That company was Enron, and the federal government, specifically the FERC, refused to investigate on a party line vote (GOP majority) at the time, because 1) it was making a hell of a lot of money for their corporate friends, and 2) it was damaging the political career of Democrat California governor Gray Davis, so much so it culminated with Davis's recall and election of Schwarnegger.
Hm, a California-based utility company with contracts from the State of California failing to live up to its obligations to provide power in the State of California.
Recall that the White House at the time repeatedly refereed to the blackouts in the most populous state in the union, and the 5th largest world economy as "California's problem.")
Yes, those silly Americans and their use of "Federalism" to preserve the rights of individuals, communities, and states. How savage and primitive of them.
I mean, if we were to actually admit that the burden of policing California's utilities contracts rested squarely on California that would be terrible! All those Democrat state senators, state representatives, and Governor Davis might actually be perceived to have failed in their basic duties of governing. On top of that the cost of the investigation would've been paid out of California's budget, rather than using resources paid for by all 50 states.That simply won't do!
Yes, because you can obviously trust regulation to be above-board, effective, and fiscally responsible. It isn't like certain U.S. Senators used the regulatory powers of the National Government to promote corrupt Government Sponsored Enterprises to take over the mortgage market, poison it with bad loans, and back those bad loans with the promise of tax-payer funded bail-outs. They'd never have taken massive campaign contributions and sweetheart VIP mortgage deals as kickbacks. Nobody would ever be foolish enough to entrust people who committed such deed with leadership positions in the U.S. Senator, right?
Let's get real here. "Deregulation" is a red herring. Increasing regulation Volume rather than regulation Quality just leads to increased pay-days for lawyers, more patronage jobs for bureaucrats, and more cover for massive graft and corruption.
Our Public Schools, as an overall demographic, have been in a serious decline. Increasing the volume of time and money dumped into the failing systems has failed time and time again. This is because those solutions do not address the fundamentals that have hamstrung education.
Entitlement Mentalities: These are the absolute killers of our education system. Kids who are Entilted to attend the public school of their choice know that teachers are absolutely powerless to discipline them for infractions short of attempted murder or a "hate crime." These kids ruin classrooms. Parents are Entitled to have their little monsters admitted to the classroom regardless of the parent's unwillingness to participate in their child's education. They are also, in some places, Entitled to see their spawn promoted through grades without merit. Teachers are Entitled to keep their jobs regardless of poor performance due to union contracts. Unions are Entitled to keep their monopoly on Public Schools regardless of ambysmal performance due to their political contributions.
The only people who get really screwed are the naive suckers who though they were Entitled to classroom environment in which a well-behaved, apt child with involved parents could thrive. These people didn't understand that the lowest common denominator and their unscrupulous lawyers and advocates are the around whom Public Schools must bend themselves.
The problem won't be solved until parents are treated like consumers and tax-payer dollars start following the children. In an environment with competition and choices the pace of education can pick up. Discipline becomes possible again if children can actually be suspended or expelled for disruptive conduct in the classroom. We'll see improvement when lawyers and politicians can't force bright children to share a classroom with gang-bangers. We'll all be better off when teachers aren't forced to hold 23 children back at half-pace to accomodate 2 kids with learning disabilities that someone, in their wisdom, decided were Entitled to be "mainstreamed." Twisted ideologies around things like "social promotion" don't just hurt "regular" kids - they also keep children with special needs out of specialized learning programs.
I look forward to the day parents can be turned away from a school for failing to hold up their end of the education equation and likewise parents take away funding from a school for failing to hold up their end. Maybe on that day I won't have to witness dozens of children whose potential is being squandered because some negligent jackass wanted to work at/enroll their kid at the closest available school that doesn't charge tuition.
If you can manage to remove your loonybin libertarian spectacles, wipe the foam from your mouth and pause to consider for a moment:
Suuuuure.
You will find that fire officers/fighters do put a very great stock in rescuing people from house and other fires. Never really heard of them preventing the spread and leaving the people inside to choke.
What I'm gathering there's a problem here with either Reading Comprehension on your part or Clear Writing on my part. Either that or you fetish for Straw Men.
While rescues of initial victims are a happy event often made possible by the personal heroism of Police Officers and Fire Fighters they are not the primary function of Police and Fire Departments in most towns and counties. Property recovery isn't the main focus of burglary investigations either. Most rescues from burning buildings don't involve single-family homes, but rather extricating people from neighboring apartments to where fire is spreading. If the fire breaks out in your apartment and you're still in there by the time a fire fighter could rescue you then you're most likely dead. That's why fire escapes can be so important.
We have too many people that do not understand even the most basic personal responsibilities in large part because of idiotic, romanticized, and sheltered notions of what emergency service personel can do. I meet people who expect cops to run forensics on smash-and-grabs. I see people pointing fingers when the Fire Department didn't arrive in time to save somebody's kid from a home where that someone didn't replace their smoke-detector batteries. I read people who are utterly horrified at the idea of any citizen carrying a licensed firearm for self defense because "that's what we have police for!"
Police Officers are not your personal bodyguards or home security personel. Fire Fighters aren't psychic, can't fly, and their trucks don't teleport. CSI-[Insert City Here] is fictional. The person who has the primary responsibility for the safety and property of an adult of sound mind and body is that adult. I'd like to think the folks that pretend otherwise fell of the back of a turnip truck, but they usually come from dense urban areas, suburbs, or college campi.
I suspect you probably wish fire services could only stop the spread because you see government (any larger than the minimum possible) as an intrinsic evil. "We must set the example, self-reliance is the only way, etc.etc."
I suspect you might just be a complete nutter.
Regarding possible taxation of things that are bad for you; you are following a fairly typical libertarian fundamentalist tactic - wilfully conflating banning things and putting taxes on them.
