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Online Gambling Not Banned Yet
For the moment, the rush to legislate the ban on online gambling has been slowed. Senator John Warner, (R) from Virginia, has refused to allow a ban on online gambling to be tacked onto an upcoming defense bill. Opponents of online gambling were hoping to tack their measure on to a "must pass" bill but will apparently be forced to delay. Congress recesses in one week, giving only a few days left if this measure is to be passed before the November 7th elections.
i wish they would give up or just legalize it. online gambling really isn't a problem, just like online sales of goods isn't a problem to walmart or best buy.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Surely that's a big bloody hole in the legislative system.. why don't they patch it?
It's just crazy.
How we know is more important than what we know.
For the moment, the rush to legislate the ban on online gambling has been slowed. Senator John Warner, (R) from Virginia, has refused to allow the banning of online gambling to be tacked on to an upcoming defense bill.
What I don't "get" is that if they do eventually ban online gambling, what is the legal status of games like Second Life, which allow gambling in-world (in Linden Dollars, which you can then convert to US Dollars)? How will it even be possible to police that sort of thing given the open-ended nature of the game?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I play poker, but I'm not using my own money. I bankrolled money from a freeroll. Now I am freerolling my way up the stakes ladder. If they ban online gambling, I'll have to get a Swiss Bank account or something.
God spoke to me.
. . .because someone, somewhere might just be enjoying themselves, and certain portions of the population don't happen to approve of that kind of fun. . .
.. democracy.
/. democracy means this post will get slapped with -1 flamebait. Yay to free speach!
Can't get a law to pass? Attach it to one that will!
To be fair, it is indeed a last resort. This bill can't be passed because of casino owners lobbying against it, so the fact that it doesn't pass also has little to do with democracy.
I feel this is just another example of why the US needs to take a good hard look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy and compare it to the system theyre currently using.
Then again,
my capcha was condom
Many do, they just want it to take place somewhere they can take their cut.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Stop attaching TOTALLY unrelated shitty riders to bills. How about that?
.. oh I don't know.... gives more financial assistance to the families of firemen and policement killed in 9/11. There's a special place in hell for congressmen who pull that.
Let's attach this here rider that rewards one of my biggest constituents to a bill that
No doubt that the U.S. ** IS ** the greatest democracy ever, but it has some serious shortcomings in this area. (And yes, regardless of our horrible directions we've taken these last six years, American government DOES correct itself.. eventually).
...I'll lay you 2-to-1 odds it doesn't pass.
Footix - President, Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things
If that were the case they'd be introducing new tax laws. No, this is a "my mother lost a fortune betting online, it must be banned!" reaction.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The United States is not and was never intended to be a democracy. It is a Republic, which is quite diffrend from a Democracy. http://www.chrononhotonthologos.com/lawnotes/repvs dem.htm
http://www.ahherald.com/bishop/020228_democracy.ht m
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
There are more important issues out there, but few frost my behind as much as this one: I mean the opponents of online gambling are almost invariably the same blowhards who wrap themselves around the flag and lecture the rest of the world about what it means to be free. If we cannot decide for ourselves how to dispose of our disposable income, then in no way, shape or form can we be described as free. All forms of gambling should be legal, regulated and taxed. Use a slice of the tax revenue to help problem gamblers. Leave the rest of us alone.
How do we stop this insane practise of piling one bill on top of another as it passes through the gauntlet?
This practise has probably more to do with the sad state we are in than any other- this even bypasses/surpasses pork barrel crap shuffled through.
Let the original bill stand (or fall) on it's own- quit this backscratchin',feel good,get re-elected bullshit end. If not, we fial and stay where we are.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
How much would you want to bet (pun intended) that a move to limit online gambling isn't sponsored by brick-and-mortar casinos?
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
He refused to cave to the Bush administration on torture.
Now, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he refuses to let a trivial non-issue be tacked on along with a government spending bill. Bravo, if only more people like him could be elected to the Senate.
i wish they would give up or just legalize it. online gambling really isn't a problem, just like online sales of goods isn't a problem to walmart or best buy.
