Indeed. Felony theft usually requires theft of something valued over 100 dollars, so theft of any CD or DVD would be misdemeanor theft.
Which almost never results in any jail time, and often has no fines beyond having to return or pay for what you took. Sometimes you'll get slapped with a $100 fine or so on top of that. (At least on the first offense.)
However, take a CD, rip it to your computer, put it on P2P, and not have anyone even download it, and suddenly it's $10,000.
This is, of course, why the ANWR has suddenly become news. Not because it makes sense to drill there now.
It is going to get drilled, eventually, although that isn't going to do much of anything. It's certainly not going to do anything now.
No, the reason it's in the news now is that oil companies would much rather buy it from Bush than from Obama.
Conservatives like to 'privatize' government property like they privatize government functions...instead of having actual competition, just let the biggest possible company walk in and take it for a song. (They do this by making the contracts so huge that only the huge megacorps could possible fulfill them.)
I say we wait until Obama is in office, and then have the largest damn bidding war in US history for the ANWR. And then we turn around and spend that money on alternate energy.
As an aside, the 'ANWR' isn't up for grabs. At least half of it is owned by Alaska or Native American (Inuit) tribes.
It certainly isn't true for the massive fields we haven't even touched yet, including the arctic, the US coasts, and of of Brazil's coast.
Yeah, I hate the way Democrats have stopped us from drilling off Brazil's coast.
And it's interesting that, in addition to the coast of Brazil, all the other worldwide remaining oil is under US control, thus allowing the US government to create scarcity like it does.
The reason you are seeing this push to drill is because the oil companies want to lock in the lease prices and the royalties, even on this tiny bit of land called "ANWR" while Bush and Cheney are in the White House because they know they'll get a much better deal from them than they will from the Obama Administration.
No shit.
Anyone with at least half a brain knows three things:
1) ANWR will eventually be drilled. At least a lot of it. (It's worth pointing out that some is Alaskan land, and some is Native American land, neither of which Congress can touch. Only about half the oil in ANWR is under Federal control, so whenever you hear people talk about how much oil is up there, and Congress should allow drilling...realize they are, in fact, incorrect. Congress can only allow drilling of half of it.)
2) It won't make a damn bit of difference, and in fact the longer we hold off on it, the more difference it will make when we do drill. It might be the difference between $4 and $3.75 a gallon gas now if it hypothetically existed at this moment, but the less oil there is when it shows up, the more difference it will take.
3) There is absolutely no reason to open it up to drilling before Bush leaves office, considering we are talking about a decade of construction, except that Bush will sell it for cheaper.
The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
If you buy Greenwald's premise -- that there was more to the whole anthrax episode than met the eye, more than just a Unibomber-type loner responsible for it -- then it doesn't take too many layers of foil on your hat to make that leap.
And if you don't buy Greenwald's premise, you probably shouldn't be given the right to vote.
This story, this criminal case, makes no sense.
I quote Richard Cohen, a small comment he made that he doesn't seem to realize the significance of:
The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
...so, the attack came from a US government lab (1), the same lab that apparently lied about bentonite in said attack (2), implicating Iraq, and the US government told journalists in advance to get anthrax antidote? (3)
Well, nothing to see here, move along.
You don't even have to postulate any sort of conspiracy, you don't have to jump to any conclusion. You just have to add one and one and one together and realize it is not, in fact, seventeen.
Someone in the US government getting a 'tip' about an anthrax attack by a terrorist and passing it outside channels is a security breach, but explicable. Someone in the US government getting a tip about a crazy person at a US lab stealing anthrax and going to mail it out is just inane. There's no possible way for the original source in the government to know that in advance without either being involved or trying to stop it.
1) According to the US government
2) According to ABC news, although they have, until recently, refused to admit it was a lie or even that it was wrong.
3) According to a writer for the Washington post.
A motive that was given in this news account
was that he was working on a vaccine for Anthrax and wanted to test it.
Yes, that is a motive if you are very very very stupid.
To test a vaccine, a fundamental concept requires that people be vaccinated. Unless this was some magical long-distance vaccine.