I think you may be looking for the poster across the street. He actually posted words about banning or taxing things. Can't miss him.
It is one thing for countries to pick sides when smaller nations go to war or rival factions spring up in a civil war. The USSR backing Iran vs. NATO pushing Iraq, or the PRC backing North Korea and NATO backing South Korea. It is an entirely different kettle of fish when a country is arming, financing, and training extra-national networks to carry out terror attacks. The nuclear ambitions of nations that engage in that last sort of activity can't be tolerated. Eventually some random "infidel den of inequity" is going to eat a nuclear or severe dirty-bomb attack from Hezbollah or a similar state-sponsored terror proxy. At that point you'll have to either declare war on the sponsor-nation based on gathered intelligence, or accept that sort of savagery as the new face of war-making and "diplomacy" that the rest of the world must accept.
Given the alternatives, bombing Iran's nuclear program back to the stone-age every 5 years until they stop sponsoring terror proxies like Hezbollah seems the least awful.
And yes Lefties, we can still have fire departments and police and roads and a military with a Limited Representative government.
You know what else is good for a laugh? I keep running into nanny-staters who think that the Police Officers and Fire Fighters have a primary roll of directly defending the individual citizen from violent crime or fire-related death and property loss. Police and Fire services protect the community from the spread of crime and fire incidents. In most cases the initial individual victim's life, his/her property, or his/her family is forfeit in the incident with or without the Police Officer or Fire Fighter.
If someone breaks into your house and robs you, kiss your stuff good-bye. The Police aren't bringing it back. Unless the perpetrator is committing serial crimes in the same area he or she isn't getting brought to justice either. If someone comes to kill you, the police will probably actually investigate the crime post facto, but your survival in an isolated incident isn't something their going to be able to influence. The obligation to protect your life and property (and that of your family) from any given incident rests squarely on you, citizen. The Police don't install home security systems. The Police don't stay in your home with a firearm to repel intruders.
Likewise a fireman isn't responsible for putting in smoke detectors. He doesn't provide you with Fire Insurance for your home and property. He doesn't come to your house and set up an evacuation plan. Count yourself lucky if he comes to a school to encourage your kids to learn basic safety that you are supposed to be teaching and reinforcing yourself.
Nope, Police and Fire services don't protect the individual from crime and fire. They protect the community from the spread of crime and fire from individual incidences. The survival and safety of your family on the individual unit level is your responsibility and the nanny state can't fix that and let you retain your liberties. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
I tried Moblin on an Intel Aspire One D250 and on an Asus 701 4G with 1GB RAM
People still write code for the 7" Asus model? I mean, I own one but I didn't even bother trying to shove UNR on the thing. I really wouldn't expect much support for 2-year old models that support less than a 8.9" screen.
I think it is absolutely critical to distinguish between a warrant-based system for Evidence Gathering by Law Enforcement and a system of Intelligence Gathering by Military Offices. Wire-tapping without a warrant to introduce evidence in a criminal prosecution is a no-no. It is, however, completely distinct from gather intelligence or recon data abroad to target enemy soldiers, spies, and saboteurs. If somebody a valid target to be shot up by a predator drone without a trial then bugging their phone calls isn't really a 4th Amendment issue.
MA state and local policy investigators are part of Law Enforcement and thus all their searches, seizures, wiretaps, and electronic monitoring are subject to warrant requirements.
Bill Clinton issued pardons on far worse offenses as political rewards
TBH I never understood why the US puts up with presidential pardons. Why on earth can the president pardon someone and how is that different from having a King?
Rich.
Elections, terms limits, impeachment, and judicial review come to mind. I suppose you can put the shoe on the other foot pretty easily too. I can't understand tolerating an unelected judiciary serving lifetime terms that can not be undermined / rebuked / countermanded by other branches of government. That's essentially an undemocratic oligarchy, isn't it?
No, admitting illegal searches but punishing those who introduce the evidence would be a terrible plan. Those in positions of power could create sufficient incentive by means of bribery or blackmail. While gangs, mobs, and corporations are likely candidates the worst offenders by far would be the state and federal governments. You're going to hit me with a $20K fine and 5 years in prison? My labor union owns the governor or has an influential lobbyist with the White House. Good luck making that stick.
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Bill Clinton issued pardons on far worse offenses as political rewards on his way out of his second term. In our media culture it would probably be a positive rather than a negative to shield cop or agent who conducts illegal searches but manages to put "the bad guy" behind bars. That's an Orwellian nightmare waiting to happen.
The closest anyone can get to the "truth" within the realm of science is a model which is self-consistent and compatible with all known observations and which involves no unnecessary assumptions or entities (Occum's Razor). The model could still be demonstrated false by future observations, however. The concept of absolute truth, propositions which once (correctly) proven can never be falsified, is the domain of pure logic and/or philosophy, not science.
The problem is most opinionated folks in our society (and on the Internet) suck something awful at philosophy. In an effort to appear "smart" they try to bludgeon their way through conversations with inappropriate claims with regards to science. Most of the time they don't even have a firm grasp of the science in question, but they know that accusing other people of disagreeing with established science is a great way to discredit someone, even when you are wielding that science in a logically fallacious manner.
When all you've got is a (borrowed) hammer, everything looks like a nail.
a monitor won't show that the child has complained ten times. or is dehydrated. or is developing a headache.
An abnormally elevated heart-rate while exercising (typically accompanied with higher respiration and lowered perspiration) is a normal symptom of the early stages of dehydration. Being able to track a student's heart rate across a curriculum would help more reliably identify this abnormality. It would certainly be more reliable and practical than letting every student with enough low cunning to say, "I have a headache" systemically evade their fitness training.
If nothing else, those monitors could provide exculpatory evidence that the school was, in fact, neither cruel nor negligent the next time some kid drops dead running wind sprints in gym class after he and a dozen other slackers complained that they "didn't feel good."