Several states have deals where they get a cut of Indian Casinos and the other privately run casinos. Even Las Vegas is feeling the pinch from the competition of the spread of brick and mortar (albeit well lit bricks and glittery mortar) casinos throughout the USA and thus great giveaways aren't what they used to be as Vegas repositions itself as a destination for the family (what a sordid thought that is, but they really are!) along with conventions.
If I could be anywhere in the world and bet on 888.com or any other site, who gets a cut? There's multiple special interests at work and the online community isn't quite as strongly represented, to say nothing of the people's own personal wishes. I dare Washington to make it a Fall referendum.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
and I approve this message......... Go Warner! Let's stop playing politics and start linking votes on bills to what's actually in the bills!
We should secede and have the best form of government ever: wait, there is no good form of government, oops. LIBERTARIANISM FOR LIFE
the Political Inquirer
We cannot ban it according to the World Trade Organization. It seems that the US congress have given away some of their sovereignty.
Looks to me like the two where made for eachother, after all alot of these new defence systems like the missile shield appear to give the same crappy odds of success as some games of chanse. Not to mention that there really is only one winner in each scenario (casionos and the military industrial complex) and a whole bunch of loosers paying thru the noose for it.
Reminds me of a quote I found quite funny.
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun.
Initially I thought the same thing. But it turns out attendance at live poker in casinos as at an all time high. Plus a lot more people are entering live tournaments after they get into gambling online. The big online gamblings sites let you win entry to live tournaments and often have meetups at casinos. I think casinos already see the benefit to their bottom line.
Developers: We can use your help.
Of course all forms of online gambling should be banned! Things like poker chips block the tubes that make up the internets. Only lotteries and horse races gambling should be allowed, to ensure that the tubes are flushed clean regularly. Otherwise, how long do you think the gerbils on wheels that power the internet are going to run? Not long!
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
In Soviet Russia, YOU save Jesus!
Maybe I should set up my own Online Casino, there sure isn't a lack of suckers that would waste their cash on a greatly rigged Online Casino...... Plus it would be nice not to have any laws that required me to be fair or actually pay the winners...
Can someone help me out here... How exactly does one go about blocking these riders? And why doesn't it happen more often? Also, who gets to add rider's to bills? Can anyone just submit anything they want to be included with a bill?
I know they tried to pass the line item veto in 1996 to help deal with this, but isn't there anything better we can do to stop so many tacked on clauses? I don't know if I agree with a line item veto because it could be easily abused to get rid of things central to the bill. How about anything added to a bill after a certain period is automatically a candidate for the line item veto.
Maybe let the supreme court knock down a law as unconstitutional if said law was passed as a rider along with a completely unrelated bill. You could make the argument that congress never really voted on the law because what they were really voting on was the content of the central bill.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
So how do we tell the difference between an information market and gambling? Some would say sports betting is just a derivitive play on NFL/NBA team stocks.
From what I can tell in Iowa, "Bookmaking" is illegal:
"Bookmaking as used herein means the taking or receiving of any bet or wager upon the result of any trial or contest of skill, speed, power or endurance of human, beast, fowl or motor vehicle..."
So apparently corprorations in Iowa are not human, best, fowl, or motor vehicle.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
I agree with you; I think our political system is in desperate need of reform, and not just a few simple Band-Aids.
However, with the current two-party structure, riders do serve a semi-legitimate, or at least useful, purpose: they provide a way for a minority to torpedo a bill that really shouldn't get passed, preventing a "tyranny of the majority." It doesn't prevent a 'tyranny of the super-majority,' because riders can be defeated through parliamentary procedure, but that's democracy for you.
It's important when we look at legal procedure, that we don't "streamline" the system too much: sometimes, things that look like terribly stupid ideas (and probably are), are the only things holding back a torrent of terrible legislation. Riders are a double-edged sword in this way; they allow a minority to get things passed that otherwise wouldn't have enough votes -- an obviously undemocratic outcome, and prone to abuse -- but it also works as a blocking maneuver. Sometimes, it can be possible to stop a legislative juggernaut by attaching an impossible-to-pass rider.
