Yes indeed. I have packet sniffers (in fact an entire pen testing OS on USB stick) and a super-duper high-power wifi adapter. I can and have broken WEP and WPA-PSK passwords on some of my neighbors' networks for fun.
I say good luck to anybody trying to crack my setup. They'll need it.
But on the other hand, they can just hook up to my open guest network, and use it as they please. If I notice inordinate traffic, I may investigate or block them.
Only once did I ever catch anyone doing anything "not allowed" on my open wifi. I saw that a neighbor girl was downloading music. I put a.mp3 file where she would find it, disguised as a popular tune. Instead, it was a voice recording, calling her by name and telling her that downloading was not allowed on my public network, and that if I caught her at it again I would ban her. (It was easy to know her name because her network adapter was broadcasting it: "K____'s Computer".
I think it scared the hell out of her. In any case, I never saw her downloading again.
"The wording is a bit bad, but presumably it's a means of combating sex tourism."
"A bit bad"?? It's atrocious. It's overly vague and overly broad.
In terms of illicit, I would suggest that you're odds of getting a jury to convict on any offence sexual or otherwise that isn't actually illegal in the US is somewhere between slim and none, so whether that's what they intended or not that's the likely de facto definition of illicit.
If it wouldn't result in a prosecution, then there's no point in the law.
A law that is not intended to be enforced as written is one of the worst kinds of law, because it allows people to ignore it, and leave it unchallenged, until WHAM!!! it is used against someone the government doesn't like.
So if you do agree with the original poster and think I am wrong, you agree with him that a 30-40 year old should have the right to have sex with a 10 or younger year old... and that is "America" Really?
Um... what? No, not really. I don't see how you got that from what I wrote.
By "you" I didn't mean YOU personally. Pardon me if I wasn't clear. I agree that an "adult standard" other than age is probably unworkable. I was simply saying that there are other kinds of "standards" that would also be unworkable, for some of the same reasons.
"The rest of your post basically boils down to, using age to determine if a person is ready to handle sex is bad (you argued against me saying it's not bad twice now)"
No it doesn't. Not even close. I was simply stating (and I stated it pretty explicitly, in plain English) that the age situation is not as black-and-white as you made it out to be. The "standard" age is not the same everywhere. But that doesn't mean I disagree that it should be based on age. Just that the particular age is (and should be, in my opinion) up to each State.
So, to be clearer: yes, I feel age is the correct standard. But different places have decided on different ages.
"You are arguing a person MUST get a certificate from the government that deems them an adult, and this certificate can not be based on age.
(That is the exact argument the original poster made, and I argued against to him and to you)"
I argued nothing of the sort. You seem to be imagining that I am arguing with you, when I am not. Probably a misunderstanding somewhere.
"I pointed out the state is clearly NOT qualified to determine sexual maturity, and that is exactly why they do not do so and set an arbitrary line of "Xth birthday"
Only the original poster (and now you) are saying I am wrong, the state IS qualified and MUST issue certificates on a per-individual basis because that is the only method to be factually correct."
YES!! Except for the "now you" part. I was agreeing with you. I simply pointed out that the same objections apply to other areas too.
So to answer your question, who decides who/what is competent or proficient?
You are, since I claimed the state can't possibly do this, which is why they use the current system of age that clearly doesn't reflect if a person is able to handle adult situations like sex or not.
There is no argument about that here, and I know what caused you to imagine one. Again, I suspect that you misunderstood something in what I wrote. The question was rhetorical. Asking the State to decide who is competent to do these things creates obvious problems.
"Authorizes fines and/or imprisonment for up to 30 years for U.S. citizens or residents who engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad, with or without the intent of engaging in such sexual misconduct."
WTF? This makes it a felony for a U.S. citizen to engage in "illicit sexual conduct" while out of the country??? How outrageous can a law get?
Some countries have some pretty outrageous laws. This is in effect saying you can't engage in "illicit" conduct in any country, at any time, or you might face as much as 30 years in a U.S. jail, even if it's something legal in the U.S. but illegal in that other country!?!? Could the law possibly be more bizarre?
Just what is "illicit", anyway? Not just bizarre, but bizarrely vague.
That reminds me of the Federal law that makes it illegal to break the laws of any other country when importing goods. Some poor importer got put in prison because he accepted some lobster tails, which was perfectly legal, but the country he got them from had a law against exporting seafood in plastic bags.
Jesus. Some of these politicians should be taken out and shot. This is beyond ridiculous.
