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Dept. of Homeland Security Enforces Expired Patent
Fouquet writes "Apparently the Department of Homeland Security does not have enough to do in keeping the US safe, and now is enforcing copyright law as well. The AP reports that a toy store owner in Oregon was requested by Homeland Security officials to remove a potentially copyright-infringing Rubik's cube-like toy from her shelves. The patent for Rubik's cube was issued in 1980, and so it is expired."
Abuse of rights, law, and tax dollars. This is why you should vote Libertarian.
Take the Advocates.org "World's Smallest Political Quiz" to find out what party you belong in based on real issues. According to them, "Take the Quiz now and find out where you fit on the political map!"
It is my belief that everyone is a Libertarian, but they they just don't know it.
Vote Michael Badnarik in 2004. Send a message to Washington and don't choose between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich.
And I previewed, too. That'll teach me to drink and Slashdot. :P
This is a good analogy? The fact that polls show Michael Badnarik receiving 4% of the votes does not mean that he has a 4% chance of winning the election. He will win if a large number of main party supporters change their votes, and the probability of that happening is a lot less than 4%, or even 0.04%, for that matter.
And your vote clearly makes a difference. When polls show several states going down to the wire, when Gore won New Mexico by 366 votes in the last election, it's ridiculous to believe that your vote is irrelevant. Even if the candidate you support cannot win, your vote is important as an indicator of public opinion.
And now, just to be contrarian, I'll admit that I agree with a good deal of the libertarian philosophy myself. Of course, since I'm not an American citizen, my preference is irrelevant. Still, my beliefs don't alter the fact that this analogy is absurd.
I said it didn't matter in the analogy because people would say "you have a 100% chance of getting set free because you're voting". Sometimes absurdity is required to fight against a catch-22.
People say, "I'm not voting for him because he isn't going to win." But then, how do people win if they don't get votes. If you agree with someone, vote for them. If everyone does this, the leader that is _REALLY_ supported will be elected. My other posts in this thread were modded off-topic(probably by the same moderator, since it was at the same time), but this is very ON TOPIC. This leadership in America can waltz in and take over toystores now as a matter of national security ?!?
Wake up America, and vote Libertarian.
I'm very serious. Bush has done a wonderful job given the circumstances. He got to deal with all of the fallout for the previous four presidencies:
* Terrorism (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and to a lesser extent GHWB)
* Enron (Clinton, maybe others [have not searched it back further than him])
* Accounting scandals (probably back as far as Raegan, definitely on an increase w/ Clinton. Clinton led by example -- we had a "surplus" with an increasing debt -- great job!)
* Stock market bomb (this was due to circumstances which were in place under Clinton, but I actually don't think it's his fault -- it's our fault for being so greedy we got stupid)
* Social Security (this one hasn't hit yet, but it's coming -- Bush did a realistic estimate for how big the national debt is if we accounted for Social Security properly -- I don't remember the exact number but it was between 40 and 60 billion).
* Illegal immigration (haven't read up enough on the subject to know when it really started and what's been done about it)
Almost all of these, although they had been building for years, came to a head under Bush. Part of it was because he refused to abuse his power on behalf of large corporations. In fact, it was the former Clinton Secretary of the Treasury Rubin who tried to convince the administration to help Enron out with their credit rating (helping out Enron was basically a normal policy under Clinton -- foreign aid to India was tied to India's contracts w/ Enron). The administration's refusal to abuse its power on Enron's behalf is what triggered its destruction.
Terrorism was essentially caused by Raegan, and to a lesser extent Carter. Raegan fought the Soviets by propping up Soviet enemies. Unfortunately, Raegan wasn't real picky on who these enemies were, so we wound up w/ Al-Qaeda. Clinton tried to ignore the problem by covering it up. He did not pursue the middle-east links to OKC even though almost all eyewitnesses pointed out that middle-eastern men were with McVeigh on the day of the bombing. Richard Clarke even mentions in his book that Terry Nichols likely learned bomb-making from Ramzi Youssef, the terrorist from WTC1. For the full scoop on the middle-eastern terrorists that McVeigh and Nichols were involved with, see the book The Third Terrorist by Jayna Davis (she was actually sued for libel by the person she names as John Doe #2, and _she_ won). Clinton covered up TWA 800, which has been referred to as a terrorist attack by both George Stephanopolous and John Kerry. Clinton also ignored the middle east connections to the olympic park bombing, wrongfully pinning it on a US citizen (who was not convicted).