Removing something like this, particularly in the current atmosphere, where other safeguards like filibusters are also on the block, could potentially be disastrous. It could lead to seesaw legislation, with each successive Congress undoing the one before it and then going further in the opposite direction, without any way to stop it. In physics terms, filibusters and poison-pill riders act as drag or friction on a pendulum, which is constantly having energy put into it. Were it not for these outlets, the whole thing could easily oscillate out of control.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Wait a minute. Why was the parent post modded as "flamebait"? It's exactly the opposite.
Attaching unrelated riders to "must pass" bills is appalling. It's absolutely staggering that my fellow Americans have allowed our do-nothing-but-try-to-get-reelected officials to continue doing it. I absolutely support Senator Warner with this for two main reasons: (A) the idea of forcing Americans to spend/gamble their money only within American borders for the sole purpose of taxation is repugnant and is exactly what my fellow Republicans are supposed to prevent, and (B) adding totally unrelated riders to a bill is in my opinion completely unethical regardless of whether it's allowed or not. What's next? Preventing Americans from making any purchases on foreign web sites or from foreign companies for the same reason - taxes? Hey, look! Is that a lead balloon coming down on Washington?
Bravo, Senator! There are so many more important things that we should be worried about! Americans spending their money on non-American web sites should be one of the least concerning issues out there!
To answer some of your questions... (I work somewhere on the Hill).
Senators or at least the few that I know or have come in contact with, usually have some sort of philosophy that they follow. This philosophy or set of beliefs serves as a guide on how they will vote. Occasionally you will get someone that is easily influenced by newspapers or political lobbies, but that is in all actuallity, not as common as most people think (which is why when it happens it's big news). There are very strict rules about what kind of gifts politicians and their staff (Senate Staff is limited to 50$ for gifts at receptions) can accept and what they can't.
For the most part, legislation is not written by Senators (Rep's may write their own). Usually there is a Legislative Assistant(s) or Legislative Director in the office that will write the actual bill or ammendment. The Senator will then review it, and if he / she approves it - it will be submitted to where ever it needs to go (usually a committee of sorts). Often they are attached to other bills, since the legislative process is very slow (and attaching it to something may speed it up).
Now, as it is election time, many people that are up for re-election are submitting all sorts of things. However, they aren't trying that hard to have them get passed (thankfully - or I'd have no free time), just submitting them so they can claim to have done some work on a certain issue that they may feel their constituents care about (or more likely matches their ideas). Lame Duck session in December, is when the outgoing folks actually sit down and try to get this crap passed.
So you can assume, that this bill was introduced by someone that believes gambling is wrong. It has nothing to do with the mail that they get, the phone calls people make or the faxes that come in. They don't even see most of those - interns and other staff handle them (although a few Senators actually read a sampling of handwritten mail each week). The politician usually gets a report each week of what mail came in, what issues were popular and what was the stance of the mail (for or against). Usually batch letters (meaning large bunches of faxes / letters / postcards that are all the same ) are not included in that count (cause people often send them in without actually reading them or knowing much about the issue, and mail from someone other then a constituent (meaning outside the politicians district - exceptions being the VA and Natural Resources Committees) or someone that did not put a real mailing address (like the people that always sign with their email address) is ignored. In the event that the politican does not have an opinion on something yet, this mail report will serve to influence their opinion in addition to the research and hearings that they or their staff will conduct. However, their opinion is usually in line with their established philosophy. Long story short, this ammendment was simply so someone could satisfy a mark on their philosophy checklist (most likely), and that is why it was rejected by the Senator (who dislikes this sort of stuff) and not because of some lobbying group.
The best way to stop these things, is to either write large amounts of handwritten mail to your senator / rep (not other peoples), or simply vote them out during elections time. Problem is -- most people aren't informed enough to actually know what's going on (or at least that is what I see from DC). It's easiest to contact your Senator / Rep at a state office also (if they have some), since most of them spend weekends and when session is out at home.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
Why does a true democracy need to brainwash its kids from an early age with the declaration of independence?
Why does any challenge of USA being such a great democracy end up with it being compared to how much better it is than China etc.. Surely if it is so great it should be compared to some of the top democracies and not the bottom ones?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Currently, due to prior efforts by Congress and corporations to enforce some sort of "ban" online gambling, all I have to do is go to Central Coin (which purports to be facilitator for online privacy in purchases, or some such whatnot; I've never seen a merchant other than gaming sites that uses their services), deposit some money into the account (and pay some fairly small fee, roughly double ATM transaction fees) and then go to Poker Stars to withdraw that money from CC and deposit to Poker Stars. Whole thing takes roughly 45 seconds.
