Domain: wikiquote.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to wikiquote.org.
Comments · 1,332
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Re:The only thing without frontiers isTo quote one of your more-famous presidents: "Those who give up essential liberty to gain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". I can't think of a more-appropriate quote...
Actually, that was supposedly Benjamin Franklin in An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759). Arguably one of the ablest statesmen of the early Republic, he was never President, and in fact denied he had written those words (he claimed to be only the editor of and minor contributor to the book). The actual book and the quotation in question may have been written by one Richard Jackson, Colonial Agent for Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
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Re:Why Bother?
...and we all know how fair and unexploitative recording contracts have proven to be over the history of their existence.
I think Ian MacKaye said it best: "When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance." -
Re:Uh Oh!
Can we predict the ending? http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing
Congratulation!!
A.D. 2006
All mp3 player of McDonalds were recall.
It seems to be peaceful.
But it is incorrect.
McDonalds is still serve meal.
Customer must fight against McDonalds again.
And down with them completely!
Good Luck!
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Re:Go figure - too clever
Yeah, that saying is just a little bit older than Woody Allen, and while that particular version may be attributable to him, I highly doubt he was the first to add a third line.
I've got nothing against being snide, just make sure you know what you're talking about first. -
Re:Huh..
Half a million installs, and 450k of them crashed.
"450k ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates
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Re:freedom ringerIt is unknown whether Ben Franklin actually said (the correct form): "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." As wikiquote notes:
This statement was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759) which was attributed to Franklin in the edition of 1812, but in a letter of September 27, 1760 to David Hume, he states that he published this book and denies that he wrote it, other than a few remarks that were credited to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which he served. The phrase itself was first used in a letter from that Assembly dated November 11, 1755 to the Governor of Pennsylvania. An article on the origins of this statement here includes a scan that indicates the original typography of the 1759 document, which uses an archaic form of "s": "Thofe who would give up Essential Liberty to purchafe a little Temporary Safety, deferve neither Liberty nor Safety." Researchers now believe that a fellow diplomat by the name of Richard Jackson is the primary author of the book. With the information thus far available the issue of authorship of the statement is not yet definitely resolved, but the evidence indicates it was very likely Franklin, who in the Poor Richard's Almanack of 1738 is known to have written a similar proverb: "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
Note: I substituted 'f' for unicode #383 because it won't render on Slashdot.
I support the correct form of the statement, but I believe it is a little disingenuous to quote the misattributed version because it has a slightly different meaning. -
Re:Source of the quote
Yes, sir! It is from Deus Ex. It's from the first time you're in the UNATCO base on Liberty Island. In the break room, there's a little kiosk next to the vending machines and the ATM that has several articles (one of which I posted). Anna Navarre is an agent at UNATCO and quite ruthless at that.
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Re:FreeFox
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
It's a quote. From Matt Groening.
Firefox. Iceweasel. It's clever. -
Re:Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, RepriseI agree with this 100%, but we are not talking about the "chains and slavery" here. We are talking about a computer that monitors phone calls made to known terrorist hot-spots overseas looking for key words. Hardly "chains and slavery". Before you claim a slippery slope, keep in mind that rights are not absolute and are limited already. To assume that tapping overseas phone calls today is equal to some sort of authoritarian government control is hyperbole.
Actually, you're misinformed. We're talking about a computer that monitors calls made to foreign countries. And then monitors every call that phone makes thereafter. And then monitors the phones at the other end the same way. I don't need to claim "slippery slope;" we're already halfway down and the traction is gone.
Saying I want to give the government a bit more control when it comes to national security does not mean that I want to live in China.
All we're asking is that if you feel that way that you not take the rest of us with you. "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
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Re:Liberalism
Actually that quote has been modified. The actual quote is "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Here is a list of quotes from Franklin.
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Re:What is a "rip-off"?
This may not be the original attribution, but it looks like Pablo Picasso coined the phrase, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal."
I enjoyed the pilot, and it's got a Season Pass on my Tivo... -
Re:this sort of thing always reminds me of a quote
Actually this quote is not by Benjamin Franklin.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin Wiki is your friend.
Also a scan of the original text can be seen http://www.futureofthebook.com/stories/storyReader $605
The actual quote by B.J. is ""Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."" -
Re:What's the point?
