If kiddy porn is on your computer, I'm inclined to believe one of the users put it there
So in brief, your view is that the guy from yesterday's article, even though he had been framed by a bot program downloading child porn, should be sitting in jail for 5+ years. In your view, if somebody can not prove his innocence, then he's presumed guilty. The prosecutor has absolutely no obligation to prove the guy *actually* downloaded the images - the mere existence of the images is enough to deprive a man of his liberty for several years.
That's fucked up, and it's a violation of inalienable human rights.
In my view the mere existence of images should not be enough. The man should be presumed innocent, be presumed to Not have downloaded those images (unless the prosecutor can produce proof he did the actual act), and be left to go free. Better to let the man go, than to imprison an innocent men.
BTW:
This is why I'm also against the death penalty. The system makes mistakes, innocent people get charged, and you can't undo death.
We should save U.S. oil (and coal) until the rest of the world is dried-out (circa 2030), and then sell the oil on the open market at exorbitant prices. We can use that money to pay-off our enormous 30 trillion dollar debt.
On the other hand it's possible the EU and China might get mad, and decide to just declare war and take the oil by force. A two-front war of the US v China and US v EU could be interesting. But who knows? Difficult to see the future is - always changing it is.
My understanding of Godwin's law is not that referencing Nazis is bad (after all, they were a part of history). He just observed that eventually, if a fight goes on long enough, someone will make reference to them. He did not opine if that was bad or good.
Personally I think it's rather silly we can't talk about tyrants or their tyrannical governments. Even if I invoke a different tyrant to make my point, like Communist Dictator Nicholae Ceasescu, I still get accused of Godwining myself. It's like a blatant censorship of history, and the willful decision to put blinders over your eyes and deny that governments can, from time to time, be destructive to their own citizens.
What if, and please don't be shocked, the porn was actually put there by the district attorney, anxious to get re-elected next year because he's "tough on crime" or "protects the children", so he frames a bunch of people by filling their machines with child images. It's happened before.
Or what if the accused thinks 'Maybe it was a virus,' but has no way to prove it because the PC is locked-up in police custody. That could have EASILY happened in the linked case, with the result of that man being stuck in jail for 5+ years, since he couldn't prove his innocence.
And then there's the simple "my friend's a creep" factor. I've used friends' computers. It would be extremely easy for me to download some child porn during that time. And then THEY get the blame for it, even though they are innocent of wrongdoing. ----- Ye are too quick to presume "he's guilty" on extremely flimsy evidence (yes images on a Windoze computer, which can be easily hijacked, is flimsy).
Yes because attraction for beautiful teenaged women (even those who, like Miley Cyrus or Emily Osment, are only 16/17) or beautiful twenty-something women clearly means I'm sick. Sure. Yep. Uh huh. I'm curious to know what the cure might be? Sterilization of everybody who finds young women attractive? Wouldn't that make the human race..... ya know, go extinct from lack of babies?
Sorry but I disagree. Sexual attraction is not "sick". On the contrary it's extremely healthy.
P.S. I think it's rather stupid to criminalize God's creation (the body). Only a completely and total dipshit, also known as a politician, would find the Creator's work a perversion. It's sickening.
But then I've long thought Puritan americans have a mental aberration where they can see violence on television without concern (think 24), but fear nudity (like Janet Jackson's naked breast). That can't be normal.
"Simulated child pornography was made illegal with the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The CPPA was short-lived. In 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, holding that the relevant portions of the CPPA were unconstitutional because they prevented lawful speech. Referring to Ferber, the court stated that "the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not 'intrinsically related' to the sexual abuse of children.""
