I've got a couple of thoughts on your responses. I did read your comment thoroughly, actually several times, before I formulated my opinion. But the gist is that you tie Ron Paul to "common sense" which is just silly for the reasons I outlined above. You can only gauge a person's decision making abilities on the decisions they've made in the past and while Dr. Paul has made some very good decisions, he's also made some very bad ones.
And I find it quite humorous that you alluded to the difficulty of getting legislation passed as a President, as if this were a reason to elect someone with otherwise dangerous policy positions. I remember a discussion I had with a friend prior to the 2000 election. He mentioned that he'd be voting for Bush for the very reasons you just alluded to. He was going to vote for Bush because he felt Bush could do the least harm. "Oh, he's a do-nothing President. An empty shirt. Congress will fight him on everything and we won't have to worry about too 'government' coming out of Washington." It's amazing how quickly the political landscape can change, eh?
Oh, and before you say, "But, Ron Paul's different!!!" I'd advise you remember what Bush said in the 2000 debates: "The U.S. is not in the business of nation building."
Which brings us to a point I think you fail to grasp. The reason people choose a platform over a person is because that's usually the best way to advance their goals given essentially zero information on how a candidate would actually behave in the office of the Presidency. There is substantial documentation on representative democracy and, more specifically, how the two party system fails miserably at achieving precision therein. That being the case, the best a person can do is rank their preferences and vote on a candidate based on those preferences.
Most often an individual will put at the top of the list things that are most important to them. Today those list-toppers tend to be the Iraq war, abortion, the economy and immigration. Since your representative is going to vote on a number of issues, and he or she isn't going to call you every time they head to the floor, your incentive is to pick the issues that matter most, and vote for your candidate based on those. If abortion is the most important single issue to a voter, why on earth would they vote for someone who was sure to advance a pro-life agenda? The same goes for education, immigration, health care, or the war. Pick your poison.
I could go on, but this has been covered fairly thoroughly in books like The Myth of the Rational Voter and From Liberty to Democracy, and also on a number of blogs and podcasts. Suffice it to say, people rank preferences and then choose a candidate based on those ranks because that's where the political incentive lies. You, as a voter, aren't going to win it all, so you'd better pick the important stuff.
The ideal person, for me, is the person who can evaluate situations as they come along and apply a little bit of common sense in government. Maybe this describes Ron Paul, maybe it doesn't
Ron Paul is for going back to the gold standard and abolishing the Fed. These are very bad ideas for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who's gone beyond Econ 101. He wants to remove our troops from not just Iraq, but strategically important locations like Germany and Japan. This doesn't even begin to describe his stances on many social issues (e.g. abortion, immigration) - a fact which the media has ignored because he is not a serious contender for the presidency.
Common sense and Ron Paul are not two things I would put in the same sentence together.
Her supporters are bitter about how they perceive Clinton's treatment versus how Obama has been treated by the press.
I, too, am bitter about how Obama was handled with kid gloves. I mean, I am really concerned about the important questions in this race that haven't been asked. Like, why does Obama hate America so much that he won't wear a flag lapel pin? Or, why doesn't Senator Obama hold himself accountable for things his pastor said several years ago when he wasn't there.
I really wish the press would ask these questions!
As a proud member of MAHK (Mothers Against Hooker Killing), I think it's great that people are finally starting to take notice of a game that we, as an organization, have been fighting for a long time. Hooker killing is not a game; it's something we take very seriously. The responses on this site have been nothing short of juvenile. I, for one, give MADD a resounding "Huzzah!"
This is really only true for undergraduate level economics. Most undergrads take business calc and maybe Stats 101. Plus, there's really only one course (Econometrics) that stresses math at most universities.
That said, at the graduate level - and keep in mind you need at least a masters degree to consider yourself an economist - the math required for economics becomes much more substantial. I've got a book sitting on my shelf that discusses advanced mathematics w/rt economics and it's way over my head. And don't even get me started on experimental econ.