There's two (well, more than that, really) sides to the suicide coin.
1. You have men like this. Men who have seen that which they have wrought, and found a life well spent. Rather than wither away and die as you say, these people deserve an 'easy out.'
It think people seriously overlook the right to simply refuse futile and degrading extraordinary methods to preserve life beyond its natural conclusion. We have a lot of options for pain management that provide a useful alternative to taking a shotgun to one's face.
3. Also, you have those who genuinly have something wrong with their mind that pushes them to it. You can't blame someone for something external pushing it down on you like that.
Not just something wrong with their minds - there are people who have something wrong with their surrounding culture. There are many sad situations where "something external" is a social prerogative that condemns the disabled as being burdensome and unworthy of life.
4. Finally, unless there are more I'm too tired to think of, you have those that go for a good cause. The good soldier diving on a grenade. Sacrificing one's self for the good of many, etc - the true altruistic finale.
That doesn't qualify as suicide. That's an altruistic act of heroism that happens to have the undesired outcome of dying. Likewise, killing in self-defense is not murder. It is an act to preserve one's own life from an aggressor with the otherwise unwanted outcome of killing.
Four paragraphs into the article they note that the Irish Constitution (from 1937) explicitly prohibits the publication of blasphemy. "it goes on to prohibit the publication of 'blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter'
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Further even in the First Paragraph they note that the new law came into being in removing the old 1961 Defamation Act. So the title of the original post is completely misleading. Blasphemy has been prohibited under Irish law for a long time. This is not a new situation in that regard. In the Sixth Paragraph the author notes: "only one case was ever taken under the blasphemy prohibition since the introduction of the constitution in 1937 (a 1999 case against a newspaper, in which the Supreme Court concluded that it was not possible to say 'of what the offence of blasphemy consists' and that 'the state is not placed in the position of an arbiter of religious truth')."
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In other words, this is much to do about nothing. Ireland doesn't prosecute blasphemy. It does have a need to do a little house-cleaning on the wording of its Constitution to bring it into line with popular practice, though.
Well, if it works it'll create an new avenue through which to assault some of the corruption degrading our education systems. Text-book publishing is a giant scam. Removing the heavy overhead of print-based publishing could significantly increase competition. Perhaps schools will be able to focus on purchasing content rather than page-count. Is it too much to hope that we won't see quite so many products purchased without proof-reading? Maybe we'll see an end to needing to drop $150 for a "revised 5th edition" copy to replace the old "5th edition" copy of a book because it updates 3 typographical errors. Wouldn't that be a trip? That's not even getting started on the potential for interactive content presents over static text and diagrams.
Unless they strapped the man down with his eyes open I doubt Saddam was actually forced to watch the movie.
The man was entitled to a roof over his head, a bed to sleep in, a pot to piss in, and regular meals. I seriously doubt he was denied access to religious scripture either.
It was, in all likelihood, one of the few movies they'd let Saddam watch as a break from the mind-numbing tedium of sitting in a cell by his lonesome.
Most likely, it is one of those awful misuses of the word "forced" just like people routinely misuse the word "torture." Seriously, by the definition of most folks locking someone in a room by themselves with no entertainment and just food, water, shelter, and waste facilities would be "torture." It certainly sucks, which is why the innocent aren't supposed to be subjected to such treatment on a whim.
Lots of lawful punishments for criminals, unlawful combatants, and POWs would be considered "torture" and "human rights violations" if the state just grabbed a random civilian off the street and subjected them to such conditions.
Sorry, but if you in prison awaiting trial for crimes against humanity and your only choices are to watch "South Park" make fun of you or sit in your cell and watch nothing you aren't being "tortured" or "mistreated." You've got it way better than many people in prison for lesser offenses, honestly.
The very possibility of any tax-payer dollars paying for this made me throw up a little bit in my mouth. If the U.N. junketeers want to get their Sci-Fi on they'd better pay out of their own pockets for their own convention badges like everyone else.
Hooray! A bunch of international bureaucrats to have their own sci-fi wank-fest. Yeah, use the U.N. building as a venue for advertising a private company's DVD sales. That's probably the least irresponsible thing the U.N.'s done in a decade... I wonder if they'd ever consider seriously confronting grave moral and geo-political issues. Perhaps they could invite philosophers, statesmen, and theologians before they brought out the entertainers.
Personally, I think the insurance companies have created a vicious cycle of "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" with doctors, where both parties benefit from less work and more money being extracted from us. In this environment, there is no need to do your job well. It's as anti-competitive as Soviet Russia.
Yes, it is anti-competitive - due to artificial barriers to consumer choice and competitor entry into the market.
These are the product of Tort Lawyers, established Insurance Companies, their Lobbyists, and the Politicians they've bought and paid for.
I don't have this kind of problem with my Life Insurance policy. I don't have this kind of problem with my auto-insurance since I moved away from Massachusetts either. I still have this problem with my health insurance because the government restricts my access to health insurance choices. I can either be herded like the rest of the sheeple into taking the one plan offered by my Employer and backed by the State's Tax Policies, or strike out on my own into a market completely warped by that same non-compete scenario. With so few healthy Americans actually choosing their own health care, costs for independent insurance providers are prohibitive.
This isn't a monopolist / oligopolist scenario caused by the "Free Market." This is a closed market due to the Market Leaders forging an alliance with the State to effectively bar competition in the marketplace. You already live under Socialized Medicine in America, just hushed up and subcontracted. Now we're moving to the stage where the State tries to cut costs to finance their untenable position by limiting consumer choices. The step after than is rationing (such as we see in Dentistry in the UK already) and the next one is the killing / denial of treatment to "useless eaters."