On the other hand: "In Richmond, Virginia, on December 2005, Dwight Whorley was convicted under 18 U.S.C. 1466A for using a Virginia Employment Commission computer to receive "...obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubescent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males."..... On December 19, 2008 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.[6] The court stated that "it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists." Attorneys for Mr. Whorley have said that they will appeal to the Supreme Court."
and:
In October 2008, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund became involved in a case defending 38 years old Iowa comic collector named Christopher Handley - "there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book."... Judge Gritzner was petitioned to drop some of the charges, but instead ruled that 2 parts of the PROTECT Act criminalizing "a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting" were unconstitutional. Handley still faces an obscenity charge..... CBLDF leader Neil Gaiman remarked on how this could apply to his work The Doll's House, saying, "if you bought that comic, you could be arrested for it? That's just deeply wrong. Nobody was hurt. The only thing that was hurt were ideas."
Actually if you read ClubSeventeen's history, they used to have seventeen year old models until the U.S. Government imposed its will upon the company (on the theory that the website is viewable in the U.S. therefore that company must follow U.S. law). It's somewhat akin to how the U.S. Government (or RIAA) is trying to impose the Digital Millennium Copyright Act upon the EU and Australia.
Anyway if you live in the Netherlands they let you see the 17 year old models.
>>>I'm reasonably sure one has to be 18 in Dutchyland
What? Too lazy to drag your ass over to wikipedia and double-check? Well you're wrong - 17 is the legal age
What the hell? Did the Church of Rome take-over the US and EU governments while I was sleeping? We're now under a moral oligarchy that tells us "nudism is bad"??? I feel like I've been dropped into some Robert Heinlein novel.
>>>If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'. This is a self-regulating phenomenon that popped up in the TiVo community.
Did I just step into the novel called 1984? Jeez. "If you are suspected of doing something illegal your neighbors, or even your own children, will report you. The government will investigate."
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08, @06:30PM (#30026354)
Sick Fuck
Hey look. An european. They hate americans like the GP, and just love to find an opportunity to insult us ("sick fuck"). I dare you to log in with your real username and repeat that. I want to damage your rep with a -1 Troll mod. Fucking anonymous coward. The grandparent poster's message was completely logical and reasonable and Not an indication that he goes-round raping children. But I guess I can't expect logic from the *.eu domain.
I think, if the U.S. discovers a photo of a Japanese girl being raped, the police should simply turn-over the evidence to our ally and let them track down the criminal.
Cracking down on child porn means cracking down on possession.
Okay. But what's the logic of making cartoons of children having sex illegal (as is the case in Aussieland). Where's the victim? Where's the crime? This is nothing more than morality enforcement except now instead of the Catholic church doing it, it's the government.
Your view also calls into question the existence of sites like this: http://clubseventeen.com/ (warning nudity). In that country, the Netherlands, 17 is the legal age of consent, so no crime has been committed in any of those photos. But am I going to get arrested in the US for a non-crime that never happened??? ----- Or what about American nudist sites? http://www.nude2000.com/Family_Pageant_Activities.htm (nudity again). Is daddy going to get arrested because he took a photo of his underage daughter or son???
How about we embrace that concept "land of the free" and just let people enjoy liberated speech without fear of jail time? Arrest the rapist, or the murderer, or the thief, not the guy who just happens to have the photo of the event.
Anyone who purposely goes without healthcare is an idiot. And when you get in a car accident and have a 300k hospital bill to pay, i bet you will pony that right up to the hospital
The driver who caused the accident would pay the bill, not the victim. Plus it wouldn't cost that much. The average cost of a hospital stay (6 days) is ~$19K..... only 6% of your ridiculous shitty estimate.
And 19K is less than I spent on my Honda. It's also less than how much I paid in government taxes last year (almost $25,000). I could afford that bill. Besides I'd be paying for it anyway - government care is not free. You pay the same cost in taxes so what difference does it make? You're still paying.
Anyone who purposely goes without healthcare is an idiot. And when you get in a car accident and have a 300k hospital bill to pay, i bet you will pony that right up to the hospital/quote> The driver who caused the accident would pay the bill, not the victim. Plus it wouldn't cost that much. The average cost of a hospital stay (6 days) is ~$19,000.
