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Moon Rock Winds Up In Court
Lothar+0 writes "In United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material (an actual case, I'm not making this up, folks), the feds are suing to get back a moon rock from an American who brought it back from Honduras. They're alleging that this rock from the Apollo 17 mission is stolen property; ironic considering that NASA took something that wasn't under U.S. jurisdiction."
Your implicit assumption is that there are two states of moon rocks "possessed by the US Gov't" and "Stolen from the US Gov't." Hint: Other countries have reached the moon and returned with rocks. As well, the US Gov't has sold some, a fact that doesn't preclude some being stolen.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Furthermore, the rock, if stolen, should be returned. The United States can do a lot more with it (scientific research, etc) than some Honduras collector.
Actually, the US wants it returned to Honduras. The US government presented it as "a goodwill gift", but the moon rock was somehow misappropriated. Even if the then reigning dictator gave it to the "colonel" who sold it to Alan Rosen, that initial transfer was illicit-- since it belongs to the "Honduran people".
The fact that it was used as a diplomatic gift might be an indication of samples's lack of diplomatic value. Or it might be an indication of NASA's subordination of science to politics...
I think the feds have it right on this one.
The Applo 17 team was sent as an agent of NASA to collect samples from The Moon. Although there is no title claim to any part of The Moon, the samples taken are technically NASA's(I'm fuzzy but maybe this is precidence stretching back to English Common Law). So the US Government through Nixon gave the rock as a gift to Honduras in the 1970s.
Flash forward to now: NASA has no claim on the rock since it was given as a gift. However unless the government of Honduras legally sold the rock it should be given back to the government of Honduras There is clear federal juristiction here and Honduras at the moment has a strong case for asking the rock back. Rosen can't claim "I didn't know I couldn't buy this legally". If he can't prove the Honduran governement sold it to him legally then he is out one expensive rock.
Federal and many state forfeiture laws empower overnments to take people's private property without ever charging a crime. Legally, the property is accused of a crime, not the owner. Lawyers call that in rem -- Latin for "against the thing.
This is why forfeiture cases often have peculiar titles such as "U.S. v. 1960 bags of coffee," U.S. vs. $2,452, "U.S. vs. 9.6 acres of land and lake," or "U.S. vs. 667 bottles of wine." And since the Bill of Rights recognizes the rights only of citizens and state governments, not the rights of chunks of land or bottles of wine, there are almost no due process restrictions on government's attacks on property.
Between 1985 and 1995, the federal government through the Departments of Justice and Treasury, has seized over $4,000,000,000.00 (4 billion) from U.S. citizens, many of whom have never even been charged with a crime. In a single year, fiscal year 1994, the DEA alone made 13,631 seizures with a total value of $646,786,850.00.
How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?
Happens that way with real property all the time. Why do you think so much is involved in buying a house, including buying insurance to protect the deed's validity?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Heh. You realize that the evidence that the moon landing was faked included the following:
m l
* Total ignorance of the proof that was provided that it did happen. (Like the video of the moon lander spraying dust in a perfect parabolic arc, only possible in a vaccuum.)
* An 'expert' that didn't understand the physics of a flag with a metal rod holding it out. (He mistook the metal rod for wind...)
* A professional photographer who didn't understand the concept of radiosity. (Plus he didn't understand that in extreme light stars wouldn't be visible...)
* A mathematician saying that the odds of safely arriving on the moon were uber extreme. (Using similar math, the odds of me returning home safely after work are also uber extreme...)
* A conspiracy theory where Nasa astronauts were killed by Nasa. (Very exotic way of bumping off somebody, too...)
... and so on. In other words, nobody's even come close to disproving the moon landing. Don't believe me? Go to this address:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.ht
It debunks the debunking of the moon landing. If any of you caught that show on Fox that claimed to have evidence of a faked moon landing, go to that site. It was very irresponsible of Fox to air this stupid show. I know a couple of photographers that thought Fox should have known better.
I don't know if the rock is real or not. I don't see how anybody could possibly know if it is. What distinguishes a Moon rock from an Earth rock?
Whether or not the rock exists, it has 0 bearing on whether or not the moon landing actually happened.
First, there wasn't a single Reagan or Bush appointee who made the decisions on the basic cases. It was, instead, a Supreme Court ruling in Dobbins's Distillery v. United States, in 1877, 104 years before Reagan was President, that established the precedent. It was followed up, reconfirmed, and expanded in Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co. in 1974, seven years before Reagan took the oath of office.
Now, of course, that didn't become a major issue until the Democratic Congress and Ronald Reagan jointly put through the 1988 Drug Act. But, at the height of Reagan-Bush influence on the Court, in four cases in 1993, the Supreme Court began to recognize the harm done by civil forfeiture laws and acted to curtail some of the government's most obvious abuses.".
Now, true, in 1996 the Court refused to further curtail civil forfeiture, bowing to those century- and decades-old precedents I mentioned above. So who stepped into the breach?
Republican senator Henry Hyde, with the support of Bill Clinton, shepherded the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act through the Republican-controlled Congress, after which it was signed by President Clinton.
In short, it's absolutely, ridiculously dishonest to blame this on Reagan-Bush appointees, when the major precedents predate Reagan, and all the recent laws on the subject were passed when one party controlled the Congress and the other controlled the Presidency.