Yes, it would be opening a huge can of worms. The only good thing is that with the required super majority requirement to amend, only the simplest amendments, such as my Air Force example, are likely to pass.
The 4th ALREADY covers electronic documents. 'Papers and EFFECTS'.
Your Supreme Court has thought differently at times. Olmstead v. United States (1928) basically ruled that wiretapping was not a search as no trespass had happened and electrons are not physical property. While Katz v. United States (1967) ruled that the 4th was as much about privacy as physically entering your property and overruled Olmstead, it was not unanimous and to quote Justice Black in his dissenting opinion,
It is significant that such a rule [protecting electronic privacy] appears nowhere in the text of the Constitution. In fact, this is precisely the kind of judgment the Olmstead Court refused to make because it considered such an extension of the meaning of "search and seizure" to be the proper jurisdiction of Congress....In his dissenting opinion, Justice Black claims that the decision rendered by the Katz Court effectively amounts to a revision of the Fourth Amendment.
While I agree that electronic documents should be protected, there will always be Justices who disagree based on there being no mention of electronics in the Constitution. Add it and that argument goes away. As for CP, that is not my argument but once again the American Supreme Court concluded in Osborne v Ohio (1990) that someone can be sent to jail for merely possessing it. Then in United States v Williams (2008) (about the Protect Act of 2003) writing for the Court, Justice Scalia found the law to be a constitutionally permissible effort to criminalize the proposing of an illegal transaction. Scalia reasoned that because child pornography is not protected speech, speech that proposes to sell or provide such material is no more protected by the First Amendment than would be speech that proposed to sell or provide illegal drugs. Justices Souter and Ginsburg dissenting, finding the law substantially overbroad. Then of course there are the various rulings on obscenity and I'd guess communications for buying and selling sex between consenting adults. So don't scream at me for pointing out the actions of your government, instead remember that while the writers of the Constitution were still around they illegalized your ranting about the police state (IIRC The Alien and Sedition Act)
The truth is that the old document can use some updates. Examples include adding electronic documents to the 4th, explicitly listing the cases where government can limit speech such as national security and perhaps child porn. These are cases where the courts have extended the Constitution (or didn't) in ad hoc ways. Discussion can also start on issues like is it OK for businesses to violate your rights, and if so, is it OK for them to do it for the government. Then there are questions about whether you own your data. The American Constitution is a fine document but has suffered bitrot and you get the courts making rulings like how the 1st only protects some speech which sets a precedent that can be extended in the future. Even simple things like is the Air Force constitutional. The constitution mentions defence but gives different powers to Congress to form a navy and an army with the idea of a standing army discouraged (at the time it was recognized that a standing army often led to tyranny and a militia was a superior option). Would have been really easy to amend the Constitution to allow an Air force rather then once again depending on the courts interpretation. There are other parts such as the Interstate commerce clause that may be better defined as well.
Depends on how you define local. My Provincial government has defined local as the distance across the Province, about a 1000 miles, which in the other direction includes California. Now being dependent on California for food, so we can pave over some of the best farmland in the country is stupid as the raising prices show, my previous Federal government was fine with the idea of getting all our food from China, which really seems stupid. Especially with a government that doesn't believe in food inspection as the market will sort it out. It's also amazing how much food does currently come from China. Chinese carrots, wtf. If New York City can get a good amount of food from 500 or even a thousand miles away, it still seems like an improvement from shipping it half way around the world from countries that really don't give a shit about the environment and probably think that lead is great as it increases the weight of the product.
