The Constitution is only a "living document" insofar as there is a provision within it allowing it to be amended. The point is that no one has ever amended the Constitution to require secret ballots. Actually, the U.S. Constitution actually delegates the power of deciding how elections shall be carried out to the states (although it allows Congress to pass laws over-riding state laws). So, the judge was absolutely correct that there is no Constitutional right to secret ballots. If you believe that there should be, you are free to campaign to so amend the Constitution. You are not however free to require judges to read into the Constitution a right that is blatantly not there.
I am quite torn on the issue. On the one hand, I see advantages to a secret ballot. With a secret ballot, those with power (whatever form that power takes) cannot effectively pressure others to vote according to the dictates of those with power. On the other hand, when everybody knows how everybody else voted, it is very hard to successfully carry out voter fraud ("200 people voted in this precinct. I know for a fact that 90 of them voted for Joe--I watched them fill out the ballot. Now you are saying that 120 people voted for Jim. Where did those extra 10 votes come from?").
The U.S. did not use secret ballots in a major way until after the Presidential election of 1884. This suggests that the power of the government to oppress its people can be limited with a non-secret ballot. The secret ballot was introduced to prevent a repeat of the Presidential election of 1876, an election where people questioned whether or not the person who took office had actually won the election. Of course, we know how well that worked (although it is more likely that Rutherford B. Hayes lost the election of 1876 than it is that George W. Bush lost the election of 2000).
I was not making the argument that Christians were "less violent, less greedy, less power-hungry, less hypocritical or more charitable than everybody else." I was making the argument that the Breiviks and McVeighs are not in the same category with relationship to Christians in general as the people who carried out the original 911 attacks or the people who carried out the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya are with relationship to Muslims in general.
You are correct about China. The only question regarding China is whether their military capability will reach the point that allows them to become expansionist before their internal issues cause them to implode.
There is only a single source for this. That source is a company that is looking for publicity for a product they are producing which they hope to have compete in a marketplace where the established players (Ios from Apple, Android from Googloe) have both a relatively polished product and position to control "mindshare". This makes me somewhat suspicious of the story.
Others have pointed out reasons to doubt the significance of this study. I noticed one thing which raises questions about the effectiveness of Facebook political ads. The study found that people who got messages from their friends saying that those friends had voted were more likely to vote. No where did it discover if the message recipients were any more likely to vote the same as their friends. Nor did it say whether they actually did vote the same as their friends. Perhaps this effect was the result of people going out and voting in an attempt to counteract the vote of the friend who messaged them (I know that is unlikely, but with a result that is less than one half of one percent it can't be ruled out).
Right, we should fund cloning people and raising the clones to provide organ transplants. Fuck whatever piece of paper says that it is immoral, if it can make sick kids better, we should be funding it.
Ah yes, claiming I am making a "no true Scotsman" argument. Rather than refute the basis for what I said, just claim I am rejecting them as Christians because they did something bad. However, I am saying they are not Christian because of how they self-identified". McVeigh identified himself as an agnostic the day before his execution. Previous to that he had said that science was his religion. Breivik does identify himself as Christian, but he refers to himself as a "cultural Christian". In addition he refers to "Christian-agnostics" and "Christian-atheists". Since a central tenet of Christianity is the existence of a Creator God, it is a bit of a stretch to consider Breivik to be a Christian in the same way that these rioters were Muslims.
Neither Breivik nor McVeigh was a Christian by any rational definition of the term. McVeigh was an avowed agnostic. While Breivik called himself a Christian, he explicitly said that he did not believe in the religion.
Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao carried out plenty of atrocities against people because those people believed in a god. I think that qualifies as committing an atrocity in the "name of atheism".
He did not "shout fire in a theatre". In the context of the ruling which that phrase comes from, if there was a fire in a theatre, the people in the theatre were in significant danger. When the people became aware of a fire in the theatres of that time, they tended to attempt to escape the danger with no concern for the welfare of others. So, what danger was the maker of this film pointing out falsely that was so dangerous that they attacked U.S. facilities and killed people without thinking because they were trying to escape that danger?
I am making an assertion about what was written on tickets that have been given to people I know. I know people who have been ticketed for being in the left lane while not passing. I do not know what the legal definition of "passing" is. I do know people who have been given ticketed for not getting out of the left lane when not passing.
Enjoy your little world. In which anyone who does not agree with you does not use logic. Every presentation of AGW I have seen has gone something like this: "The sky is falling. If we don't give the government broad powers over the economy we will all die. If you don't believe us, you are anti-science."
