To be even more pedantic, the life mentioned in Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not a right to live, but your right to control your own destiny or die trying. That is where liberty and pursuit of happiness come into play. It is only limited by your abilities and resources due to the life you created for yourself.
It's a combination of the life you created for yourself and circumstances. For example my life is probably much better due to my parents decision to emigrate to a new land with much better opportunities. The kid who was born to an alcoholic mother who was drunk throughout her pregnancy is at a huge disadvantage in creating much of a life for themselves due to brain damage.
The concept of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not about what a person is entitled to. If that was the case, the very first congress would have instituted welfare. It wasn't until the early 1900s that it became part of the political landscape and that wasn't because the sudden invention of TV or Radio and congress somehow knew some of the people were in need. No, the concept is about what you can attempt to strive for and achieve.
Actually one of the driving forces behind the American revolution was welfare in the form of land. Americans had a sense of entitlement to all that land to the west and the government made it possible to cheat or kill the occupants and take it.
The money will go to the politicians instead. Costs a lot of money to get elected and the return on investing in some politicians is probably better then most investments. I guess you can argue that the politicians will spend the money but it is sorta like arguing that breaking windows is good for the economy as it employs glaziers.
They are different from totalitarian States, upside down even. Instead of the State controlling corporations, corporations control the State. Instead of politically motivating the people through youth organizations and such, they push for the population to be politically apathetic. Instead of mocking democracy, they pretend that they are the ultimate in democracy. Exactly the opposite of most totalitarian States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
OK, I'd agree that it is worth not convicting people who are innocent.
The appeal is not heard by a jury, but if the appeal court decides that there was an error of law that led to an acquittal, the acquittal can be thrown out and a new jury trial can happen. All the judge can do is guess about jury nullification as the juries here also don't [usually] write opinions. If juries keep letting an obvious guilty person off, the crown will usually give up as it doesn't look good. The most famous case was Morgentaler who started operating abortion clinics. No jury would find him guilty even though the fact that he was illegally doing abortions was admitted and the argument was as much about the law with his defence being necessity, as a Doctor, safe guarding the health of people overrode the law. Interestingly the juries got quicker each time in acquitting him, taking only an hour the last time. Eventually we got a bill of rights added to the Constitution (1982) and the Supreme Court in a split decision threw the law out as it interfered with our right to security of person. To this day we don't have an abortion law.
Generally in Canada, judges will throwout laws and/or convictions based on the Charter of Rights. Recent examples include refusing to follow minimum sentences (conviction stands but sentence is close to zero rather then the mandated 2 years or whatever) and a natives conviction for manslaughter being thrown out due to the all white jury not consisting of a jury of peers (the city had a habit of all white juries even though there was a sizeable native population). The crown often doesn't appeal these decisions as they don't want a higher court agreeing and making precedent.
Strictly speaking, an unconstitutional law should never make it to the jury as the Judge is supposed to dismiss the case due to unconstitutionality...
"Should never" and "does never" are two entirely different things. Again: "It is a last ditch" defense, not a first line of defense. Further, the John Jay quote addresses this directly. Courts are presumed better judges of law, but juries also hold that power.
I think it would be better to use unconscionable law rather then unconstitutionality as there are more rights then listed in any constitution and rights are always a balance, eg right of free speech vs noise laws limiting someone from standing outside your property all night with a megaphone practicing free speech. Finding the line can be difficult at times and if the government goes overboard by limiting speech in a park in the daytime with a noise law then the jury would be in its right to nullify.
The real problem can be when the jury decides the law based on their morals.
Interesting that you should say that.
Attributed to John Adams:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
So much variety in religions and their accompanying morals. Ethics is a better word but there is still a variety in ethics.
Setting religion aside, if jurors approach their role as mere automatons, they cannot fulfill their solemn duty as a check on the government. If government defines what is right, and what is wrong, then who is to stop them? Juries. They must have some compass to work from to determine if the government has overstepped its bounds. The constitution is great, but does not presume to be a full list of freedoms granted to man. This compass must be a shared set of ethics (not religion) that our nation rests upon.
Often nullification has been used to not convict a white man who obviously killed a black man.