Now, some people might be dumb enough to think you can test a vaccine without using the vaccine to vaccinate people...but I'll wager they don't work for research labs developing vaccines.
The way to illegally test a vaccine would be to dust anthrax somewhere out of the way, and then anonymously alert the government, and hope they show up to your lab to try your fancy new vaccine.
It is not to send letters contain anthrax to unsuspecting, unvaccinated people implicating Muslim extremists and wait for them to die. At the very least, you send it to one person, and in that letter list a bunch of other people and say you'll be sending anthrax to them, which might make them get vaccinated. Just killing people with anthrax who've never seen your vaccine seems like a poor test. (I guess they were the control group...)
Although, in actuality, if the government needed to vaccinate people against anthrax, it would use existing and proven methods instead of a new method, which is also something any medical researcher would know.
That motive makes as much sense as shooting up a school because you wanted to test fancy new bulletproof vests you wanted the police to buy...and everyone ignores the fact that, um, the people in the school didn't have those vests, and the police are hardly going to buy bulletproof vests from you during the attack to defend themselves.
This 'motive' makes no sense at all.
Oh, and I love this line: Unusual behavior by Ivins was noted at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings, when he conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus long stayed on Hatfill.
My God! Someone who worked with anthrax in a lab got paranoid after people died from anthrax apparently leaked from a lab and started testing things without 'authorization'. Well, I'm convinced he was guilty.
Seriously, what is this 'unusual behavior' supposed to demonstrate?
That is why I kept my phone not only in 'airplane mode' but out of sight as I listened to mp3s and watched TV on it the last time I flew.
And despite what the article says, all but the cheapest phones now have that. Basically any phone that you can install Java programs on will have an airplane mode so you can play them on an airplane.
I don't buy the "Cellphones make people rude and loud" claim. I don't get complaints, rude stares, or any other signs my use of my cellphone is causing annoyance but I see others subjected to that treatment when they really are loud and annoying. I have to assume that I, like probably 95% of the population, am simply invisible, because I don't speak loudly into my phone, I keep my conversations in public short, and my cellphone uses vibration to notify me of calls rather than a loud, annoying, ring.
No shit. There is a certain subclass of morons who think they should talk loudly into a cell phone. This subclass overlaps strongly with the subclass of people who are not observant and don't realize that half the damn plane can hear them. (As people who were observant would have noticed others do not speak loudly into their phone.)
There are plenty of responsible people who are very aware others can hear them, and talk at less than normal conversational levels. The only way that could annoy people is if they were listening in and got annoyed they only heard half the conversation, and I think we can all determine who the rude person is in those circumstances.
There are legitimate safety issues with cell phone usage, like while driving, and there are places where any cell phone usage, like any conversation, should be banned, like a theater.
Anyone who wants to ban them where people can talk is just an asshat. You want to stop morons from talking too loudly on the phone, inform them they are talking too loudly on the phone, and allow the attendants to make them stop if they continue to annoy people.
People who are not observant and do not realize how their behavior affects others is a major problem in society, and it won't change until normal people start being 'rude' and informing them their behavior is not acceptable.
The punishment for breaking the rule before takeoff is being removed from the plane.
The punishment for breaking the rule after takeoff should be them taking your cell phone and not giving it back. Or alternately barring you from flying on them in the future.
I propose a test. We can start in Europe. Give me a terabyte of data. I will carry no electronics on the flight into the states. Within days back in the U.S. I will produce the terabyte of data.
I've proposed the same test with knives. Put a nice big ham, or some other 'human simulator' on the plane. Search me like normal. Search me more than normal, but let me carry on anything that the rules specifically allow.
If I can then go on the plane, have ten minutes or so of prep time, and run up and quickly slice a big cut in the ham, large enough to slice open any 'arteries', perhaps we should stop this idiotic idea of attempt to ban 'sharp things'.
Any idiot can get something sharp enough to be a danger to other humans on an airplane. Hell, they let CDs on airplanes, and anyone who's broken one of them knows how sharp they can get on accident.