I guess I should have used the sarcasm tag, though sadly there are a lot of Christian sects, with a lot of power, who honestly do believe that God rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked by using wealth. I believe that Gandhi said something like "I really like your Christ and his teachings, not so much his followers"
If your deductions mean that you owe negative taxes, it means that you owe zero taxes. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Gates income taxes are close to zero as I doubt that he has any earnings, just capital gains with a lot of write-offs. Shit, I've ran a small business where the tax burden was basically negative (from investing savings and having very little profit) at first. Of course I didn't get the negative back but at least where I am there is income averaging, though not for wage earners. If you're a business or a foundation, generally the tax system works in your favour compared to just a wage earner and the parent was talking about wage earners, "When you grow up and get a job and pay tax you will realise that you don't get taxed on what you own, you get taxed on what you earn" were the ACs words
When you become one of the class of people who don't need a job, you'll find that with zero income from wages means that $5 tax cut puts you into negative tax country.
On a practical basis, get real. Passing nuclear secrets is attempted murder and an act of war.
Of course it is, which is why most countries have limits on free speech such as no giving out secrets to do with national security. Only America has no limits written into their constitution and then has unwritten limits which just encourages the fucking politicians to ignore their constitution. Once they're used to ignoring the highest law in the land it comes easy to ignore the other laws. And the American people just go along with it and keep voting the same arseholes in over and over. Free speech is really important and should have the minimum limits possible but it turns out there are necessary limits like the old "loose lips sink ships"
and the DJ was talking about the problems he had due to his show also being broadcast in America where there were these restrictions on speech
Those are not restrictions on speech, they are restrictions that are part of the licensing of spectrum for broadcast. He can talk about the "Fuckups" on cable or the Internet all he wants.
It is still restrictions on speech passed by congress, who had no right to do it according to your point below this. Would you be OK with the government restricting speech in public parks, under the name of licensing? You can still practice free speech in your private yard so your speech isn't really restricted.
When you look at certain countries, rights are well defined but ignored. I think the Soviets took this to the extreme with a very good but ignored constitution.
Correct. So do most European constitutions. The US Constitution, however, does not define any rights for the people at all, it does something much better: it defines powers of the government (thirty enumerated powers).
Actually originally it only defined the powers of the Federal government, in a time when the States were much more sovereign. As any fool can see, the American Federal Government barely pays lip service to those 30 enumerated powers and Americans seem very good at rationalizing away the expansions of power outside the 30 enumerated powers.
One famous case was the Rosenbergs or whatever their name was.
The US Constitution authorizes the federal government to do certain things; adjudicating treason is one of those. Whether you consider that an infringement on "free speech" is immaterial.
Actually amendments actually amend (change) the Constitution and just because everyone thinks free speech shouldn't apply in certain cases doesn't mean that free speech no longer exists in those cases.
BUT... it does not matter. In the end it is up to the business whether it will run X or not.
By way of example: if I paid you $10 to put a sign on your lawn saying X would it be wrong for you to refuse to put a sign saying Y on your lawn for $10?
A business is not a person in the UK. In NI a bakery was sued for not wanting to supply a cake with a gay marriage message on it so maybe if the church pursues legal means they might have to. I'm not a lawyer but the law in this area seems quite different in the UK to the USA.
I'm sure that if the bakery had a policy of not putting messages on cakes, they would have won. Same with a policy of not doing wedding cakes. Same with the theatres, their policy is no religion or politics rather then only ads from certain churches and certain political parties.
So the Germans are honest about their restrictions on speech unlike some other countries that have noble constitutions that are routinely ignored. Not long ago, I was listening to the radio and they were talking about a band called the Fuckups (or was it the Fuckheads?) and the DJ was talking about the problems he had due to his show also being broadcast in America where there were these restrictions on speech, to protect the youth,which meant that speech such as shit and even fuck that was legal in my country had to be censored due to the Americans prudish laws about speech designed to "protect youth" and protect the dignity of certain religions. When you look at certain countries, rights are well defined but ignored. I think the Soviets took this to the extreme with a very good but ignored constitution.
America, isn't that the country that has as part of its Constitution that Congress shall make no law restricting speech and yet has executed people for speech? Oh right, it is only some speech that is protected and there are tons of exceptions such as publishing the blue prints for nuclear weapons and giving them to the enemy. Which is better, a country with a noble Constitution that is ignored whenever expedient or a country that is honest about things like national security being a good reason to limit speech?