I find the idea of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to be an incredibly bad idea for reasons too complicated to discuss in a slashdot post. Technically, the Supreme Court should have stayed out of it. However, by intervening they sped the process up. If the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed out of it at that stage, it would have been processed through in one of two ways. First way, the Florida legislature would have appointed the states electors (the Florida legislature was controlled by Republicans at the time, so they would have chosen electors who would vote for GWB in the Electoral College). Second way, Florida would not have sent any electors to the Electoral College and no one would have had sufficient votes in the Electoral College. In which case the decision would have been made by the U.S. House of Congress, which was controlled by Republicans--George W. Bush again.
Yes, we do have a great method to decide how to handle a tie - the problem is that we don't have a mechanism to declare an individual state election to be a tie.
That is not a federal government problem to solve. It is up to each of the states to come up with a solution to that problem. Determining how its electoral votes are distributed is up to the legislatures of each of the states. The fact that they are currently distributed according to who wins the popular vote in most states is because those states' legislatures have decided to do it that way. Feel free to begin a campaign within your state to change your state's laws to correct this failure. I believe that several states have laws which distribute their electoral college votes according to percentage of votes they receive in the state. although most states have a winner takes all approach.
The original poster did not say "everyone else running for president", they said "everyone else". I am one of "everyone else". I have not released my tax returns, neither has anyone else that I personally know. Therefore, "everyone else" have not released their tax returns
This is a strawman. Doctors often have differences of opinion. I assume that US healthcare services, like UK, give you a right to a second opinion.
Well, I do not know about the UK system, but Obamacare contains a provision establishing a board which will establish "best practices" of treatment for many diseases, any doctor who does not follow those "best practices" treatments is subject to disciplinary action. That means that if I go to Doctor A and they give me a treatment program that is based on the "best practices" determined by that board, it does me absolutely no good to go to another doctor, because that second doctor is unlikely to give me a recommendation that goes against that board recommended treatment (if they do and it comes to the attention of anyone in authority, they will receive a punishment of some kind--generally reduced compensation for their work).
Slashdot Mirror
The Constitution is only a "living document" insofar as there is a provision within it allowing it to be amended. The point is that no one has ever amended the Constitution to require secret ballots. Actually, the U.S. Constitution actually delegates the power of deciding how elections shall be carried out to the states (although it allows Congress to pass laws over-riding state laws). So, the judge was absolutely correct that there is no Constitutional right to secret ballots. If you believe that there should be, you are free to campaign to so amend the Constitution. You are not however free to require judges to read into the Constitution a right that is blatantly not there.
I am quite torn on the issue. On the one hand, I see advantages to a secret ballot. With a secret ballot, those with power (whatever form that power takes) cannot effectively pressure others to vote according to the dictates of those with power. On the other hand, when everybody knows how everybody else voted, it is very hard to successfully carry out voter fraud ("200 people voted in this precinct. I know for a fact that 90 of them voted for Joe--I watched them fill out the ballot. Now you are saying that 120 people voted for Jim. Where did those extra 10 votes come from?").
The U.S. did not use secret ballots in a major way until after the Presidential election of 1884. This suggests that the power of the government to oppress its people can be limited with a non-secret ballot. The secret ballot was introduced to prevent a repeat of the Presidential election of 1876, an election where people questioned whether or not the person who took office had actually won the election. Of course, we know how well that worked (although it is more likely that Rutherford B. Hayes lost the election of 1876 than it is that George W. Bush lost the election of 2000).
Just because you needed to google the term does not mean that the poster did.
Technically, Facebook recently became a public company.
I was not making the argument that Christians were "less violent, less greedy, less power-hungry, less hypocritical or more charitable than everybody else." I was making the argument that the Breiviks and McVeighs are not in the same category with relationship to Christians in general as the people who carried out the original 911 attacks or the people who carried out the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya are with relationship to Muslims in general.
You are correct about China. The only question regarding China is whether their military capability will reach the point that allows them to become expansionist before their internal issues cause them to implode.
So, then atheists should be keeping their Stalins, Maos and Pol Pots in line.
What desert does not have any plants and/or animals?
He also says that there are such things as "Christian-atheists".
There is only a single source for this. That source is a company that is looking for publicity for a product they are producing which they hope to have compete in a marketplace where the established players (Ios from Apple, Android from Googloe) have both a relatively polished product and position to control "mindshare". This makes me somewhat suspicious of the story.
So, if I call myself an atheist, but say that I believe in God, you have to still accept that I am an atheist?