I should probably mention that I'm an economics major / math minor.
Voting is an act that provides the PTB a simple request from the voter: "Lead me as you think I should be led."
So much for Representative government, eh. We're not a direct democracy. I think you might be thinking of a different country.
The surprise to me is that we United States citizens believe we need a leader, at least in government. The Constitution doesn't give the President power to lead, only to execute the laws which we wanted put in place; equitable laws that infringe on everyone equally, rather than giving preferential treatment to the few at the cost of the many (or vice versa).
I highly recommend you read less philosophy and more history - particularly books like His Excellency and American Sphinx (hint: Guess how congress wanted to address the President at first). The United States was set up to be an elitist, representative democracy wherein constituents had little power themselves, but chose others to make decisions based on (what they could, I suppose, presume to be) the best interests of the country...note that I didn't say "the will of the people." Does this form of government suck? Without a doubt. It's rife with corruption, cronyism, and outright thievery. Sadly, it's a human institution, and to quote Churchill, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Anyway, your post is replete with misconceptions about the founding of this country as well as the function of the Presidency. Case in point:
The President is not the Commander-in-Chief until Congress actively declares war.
The President is not there to save the economy, or even care about the economy, because economic issues are the domain of Congress, or even more preferably the States.
If wishing made it so. Jackson revoked the charter of the second Bank of the U.S. and threw the U.S. economy into an instability cycle lasting for 60 years. The election of Roosevelt helped turn the tide of the Great Depression (note: Roosevelt didn't get us out of the Great Depression, but his election became a self-fulfilling prophecy). Carter appointed Volcker to chair the Fed, who helped end the stagflation of the 1970's.
There's more, but the gist is that idealistic arguments stemming from modern political propaganda and a literal reading of the constitution do very little to color the actual scope and thought placed therein. It doesn't include documents like the Federalist Papers, or common law, or 200 years of American legal thought. The history of the U.S. is substantially more complicated than all that. And if you are "sickened" by the politics you see today, then you should be sickened by politics stemming back to the founding of the U.S.
Anyway, there's all kinds of literature on this stuff, and it's a tired subject.
Not the same thing. This company used his images for profit. What would have been analogous to file sharing might be if the defendant had photocopied the image, put it on his wall for his own personal enjoyment, and given some copies to friends for the same purpose.
And you'll swear on the bible that you don't listen to mp3's at work, right?
This is the case for about half my movies, if not more. You can skip the actual previews, but the piracy warnings and other B.S. the studios throw in at the front end tend to be unskippable (is that a word?).
Perhaps because the lefties have already tried it many times when learning to write
I don't think that's necessarily true. I never tried actually writing for content with my right hand, even when I was learning to write the alphabet. I've always been a lefty. I was just always able to write pretty well with my right hand for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because, when learning to write, I had to visualize how to do what everyone else was doing with their right hand with my left.
I have never heard anyone say "No Timmy, use your left hand".
The bill applies to anyone who used a computer to help commit the original sex crime. It also may be applied to paroled sex offenders under lifetime supervision, but it exempts work done as part of a job or search for employment.
I'm not arguing for this law - far from it. I think this is preposterous, and akin to banning someone from using the street because they used a car to commit a crime. It clearly shows a lack of understanding on the part of law makers about what the internet is and how massively integrated it is into our society. But keep in mind that it doesn't ban sex offenders from using the internet for work.
But seriously, society needs to stop this puritanical "if we remove the trigger, we can prevent the crime" B.S.
In my experience, most righties are strongly right handed like your nephew. You'll notice a much greater level of ambidextrous behavior in left handed people - generally this is because they were given free reign to figure out which hand they preferred for every-day tasks. Usually, the test is this: ask someone who's right handed to write a sentence with their left. Now do the opposite with a lefty. You'll find that the lefty can generally write far more legibly with their right hand than said righty with their left. The same is true for most tasks, keeping in mind that this is more of a generalization than a hard and fast rule.