"Immediately after that Supreme Court ruling, the lawmakers rushed through a new law (worded a bit differently) making it all illegal again. And the new law was never challenged and still exists."
So I see:
"Prohibits computer-generated child pornography when "(B) such visual depiction is a computer image or computer-generated image that is, or appears virtually indistinguishable from that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; (as amended by 1466A for Section 2256(8)(B) of title 18, United States Code)."
So Congress subverted the Supreme Court's clear intent, and made "thought crime" a crime after all. Goddamned politicians.
This isn't the America I signed up for. I'm all for actually protecting actual children, but that provision has nothing to do with protecting children at all. It's "thought crime", pure and simple.
The Supreme Court case, as I recall, was over an artist and his "controversial" paintings.
"I would also assume a reasonable person would think a 40 year old is able to handle sex, but again under the GPs system that 40 year old might not have got their "You are an adult" certificate, and thus it would be criminal to have sex with them.
That's a lot of reasonable people in prison for child molestation!"
More on this below. But I wanted to get this out of the way first:
"With the current standard of "midnight of your 18th birthday", it's very simple to apply the reasonable person test."
It's not as black and white as you make it out to be. It's only a "current standard" where you live. In the U.S., not all states have 18 as the age of consent. In at least one state in my local "group" of states, the age of consent is 16, and not all 16-year-olds have driver's licenses.
In a state next to that, the age of consent is 18. So it would be very easy for someone to cross the border into another town, forget where they are, and commit statutory rape, when what they did would be perfectly legal 5 miles away.
Also, in some states "age of consent" is not absolute: there are conditions placed on it.
I am not sure what the age of consent is in all states. I think some might still have an age of consent lower than 16. I do know that not very many years ago, in a couple of Southern states the age of consent was 12. I think that's changed, but what did it change to? 14? 15? I have no idea.
But back to the main topic:
Your objections to an "adult test" are exactly the same objections many people have to a "firearms proficiency test" in order to get a concealed weapons permit. Who decides what is competent or proficient? The State? If so, is their decision objective or politically motivated? Who is to say the standard won't change over time, or why?
Etc.
The whole point is: if you want a nanny state, please go elsewhere. That's not the kind of country America was ever intended to be, and most of us don't want it.
I wonder if in defence one could demand not a "reasonable person" test, but a "reasonable drunk person" test. "She was so hot I had to go and throw up, and then came back to chat to her! She seemed really intelligent, way smarter than me, so she had to be at college, like she said she was!"
I know that in the states I have lived in, intoxication is not a defense against the "reasonable person" standard.
"For the courts entrapment is generally not acceptable but there is this rather clear line, if the perpetrator volunteered to come into the chat room and it was his and not the 'victim' that initiated the illegal parts of the conversation.
Your software argument is rather weak if not outright shitty."
No, it's your argument that is "shitty".
What was the crime committed? If there was no crime, there will be no trial. You can't presuppose a trial, much less a defense, until you have first established that a crime has taken place.
Who was the victim? What is the charge?
The real question here is: was a crime even committed? If so, just exactly what was it? Should it be a crime to "sexually abuse" software, even if you don't know it was software?
"DNA is the most accurate, with dependencies mostly occurring in attempts to tell twins apart from one another."
Common myth. Corrected: DNA can be the most accurate, but is often not.
The main problem with DNA evidence is that it is far too easily contaminated. Hell, strew some semen around a crime scene from a used condom, and it's "solid" evidence the guy did it, eh?
DNA can be very solid evidence, but only under very narrow and specific conditions. It would be ridiculously easy to kill somebody and leave some skin scrapings under a couple of fingernails, for example.
And witnesses are notoriously unreliable. In fact, in at least one study, police who were "trained witnesses" proved to be far less reliable at reporting incidents accurately than people off the street.
And IP addresses don't even necessarily track a culprit to "a residence". I maintain an open WiFi connection ("guest" network) as a public service. It has a good signal and it is available to my whole neighborhood, including people walking by with a cellphone and even cars driving through the area.
"My thought exactly. Isn't that, i don't know, victimless crime?"
It really is an interesting question.
A few years ago, in the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that in order for something to be prosecuted as child pornography, it had to [1] involve a real child (not just an artificial "depiction" of one), and [2] be real pornography... in other words, something that would be judged pornography even if it didn't involve a child.
Therefore, bathtub pictures of the kids playing don't qualify, for example. But before the Supreme Court ruled on it, there were some pretty outrageous claims and prosecutions in a few states.