That's less than I spent on my Honda. It's also less than how much I paid in government taxes last year (almost $25,000). If I got that bill I wouldn't be happy but I could afford it. Besides I'd be paying for it anyway - government care is not free. You pay the same cost in taxes.
They aren't willing to say "This treatment costs too much for its expected return, and thus shouldn't be covered, even if it means someone will die sooner."
Actually that is in the bill.
Government bureaucrats will be tasked to call people over age 80, and advise them not to get certain expensive procedures, and instead allow nature to take its course. It's basically an extension of what bureaucrats are already doing in GI Hospitals. And in the UK's N.I.C.E. organization
- If I see an illegal, and I'm jobless, I'll shoot the illegal in the head and take the job for myself. Illegals should not have jobs when Actual citizens are unemployed.
It's a non-issue in terms of a Health Care bill. There are other parts of law designed to deal with illegal immigration
The other parts of the law are not getting the job done (there are 10,000,000 illegals here), therefore it become necessary to block aliens from receiving free government care, just as it's necessary to arrest people for possession of cocaine (which is not supposed to enter the country per the law, but does).
the Supreme Court says it's okay, then it's defacto constitutional, so says the Constitution
Where? Please show me where the United States was given the power to police itself? That's as illogical as saying Microsoft should police itself to see whether or not it's violating antitrust laws. (Irrelevant portions snipped - you can read the whole thing at constitution.org).
Article. III. [Section 1.] The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court... [Section 2.] The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; -- to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; -- to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; -- to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; -- to Controversies between two or more States; -- between a State and Citizens of another State; -- between Citizens of different States; -- between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make
I can not lay my hand on any portion that allows SCOTUS to declare laws passed by Congress to be unconstitutional. Can you? I also can not law my hand on any portion that forbids me or other Americans from saying, "That's unconstitutional" - can you? In fact President Andrew Jackson once offered, "The Chief Justice gave his opinion. Now let's see him enforce it," and went ahead and executed the laws Congress had passed anyway.
"The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches." --Thomas Jefferson to W. H. Torrance, 1815. ME 14:303
"If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide] . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
"The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451
--author of the Declaration of Independence
--author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the phrase "separation of church and state"
--founder of the Democratic Party
So the woman who ran-over a five-year-old while texting should be "held accountable". What's that mean? Electrocuting her on the chair? Now you have two dead people. Brilliant solution. (rolls eyes)
Wouldn't it have been better to simply ban phone usage while driving, and therefore have two still-living people?
Then bypass the governors and just submit the amendment directly to the 50 state legislatures for ratification. The 1776 Articles of Confederation were created in direct opposition to the sitting governors. The people simply went "around" the governors and did it anyway.
Because the government subsidized the automotive infrastructure!
The government didn't subsidize anything, either then or now. Every mile of paved road was *directly* paid by the people who drove those miles. It's called a road toll, and it's collected at the gasoline pump. Roads took-off because the drivers were willing to pay the ~50 cents per gallon toll required to keep the roads maintained, and turned their backs on trains.
This was a strictly personal choice made by the consumers of the late 1940s and 50s. They let the passenger trains die (stopped buying tickets), and instead paid tolls to run their cars on paved roads.
Perhaps you think the consumers of that time made a bad choice, but they had every right to make it. Just as today consumers are abandoning newspapers in favor of websites. Perhaps someday our grandchildren will call us idiots for letting newspapers die, just as we criticize our ancestors for abandoning passenger rail, but right now this is the choice we want - let the papers die.
Except money is not an abstraction. That 1 trillion dollars, if you assume the average American earns $15/hour, translates to about 60 billion labor hours. If we had not fought the Iraq/Afghan war, those 60 billion labor hours could have been spent elsewhere on more-productive pursuits.
A better example (in London) is Clapham Junction, which has 18 platforms
What a gigantic waste of space, and all to serve what - 1% of the commuter traffic? Waste, waste, waste. Yes roads take-up a lot of room too but they serve 99% of the commuters.