In your country if you're accused of a crime you consider it a natural right to have access to a free lawyer and access to free legal advice is enshrined in the highest law of the land. The spirit of socialism at its finest! But oddly there's no "socialism" conflict in that area, even from the "libertarians".
That's probably because there is not Socialism involved at all. Public Defenders are only supplied in Criminal Cases because they are in opposition to Public Prosecutors. In contrast, the state does not hire you a lawyer so you can sue someone.
The system is set up that way to limit the power of the State. Instead of using the public coffers to bludgeon the individual into submission (as happens in most exercises of Socialism) the State must pay for both sides of it adversarial trials so as not to exert undue influence and marginalize the rights of its citizens. Similarly, evidence discovered by State employees and officers (such as the police) must be disclosed equally to both sides whether it helps or harms the State's prosecution of its case.
I'd like to stress, though, that evolution doesn't have anything to do with the origin of life. The first life could have formed from chemicals in the early earth's oceans, been created by the Designer, left here by aliens, or drifted in on a comet. Doesn't matter. Evolution can't happen until life can replicate itself. It would certainly be nice to know how life came about, but it's not relevant to evolution.
It think that observation is truly key.
I think the true reason you get the word "Darwinist" tossed around from time to time is because you have two active factions of Religious Philosophy that are abusing the science by committing logic fallacies to try and "win" an argument over metaphysics. The faulty premise in their pointless bickering is that somehow Evolution contradicts the existence of a Creator Deity.
About the only thing Evolution truly challenges are odd notions of folks convinced that the first human being was literally molded out of clay.
The entire notion of an Judeo-Christian Deity demands that such an Entity be responsible for the laws of physics that govern the universe itself. As a consequence the process leading to the stars, planets, seas, and all living creatures forming are all themselves part of an elaborate Act of God. Hence, man's formation through evolution is likewise caused by God. The mechanics of creation and evolution don't directly speak to the existence, non-existence, or nature of said Deity.
People try to interpret those mechanics to find answers, but that's like asking someone what they think the clouds in the sky look like. It is more likely to tell you about the personality and feelings of the observer than anything else. Some people want to see a flat, empty continuum. Some people want to see the Mind of God.
Most serious theologians don't have trouble reconciling this issue, nor do most serious scientists. The fringe fundamentalists and the militant atheists, however, get themselves all worked up over it. They also seldom target any but the most uninformed bystanders and scapegoats in their attempts to assert their doctrine, as opposed to counterparts with education in theology, philosophy, or the like.
The meta-physical arguments address a question of the purpose of human existence.
The scientific arguments address a question of the mechanics of human existence.
They can both the question of "Why are we here?" due to the frailties of the English language, but that's about it. They don't have much to do with one another.
D.C. Public Schools spend way more money per student every year than most of those "white flight schools," or even urban charters and religious schools. Their results are much, much worse than the average school in the U.S. even though they spend way more money than the average school.
That's because the problem isn't the lack of money (there isn't any thanks to redistribution programs) but rather the utter incompetence of the School Administration. Who'd have thought that rewarding bureaucrats for failure and denying consumers choices in the market place would lead to a terrible product? The legal liabilities of Entitlement Schools making it impossible to maintain any semblance of Discipline couldn't possibly have a negative influence on outcomes either, could it?
The primary purpose Public Schools in many districts is strictly to line the pockets of the Teacher's Union Officials and the Public Sector Bureaucrats in exchange for putting politicians in office. As long as the Diploma Mill continues to hand out worthless counterfeit degrees to the illiterate and ill-behaved parents can pretend they held up their end. It is no wonder they fail.
McCollum v. Board of Education (1947) is when the Jefferson letters were introduced into Jurisprudence with the phrase "Separation of Church and State" as well as radical modern requirements for "secularization" that were never implemented in the Founders' lifetimes or apparently intended by their writing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It was driven by a court packed by FDR, the ruling lead by justice Hugo Black, a Ku Klux Klan member.
Lynch vs. Donnelly (1984) finally corrected this abuse of jurisprudence, repudiating Justice Black's arguments and concluding that you could not take Thomas Jefferson's opinion (who didn't compose the Bill of Rights, vote on it, or have a hand in its ratification short of some letters written to Madison and a few other colleagues while Jefferson was in Europe) from a private letter as the foundation of an Constitutional interpretation that somehow overrides the public actions and publications of everyone else.
I think that between those three categories most instances of "profanity" that people are actually concerned about would already be punishable without having to actually ban words outright.
Using excessive vulgarity in public to the detriment of surrounding folks: Disturbing the peace
Continuous lewd or abusive comments towards another individual: Harassment
Insulting or berating other people to provoke an altercation or verbally assault them: Fighting words
I think that should cover almost all the bases of "public standards of decency" without having to actually make specific words felonious in any context.
Whether Adam & Steve down the street can marry does not affect me. Whether Comcast can pick and choose which packets of mine get through in a timely fashion does. Big difference.
-Ted
If you read what the man wrote, he agrees with you.
'Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like. '
His complaint is with the Government abusing its power, specifically in taking children by force and placing them into state "education" facilities where they are indoctrinated with the teaching that what "Adam & Steve" are doing down the street is right, good, and sociologically and morally interchangeable with a "traditional" marriage.
And that's not even scratching the surface of the Constitutional violation of Equal Protection that comes up every time the State extends a Privilege (marriage license, driver's license, fishing permit, cash payment, whatever) without requiring those that receive the Privilege to have provided a Public Benefit related to said Privilege.
Slashdot Mirror
That company was Enron, and the federal government, specifically the FERC, refused to investigate on a party line vote (GOP majority) at the time, because 1) it was making a hell of a lot of money for their corporate friends, and 2) it was damaging the political career of Democrat California governor Gray Davis, so much so it culminated with Davis's recall and election of Schwarnegger.
