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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
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
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.