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Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act
Shining Celebi writes "U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled in favor of the ACLU and struck down a portion of the revised USA PATRIOT Act this morning, forcing investigators to go through the courts to obtain approval before ordering ISPs to give up information on customers, instead of just sending them a National Security Letter. In the words of Judge Marrero, this use of National Security Letters 'offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers.'"
This act is contrary to everything that makes America who it is. At least they had the marginally good sense to put a sunset on it. I think they knew it would be kicked out at some point anyway. Good riddance. Patriot Act supporters are whats wrong in America.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Courts these days have very little to do with a codified rule of law - look at all of the Supreme Court cases where major changes in national course have been made by a single person voting along party lines.
This ruling is inevitably going to be appealed, since the government has unlimited funds to drag things through court indefinitely (zero accoutability) and will eventually be brought before the USSC where it will probably be ultimately overturned on a 5-4 vote along party lines. Personally, I think that any case that isn't decided by a margin of at least three should never be allowed to be considered as precedent, and that if a judicial panel can't rule by at least a margin of two then the law should be immediately thrown out as being too vague.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
I find the ACLU terribly racist (believing people should be grouped together rather than be individuals) and unconcerned with real direction of freedom from force.
For me, I prefer the Institute for Justice, where I donate my money towards real lawyers who get out and trample on the State that tries to trample on us. I'd never give to the ACLU, which has a history of supporting aggressive government growth when it appeals to them, versus the IJ which works against government in ever lawsuit it files or every defendant it defends.
IMO that's a BIG problem. It means essentially that they can pass any unconstitutional law and SCOTUS will take four years before they'll strike it down as unconstitutional. That IMO is really bad.
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Various parts of The Government Intrusion Act have been struck down over the years, right from the time it was first passed. I was hoping they'd let it just go away through its sunset clause, but they rammed a new version through. So now we start the process anew... go after one part at a time. It may take a while, but it will all eventually go away because Congress and the President overstepped their constitutional authority.
OCO is Loco
One man's terrorist is another man's patriot. It's all a matter of perspective.
It is Gulliani that I would fear with the Patriot Act available to him. He's got "fascist wannabe" written all over him.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I pay my taxes. I do not in any way wish to support the ACLU.
For example, a courthouse has a display of 15 of history's preeminant lawgivers. Among them, is Jesus. ACLU is trying to get rid of the Jesus image. I can't say I agree with that. Jesus is up there with 15 of history's preeminant lawgivers, IMO. Makes sense. He promoted peace and justice, things you want in a courthouse. Or the ethiopian food fight. Were it about Republicans, or about the plight of white overage Americans, the ACLU wouldn't care.
Are those 2 (very recent) examples really what you want your tax dollars going towards? I'd classify it as pork. There are so many things that rank higher in the world of 'civil liberties', the ACLU, from what I have seen, nitpicks the little things that really don't matter. If pictures offend you, you have bigger problems.
your forgetting that there are two court systems in the us. Criminal Courts, and the Court of Public Opinion. The Court of Public Opinion is headed by news organizations who will refer to someone who murdered 5 people in front of 20 witnesses and 2 cameras as the "alleged Murderer" yet treat any celebrity or person that is a suspect in a crime they don't like as guilty.
We in this great country prefer the Court of Public Opinion, because it gives 40 seconds to one side of the story, 10 seconds to the other side to show their not biased, and 10 seconds of the newscasters own disgust or personal opinion. That way, we get the whole court of public opinion case over with in 1 Minute, instead of months of boring details like evidence in Criminal Court!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
The unorganized militia, which every man not a member of the regular armed forces belongs to.
U.S. code - Title 10, Section 311:
Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
"I don't go to church, I want the portion of my taxes that supports those churches back."
You get that back. Since you are taxed "zero" for churches, you get back "zero".
What planet do you live on?
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
The worst part is that the local DA and the police know it is illegal to do this and do it anyway.
Personally I think we need both the ACLU and the NRA, and as many other groups that want to fight for our civil liberties.
(a) How much would BMS have been able to develop the drug for had they paid for it rather than the government? Was government research actually more effecient, or would we have been better off just having BMS do it?
(b) How many unsuccessful drugs have BMS have attempted, and how much have they lost persuing them? How many of those drugs were unsuccessful because the FDA didn't approve them, even if there are people for whom using it would be worth the risk? Generally, how much money is spent by pharmaceutical companies on unsuccessful drugs for every successful drug?
(c) How many drugs does this scenario actually relate to? Is this exception or the norm?
I think you have to ask all of those questions before concluding that the government is a useful vehicle for sustainable medicine development.
It's not 'unpossible', it's in place. Know what a telephone switch is? A computer. Know how easy it is to divert and filter packets going through a computer? Trivial. Know how hard it is to have those packets analysed by the switch, or optionally, another computer the packets are forwarded to? Also trivial. Where it gets human-intensive is the second order analysis, when the computer flags stuff for human eyes to look over. That takes a bit of programming to get right. Now, Fed programmers may not be the brightest of the bright, but there's a lot of them. Given enough time, I have zero doubt they can write filtering programs. And sometimes, they might even get one that works. You're simply not thinking in large enough terms. The Feds have trillions of dollars to play with. Diverting a couple billion to handle the task is no big thing for them.
Again, look at the big picture. Throw enough money at a problem, you'll come up with something.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
There's a massive and powerful organisation entirely devoted to the Second Amendment, the NRA. They're likely better at it than the ACLU ever could be. In short, you can have your cake and eat it too - but now you're bitching that you get two cakes instead of one.