With my online sportsbook/casino at SportsInteraction, it's even easier. I fire up the client interface (casino) or browser (sportsbook), and I can deposit money into my Firepay account and transfer it into my SI account all on one screen. So, short of getting IPs from the gaming merchants themselves (not likely), blocking traffic to specific IPs at the ISP level (more likely, still isn't going to happen), banning the use of online third party money handlers (least likely), or taking my computer, I really fail to see how they propose to stop me.
...who gets to decide what is outside the subject?
Congress right?
Next idea please.
Too bad it's going to get a lot more of our service members tortured after capture in retribution and give the terrorist networks even more recruiting fodder.
The second part of your comment might have merit, in that the new stance might provide propaganda for terrorist recruitment (but really, it's not like there's a shortage), however, if you don't think that anyone in uniform is at risk of being tortured to death if captured anyway, you're sorely mistaken.
The only reason more people aren't tortured and executed after capture is because the terrorists know they're more useful alive (and on TV) than dead. I doubt it has anything to do with any high-minded moral feelings on the point of the Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban, or the occasional Al Qaeda cell. If any of them are seemingly obeying the Geneva Convention, it's purely coincidental.
Allow me to play the Devil's Advocate a bit further for a moment:
Take a think right now to the tactics used throughout much of the Civil War. Seems pretty ridiculous, doesn't it? I mean, lines of people, just blasting away at each other? Almost criminally negligent, in retrospect -- but those were the established tactics, and they were employed up until (and arguably, well beyond -- they should have been obsolete with the introduction of the rifle) when they were impossible to maintain anymore. Since then, tactics and strategy moved on, and now it seems bizarre that people would have chosen to wear uniforms in bright colors, or choose a cleared field for an infantry battle instead of a forest, or engage at a stone's throw instead of the maximum effective range of their organic weapons, as current tactics would dictate (if in the defense).
I believe that in a generation or two, people will look back on the tactics used in the great wars of the 20th century and by the major powers in the 21st as similarly antiquated. I mean, wearing uniforms? So the enemy can identify you? Idiotic. Refusal to use civilians to mask one's forces will be seen as something quaint; like wearing blaze orange (or bright red) on a battlefield in 1944. The battle dress of the 21st century warrior won't be "woodland" or "ACU digital" (those are carryovers; legacies from a more civilized age, perhaps), but the clothing of the civilian populace. The standard tactics and maneuvers won't be 'Platoon Attack' or 'Knock Out Bunkers,' but 'Creating a Mass Casualty Incident' and 'Propaganda Creation 101.'
Every time that the methods of war have shifted dramatically, it has been those most successful with the previous generation of tactics that have been the most resistant to change, and who have consequently suffered the most. "Terrorism" isn't some new bogeyman that we can make go away; any more than people who thought the machine gun was uncivilized and barbaric could just snap their fingers and return themselves to a world of cavalry charges and infantry squares. It's the new standard: we just haven't realized it yet.
Sending more troops and equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan today is about as strategically sound as the generals in the Battle of the Somme sending their troops 'over the top' again and again, into the waiting machine guns. Today, we send our troops, in their well-marked vehicles and uniforms, out to be cut down by IEDs and snipers. War has changed, and probably not for the better, if you liked the 20th century idea of war being something between soldiers and armies that can be drawn on a map or modeled on a sand table. Terrorism is the new war, and the Geneva Convention is about as relevant to that as the Code of Chivalry was to someone trying to keep their feet from rotting off in a trench in 1918.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Um, "tyranny of the super-majority" was meant to be ironic; that is democratic: if enough people want something badly enough, any democratic system must give it to them. In the current U.S. system, it could happen via Constitutional amendments followed by legislation.
Certainly one could create a system that would be a limited democracy, where there was no way, even if all but one person in the country wanted something done, that it could happen -- a Constitutional Republic where the Constitution was fixed and there was no mechanism for amendments, perhaps; but this would be, in my opinion, less democratic than a U.S.-type system where the entire government can be changed if enough of a super-majority desires it.