There are also lots of interesting circumstances around there in the older set (usually folks above 50) who were usually forced to use their right hands for tasks even if they were left handed. That really screwed people up.
It's hard to say whether or not handedness is environmental or genetic - I lean towards environmental - but even if it is, I don't think we're talking about the way a child is raised ("No, timmy. Use your right hand!") but rather psychological factors that probably play a part. Hell, maybe some kids just pick and some kids don't.
Funny, I actually didn't really care what/. editor posted which story until I read a couple of stinkers six months ago in which half the posters pointed out what a crappy editor kdawson was. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, to find this bit of FUD posted by the infamous editor as well.
Seriously, the first link is to a self-referenced Slashdot Journal. The second link is to a google groups thread discussing how google shares with your friends data that you've opted to share with your friends!!!
In order to to get to the information we want, it's necessary to omit the information it's clear we don't want. If you're looking for Adam Smith, for example, the last thing you should have to do is wade through six million results - from excerpts of Wealth of Nations to some New Jersey guido's MySpace page. That's not the function of an encyclopedia; that's the function of a search engine.
A useful encyclopedia has to be concise. An on-line site like Wikipedia definitely allows for substantially more content, but it doesn't obviate the need for discretion on the subject matter.
You must be new here. This "society of fear" you talk about is perpetuated not because of "The Media" or "The Man." It's perpetuated because that's what people want. Your average person is a fearful idiot who thinks the war in Iraq has made the U.S. safer, immigration is taking jobs from hard working Americans, and that "texting your vote" is democracy in action.
People get exactly what they want. The problem is that what they want is wrong.
As I understand it, this could form the basis of an appeal. There was a case here in Colorado about a death penalty case being overturned because at least one juror consulted the bible to convince another juror of the defendant's guilt. There are numerous similar cases on this subject, but it does look like a juror's comments after the fact - provided they suggest juror misconduct - could be used as grounds for an appeal. Or at least, any decent defense attorney would argue they are;-)
Oh come on, man. OJ is guilty as sin. If I were a juror on that case, I would have voted not-guilty thanks to the worst prosecution EVAR! But for the love of God, that guy killed the shit out of Nicole and Ron.
hey purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred. This was not a matter of law.
RTFA before you comment. The juror quoted was one Michael Hegg. Also, the fairness of a jury's awarding of damages is one of opinion, not intellect. See: punitive damages.
BTW - What country do you live in currently? Here in the U.S., if I were to bring a dictionary to a court of law I'd get laughed out of the room. They might ask me about Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, however, before having the bailiff toss me out on my ass.
In case you don't have a copy of the U.S. Constitution handy:
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
FYI - the law interprets "aid and comfort" literally, not in some super-hippie emotional way.
Generally my line of thinking is that, if a federal law were passed tomorrow and was upheld by SCOTUS outlawing all firearms, I would probably begin to procure as many said firearms as I could. Absent that, and given my studies and beliefs on political science (re: Locke, Hume, et al), I would work within the framework of the U.S. legal system. As I've said, we are a nation of laws - no man is larger than that (insert your obligatory Bush jab here).
but you probably don't know that you have the right to a jury trial, because you can't afford and [sic] attorney...
You do realize that, if police intend to question you at all, they are required to read you your "Miranda" rights. One of the rights they read you says, "If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you." Though I should also note here that, for many petty offenses, you actually don't have the right to a jury trial (many traffic tickets are an example). The laws vary from state to state.
Also, I think someone forgot to tell you that the freedom of speech is not unlimited (see: incitement, disturbing the peace, hate speech, etc.)
That would false. Hibel v Nevada ruled on the constitutionality of a state law that required a person to identify themselves when asked. Similar laws exist in only 29 states, maybe less now since Hibel.
