A useful mental exercise on the topic of drugs. Imagine if the coca leaf had been known to the native Americans in North America, becoming part of their traditions, and the tobacco leaf had only been found in the south of the continent...
I am not sure what you are getting at. However, you should do a study of the history of cocaine. When 19th Century European scientists discovered cocaine, they thought it was a wonder drug. The reason that cocaine has become demonized is because cocaine has fairly severe negative side effects. If cocaine was consumed the way that nicotine is (by smoking the natural leaf), it would not be a problem and might still be legal. Unlike marijuana, racism does not play a role in the fact that cocaine is illegal. This does not in any way address the question of whether or not cocaine should be illegal.
Forfeiture of all of one's earthly possessions is a common punishment for being suspected of a drug-related crime.
I'm not sure what this has to do with "drug-related crime".
Try robbing a bank and buy a car with the proceeds, then see if you don't have to give back the car.
Same deal here...Or do you think criminals should be able to keep their ill-gotten gains?
Now, whether or not drugs should be illegal is a different debate (and maybe that was the point you were trying to make?)
The OP's point was that the government should have to wait until after they have convicted someone of committing a crime before they can seize property that they allege was purchased with money obtained by committing a crime.
Because it will have been sold by then. These civil forfeiture laws were passed because of the myth that many successful crime bosses stayed out of jail because they were careful enough to prevent the police from obtaining sufficient evidence to convict them. In actuality, these crime bosses stayed out of jail because of corrupt law enforcement agents and/or politicians. It turns out that "criminal mastermind" is an oxymoron. Those with the brains (and self-control) to make money at crime and stay out of jail can make much more money by legal endeavor.
You do realize that most AGW proponents propose massive government intervention in the market place, limiting what things people are allowed to do (such as use traditional incandescent lights)?
You do realize that Democrats were happy to use the term Obamacare back when they still thought that the American people would come to like the law. Now that it has become obvious that the American people are not going to fall in love with this power grab by the Federal government, they want people to consider that term an unacceptable attack. The reason it is called Obamacare by so many people is because it is Obama's signature accomplishment.
You are mistaken, according to NH law, if you record a conversation with someone without their knowledge, it is wiretapping. The key here is that there are a couple of exceptions to this. The exception that applies in this case is that it is not illegal if the conversation occurs someplace that the uniformed party has no reasonable expectation of privacy. The courts have consistently ruled that a police officer making a traffic stop has no reasonable expectation of privacy.
To be perfectly honest, I think this is perfectly legitimate. The police should approach someone who is standing on the street corner downtown carrying a firearm and a camcorder and question him. If he turns out to be a crackpot retorting with overly dramatic recitals of anything, the officer should politely inform him of any legal limits to his behavior and move on. When the police know they are interacting with such individuals they should go out of their way to be polite. These individuals should be viewed as obnoxious twits who, on those occasions when the police catch them doing something that they can be legitimately charged, as people who got what was coming to them. On those occasions when the police have no legitimate basis to charge these twits, they should be viewed (by both the general public and the police) as good training for police officers to treat innocent civilians with respect, even when those innocent civilians are annoying twits.
Too often, the police view the general public as criminals they have yet to catch.
This is quite different than calling trains communism. It is saying that the reason a group of people ("progressives" in this case) favor trains, even though most of the situations where they favor them they have been shown to be a poor option, is because those people favor communism (actually, that isn't true, most progressives prefer fascism--although they wouldn't call it that).
The person driving in the left lane doing exactly the same speed as the car in the right lane is just as guilty of breaking the law in most states as the person who drives faster than the speed limit. In most states, the law says that the left lane is for passing only. There is no compelling reason for society to tolerate people who think it is their job to regulate the behaviors of others by violating the law.
Your mistake is that you think they meant famous. Instead, they meant that they had once known this program, forgotten about it and now they know it again...See it is re-knowed (Ok, even then they would be wrong because it would be re-known).