There are only two options about the state of security in the US: 1) It's being run by complete and total idiots, or 2) They know damn well it isn't protecting anything.
Which is possibly a good reason to ban the operation of cell phones in the situations you list, but hardly a logical reason to ban them on airplanes, where people failing to pay attention is not a concern.
However, people failing to pay attention to their surroundings because they are idiots is just a modern problem of life. The other day, I could not get out of the grocery store with my shopping cart because some moron was standing in front of the door and talking to someone else. I actually had to interrupt them and ask them to not stand in such an obviously stupid place to stand.
I don't know if I've been become more aware of this, or if people have actually become less observant, but it's the sort of crap that really pisses me off and seems to be happening more and more...people just being stupid and inconveniencing others for no reason at.
Such behavior is more destructive than people inconveniencing others for their own gain. If it's for their own gain, we can, and do, structure society so that they actually gain little from that behavior. In extreme cases they are arrested.
If it's not for any reason at all, but simply because they are fucking stupid, we can't 'discourage' the behavior in any way, as they are not aware they are doing it.
Which is a reasonable point, but it doesn't make Congress deciding who's in the executive branch 'unconstitional':
[The president] shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
Or, to split out the second item there (I wish the constitution didn't have such absurdly long sentences.):
The president shall nominate all other (That is, not SC judges, ambassadors, ministers, or counsels) officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law (How the hell would you nominate people for non-existing positions?): but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
As that is still damn confusing, I will rephrase:
In the topmost executive positions, and Supreme Court, the president must nominate people, and Congress must confirm them.
In other executive and judicial positions, that is also the default mode of operations, but Congress can write whatever rules and regulations about those people they want and let the president, his topmost staff, or even a court of law use those rules and regulations to appoint people.
Or, in a metaphysical sense, Congress can say 'Okay, we're not going to individually confirm each person. Pick whoever you want, and we'll consider them confirmed if they are within the bounds of X, Y, and not Z.', thus frobbing their duties off to the honestly of the person doing the selection. If you get what I'm saying.
Have you ever actually READ the Constitution? Congress doesn't "buy" anything - they appropriate the money, the President spends it.
The constitution says nothing of the sort. Congress does buy plenty of stuff, for itself. Or I guess all the tables and chairs and whiteboards and rented office space and cars Congress has just appeared out of thin air.
And while they do generally just appropriate money for other branches, and let those branches buy it, there is no constitutional reason they couldn't just buy everything and distribute it themselves.
They may "create" positions and agencies, but the President fills the positions - if the President fails to nomimate someone, the position stands empty, and there isn't jack shit Congress can do about it.
Wrong. The president has nomination power over ambassadors, 'ministers and consuls', and Supreme Court judges. Congress can only reject nominated ones of those, not pick their own.
But everyone else in the executive Congress can make laws about. I quote 'but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.'
Note that these laws actually allows Congress themselves to write the standards of appointment, as they did so in this case.
And they fund the military, but they are constitutionally precluded from any command role - the Joint Chiefs report (in the military sense) to the President, not Congress.
Congress writes the UCMJ. Congress decides what military actions are lawful, and which ones are not.
Soldiers swear to obey the 'orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.'.
If regulations, written by Congress, say not to obey the president, they don't obey the president. It's that simple. (Although honestly that's not that amazing a power, considering they also could dissolve the entire military in the first place.)
Whether or not Congress could get soldiers to do something, instead of simply not doing something, is unknown. It is entirely possible to make it illegal to not do things. (Like fill out your taxes.) I wonder if they could make it illegal for the joint chiefs to not plan and operate an invasion.
Of course, ultimately, if Congress didn't like how the military was operated, and wished to operate it 'themselves', they could just impeach the president and VP and stick the speaker of the house in there. (Hence anyone who talks about 'equal branches of government' should have their head examined.)
Oh, and in addition to the USA, the hiring of which was legal, (But the pressure and firing in response were not, and neither was lying to Congress about it.), there are plenty of DOJ jobs, like the ones Goodling was trying to file and this story is talking about, that aren't political, and it is in fact illegal to use political considerations in hiring.