Hm, a California-based utility company with contracts from the State of California failing to live up to its obligations to provide power in the State of California.
Recall that the White House at the time repeatedly refereed to the blackouts in the most populous state in the union, and the 5th largest world economy as "California's problem.")
Yes, those silly Americans and their use of "Federalism" to preserve the rights of individuals, communities, and states. How savage and primitive of them.
I mean, if we were to actually admit that the burden of policing California's utilities contracts rested squarely on California that would be terrible! All those Democrat state senators, state representatives, and Governor Davis might actually be perceived to have failed in their basic duties of governing. On top of that the cost of the investigation would've been paid out of California's budget, rather than using resources paid for by all 50 states.That simply won't do!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/
Moral of the story: You can't trust deregulation
Yes, because you can obviously trust regulation to be above-board, effective, and fiscally responsible. It isn't like certain U.S. Senators used the regulatory powers of the National Government to promote corrupt Government Sponsored Enterprises to take over the mortgage market, poison it with bad loans, and back those bad loans with the promise of tax-payer funded bail-outs. They'd never have taken massive campaign contributions and sweetheart VIP mortgage deals as kickbacks. Nobody would ever be foolish enough to entrust people who committed such deed with leadership positions in the U.S. Senator, right?
Let's get real here. "Deregulation" is a red herring. Increasing regulation Volume rather than regulation Quality just leads to increased pay-days for lawyers, more patronage jobs for bureaucrats, and more cover for massive graft and corruption.
Our Public Schools, as an overall demographic, have been in a serious decline. Increasing the volume of time and money dumped into the failing systems has failed time and time again. This is because those solutions do not address the fundamentals that have hamstrung education.
Entitlement Mentalities: These are the absolute killers of our education system. Kids who are Entilted to attend the public school of their choice know that teachers are absolutely powerless to discipline them for infractions short of attempted murder or a "hate crime." These kids ruin classrooms. Parents are Entitled to have their little monsters admitted to the classroom regardless of the parent's unwillingness to participate in their child's education. They are also, in some places, Entitled to see their spawn promoted through grades without merit. Teachers are Entitled to keep their jobs regardless of poor performance due to union contracts. Unions are Entitled to keep their monopoly on Public Schools regardless of ambysmal performance due to their political contributions.
The only people who get really screwed are the naive suckers who though they were Entitled to classroom environment in which a well-behaved, apt child with involved parents could thrive. These people didn't understand that the lowest common denominator and their unscrupulous lawyers and advocates are the around whom Public Schools must bend themselves.
The problem won't be solved until parents are treated like consumers and tax-payer dollars start following the children. In an environment with competition and choices the pace of education can pick up. Discipline becomes possible again if children can actually be suspended or expelled for disruptive conduct in the classroom. We'll see improvement when lawyers and politicians can't force bright children to share a classroom with gang-bangers. We'll all be better off when teachers aren't forced to hold 23 children back at half-pace to accomodate 2 kids with learning disabilities that someone, in their wisdom, decided were Entitled to be "mainstreamed." Twisted ideologies around things like "social promotion" don't just hurt "regular" kids - they also keep children with special needs out of specialized learning programs.
I look forward to the day parents can be turned away from a school for failing to hold up their end of the education equation and likewise parents take away funding from a school for failing to hold up their end. Maybe on that day I won't have to witness dozens of children whose potential is being squandered because some negligent jackass wanted to work at/enroll their kid at the closest available school that doesn't charge tuition.
If you can manage to remove your loonybin libertarian spectacles, wipe the foam from your mouth and pause to consider for a moment:
Suuuuure.
You will find that fire officers/fighters do put a very great stock in rescuing people from house and other fires. Never really heard of them preventing the spread and leaving the people inside to choke.
What I'm gathering there's a problem here with either Reading Comprehension on your part or Clear Writing on my part. Either that or you fetish for Straw Men.
While rescues of initial victims are a happy event often made possible by the personal heroism of Police Officers and Fire Fighters they are not the primary function of Police and Fire Departments in most towns and counties. Property recovery isn't the main focus of burglary investigations either. Most rescues from burning buildings don't involve single-family homes, but rather extricating people from neighboring apartments to where fire is spreading. If the fire breaks out in your apartment and you're still in there by the time a fire fighter could rescue you then you're most likely dead. That's why fire escapes can be so important.
We have too many people that do not understand even the most basic personal responsibilities in large part because of idiotic, romanticized, and sheltered notions of what emergency service personel can do. I meet people who expect cops to run forensics on smash-and-grabs. I see people pointing fingers when the Fire Department didn't arrive in time to save somebody's kid from a home where that someone didn't replace their smoke-detector batteries. I read people who are utterly horrified at the idea of any citizen carrying a licensed firearm for self defense because "that's what we have police for!"
Police Officers are not your personal bodyguards or home security personel. Fire Fighters aren't psychic, can't fly, and their trucks don't teleport. CSI-[Insert City Here] is fictional. The person who has the primary responsibility for the safety and property of an adult of sound mind and body is that adult. I'd like to think the folks that pretend otherwise fell of the back of a turnip truck, but they usually come from dense urban areas, suburbs, or college campi.
I suspect you probably wish fire services could only stop the spread because you see government (any larger than the minimum possible) as an intrinsic evil. "We must set the example, self-reliance is the only way, etc.etc."
I suspect you might just be a complete nutter.
Regarding possible taxation of things that are bad for you; you are following a fairly typical libertarian fundamentalist tactic - wilfully conflating banning things and putting taxes on them.
I think you may be looking for the poster across the street. He actually posted words about banning or taxing things. Can't miss him.