Actually, it would be true. The ruling in Hibel v. Nevada actually cites case Florida case law as well:
Hayes v. Florida, 470 U. S. 811, 816 (1985) ("[I]f there are articulable facts supporting a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a criminal offense, that person may be stopped in order to identify him, to question him briefly, or to detain him briefly while attempting to obtain additional information");
So while it might be false in some places, the law certainly applied to this guy in Florida. But that's neither here nor there, I just thought it was funny that this guy clearly had a misunderstanding of what he was and wasn't legally allowed to do.
WTF? Taser use is supposed to be restricted to a response to physical threat.
I'm not sure where you read this. I haven't seen any paper on the internal policies of the police dept. in question. Can you provide a link to the department documentation?
The guy was on the ground, unarmed, no indications of violence and restrained by about 6 officers.
I think the video shows otherwise. The gentleman was clearly resisting arrest and refused to place his arms behind his back so he could be cuffed. More importantly, assuming he was still resisting arrest after being cuffed, exactly how do you propose the police move him to the squad car? Do they then hog-tie him and carry him? My guess is that goes against officer safety policies, and my bet is that you'd be up in arms about that, too.
Meh. This will all play out in court. The guy has an arraignment date, and I'll bet you $20 he's convicted of at least disturbing the peace.
Oh come off it. First off, you don't know better. Maybe I am part of someone's propaganda machine. Second of all, this is really clear cut. The guy was disruptive, the police tried to escort him out peacefully, he refused, so the level of force against him escallated. How should things have gone? Easy. He should have left when the police asked him too and then immediately filed a civil suit against the police for violation of his first amendment rights.
Of course I don't really think any of his rights were violated. He was pretty clearly disturbing the peace. My guess is that, had he been compliant and left when the officers asked him to leave he would have been ticketed at worst. He could have then fought the ticket and the police dept. in court (this being a nation of laws and all that). So you can talk about cooler heads prevailing, but that's exactly what the guy should have been thinking about. Resisting an officer's directives, even if you believe them to be in the wrong, is a quick way to get your ass hauled off to jail - and rightly so. It bears repeating: this is a nation of laws, and the court system - not forcefully resisting a police officer - is the correct way to redress grievances.
This is where you can reply that the court system is like, corrupt, man!
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a couple of thoughts on your responses. I did read your comment thoroughly, actually several times, before I formulated my opinion. But the gist is that you tie Ron Paul to "common sense" which is just silly for the reasons I outlined above. You can only gauge a person's decision making abilities on the decisions they've made in the past and while Dr. Paul has made some very good decisions, he's also made some very bad ones.
And I find it quite humorous that you alluded to the difficulty of getting legislation passed as a President, as if this were a reason to elect someone with otherwise dangerous policy positions. I remember a discussion I had with a friend prior to the 2000 election. He mentioned that he'd be voting for Bush for the very reasons you just alluded to. He was going to vote for Bush because he felt Bush could do the least harm. "Oh, he's a do-nothing President. An empty shirt. Congress will fight him on everything and we won't have to worry about too 'government' coming out of Washington." It's amazing how quickly the political landscape can change, eh?
Oh, and before you say, "But, Ron Paul's different!!!" I'd advise you remember what Bush said in the 2000 debates: "The U.S. is not in the business of nation building."
Which brings us to a point I think you fail to grasp. The reason people choose a platform over a person is because that's usually the best way to advance their goals given essentially zero information on how a candidate would actually behave in the office of the Presidency. There is substantial documentation on representative democracy and, more specifically, how the two party system fails miserably at achieving precision therein. That being the case, the best a person can do is rank their preferences and vote on a candidate based on those preferences.
Most often an individual will put at the top of the list things that are most important to them. Today those list-toppers tend to be the Iraq war, abortion, the economy and immigration. Since your representative is going to vote on a number of issues, and he or she isn't going to call you every time they head to the floor, your incentive is to pick the issues that matter most, and vote for your candidate based on those. If abortion is the most important single issue to a voter, why on earth would they vote for someone who was sure to advance a pro-life agenda? The same goes for education, immigration, health care, or the war. Pick your poison.
