There is also frequently a connection to drug use, thus the fact that the vehicle was speeding is automatically sufficient cause to search a vehicle for drugs, even if only to add the potential for DWI charges.
Nope.
The controlling legal authority is the Fourth/Fourteenth Amendment, mandating freedom from unreasonable search. This is best viewed in the light of Katz v. United States, in which the Nine Worthies declared that searches into any area required justification, when a person had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Your car isn't the same as your home, with the same protection. It is, however, more private than not. A search by a police officer may not require a warrant, but it does require some sort of legal justification, such as probable cause (facts and circumstances which would lead a reasonable officer to believe that evidence of a crime is present)
Speeding is evidence of speeding. It could possibly be evidence of drug/alcohol impairment, depending upon what else is going on. It could be a piece of circumstantial evidence for any number of things. It does not, however, automatically justify a search.
And I never charge DUI/DUID off of a vehicle search. I charge DUI/DUID off of my observations of the driver's manual dexterity and ability to focus and concentrate, and my observations of the vehicle in motion, and the alcohol/drug test justified by said observations. The mere presence of drugs does not imply the consumption of said drugs strongly enough to charge DUI, absent other evidence.
A federal police officer (FBI, Customs, &etc) can only enforce federal laws, but they can do it anywhere in the USA. (E.g. they can chase you across state lines &etc.)
Nope.
A Federal Special Police Officer has little or no police powers off of Federal property. However, under the Assimilative Crimes Act he has the power to enforce state and local laws, when such laws apply on Federal property.
A Federal Special Agent can enforce Federal law anywhere in the United States, but only those specific Federal laws which his agency is chartered to enforce. For instance, a special agent from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement can't do anything with the Pure Food and Drug Act, or the 1968 Gun Control Act.
A state officer (State Troopers, &etc.) can enforce federal or state laws, but only within their own state. So they can pull you over for speeding or issue warrants, but they can't go into other states to get you. (For that, they just call the next jurisdiction over.:)
Negative. Staties and locals are rarely-to-never commissioned to enforce Federal laws. And their jurisdictional boundaries are set by each individual state's laws. For instance, here in Colorado, I, as a local cop, essentially have statewide arrest powers which would exceed citizen's arrest powers.
State Troopers are actually constrained to enforcing specific statutes. It's very rare that they can act as peace officers in contexts with no connection to traffic, transportation, public roads, motor vehicles, or the safety of the Governor and the Legislature.
As for jurisdictional boundaries, there's a doctrine called "Fresh Pursuit." It says basically that, if I'm pursuing someone who I reasonably believe has committed a crime, I can follow him no matter how far he runs, so long as my pursuit is continuous and uninterrupted and I have jurisdiction over the place where the original crime occurred.
At least- that's how the system was designed.
It wasn't really designed. Our system of justice, viewed as a US-wide whole, is a clusterfsck. It's confused and muddled and you can tell that it originated with something confused and muddled like the English Common Law as interpreted by fifty-one different sovereign entities. It just sort of happened.
Out of curiosity, does the FBI have any "normal" agents? Cause if they're all "special" agents, are they really that special?
It's a way of constraining them. If you ever go to a federal building and see a bunch of people standing around claiming to be the "Federal Police," they're actually titled "special
police officers." The reason for this is that no Fed actually has true general police powers. The way the statute is written, they have the powers of "sheriffs and constables" when in the course of some other duties.
However, they're walked on an amazingly short leash compared to, say, your city's police department. And for good reason: the feds have a large proportion of people too stupid to function as real cops.
I believe that "Special Agents" are the same situation. They have arrest and warrant powers when in the course of investigating certain matters explicitly given them by statute, but they don't get to just roll up and arrest you if you slug your wife while driving drunk or whatever.
For the "Special Police Officers," see 40 USC 318. I don't know how that affects "Special Agents."
Actually, at safeway. If you don't have your card, you don't have to talk to anyone. You just input your phone number on the same device you use to swipe it. It will say "Swipe card or enter phone number". That is all there is to it. No explanation or communication necessary.