So what about this? Is it soliciting from a minor if it isn't a real minor? Where is the line between an actual crime with an actual victim, and "thought crime"?
"Hence the "but she was in a pub/bar/club, so she *must have been* over 18/21" defence, which does actually work on occasion. I'm not sure exactly how it's been worded, but the gist is that the defendent could reasonably believe the age of the other party was what he/she claimed."
See my reply above. I know that in at least one state, if you are 14 or over and misrepresent your age, no crime has occurred.
This is actually quite reasonable. I probably could not have passed for 21 when I was 14 or 15, but I knew some who could. It is NOT reasonable to expect everyone on the street to be a forensic pathologist, and be able to tell someone's age from clues about bone ossification or whatever.
"The curious thing is that if you solicit sex from someone who a reasonable person would believe was not a minor, but actually is, I'm pretty sure that's still illegal, which is sort of a double standard."
Not necessarily. I know of at least one state in which if you are 14 years old or more, and represent yourself to be older, YOU are responsible for the outcome. In other words, if you deliberately fool an adult into thinking you are over 18 (which for some 14- or 15-year-olds is quite possible), the other party is not guilty of any crime.
Of course, establishing that someone misrepresented their age is not always easy. But sometimes it can be demonstrated. A record of a chat session, for example.
In that state, or any others with similar laws, if the "fake girl" were 14 or older rather than 10, someone on the other end would be committing no crime.
When are corporations going to be held responsible for the security of their customers' information?
If things like credit card information are stored in cleartext, the corporation doing it should be fined and the people responsible prosecuted if there is a leak. It's just gross irresponsibility, for which nobody has seemed to get punished.
"Well turning up to work drunk can and should get you fired."
I would say that's usually "job related", so it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
But even then, there are exceptions:
(1) It doesn't get you fired if you're the boss.
(2) If you are working for yourself, and you get the job done, it probably won't get you "fired".
(3) Company party?
Etc.... See, the problem with these absolute statements, and "zero tolerance policies", is that they never work. People break them all the time. Often the people who impose or enforce the policies are the biggest hypocrites of them all.
"Well you should have more to not like. Most of these tests are not proper tests and have stupid high false positive rates. For example even on Mythbusters they showed that they would fail the test for a long time after eating a poppy seed cake."
I am aware of this. That is part of my objection. Further, even if they did not fail due to non-restricted substances, they would still show more false positives than false negatives, due to the Base Rate Fallacy.
That's why I said it hurts more innocent people than it punishes the guilty.
"Most of the taxes sheltered by people are on profits."
Profits are the result of production. Income taxes, capital gains taxes, and the like are taxes on production. They are therefore, by definition, counter-productive.
Lawyers in general, (though they tend to feel, and assert, otherwise), have a rather feeble grasp of Constitutional law and history. Ask any well-known Constitutional scholar (except Obama, since he's already known to be a liar). Lawyers study what to present to a judge in order to win cases; very few have much particular knowledge of Constitutional law and history.
I, on the other hand, am a long-time student of such history, which puts me far ahead of the vast majority of lawyers.
"In any case, where did you get the idea that federal supremacy is limited to issues where "it's a constitutional question"?"
Perhaps I should have worded it better, but this is what I meant: U.S. Constitution, Article VI.
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
Note that the Constitution itself says that only laws "in pursuance of" the stipulations of the Constitution itself, are "the supreme law of the land". Therefore, any unconstitutional law is NOT supreme.
The Constitution is a document that limits the power of the Federal government; that is its primary purpose. Not the "general welfare clause", not the "interstate commerce clause", nor the "supremacy clause" give absolute power to the Federal government. If it exceeds its authority (according to the founders themselves), the result is not law. It is "of no force, null, and void".
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Yes indeed. I have packet sniffers (in fact an entire pen testing OS on USB stick) and a super-duper high-power wifi adapter. I can and have broken WEP and WPA-PSK passwords on some of my neighbors' networks for fun.
.mp3 file where she would find it, disguised as a popular tune. Instead, it was a voice recording, calling her by name and telling her that downloading was not allowed on my public network, and that if I caught her at it again I would ban her. (It was easy to know her name because her network adapter was broadcasting it: "K____'s Computer".
I say good luck to anybody trying to crack my setup. They'll need it.
But on the other hand, they can just hook up to my open guest network, and use it as they please. If I notice inordinate traffic, I may investigate or block them.