Personally, I gave up on the series after the second book in which he killed off (mostly at the hands of characters that were unlikable) all of the likable characters from the first book (those that had not died in the first book).
The problem with that is that people have had their lives pretty much ruined by people posting slanderous allegations against them online. The most recent one I heard of was a guy who had to move because word got around that he was a child molester. Some woman took it into her head that he was one. She created multiple accounts on online forums and then started "exchanging" information about his record as a child molester. Each one of her accounts "didn't know" about some of the stuff that another one did. She even had one account that started out "skeptical".
Do you know how you defeat terrorism?
You make those who support it tacitly pay the price. General Sherman showed how you defeat this type of enemy when he marched through the South. There are other places this same practice has been used, including Germany after WWII. The only way to end a war (and this is a war) is to make the population that supports the enemy want the war to end more than they want not to lose. After the will of the enemy to fight is destroyed, you use good treatment to get them to not want to fight again. This idea that you defeat terrorism by being nice to those who support the goals of terrorists is BS.
Actually, there is a reason not to tell the subject why he was being monitored. It may be that he was being monitored because the FBI had reason to believe that one (or more) of his associates was involved in terrorism. It may be that they were tracking him in order to find out if he was involved in terrorism with those associates.
To be perfectly honest, I am somewhat suspicious of him because his lawyer is with CAIR. CAIR is an organization with extensive ties to terrorist organizations. I believe based on the evidence that I have seen that CAIR's goal is the replacement of democracy in America with an Islamic dictatorship.
Sorry, that has nothing to do with flying and everything to do with crossing the border into the country. The article you linked to is about Customs seizing and inspecting laptops. The idea that the Fourth Amendment does not apply at Customs goes back to when the Framers of the Constitution were still running the country.
We really need to improve education in this country. Seizing and inspecting laptops is not a new invasion of privacy. It is just that we carry more information about ourselves and our business on a laptop then people traditionally did when most information was on paper.
How do some states (Germany, France, etc) have national (EU) ID cards while others don't? If the EU has a national ID card wouldn't that apply to every state in the EU?
It doesn't help that the judges in the highest court in the land can be verifiably bought and seemingly, no repercussions whatsoever.
Please provide some support for this wild allegation. Something other than the fact that two of the Justices spoke at a conference sponsored by people you don't like who were (much) later involved peripherally in a case where you don't like how the Court ruled.
I have spent a lot of time cleaning up XP problems. With one or two exceptions, the time spent tracking down and then fixing the problem is not worth the time involved. It is usually much faster to format the box and reinstall/restore from backup. My home machines are all imaged to an external hard drive to make doing so a breeze (even my Linux machine, although that is for when I am experimenting with configuration, software and/or hardware and want a quick and easy way for putting it back the way it was)
I will be perfectly honest, I see this ruling as being exactly the same sort of ruling as the Citzens United vs FEC ruling. In both cases the Court looked at the intent of those who wrote the law in question and applied the law as the framers of the relevant statute would have. In this case that law was the Freedom of Information Act. In the Citzens United vs FEC the law in question was the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Verizon does not need to use AT&T copper any more than AT&T needs to use Verizon's copper. Verizon is one of the "Baby Bells" (actually it is the merger of several of the "Baby Bells"), so is AT&T. The AT&T that exists today is not the company that was left after the various local phone companies were split off into "Baby Bells". AT&T is now actually one of those "Baby Bells" (SBC) that bought what was left of AT&T when its post breakup business plan met the changes in communication technology and failed.
Sea level rise of 30 FEET? Please give me a reference to a credible study that calls for anything close to that.
The question is not whether or not releasing CO2 into the atmosphere has no cost. The question is whether it is worth spending trillions of dollars to reduce CO2 in ways that will have no significant impact. You ask for studies that prove it won't be harmful. That is asking for someone to prove a negative. Additionally, you are the one who wants people to spend trillions of dollars, so the burden of proof is on you. All of the proofs for negative effects from Global Warming are based on models. Every prediction that proponents of AGW have made have not come true.
when the true cost of electricity production through coal/nuclear is reflected in your utility price, only then can you make a fair comparison between incandescents and high efficiency bulbs.