Also I don't know how the UK funds its trains, but in the Virginia/Maryland region they make the drivers pay the bill. The train/metro money comes out of the revenue collected from road tolls. Why should people in cars have to pay to provide free or almost-free tickets to train riders? No reason I can think of.
you know that trains aren't going bumper to bumper right?
Actually in most metro areas trains are going "bumper to bumper". Like in D.C. - the rail capacity is full, and adding more trains would either create congestion, or collisions (which just happened a few months ago), or both.
I hate to state the obvious, but how long would it take you to drive your car from LA to San Francisco, and then how long would it take a bullet train going 200mph?
Who cares? I don't travel 800 miles a day to get to my job so the problem is a non-existent one.
If I did make such a trip, it would be for a vacation, and I'd rather take my car because driving through California is FUN. Riding a train would make for a boring vacation.
No, driving time is unproductive time.
Not when you listen to books-on-tape, or Teaching company lectures, or news on the radio, or whatever.
Trains are only suitable for high-congestion areas like inside cities. For example the Metro system in D.C. is superb. But outside the cities, either the car or the airplane are superior. The car is slower but cheaper to operate, and the airplane is waaay faster than any bullet train.
The key is that the train commute is worse than the car commute. That guy's boss spends *3 hours* a day commuting by the train. Plus if he's like me and works in the D.C. or other expensive metro area, moving closer ain't an option. Homes within 10 minutes drive of my job cost nearly a million dollars. Who the hell can afford that?!?!?
I could downsize to the teeny-tiny 1/2 million dollar homes, but don't want to. Instead I have a nice-sized home that is some distance from my job but only cost only $150,000.
Slashdot Mirror
If kiddy porn is on your computer, I'm inclined to believe one of the users put it there
So in brief, your view is that the guy from yesterday's article, even though he had been framed by a bot program downloading child porn, should be sitting in jail for 5+ years. In your view, if somebody can not prove his innocence, then he's presumed guilty. The prosecutor has absolutely no obligation to prove the guy *actually* downloaded the images - the mere existence of the images is enough to deprive a man of his liberty for several years.
That's fucked up, and it's a violation of inalienable human rights.
In my view the mere existence of images should not be enough. The man should be presumed innocent, be presumed to Not have downloaded those images (unless the prosecutor can produce proof he did the actual act), and be left to go free. Better to let the man go, than to imprison an innocent men.
BTW:
This is why I'm also against the death penalty. The system makes mistakes, innocent people get charged, and you can't undo death.
Yes.
We should save U.S. oil (and coal) until the rest of the world is dried-out (circa 2030), and then sell the oil on the open market at exorbitant prices. We can use that money to pay-off our enormous 30 trillion dollar debt.
On the other hand it's possible the EU and China might get mad, and decide to just declare war and take the oil by force. A two-front war of the US v China and US v EU could be interesting. But who knows? Difficult to see the future is - always changing it is.
My understanding of Godwin's law is not that referencing Nazis is bad (after all, they were a part of history). He just observed that eventually, if a fight goes on long enough, someone will make reference to them. He did not opine if that was bad or good.
Personally I think it's rather silly we can't talk about tyrants or their tyrannical governments. Even if I invoke a different tyrant to make my point, like Communist Dictator Nicholae Ceasescu, I still get accused of Godwining myself. It's like a blatant censorship of history, and the willful decision to put blinders over your eyes and deny that governments can, from time to time, be destructive to their own citizens.
Foolishness.
What if, and please don't be shocked, the porn was actually put there by the district attorney, anxious to get re-elected next year because he's "tough on crime" or "protects the children", so he frames a bunch of people by filling their machines with child images. It's happened before.
Or what if the accused thinks 'Maybe it was a virus,' but has no way to prove it because the PC is locked-up in police custody. That could have EASILY happened in the linked case, with the result of that man being stuck in jail for 5+ years, since he couldn't prove his innocence.
