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House Votes to Launch Do-Not-Call List
Zendar writes "Yahoo! has a story on how it took less than an hour with a final vote of 412-8 to approve the 'do not call list'. "Votes to overturn the judge's order are expected mid-afternoon in both chambers, according to Republican leadership aides." The President is expected to sign today. Some choice quotes: "Fifty million Americans can't be wrong." and "This bill will pass faster than a consumer hanging up on a telemarker at dinner time." CNN also has the story."
Hopefully voters will remember how well the dissenting congressmen "represented" them the next time they go to the polls.
Ron Paul is a former Libertarian who joined the Republican party (in my opinion) so he could get elected.
He's probably just voting it down on libertarian principles.
Just to clarify - the judge held that the FTC did not have Congressional authority to implement the list. This vote simply gives explicit Congressional authority to the FTC to maintain a "Do Not Call" list.
The role of a judge is to interpret the laws, and he interpreted the law as he saw it. Congress took note and now fixed it. Now, unless there's a serious Constitutional question (doubtful), and if the FTC now has explicit authority from Congress, then this *should* be the end of litigation by the DMA.
So, just to clarify, the judges ruling was complied with, not really overruled.
The judge didn't overturn a law written in congress and signed by the president. The ujudge overturned regulation implemented by the FTC because he felt that the FTC had no authority to do what it did, but the FCC could've done it. The FTC claimed that a small section of last year's budget provided them with the authority to do what they did.
So with congress passing this bill, and the president signing it, the case becomes pointless.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Here's the correct link : Creationism vs Evolution
Nope. Though the following pertains to bulk mail, and as an extension also to spam, it fits here, too. Cheif Justice Berger, c. 1970: "Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on anunwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the out er boundary of every person's domain."
In case anyone's interested, the actual text of the bill that was just passed is here.
How To Get Humans To Mars
Well this isn't exactly an answer to your question, the reason they could pass this bill so easily is because it only consists of a few sentences. Text of the Bill
--Kobayashi--
Ron Paul, R-Texas - 202-225-2831
Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. - 202-225-2635
Kendrick Meek, D-Fla. - 202-225-4506
Tim Ryan, D-Ohio - 202-225-5261
Ted Strickland, D-Ohio - 202-225-5705
Lee Terry, R-Neb. - 202-225-4155
Rob Bishop, R-Utah - 202-225-0453
Chris Cannon, R-Utah. - 202-225-7751
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Wrong.
Both individuals (natural persons) and corporations (artificial persons) have rights protected by the First Amendment. Commercial speech, however, is protected less than other types of speech. This is why false advertising laws are constitutional and apply equally to corporations, sole proprietorships, and partnerships.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Assuming your first point is correct (which I do not totally agree with, but we'll assume it is for now), your last point is wrong. If implementing the DNC list is unconstitutional for Congress to pass due to viloating the First Amendment, then it is illegal for states to do so as well (Fourteenth Amendment Section 1, "No state shall...").
fuck you.
A lot of spam goes through servers overseas (open SMTP relays), but still originates in the US (or the ever popular Nigeria).
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
The phone system is all regulated and controlled. While anyone can get a line and use it, only certian people can provide the service. It requires right of way to lay copper, millions of dollars of equipment and so on. So, all the companies that do it, have to coperate and obey regulations. One side effect is that they always can tell where a call came from. If someone blocks calling line ID for you, that just means that your box doesn't show you. The phone switch that serves your line knows where it came form, it must by the nature of the system. IT logs it too.
So, if you get an unauthorised call and you file your complaint, it is a simply matter for the FTC to check on. They get records from the phone company confirm that, yes, the telemarketer DID call you and so on.
However with e-mail, they can use some anonymous relay off in Asia with an admin that won't respond to e-mails. It is then much harder to track anyone down and prove anything. Not saying it can't be done, it is just a more difficult job and one the FTC understand less well.
It's called following the spirit of the law instead of the letter.
... To condone in these instances the practice of talking in terms of the intent of the legislature, as if the legislature had attributed a particular meaning to certain words, when it is apparent that the intent is that of the judge, is to condone atavistic practices too reminiscent of the medicine man."
More accurately, this is called "judicial activism". Also known as, "when the judge substitutes his or her idea of what the law ought to do for what the text of the law really does."
I don't want to be at trial and have the judge decide, "you know, Mr. Hansen, the law as written in the books doesn't work the way I think it should work. So instead of applying the law, I'm going to apply what I think ought to be instead. Deal with it."
That, Zath, is called judicial tyranny. Some very sharp people wrote some essays warning against allowing this to happen. You can find these essays collected into convenient book form and sold as the Federalist Papers. I strongly suggest you read them.
Let me give you a couple of scholarly references here, too--this one comes courtesy of Justice Antonin Scalia's monograph, A Matter Of Interpretation, which argues compellingly against judicial activism:
"It is the law that governs, not the intent of the lawgiver. That seems to be the essence of the famous American ideal set forth in the Massachusetts constitution: A government of laws, not of men. Men may intend what they will; but it is only the laws that they enact which bind us."
Or, as Dean James M. Landis of Harvard Law School wrote in Harvard's 1930 law review,
"The gravest sins are perpetrated in the name of the intent of the legislature.
Moving again to Scalia:
"Of all the criticisms leveled against [strict interpretation of laws], the most mindless is that it is `formalistic'. The answer to that is, of course it's formalistic! The rule of law is about form. If, for example, a citizen performs an act--let us say the sale of a certain technology to a foreign country--which is prohibited by a widely publicized bill proposed by the Administration and passed by both houses of Congress, but not yet signed by the President, that sale is lawful. It is of no consequence that everyone knows both houses of Congress and the President wish to prevent that sale. Before the wish becomes a binding law, it must be embodied in a bill that passes both houses and is signed by the President. Is that not formalism? A murderer has been caught with blood on his hands, bending over the body of the victim; a neighbor with a video camera has filmed the crime; and the murderer has confessed in writing and on videotape. We nonetheless insist that before the state can punish this miscreant, it must conduct a full-dress criminal trial that results in a verdict of guilty. Is that not formalism? Long live formalism! It is what makes a government a government of laws and not of men."
(All emphasis is as found in the original documents.)
Of course, his position is nothing to sneeze at either, but it worries me to have such a strict justice in that position.
Only those appointed to the Supreme Court are called "justices". Everyone else is just called "judge".