Only once did I ever catch anyone doing anything "not allowed" on my open wifi. I saw that a neighbor girl was downloading music. I put a
I think it scared the hell out of her. In any case, I never saw her downloading again.
"The wording is a bit bad, but presumably it's a means of combating sex tourism."
"A bit bad"?? It's atrocious. It's overly vague and overly broad.
In terms of illicit, I would suggest that you're odds of getting a jury to convict on any offence sexual or otherwise that isn't actually illegal in the US is somewhere between slim and none, so whether that's what they intended or not that's the likely de facto definition of illicit.
If it wouldn't result in a prosecution, then there's no point in the law.
A law that is not intended to be enforced as written is one of the worst kinds of law, because it allows people to ignore it, and leave it unchallenged, until WHAM!!! it is used against someone the government doesn't like.
"dumbs. do you also provide dark alleys and money changing as a public service?"
Is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) dumb too? They strongly endorse the practice.
Correction: "and I know what caused you to imagine one" should have read "and I DON'T know what caused you to imagine one".
So if you do agree with the original poster and think I am wrong, you agree with him that a 30-40 year old should have the right to have sex with a 10 or younger year old... and that is "America" Really?
Um... what? No, not really. I don't see how you got that from what I wrote.
By "you" I didn't mean YOU personally. Pardon me if I wasn't clear. I agree that an "adult standard" other than age is probably unworkable. I was simply saying that there are other kinds of "standards" that would also be unworkable, for some of the same reasons.
"The rest of your post basically boils down to, using age to determine if a person is ready to handle sex is bad (you argued against me saying it's not bad twice now)"
No it doesn't. Not even close. I was simply stating (and I stated it pretty explicitly, in plain English) that the age situation is not as black-and-white as you made it out to be. The "standard" age is not the same everywhere. But that doesn't mean I disagree that it should be based on age. Just that the particular age is (and should be, in my opinion) up to each State.
So, to be clearer: yes, I feel age is the correct standard. But different places have decided on different ages.
"You are arguing a person MUST get a certificate from the government that deems them an adult, and this certificate can not be based on age. (That is the exact argument the original poster made, and I argued against to him and to you)"
I argued nothing of the sort. You seem to be imagining that I am arguing with you, when I am not. Probably a misunderstanding somewhere.
"I pointed out the state is clearly NOT qualified to determine sexual maturity, and that is exactly why they do not do so and set an arbitrary line of "Xth birthday" Only the original poster (and now you) are saying I am wrong, the state IS qualified and MUST issue certificates on a per-individual basis because that is the only method to be factually correct."
YES!! Except for the "now you" part. I was agreeing with you. I simply pointed out that the same objections apply to other areas too.
So to answer your question, who decides who/what is competent or proficient?
You are, since I claimed the state can't possibly do this, which is why they use the current system of age that clearly doesn't reflect if a person is able to handle adult situations like sex or not.
There is no argument about that here, and I know what caused you to imagine one. Again, I suspect that you misunderstood something in what I wrote. The question was rhetorical. Asking the State to decide who is competent to do these things creates obvious problems.
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003"
Holy crap. Take a look at this provision:
"Authorizes fines and/or imprisonment for up to 30 years for U.S. citizens or residents who engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad, with or without the intent of engaging in such sexual misconduct."
WTF? This makes it a felony for a U.S. citizen to engage in "illicit sexual conduct" while out of the country??? How outrageous can a law get?
Some countries have some pretty outrageous laws. This is in effect saying you can't engage in "illicit" conduct in any country, at any time, or you might face as much as 30 years in a U.S. jail, even if it's something legal in the U.S. but illegal in that other country!?!? Could the law possibly be more bizarre?
Just what is "illicit", anyway? Not just bizarre, but bizarrely vague.
That reminds me of the Federal law that makes it illegal to break the laws of any other country when importing goods. Some poor importer got put in prison because he accepted some lobster tails, which was perfectly legal, but the country he got them from had a law against exporting seafood in plastic bags.
Jesus. Some of these politicians should be taken out and shot. This is beyond ridiculous.
"Immediately after that Supreme Court ruling, the lawmakers rushed through a new law (worded a bit differently) making it all illegal again. And the new law was never challenged and still exists."
So I see:
"Prohibits computer-generated child pornography when "(B) such visual depiction is a computer image or computer-generated image that is, or appears virtually indistinguishable from that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; (as amended by 1466A for Section 2256(8)(B) of title 18, United States Code)."