I thought it was that he wanted to divorce instead of having one of his wives executed. Of course one of the main motivations was the traditionally Christian one of acquiring wealth and power to prove that you're worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven as obviously God rewards the faithful with riches and a variety of wives and punishes the unfaithful with poverty and a nagging shrew for a wife.
The AC makes a good point. Note that the evil countries, excepting N. Korea, are all oil producing countries that have tried to use other currencies then the US$ to sell oil. Saddam it was Euros, Gaddafi, it was a gold based currency. Iran also has been using Euros. America gets a lot of benefits from the Petrol Dollar including printing money like crazy and running a huge debt while having a stable currency and being able to afford a huge military to prop up the Petrol Dollar.
My understanding is that a clerk changed a "less" to a "more" which kind of ruined the intent. Still as written I believe the math can come out to close to 6000 representatives for the current population. The minimum back in the days of 18 million population was 200. The main point is that Congress has already OKed it so it can still pass. BTW, I'm in Canada where with 1/10th the population we have about 3/5ths the representatives and as recently as last month that number increased by close to 10%
There is a proposed amendment to keep the House of Representatives more representative, something that was considered important enough that it was the 1st proposed amendment and should have caused a representative for every 50,000 people. Needs another 27 States to ratify. Just as possible as the original 2nd which finally passed in 1992 as the 27th. Wikipedia had a good article under "Article the First" which unluckily seems to have been dumbed down and redirected to make it hard to find the history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Well when the person only exists due to the State creating them and the person makes insane profits due to special laws the State passes for their benefit and then they make even more insane profits due to the treaties the State forces other countries to sign, perhaps the State should own all that income. Of course the company does have the option of not accepting the person-hood offer from the State along with all the perks and fall back to being a collection of natural people with the same tax structure as the average person and the same responsibilities as the average person including being liable for their decisions.
Have you seen the treaties that Pfizer and the other drug companies have written and are having America push on us (us being various other countries). How much extra profits will these various free trade deals give to Pfizer? I know here in Canada drug prices are supposed to go way up due to the TPP while our freedoms will once again go down. America has many aircraft carriers with which it practices gunboat diplomacy for the benefit of these companies.
It takes more than a lack of empathy to make a sociopath.
Yes, there's also aggression and violence, or at least the genetic alleles for them. They can show up as a murderer or just an asshole.
And a surgeon who operates unnecessarily is not a benefit to society.
Yes, but on the other hand a surgeon who can distance themselves from the fact that they're millimeters away from killing someone and concentrate on doing the job right ca be an advantage. The case I was thinking of was actually a neuroscientist who is a pro-social psychopath, lots of murderers in his family including Lizzie Borden. See eg http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... for an interesting short read.
There are occupations where having a sociopath is an advantage. For example surgeons, where a lack of empathy can be an advantage when cutting into people.
The same sort of thing happened in Canada with wage and price controls leading to fringe benefits such as medical, dental etc being used to lure workers much as in America. Yet we ended up with universal medical coverage. Other examples probably include Australia and New Zealand though I don't know the specifics.
So you're saying that they need to undo the American invasion of Iraq? And do you really approve of the situation in Baltimore and Chicago? I assume yes since you haven't cleaned up your country so you must approve, even if it is only tactically.
Actually I believe it was first used for the germ theory of disease deniers, people who were in denial that little living things could cause illness or even existed and refused to even look in a microscope, little well experiment by washing their hands before entering the operating or birthing room. The history of the germ theory of disease is quite interesting, at first most of the evidence was statistical in nature, acceptance would be expensive and mean the changing of habits so well respected scientists, surgeons and such were in total denial about it as it is expensive to move and fix water supplies, and the very idea of washing your hands before surgery or after using the toilet was revolting to some. Here we are now and most everyone accepts that some diseases are caused by invisible beings and it is a good idea to practice cleanliness.
