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Illinois to Pay for Unconstitutional Gaming Law
adam_sd writes "Those of us in the Video Game Voters Network were emailed a press release today stating that the state of Illinois will have to pay a half-million dollars in attorney's fees to the Entertainment Software Association, Video Software Dealers Association and Illinois Retail Merchants Association. ESA president Douglas Lowenstein is quoted in the press release saying "Judge Kennelly's rulings send two irrefutable messages — not only are efforts to ban the sale of violent video games clearly unconstitutional, they are a waste of taxpayer dollars." The law was declared unconstitutional in December of last year."
So I guess violence is OK in the US then. But the devil will grab you be the b...s if you show a nipple somewhere. Quite funny ;-) And sad....
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=180417&cid=149 34104
...to be an ESA attorney!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Or, at least send him a kindly worded letter, thanking him for standing up for our rights. It's not an easy position to take in this day and age, and anyone who sticks their neck out for my country deserves a debt of gratiitude. And, yes, the Constitution MATTERS!
- Being able to persecute minority religions (prior to the ACLU it was actually illegal to be of the wrong religion in many places).
- Outlawing abortion.
- Eliminating enviromental legislation.
- Keeping black people from voting.
etc...Of course, few strict constructionist judges ever notice that the war on drugs is clearly unconstitutional too.
Illinois won't be paying - they will just raise taxes or cut services to recover the costs. Those who made the decision to do this will face no consequences. Rather, the taxpayer will face all of the consequences.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You probably know this, but for those that don't -- this is only true if the money goes toward a good or service made in the US. Even if you buy from a US company, that good could be made elsewhere, you are contributing to that economy's GDP. On the flip side, you may be contributing to the US GDP if you buy a Toyota and that car is made here (Toyota does have factories here).
Because of all the outsourcing, buying "American" (i.e. from an American company) has very little meaning anymore. If we all started buying "American" from tomorrow on, it would probably have minimal effect on our trade deficits unless actual manufacturing moves back here.
Blagojevich is the worst Governer ever. Instead of worrying about the budget or education, he used his power to focus on this shit along with his attempts to try to move the capital to Chicago. He spends less time in Springfield than Chicago. Then again, Ryan wasn't that much better.
Judy Baar Topinka sucks too. I don't even know her stances on crap cause she displays stupid commercials about "more accountability" which people will OOOH and AHH for.
In fact, wtf do any of Novembers' candidates stand for? They're all bad-mouthing each other and on the "increased accountability" stance.
If millions of people play violent video games and don't act out what they see in the games, then when somebody does... maybe it's not the game, it's the person.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
That seems like a great idea
Uhh... no, it doesn't. For many reasons, among them:
1. You think politicians don't do anything useful now? Imagine the levels of inactivity you are going to force them into if you tell them that if they mess up too many times, their career is over. Nobody is going to take chances. Nobody is going to pass controversial measures. And it bears reminding that some things we find to be absolute no-brainers (civil rights, etc) were highly controversial when they were passed.
2. There seems to be a tacit insinuation that "legal" means "right," which is an issue of morality. There's no such link, and while I would like my politicians to adhere as best they can to the Constitution, I also understand that we need a new type of government if we're not going to let them vote the way they think is right.
3. Voters really ought to be able to elect whomever they please, as many times as they please. I don't believe in term limits for just this reason--but at least they did that one right; they amended the Constitution to include such a limit. Nobody should tell me I can't vote for somebody for any reason, including "he's fucking awful." What if I don't care that he's passed three unconstitutional laws? What if I like the stands he was taking, the points he was making with the laws? What if I supported the laws? My candidate is no longer eligible because he represented me?
Look, passing unconstitutional laws really shouldn't happen, but if there's going to be a penalty attached to such activity, I will attach it as a voter. And if voters are too dumb to take these things into consideration (and they probably are), too bad. That's one of the consequences of living in a republic.
4. Constitutionality is not a simple subject. You can take just about any Constitutional issue, post about it here on slashdot, and get a tremendous flamefest over what it means, how it pertains, etc. And that phenomena is not limited to discussion forums. You can probably take ANY Supreme Court decision--certainly EVERY decision that was not made unanimously, by the very definition--and find some judge somewhere in the country who disagrees with it. It's hard to determine these issues. We dedicated a third of our federal government to doing nothing BUT deciding these issues. A lot of people here, as elsewhere, take their own interpretations of the Constitution to be the end-all-be-all, and that's fine. I'm glad they have strong opinions. But it means absolutely nothing to a court, and it shouldn't.