Any good government should protect a minority group from the majority, but there is a certain limit to how big a minority group must be, before it becomes protected: if that minority is smaller than the number of people required to block a super-majority, then it effectively is unprotected. For example, if pedophilia was currently legal, but widely detested, it's likely that a small number of pedophiles would be unable to prevent an abolition of their rights by the majority, because they wouldn't have the votes required to block it. (I'm making an assumption here that pedophiles are a far fringe group; whether this is actually true I'm not sure, but work with me here.) This isn't undemocratic, even though it does represent an oppression of a minority by the majority. When a minority group gets suitably small, it's not a 'legitimate minority' any more: they're just criminals.
When people speak of the 'tyranny of the majority,' at least in my experience, they speak really of the 'tyranny of 51%.' That is to say, a tyranny where a single person or very small group of people (the 1%) can have an un-deserved influence on the system. Nobody really speaks or cares about the 'tyranny of 99.99999%.' At that point, it's probably not likely to be viewed as tyrannical oppression anymore, but just sensible lawmaking versus criminals.
Ideally, the size of the supermajority required to oppress a minority group should be just smaller than the number of people needed to overthrow the government completely. This ensures that rather than Revolution, the government is changed via peaceful means; if you make the required supermajority any larger than this, then your government will just collapse.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Redundant?
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
They're called 'Criminal Combatants' by the president when he rips away their Geneva Conventions Protections without first properly having a determination of their status made through a valid tribunal process. Does this not imply that they are being held as 'criminal' actors by the US government and not as POWs?
The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution begins with; "In All Criminal Prosecutions..." The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitutional states that No Person shall have life, liberty or property taken from them by the government without due process of law.
These humans are being held in violation of the US Constitution, and instead of correcting this grevious harm, Congress has worked tirelessly to abrogate habeas corpus.
Again I ask, America has a Bill of Rights?
Originalise this:
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
I don't get it. I've worked on the board of a non-profit organization before. If somebody tried to avoid review by attaching junk to an otherwise good motion, we'd always either make a motion to split the bill into the separate issues, or just outright vote the thing down. Why do parliamentarians tolerate random crap being added to bills?
http://outcampaign.org/
To any sensible observer these would appear to be two completely separate questions, thus it'd make sense to vote on them separately, I *completely* fail to see the supposed benefits of this "rider"-system.
You even frequently see semi-controversial stuff "attached" to the most obscure nobody-cares piece of legislation in existence, hoping that it'll get passed before somebody notices or something. Hello ? The entire *point* of a democracy is that people *should* notice the controversial issues, debate them, and then vote on them.
Can somebody with an insigth please explain what the benefits are ? To outsiders, frankly, it just seems completely ridicolous.
On a personal level, I agree.
However I have a hypothetical question that came to mind. What if it became clear that the ideals of Western society were counterproductive to its survival? As in, what happens when you start to see your way of live being subsumed by a more aggressive culture, because of strongly-held beliefs that prevent the response that would prevent the takeover?
I'm not saying that such a situation exists at present, but what if it really was an "existential struggle" in the literal sense of one culture systematically destroying the fabric of the other, and the one being destroyed was at a grave disadvantage because of self-imposed limitations that were not symmetric?
One argument would suggest that the only correct course of action is to maintain those beliefs to the grave; even if in holding them it ensures the destruction of one's culture by another. I'm not sure this is really a practical suggestion. This implies that there is nothing to your culture besides this belief -- nothing at all -- because you can't carry on if you betray it. Plus, it also implies that once given up, the belief can't be reinstated later; i.e., that the moral high ground, once lost, can never be re-ascended.
Like I said, I'm not into the Book of Revelation school of foreign policy, but I think it's an interesting philosophical question as to what various cultures would do when really threatened with being put to the bayonet as a result of their hesitance to do something morally reprehensible; I think it would be very rare indeed for any group to not compromise itself.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Why does the American government insist on being different from the rest of the world? Why do they try to be so self-righteous?
In Europe, online gambling is very much accepted, and doesn't interfere with all the land-based casinos that spread all across Europe. They make enough money as it is.