It is one thing for countries to pick sides when smaller nations go to war or rival factions spring up in a civil war. The USSR backing Iran vs. NATO pushing Iraq, or the PRC backing North Korea and NATO backing South Korea. It is an entirely different kettle of fish when a country is arming, financing, and training extra-national networks to carry out terror attacks. The nuclear ambitions of nations that engage in that last sort of activity can't be tolerated. Eventually some random "infidel den of inequity" is going to eat a nuclear or severe dirty-bomb attack from Hezbollah or a similar state-sponsored terror proxy. At that point you'll have to either declare war on the sponsor-nation based on gathered intelligence, or accept that sort of savagery as the new face of war-making and "diplomacy" that the rest of the world must accept.
Given the alternatives, bombing Iran's nuclear program back to the stone-age every 5 years until they stop sponsoring terror proxies like Hezbollah seems the least awful.
And yes Lefties, we can still have fire departments and police and roads and a military with a Limited Representative government.
You know what else is good for a laugh? I keep running into nanny-staters who think that the Police Officers and Fire Fighters have a primary roll of directly defending the individual citizen from violent crime or fire-related death and property loss. Police and Fire services protect the community from the spread of crime and fire incidents. In most cases the initial individual victim's life, his/her property, or his/her family is forfeit in the incident with or without the Police Officer or Fire Fighter.
If someone breaks into your house and robs you, kiss your stuff good-bye. The Police aren't bringing it back. Unless the perpetrator is committing serial crimes in the same area he or she isn't getting brought to justice either. If someone comes to kill you, the police will probably actually investigate the crime post facto, but your survival in an isolated incident isn't something their going to be able to influence. The obligation to protect your life and property (and that of your family) from any given incident rests squarely on you, citizen. The Police don't install home security systems. The Police don't stay in your home with a firearm to repel intruders.
Likewise a fireman isn't responsible for putting in smoke detectors. He doesn't provide you with Fire Insurance for your home and property. He doesn't come to your house and set up an evacuation plan. Count yourself lucky if he comes to a school to encourage your kids to learn basic safety that you are supposed to be teaching and reinforcing yourself.
Nope, Police and Fire services don't protect the individual from crime and fire. They protect the community from the spread of crime and fire from individual incidences. The survival and safety of your family on the individual unit level is your responsibility and the nanny state can't fix that and let you retain your liberties. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
I tried Moblin on an Intel Aspire One D250 and on an Asus 701 4G with 1GB RAM
People still write code for the 7" Asus model? I mean, I own one but I didn't even bother trying to shove UNR on the thing. I really wouldn't expect much support for 2-year old models that support less than a 8.9" screen.
I think it is absolutely critical to distinguish between a warrant-based system for Evidence Gathering by Law Enforcement and a system of Intelligence Gathering by Military Offices. Wire-tapping without a warrant to introduce evidence in a criminal prosecution is a no-no. It is, however, completely distinct from gather intelligence or recon data abroad to target enemy soldiers, spies, and saboteurs. If somebody a valid target to be shot up by a predator drone without a trial then bugging their phone calls isn't really a 4th Amendment issue.
MA state and local policy investigators are part of Law Enforcement and thus all their searches, seizures, wiretaps, and electronic monitoring are subject to warrant requirements.
Bill Clinton issued pardons on far worse offenses as political rewards
TBH I never understood why the US puts up with presidential pardons. Why on earth can the president pardon someone and how is that different from having a King?
Rich.
Elections, terms limits, impeachment, and judicial review come to mind. I suppose you can put the shoe on the other foot pretty easily too. I can't understand tolerating an unelected judiciary serving lifetime terms that can not be undermined / rebuked / countermanded by other branches of government. That's essentially an undemocratic oligarchy, isn't it?
No, admitting illegal searches but punishing those who introduce the evidence would be a terrible plan. Those in positions of power could create sufficient incentive by means of bribery or blackmail. While gangs, mobs, and corporations are likely candidates the worst offenders by far would be the state and federal governments. You're going to hit me with a $20K fine and 5 years in prison? My labor union owns the governor or has an influential lobbyist with the White House. Good luck making that stick.
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Bill Clinton issued pardons on far worse offenses as political rewards on his way out of his second term. In our media culture it would probably be a positive rather than a negative to shield cop or agent who conducts illegal searches but manages to put "the bad guy" behind bars. That's an Orwellian nightmare waiting to happen.
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Repeat after me: LIMITED. ENUMERATED. POWERS.
The closest anyone can get to the "truth" within the realm of science is a model which is self-consistent and compatible with all known observations and which involves no unnecessary assumptions or entities (Occum's Razor). The model could still be demonstrated false by future observations, however. The concept of absolute truth, propositions which once (correctly) proven can never be falsified, is the domain of pure logic and/or philosophy, not science.
The problem is most opinionated folks in our society (and on the Internet) suck something awful at philosophy. In an effort to appear "smart" they try to bludgeon their way through conversations with inappropriate claims with regards to science. Most of the time they don't even have a firm grasp of the science in question, but they know that accusing other people of disagreeing with established science is a great way to discredit someone, even when you are wielding that science in a logically fallacious manner.
When all you've got is a (borrowed) hammer, everything looks like a nail.
students can talk. simply asking how they are doing is a much better way to mitigate the threat of a lawsuit than showing a heart rate monitor output.
we're talking about people here, not lab rats.
"Everybody lies." /House
If you want to ditch gym that bad get a doctor's note already.
how convenient
a monitor won't show that the child has complained ten times. or is dehydrated. or is developing a headache.
An abnormally elevated heart-rate while exercising (typically accompanied with higher respiration and lowered perspiration) is a normal symptom of the early stages of dehydration. Being able to track a student's heart rate across a curriculum would help more reliably identify this abnormality. It would certainly be more reliable and practical than letting every student with enough low cunning to say, "I have a headache" systemically evade their fitness training.