Of course bill doesn't mind being beat up over it, as it's an urban legend.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
" *
o Often attributed to Gates in 1981. Gates has repeatedly denied ever saying this:
I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
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Re:I've quoted this before and i'll do it again...
That's my favorite quote that Ben Franklin never said! See:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Still... keep on posting it! My sig actually IS a Franklin quote :-) -
Sauce for the gander, and Richelieu
"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre."
* Translation: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
Cardinal Richelieu.
If eavesdropping is so harmless, can the citizens wiretap government officials? Knowledge is power and the people in power know that. -
Re:You are not correctAntimatter does not have a negative mass.
The remaining six paragraphs (!) are not even wrong. You're not a physicist, are you?
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Re:Interesting 'idea'
- Fixing bugs is the most requested and profitable thing a large software company can do
- The entire Microsoft product development branch is involved in spin and marketing. The smart and effective developers and product managers at Microsoft are just a myth, because all they do is ignore bugs and think of lies to tell the public.
- Bill Gates actually said nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory, despite all the evidence that he didn't (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates)
- Graduating people with the skills of MS employees is a bad because even though these people are valuable to Microsoft and all the other companies that popped up in Seattle that constantly leech hightly-skilled Microsoft employees after they've been screened and given training by Microsoft, ..... I'm sorry, I'm still trying to figure out where you're going with this.
Other than the ability to set up as many strawmen as a farmer in june, you demonstrate that you don't grasp the difference between what a high school student needs to learn and what an MS employee needs to learn. And, actually, there is quite a difference just between what they need to learn, as well as how to teach them.
Oh, and don't just blindly believe everything BG says, or denies
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Narf
Pinky: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!
Classic -
Re:oblig
Crikey means gee whiz, wow! (Steve Irwin)
More quotes here:
Multi Search -
Re:that's only the half of it
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Re:Apology To Crime?
What amazes me the most is that there are idiots around the world that actually DEFEND such shitheads.
"Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." -
Re:What about appropriate depression ?
Speaking Of Trek - How about this quote.
From Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
James T. Kirk: Damn it Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. [to Sybok] I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!
I am on an anti-depressant (fairly low dose) and most likely will be for the rest of my life. And there are a few (very few) pains I wouldn't mind loosing. However; I couldn't agree more with Captain Kirk. I am who I am because of both my pain and my happiness. As a human, one of our main goals in life is "The Pursuit Of Happiness". Well, if we peak and stay there, through no effort of our own (through drugs or DNA alteration) there would be no sense of accomplishment. Is happiness and a sense of success the same thing? Because we need both.
Besides, happiness in mice is mostly objective, where as, happiness in humans is very subjective. I swear I know people that are happiest when they have something to be depressed about! It seems as though what they want is strong emotion and if they can't get it on the happy side, they will take it on the depressing side. I don't think that can be determined in mice.
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Re:It's stories like this one...
You're absolutely right about encouraging people not to deal with companies like this if they really care that much about the issue. Bottom line is, most people don't.
It's insightful to remember the Scott McNealy quote: "You have zero privacy. Get over it." -
Re:Trust us! We're the government!
You took the words right out of Noam Chomsky's mouth:
"I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with "experts." While driving, I sometimes turn on radio talk shows on sports, and am always struck by this. People calling in have no hesitation in criticizing the coaches, the judgments of the people running the shows, etc. In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives -- their own and others -- people tend to defer to "experts," though for the most part the expert knowledge is no more beyond them than how the local professional sports team should play their next game. That's where the indoctrination comes in: in the intensive training that brings people to feel that they must defer to alleged "experts" on matters of very direct concern to them, far more so than sports. I do, however, agree that there can be negative aspects to the heavily promoted frenzy on spectator sports, loyalty to the home team, etc. Depends very much on how it is carried out." -
Re:From the conservative bench
You wanted it, so here goes:
1. From the FOX News Website: Is the ACLU Bin Laden's Best Ally?
Quote from the same: "If the ACLU ever wants money, it should contact the Al Qaeda fundraisers. No organization in America enables terrorism as much as the ACLU, period. It is putting your life in danger. And that is no exaggeration."
2. From Wikiquote
"I have to pick on the ACLU because they're the most dangerous organization in the United States of America right now. There's by far. There's nobody even close to that. They're, like, second next to Al Qaeda." (2 June 2004)
"Hitler would be a card-carrying ACLU member. So would Stalin. Castro probably is. And so would Mao Zedong." (19 January 2005) -
Re:Illness
Are the OS-agnostics saying they don't know whether or not an OS exists?