And then there's the simple "my friend's a creep" factor. I've used friends' computers. It would be extremely easy for me to download some child porn during that time. And then THEY get the blame for it, even though they are innocent of wrongdoing. ----- Ye are too quick to presume "he's guilty" on extremely flimsy evidence (yes images on a Windoze computer, which can be easily hijacked, is flimsy).
>>>Sick Fuck
Yes because attraction for beautiful teenaged women (even those who, like Miley Cyrus or Emily Osment, are only 16/17) or beautiful twenty-something women clearly means I'm sick. Sure. Yep. Uh huh. I'm curious to know what the cure might be? Sterilization of everybody who finds young women attractive? Wouldn't that make the human race..... ya know, go extinct from lack of babies?
Sorry but I disagree.
Sexual attraction is not "sick".
On the contrary it's extremely healthy.
P.S. I think it's rather stupid to criminalize God's creation (the body). Only a completely and total dipshit, also known as a politician, would find the Creator's work a perversion. It's sickening.
But then I've long thought Puritan americans have a mental aberration where they can see violence on television without concern (think 24), but fear nudity (like Janet Jackson's naked breast). That can't be normal.
Don't know how to use google?
http://zetachannel.com/index.php?topic=5297.0;wap2
http://epic.org/free_speech/copa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Union
"Simulated child pornography was made illegal with the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The CPPA was short-lived. In 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, holding that the relevant portions of the CPPA were unconstitutional because they prevented lawful speech. Referring to Ferber, the court stated that "the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not 'intrinsically related' to the sexual abuse of children.""
On the other hand:
"In Richmond, Virginia, on December 2005, Dwight Whorley was convicted under 18 U.S.C. 1466A for using a Virginia Employment Commission computer to receive "...obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubescent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males."..... On December 19, 2008 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.[6] The court stated that "it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists." Attorneys for Mr. Whorley have said that they will appeal to the Supreme Court."
and:
In October 2008, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund became involved in a case defending 38 years old Iowa comic collector named Christopher Handley - "there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book." ... Judge Gritzner was petitioned to drop some of the charges, but instead ruled that 2 parts of the PROTECT Act criminalizing "a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting" were unconstitutional. Handley still faces an obscenity charge..... CBLDF leader Neil Gaiman remarked on how this could apply to his work The Doll's House, saying, "if you bought that comic, you could be arrested for it? That's just deeply wrong. Nobody was hurt. The only thing that was hurt were ideas."
Actually if you read ClubSeventeen's history, they used to have seventeen year old models until the U.S. Government imposed its will upon the company (on the theory that the website is viewable in the U.S. therefore that company must follow U.S. law). It's somewhat akin to how the U.S. Government (or RIAA) is trying to impose the Digital Millennium Copyright Act upon the EU and Australia.
Anyway if you live in the Netherlands they let you see the 17 year old models.
>>>I'm reasonably sure one has to be 18 in Dutchyland
What? Too lazy to drag your ass over to wikipedia and double-check? Well you're wrong - 17 is the legal age
So now we're arresting for "being sleazy"?
What the hell? Did the Church of Rome take-over the US and EU governments while I was sleeping? We're now under a moral oligarchy that tells us "nudism is bad"??? I feel like I've been dropped into some Robert Heinlein novel.
>>>If you're using a TiVo, as a TiVo, without paying TiVo, you're 'stealing'.
This is a self-regulating phenomenon that popped up in the TiVo community.
Did I just step into the novel called 1984? Jeez. "If you are suspected of doing something illegal your neighbors, or even your own children, will report you. The government will investigate."
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08, @06:30PM (#30026354)
Sick Fuck
Hey look. An european. They hate americans like the GP, and just love to find an opportunity to insult us ("sick fuck"). I dare you to log in with your real username and repeat that. I want to damage your rep with a -1 Troll mod. Fucking anonymous coward. The grandparent poster's message was completely logical and reasonable and Not an indication that he goes-round raping children. But I guess I can't expect logic from the *.eu domain.