Clinton didn't fire US attorneys, they resigned, as was expected of them at the start of a new presidency.
This is because they are, indeed, political positions. That, in fact, is the easiest way to tell such positions apart without looking at the law...people in political positions are expected to resign enmass at the start of a new presidency.
US attorneys are 'political' because they are expected to concentrate their office on the laws that matter to them.
It's worth pointing out that such 'concentration' isn't always political per se. Sometimes, on their way up, they get a rep for being really good at a specific type of case, and focusing on that, and a president that wants to concentrate on that crime will hire them even if their political views differ. (I.e., a Republican who's really good at prosecuting gun control violations might end up a USA under a Democratic president who wants to focus on that.)
What Bush did, however, was fill the slots with people who agreed with him, which was fine...but then he attempted to pressure them into enforcing laws in a partisan manner, and fired those who didn't play ball. And then lied about firing them.
There's a difference between a USA saying 'This office will concentrate on tracking down bank robberies and child porn, let's backburner the drugs for a bit' and saying 'This office will attempt to dig up dirt on the Governor of Alabama (because he's a Democrat)'.
Bush fired both people who would not attempt to 'enforce' the law against Democrats when they didn't have a good case, and people who investigated Republicans. It is perfectly fine to politicize the focus of the DOJ. It is not fine to politicize the investigations of the DOJ.
The president doesn't have the power to run the administration however he sees fit.
The president doesn't even have the power to have an administration without Congress.
Constitutionally, it's just him and the VP, standing around outside somewhere. He does have the constitutional power to sign bills into law, so legally he probably demand, in the courts, that Congress budget him a pen or other writing utensil. But that's it.
Does none of these 'Bush has the right to run the executive how he sees fit' people ever read the constitution? Congress buys everything. Congress creates every single cabinet position, and every single executive agency. (And the entire military, while we're at it.)
Without Congress creating things for him to run, the president is essentially just some guy with a veto pen.
My car has a non-linear gauge...except the gauge is broken, shifted upward. So it starts out at 125% full, and sticks there for the first 25% of the tank. (I.e, there's another 25% upward it's shifted, but the gauge pin can only physically manage 125%.)
Then the next 25% takes it down to 100% full. (So when it hits 100% full, it's at 50%.)
It keeps going down at that speed, claiming about 75% full when it's actually 25% full.
And then it plummets down twice as fast, hitting empty when displaying 25% full. (It's fun to point this out to people and claim I have really bad gas mileage. And then point out I've been driving for an hour and still are on 'full' at the other end.)
I imagine what it's trying to do is make the first 66% of the gauge be 75% of the gas, the next 33% be 15%, and then an extra 10% of the gauge, below zero, be the rest of the gas, and it's just gotten shifted upward 25% at the low end and 50% at the high end, and even more confused by the fact it can't actually show 150% full.
But what is has actually accomplished is to confuse the hell out of everyone who drives that car. I just rely on distance and reset the mileage counter.
While you are correct that tacking on 'I believe' is not always a defense to libel, in actuality saying someone 'did something illegal' is not libel. Saying someone committed specific crimes is libel.
Just saying they committed the crime of 'ruining the constitution' isn't libel, as that isn't actually a crime. It's no more libel than threatening to call the police because someone is 'too pretty'.
Now, going into detains of what 'ruining the constitution' entailed could be libel.
The police are not in charge of stopping or even investigating things that are 'probably libel'.
The courts are in charge of deciding if something is actually libel or not, and awarding damages, and ordering that the libeler remove the libel, with the police as enforcement if he refuses.
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Indeed. Felony theft usually requires theft of something valued over 100 dollars, so theft of any CD or DVD would be misdemeanor theft.
Which almost never results in any jail time, and often has no fines beyond having to return or pay for what you took. Sometimes you'll get slapped with a $100 fine or so on top of that. (At least on the first offense.)
However, take a CD, rip it to your computer, put it on P2P, and not have anyone even download it, and suddenly it's $10,000.
The real reason not to pass drilling the ANWR now is that everyone with a brain knows Bush will sell it to the oil companies cheaper than Obama will.
Let's gouge the oil companies for once. :)
This is, of course, why the ANWR has suddenly become news. Not because it makes sense to drill there now.
It is going to get drilled, eventually, although that isn't going to do much of anything. It's certainly not going to do anything now.
No, the reason it's in the news now is that oil companies would much rather buy it from Bush than from Obama.
Conservatives like to 'privatize' government property like they privatize government functions...instead of having actual competition, just let the biggest possible company walk in and take it for a song. (They do this by making the contracts so huge that only the huge megacorps could possible fulfill them.)
I say we wait until Obama is in office, and then have the largest damn bidding war in US history for the ANWR. And then we turn around and spend that money on alternate energy.
As an aside, the 'ANWR' isn't up for grabs. At least half of it is owned by Alaska or Native American (Inuit) tribes.
It certainly isn't true for the massive fields we haven't even touched yet, including the arctic, the US coasts, and of of Brazil's coast.
Yeah, I hate the way Democrats have stopped us from drilling off Brazil's coast.
And it's interesting that, in addition to the coast of Brazil, all the other worldwide remaining oil is under US control, thus allowing the US government to create scarcity like it does.
The reason you are seeing this push to drill is because the oil companies want to lock in the lease prices and the royalties, even on this tiny bit of land called "ANWR" while Bush and Cheney are in the White House because they know they'll get a much better deal from them than they will from the Obama Administration.
No shit.
Anyone with at least half a brain knows three things:
1) ANWR will eventually be drilled. At least a lot of it. (It's worth pointing out that some is Alaskan land, and some is Native American land, neither of which Congress can touch. Only about half the oil in ANWR is under Federal control, so whenever you hear people talk about how much oil is up there, and Congress should allow drilling...realize they are, in fact, incorrect. Congress can only allow drilling of half of it.)
2) It won't make a damn bit of difference, and in fact the longer we hold off on it, the more difference it will make when we do drill. It might be the difference between $4 and $3.75 a gallon gas now if it hypothetically existed at this moment, but the less oil there is when it shows up, the more difference it will take.
3) There is absolutely no reason to open it up to drilling before Bush leaves office, considering we are talking about a decade of construction, except that Bush will sell it for cheaper.
Dude, when terrorist attacks actually originate from government labs, it's not actually a 'conspiracy rant'.
They were getting their information from the place that was in charge of investigating the anthrax.
Fort Derrick.
It's an old variant on 'it takes a thief to catch a thief'. Namely, 'it takes a terrorist to catch himself'.
What i want to know is who warned Richard Cohen:
If you buy Greenwald's premise -- that there was more to the whole anthrax episode than met the eye, more than just a Unibomber-type loner responsible for it -- then it doesn't take too many layers of foil on your hat to make that leap.
And if you don't buy Greenwald's premise, you probably shouldn't be given the right to vote.
This story, this criminal case, makes no sense.
I quote Richard Cohen, a small comment he made that he doesn't seem to realize the significance of:
Well, nothing to see here, move along.
You don't even have to postulate any sort of conspiracy, you don't have to jump to any conclusion. You just have to add one and one and one together and realize it is not, in fact, seventeen.
Someone in the US government getting a 'tip' about an anthrax attack by a terrorist and passing it outside channels is a security breach, but explicable. Someone in the US government getting a tip about a crazy person at a US lab stealing anthrax and going to mail it out is just inane. There's no possible way for the original source in the government to know that in advance without either being involved or trying to stop it.
1) According to the US government
2) According to ABC news, although they have, until recently, refused to admit it was a lie or even that it was wrong.
3) According to a writer for the Washington post.
A motive that was given in this news account was that he was working on a vaccine for Anthrax and wanted to test it.
Yes, that is a motive if you are very very very stupid.
To test a vaccine, a fundamental concept requires that people be vaccinated. Unless this was some magical long-distance vaccine.
Now, some people might be dumb enough to think you can test a vaccine without using the vaccine to vaccinate people...but I'll wager they don't work for research labs developing vaccines.
The way to illegally test a vaccine would be to dust anthrax somewhere out of the way, and then anonymously alert the government, and hope they show up to your lab to try your fancy new vaccine.
It is not to send letters contain anthrax to unsuspecting, unvaccinated people implicating Muslim extremists and wait for them to die. At the very least, you send it to one person, and in that letter list a bunch of other people and say you'll be sending anthrax to them, which might make them get vaccinated. Just killing people with anthrax who've never seen your vaccine seems like a poor test. (I guess they were the control group...)
Although, in actuality, if the government needed to vaccinate people against anthrax, it would use existing and proven methods instead of a new method, which is also something any medical researcher would know.
That motive makes as much sense as shooting up a school because you wanted to test fancy new bulletproof vests you wanted the police to buy...and everyone ignores the fact that, um, the people in the school didn't have those vests, and the police are hardly going to buy bulletproof vests from you during the attack to defend themselves.
This 'motive' makes no sense at all.
Oh, and I love this line: Unusual behavior by Ivins was noted at Fort Detrick in the six months following the anthrax mailings, when he conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at the infectious disease research unit where he worked, according to an internal report. But the focus long stayed on Hatfill.
My God! Someone who worked with anthrax in a lab got paranoid after people died from anthrax apparently leaked from a lab and started testing things without 'authorization'. Well, I'm convinced he was guilty.
Seriously, what is this 'unusual behavior' supposed to demonstrate?
That is why I kept my phone not only in 'airplane mode' but out of sight as I listened to mp3s and watched TV on it the last time I flew.
And despite what the article says, all but the cheapest phones now have that. Basically any phone that you can install Java programs on will have an airplane mode so you can play them on an airplane.
I don't buy the "Cellphones make people rude and loud" claim. I don't get complaints, rude stares, or any other signs my use of my cellphone is causing annoyance but I see others subjected to that treatment when they really are loud and annoying. I have to assume that I, like probably 95% of the population, am simply invisible, because I don't speak loudly into my phone, I keep my conversations in public short, and my cellphone uses vibration to notify me of calls rather than a loud, annoying, ring.
No shit. There is a certain subclass of morons who think they should talk loudly into a cell phone. This subclass overlaps strongly with the subclass of people who are not observant and don't realize that half the damn plane can hear them. (As people who were observant would have noticed others do not speak loudly into their phone.)
There are plenty of responsible people who are very aware others can hear them, and talk at less than normal conversational levels. The only way that could annoy people is if they were listening in and got annoyed they only heard half the conversation, and I think we can all determine who the rude person is in those circumstances.
There are legitimate safety issues with cell phone usage, like while driving, and there are places where any cell phone usage, like any conversation, should be banned, like a theater.
Anyone who wants to ban them where people can talk is just an asshat. You want to stop morons from talking too loudly on the phone, inform them they are talking too loudly on the phone, and allow the attendants to make them stop if they continue to annoy people.
People who are not observant and do not realize how their behavior affects others is a major problem in society, and it won't change until normal people start being 'rude' and informing them their behavior is not acceptable.
The punishment for breaking the rule before takeoff is being removed from the plane.
The punishment for breaking the rule after takeoff should be them taking your cell phone and not giving it back. Or alternately barring you from flying on them in the future.
I propose a test. We can start in Europe. Give me a terabyte of data. I will carry no electronics on the flight into the states. Within days back in the U.S. I will produce the terabyte of data.
I've proposed the same test with knives. Put a nice big ham, or some other 'human simulator' on the plane. Search me like normal. Search me more than normal, but let me carry on anything that the rules specifically allow.
If I can then go on the plane, have ten minutes or so of prep time, and run up and quickly slice a big cut in the ham, large enough to slice open any 'arteries', perhaps we should stop this idiotic idea of attempt to ban 'sharp things'.
Any idiot can get something sharp enough to be a danger to other humans on an airplane. Hell, they let CDs on airplanes, and anyone who's broken one of them knows how sharp they can get on accident.
There are only two options about the state of security in the US: 1) It's being run by complete and total idiots, or 2) They know damn well it isn't protecting anything.
Which is possibly a good reason to ban the operation of cell phones in the situations you list, but hardly a logical reason to ban them on airplanes, where people failing to pay attention is not a concern.
However, people failing to pay attention to their surroundings because they are idiots is just a modern problem of life. The other day, I could not get out of the grocery store with my shopping cart because some moron was standing in front of the door and talking to someone else. I actually had to interrupt them and ask them to not stand in such an obviously stupid place to stand.
I don't know if I've been become more aware of this, or if people have actually become less observant, but it's the sort of crap that really pisses me off and seems to be happening more and more...people just being stupid and inconveniencing others for no reason at.
Such behavior is more destructive than people inconveniencing others for their own gain. If it's for their own gain, we can, and do, structure society so that they actually gain little from that behavior. In extreme cases they are arrested.
If it's not for any reason at all, but simply because they are fucking stupid, we can't 'discourage' the behavior in any way, as they are not aware they are doing it.
Which is a reasonable point, but it doesn't make Congress deciding who's in the executive branch 'unconstitional':
[The president] shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
Or, to split out the second item there (I wish the constitution didn't have such absurdly long sentences.):
The president shall nominate all other (That is, not SC judges, ambassadors, ministers, or counsels) officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law (How the hell would you nominate people for non-existing positions?): but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
As that is still damn confusing, I will rephrase:
In the topmost executive positions, and Supreme Court, the president must nominate people, and Congress must confirm them.
In other executive and judicial positions, that is also the default mode of operations, but Congress can write whatever rules and regulations about those people they want and let the president, his topmost staff, or even a court of law use those rules and regulations to appoint people.
Or, in a metaphysical sense, Congress can say 'Okay, we're not going to individually confirm each person. Pick whoever you want, and we'll consider them confirmed if they are within the bounds of X, Y, and not Z.', thus frobbing their duties off to the honestly of the person doing the selection. If you get what I'm saying.
Bush's people? Not so honest.
Have you ever actually READ the Constitution? Congress doesn't "buy" anything - they appropriate the money, the President spends it.
The constitution says nothing of the sort. Congress does buy plenty of stuff, for itself. Or I guess all the tables and chairs and whiteboards and rented office space and cars Congress has just appeared out of thin air.
And while they do generally just appropriate money for other branches, and let those branches buy it, there is no constitutional reason they couldn't just buy everything and distribute it themselves.
They may "create" positions and agencies, but the President fills the positions - if the President fails to nomimate someone, the position stands empty, and there isn't jack shit Congress can do about it.
Wrong. The president has nomination power over ambassadors, 'ministers and consuls', and Supreme Court judges. Congress can only reject nominated ones of those, not pick their own.
But everyone else in the executive Congress can make laws about. I quote 'but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.'
Note that these laws actually allows Congress themselves to write the standards of appointment, as they did so in this case.
And they fund the military, but they are constitutionally precluded from any command role - the Joint Chiefs report (in the military sense) to the President, not Congress.
Congress writes the UCMJ. Congress decides what military actions are lawful, and which ones are not.
Soldiers swear to obey the 'orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.'.
If regulations, written by Congress, say not to obey the president, they don't obey the president. It's that simple. (Although honestly that's not that amazing a power, considering they also could dissolve the entire military in the first place.)
Whether or not Congress could get soldiers to do something, instead of simply not doing something, is unknown. It is entirely possible to make it illegal to not do things. (Like fill out your taxes.) I wonder if they could make it illegal for the joint chiefs to not plan and operate an invasion.
Of course, ultimately, if Congress didn't like how the military was operated, and wished to operate it 'themselves', they could just impeach the president and VP and stick the speaker of the house in there. (Hence anyone who talks about 'equal branches of government' should have their head examined.)
Oh, and in addition to the USA, the hiring of which was legal, (But the pressure and firing in response were not, and neither was lying to Congress about it.), there are plenty of DOJ jobs, like the ones Goodling was trying to file and this story is talking about, that aren't political, and it is in fact illegal to use political considerations in hiring.
Clinton didn't fire US attorneys, they resigned, as was expected of them at the start of a new presidency.
This is because they are, indeed, political positions. That, in fact, is the easiest way to tell such positions apart without looking at the law...people in political positions are expected to resign enmass at the start of a new presidency.
US attorneys are 'political' because they are expected to concentrate their office on the laws that matter to them.
It's worth pointing out that such 'concentration' isn't always political per se. Sometimes, on their way up, they get a rep for being really good at a specific type of case, and focusing on that, and a president that wants to concentrate on that crime will hire them even if their political views differ. (I.e., a Republican who's really good at prosecuting gun control violations might end up a USA under a Democratic president who wants to focus on that.)
What Bush did, however, was fill the slots with people who agreed with him, which was fine...but then he attempted to pressure them into enforcing laws in a partisan manner, and fired those who didn't play ball. And then lied about firing them.
There's a difference between a USA saying 'This office will concentrate on tracking down bank robberies and child porn, let's backburner the drugs for a bit' and saying 'This office will attempt to dig up dirt on the Governor of Alabama (because he's a Democrat)'.
Bush fired both people who would not attempt to 'enforce' the law against Democrats when they didn't have a good case, and people who investigated Republicans. It is perfectly fine to politicize the focus of the DOJ. It is not fine to politicize the investigations of the DOJ.
It's not there to mindlessly flag people. No one's asserting this was some computerized filter for applicants.
Once the query was ran, presumably people would click into each article to see what was said about each person.
The president doesn't have the power to run the administration however he sees fit.
The president doesn't even have the power to have an administration without Congress.
Constitutionally, it's just him and the VP, standing around outside somewhere. He does have the constitutional power to sign bills into law, so legally he probably demand, in the courts, that Congress budget him a pen or other writing utensil. But that's it.
Does none of these 'Bush has the right to run the executive how he sees fit' people ever read the constitution? Congress buys everything. Congress creates every single cabinet position, and every single executive agency. (And the entire military, while we're at it.)
Without Congress creating things for him to run, the president is essentially just some guy with a veto pen.
You're a fool who's not paying attention.
There are, indeed, plenty of political spots in the government.
These were not them. These were civil service jobs which were, by law, non-political.
My car has a non-linear gauge...except the gauge is broken, shifted upward. So it starts out at 125% full, and sticks there for the first 25% of the tank. (I.e, there's another 25% upward it's shifted, but the gauge pin can only physically manage 125%.)
Then the next 25% takes it down to 100% full. (So when it hits 100% full, it's at 50%.)
It keeps going down at that speed, claiming about 75% full when it's actually 25% full.
And then it plummets down twice as fast, hitting empty when displaying 25% full. (It's fun to point this out to people and claim I have really bad gas mileage. And then point out I've been driving for an hour and still are on 'full' at the other end.)
I imagine what it's trying to do is make the first 66% of the gauge be 75% of the gas, the next 33% be 15%, and then an extra 10% of the gauge, below zero, be the rest of the gas, and it's just gotten shifted upward 25% at the low end and 50% at the high end, and even more confused by the fact it can't actually show 150% full.
But what is has actually accomplished is to confuse the hell out of everyone who drives that car. I just rely on distance and reset the mileage counter.
While you are correct that tacking on 'I believe' is not always a defense to libel, in actuality saying someone 'did something illegal' is not libel. Saying someone committed specific crimes is libel.
Just saying they committed the crime of 'ruining the constitution' isn't libel, as that isn't actually a crime. It's no more libel than threatening to call the police because someone is 'too pretty'.
Now, going into detains of what 'ruining the constitution' entailed could be libel.
The police are not in charge of stopping or even investigating things that are 'probably libel'.
The courts are in charge of deciding if something is actually libel or not, and awarding damages, and ordering that the libeler remove the libel, with the police as enforcement if he refuses.
Pffft, everyone does that.