If nothing else, those monitors could provide exculpatory evidence that the school was, in fact, neither cruel nor negligent the next time some kid drops dead running wind sprints in gym class after he and a dozen other slackers complained that they "didn't feel good."
There's two (well, more than that, really) sides to the suicide coin.
1. You have men like this. Men who have seen that which they have wrought, and found a life well spent. Rather than wither away and die as you say, these people deserve an 'easy out.'
It think people seriously overlook the right to simply refuse futile and degrading extraordinary methods to preserve life beyond its natural conclusion. We have a lot of options for pain management that provide a useful alternative to taking a shotgun to one's face.
3. Also, you have those who genuinly have something wrong with their mind that pushes them to it. You can't blame someone for something external pushing it down on you like that.
Not just something wrong with their minds - there are people who have something wrong with their surrounding culture. There are many sad situations where "something external" is a social prerogative that condemns the disabled as being burdensome and unworthy of life.
4. Finally, unless there are more I'm too tired to think of, you have those that go for a good cause. The good soldier diving on a grenade. Sacrificing one's self for the good of many, etc - the true altruistic finale.
That doesn't qualify as suicide. That's an altruistic act of heroism that happens to have the undesired outcome of dying. Likewise, killing in self-defense is not murder. It is an act to preserve one's own life from an aggressor with the otherwise unwanted outcome of killing.
Four paragraphs into the article they note that the Irish Constitution (from 1937) explicitly prohibits the publication of blasphemy. "it goes on to prohibit the publication of 'blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter'
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Further even in the First Paragraph they note that the new law came into being in removing the old 1961 Defamation Act. So the title of the original post is completely misleading. Blasphemy has been prohibited under Irish law for a long time. This is not a new situation in that regard. In the Sixth Paragraph the author notes: "only one case was ever taken under the blasphemy prohibition since the introduction of the constitution in 1937 (a 1999 case against a newspaper, in which the Supreme Court concluded that it was not possible to say 'of what the offence of blasphemy consists' and that 'the state is not placed in the position of an arbiter of religious truth')."
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In other words, this is much to do about nothing. Ireland doesn't prosecute blasphemy. It does have a need to do a little house-cleaning on the wording of its Constitution to bring it into line with popular practice, though.
Well, if it works it'll create an new avenue through which to assault some of the corruption degrading our education systems. Text-book publishing is a giant scam. Removing the heavy overhead of print-based publishing could significantly increase competition. Perhaps schools will be able to focus on purchasing content rather than page-count. Is it too much to hope that we won't see quite so many products purchased without proof-reading? Maybe we'll see an end to needing to drop $150 for a "revised 5th edition" copy to replace the old "5th edition" copy of a book because it updates 3 typographical errors. Wouldn't that be a trip? That's not even getting started on the potential for interactive content presents over static text and diagrams.
Unless they strapped the man down with his eyes open I doubt Saddam was actually forced to watch the movie.
The man was entitled to a roof over his head, a bed to sleep in, a pot to piss in, and regular meals. I seriously doubt he was denied access to religious scripture either.
It was, in all likelihood, one of the few movies they'd let Saddam watch as a break from the mind-numbing tedium of sitting in a cell by his lonesome.
Most likely, it is one of those awful misuses of the word "forced" just like people routinely misuse the word "torture." Seriously, by the definition of most folks locking someone in a room by themselves with no entertainment and just food, water, shelter, and waste facilities would be "torture." It certainly sucks, which is why the innocent aren't supposed to be subjected to such treatment on a whim.
Lots of lawful punishments for criminals, unlawful combatants, and POWs would be considered "torture" and "human rights violations" if the state just grabbed a random civilian off the street and subjected them to such conditions.
Sorry, but if you in prison awaiting trial for crimes against humanity and your only choices are to watch "South Park" make fun of you or sit in your cell and watch nothing you aren't being "tortured" or "mistreated." You've got it way better than many people in prison for lesser offenses, honestly.
The very possibility of any tax-payer dollars paying for this made me throw up a little bit in my mouth. If the U.N. junketeers want to get their Sci-Fi on they'd better pay out of their own pockets for their own convention badges like everyone else.
Hooray! A bunch of international bureaucrats to have their own sci-fi wank-fest. Yeah, use the U.N. building as a venue for advertising a private company's DVD sales. That's probably the least irresponsible thing the U.N.'s done in a decade ... I wonder if they'd ever consider seriously confronting grave moral and geo-political issues. Perhaps they could invite philosophers, statesmen, and theologians before they brought out the entertainers.
Personally, I think the insurance companies have created a vicious cycle of "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" with doctors, where both parties benefit from less work and more money being extracted from us. In this environment, there is no need to do your job well. It's as anti-competitive as Soviet Russia.
Yes, it is anti-competitive - due to artificial barriers to consumer choice and competitor entry into the market.
These are the product of Tort Lawyers, established Insurance Companies, their Lobbyists, and the Politicians they've bought and paid for.
I don't have this kind of problem with my Life Insurance policy. I don't have this kind of problem with my auto-insurance since I moved away from Massachusetts either. I still have this problem with my health insurance because the government restricts my access to health insurance choices. I can either be herded like the rest of the sheeple into taking the one plan offered by my Employer and backed by the State's Tax Policies, or strike out on my own into a market completely warped by that same non-compete scenario. With so few healthy Americans actually choosing their own health care, costs for independent insurance providers are prohibitive.
This isn't a monopolist / oligopolist scenario caused by the "Free Market." This is a closed market due to the Market Leaders forging an alliance with the State to effectively bar competition in the marketplace. You already live under Socialized Medicine in America, just hushed up and subcontracted. Now we're moving to the stage where the State tries to cut costs to finance their untenable position by limiting consumer choices. The step after than is rationing (such as we see in Dentistry in the UK already) and the next one is the killing / denial of treatment to "useless eaters."