I think, if the U.S. discovers a photo of a Japanese girl being raped, the police should simply turn-over the evidence to our ally and let them track down the criminal.
Cracking down on child porn means cracking down on possession.
Okay. But what's the logic of making cartoons of children having sex illegal (as is the case in Aussieland). Where's the victim? Where's the crime? This is nothing more than morality enforcement except now instead of the Catholic church doing it, it's the government.
Your view also calls into question the existence of sites like this: http://clubseventeen.com/ (warning nudity). In that country, the Netherlands, 17 is the legal age of consent, so no crime has been committed in any of those photos. But am I going to get arrested in the US for a non-crime that never happened??? ----- Or what about American nudist sites? http://www.nude2000.com/Family_Pageant_Activities.htm (nudity again). Is daddy going to get arrested because he took a photo of his underage daughter or son???
How about we embrace that concept "land of the free" and just let people enjoy liberated speech without fear of jail time? Arrest the rapist, or the murderer, or the thief, not the guy who just happens to have the photo of the event.
Anyone who purposely goes without healthcare is an idiot. And when you get in a car accident and have a 300k hospital bill to pay, i bet you will pony that right up to the hospital
The driver who caused the accident would pay the bill, not the victim. Plus it wouldn't cost that much. The average cost of a hospital stay (6 days) is ~$19K..... only 6% of your ridiculous shitty estimate.
And 19K is less than I spent on my Honda. It's also less than how much I paid in government taxes last year (almost $25,000). I could afford that bill. Besides I'd be paying for it anyway - government care is not free. You pay the same cost in taxes so what difference does it make? You're still paying.
Anyone who purposely goes without healthcare is an idiot. And when you get in a car accident and have a 300k hospital bill to pay, i bet you will pony that right up to the hospital/quote> The driver who caused the accident would pay the bill, not the victim. Plus it wouldn't cost that much. The average cost of a hospital stay (6 days) is ~$19,000.
That's less than I spent on my Honda. It's also less than how much I paid in government taxes last year (almost $25,000). If I got that bill I wouldn't be happy but I could afford it. Besides I'd be paying for it anyway - government care is not free. You pay the same cost in taxes.
They aren't willing to say "This treatment costs too much for its expected return, and thus shouldn't be covered, even if it means someone will die sooner."
Actually that is in the bill.
Government bureaucrats will be tasked to call people over age 80, and advise them not to get certain expensive procedures, and instead allow nature to take its course. It's basically an extension of what bureaucrats are already doing in GI Hospitals. And in the UK's N.I.C.E. organization
I'll go further -
- If I see an illegal, and I'm jobless, I'll shoot the illegal in the head and take the job for myself. Illegals should not have jobs when Actual citizens are unemployed.
It's a non-issue in terms of a Health Care bill. There are other parts of law designed to deal with illegal immigration
The other parts of the law are not getting the job done (there are 10,000,000 illegals here), therefore it become necessary to block aliens from receiving free government care, just as it's necessary to arrest people for possession of cocaine (which is not supposed to enter the country per the law, but does).
the Supreme Court says it's okay, then it's defacto constitutional, so says the Constitution
Where? Please show me where the United States was given the power to police itself? That's as illogical as saying Microsoft should police itself to see whether or not it's violating antitrust laws. (Irrelevant portions snipped - you can read the whole thing at constitution.org).
Article. III. [Section 1.] The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court... [Section 2.] The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; -- to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; -- to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; -- to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; -- to Controversies between two or more States; -- between a State and Citizens of another State; -- between Citizens of different States; -- between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make
I can not lay my hand on any portion that allows SCOTUS to declare laws passed by Congress to be unconstitutional. Can you?