Given all of that, I'd say that Bush has done a great job at keeping us from a national disaster, and keeping the country together while the media tries to divide us.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Taking your logic, i've decided to stop using condoms, stop eating, stop all my bodily functions in fact. After all, there are terrorists in the world.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
So does this mean they have to go after God now because he didn't turn this guy in immediately?
Seriously though, knowing about a crime to be committed yet saying nothing is punishable nearly as severely as actual crime, no? So if I put in my blog "I'm going to kill Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadooat at Moe's Tavern on the 13th of Smarch" then anybody and everybody who reads is required to turn me in. Or does this law not apply at all to mis/information spread via the internet? I'm curious is the SS checked IPs of visitors to the guy's site and asked them some questions.
USA seem more and more like a police state.
Where are you now? As bad as things are now, wait till the baby boomers start retiring in about 10 years, and watch things *really* go all to hell.
Unless we change course in a drastic way and soon, leaving the country will be a compelling, if not necessary choice.
Software Wars
I'm sorry, but the grandparent post showed something that the Secret Service would give you a very tough time before 9/11, PATRIOT, etc. The Secret Service is paid to not have a sense of humor, a joke is supposed to be taken seriously.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
The War on Drugs has always been stupid. There is one presidential candidate on the ballot who opposes it. I'll leave it to the readers to figure out who.
This still counts as civil disobediance. You entered legally, heckeled the speaker, were arrested, got news coverage and that should be the end of it. Typiically non-violent civil disbediance is dealt with a summons, which is usually dismissed since the charges are minor and no economic or physical damage occured.
Punishing someone harshly for civil disobediance would be pretty bad for the state of our country. Since we'd be in effect locking up dissedents who refused to play along with the political machine that is American politics.
Save a life, sign your organ donor card.
Hmmm. Hitler's ally Stalin (look up the pre-war Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) attacked Finland (nearly unarmed and the first country in Europe to have introduced full democracy) in 1939. The mighty Soviet machine failed to break through into Finland that time but invaded numerous other European countries which couldn't defend themselves and then launched another massive attack against Finland in 1941.
Since Hitler had also attacked Soviet Russia (before Stalin had the chance, although the Soviets were planning the same backstabbing manoeuver), the Allied Powers (USA only joined in later when they were attacked by Japan) decided to make that lunatic Stalin (the most murderous dictator in history) their best buddy and an "Ally". Neat, eh?
So now the Allied Powers saw little Finland desperately defending itself against the murderous regime of Stalin and decided that Finland was an enemy! In 1944, in the most intense battle ever in continental Europe, Finland managed to repel a huge Soviet invasion and on the strength of that fortunate defensive victory Finland was able to negotiate for peace without losing her independence...
In the Paris war court in 1947 the Finns were treated as Allied enemies and when the Finnish delegation attempted to set the Soviet-provided records straight (e.g. the ludicrous claim that the unarmed Finns had supposedly attacked their 50-times larger and militarized neighbour first!), they were threatened with immediate removal from the premises if they as much as opened their mouths. The result was that Finland was ordered to surrender large areas of their historical heartland (plus areas further up north, including access to the northern seafront) to the Soviets and to pay humongous war reparations to the invading dictatorship as well. The Putinist Russians hang onto those lands to this day, and haven't returned a sinle penny of those extortionist reparations.
And now you're saying that it was the in fact the USA that engineered this criminal act on Stalin's behalf??? Of course there has never been any effort to correct such injustice, probably because the US has always been too busy playing new war games and striking convenient new alliances with dictatorships elsewhere...
Did I say anything about Finland?
My remarks on the relative powers of the Allied Powers were obviously in the context of occupied Germany. And it that context it was the USA calling the shots.
However shameful the treatment the Finns got, it has nothing at all to do with my post.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?