So Congress subverted the Supreme Court's clear intent, and made "thought crime" a crime after all. Goddamned politicians.
This isn't the America I signed up for. I'm all for actually protecting actual children, but that provision has nothing to do with protecting children at all. It's "thought crime", pure and simple.
The Supreme Court case, as I recall, was over an artist and his "controversial" paintings.
"I just tried applying your version of logic. It's called sarcasm."
I know what you were trying. The point was that you did not succeed.
"I would also assume a reasonable person would think a 40 year old is able to handle sex, but again under the GPs system that 40 year old might not have got their "You are an adult" certificate, and thus it would be criminal to have sex with them. That's a lot of reasonable people in prison for child molestation!"
More on this below. But I wanted to get this out of the way first:
"With the current standard of "midnight of your 18th birthday", it's very simple to apply the reasonable person test."
It's not as black and white as you make it out to be. It's only a "current standard" where you live. In the U.S., not all states have 18 as the age of consent. In at least one state in my local "group" of states, the age of consent is 16, and not all 16-year-olds have driver's licenses.
In a state next to that, the age of consent is 18. So it would be very easy for someone to cross the border into another town, forget where they are, and commit statutory rape, when what they did would be perfectly legal 5 miles away.
Also, in some states "age of consent" is not absolute: there are conditions placed on it.
I am not sure what the age of consent is in all states. I think some might still have an age of consent lower than 16. I do know that not very many years ago, in a couple of Southern states the age of consent was 12. I think that's changed, but what did it change to? 14? 15? I have no idea.
But back to the main topic:
Your objections to an "adult test" are exactly the same objections many people have to a "firearms proficiency test" in order to get a concealed weapons permit. Who decides what is competent or proficient? The State? If so, is their decision objective or politically motivated? Who is to say the standard won't change over time, or why?
Etc.
The whole point is: if you want a nanny state, please go elsewhere. That's not the kind of country America was ever intended to be, and most of us don't want it.
I wonder if in defence one could demand not a "reasonable person" test, but a "reasonable drunk person" test. "She was so hot I had to go and throw up, and then came back to chat to her! She seemed really intelligent, way smarter than me, so she had to be at college, like she said she was!"
I know that in the states I have lived in, intoxication is not a defense against the "reasonable person" standard.
"Just as soon as we stop referring to "corporations" as if they were people?"
Corporations can be held legally responsible for their actions. Hell, that's one of the reasons corporations were invented.
"It's as cheap as a validated ID card (which most places is govt/state issued anyways, so already an expected and required cost)"
I don't think there is a State in the country that requires presenting a State ID before having sex.
It is -- by necessity -- based on the "reasonable person" concept. Would a reasonable person believe that this person was of age?
Of course, ID is one way to find out. But it isn't the only one, or even the only "reasonable" kind of evidence.
"For the courts entrapment is generally not acceptable but there is this rather clear line, if the perpetrator volunteered to come into the chat room and it was his and not the 'victim' that initiated the illegal parts of the conversation.
Your software argument is rather weak if not outright shitty."
No, it's your argument that is "shitty".
What was the crime committed? If there was no crime, there will be no trial. You can't presuppose a trial, much less a defense, until you have first established that a crime has taken place.
Who was the victim? What is the charge?
The real question here is: was a crime even committed? If so, just exactly what was it? Should it be a crime to "sexually abuse" software, even if you don't know it was software?
"If any of these go to trial, then they may certainly present that as their defense at their trial."
That rather begs the question. Trial for what? What would the charge be?
"DNA is the most accurate, with dependencies mostly occurring in attempts to tell twins apart from one another."
Common myth. Corrected: DNA can be the most accurate, but is often not.
The main problem with DNA evidence is that it is far too easily contaminated. Hell, strew some semen around a crime scene from a used condom, and it's "solid" evidence the guy did it, eh?
DNA can be very solid evidence, but only under very narrow and specific conditions. It would be ridiculously easy to kill somebody and leave some skin scrapings under a couple of fingernails, for example.
And witnesses are notoriously unreliable. In fact, in at least one study, police who were "trained witnesses" proved to be far less reliable at reporting incidents accurately than people off the street.
And IP addresses don't even necessarily track a culprit to "a residence". I maintain an open WiFi connection ("guest" network) as a public service. It has a good signal and it is available to my whole neighborhood, including people walking by with a cellphone and even cars driving through the area.
"My thought exactly. Isn't that, i don't know, victimless crime?"