You didn't get it at all here. People are not OS-agnostic. Programs can be, among other things. And yes -- a Java program, for instance, does not necessarily know whether it's running on an OS at all. I'm pretty sure the JVM can be run without an OS, and that this is what people run on their phones, and Lego Mindstorms, and so on.
Even a C program can, at least in source code, be OS-agnostic. You can compile Hello World to run on boot, without requiring an OS, if you so desired -- not to mention any OS in the world.
Anyway, you're right, it may not be quite accurate there. I was just pointing out that it's used enough that when I say I'm agnostic, most people at least know the word, and almost no one misses the point.
It is still just "atheist" although some make the distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' atheists.
Which is as useless as the distinction between "black hat" and "white hat" hackers. Most people will already have that cyberpunk image in their head as soon as they hear the word "hacker", and that makes the word fairly useless when I have to explain it every time.
This dovetails into what I have found to be a more practical definition of the agnostic: one who doesn't know what they believe. A great MANY people fall into that camp. They are wishy-washy with their beliefs all over the map based on whatever.
I have fewer beliefs, and more assumptions, and I explained that earlier. Anyway, it is hard to know what to believe, isn't it? Perhaps it's not logically sound, but looking at the inherent order in Nature, it's hard not to become religious in Einstein's sense: "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He has a lot more to say on the subject; check WikiQuote.
Anyway, I see nothing wishy-washy in deciding not to waste my life trying to find the meaning of it, and I wouldn't want to believe an easily disprovable assertion, such as "There is no God."
Another motivation for term agnostic seems to be a desire not to offend the true believers. "Atheist" is a (well-needed) slap in the face. It closes the door on Mormons. People 'get' it. "Oh, you're not buying, I'll stop trying to sell you."
That's not often my motivation. Entertainment is my motivation -- you might also call me a hedonist, but I have a conscience. So when someone knocks on the door trying to sell me something, I have fun with them. I make sure I know my Bible, so I can quote the raunchiest parts of it, and the direct contradictions, and maybe convert them, but if not, at least I had fun.
My roommate had even more fun -- he was also agnostic, in about the same sense, but he'd been playing Nexus TK as a Geomancer, a subpath (think "clan", but more fundamental to gameplay) which was Taoist. So, regardless of whether anyone believed it, everyone had read the Tao Te Ching, and he understood it fairly well. So when the campus Christian people came around, he was able to attack their religion and claim to be a Taoist, a completely different religion, fairly unknown to most of the Christian West.
"How do you know my religion's evil or wrong when you don't know the first thing about it? Maybe they're both true! Maybe Christ was an incredible Feng Shui master!"
Unfortunately for me, I was gone at the time, because they never came back. Atheist, and they might think they can still save his soul. Geomancer agnostic, and they leave wondering if they're losing theirs.
So no, I'm not afraid of offending the true believers, I just like to be more artful about it. And by artful, I mean much, much subtler and more painful (to them).
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Re:Nothing to hide?
I present some interesting quotes on the subject for the uninitiated (uninitiated to Robert Heinlein's stance on militarism, that is). I like the one about cutting a baby's head off in chapter 5 and the one about "violence never solves anything" in chapter 1.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers -
Re:Well...a little of both?
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Re:specmarks?
If it's running Linux...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
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Re:I think...
What about Septuple-A?
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War on Civil Rights.
I, for one, am so tired of hearing about the 'war on drugs'.
America has their war on drugs, we have more people in jail for non violent drug related 'crimes' than any other country has in their jail systems. Most of these are just for possession! What about countries like Amsterdam where pot, and schrooms are legal? Do they have streets full of junkies, out of control crime, and full prisons? The answer is No! They view drug addictions as a medical issue, not a criminal one. They have a much better medical system in Europe, and a better way of dealing with drugs and those addicted to them. Maybe because they are way more ahead of the times than America is?
People are scared about drugs, more than likely because they have no clue what they really are about. All we see is the anti drug commericals on tv, (you have to remember the one with the egg and frying pan) the D.A.R.E programs in our schools, (I think kid's should DARE to learn the unbiased truth about drugs instead of listening to a stupid cop who probably does the training because he/she hates their desk job and want to get out for a while), etc.