888.com is very popular in Britain, for example. And people there don't see it as an addictive thing that should be banned, but rather as a way to get some entertainment. Instead of going out to a movie and dinner, you can enjoy a quick game of blackjack or roulette, and make sure to limit yourself to $50 or whatever your budget is. If you lose it - you lose it, and that's it. It's just like spending the same money on some other form of entertainment.
-- You must be yay-high to rule the world.
... it really wonder about all the other "laws" and "regulations" they "pass".
... and never mind that it's them who make us miserable
Note my quotation marks, I don't think anything they do or come up with is
in any way honest and worthy and the act of "passing the law" is a farce
in itself.
The real issue to be upset here is not that they're not happy about losing their
grip on gambling, the real issue to be upset here is about how they're conning
us.
But it's all right I suppose. After all we have other things to worry about and
we can't be bothered with stuff that is so clearly off our radar. We got lives to
attend to and bills to pay
and they're the reason the bills are so high.
Been a while since you spent time in Vegas?
Las Vegas is constantly adjusting their pitches and hooks. It's how they stay profitable. They love to call new angles in their agressive marketing techniques, "Reinventing Las Vegas". What a load of hype, nothing has been truly reinvented, it's sill all about you, Loser.
The early nineties overt push for families has been on the whole discredited, and the official Vegas spin is no long, "Please bring the kids", it instead has morphed to, "Uh, ok, If you bring the kids".
After several years overtly seeking families as a primary source of visitors, the mid-nineties saw most major properties (Mandalay Bay Properties [formerly Circus Circus] execpted) backing away from it. After several years of market studies and analysis, Gaming Corporations realised that if you bring you kids to Vegas, both your maximum allowable gambling time, and your maximum acceptable losses in the casino are significantly reduced. I guess one needs a 4 year University degree in marketing to be able to drag out the self-evident for so long.
Major Gaming Corporations which operate in Nevada are not opposed to internet gambling, as long as it is a free market, and they are allowed to enter into it. If lawfully enabled to do so, the corporations could scale up their net resources instantly, and almost overnight have top class enterprise gaming web site which could easily compete with pre-existing sites.
The Vegas gaming corporations have discovered that California tribal gambling didn't turn out to be the goose neck-breaker many were predicting. It has affected Reno negatively. In Las Vegas, the tribal casinos have served to greatly broaden the base of potential visitors to the city, and at the same time operate as a trap for low-end players Vegas would be just as happy without. It seems that P.T. Barnum vastly underestimated the statical frequency, and it's more like, 'one born every second'.
Vegas does agressiveley market conventions still, and even though the atendees, as a broad group gamble less than the average visitor, their consumption of other high profit-margin hotel offerings can sometimes exceed cash flow projections had the rooms been filled with non-business visitors.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Disallowing an unrelated rider to be tacked on to a bill? Is this a sudden attack of conscious, or a sudden attack of campaign contributions?
But won't you think of the children?!??!!?
MY GOD, WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!??!?!?!
Please, nanny government, please make my decisions for me because I'm a complete and utter retard and can't make them on my own.
Nanny government speaking, how many I help you?
"May I gamble"? Why, dear, go gamble all you want. It's a free country. Just don't neglect your responsiblities, or Nanny will get angry with you.
If you fail to honour your commmitment to your children's future due to gambling addiction, drug addiction, or any other problem that takes your primary focus off your primary job AS a parent(raising your children to grow up to be a decent set of honest, law abiding citizens), Nanny Government WILL call in her Child Services department, and take your kids to a safe place where they can get be educated to grow up to be more responsible citizens than you.
See? Nanny Government thinks of the children.
Make sure you to do, too, okay, dear?
they don't have a choice. Amendments to bills can be added by vote or in committee. They can only complain.
This is nonsense. The Warner/McCain/etc bill is a total capitulation to the Bush/Cheney administration. The whole 'we're so independent, we're standing up to teh Prez!' thing is a bullshit kabuki dance intended to get McCain some independent cred for the 2008 presidential election in exchange for being considerably more publicly sympathetic to the theocratic agenda of the far right than he has been in the past.