It really is an interesting question.
A few years ago, in the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that in order for something to be prosecuted as child pornography, it had to [1] involve a real child (not just an artificial "depiction" of one), and [2] be real pornography... in other words, something that would be judged pornography even if it didn't involve a child.
Therefore, bathtub pictures of the kids playing don't qualify, for example. But before the Supreme Court ruled on it, there were some pretty outrageous claims and prosecutions in a few states.
So what about this? Is it soliciting from a minor if it isn't a real minor? Where is the line between an actual crime with an actual victim, and "thought crime"?
"Hence the "but she was in a pub/bar/club, so she *must have been* over 18/21" defence, which does actually work on occasion. I'm not sure exactly how it's been worded, but the gist is that the defendent could reasonably believe the age of the other party was what he/she claimed."
See my reply above. I know that in at least one state, if you are 14 or over and misrepresent your age, no crime has occurred.
This is actually quite reasonable. I probably could not have passed for 21 when I was 14 or 15, but I knew some who could. It is NOT reasonable to expect everyone on the street to be a forensic pathologist, and be able to tell someone's age from clues about bone ossification or whatever.
"The curious thing is that if you solicit sex from someone who a reasonable person would believe was not a minor, but actually is, I'm pretty sure that's still illegal, which is sort of a double standard."
Not necessarily. I know of at least one state in which if you are 14 years old or more, and represent yourself to be older, YOU are responsible for the outcome. In other words, if you deliberately fool an adult into thinking you are over 18 (which for some 14- or 15-year-olds is quite possible), the other party is not guilty of any crime.
Of course, establishing that someone misrepresented their age is not always easy. But sometimes it can be demonstrated. A record of a chat session, for example.
In that state, or any others with similar laws, if the "fake girl" were 14 or older rather than 10, someone on the other end would be committing no crime.
When are corporations going to be held responsible for the security of their customers' information?
If things like credit card information are stored in cleartext, the corporation doing it should be fined and the people responsible prosecuted if there is a leak. It's just gross irresponsibility, for which nobody has seemed to get punished.
That needs to change.
??? Huh? Are you trying to imply that all human action results in taxes???
Seriously... where did you learn basic logic? Sesame Street? This doesn't even remotely follow from what I wrote.
"Well turning up to work drunk can and should get you fired."
I would say that's usually "job related", so it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
... See, the problem with these absolute statements, and "zero tolerance policies", is that they never work. People break them all the time. Often the people who impose or enforce the policies are the biggest hypocrites of them all.
But even then, there are exceptions:
(1) It doesn't get you fired if you're the boss.
(2) If you are working for yourself, and you get the job done, it probably won't get you "fired".
(3) Company party?
Etc.
"Well you should have more to not like. Most of these tests are not proper tests and have stupid high false positive rates. For example even on Mythbusters they showed that they would fail the test for a long time after eating a poppy seed cake."
I am aware of this. That is part of my objection. Further, even if they did not fail due to non-restricted substances, they would still show more false positives than false negatives, due to the Base Rate Fallacy.
That's why I said it hurts more innocent people than it punishes the guilty.
"Most of the taxes sheltered by people are on profits."
Profits are the result of production. Income taxes, capital gains taxes, and the like are taxes on production. They are therefore, by definition, counter-productive.
"Are you a lawyer?"
Lawyers in general, (though they tend to feel, and assert, otherwise), have a rather feeble grasp of Constitutional law and history. Ask any well-known Constitutional scholar (except Obama, since he's already known to be a liar). Lawyers study what to present to a judge in order to win cases; very few have much particular knowledge of Constitutional law and history.
I, on the other hand, am a long-time student of such history, which puts me far ahead of the vast majority of lawyers.
"In any case, where did you get the idea that federal supremacy is limited to issues where "it's a constitutional question"?"
Perhaps I should have worded it better, but this is what I meant: U.S. Constitution, Article VI.
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
Note that the Constitution itself says that only laws "in pursuance of" the stipulations of the Constitution itself, are "the supreme law of the land". Therefore, any unconstitutional law is NOT supreme.
The Constitution is a document that limits the power of the Federal government; that is its primary purpose. Not the "general welfare clause", not the "interstate commerce clause", nor the "supremacy clause" give absolute power to the Federal government. If it exceeds its authority (according to the founders themselves), the result is not law. It is "of no force, null, and void".
Maybe if taxes were on consumption rather than production, productive people wouldn't have to shelter their funds.