I'm aware of that. Equally dismaying, it is more likely to be used today by a single juror to cause a hung-jury, getting a black murderer off. (varies by state)
This is an inherent flaw in the system. In fact, it's an inherent flaw in any system run by humans to protect human rights and administer justice at the same time. If the power were reserved to judges, then it would be the racial prejudices (etc) of judges that caused miscarriages of justice, not that of jurors. The system is supposed to err on the side of caution and false-negatives, instead of false-positives. Those false-negatives can stink pretty bad, sometimes.
Yes, that is a fundamental problem with nullification, nullification based on tribalism rather then a law being unconscionable or applied in an unconscionable manner. I don't think we're in much disagreement and what there is is as much culture as I'm a Canadian and nullification is harder up here as the appeals process is considered part of the trial so it is possible for the government to overturn a nullification on appeal without invoking double jeopardy. As you even stated, it is a last ditch defence and should not be used lightly. I still think that unconstitutional is not the best description for a bad law as constitutions are not perfect and even need to be updated occasionally.
I thought that there was paper gold as well. There was real gold in the form of Eagles which raises another problem with a metallic based currency. What is the exchange rate between silver and gold? Are those 10 silver dollars equal to that gold $10 piece? Is it the same value in other markets? Countries have been screwed when all their gold or silver left the country due to being worth more somewhere else.
Paranoia has shrunk the size of the bills over the years. Someone might do something illegal with that $1000 or $10000 bill. There still are a few $10000 bills around, a Vegas casino IIRC used to exhibit 100 of them.
Speaking of old... I'm fairly sure if somebody pulled a Reagan era $100 note from a matress somewhere, it's still spendable. Anti-counterfeit measures are only good as the oldest version of currency still being accepted.
Here in Canada most stores won't take old large ($50-$100) bills so you have to take them to a bank. The bank tellers usually have enough experience to spot most counterfeits.
The claim is that there were more paper dollars then there was actual silver. If the government issues (numbers made up) $10 million in silver certificates and only has $5 million in bullion you can not exchange it all for silver. The gamble is that half the people won't actually try to exchange their paper for silver and it is a pretty good gamble. I heard an interview with someone who figured even now that there is about 7 times the amount of paper gold as real gold. Whether true or not I don't know but it is easy to believe.
Strictly speaking, an unconstitutional law should never make it to the jury as the Judge is supposed to dismiss the case due to unconstitutionality and often the jury doesn't really have the training to decide on constitutionality except in obvious cases. The real problem can be when the jury decides the law based on their morals. Often nullification has been used to not convict a white man who obviously killed a black man.
Are you seriously saying that a co-op is not collective ownership? Or perhaps the mill down the road that the workers got together and bought collectively when the owner was going to close it down? Are you also seriously saying that the cotton plantations were not capitalist, where someone privately owned the capital in the form of land and everything on it including the workers? As a member of a local co-op and also as a member of a local credit union I have choices. As an owned slave the plantation worker had no choices. Even if he ran away the State would capture him and return him to his owner. The idea is to get away from government coercion, as the government is too easily corrupted, whether by authoritarian community leaders or authoritarian capitalists. Just because American Libertarians generally believe in property, which was usually stolen at some point, doesn't mean that that is the only flavour of Libertarianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
Huh? Socialism takes many forms including credit unions instead of banks, co-ops instead of for profit companies, neither of which is slavery. Same with capitalism, you can have people freely interacting or as America showed, a capitalist system of slavery and theft all with the backing of the State. Taking people to another land and selling them for profit to work rich peoples plantation is almost the definition of slavery, same with claiming someones land as your own and taking it with force of arms.
Actually the jury found there was not enough evidence to convict. Whether Zimmerman was actually guilty will never be known due to lack of witnesses and such.
Which UK citizens make a big deal out of being British subjects? The few Irish without Irish citizenship who are still considered British subjects? Anyways the Queen is only part of the government with the major part being Parliament and the major part of Parliament being the House of Commons who are elected by UK citizens and responsible to them. And the Queen herself serves the people and if she screws up she can be removed. As recently as 1936 a King was encouraged to quit as he had fascist tendencies and it was considered that he wouldn't serve the people well. At one time being a British subject was important if you were a Canadian, Australian, etc citizen as it allowed mobility around the Commonwealth.