5. Taking #3 into account, you're going to polticize the judicial process even more than it is already politicized. In states where judges have to run for office (is that all of them?), how kindly do you think the Republican party will take to a Republican judge kicking one of their guys out of office because of such a three-strike law? Is a Democratic judge kicking a Republican out of office going to be seen as a polticial move? Do we really want to essentially give impeachment powers to the judiciary at all?
6. And while we're here, in most states, and the federal government, this would need to be enacted as a constitutional amendment. A law to this effect would almost certainly be struck down, which would be the epitome of irony.
7. As another mini-irony, not only does the Constitution not include any such punishment scheme for violating the Constitution, it really doesn't include any provisions for declaring laws unconstitutional at all. It's something Justice Marshall took upon himself to piss off Thomas Jefferson in the opening years of our country, and we just sort of said "yeah, that makes sense." Could it be that declaring laws unconstitutional is unconstitutional? Hmmmm.
So no. It doesn't seem like a very good idea to me at all.
While I am not very sure about his track record in the past, I was really only speaking of the current article.
However, I do not take too much issue with his stance on AT&T's disclosure of phone records. I do not know too much about law, however, the reason is this.
While it is shitty business practice to give up your clients phone records, it is not a breach of privacy. Partially because a phone record is not really anything very personal, and can only be used to track your contacts, and frequency of... contacting them. They are not giving up anything that could be used to personally hurt you, unless of course you are doing something wrong.
Now don't misunderstand this as me thinking that this is a good idea, I definately do not. If they were giving access to actual phone conversations, it would be different (and I wouldn't be suprised if it were true). But legally I just don't think AT&T really has done anything wrong. However, I would be very hesitant to give them any of my business, and I wish more people paid attention to this stuff and actually showed the big companies that they are willing to stop using services over this kind of thing. I think that a lot of blame that gets placed on public officials, though a ton of it is deserved, could easily be pointed at our very complacent and accepting population. I sometimes wonder what it would take to get a large portion of our citizens fired up, not "I'm gonna go blog RIGHT NOW!" fired up, but "I am going to go do something because I believe in it." fired up. So our new president isn't going to bar people from doing things that are shitty... As long as he is going to keep them from doing things that are illegal, I am cool with that.
There might be better options out there though... I just liked seeing someone from Illinois putting a smack down on these frivilous laws.
You take it, I don't want it...
So why doesn't the same argument apply to porn?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
1) "Bush" can't "pass laws". If you don't understand how the US government works, don't jabber about it, k?
2) "Bush" had nothing to do with this. This was an action of the state of Illnois, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is one of the most anti-Bush states in the Union.
3) It's not really necessary to start screeching about "Bush", regardless of the topic under discussion. Please stop behaving like a rat that's been conditioned in a Skinner box. Thanks.
Unless, by some amazing turn of events, there are two different persons named Matthew Kennelly who both happen to be District Judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois -- which is the listed job title for both names, incidentally -- then the discrepancy in the middle initial can be ignored.
In other words: it's the same guy.
Not so. If the president does not sign the bill, it becomes a law within 10 days as long as Congress does not adjourn. Signing it will make it a law immediately, but not doing so will not necessarily prevent it from becoming a law.
Of course, the government is in control of what "wrong" is defined as. The sheep that suggest that a top-secret information gathering program can't be used to damage law-abiding citizens should think about how easily the government's sense of "law-abiding" can be changed by committee or legislation.
SRSLY.
I think the reason the law works out this way, is that it would be obviously unjust for a woman to have to continue with a pregnancy that she doesn't want, because of somebody else's (the father's) wishes.
Frankly, I think the way it should work is something like this: if both parents want the child, everything's hunky-dory. If the father doesn't want it, then he has to cover the cost of the termination, but after that has no further liabilities. If the mother wants to continue with it at that point, it's on her. If the mother wants to terminate, and the father doesn't, then it isn't fair to require her to continue with the pregnancy: at best, she could be required to have the pregnancy terminated in such a way that the frozen embryo could be turned over to the father, and he could find/pay someone to act as a surrogate mother, if he was so inclined. Either way, either partner could leave but leave the other partner the possibility of continuing on without them, if they really wanted to.
I think the key is that we need to make it clear that nobody who is uninterested in becoming a parent should ever become one. It's too damned important a job to take on if you have any reservations at all about your ability or desire to do it. There are enough people in the world: I'd rather have more abortions than have kids born to parents who didn't want to be parents.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Will it?
The legislators get the credit and the votes for "taking a principled stand". The state's taxpayers get the bill for lawyers' fees. Come November it'd be nice to see some incumbents voted out over this issue, but it's a pretty safe position (like "tough on crime") because people who aren't directly affected won't fire up the necessary neurons to examine the consequences of success -- it's not something they're into, cleaning it up can only be a good thing, vote "yes".
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields