Which "limp-wristed" responses are you referring to? The ones where the Republican congress and conservative media shouted "Wag the Dog!" over and over to force him to stop attempting to kill Bin Laden? After all, shooting rockets into Afghanistan to try blow up known terrorist training camps had nothing to do with Clinton trying to protect America - it was all about distracting people from his blow job.
The incident was proof that Clinton getting "serviced" in the oval office was indeed a bad thing which interfered with his job performance. Do not blame Clinton's failure on anybody but him. Politics is a contact sport. In contact sports you must expect the opposing team to push back. What quarterback whines that he could not complete a pass because his opponents got in the way? What boxer whines that his opponent punched back? A real pro would have either not had the fling, or would have had the fling but been competent at keeping it secret, or would have had the fling and still managed to do the job without regard to any political blow-back. If Clinton was not capable of messing with the help and still doing his job (doing the country's business even while political opponents make life tough) then he should have left the intern alone. To say that Bill Clinton was not capable of continuing the Bin Laden chase because his political opponents were howling is to say that he was far less determined or capable than Bush (who has run two full-blown wars for years while his political opponents yelled and screamed). Simply put, Bill Clinton was no Jack Kennedy
First: This is the 9th circuit. They are the most overturned court in the country, so nobody on either side of the issue should presume this is the final result.
Second: If you think of this ruling as bad news, let's try a simple thought experiment... The RIAA drags you into court and wants to introduce as evidence their "recollections" of documents that said what you did on the internet, what files you downloaded, and what files you shared. Should this be allowed? Should you have to answer this by providing an complete an accurate record of your online activities and the files on your system? (in other words: should the threat of "recollection" evidence be a tool that can be used to force you to give-up evidence you would not otherwise have to produce?)
I do not like the idea of government using secret evidence, but I also do not want any court making it worse by allowing in "recollections" of documents. You do not fix the problem of secret evidence which cannot be examined by allowing recollected evidence which cannot be examined. Why not just skip a few steps and start using fortune tellers and ouija boards for evidence?
(A) NASA has a tiny budget relative to the rest of the Federal budget (16Billion out of 2.7Trillion); there are actually significant amounts wasted elsewhere.
(B) The line about NASA getting an extra billion is intentional deception; The senate has indeed added the billion in its budget but the house has not and the congress as a whole has yet to pass a budget even though we are into the second month of the new fiscal year. The billion dollars cited in the article is just vaporware at this time, a fantasy like most of the rest of the CBS "news".
(C) How many billions do we spend every year on illegal aliens, and on people who are bums because of their own drug or alcohol addictions? How many billions do we put into all manner of non-productive people and activities every year? Bridge to nowhere anybody? How many millions on mushroom museums, studies of snail sex, etc? I have no problem at all rewarding a few very skilled people for doing their best to move the country forward. Sure, many of them work for the contractors. Those contractors are typical big impersonal corporations who likely do little to reward these people and probably try to rob them in every contract negotiation and get them to work all sorts of uncompensated overtime. How do these parties compare to a typical Senatorial "conference" in the Bahamas?
There are a lot of users on this site that are convinced the big evil government is out to get them, the evil Bush and Cheney are turning the country into a dictatorship, etc. but this illustrates exactly how silly that notion really is. This is similarly good evidence against the Roswell UFO, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, and the 9/11 inside job lunacy, among other things.
The bureaucrats who really run Washington DC year after year, whether Republicans or Democrats are in the White House are a fairly stupid, clumbsy, inept and out-of-touch bunch; These are the sort who think this stupid idea would actually work and make sense. Not only were they completely unable to pull-off this phony news conference, but they also were unable to hide how phoney it was and now cannot manage the resulting bad publicity. If they cannot cover-up even something stupid like this, they are hardly up to the level of a James Bond super-villain. They're all idiots.
FEMA & DHS should be disbanded along with 90% of the rest of the federal government. Not because they are evil and about to squish us all, but because they are lazy, overpaid, and completely incompetent. People who actually WANT the federal government to do much more than the Constitution says it should do ought to look at the track record and re-consider. Yes, Chertoff is a loser who was appointed by Bush, just as Burger was a loser who was appointed by Clinton... There are plenty of professional government appointees in both parties who just go from administration to administration running things when their party is in power and being lawyers/lobbyists when their party is out of power. These people are not really capable of actually running a big evil conspiracy; they lack the skill set. If you are ever in a natural disaster you should count on yourself and your community before you ever dream of depending on the clowns from the federal government. Look at the difference between Katrina and these wildfires; The PEOPLE responded differently and got different results, but the DC crowd were just consistently stupid as expected.
The enemy is more dangerous than our own government? Really?!
Yes. The enemy plans to kill innocent US citizens. The US govenment does not plan to kill US citizens. You'd have to be educated by a unionized school teacher to not be able to see that.
Last I checked, it wasn't terrorists who were eroding our constitutional rights.
This is such a weak load of paranoia. List the rights you have personally lost.
It wasn't terrorists who ignored the citizens of an entire city after a major natural disaster.
So now you're saying that the Democrats who run New Orleans and Louisiana are more dangerous than Al Queda? hmmmm... you may have a point...
The cost in lives from the attack on 9/11 was around 2800 people. The last confirmed count of US deaths in Iraq confirmed by the DoD was around 3800.
By this nutty thinking we would never have fought WWI, WWII or the Civil War. Most Americans prefer to take-on an enemy after he makes it clear he IS an enemy but before he can do overwhelming harm
But they were killed by terrorists, too, right? Nope, guess again. The war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, despite what our Dear Leaders would like us to believe.
Osama Bin Laden sure seems to think we're fighting his boys in Iraq. Guess you know more about his outfit than he does. Iraq was a situation that had to be dealt with sooner or later. UN sanctions were slipping away, Saddam had been funding suicide bombers, he claimed to have WMDs and most intelligence agencies of western governments thought he had them or was working on them. He caused his own misery by interfering with UN inspectors that would have been able to clear him. He was in violation of the cease-fire terms of the 91 gulf war and was shooting at American personnel on a nearly daily basis, so we had every legal right to wipe him out. Funny that Abu Nidal turned out to be hiding from the US in Iraq... nothing to do with terror indeed.
The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is just that the latter won his war.
Pathetic and idiotic. The sort of tripe usually spouted by people who prefer socialism or communism or some other evil tyranny over the mind of man, the sort who would wear a Che Guevara T-shirt (celebrating a murderous pig)
Terrorist:
1. Targets innocent people for destruction, in order to force change by terrorizing the masses
2. Does not serve a county and wear a uniform (nobody is accountable for his acts but him)
3. Usually lacks the guts to be accountable for his actions. Either hides his face behind a mask, of kills himself in the attack to avoid capture and punishment.
4. Often seeks to replace a government with some form of tyranny or worse government
Freedom fighter:
1. Targets government forces or opposing terrorists/guerrillas
2. Often organized into militia-like forms with intent to become military of new government
3. Usually proud to be identified and plans to survive to the end to see freedom
4. Seeks to replace some form of tyranny with a better government and more freedom
The more-liberal members tried to make the requirements so onerous that even more-moderate members of the Democratic party could not support it. Their efforts were turning warfare into courtroom drama. We have never before required court orders to approve of spying upon enemies overseas; had we done so, FDR would have had a lot of trouble fighting WWII. If the left wants to use this sort of legislation to score cheap political points and/or undercut spying efforts against foreign enemies, it should expect blowback and a re-bound. Adults would get together and seek intelligent solutions, but there are not enough adults on Capitol Hill and with the elections looming things are only going to get worse.
The nation is at war. The people in "fly-over country" get that. As long as one party sticks its fingers in its ears, closes its eyes, stomps a lot and whines in an effort to convince everyone to hand the whole effort over to their lawyer friends, they cannot get the traction they want on some of this stuff. If they get serious about the war, then perhaps they will get more cooperation in defining the limits. Denying reality is not the best way to get the masses to support you in your paranoia. The public will be more-likely to listen to your concerns about the dangers of our own government once you admit that there is a war and the enemy is actually more dangerous. Seriousness on the war gains credibility on the rest.
I do wonder about this. What is the threshold where people should start to take-up arms?
You do not have the right to take-up arms. The word "people" in the Constitution really only means "The Militia", which is now The National Guard and that is under the control of the President. You'd better not have any guns. Guns are only for the government employees in law enforcement or the military...they know what's best for you anyway
Liberals rarely recognize or appreciate the role of the 2nd ammendment in protecting the rest of the document and are always too eager to re-interpret it and shut it down. In doing so they lose all credibility when they scream about the 1st, 4th, or any other. Every lefty group around has long claimed that The Constitution is a "Living Document" and each generation is free to re-interpret it (change it's meaning without actually ammending it) to suit whatever mood they are in or satisfy any desire they have. Therefore, by that disgusting and perverse twist, Bush and the Congress are doing nothing wrong here. I'll start listening to all the left-wing screeching about the need to obey The Constitution as written when the ACLU admits that Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Bork, etc. are correct that The Consitution is absolutely NOT a "living document" and it may only be "re-interpreted" by being officially and properly ammended
You reap what you sow. Move along. Nothing to see here. LOL
let's assume that the woman DID share the files.
OK, let's assume there were 50 to 100 total downloads.
100 downloads, at 0.99 cents a piece (let's be realistic here), equal = 100 dollars!
OR, let's assume there were 800 million downloads...let's see that's about 800 million bucks. This is the problem. Nobody KNOWS how many people got pirate copies of music from her, and just pulling numbers out of your posterior is meaningless, as I have just illustrated.
So, what's the basis to affirm that she should pay $222,000 for 24 songs? This is where the RIAA's case is illogical.
No, that's the law. The RIAA case is every bit as logical as the laws they have bought, thanks to all the "file sharers"
They assume that the downloaders will distribute and that this will cause them many losses. But that's THE DOWNLOADERS' FAULT, not hers.
I would agree, except that it is impossible to find out who did the downloading and many were probably in jurisdictions where the copyright owners of any particular works (not just the evil people of the RIAA, but ANY copyright owners) cannot catch-up with them. THIS woman is, however, a willing accomplice just as a bank employee who willingly helps her friends rob a bank is an accomplice even if she does not end up with any ill-gotten gains
They're making her responsible for what EVERY DOWNLOADER DID. Instead of downloading from her they could have bought a CD (even pirated!) or downloaded from someone else.
Yes, "they" could have done ANYTHING. The anonymous downloaders might have killed somebody too. Who knows? Unfortunately for her, and for all of us, she helped them with the copyright violations and she set bad legal precedents WE will now all have to live with.
And this is where "making available" doesn't equal massive infringement.
It sure does. If you intentionally do it, you have intentionally helped somebody else break the law. Even if that somebody else, gets away with it, there is no guarantee that you will or that you should
The fines MUST BE PROPORTIONAL TO THE NUMBER OF DOWNLOADS.
I Agree! Let's assume copies of the MP3 files she "made available" echo around the internet for the next 50 years and get copied on every continent by millions of people. Shall we setup a "tab" for her and just keep adding-up the penalty? What sort of payment system will she be using? Will she be establishing a fund to keep paying when she is an old lady in a nursing home? Never demand true justice...you might get it when what you would rather have is mercy.
"file sharing" of copyrighted works is a fraud and a sham and I am tired of having to live with the resulting side-effects. When you "share" something, you take something you rightfully have and let somebody else have it (temporarily, as in "sharing a book", or permanently as in "sharing half of a sandwich) and you are deprived of it while you are "sharing" it. THIS is the morally "nice" form of sharing your mom tried to teach you. There is nothing morally superior in usurping somebody else's copy RIGHT, and distributing THEIR work to others under YOUR chosen terms and not THEIRS. All the rampant "file sharing" of copyrighted works is what gave the RIAA and MPAA the ability to go to congress and get all the laws (like DMCA), and all the DRM put in place so that we cannot watch and/or listen to ANY of the content we buy on ANY of the devices we own. The lawlessness has had a HUGE impact upon all of us, particularly the people who never did any illegal and unethical "file sharing" of SOMEBODY ELSE'S copyrighted works. I hate the big media companies as much as the next guy, and I stopped buying CDs when they started the lawsuits (I have plenty of good music and can live without newer tracks), but the rampant "file sharing" turned out to be not-so-free. Free as in beer, perhaps (for those willing to do it), but not "free" in any sense that really matters.
It clearly shows what is going on in minds of regular (and "better") people in the US.
Sorry, but I am finally rather tired of empty-headed criticism of civilization
One aspect is that, if somebody is not doing well, or has done something wrong, it's ok to kick even more so s/he "learns" and gets better (the stern father penalizes).
No the idea of enforcing laws is to do two basic things: (1) hold back the forces of anarchy in a society, thereby protecting the innocent and (2) to provide a system of justice that is reasonably fair so that wronged citizens will let the system provide justice rather than forming into vigilante gangs and obtaining as much frontier-justice as they choose to inflict. "not doing well" you say? so she was sick? "done something wrong" you say? so she mis-spelled a word? did she yell at her child? You seem to be working very hard to avoid the issue that she was dumb and she broke the law. NOW EVERY LEGITIMATELY GOOD PERSON WRONGLY ACCUSED BY THE RIAA WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS WOMAN'S BAD LEGAL PRECEDENTS
Effects are overpopulated prisons, total weak or missing social umbrella and an increasing number of people under poorness level.
The social umbrella in the US is already too good. The increasing number of poor people you cite might actually be due to the fact that
1/10th of the citizens of Mexico alone (not even beginning to count the people from all the other countries) have broken into the country to
get a better life. If the country sucks so badly, people should be fleeing from it (as they are fleeing Mexico), not crashing the gates to get into it.
The other fact shown here is that people are totally out of touch with financial reality. Financially ruining a life of (is she a single mother?)
This woman chose to ruin her own life. Nobody did this to her. And since when did being a single mother equate with a right to break any law without facing the penalty any man would face?
a person with the idea to doing something "right" shows an overwhelming degree of insensitivity.
Not holding a person accountable for their own acts shows a lack of respect for them as an adult, AND a remarkable degree of disrespect for all of the other people who obeyed the law.
THIS WOMAN IS ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG PERSON TO SUPPORT HERE. The people who need support are the innocent people wrongly accused.
We are rapidly approaching the day when our computers will be fast enough for most tasks, the hard drive will be solid state, the system will be passively cooled and made from reliable parts that will last for decades, drawing minimal power. Any media that won't fit on the solid state hard drive can be stored on the spinning kind and plugged in as needed via USB/eSATA/firewire.
While equipment with the same capability gets more power efficient, newer software and consumer demand keep driving up the performance demands. As things currently stand, the performance (and therefore power demands) are rising faster than the offsetting power savings technology. If you expect this to change, then I presume you are not into gaming... There's no such thing as a "fast enough" computer, a "big enough" drive or screen, etc.
Whenever I hear the phrase "right to bear arms", I reach for my nerf blaster.
Only militia members may bear nerf blasters, civilians are restricted to plastic sporks:-P
The important thing is that all persons eligible to vote are able to vote once, that nobody who is ineligible gets any vote, and that all properly cast votes are counted accurately. If you need voting to be "convenient" before you exercise your franchise, then it would be better for everybody if you did not vote, because you probably were unwilling to exert any more effort to learn the issues than you were willing to exert to cast your vote. Every step to make voting easier for lazy people only opens systems up to greater opportunities for voter fraud.
While the Constitution "may" not apply to every citizen of the world -- it should at least apply to the "people" in the United States. The notion that we, as a nation, might condone holding anyone without charges ultimately makes us no better than the tyrants we overthrow.
Nah. I have it on the best of liberal sources that the Constitution is a "living document" whose meaning may be re-interpreted at any time by any judge, or group of government officials. Oh, and the word "people" only means the militia (National Guard). Clearly, only the members of the National Guard are entitled to free speech, Habeas Corpus, etc. (grin)
As for holding people... we treat them better than we treat our own civilian criminals and even many of our poorest non-criminal citizens. We treat the detainees better than any other government has EVER treated UNIFORMED U.S. military POWs who were actually ENTITLED to Geneva Convention treatment. Only a complete idiot would equate this with the way Saddam treated his opponents, or the way Mr. Putin treats reporters in Russia, or the way Saudi Arabia or Osama Bin Laden treats a Muslim who converts to Christianity or atheism. etc. etc. etc.
Remember this: The morons in gitmo put themselves there by fighting in a war without being in any uniformed military.
Free the people in gitmo! (drop them off back on the battlefield and gun them down PROPERLY as we had every right to do in the first place...then all the complaining about their mistreatment at gitmo will finally end) (wink)
The scary part of the MCA, as I now understand it is this:
"No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." 28 U.S.C. 2241(e)(1) (Section 7)
This is just silly and you clearly have not thought it through; The people affected have been deemed to be in a certain category and you claim to be afraid you will be slipped into that category? You do not trust the government to not mess-up and classify you as an enemy combatant?
Then WHY, even without this issue at all would you come here and trust the same government to not accidentally slip you into the category "kiddie rapist" or "drug transporter" and jail you for life on THOSE charges? I KNOW that Slashdot attracts a certain level of paranoid left-of-center people, but if you are paranoid about the US government with THIS law, then you should be as paranoid about it with ALL laws. (and paranoid about all other governments with all other laws, while you are working yourself up into a fever)
It means that the US can detain someone indefinately, as long as they decide not to determine what the status of their captive actually is. Even you or me. Being a US-citizen does not realy help, until they have decided your status.
TECHNICALLY true of all governments at all times. All governments reserve to themselves enough power to carry-out their will against anyone within their borders. In modern times, most governments restrain themselves, but what is your ACTUAL guarantee? At least the founders of the U.S. wanted to give their citizens a final guarantee, so we have a right to keep and bear arms, which most governments are afraid to provide to their citizens. (it's not that Americans with guns could hold-back the government, but it IS true that a million mad, armed citizens will discourage a lot of flunky government bureaucrats from getting out of line). One should always view all governments with a healthy dose of skepticism, but actual paranoia is not healthy
It's very Orwellian in both being a nice kind of newspeak, and allowing "all animals are equal, but some are more equal then others".
True in every country. I bet the government officials and chiefs of industry in your country get better treatment than the poor. Even more true in societies that claim to be the most fair: Soviet Russia and China are good examples where all are equal (but the party bosses have LOTS of extra goodies)
It scares me, everytime I visit the USA, when I consider that because of some mistaken identity or mix-up, I could be detained, and held without any recourse. (I am Dutch)
Lighten-up and enjoy your visits! I am sure you have found most Americans like meeting visitors from Europe (as long as they are not carrying explosives and planning to kill hundreds or thousands of people (laugh)). I personally am no longer willing to visit any country that does not trust me with a firearm; places like that do not respect me and might just choose to make up a crime and jail me for life (sarcasm intended, but with a smile)
...unlawful combatants, who, while not afforded the protections of the Geneva Convention as a Prisoner of War, must be prosecuted according to domestic law, retaining all the rights of a civilian.
ummm, NO, and VERY dangerous to ACTUAL CIVILIANS. Unlawful combatants are idiots who have slipped themselves through a loophole in international law and find themselves in a deep dark hole of their own making. Under NO circumstances should they be confused with true civilians who must be afforded the rights of civilians by all parties to the conflict. If you start to extend "civilian" protections and rights to combatants, then you reduce support for those protections among the people on the other side of the conflict, and in a really bad war you expose the civilians to intentional massacres. This sort of mushiness may SEEM humane and civilized but risks reduction in respect for the rights of ACTUAL civilians (the sort who flee combat and are just trying to keep body-and-soul together).
My understanding is that many of the people were not 'captured on the battlefield' but in fact were turned in for a reward.
Yeah, and every time we drop a bomb it miraculously hits a wedding party. Sheesh! Westerners live sooft lives and are SO easily suckered by a soft, dramatic story. Funny how every rapist is caught in his very first attack, every druggie is caught with somebody else's drugs, every trespasser was just lost, every shoplifter just forgot to pay, everybody in gitmo was an innocent tourist either accidentally holding an AK-47 or sold to the Americans by some evil warlord... I heard that when the US and USSR rolled into Germany in 1945 they discovered that NOBODY there had ever been a NAZI...
Also, your 'end of conflict' has no meaning here since there will never be an end to terror, it is as old as mankind and will exist until the end of days, so your 'end of conflict' release does not exist in a 'war on terror'.
It works PERFECTLY! If Bin Laden wants his boys back, he can end the war. If he chooses not to then they sit and rot as part of the price of being chumps who followed that pig. Wanna discourage unlawful combatants? Make it clear that they will disappear into a deep, dark hole until the war ends; this will not solve the problem, but will reduce the pool of recruits to just the hardcore idiots.
Gitmo...just another reason why being a terrorist sucks!
Since they are a militia of no government (and if they were, of no government we are at war with, since we have not declared war with any government that remains) these enemy combatants caught in acts of aggression are mere criminals and are not in fact prisoners of war. Hence, if they are criminals, they should be detained and tried where they committed said acts of aggression.
We were engaged in battle against Germans (on the Atlantic) before the declaration of WWII (as their U-Boots were sinking U.S. Merchantmen), but that did not make the Germans we killed/captured into civilians with access to our courts. It is not the magic words "War" that define the reality, but rather the flying bullets on a battlefield. A formal declaration clears things up and makes lawyers happier, but it does not define combatants.
Actually, they are not civilian criminal suspects (not accused of violating civil laws within the US); they do not deserve access to civilian lawyers and courts. They have, by their own actions, dropped themselves through an unfortunate loophole in the rules of war setup by the civilized nations. The Geneva conventions and other traditions providing some degree of civility in what would otherwise be mankind's least civilized activity (war) are not meant (as some seem to believe) to prevent civilization from holding people accountable. Somebody is responsible for combat activities; in normal warfare, that responsibility is shared by the individual combatant (who is expected to operate within the rules of war and to refuse to carry-out unlawful orders) and by the government and society that the soldier serves. The uniform the soldier wears serves many purposes, but one purpose it to let the world know which country shares responsibility for his actions. When he is captured and disarmed, he is held until hostilities cease and his country is either victorious, or is held to account for his acts by the victors. The nation the soldier served may be held to account for his actions militarily, diplomatically, or economically by the world and his interests can be represented by diplomats from the nation he serves. By operating without a country, without a uniform, and often in violation of the rules of war (for example by TARGETING non-combatants) the terror suspect is the only one that civilization can hold accountable, and his actions are not the stuff civil court proceedings are designed for (they are acts of war). For example, civilization did not need to hold every German WWII soldier to account for his actions (provided he engaged in lawful war activities and not war crimes), the German government was held to account. The modern terrorist, on the other hand, must bear the full brunt of the wrath of civilization for his actions; there is no government and society stepping-up to say "he is our soldier and acted on our behalf". If he rots in a cell for decades while the war boils on, it is his own fault because by not serving a country he did not have diplomats to represent him in negotiations for release or better treatment. I have NO sympathy for any moron who engages in combat without being a uniformed soldier serving a country. These people should be publicly drawn and quartered as a warning to everyone on earth to never be an unlawful combatant.
Any actions which give ANY protection or sympathy to people in this position only reduces the deterrence against others getting into this position. Unfortunately, the wishy-washiness of western democracies in these matters have encouraged a number of third-world nations to employ people like this as surrogates in their foreign policy, thereby escaping responsibility for their foreign policies. This must be discouraged so severely that even the most poorly educated peasant will refuse to participate as a willing dupe of some zealot or dictator. Osama Bin Laden uses people to attack the west, but then he hangs them out to dry; he has no diplomats to represent their interests, and he hides behind women in burkas where he cannot be hel
CATO is not a "conservative" think tank; they are more-accurately characterized as libertarian. They do not even agree themselves on what they should be called but they say the following (among other things):
The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called "libertarianism" or "market liberalism."
Not trying to be too picky here, but wanted the clarity for any readers not familiar with CATO, such as many of our non-US readers. CATO is sometimes viewed as conservative because their views more-often (though not always) line-up with the views of most Republicans (who are the more-conservative US political party.
When you let a fictional movie (The China Syndrome) and an accident that killed, um, well... nobody (Three mile Island) convince you to abandon the world's best source of clean power there are bound to be consequences. Old plants like that should have been retired long ago and replaced with far better, safer, facilities. If we had treated ANY other technology like we have treated nuclear technology, we would all be living in caves.
Look at the one place where the U.S. nuclear industry has been free to design new systems and keep developing the technology: The U.S. Navy. We have nuclear plants that we operate all around the world, in moving vehicles, rolling and pitching, surrounded by corrosive seawater, sometimes in war zones, and operated by 18-year-old kids (for over 40 years). We have never had a meltdown or explosion. There has never been a fatality.
If we had a collective brain, we'd build several very large well-protected clusters of plants (probably underground where they cannot be hit by planes or truck bombs) with the best tech available and double-layer containment structures and we would staff them with retirees from the U.S. Navy nuclear program. This would give retired sailors good jobs and the ability to settle-down in one place with their families and would mean our plants would all be staffed with people with decades of discipline and experience (in far tougher situations). The facilities could be far from populations and very well guarded like military weapons depots.
Broadcasters can whine about this and try to convince lawmakers (most of whom are tech-dumb lawyers) that this is all about protecting the radio frequency spectrum, but this is BUNK, Just as the FCC claims its regulation of computers is about protecting the spectrum is also BUNK.
If the FCC was REALLY about protecting the spectrum, then they would require some of the worst RF noise emitters (electric razors, light dimmers, lawnmowers, etc.) to be certified. There is a lot of money and prestige in regulating computer technology and none in regulating cheap low-tech devices. As long as they regulate important whizz-bang things like TV, radio, and computers, congress sees reasons to fund them at current levels. If they were the regulators of razors and light dimmers they might have less respect and lower budgets.
Similarly, the broadcasters are not worried about the spectrum (which sounds important and high-tech); This is about trying to keep from losing even more viewers (and the associated ad and/or subscriber revenue). Everybody knows that younger people are getting more of their entertainment from interactive web-based sources (news from the web, online games, etc) and this trend will likely SKYROCKET if low-cost high-speed net access becomes too available. Any roadblock they can throw-up will help hold back the tidal wave of losses.
Watch-out whenever somebody tells you that he, like some knight in shiny armor, is a defender-of-the-spectrum, (defender of the faith... protector of the realm... ) and all that stands between you and electromagnetic chaos. If he has a financial interest in the outcome then he probably is in it for the cash.
This is not as far out as you might imagine. There is a tradition in the U.S. in which, during wartime when the draft existed (during WWII, Korean War, etc.) conscientious objectors volunteered to provide benefit to their country by being subjects in medical tests. These people deserve a great deal of respect for being willing to take risks as big as their brothers faced in battle while still being consistent with their values. Also, these people were of far greater value than subjects who might be terminally ill, or criminals because they were both healthy and cooperative. Many but not all were Seventh Day Adventists, I believe others were Mennonites and possibly Amish. I am not a member of any of these groups, but I greatly respect this type of conscientious objector.
For those who may be interested, there were a number of groups and programs involved and I'm sure any Slashdot readers can do their own searches, but the following links may lead you to more info:
http://www.brfwitness.org/Articles/2005v40n1.htm(see item 3a on this page)
Slashdot Mirror
Think about it: what else does America produce anymore besides "intellectual property"?
Intellectual property lawyers, of course.
Better still if they had given the chimps real, loaded guns...
Which "limp-wristed" responses are you referring to? The ones where the Republican congress and conservative media shouted "Wag the Dog!" over and over to force him to stop attempting to kill Bin Laden? After all, shooting rockets into Afghanistan to try blow up known terrorist training camps had nothing to do with Clinton trying to protect America - it was all about distracting people from his blow job.
The incident was proof that Clinton getting "serviced" in the oval office was indeed a bad thing which interfered with his job performance. Do not blame Clinton's failure on anybody but him. Politics is a contact sport. In contact sports you must expect the opposing team to push back. What quarterback whines that he could not complete a pass because his opponents got in the way? What boxer whines that his opponent punched back? A real pro would have either not had the fling, or would have had the fling but been competent at keeping it secret, or would have had the fling and still managed to do the job without regard to any political blow-back. If Clinton was not capable of messing with the help and still doing his job (doing the country's business even while political opponents make life tough) then he should have left the intern alone. To say that Bill Clinton was not capable of continuing the Bin Laden chase because his political opponents were howling is to say that he was far less determined or capable than Bush (who has run two full-blown wars for years while his political opponents yelled and screamed). Simply put, Bill Clinton was no Jack Kennedy
First: This is the 9th circuit. They are the most overturned court in the country, so nobody on either side of the issue should presume this is the final result.
Second: If you think of this ruling as bad news, let's try a simple thought experiment... The RIAA drags you into court and wants to introduce as evidence their "recollections" of documents that said what you did on the internet, what files you downloaded, and what files you shared. Should this be allowed? Should you have to answer this by providing an complete an accurate record of your online activities and the files on your system? (in other words: should the threat of "recollection" evidence be a tool that can be used to force you to give-up evidence you would not otherwise have to produce?)
I do not like the idea of government using secret evidence, but I also do not want any court making it worse by allowing in "recollections" of documents. You do not fix the problem of secret evidence which cannot be examined by allowing recollected evidence which cannot be examined. Why not just skip a few steps and start using fortune tellers and ouija boards for evidence?
(A) NASA has a tiny budget relative to the rest of the Federal budget (16Billion out of 2.7Trillion); there are actually significant amounts wasted elsewhere.
(B) The line about NASA getting an extra billion is intentional deception; The senate has indeed added the billion in its budget but the house has not and the congress as a whole has yet to pass a budget even though we are into the second month of the new fiscal year. The billion dollars cited in the article is just vaporware at this time, a fantasy like most of the rest of the CBS "news".
(C) How many billions do we spend every year on illegal aliens, and on people who are bums because of their own drug or alcohol addictions? How many billions do we put into all manner of non-productive people and activities every year? Bridge to nowhere anybody? How many millions on mushroom museums, studies of snail sex, etc? I have no problem at all rewarding a few very skilled people for doing their best to move the country forward. Sure, many of them work for the contractors. Those contractors are typical big impersonal corporations who likely do little to reward these people and probably try to rob them in every contract negotiation and get them to work all sorts of uncompensated overtime. How do these parties compare to a typical Senatorial "conference" in the Bahamas?
There are a lot of users on this site that are convinced the big evil government is out to get them, the evil Bush and Cheney are turning the country into a dictatorship, etc. but this illustrates exactly how silly that notion really is. This is similarly good evidence against the Roswell UFO, the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, and the 9/11 inside job lunacy, among other things.
The bureaucrats who really run Washington DC year after year, whether Republicans or Democrats are in the White House are a fairly stupid, clumbsy, inept and out-of-touch bunch; These are the sort who think this stupid idea would actually work and make sense. Not only were they completely unable to pull-off this phony news conference, but they also were unable to hide how phoney it was and now cannot manage the resulting bad publicity. If they cannot cover-up even something stupid like this, they are hardly up to the level of a James Bond super-villain. They're all idiots.
FEMA & DHS should be disbanded along with 90% of the rest of the federal government. Not because they are evil and about to squish us all, but because they are lazy, overpaid, and completely incompetent. People who actually WANT the federal government to do much more than the Constitution says it should do ought to look at the track record and re-consider. Yes, Chertoff is a loser who was appointed by Bush, just as Burger was a loser who was appointed by Clinton... There are plenty of professional government appointees in both parties who just go from administration to administration running things when their party is in power and being lawyers/lobbyists when their party is out of power. These people are not really capable of actually running a big evil conspiracy; they lack the skill set. If you are ever in a natural disaster you should count on yourself and your community before you ever dream of depending on the clowns from the federal government. Look at the difference between Katrina and these wildfires; The PEOPLE responded differently and got different results, but the DC crowd were just consistently stupid as expected.
The enemy is more dangerous than our own government? Really?!
Yes. The enemy plans to kill innocent US citizens. The US govenment does not plan to kill US citizens. You'd have to be educated by a unionized school teacher to not be able to see that.
Last I checked, it wasn't terrorists who were eroding our constitutional rights.
This is such a weak load of paranoia. List the rights you have personally lost.
It wasn't terrorists who ignored the citizens of an entire city after a major natural disaster.
So now you're saying that the Democrats who run New Orleans and Louisiana are more dangerous than Al Queda? hmmmm... you may have a point...
The cost in lives from the attack on 9/11 was around 2800 people. The last confirmed count of US deaths in Iraq confirmed by the DoD was around 3800.
By this nutty thinking we would never have fought WWI, WWII or the Civil War. Most Americans prefer to take-on an enemy after he makes it clear he IS an enemy but before he can do overwhelming harm
But they were killed by terrorists, too, right? Nope, guess again. The war in Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, despite what our Dear Leaders would like us to believe.
Osama Bin Laden sure seems to think we're fighting his boys in Iraq. Guess you know more about his outfit than he does. Iraq was a situation that had to be dealt with sooner or later. UN sanctions were slipping away, Saddam had been funding suicide bombers, he claimed to have WMDs and most intelligence agencies of western governments thought he had them or was working on them. He caused his own misery by interfering with UN inspectors that would have been able to clear him. He was in violation of the cease-fire terms of the 91 gulf war and was shooting at American personnel on a nearly daily basis, so we had every legal right to wipe him out. Funny that Abu Nidal turned out to be hiding from the US in Iraq... nothing to do with terror indeed.
The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is just that the latter won his war.
Pathetic and idiotic. The sort of tripe usually spouted by people who prefer socialism or communism or some other evil tyranny over the mind of man, the sort who would wear a Che Guevara T-shirt (celebrating a murderous pig)
Terrorist:
1. Targets innocent people for destruction, in order to force change by terrorizing the masses2. Does not serve a county and wear a uniform (nobody is accountable for his acts but him)
3. Usually lacks the guts to be accountable for his actions. Either hides his face behind a mask, of kills himself in the attack to avoid capture and punishment.
4. Often seeks to replace a government with some form of tyranny or worse government
Freedom fighter:
1. Targets government forces or opposing terrorists/guerrillas
2. Often organized into militia-like forms with intent to become military of new government
3. Usually proud to be identified and plans to survive to the end to see freedom
4. Seeks to replace some form of tyranny with a better government and more freedomThis is what you get when you over-reach.
The more-liberal members tried to make the requirements so onerous that even more-moderate members of the Democratic party could not support it. Their efforts were turning warfare into courtroom drama. We have never before required court orders to approve of spying upon enemies overseas; had we done so, FDR would have had a lot of trouble fighting WWII. If the left wants to use this sort of legislation to score cheap political points and/or undercut spying efforts against foreign enemies, it should expect blowback and a re-bound. Adults would get together and seek intelligent solutions, but there are not enough adults on Capitol Hill and with the elections looming things are only going to get worse.
The nation is at war. The people in "fly-over country" get that. As long as one party sticks its fingers in its ears, closes its eyes, stomps a lot and whines in an effort to convince everyone to hand the whole effort over to their lawyer friends, they cannot get the traction they want on some of this stuff. If they get serious about the war, then perhaps they will get more cooperation in defining the limits. Denying reality is not the best way to get the masses to support you in your paranoia. The public will be more-likely to listen to your concerns about the dangers of our own government once you admit that there is a war and the enemy is actually more dangerous. Seriousness on the war gains credibility on the rest.
I do wonder about this. What is the threshold where people should start to take-up arms?
You do not have the right to take-up arms. The word "people" in the Constitution really only means "The Militia", which is now The National Guard and that is under the control of the President. You'd better not have any guns. Guns are only for the government employees in law enforcement or the military...they know what's best for you anyway
Liberals rarely recognize or appreciate the role of the 2nd ammendment in protecting the rest of the document and are always too eager to re-interpret it and shut it down. In doing so they lose all credibility when they scream about the 1st, 4th, or any other. Every lefty group around has long claimed that The Constitution is a "Living Document" and each generation is free to re-interpret it (change it's meaning without actually ammending it) to suit whatever mood they are in or satisfy any desire they have. Therefore, by that disgusting and perverse twist, Bush and the Congress are doing nothing wrong here. I'll start listening to all the left-wing screeching about the need to obey The Constitution as written when the ACLU admits that Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Bork, etc. are correct that The Consitution is absolutely NOT a "living document" and it may only be "re-interpreted" by being officially and properly ammended
You reap what you sow. Move along. Nothing to see here. LOL
the Infinite Improbability Drive.
let's assume that the woman DID share the files. OK, let's assume there were 50 to 100 total downloads. 100 downloads, at 0.99 cents a piece (let's be realistic here), equal = 100 dollars!
OR, let's assume there were 800 million downloads...let's see that's about 800 million bucks. This is the problem. Nobody KNOWS how many people got pirate copies of music from her, and just pulling numbers out of your posterior is meaningless, as I have just illustrated.
So, what's the basis to affirm that she should pay $222,000 for 24 songs? This is where the RIAA's case is illogical.
No, that's the law. The RIAA case is every bit as logical as the laws they have bought, thanks to all the "file sharers"
They assume that the downloaders will distribute and that this will cause them many losses. But that's THE DOWNLOADERS' FAULT, not hers.
I would agree, except that it is impossible to find out who did the downloading and many were probably in jurisdictions where the copyright owners of any particular works (not just the evil people of the RIAA, but ANY copyright owners) cannot catch-up with them. THIS woman is, however, a willing accomplice just as a bank employee who willingly helps her friends rob a bank is an accomplice even if she does not end up with any ill-gotten gains
They're making her responsible for what EVERY DOWNLOADER DID. Instead of downloading from her they could have bought a CD (even pirated!) or downloaded from someone else.
Yes, "they" could have done ANYTHING. The anonymous downloaders might have killed somebody too. Who knows? Unfortunately for her, and for all of us, she helped them with the copyright violations and she set bad legal precedents WE will now all have to live with.
And this is where "making available" doesn't equal massive infringement.
It sure does. If you intentionally do it, you have intentionally helped somebody else break the law. Even if that somebody else, gets away with it, there is no guarantee that you will or that you should
The fines MUST BE PROPORTIONAL TO THE NUMBER OF DOWNLOADS.
I Agree! Let's assume copies of the MP3 files she "made available" echo around the internet for the next 50 years and get copied on every continent by millions of people. Shall we setup a "tab" for her and just keep adding-up the penalty? What sort of payment system will she be using? Will she be establishing a fund to keep paying when she is an old lady in a nursing home? Never demand true justice...you might get it when what you would rather have is mercy.
"file sharing" of copyrighted works is a fraud and a sham and I am tired of having to live with the resulting side-effects. When you "share" something, you take something you rightfully have and let somebody else have it (temporarily, as in "sharing a book", or permanently as in "sharing half of a sandwich) and you are deprived of it while you are "sharing" it. THIS is the morally "nice" form of sharing your mom tried to teach you. There is nothing morally superior in usurping somebody else's copy RIGHT, and distributing THEIR work to others under YOUR chosen terms and not THEIRS. All the rampant "file sharing" of copyrighted works is what gave the RIAA and MPAA the ability to go to congress and get all the laws (like DMCA), and all the DRM put in place so that we cannot watch and/or listen to ANY of the content we buy on ANY of the devices we own. The lawlessness has had a HUGE impact upon all of us, particularly the people who never did any illegal and unethical "file sharing" of SOMEBODY ELSE'S copyrighted works. I hate the big media companies as much as the next guy, and I stopped buying CDs when they started the lawsuits (I have plenty of good music and can live without newer tracks), but the rampant "file sharing" turned out to be not-so-free. Free as in beer, perhaps (for those willing to do it), but not "free" in any sense that really matters.
It clearly shows what is going on in minds of regular (and "better") people in the US.
Sorry, but I am finally rather tired of empty-headed criticism of civilization
One aspect is that, if somebody is not doing well, or has done something wrong, it's ok to kick even more so s/he "learns" and gets better (the stern father penalizes).
No the idea of enforcing laws is to do two basic things: (1) hold back the forces of anarchy in a society, thereby protecting the innocent and (2) to provide a system of justice that is reasonably fair so that wronged citizens will let the system provide justice rather than forming into vigilante gangs and obtaining as much frontier-justice as they choose to inflict. "not doing well" you say? so she was sick? "done something wrong" you say? so she mis-spelled a word? did she yell at her child? You seem to be working very hard to avoid the issue that she was dumb and she broke the law. NOW EVERY LEGITIMATELY GOOD PERSON WRONGLY ACCUSED BY THE RIAA WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS WOMAN'S BAD LEGAL PRECEDENTS
Effects are overpopulated prisons, total weak or missing social umbrella and an increasing number of people under poorness level.
The social umbrella in the US is already too good. The increasing number of poor people you cite might actually be due to the fact that 1/10th of the citizens of Mexico alone (not even beginning to count the people from all the other countries) have broken into the country to get a better life. If the country sucks so badly, people should be fleeing from it (as they are fleeing Mexico), not crashing the gates to get into it.
The other fact shown here is that people are totally out of touch with financial reality. Financially ruining a life of (is she a single mother?)
This woman chose to ruin her own life. Nobody did this to her. And since when did being a single mother equate with a right to break any law without facing the penalty any man would face?
a person with the idea to doing something "right" shows an overwhelming degree of insensitivity.
Not holding a person accountable for their own acts shows a lack of respect for them as an adult, AND a remarkable degree of disrespect for all of the other people who obeyed the law.
THIS WOMAN IS ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG PERSON TO SUPPORT HERE. The people who need support are the innocent people wrongly accused.
Guns don't kill people, catchphrases kill people.
Apes with catchphrases kill people!
Sorry, couldn't resist (oh, must be said aloud in a Charlton Heston voice)We are rapidly approaching the day when our computers will be fast enough for most tasks, the hard drive will be solid state, the system will be passively cooled and made from reliable parts that will last for decades, drawing minimal power. Any media that won't fit on the solid state hard drive can be stored on the spinning kind and plugged in as needed via USB/eSATA/firewire.
While equipment with the same capability gets more power efficient, newer software and consumer demand keep driving up the performance demands. As things currently stand, the performance (and therefore power demands) are rising faster than the offsetting power savings technology. If you expect this to change, then I presume you are not into gaming... There's no such thing as a "fast enough" computer, a "big enough" drive or screen, etc.
Whenever I hear the phrase "right to bear arms", I reach for my nerf blaster.
Only militia members may bear nerf blasters, civilians are restricted to plastic sporks :-P
The important thing is that all persons eligible to vote are able to vote once, that nobody who is ineligible gets any vote, and that all properly cast votes are counted accurately. If you need voting to be "convenient" before you exercise your franchise, then it would be better for everybody if you did not vote, because you probably were unwilling to exert any more effort to learn the issues than you were willing to exert to cast your vote. Every step to make voting easier for lazy people only opens systems up to greater opportunities for voter fraud.
While the Constitution "may" not apply to every citizen of the world -- it should at least apply to the "people" in the United States. The notion that we, as a nation, might condone holding anyone without charges ultimately makes us no better than the tyrants we overthrow.
Nah. I have it on the best of liberal sources that the Constitution is a "living document" whose meaning may be re-interpreted at any time by any judge, or group of government officials. Oh, and the word "people" only means the militia (National Guard). Clearly, only the members of the National Guard are entitled to free speech, Habeas Corpus, etc. (grin)
As for holding people... we treat them better than we treat our own civilian criminals and even many of our poorest non-criminal citizens. We treat the detainees better than any other government has EVER treated UNIFORMED U.S. military POWs who were actually ENTITLED to Geneva Convention treatment. Only a complete idiot would equate this with the way Saddam treated his opponents, or the way Mr. Putin treats reporters in Russia, or the way Saudi Arabia or Osama Bin Laden treats a Muslim who converts to Christianity or atheism. etc. etc. etc.
Remember this: The morons in gitmo put themselves there by fighting in a war without being in any uniformed military.
Free the people in gitmo! (drop them off back on the battlefield and gun them down PROPERLY as we had every right to do in the first place...then all the complaining about their mistreatment at gitmo will finally end) (wink)
The scary part of the MCA, as I now understand it is this: "No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." 28 U.S.C. 2241(e)(1) (Section 7)
This is just silly and you clearly have not thought it through; The people affected have been deemed to be in a certain category and you claim to be afraid you will be slipped into that category? You do not trust the government to not mess-up and classify you as an enemy combatant? Then WHY, even without this issue at all would you come here and trust the same government to not accidentally slip you into the category "kiddie rapist" or "drug transporter" and jail you for life on THOSE charges? I KNOW that Slashdot attracts a certain level of paranoid left-of-center people, but if you are paranoid about the US government with THIS law, then you should be as paranoid about it with ALL laws. (and paranoid about all other governments with all other laws, while you are working yourself up into a fever)
It means that the US can detain someone indefinately, as long as they decide not to determine what the status of their captive actually is. Even you or me. Being a US-citizen does not realy help, until they have decided your status.
TECHNICALLY true of all governments at all times. All governments reserve to themselves enough power to carry-out their will against anyone within their borders. In modern times, most governments restrain themselves, but what is your ACTUAL guarantee? At least the founders of the U.S. wanted to give their citizens a final guarantee, so we have a right to keep and bear arms, which most governments are afraid to provide to their citizens. (it's not that Americans with guns could hold-back the government, but it IS true that a million mad, armed citizens will discourage a lot of flunky government bureaucrats from getting out of line). One should always view all governments with a healthy dose of skepticism, but actual paranoia is not healthy
It's very Orwellian in both being a nice kind of newspeak, and allowing "all animals are equal, but some are more equal then others".
True in every country. I bet the government officials and chiefs of industry in your country get better treatment than the poor. Even more true in societies that claim to be the most fair: Soviet Russia and China are good examples where all are equal (but the party bosses have LOTS of extra goodies)
It scares me, everytime I visit the USA, when I consider that because of some mistaken identity or mix-up, I could be detained, and held without any recourse. (I am Dutch)
Lighten-up and enjoy your visits! I am sure you have found most Americans like meeting visitors from Europe (as long as they are not carrying explosives and planning to kill hundreds or thousands of people (laugh)). I personally am no longer willing to visit any country that does not trust me with a firearm; places like that do not respect me and might just choose to make up a crime and jail me for life (sarcasm intended, but with a smile)
ummm, NO, and VERY dangerous to ACTUAL CIVILIANS. Unlawful combatants are idiots who have slipped themselves through a loophole in international law and find themselves in a deep dark hole of their own making. Under NO circumstances should they be confused with true civilians who must be afforded the rights of civilians by all parties to the conflict. If you start to extend "civilian" protections and rights to combatants, then you reduce support for those protections among the people on the other side of the conflict, and in a really bad war you expose the civilians to intentional massacres. This sort of mushiness may SEEM humane and civilized but risks reduction in respect for the rights of ACTUAL civilians (the sort who flee combat and are just trying to keep body-and-soul together).
My understanding is that many of the people were not 'captured on the battlefield' but in fact were turned in for a reward.
Yeah, and every time we drop a bomb it miraculously hits a wedding party. Sheesh! Westerners live sooft lives and are SO easily suckered by a soft, dramatic story. Funny how every rapist is caught in his very first attack, every druggie is caught with somebody else's drugs, every trespasser was just lost, every shoplifter just forgot to pay, everybody in gitmo was an innocent tourist either accidentally holding an AK-47 or sold to the Americans by some evil warlord... I heard that when the US and USSR rolled into Germany in 1945 they discovered that NOBODY there had ever been a NAZI...
Also, your 'end of conflict' has no meaning here since there will never be an end to terror, it is as old as mankind and will exist until the end of days, so your 'end of conflict' release does not exist in a 'war on terror'.
It works PERFECTLY! If Bin Laden wants his boys back, he can end the war. If he chooses not to then they sit and rot as part of the price of being chumps who followed that pig. Wanna discourage unlawful combatants? Make it clear that they will disappear into a deep, dark hole until the war ends; this will not solve the problem, but will reduce the pool of recruits to just the hardcore idiots.