Yes, being able to run at 1g for up to a month would really open up the solar system with a month of 1g easily taking a ship to Neptune. Even a steady 0.1g would be wonderful and is likely actually possible. Btw, according to http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/... one ship year (1.19 Earth yr) at 1g will put the ship at about 0.56 lyrs and a velocity of 0.78 c with a trip to Centauri (including stopping at the end) taking 3.6 ship years.
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Yes, it would be opening a huge can of worms. The only good thing is that with the required super majority requirement to amend, only the simplest amendments, such as my Air Force example, are likely to pass.
The 4th ALREADY covers electronic documents. 'Papers and EFFECTS'.
Your Supreme Court has thought differently at times. Olmstead v. United States (1928) basically ruled that wiretapping was not a search as no trespass had happened and electrons are not physical property.
While Katz v. United States (1967) ruled that the 4th was as much about privacy as physically entering your property and overruled Olmstead, it was not unanimous and to quote Justice Black in his dissenting opinion,
While I agree that electronic documents should be protected, there will always be Justices who disagree based on there being no mention of electronics in the Constitution. Add it and that argument goes away.
As for CP, that is not my argument but once again the American Supreme Court concluded in Osborne v Ohio (1990) that someone can be sent to jail for merely possessing it. Then in United States v Williams (2008) (about the Protect Act of 2003) writing for the Court, Justice Scalia found the law to be a constitutionally permissible effort to criminalize the proposing of an illegal transaction. Scalia reasoned that because child pornography is not protected speech, speech that proposes to sell or provide such material is no more protected by the First Amendment than would be speech that proposed to sell or provide illegal drugs. Justices Souter and Ginsburg dissenting, finding the law substantially overbroad.
Then of course there are the various rulings on obscenity and I'd guess communications for buying and selling sex between consenting adults.
So don't scream at me for pointing out the actions of your government, instead remember that while the writers of the Constitution were still around they illegalized your ranting about the police state (IIRC The Alien and Sedition Act)
The truth is that the old document can use some updates. Examples include adding electronic documents to the 4th, explicitly listing the cases where government can limit speech such as national security and perhaps child porn. These are cases where the courts have extended the Constitution (or didn't) in ad hoc ways.
Discussion can also start on issues like is it OK for businesses to violate your rights, and if so, is it OK for them to do it for the government. Then there are questions about whether you own your data.
The American Constitution is a fine document but has suffered bitrot and you get the courts making rulings like how the 1st only protects some speech which sets a precedent that can be extended in the future.
Even simple things like is the Air Force constitutional. The constitution mentions defence but gives different powers to Congress to form a navy and an army with the idea of a standing army discouraged (at the time it was recognized that a standing army often led to tyranny and a militia was a superior option). Would have been really easy to amend the Constitution to allow an Air force rather then once again depending on the courts interpretation.
There are other parts such as the Interstate commerce clause that may be better defined as well.
Depends on how you define local. My Provincial government has defined local as the distance across the Province, about a 1000 miles, which in the other direction includes California. Now being dependent on California for food, so we can pave over some of the best farmland in the country is stupid as the raising prices show, my previous Federal government was fine with the idea of getting all our food from China, which really seems stupid. Especially with a government that doesn't believe in food inspection as the market will sort it out.
It's also amazing how much food does currently come from China. Chinese carrots, wtf.
If New York City can get a good amount of food from 500 or even a thousand miles away, it still seems like an improvement from shipping it half way around the world from countries that really don't give a shit about the environment and probably think that lead is great as it increases the weight of the product.
I guess I should have used the sarcasm tag, though sadly there are a lot of Christian sects, with a lot of power, who honestly do believe that God rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked by using wealth.
I believe that Gandhi said something like "I really like your Christ and his teachings, not so much his followers"
If your deductions mean that you owe negative taxes, it means that you owe zero taxes. I wouldn't be surprised if Bill Gates income taxes are close to zero as I doubt that he has any earnings, just capital gains with a lot of write-offs. Shit, I've ran a small business where the tax burden was basically negative (from investing savings and having very little profit) at first. Of course I didn't get the negative back but at least where I am there is income averaging, though not for wage earners.