Others have pointed out reasons to doubt the significance of this study. I noticed one thing which raises questions about the effectiveness of Facebook political ads. The study found that people who got messages from their friends saying that those friends had voted were more likely to vote. No where did it discover if the message recipients were any more likely to vote the same as their friends. Nor did it say whether they actually did vote the same as their friends. Perhaps this effect was the result of people going out and voting in an attempt to counteract the vote of the friend who messaged them (I know that is unlikely, but with a result that is less than one half of one percent it can't be ruled out).
Right, we should fund cloning people and raising the clones to provide organ transplants. Fuck whatever piece of paper says that it is immoral, if it can make sick kids better, we should be funding it.
Ah yes, claiming I am making a "no true Scotsman" argument. Rather than refute the basis for what I said, just claim I am rejecting them as Christians because they did something bad. However, I am saying they are not Christian because of how they self-identified". McVeigh identified himself as an agnostic the day before his execution. Previous to that he had said that science was his religion. Breivik does identify himself as Christian, but he refers to himself as a "cultural Christian". In addition he refers to "Christian-agnostics" and "Christian-atheists". Since a central tenet of Christianity is the existence of a Creator God, it is a bit of a stretch to consider Breivik to be a Christian in the same way that these rioters were Muslims.
Neither Breivik nor McVeigh was a Christian by any rational definition of the term. McVeigh was an avowed agnostic. While Breivik called himself a Christian, he explicitly said that he did not believe in the religion.
Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao carried out plenty of atrocities against people because those people believed in a god. I think that qualifies as committing an atrocity in the "name of atheism".
The movie was merely the pretext. The reason for the riot and for killing the Americans was to celebrate the 911 attack on the World Trade Centers.
He did not "shout fire in a theatre". In the context of the ruling which that phrase comes from, if there was a fire in a theatre, the people in the theatre were in significant danger. When the people became aware of a fire in the theatres of that time, they tended to attempt to escape the danger with no concern for the welfare of others. So, what danger was the maker of this film pointing out falsely that was so dangerous that they attacked U.S. facilities and killed people without thinking because they were trying to escape that danger?
I am making an assertion about what was written on tickets that have been given to people I know. I know people who have been ticketed for being in the left lane while not passing. I do not know what the legal definition of "passing" is. I do know people who have been given ticketed for not getting out of the left lane when not passing.
Define "passing." How close to the vehicle I'm passing do I need to be in order to be eligible for the left lane?
Ask a police officer.
Enjoy your little world. In which anyone who does not agree with you does not use logic. Every presentation of AGW I have seen has gone something like this: "The sky is falling. If we don't give the government broad powers over the economy we will all die. If you don't believe us, you are anti-science."
I find the idea of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to be an incredibly bad idea for reasons too complicated to discuss in a slashdot post. Technically, the Supreme Court should have stayed out of it. However, by intervening they sped the process up. If the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed out of it at that stage, it would have been processed through in one of two ways. First way, the Florida legislature would have appointed the states electors (the Florida legislature was controlled by Republicans at the time, so they would have chosen electors who would vote for GWB in the Electoral College). Second way, Florida would not have sent any electors to the Electoral College and no one would have had sufficient votes in the Electoral College. In which case the decision would have been made by the U.S. House of Congress, which was controlled by Republicans--George W. Bush again.
Yes, we do have a great method to decide how to handle a tie - the problem is that we don't have a mechanism to declare an individual state election to be a tie.
That is not a federal government problem to solve. It is up to each of the states to come up with a solution to that problem. Determining how its electoral votes are distributed is up to the legislatures of each of the states. The fact that they are currently distributed according to who wins the popular vote in most states is because those states' legislatures have decided to do it that way. Feel free to begin a campaign within your state to change your state's laws to correct this failure. I believe that several states have laws which distribute their electoral college votes according to percentage of votes they receive in the state. although most states have a winner takes all approach.
The original poster did not say "everyone else running for president", they said "everyone else". I am one of "everyone else". I have not released my tax returns, neither has anyone else that I personally know. Therefore, "everyone else" have not released their tax returns
This is a strawman. Doctors often have differences of opinion. I assume that US healthcare services, like UK, give you a right to a second opinion.
Well, I do not know about the UK system, but Obamacare contains a provision establishing a board which will establish "best practices" of treatment for many diseases, any doctor who does not follow those "best practices" treatments is subject to disciplinary action. That means that if I go to Doctor A and they give me a treatment program that is based on the "best practices" determined by that board, it does me absolutely no good to go to another doctor, because that second doctor is unlikely to give me a recommendation that goes against that board recommended treatment (if they do and it comes to the attention of anyone in authority, they will receive a punishment of some kind--generally reduced compensation for their work).