Gitmo...just another reason why being a terrorist sucks!
Since they are a militia of no government (and if they were, of no government we are at war with, since we have not declared war with any government that remains) these enemy combatants caught in acts of aggression are mere criminals and are not in fact prisoners of war. Hence, if they are criminals, they should be detained and tried where they committed said acts of aggression.
We were engaged in battle against Germans (on the Atlantic) before the declaration of WWII (as their U-Boots were sinking U.S. Merchantmen), but that did not make the Germans we killed/captured into civilians with access to our courts. It is not the magic words "War" that define the reality, but rather the flying bullets on a battlefield. A formal declaration clears things up and makes lawyers happier, but it does not define combatants.
Actually, they are not civilian criminal suspects (not accused of violating civil laws within the US); they do not deserve access to civilian lawyers and courts. They have, by their own actions, dropped themselves through an unfortunate loophole in the rules of war setup by the civilized nations. The Geneva conventions and other traditions providing some degree of civility in what would otherwise be mankind's least civilized activity (war) are not meant (as some seem to believe) to prevent civilization from holding people accountable. Somebody is responsible for combat activities; in normal warfare, that responsibility is shared by the individual combatant (who is expected to operate within the rules of war and to refuse to carry-out unlawful orders) and by the government and society that the soldier serves. The uniform the soldier wears serves many purposes, but one purpose it to let the world know which country shares responsibility for his actions. When he is captured and disarmed, he is held until hostilities cease and his country is either victorious, or is held to account for his acts by the victors. The nation the soldier served may be held to account for his actions militarily, diplomatically, or economically by the world and his interests can be represented by diplomats from the nation he serves. By operating without a country, without a uniform, and often in violation of the rules of war (for example by TARGETING non-combatants) the terror suspect is the only one that civilization can hold accountable, and his actions are not the stuff civil court proceedings are designed for (they are acts of war). For example, civilization did not need to hold every German WWII soldier to account for his actions (provided he engaged in lawful war activities and not war crimes), the German government was held to account. The modern terrorist, on the other hand, must bear the full brunt of the wrath of civilization for his actions; there is no government and society stepping-up to say "he is our soldier and acted on our behalf". If he rots in a cell for decades while the war boils on, it is his own fault because by not serving a country he did not have diplomats to represent him in negotiations for release or better treatment. I have NO sympathy for any moron who engages in combat without being a uniformed soldier serving a country. These people should be publicly drawn and quartered as a warning to everyone on earth to never be an unlawful combatant.
Any actions which give ANY protection or sympathy to people in this position only reduces the deterrence against others getting into this position. Unfortunately, the wishy-washiness of western democracies in these matters have encouraged a number of third-world nations to employ people like this as surrogates in their foreign policy, thereby escaping responsibility for their foreign policies. This must be discouraged so severely that even the most poorly educated peasant will refuse to participate as a willing dupe of some zealot or dictator. Osama Bin Laden uses people to attack the west, but then he hangs them out to dry; he has no diplomats to represent their interests, and he hides behind women in burkas where he cannot be hel
CATO is not a "conservative" think tank; they are more-accurately characterized as libertarian. They do not even agree themselves on what they should be called but they say the following (among other things):
The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called "libertarianism" or "market liberalism."
Not trying to be too picky here, but wanted the clarity for any readers not familiar with CATO, such as many of our non-US readers. CATO is sometimes viewed as conservative because their views more-often (though not always) line-up with the views of most Republicans (who are the more-conservative US political party.
When you let a fictional movie (The China Syndrome) and an accident that killed, um, well... nobody (Three mile Island) convince you to abandon the world's best source of clean power there are bound to be consequences. Old plants like that should have been retired long ago and replaced with far better, safer, facilities. If we had treated ANY other technology like we have treated nuclear technology, we would all be living in caves.
Look at the one place where the U.S. nuclear industry has been free to design new systems and keep developing the technology: The U.S. Navy. We have nuclear plants that we operate all around the world, in moving vehicles, rolling and pitching, surrounded by corrosive seawater, sometimes in war zones, and operated by 18-year-old kids (for over 40 years). We have never had a meltdown or explosion. There has never been a fatality.
If we had a collective brain, we'd build several very large well-protected clusters of plants (probably underground where they cannot be hit by planes or truck bombs) with the best tech available and double-layer containment structures and we would staff them with retirees from the U.S. Navy nuclear program. This would give retired sailors good jobs and the ability to settle-down in one place with their families and would mean our plants would all be staffed with people with decades of discipline and experience (in far tougher situations). The facilities could be far from populations and very well guarded like military weapons depots.
Broadcasters can whine about this and try to convince lawmakers (most of whom are tech-dumb lawyers) that this is all about protecting the radio frequency spectrum, but this is BUNK, Just as the FCC claims its regulation of computers is about protecting the spectrum is also BUNK.
If the FCC was REALLY about protecting the spectrum, then they would require some of the worst RF noise emitters (electric razors, light dimmers, lawnmowers, etc.) to be certified. There is a lot of money and prestige in regulating computer technology and none in regulating cheap low-tech devices. As long as they regulate important whizz-bang things like TV, radio, and computers, congress sees reasons to fund them at current levels. If they were the regulators of razors and light dimmers they might have less respect and lower budgets.
Similarly, the broadcasters are not worried about the spectrum (which sounds important and high-tech); This is about trying to keep from losing even more viewers (and the associated ad and/or subscriber revenue). Everybody knows that younger people are getting more of their entertainment from interactive web-based sources (news from the web, online games, etc) and this trend will likely SKYROCKET if low-cost high-speed net access becomes too available. Any roadblock they can throw-up will help hold back the tidal wave of losses.
Watch-out whenever somebody tells you that he, like some knight in shiny armor, is a defender-of-the-spectrum, (defender of the faith... protector of the realm... ) and all that stands between you and electromagnetic chaos. If he has a financial interest in the outcome then he probably is in it for the cash.
This is not as far out as you might imagine. There is a tradition in the U.S. in which, during wartime when the draft existed (during WWII, Korean War, etc.) conscientious objectors volunteered to provide benefit to their country by being subjects in medical tests. These people deserve a great deal of respect for being willing to take risks as big as their brothers faced in battle while still being consistent with their values. Also, these people were of far greater value than subjects who might be terminally ill, or criminals because they were both healthy and cooperative. Many but not all were Seventh Day Adventists, I believe others were Mennonites and possibly Amish. I am not a member of any of these groups, but I greatly respect this type of conscientious objector.
For those who may be interested, there were a number of groups and programs involved and I'm sure any Slashdot readers can do their own searches, but the following links may lead you to more info:
http://www.brfwitness.org/Articles/2005v40n1.htm (see item 3a on this page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Whitecoat
http://www.themennonite.org/issues/10-12/article s/Corn_oil_and_skim_milk
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/bioterrorism /2001-12-20-whitecoat-usat.htm
http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/releases/2 0050318research.cfm?m=3&y=2005