Aside from legalizing torture, the bill effectively eliminates habeas corpus, an important principle of law enshrined in the main body of the US Constitution itself. Eliminating habeas corpus means that the administration can jail you indefinitely simply by calling you as a terrorist. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, but here it is, in one tidy package.
How can a former torture victim like McCain roll over like this? Easy: he's selfish, he's a far-right wingnut (not a centrist -- look at his voting record), and he's personally never going to be tortured again, so what does he care? He wants to be president, and that's all that matters to him.
Warner is a damn liar like the rest of them. And so is McCain. Remember in 2008.
E-mail ranks low on the list because it is so easy to send. People can send (and do) large batches of email (10,000's when some website organizes some campaign) that basically say the same thing (and is often incorrect on the issue), and just tack names out of the phone book on them. Also, most email has no information on / in it that allows politicians to see where it is from (location wise). That is why email / faxes weight low (you might not like it, but it is a fact of life).
Handwritten mail, that is clean and legible is important because it allows communication back with the constituent - and can create an environment in which dialogue is possible. This dialogue allows people here to communicate easier w/ people back home.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
How about introducing a bill which is only about online gambling and having people vote on it? Complaining about not being allowed to create a garbage bill doesn't seem kosher.
a kitten get's tortured somewhere.
New Flash: Dinosaurs Still Extinct! (Full story at 11:00!)
Comment of the year
I was mistaken, the term 'criminal combatant' is not used officially by the Bush Administration, but your refutation is disingenuous, and even more error ridden than my misstatement.
Instead of 'criminal combatant' the Bush Administration seems to prefer "unlawful enemy combatant", which also carries the implication that these humans are held as criminal actors, does it not? They are certainly defined by more than your truncated "enemy combatant", because that would not in any way distinguish them from POWs, and the Administration created an unconstitutional third class, attempting to place these humans outside the reach of the rule of law.
On November 29, 2001, Mr. Bush, speaking at the U.S. Attorneys Conference, clearly stated that these individuals are criminal actors, and then posits that he, of and by himself, has the ability to abrogate their natural rights:
Mr. Bush's sole legitimising force is the US Constitution, and he has now twice solemnly sworn to uphold and protect it, yet works to destroy it by claiming a President can lawfully act outside of its constraints. The American President is not above the Supreme Law of the land. Bush engages in tyranny when claiming this.
Ari Fleischer danced a situationalist jig during a White House Press Briefing on January 28, 2002:
It still does not matter if this is indeed a different era, or just a time of an incompetent executive, The US Constitution Article VI; clause 2 guides:
Clearly the Geneva Conventions are the Supreme Law of the Land, and since under the Conventions a High Contracting Party is restrained from withdrawing from them during a time of war, Bush violated the Constitution in his detainee determination. I will address that issue later.
The US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper, speaking at Chatham House in London on February 20, 2002, clearly defined them as criminal actors, then went on to claim that Due Process of Law does not apply to them:
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
For the longest time it was getting "delayed" after the anthrax scare.
-n/t-
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
And the best part is they're really hard (if not impossible) to challenge!
Hooray for executive abuses!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
It is now official. Bill Frist confirms: Online poker is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered online poker community when IDC confirmed that online poker market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that online poker has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. online poker is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent World Poker Tour Texas Holdem survey.
You don't need to be Greg Raymer to predict online poker's future. The hand writing is on the wall: online poker faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for online poker because online poker is dying. Things are looking very bad for online poker. As many of us are already aware, online poker continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
PartyPoker is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core donkeys. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time PartyPoker players Doyle Brunson and Chris Moneymaker only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: PartyPoker is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
PokerStars leader Lee Jones states that there are 70000 players on Pokerstars. How many users of Bodog are there? Let's see. The number of PokerStars versus Bodog posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Bodog users. UB posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Pokerstars posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of UB. A recent article put Doyle's Room at about 80 percent of the online poker market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Bodog users. This is consistent with the number of Bodog Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of poor customer service, confusing emails, monster rakes and so on, PartyPoker went out of business and was taken over by Full Tilt who run another troubled cardroom. Now Full Tilt is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that online poker has steadily declined in market share. online poker is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If online poker is to survive at all it will be among hard core poker addicts. Online poker continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, online poker is dead.
Fact: online poker is dead