I personally see no problems with the use of some illegal drugs as long as it's in moderation. I've done drugs, and will continue to do them. Because I'm smart enough to know which ones to stay away from, and when to stop. I think that's the big problem with most people, they don't know when to stop. Look at the overwhelming number of obese people in America. Look at the gambling addicts. They don't know when to stop.
So thank you America, for harnessing my rights, telling me what I can and cannot do to my own body, in my own time, in the privacy of my own home.
I don't think anyone has ever had a better arguement about the war on drugs than the late, and great Bill Hicks. Think about what he says, it really makes sence.
The late, great stand-up comedian Bill Hicks perhaps put it best when he said: "Alcohol's legal. They push alcohol 24 hours a day on TV. They push it down your throat -- drink beer, drink beer, drink beer. Why? Well, cause it makes you stupid, slow, and docile, and that's the way we like you to be... I've actually seen beer commercials during War Against Drugs specials. Cigarettes, legal. Alcohol, legal. Kill more people than all other illegal drugs combined times one thousand. They are illegal. Marijuana, a drug that kills... no one... and let's put it in a time frame... ever... marijuana's against the law."
I could fill up 30 more pages with quotes that fit this subject. If you don't know about Bill Hicks....You have some reading to do ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks -
Re:My uninformed hunch: screwup...
That was always my hunch too. Put another way...
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor -
There's hope yet...
for Dan Quayle.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
- Vice President Dan Quayle, Hawaii, 8/11/89 (interview broadcast on CNN, referenced in 9/1/89 Washington Post article: "A Quayle Vision of Mars")Phoenixes... quayles... same difference.
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In Soviet Union...
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Re:how I lost respect for soldiers
I've seen the same clip (the second you mention), and I felt exactly the same way.
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Re:not surprisinghttp://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
"Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did."
http://hotwired.goo.ne.jp/matrix/9709/5_linus.html I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works. When it comes to software, I _much_ prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.
So in that sense I am an avid promoter of free software, and GPL'd stuff in particular (because once it's GPL'd I _know_ it's going to stay free, so I don't have to worry about future releases).
In other words, Linus likes the GPL for the actual reasons that it is a good license, not out of any kind of narrow-minded 'software ideology'. -
Re:Team Discovery:
I'm glad that worked out so well for Team Discovery, especially without Amstrong.
I suppose that since another American has won, one could say that we have taunted them a second time. -
Re:I Would Assume...
Maybe people should get a little artistic and learn to play an instrument so they could play music with friends and listen as they played and we would never have to buy music again.
I do like your sentiment. Those of us who have taken the time to learn how to play music realize this.Unfortunately, most would see it as hard work and hold it in total disdain; as the effort spent in learning a musical instrument does not result in instant gratification. Those who play music are aware that you find gratification in each step of progress they attain.
Not a process for the impatient. To those impatient folks, I say: Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
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Re:There's your answer:
Personally I could care less if the NSA wants to spy on everyone. Good luck with that. I have nothing to hide.
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
- Cardinal Richelieu (translated) -
Re:Get real.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin (maybe)
I decided to reply to this one because I think it's important for those of us who actually care about our country and the Constitution to realize that there are a lot of people who believe the parent's logic. It's basically a "think of the children" argument balanced against a "if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear" mindset. It's a very, very scary argument for our country but I think a lot of Fox viewers believe this and no amount of parroting the Franklin quote or modding down anonymous postings will get them to change their mind.
So the question on the table to the people who belive in the Constitution is this: how do we convince the people who are this afraid of terrorists that a totalitarian state is not the solution to terrorism? -
Re:Power lies in its users hands
Yeah. But it's only applied to a very small minority of genuine anti social people right now. I believe this guy had something to say on the matter but what does he know?
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WRT your tagline...
About True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith, I have to agree.
Most truly impressive scientific advances come with re-evaluations, as Isaac Asimov once put it, The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny...' which will happen more often to people who take a break and a fresh look, as you advise.
Mr Asimov also needed to re-evaluate a lot of his own principles, even though he did fairly well for such a self-limiting personality. OTOH, while Charlie Darwin butchered quite a huge number of concepts very badly, he seems to have spoken this particular one pretty well: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. The bottom line is to take a break, not disconnect yourself completely. -
Re:^^ Mod Parent Up!