I also can not law my hand on any portion that forbids me or other Americans from saying, "That's unconstitutional" - can you?
In fact President Andrew Jackson once offered, "The Chief Justice gave his opinion. Now let's see him enforce it," and went ahead and executed the laws Congress had passed anyway.
"The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches." --Thomas Jefferson to W. H. Torrance, 1815. ME 14:303
"If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide] . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
"The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451
--author of the Declaration of Independence
--author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the phrase "separation of church and state"
--founder of the Democratic Party
So the woman who ran-over a five-year-old while texting should be "held accountable". What's that mean? Electrocuting her on the chair? Now you have two dead people. Brilliant solution. (rolls eyes)
Wouldn't it have been better to simply ban phone usage while driving, and therefore have two still-living people?
Then bypass the governors and just submit the amendment directly to the 50 state legislatures for ratification. The 1776 Articles of Confederation were created in direct opposition to the sitting governors. The people simply went "around" the governors and did it anyway.
Because the government subsidized the automotive infrastructure!
The government didn't subsidize anything, either then or now. Every mile of paved road was *directly* paid by the people who drove those miles. It's called a road toll, and it's collected at the gasoline pump. Roads took-off because the drivers were willing to pay the ~50 cents per gallon toll required to keep the roads maintained, and turned their backs on trains.
This was a strictly personal choice made by the consumers of the late 1940s and 50s. They let the passenger trains die (stopped buying tickets), and instead paid tolls to run their cars on paved roads.
Perhaps you think the consumers of that time made a bad choice, but they had every right to make it. Just as today consumers are abandoning newspapers in favor of websites. Perhaps someday our grandchildren will call us idiots for letting newspapers die, just as we criticize our ancestors for abandoning passenger rail, but right now this is the choice we want - let the papers die.
Except money is not an abstraction. That 1 trillion dollars, if you assume the average American earns $15/hour, translates to about 60 billion labor hours. If we had not fought the Iraq/Afghan war, those 60 billion labor hours could have been spent elsewhere on more-productive pursuits.
A better example (in London) is Clapham Junction, which has 18 platforms
What a gigantic waste of space, and all to serve what - 1% of the commuter traffic? Waste, waste, waste. Yes roads take-up a lot of room too but they serve 99% of the commuters.
Also I don't know how the UK funds its trains, but in the Virginia/Maryland region they make the drivers pay the bill. The train/metro money comes out of the revenue collected from road tolls. Why should people in cars have to pay to provide free or almost-free tickets to train riders? No reason I can think of.
you know that trains aren't going bumper to bumper right?
Actually in most metro areas trains are going "bumper to bumper". Like in D.C. - the rail capacity is full, and adding more trains would either create congestion, or collisions (which just happened a few months ago), or both.
I hate to state the obvious, but how long would it take you to drive your car from LA to San Francisco, and then how long would it take a bullet train going 200mph?
Who cares? I don't travel 800 miles a day to get to my job so the problem is a non-existent one.
If I did make such a trip, it would be for a vacation, and I'd rather take my car because driving through California is FUN. Riding a train would make for a boring vacation.
No, driving time is unproductive time.
Not when you listen to books-on-tape, or Teaching company lectures, or news on the radio, or whatever.
Trains are only suitable for high-congestion areas like inside cities. For example the Metro system in D.C. is superb. But outside the cities, either the car or the airplane are superior. The car is slower but cheaper to operate, and the airplane is waaay faster than any bullet train.
Only?!?! You're spending 1.5 hours of each day
The key is that the train commute is worse than the car commute. That guy's boss spends *3 hours* a day commuting by the train. Plus if he's like me and works in the D.C. or other expensive metro area, moving closer ain't an option. Homes within 10 minutes drive of my job cost nearly a million dollars. Who the hell can afford that?!?!?
I could downsize to the teeny-tiny 1/2 million dollar homes, but don't want to. Instead I have a nice-sized home that is some distance from my job but only cost only $150,000.