How strange,
In your country if you're accused of a crime you consider it a natural right to have access to a free lawyer and access to free legal advice is enshrined in the highest law of the land. The spirit of socialism at its finest! But oddly there's no "socialism" conflict in that area, even from the "libertarians".
That's probably because there is not Socialism involved at all. Public Defenders are only supplied in Criminal Cases because they are in opposition to Public Prosecutors. In contrast, the state does not hire you a lawyer so you can sue someone.
The system is set up that way to limit the power of the State. Instead of using the public coffers to bludgeon the individual into submission (as happens in most exercises of Socialism) the State must pay for both sides of it adversarial trials so as not to exert undue influence and marginalize the rights of its citizens. Similarly, evidence discovered by State employees and officers (such as the police) must be disclosed equally to both sides whether it helps or harms the State's prosecution of its case.
I'd like to stress, though, that evolution doesn't have anything to do with the origin of life. The first life could have formed from chemicals in the early earth's oceans, been created by the Designer, left here by aliens, or drifted in on a comet. Doesn't matter. Evolution can't happen until life can replicate itself. It would certainly be nice to know how life came about, but it's not relevant to evolution.
It think that observation is truly key.
I think the true reason you get the word "Darwinist" tossed around from time to time is because you have two active factions of Religious Philosophy that are abusing the science by committing logic fallacies to try and "win" an argument over metaphysics. The faulty premise in their pointless bickering is that somehow Evolution contradicts the existence of a Creator Deity.
About the only thing Evolution truly challenges are odd notions of folks convinced that the first human being was literally molded out of clay.
The entire notion of an Judeo-Christian Deity demands that such an Entity be responsible for the laws of physics that govern the universe itself. As a consequence the process leading to the stars, planets, seas, and all living creatures forming are all themselves part of an elaborate Act of God. Hence, man's formation through evolution is likewise caused by God. The mechanics of creation and evolution don't directly speak to the existence, non-existence, or nature of said Deity.
People try to interpret those mechanics to find answers, but that's like asking someone what they think the clouds in the sky look like. It is more likely to tell you about the personality and feelings of the observer than anything else. Some people want to see a flat, empty continuum. Some people want to see the Mind of God.
Most serious theologians don't have trouble reconciling this issue, nor do most serious scientists. The fringe fundamentalists and the militant atheists, however, get themselves all worked up over it. They also seldom target any but the most uninformed bystanders and scapegoats in their attempts to assert their doctrine, as opposed to counterparts with education in theology, philosophy, or the like.
The meta-physical arguments address a question of the purpose of human existence.
The scientific arguments address a question of the mechanics of human existence.
They can both the question of "Why are we here?" due to the frailties of the English language, but that's about it. They don't have much to do with one another.
D.C. Public Schools spend way more money per student every year than most of those "white flight schools," or even urban charters and religious schools. Their results are much, much worse than the average school in the U.S. even though they spend way more money than the average school.
That's because the problem isn't the lack of money (there isn't any thanks to redistribution programs) but rather the utter incompetence of the School Administration. Who'd have thought that rewarding bureaucrats for failure and denying consumers choices in the market place would lead to a terrible product? The legal liabilities of Entitlement Schools making it impossible to maintain any semblance of Discipline couldn't possibly have a negative influence on outcomes either, could it?
The primary purpose Public Schools in many districts is strictly to line the pockets of the Teacher's Union Officials and the Public Sector Bureaucrats in exchange for putting politicians in office. As long as the Diploma Mill continues to hand out worthless counterfeit degrees to the illiterate and ill-behaved parents can pretend they held up their end. It is no wonder they fail.
McCollum v. Board of Education (1947) is when the Jefferson letters were introduced into Jurisprudence with the phrase "Separation of Church and State" as well as radical modern requirements for "secularization" that were never implemented in the Founders' lifetimes or apparently intended by their writing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It was driven by a court packed by FDR, the ruling lead by justice Hugo Black, a Ku Klux Klan member.
Lynch vs. Donnelly (1984) finally corrected this abuse of jurisprudence, repudiating Justice Black's arguments and concluding that you could not take Thomas Jefferson's opinion (who didn't compose the Bill of Rights, vote on it, or have a hand in its ratification short of some letters written to Madison and a few other colleagues while Jefferson was in Europe) from a private letter as the foundation of an Constitutional interpretation that somehow overrides the public actions and publications of everyone else.
I think that between those three categories most instances of "profanity" that people are actually concerned about would already be punishable without having to actually ban words outright.
Using excessive vulgarity in public to the detriment of surrounding folks: Disturbing the peace
Continuous lewd or abusive comments towards another individual: Harassment
Insulting or berating other people to provoke an altercation or verbally assault them: Fighting words
I think that should cover almost all the bases of "public standards of decency" without having to actually make specific words felonious in any context.
Whether Adam & Steve down the street can marry does not affect me. Whether Comcast can pick and choose which packets of mine get through in a timely fashion does. Big difference.
-Ted
If you read what the man wrote, he agrees with you.
'Let me put it another way. The sex life of the people around me is none of my business; the homosexuality of some of my friends and associates has made no barrier between us, and as far as I know, my heterosexuality hasn't bothered them. That's what tolerance looks like. '
His complaint is with the Government abusing its power, specifically in taking children by force and placing them into state "education" facilities where they are indoctrinated with the teaching that what "Adam & Steve" are doing down the street is right, good, and sociologically and morally interchangeable with a "traditional" marriage.
Case in point: School takes 1st-graders to see lesbian teacher wed
And that's not even scratching the surface of the Constitutional violation of Equal Protection that comes up every time the State extends a Privilege (marriage license, driver's license, fishing permit, cash payment, whatever) without requiring those that receive the Privilege to have provided a Public Benefit related to said Privilege.
- Marty Lund