Sometimes you need to think longer term, and the individual or the market isn't going to do that unless expressly directed to do that.
If you wait until there is parity between them it will be too late and you'll pay orders of magnitude more to clean up the resulting problems.
In what way is the true cost of electricity production higher than what we pay? If we can't make a fair comparison between regular incandescents and high efficiency light bulbs, how do you know that "it will be too late"?
What it comes down to is that you think you know more than everybody else. The problem is that you don't know what you don't know that someone else knows. The fact is that there are many variables that determine why people choose the light bulb they do. There is no rational way to weigh those variables and decide that regular incandescents are not the best solution for any significant number of the many possible uses for light bulbs.
No, the reason to keep production going is because there is demand for regular incandescent light bulbs. It is still possible to buy CRT monitors. As far as I am aware it is still legal to manufacture them. CRTs are going away because the market for CRTs is going away. If regular incandescent light bulbs were going away because the market for them was going away, I would have no problem with that. I do not believe that it should be up to the government to dictate what kind of light bulbs I can buy.
Was it really worth your time?
I had a situation where I got pulled over as part of a speed trap (this was perfectly legitimate one that I shouldn't have gotten caught in, but I was just a little bit out of it that day and it didn't register what the presence of the cop cars up ahead meant). I was driving for a living at the time, so I contested it to get out of the points. They scheduled 15-20 of us on the same day at the same time. A police department representative showed up and offered us a deal, no points and a reduced fine. One guy decided that since the officer who wrote the ticket wasn't there he was going to fight even that. The judge told him, "OK, you can go. We will send you a letter telling you when we schedule your hearing." The fine I paid was less than the amount it would have cost me to take off another day to come back.
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A useful mental exercise on the topic of drugs. Imagine if the coca leaf had been known to the native Americans in North America, becoming part of their traditions, and the tobacco leaf had only been found in the south of the continent...
I am not sure what you are getting at. However, you should do a study of the history of cocaine. When 19th Century European scientists discovered cocaine, they thought it was a wonder drug. The reason that cocaine has become demonized is because cocaine has fairly severe negative side effects. If cocaine was consumed the way that nicotine is (by smoking the natural leaf), it would not be a problem and might still be legal. Unlike marijuana, racism does not play a role in the fact that cocaine is illegal. This does not in any way address the question of whether or not cocaine should be illegal.
Forfeiture of all of one's earthly possessions is a common punishment for being suspected of a drug-related crime.
I'm not sure what this has to do with "drug-related crime". Try robbing a bank and buy a car with the proceeds, then see if you don't have to give back the car. Same deal here...Or do you think criminals should be able to keep their ill-gotten gains?
Now, whether or not drugs should be illegal is a different debate (and maybe that was the point you were trying to make?)
The OP's point was that the government should have to wait until after they have convicted someone of committing a crime before they can seize property that they allege was purchased with money obtained by committing a crime.
Because it will have been sold by then. These civil forfeiture laws were passed because of the myth that many successful crime bosses stayed out of jail because they were careful enough to prevent the police from obtaining sufficient evidence to convict them. In actuality, these crime bosses stayed out of jail because of corrupt law enforcement agents and/or politicians. It turns out that "criminal mastermind" is an oxymoron. Those with the brains (and self-control) to make money at crime and stay out of jail can make much more money by legal endeavor.
You do realize that most AGW proponents propose massive government intervention in the market place, limiting what things people are allowed to do (such as use traditional incandescent lights)?
thead hominem portmanteau "ObamaCare"
You do realize that Democrats were happy to use the term Obamacare back when they still thought that the American people would come to like the law. Now that it has become obvious that the American people are not going to fall in love with this power grab by the Federal government, they want people to consider that term an unacceptable attack. The reason it is called Obamacare by so many people is because it is Obama's signature accomplishment.