I could go on, but this has been covered fairly thoroughly in books like The Myth of the Rational Voter and From Liberty to Democracy, and also on a number of blogs and podcasts. Suffice it to say, people rank preferences and then choose a candidate based on those ranks because that's where the political incentive lies. You, as a voter, aren't going to win it all, so you'd better pick the important stuff.
The ideal person, for me, is the person who can evaluate situations as they come along and apply a little bit of common sense in government. Maybe this describes Ron Paul, maybe it doesn't
Ron Paul is for going back to the gold standard and abolishing the Fed. These are very bad ideas for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who's gone beyond Econ 101. He wants to remove our troops from not just Iraq, but strategically important locations like Germany and Japan. This doesn't even begin to describe his stances on many social issues (e.g. abortion, immigration) - a fact which the media has ignored because he is not a serious contender for the presidency.
Common sense and Ron Paul are not two things I would put in the same sentence together.
Her supporters are bitter about how they perceive Clinton's treatment versus how Obama has been treated by the press.
I, too, am bitter about how Obama was handled with kid gloves. I mean, I am really concerned about the important questions in this race that haven't been asked. Like, why does Obama hate America so much that he won't wear a flag lapel pin? Or, why doesn't Senator Obama hold himself accountable for things his pastor said several years ago when he wasn't there.
I really wish the press would ask these questions!
Well, at you can try, anyway.
As a proud member of MAHK (Mothers Against Hooker Killing), I think it's great that people are finally starting to take notice of a game that we, as an organization, have been fighting for a long time. Hooker killing is not a game; it's something we take very seriously. The responses on this site have been nothing short of juvenile. I, for one, give MADD a resounding "Huzzah!"
This is really only true for undergraduate level economics. Most undergrads take business calc and maybe Stats 101. Plus, there's really only one course (Econometrics) that stresses math at most universities.
That said, at the graduate level - and keep in mind you need at least a masters degree to consider yourself an economist - the math required for economics becomes much more substantial. I've got a book sitting on my shelf that discusses advanced mathematics w/rt economics and it's way over my head. And don't even get me started on experimental econ.
I should probably mention that I'm an economics major / math minor.
Which is NOT going to happen unless Barack gets caught with a dead girl or live boy.
The rumor going around right now is that Obama has several black children.
Voting is an act that provides the PTB a simple request from the voter: "Lead me as you think I should be led."
So much for Representative government, eh. We're not a direct democracy. I think you might be thinking of a different country.
The surprise to me is that we United States citizens believe we need a leader, at least in government. The Constitution doesn't give the President power to lead, only to execute the laws which we wanted put in place; equitable laws that infringe on everyone equally, rather than giving preferential treatment to the few at the cost of the many (or vice versa).
I highly recommend you read less philosophy and more history - particularly books like His Excellency and American Sphinx (hint: Guess how congress wanted to address the President at first). The United States was set up to be an elitist, representative democracy wherein constituents had little power themselves, but chose others to make decisions based on (what they could, I suppose, presume to be) the best interests of the country...note that I didn't say "the will of the people." Does this form of government suck? Without a doubt. It's rife with corruption, cronyism, and outright thievery. Sadly, it's a human institution, and to quote Churchill, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Anyway, your post is replete with misconceptions about the founding of this country as well as the function of the Presidency. Case in point:
The President is not the Commander-in-Chief until Congress actively declares war.
Ask Tom the Tinker how that's working out.
The President is not there to save the economy, or even care about the economy, because economic issues are the domain of Congress, or even more preferably the States.
If wishing made it so. Jackson revoked the charter of the second Bank of the U.S. and threw the U.S. economy into an instability cycle lasting for 60 years. The election of Roosevelt helped turn the tide of the Great Depression (note: Roosevelt didn't get us out of the Great Depression, but his election became a self-fulfilling prophecy). Carter appointed Volcker to chair the Fed, who helped end the stagflation of the 1970's.