There also seems to be many people who have no idea of what socialism means. A socialist idea is that it is in societies interest to protect individual rights whereas a right wing police state might have the idea that the rights of the State override individual rights. My socialist country has this in the Constitution,
13. A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.
Whereas in a right wing government such as run by General Pinochet, trying to exercise individual rights unless a member of the ruling class could be a death sentence. The problem is authoritarianism, whether from the right or left which is why right wing countries such as Saudi Arabia are not bastions of liberty
Consider a drug like alcohol, addictive, deadly in large quantities, deadly in prolonged use with some painful deaths such as liver shutdown, causes users to get really stupid and often times violent. It would be way cheaper to wage a war on alcohol then to have it legal and regularized.
You can always push for Article the First to be ratified and finish ratifying the original 12 amendments. You'd have a representative for every 50,000 people so about 6000 representatives. Harder to bribe them all and more responsive to those who they represent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_the_first
Why do people pick on the poor wolf? The sheep in their fear have taken over the government, spy on everything they can, have created the largest armed force in the world, all because they're scared. We now have tyranny of the minority.
I don't see any way to change the styles, or remove the pics. I use my browser in windowed mode, at about 420x260 resolution so I can read a story while waiting for my IDE to finish building a project but not look like I'm goofing off all day. At that resolution, I don't see any controls except the four horizontal bars in a square, which only allows me to login when I click on it.
I don't see anything across the top besides Slashdot, News for Nerds and an icon for mobile on my usual sized window, probably a bit larger then yours. Clicking maximize (1280x1024) I get the usual menu across the top but still no way to change to classic mode. The beta is really a killer for those of us on dial-up.
Or who funded the anti-hemp movement (lots of cotton farmers).
Actually one particular media mogul by the name of Hearst who had heavily invested in pulp paper combined with parts of government who had gained much power during prohibition and wanted to keep it after prohibition was repealed.
Slashdot Mirror
To be even more pedantic, the life mentioned in Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not a right to live, but your right to control your own destiny or die trying. That is where liberty and pursuit of happiness come into play. It is only limited by your abilities and resources due to the life you created for yourself.
It's a combination of the life you created for yourself and circumstances. For example my life is probably much better due to my parents decision to emigrate to a new land with much better opportunities.
The kid who was born to an alcoholic mother who was drunk throughout her pregnancy is at a huge disadvantage in creating much of a life for themselves due to brain damage.
The concept of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not about what a person is entitled to. If that was the case, the very first congress would have instituted welfare. It wasn't until the early 1900s that it became part of the political landscape and that wasn't because the sudden invention of TV or Radio and congress somehow knew some of the people were in need. No, the concept is about what you can attempt to strive for and achieve.
Actually one of the driving forces behind the American revolution was welfare in the form of land. Americans had a sense of entitlement to all that land to the west and the government made it possible to cheat or kill the occupants and take it.
The money will go to the politicians instead. Costs a lot of money to get elected and the return on investing in some politicians is probably better then most investments.
I guess you can argue that the politicians will spend the money but it is sorta like arguing that breaking windows is good for the economy as it employs glaziers.
They are different from totalitarian States, upside down even. Instead of the State controlling corporations, corporations control the State. Instead of politically motivating the people through youth organizations and such, they push for the population to be politically apathetic. Instead of mocking democracy, they pretend that they are the ultimate in democracy.
Exactly the opposite of most totalitarian States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's true, luck had a lot to do with it as well.
OK, I'd agree that it is worth not convicting people who are innocent.
The appeal is not heard by a jury, but if the appeal court decides that there was an error of law that led to an acquittal, the acquittal can be thrown out and a new jury trial can happen. All the judge can do is guess about jury nullification as the juries here also don't [usually] write opinions.
If juries keep letting an obvious guilty person off, the crown will usually give up as it doesn't look good.
The most famous case was Morgentaler who started operating abortion clinics. No jury would find him guilty even though the fact that he was illegally doing abortions was admitted and the argument was as much about the law with his defence being necessity, as a Doctor, safe guarding the health of people overrode the law. Interestingly the juries got quicker each time in acquitting him, taking only an hour the last time.