You are mistaken, according to NH law, if you record a conversation with someone without their knowledge, it is wiretapping. The key here is that there are a couple of exceptions to this. The exception that applies in this case is that it is not illegal if the conversation occurs someplace that the uniformed party has no reasonable expectation of privacy. The courts have consistently ruled that a police officer making a traffic stop has no reasonable expectation of privacy.
To be perfectly honest, I think this is perfectly legitimate. The police should approach someone who is standing on the street corner downtown carrying a firearm and a camcorder and question him. If he turns out to be a crackpot retorting with overly dramatic recitals of anything, the officer should politely inform him of any legal limits to his behavior and move on. When the police know they are interacting with such individuals they should go out of their way to be polite. These individuals should be viewed as obnoxious twits who, on those occasions when the police catch them doing something that they can be legitimately charged, as people who got what was coming to them. On those occasions when the police have no legitimate basis to charge these twits, they should be viewed (by both the general public and the police) as good training for police officers to treat innocent civilians with respect, even when those innocent civilians are annoying twits. Too often, the police view the general public as criminals they have yet to catch.
This is quite different than calling trains communism. It is saying that the reason a group of people ("progressives" in this case) favor trains, even though most of the situations where they favor them they have been shown to be a poor option, is because those people favor communism (actually, that isn't true, most progressives prefer fascism--although they wouldn't call it that).
The person driving in the left lane doing exactly the same speed as the car in the right lane is just as guilty of breaking the law in most states as the person who drives faster than the speed limit. In most states, the law says that the left lane is for passing only. There is no compelling reason for society to tolerate people who think it is their job to regulate the behaviors of others by violating the law.
Your mistake is that you think they meant famous. Instead, they meant that they had once known this program, forgotten about it and now they know it again...See it is re-knowed (Ok, even then they would be wrong because it would be re-known).
What about posts by AlbeBodiedMan (or some other Internet handle)?
Personally, I gave up on the series after the second book in which he killed off (mostly at the hands of characters that were unlikable) all of the likable characters from the first book (those that had not died in the first book).
The problem with that is that people have had their lives pretty much ruined by people posting slanderous allegations against them online. The most recent one I heard of was a guy who had to move because word got around that he was a child molester. Some woman took it into her head that he was one. She created multiple accounts on online forums and then started "exchanging" information about his record as a child molester. Each one of her accounts "didn't know" about some of the stuff that another one did. She even had one account that started out "skeptical".
Do you know how you defeat terrorism?
You make those who support it tacitly pay the price. General Sherman showed how you defeat this type of enemy when he marched through the South. There are other places this same practice has been used, including Germany after WWII. The only way to end a war (and this is a war) is to make the population that supports the enemy want the war to end more than they want not to lose. After the will of the enemy to fight is destroyed, you use good treatment to get them to not want to fight again. This idea that you defeat terrorism by being nice to those who support the goals of terrorists is BS.
Actually, there is a reason not to tell the subject why he was being monitored. It may be that he was being monitored because the FBI had reason to believe that one (or more) of his associates was involved in terrorism. It may be that they were tracking him in order to find out if he was involved in terrorism with those associates.
To be perfectly honest, I am somewhat suspicious of him because his lawyer is with CAIR. CAIR is an organization with extensive ties to terrorist organizations. I believe based on the evidence that I have seen that CAIR's goal is the replacement of democracy in America with an Islamic dictatorship.
Sorry, that has nothing to do with flying and everything to do with crossing the border into the country. The article you linked to is about Customs seizing and inspecting laptops. The idea that the Fourth Amendment does not apply at Customs goes back to when the Framers of the Constitution were still running the country.
We really need to improve education in this country. Seizing and inspecting laptops is not a new invasion of privacy. It is just that we carry more information about ourselves and our business on a laptop then people traditionally did when most information was on paper.