If you're a business or a foundation, generally the tax system works in your favour compared to just a wage earner and the parent was talking about wage earners, "When you grow up and get a job and pay tax you will realise that you don't get taxed on what you own, you get taxed on what you earn" were the ACs words
When you become one of the class of people who don't need a job, you'll find that with zero income from wages means that $5 tax cut puts you into negative tax country.
On a practical basis, get real. Passing nuclear secrets is attempted murder and an act of war.
Of course it is, which is why most countries have limits on free speech such as no giving out secrets to do with national security. Only America has no limits written into their constitution and then has unwritten limits which just encourages the fucking politicians to ignore their constitution. Once they're used to ignoring the highest law in the land it comes easy to ignore the other laws. And the American people just go along with it and keep voting the same arseholes in over and over.
Free speech is really important and should have the minimum limits possible but it turns out there are necessary limits like the old "loose lips sink ships"
Those are not restrictions on speech, they are restrictions that are part of the licensing of spectrum for broadcast. He can talk about the "Fuckups" on cable or the Internet all he wants.
It is still restrictions on speech passed by congress, who had no right to do it according to your point below this.
Would you be OK with the government restricting speech in public parks, under the name of licensing? You can still practice free speech in your private yard so your speech isn't really restricted.
Actually originally it only defined the powers of the Federal government, in a time when the States were much more sovereign.
As any fool can see, the American Federal Government barely pays lip service to those 30 enumerated powers and Americans seem very good at rationalizing away the expansions of power outside the 30 enumerated powers.
One famous case was the Rosenbergs or whatever their name was.
The US Constitution authorizes the federal government to do certain things; adjudicating treason is one of those. Whether you consider that an infringement on "free speech" is immaterial.
Actually amendments actually amend (change) the Constitution and just because everyone thinks free speech shouldn't apply in certain cases doesn't mean that free speech no longer exists in those cases.
BUT ... it does not matter. In the end it is up to the business whether it will run X or not.
By way of example: if I paid you $10 to put a sign on your lawn saying X would it be wrong for you to refuse to put a sign saying Y on your lawn for $10?
A business is not a person in the UK. In NI a bakery was sued for not wanting to supply a cake with a gay marriage message on it so maybe if the church pursues legal means they might have to. I'm not a lawyer but the law in this area seems quite different in the UK to the USA.
I'm sure that if the bakery had a policy of not putting messages on cakes, they would have won. Same with a policy of not doing wedding cakes. Same with the theatres, their policy is no religion or politics rather then only ads from certain churches and certain political parties.
So the Germans are honest about their restrictions on speech unlike some other countries that have noble constitutions that are routinely ignored.
Not long ago, I was listening to the radio and they were talking about a band called the Fuckups (or was it the Fuckheads?) and the DJ was talking about the problems he had due to his show also being broadcast in America where there were these restrictions on speech, to protect the youth,which meant that speech such as shit and even fuck that was legal in my country had to be censored due to the Americans prudish laws about speech designed to "protect youth" and protect the dignity of certain religions.
When you look at certain countries, rights are well defined but ignored. I think the Soviets took this to the extreme with a very good but ignored constitution.
America, isn't that the country that has as part of its Constitution that Congress shall make no law restricting speech and yet has executed people for speech? Oh right, it is only some speech that is protected and there are tons of exceptions such as publishing the blue prints for nuclear weapons and giving them to the enemy.
Which is better, a country with a noble Constitution that is ignored whenever expedient or a country that is honest about things like national security being a good reason to limit speech?
I thought it was that he wanted to divorce instead of having one of his wives executed. Of course one of the main motivations was the traditionally Christian one of acquiring wealth and power to prove that you're worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven as obviously God rewards the faithful with riches and a variety of wives and punishes the unfaithful with poverty and a nagging shrew for a wife.
