a queer? Maybe you deserve a bloody lip, but does 1000$ from your pocket sound better? An excellent summary of what's going on can be found on the Volokh Conspiracy (I stumbled upon it by chance): http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_07.shtm l#1097586698

Moreover, the recent controversy surrounding the refusal of the federal communication commission (CRTC) to renew the licence of a Québec-based private radio station on the grounds that its content was inacceptable. This link, in French, provides a good résumé: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/04/040915-15.htm (Other articles include a history of the Canadian government censorship of private broadcasters.) If the libertarian blog "Le Québécois Libre" isn't to your taste, you can surely find the story on the CBC's or Radio Canada's web site.

Canada is a great place. Québec even better. :-D But free speech is rapidly becoming more and more restricted. I believe that despite what's going on in the States, they have more liberties in this regard and quite frankly, I'm jealous!

President Bush's position is actually consistent with the FMA (whether or not either is right). President Bush said that "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so" -- that, in the Times' words, "the matter should be left up to the states."

The Federal Marriage Amendment would not block a state from recognizing civil unions. It provides (I quote the Mar. 22, 2004 version, S.J. Res. 30) that "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."

Actually, it is a little distressing that Canada is ranked higher than America when there are things like this going on:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_10_07.shtm l#1097586698

You may not agree with what the man says, but when the Canadaian government starts fining people for essentially not being "nice," particularly in the private context of when those remarks were made, those are some serious limits on freedom of speech. And when even private, noncommercial speech is limited such as in this context, you can bet that you would find such speech limited in the press as well.

UDPATE: A few readers write in to ask, "If the entry for the Patriot Act is so bad, why don't you just correct it?" The main reason is that I suspect that as soon as I correct it, someone else will come along and "correct it back."

If I understand accurately how Wikipedia works -- a big "if," I should point out-- my views of what is in the Patriot Act are no more and no less valued by Wikipedia than the views of any other Internet user. Given the widespread misperceptions about what is in the Patriot Act, some one else is likely to come across my corrected entry and think, "What idiot wrote this? This is totally wrong!" They will then erase my entry and re-enter all the mistakes that I corrected. The "genius" of Wikipedia is that no one is there to resolve the disagreement: the loudest voice eventually wins. Unless I am willing to monitor Wikipedia's Patriot Act entry on a regular basis, there isn't much that can be done to correct the errors over the long term.

1. Wikipedia is not trustworthy.
2. The microturbines the authors appear to be talking about are in the neighborhood of 30 kilowatts and bigger, not 15 watts. A non-micro turbine would have an output of megawatts; some are capable of hundreds of megawatts.

1. Wikipedia is not trustworthy.
2. The microturbines the authors appear to be talking about are in the neighborhood of 30 kilowatts and bigger, not 15 watts. A non-micro turbine would have an output of megawatts; some are capable of hundreds of megawatts.

http://volokh.com/posts/1097514987.shtml/ has some interesting insights and questions on this.

There is some question as to whether or not it was actually the PATRIOT act that was partially declared unconstitutional. The ACLU says it was, many (the Justice department and several other independent attorneys) say it was another law that was struck down.

To clarify, this ruling was NOT about any part of the Patriot Act being shotdown. The court's ruling wasn't actaully read by, apparently, ANY journalists that reported on this story. The ACLU issued a press release that seems to have been the entire basis for any article about said ruling.

The ruling actually affects the 1986 law known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Further info: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_09_28.shtm l#1096522582

-VolVE

According to Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy, the provisions being struck down were part of the Reagan Era "Electronic Communications Privacy Act". Mr. Kerr writes that "To be fair, the Patriot Act did amend some language in this section; just not in a relevant way. As best I can tell, the court's decision does not rely on or even address anything in the Patriot Act."

According to Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy, the provisions being struck down were part of the Reagan Era "Electronic Communications Privacy Act". Mr. Kerr writes that "To be fair, the Patriot Act did amend some language in this section; just not in a relevant way. As best I can tell, the court's decision does not rely on or even address anything in the Patriot Act."

Re:Civil Liberties vs. Constitutional Rights (Score:2)

the ACLU fights for the freedom of speech. Period.

No less an authority than G. Robert Blakely, the Notre Dame law professor who wrote RICO, warns that applying it to protesters will have a chilling effect on speech. "Everybody who loves the First Amendment has got to sleep uneasily tonight," he said after the verdict.

And I think it's also likely to lose some of its credibility in future cases where it tries to defend potentially harmful speech. True, they might reasonably argue that there's a difference between the speech they're trying to restrict here and the speech they try to protect elsewhere. But many in the public might not buy those arguments, and might see the ACLU as being unprincipled, and as simply trying to restrict speech that hurt its favored causes while protecting speech that helps its favored causes. And the ACLU's reputation for principled defense of free speech, and the grudging admiration that this has at times earned the ACLU even from some of its opponents, is one of its most valuable assets.