That's not ironic.
In any event, if the poster practices Falun Dafa/Gong then that is their business, and if they would like to tell everyone that it isn't an evil cult as the Chinese authorities propagandize it to be and that it, instead, is a beneficial spiritual practice, then that is that poster's perogative. Unlike China, the United States is a free country and posting that in a forum isn't going to result in the poster getting killed or tortured.
Besides, that quip wasn't part of the message, that was part of the poster's signature. -
Re:Educate the World
I think it was around high school when I became much more intelligent than my father
Mark Twain:When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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Re:Racism
You know, I thought quoting Ann Coulter would be the most pathetic thing ever. But I was wrong. The most pathetic thing on the world is tryin to pass of an Ann Coulter quote as yours.
It's like, evil and stupidity PLUS plagiarism. I don't know how much lower you can get (but I'd guess not much). -
Re:Damn.
Really? So you are saying no corporation has ever lost money pursuing some product or service because the CEO was stroking his ego?
I give you a prime example to support how much an ego can change the path of a company for the worse: Darl McBride. Turned a company that once had many products to a shitty litigation house with few products which have dwindling customer numbers (SCO Unix has lingered at version 7.1.4 for a couple of years now). How much empty ego do you need to say something like "And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++." (source)? -
Re:/. wiretap
Proudly posting AC to Slashdot sans proxy for years. I have never set up an account and don't intend to. I have always felt like my words need not be backed by my name, pseudonym or built up karma. If what I have to say can't stand on its own merits it should be lanquishing at 0 or -1 if really bad. If the NSA wants to come after me for my many quotes of Thomas Jefferson etc then let them. Here, I will repeat a couple I have quoted before: "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." and "What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure." I suppose they could charge me for sedition for quoting Thomas Jefferson or many more of our founding fathers. They would be even more likely too if I had said the very same words as spoken by Jefferson without proper attribution. Hiding behind Jefferson? Perhaps to some extent, but then in any court but perhaps Quantanamo it opportunes my defense in court to introduce the related writings of Jefferson and those he corresponded with. Those two quotes and more can be found here
Something else to think about, all government is evil: "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." Thomas Paine Common Sense If you have never read Common Sense before you should and imo you should reread it each and every time before you go vote. Every time I read it I wonder if those in Congress have ever read it because their votes would seem to make it apparent they never have or have failed to see the logic in it. Send your elected officials a copy, highlight the points that can get them your vote.
This post reminds me of another reason I post AC, there really isn't anything I can say that hasn't been said before and probably better. Any posters been sued for copyright infringement yet?
By the way, hey Taco, you gotten any National Security Letters handed to you yet? Oh, nvm, unPATRIOTic ACT. Maybe you can use an open .gov proxy and post us an AC answer. Can see it now, 50 AC replies later someone is going to post "will the real Taco please stand up".
Amusingly: "please type the word in this image: rebels" -
Re:'This is the best possible news,' ...NOT
I wish there was a faster way to cook baked potatoes in a conventional oven. I don't have a microwave, but I like baked potatoes, and they take too long to make. Sometimes I throw one in the oven, even if I don't want one. By the time it's done, who knows? I throw one in and go on vacation.
Joke stolen from the late great Mitch Hedberg. -
Once again, with feeling:
"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Schenck v. United States, March 3rd, 1919 -
Re:seriousness of the matter?
Wow, a real life pussy.
Calm down anyway: your rancor hurts your point.
Nonsense. Anger doens not == "rancor". Anger is a perfectly normal reaction to outrageous behavior. Anger is what gained the U.S. independance over a century earlier than Canada. It is anger than forces corrupt politicians from office, and keeps our cops honest.
So there's little reason the think the police broke the law, or if it was illegal that they did so knowing it was illegal: the article simply doesn't cover that.
As the librarian pointed out in the article, and as other posters here have pointed out, in New Jersey police have to use a supoena to get library records. Skipping the sopoena might have resulted in a faster arrest, but it would have also resulted in the evidence being thrown out of court.
Getting a subpoena costs time, money, and political capital.
Political capital? How do you figure? And in any case, once again: too damn bad. The fourth and fifth amendments are not negociable when the cops are "in a hurry". It's their job to prove that they need access to information, not the citizens job to prove that it should be kept private.