Eventually we got a bill of rights added to the Constitution (1982) and the Supreme Court in a split decision threw the law out as it interfered with our right to security of person. To this day we don't have an abortion law.
Generally in Canada, judges will throwout laws and/or convictions based on the Charter of Rights. Recent examples include refusing to follow minimum sentences (conviction stands but sentence is close to zero rather then the mandated 2 years or whatever) and a natives conviction for manslaughter being thrown out due to the all white jury not consisting of a jury of peers (the city had a habit of all white juries even though there was a sizeable native population). The crown often doesn't appeal these decisions as they don't want a higher court agreeing and making precedent.
"Should never" and "does never" are two entirely different things. Again: "It is a last ditch" defense, not a first line of defense. Further, the John Jay quote addresses this directly. Courts are presumed better judges of law, but juries also hold that power.
I think it would be better to use unconscionable law rather then unconstitutionality as there are more rights then listed in any constitution and rights are always a balance, eg right of free speech vs noise laws limiting someone from standing outside your property all night with a megaphone practicing free speech. Finding the line can be difficult at times and if the government goes overboard by limiting speech in a park in the daytime with a noise law then the jury would be in its right to nullify.
Interesting that you should say that.
So much variety in religions and their accompanying morals. Ethics is a better word but there is still a variety in ethics.
Setting religion aside, if jurors approach their role as mere automatons, they cannot fulfill their solemn duty as a check on the government. If government defines what is right, and what is wrong, then who is to stop them? Juries. They must have some compass to work from to determine if the government has overstepped its bounds. The constitution is great, but does not presume to be a full list of freedoms granted to man. This compass must be a shared set of ethics (not religion) that our nation rests upon.
I'm aware of that. Equally dismaying, it is more likely to be used today by a single juror to cause a hung-jury, getting a black murderer off. (varies by state)
This is an inherent flaw in the system. In fact, it's an inherent flaw in any system run by humans to protect human rights and administer justice at the same time. If the power were reserved to judges, then it would be the racial prejudices (etc) of judges that caused miscarriages of justice, not that of jurors. The system is supposed to err on the side of caution and false-negatives, instead of false-positives. Those false-negatives can stink pretty bad, sometimes.
Yes, that is a fundamental problem with nullification, nullification based on tribalism rather then a law being unconscionable or applied in an unconscionable manner.
I don't think we're in much disagreement and what there is is as much culture as I'm a Canadian and nullification is harder up here as the appeals process is considered part of the trial so it is possible for the government to overturn a nullification on appeal without invoking double jeopardy.
As you even stated, it is a last ditch defence and should not be used lightly.
I still think that unconstitutional is not the best description for a bad law as constitutions are not perfect and even need to be updated occasionally.
I thought that there was paper gold as well. There was real gold in the form of Eagles which raises another problem with a metallic based currency. What is the exchange rate between silver and gold? Are those 10 silver dollars equal to that gold $10 piece? Is it the same value in other markets? Countries have been screwed when all their gold or silver left the country due to being worth more somewhere else.
Paranoia has shrunk the size of the bills over the years. Someone might do something illegal with that $1000 or $10000 bill.
There still are a few $10000 bills around, a Vegas casino IIRC used to exhibit 100 of them.
You can't shoot someone with it.
Wouldn't gold make wonderful bullets? Denser then lead, it should pack quite a punch.
Speaking of old... I'm fairly sure if somebody pulled a Reagan era $100 note from a matress somewhere, it's still spendable. Anti-counterfeit measures are only good as the oldest version of currency still being accepted.
Here in Canada most stores won't take old large ($50-$100) bills so you have to take them to a bank. The bank tellers usually have enough experience to spot most counterfeits.
The claim is that there were more paper dollars then there was actual silver. If the government issues (numbers made up) $10 million in silver certificates and only has $5 million in bullion you can not exchange it all for silver. The gamble is that half the people won't actually try to exchange their paper for silver and it is a pretty good gamble.
I heard an interview with someone who figured even now that there is about 7 times the amount of paper gold as real gold. Whether true or not I don't know but it is easy to believe.
Strictly speaking, an unconstitutional law should never make it to the jury as the Judge is supposed to dismiss the case due to unconstitutionality and often the jury doesn't really have the training to decide on constitutionality except in obvious cases.