How do some states (Germany, France, etc) have national (EU) ID cards while others don't? If the EU has a national ID card wouldn't that apply to every state in the EU?
It doesn't help that the judges in the highest court in the land can be verifiably bought and seemingly, no repercussions whatsoever.
Please provide some support for this wild allegation. Something other than the fact that two of the Justices spoke at a conference sponsored by people you don't like who were (much) later involved peripherally in a case where you don't like how the Court ruled.
I have spent a lot of time cleaning up XP problems. With one or two exceptions, the time spent tracking down and then fixing the problem is not worth the time involved. It is usually much faster to format the box and reinstall/restore from backup. My home machines are all imaged to an external hard drive to make doing so a breeze (even my Linux machine, although that is for when I am experimenting with configuration, software and/or hardware and want a quick and easy way for putting it back the way it was)
I will be perfectly honest, I see this ruling as being exactly the same sort of ruling as the Citzens United vs FEC ruling. In both cases the Court looked at the intent of those who wrote the law in question and applied the law as the framers of the relevant statute would have. In this case that law was the Freedom of Information Act. In the Citzens United vs FEC the law in question was the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Verizon does not need to use AT&T copper any more than AT&T needs to use Verizon's copper. Verizon is one of the "Baby Bells" (actually it is the merger of several of the "Baby Bells"), so is AT&T. The AT&T that exists today is not the company that was left after the various local phone companies were split off into "Baby Bells". AT&T is now actually one of those "Baby Bells" (SBC) that bought what was left of AT&T when its post breakup business plan met the changes in communication technology and failed.
Sea level rise of 30 FEET? Please give me a reference to a credible study that calls for anything close to that.
The question is not whether or not releasing CO2 into the atmosphere has no cost. The question is whether it is worth spending trillions of dollars to reduce CO2 in ways that will have no significant impact. You ask for studies that prove it won't be harmful. That is asking for someone to prove a negative. Additionally, you are the one who wants people to spend trillions of dollars, so the burden of proof is on you. All of the proofs for negative effects from Global Warming are based on models. Every prediction that proponents of AGW have made have not come true.
when the true cost of electricity production through coal/nuclear is reflected in your utility price, only then can you make a fair comparison between incandescents and high efficiency bulbs. Sometimes you need to think longer term, and the individual or the market isn't going to do that unless expressly directed to do that. If you wait until there is parity between them it will be too late and you'll pay orders of magnitude more to clean up the resulting problems.
In what way is the true cost of electricity production higher than what we pay? If we can't make a fair comparison between regular incandescents and high efficiency light bulbs, how do you know that "it will be too late"?
What it comes down to is that you think you know more than everybody else. The problem is that you don't know what you don't know that someone else knows. The fact is that there are many variables that determine why people choose the light bulb they do. There is no rational way to weigh those variables and decide that regular incandescents are not the best solution for any significant number of the many possible uses for light bulbs.
No, the reason to keep production going is because there is demand for regular incandescent light bulbs. It is still possible to buy CRT monitors. As far as I am aware it is still legal to manufacture them. CRTs are going away because the market for CRTs is going away. If regular incandescent light bulbs were going away because the market for them was going away, I would have no problem with that. I do not believe that it should be up to the government to dictate what kind of light bulbs I can buy.
Was it really worth your time?
I had a situation where I got pulled over as part of a speed trap (this was perfectly legitimate one that I shouldn't have gotten caught in, but I was just a little bit out of it that day and it didn't register what the presence of the cop cars up ahead meant). I was driving for a living at the time, so I contested it to get out of the points. They scheduled 15-20 of us on the same day at the same time. A police department representative showed up and offered us a deal, no points and a reduced fine. One guy decided that since the officer who wrote the ticket wasn't there he was going to fight even that. The judge told him, "OK, you can go. We will send you a letter telling you when we schedule your hearing." The fine I paid was less than the amount it would have cost me to take off another day to come back.