The AC makes a good point. Note that the evil countries, excepting N. Korea, are all oil producing countries that have tried to use other currencies then the US$ to sell oil. Saddam it was Euros, Gaddafi, it was a gold based currency. Iran also has been using Euros.
America gets a lot of benefits from the Petrol Dollar including printing money like crazy and running a huge debt while having a stable currency and being able to afford a huge military to prop up the Petrol Dollar.
My understanding is that a clerk changed a "less" to a "more" which kind of ruined the intent. Still as written I believe the math can come out to close to 6000 representatives for the current population. The minimum back in the days of 18 million population was 200.
The main point is that Congress has already OKed it so it can still pass.
BTW, I'm in Canada where with 1/10th the population we have about 3/5ths the representatives and as recently as last month that number increased by close to 10%
There is a proposed amendment to keep the House of Representatives more representative, something that was considered important enough that it was the 1st proposed amendment and should have caused a representative for every 50,000 people. Needs another 27 States to ratify. Just as possible as the original 2nd which finally passed in 1992 as the 27th.
Wikipedia had a good article under "Article the First" which unluckily seems to have been dumbed down and redirected to make it hard to find the history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Well when the person only exists due to the State creating them and the person makes insane profits due to special laws the State passes for their benefit and then they make even more insane profits due to the treaties the State forces other countries to sign, perhaps the State should own all that income. Of course the company does have the option of not accepting the person-hood offer from the State along with all the perks and fall back to being a collection of natural people with the same tax structure as the average person and the same responsibilities as the average person including being liable for their decisions.
Have you seen the treaties that Pfizer and the other drug companies have written and are having America push on us (us being various other countries). How much extra profits will these various free trade deals give to Pfizer? I know here in Canada drug prices are supposed to go way up due to the TPP while our freedoms will once again go down.
America has many aircraft carriers with which it practices gunboat diplomacy for the benefit of these companies.
It takes more than a lack of empathy to make a sociopath.
Yes, there's also aggression and violence, or at least the genetic alleles for them. They can show up as a murderer or just an asshole.
And a surgeon who operates unnecessarily is not a benefit to society.
Yes, but on the other hand a surgeon who can distance themselves from the fact that they're millimeters away from killing someone and concentrate on doing the job right ca be an advantage.
The case I was thinking of was actually a neuroscientist who is a pro-social psychopath, lots of murderers in his family including Lizzie Borden. See eg http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... for an interesting short read.
There are occupations where having a sociopath is an advantage. For example surgeons, where a lack of empathy can be an advantage when cutting into people.
The same sort of thing happened in Canada with wage and price controls leading to fringe benefits such as medical, dental etc being used to lure workers much as in America. Yet we ended up with universal medical coverage.
Other examples probably include Australia and New Zealand though I don't know the specifics.
So you're saying that they need to undo the American invasion of Iraq? And do you really approve of the situation in Baltimore and Chicago? I assume yes since you haven't cleaned up your country so you must approve, even if it is only tactically.
Actually I believe it was first used for the germ theory of disease deniers, people who were in denial that little living things could cause illness or even existed and refused to even look in a microscope, little well experiment by washing their hands before entering the operating or birthing room.
The history of the germ theory of disease is quite interesting, at first most of the evidence was statistical in nature, acceptance would be expensive and mean the changing of habits so well respected scientists, surgeons and such were in total denial about it as it is expensive to move and fix water supplies, and the very idea of washing your hands before surgery or after using the toilet was revolting to some.
Here we are now and most everyone accepts that some diseases are caused by invisible beings and it is a good idea to practice cleanliness.
Yes, being able to run at 1g for up to a month would really open up the solar system with a month of 1g easily taking a ship to Neptune. Even a steady 0.1g would be wonderful and is likely actually possible.
Btw, according to http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/... one ship year (1.19 Earth yr) at 1g will put the ship at about 0.56 lyrs and a velocity of 0.78 c with a trip to Centauri (including stopping at the end) taking 3.6 ship years.