There's more, but the gist is that idealistic arguments stemming from modern political propaganda and a literal reading of the constitution do very little to color the actual scope and thought placed therein. It doesn't include documents like the Federalist Papers, or common law, or 200 years of American legal thought. The history of the U.S. is substantially more complicated than all that. And if you are "sickened" by the politics you see today, then you should be sickened by politics stemming back to the founding of the U.S.
Anyway, there's all kinds of literature on this stuff, and it's a tired subject.
Not the same thing. This company used his images for profit. What would have been analogous to file sharing might be if the defendant had photocopied the image, put it on his wall for his own personal enjoyment, and given some copies to friends for the same purpose.
And you'll swear on the bible that you don't listen to mp3's at work, right?
This is the case for about half my movies, if not more. You can skip the actual previews, but the piracy warnings and other B.S. the studios throw in at the front end tend to be unskippable (is that a word?).
Perhaps because the lefties have already tried it many times when learning to write
I don't think that's necessarily true. I never tried actually writing for content with my right hand, even when I was learning to write the alphabet. I've always been a lefty. I was just always able to write pretty well with my right hand for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because, when learning to write, I had to visualize how to do what everyone else was doing with their right hand with my left.
I have never heard anyone say "No Timmy, use your left hand".
That was my point.
I'm not arguing for this law - far from it. I think this is preposterous, and akin to banning someone from using the street because they used a car to commit a crime. It clearly shows a lack of understanding on the part of law makers about what the internet is and how massively integrated it is into our society. But keep in mind that it doesn't ban sex offenders from using the internet for work.
But seriously, society needs to stop this puritanical "if we remove the trigger, we can prevent the crime" B.S.
In my experience, most righties are strongly right handed like your nephew. You'll notice a much greater level of ambidextrous behavior in left handed people - generally this is because they were given free reign to figure out which hand they preferred for every-day tasks. Usually, the test is this: ask someone who's right handed to write a sentence with their left. Now do the opposite with a lefty. You'll find that the lefty can generally write far more legibly with their right hand than said righty with their left. The same is true for most tasks, keeping in mind that this is more of a generalization than a hard and fast rule.
There are also lots of interesting circumstances around there in the older set (usually folks above 50) who were usually forced to use their right hands for tasks even if they were left handed. That really screwed people up.
It's hard to say whether or not handedness is environmental or genetic - I lean towards environmental - but even if it is, I don't think we're talking about the way a child is raised ("No, timmy. Use your right hand!") but rather psychological factors that probably play a part. Hell, maybe some kids just pick and some kids don't.
Funny, I actually didn't really care what /. editor posted which story until I read a couple of stinkers six months ago in which half the posters pointed out what a crappy editor kdawson was. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, to find this bit of FUD posted by the infamous editor as well.
Seriously, the first link is to a self-referenced Slashdot Journal. The second link is to a google groups thread discussing how google shares with your friends data that you've opted to share with your friends!!!
Seriously. This article is crap.
One word: Clutter.
In order to to get to the information we want, it's necessary to omit the information it's clear we don't want. If you're looking for Adam Smith, for example, the last thing you should have to do is wade through six million results - from excerpts of Wealth of Nations to some New Jersey guido's MySpace page. That's not the function of an encyclopedia; that's the function of a search engine.
A useful encyclopedia has to be concise. An on-line site like Wikipedia definitely allows for substantially more content, but it doesn't obviate the need for discretion on the subject matter.
You must be new here. This "society of fear" you talk about is perpetuated not because of "The Media" or "The Man." It's perpetuated because that's what people want. Your average person is a fearful idiot who thinks the war in Iraq has made the U.S. safer, immigration is taking jobs from hard working Americans, and that "texting your vote" is democracy in action.
People get exactly what they want. The problem is that what they want is wrong.