The real problem can be when the jury decides the law based on their morals. Often nullification has been used to not convict a white man who obviously killed a black man.
Are you seriously saying that a co-op is not collective ownership? Or perhaps the mill down the road that the workers got together and bought collectively when the owner was going to close it down?
Are you also seriously saying that the cotton plantations were not capitalist, where someone privately owned the capital in the form of land and everything on it including the workers?
As a member of a local co-op and also as a member of a local credit union I have choices. As an owned slave the plantation worker had no choices. Even if he ran away the State would capture him and return him to his owner.
The idea is to get away from government coercion, as the government is too easily corrupted, whether by authoritarian community leaders or authoritarian capitalists. Just because American Libertarians generally believe in property, which was usually stolen at some point, doesn't mean that that is the only flavour of Libertarianism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
Huh? Socialism takes many forms including credit unions instead of banks, co-ops instead of for profit companies, neither of which is slavery. Same with capitalism, you can have people freely interacting or as America showed, a capitalist system of slavery and theft all with the backing of the State. Taking people to another land and selling them for profit to work rich peoples plantation is almost the definition of slavery, same with claiming someones land as your own and taking it with force of arms.
Actually the jury found there was not enough evidence to convict. Whether Zimmerman was actually guilty will never be known due to lack of witnesses and such.
Which UK citizens make a big deal out of being British subjects? The few Irish without Irish citizenship who are still considered British subjects?
Anyways the Queen is only part of the government with the major part being Parliament and the major part of Parliament being the House of Commons who are elected by UK citizens and responsible to them. And the Queen herself serves the people and if she screws up she can be removed. As recently as 1936 a King was encouraged to quit as he had fascist tendencies and it was considered that he wouldn't serve the people well.
At one time being a British subject was important if you were a Canadian, Australian, etc citizen as it allowed mobility around the Commonwealth.
There also seems to be many people who have no idea of what socialism means. A socialist idea is that it is in societies interest to protect individual rights whereas a right wing police state might have the idea that the rights of the State override individual rights. My socialist country has this in the Constitution,
13. A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.
Whereas in a right wing government such as run by General Pinochet, trying to exercise individual rights unless a member of the ruling class could be a death sentence.
The problem is authoritarianism, whether from the right or left which is why right wing countries such as Saudi Arabia are not bastions of liberty
Consider a drug like alcohol, addictive, deadly in large quantities, deadly in prolonged use with some painful deaths such as liver shutdown, causes users to get really stupid and often times violent.
It would be way cheaper to wage a war on alcohol then to have it legal and regularized.
You can always push for Article the First to be ratified and finish ratifying the original 12 amendments. You'd have a representative for every 50,000 people so about 6000 representatives. Harder to bribe them all and more responsive to those who they represent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_the_first
Why do people pick on the poor wolf? The sheep in their fear have taken over the government, spy on everything they can, have created the largest armed force in the world, all because they're scared. We now have tyranny of the minority.
I don't see any way to change the styles, or remove the pics. I use my browser in windowed mode, at about 420x260 resolution so I can read a story while waiting for my IDE to finish building a project but not look like I'm goofing off all day. At that resolution, I don't see any controls except the four horizontal bars in a square, which only allows me to login when I click on it.
I don't see anything across the top besides Slashdot, News for Nerds and an icon for mobile on my usual sized window, probably a bit larger then yours. Clicking maximize (1280x1024) I get the usual menu across the top but still no way to change to classic mode.
The beta is really a killer for those of us on dial-up.
regulations are there to give a venear of legitimacy to governments so the have an excuse to take your money.
Nothing in the constitution mentions trichonosis.
--
roman_mir blocked by the mod's again
The founders probably thought it was a States right to regulate trichinosis. Lots of regulations are done at a more local level.
Heroin is dirt cheap to produce. If an addict can support his habit easily then most of the problems with addiction go away.
Alcohol is a lot worse for you then heroin, at least in the quantities that an addict consumes.
Or who funded the anti-hemp movement (lots of cotton farmers).
Actually one particular media mogul by the name of Hearst who had heavily invested in pulp paper combined with parts of government who had gained much power during prohibition and wanted to keep it after prohibition was repealed.