As I understand it, this could form the basis of an appeal. There was a case here in Colorado about a death penalty case being overturned because at least one juror consulted the bible to convince another juror of the defendant's guilt. There are numerous similar cases on this subject, but it does look like a juror's comments after the fact - provided they suggest juror misconduct - could be used as grounds for an appeal. Or at least, any decent defense attorney would argue they are ;-)
Oh come on, man. OJ is guilty as sin. If I were a juror on that case, I would have voted not-guilty thanks to the worst prosecution EVAR! But for the love of God, that guy killed the shit out of Nicole and Ron.
hey purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred. This was not a matter of law.
Please to be studying the law in further detail.
RTFA before you comment. The juror quoted was one Michael Hegg. Also, the fairness of a jury's awarding of damages is one of opinion, not intellect. See: punitive damages.
Thanks for clearing that up.
BTW - What country do you live in currently? Here in the U.S., if I were to bring a dictionary to a court of law I'd get laughed out of the room. They might ask me about Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, however, before having the bailiff toss me out on my ass.
In case you don't have a copy of the U.S. Constitution handy:
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
FYI - the law interprets "aid and comfort" literally, not in some super-hippie emotional way.
Where do I draw the line at what? Violence?
Generally my line of thinking is that, if a federal law were passed tomorrow and was upheld by SCOTUS outlawing all firearms, I would probably begin to procure as many said firearms as I could. Absent that, and given my studies and beliefs on political science (re: Locke, Hume, et al), I would work within the framework of the U.S. legal system. As I've said, we are a nation of laws - no man is larger than that (insert your obligatory Bush jab here).
but you probably don't know that you have the right to a jury trial, because you can't afford and [sic] attorney...
You do realize that, if police intend to question you at all, they are required to read you your "Miranda" rights. One of the rights they read you says, "If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you." Though I should also note here that, for many petty offenses, you actually don't have the right to a jury trial (many traffic tickets are an example). The laws vary from state to state.
Also, I think someone forgot to tell you that the freedom of speech is not unlimited (see: incitement, disturbing the peace, hate speech, etc.)
Actually, it would be true. The ruling in Hibel v. Nevada actually cites case Florida case law as well:
So while it might be false in some places, the law certainly applied to this guy in Florida. But that's neither here nor there, I just thought it was funny that this guy clearly had a misunderstanding of what he was and wasn't legally allowed to do.
WTF? Taser use is supposed to be restricted to a response to physical threat.
I'm not sure where you read this. I haven't seen any paper on the internal policies of the police dept. in question. Can you provide a link to the department documentation?
The guy was on the ground, unarmed, no indications of violence and restrained by about 6 officers.
I think the video shows otherwise. The gentleman was clearly resisting arrest and refused to place his arms behind his back so he could be cuffed. More importantly, assuming he was still resisting arrest after being cuffed, exactly how do you propose the police move him to the squad car? Do they then hog-tie him and carry him? My guess is that goes against officer safety policies, and my bet is that you'd be up in arms about that, too.
Meh. This will all play out in court. The guy has an arraignment date, and I'll bet you $20 he's convicted of at least disturbing the peace.
Oh come off it. First off, you don't know better. Maybe I am part of someone's propaganda machine. Second of all, this is really clear cut. The guy was disruptive, the police tried to escort him out peacefully, he refused, so the level of force against him escallated. How should things have gone? Easy. He should have left when the police asked him too and then immediately filed a civil suit against the police for violation of his first amendment rights.
Of course I don't really think any of his rights were violated. He was pretty clearly disturbing the peace. My guess is that, had he been compliant and left when the officers asked him to leave he would have been ticketed at worst. He could have then fought the ticket and the police dept. in court (this being a nation of laws and all that). So you can talk about cooler heads prevailing, but that's exactly what the guy should have been thinking about. Resisting an officer's directives, even if you believe them to be in the wrong, is a quick way to get your ass hauled off to jail - and rightly so. It bears repeating: this is a nation of laws, and the court system - not forcefully resisting a police officer - is the correct way to redress grievances.
This is where you can reply that the court system is like, corrupt, man!