I use 719-111-1111. And my City Market (what Kroger's is called in most of Colorado) card belongs to Phineas Q. Spankenstein. And works just fine.
Given the laws on the books in many states where you commonly see 5+ DUI confictions with repeat offenders, the answer would appear to be "yes."
That's not so much the judge as the legislature.
In my state (Colorado), DUI is always a misdemeanor, unless there's an accident with serious bodily injury. The judge doesn't even have the option to sentence the defendant to 12 months plus one day.
It would take an act of the legislature, followed by Guv Owens signature, to change that.
Now, our judges are still soft, but that's because the law allows them to be.
Hmm... so the line to get into the court was inside the court?
Imagine a courtroom. It's inside a courthouse. Between the courtroom door and the exterior door to the courthouse is the rest of the building interior.
You can't put metal detectors and X-ray machines outside on the front stoop. Snow tends to leave them somewhat used up.
The US domestic agencies have offices in all countries ?
Not all of the subjects were outside of the US.
Also, a few dozen of the larger US embassies do have an official with the title "Legal Attache." He's actually an FBI agent with the assigment of coordinating with local agencies.
The remainder of US missions at least have some non-cop who's supposed to be able to pass information along.
As for the question about finding a USSS agent within the US, try your phone book. It's in the blue pages, and will be under "Federal."
Iraq's tanks were made primarily in a place named Chelyabinsk. Let me suggest something: That is not a General Motors facility.
Iraq's fighter aircraft were a mixture of MiGs and Mirages. One made by Russia. The other, France. (What, France may have sold weapons to someone who shouldn't have had them? Zut alors!)
Iraq's small arms were largely AK-pattern rifles. Made in a dozen countries, but not by Colt or Bushmaster or Olympic Arms. Nor by any other US maker.
So, who armed Hussein? Someone who makes Russian tanks and French aircraft. You do the math.
Contrary to popular belief, Kevlar vests do not completly negate the effects of a 5.56 round hitting the soldier.
Whose vest are you talking about? My vest (Safariland Zero-G level III-A) should actually stop bullets. It's rated for that, anyway.
I'm not sure if they're effective against the.223 rounds in question, but I can test this easily enough. I replace the vest anyway around Halloween, and shooting the old vests is a time-honored cop tradition.:)
So, anybody want to pony up for a few boxes of SS109?
And reading about how military ballistic vests don't actually stop bullets, has anybody ever wondered why an EMT-Basic working for AMR has a better (lighter AND more effective) vest than most soldiers? Someone should pass on to the Army that it's really not that hard to get decent body armor. Even a dumb-assed ticket-writing nazi pig like me can manage it.
The question here sure is whether arrest records should be a matter of public record, given that the fact of a violation of the law is an unknown at that stage.
There's a few hundred people in Cuba with no-doubt strong opinions on the subject.
FWIW: In my department, essentially all records are public record once approved by a supervisor, unless they're private personnel files, juvenile identifying information, work product, or their release would jeopardize an ongoing investigation (and we can get a judge to agree).
We have all heard that "ignorance of the law is no excuse", but in Maryland there was an exception to the law IF you didn't know it was illegal to record the conversation.
At least in Colorado, it's not an issue of exceptions. Ignorance of the law ("Mistake of Law" is the term used in our statute) is essentially no excuse. The only way to claim that you didn't know is if you can show a different provision of law which explicitly authorized the conduct.
Neither here nore there, however. There's a separate category: "Mistake of Fact," to use the Colorado term. That protects you if you knew the laws governing your situation, but there was a fact or circumstance which you did not know, and that fact or circumstance converted a lawful act on your part into an unknowing violation.
The classic example is buying a used stereo at a swap meet and it turns out to have been stolen. If a reasonable person should have known it to be stolen, then you've committed a crime ("Theft by Receiving," some states call it "Possession of Stolen Property"). However, if there was no reasonable way for you to know that the stereo was stolen, then you're in the clear.
IANAL, natch. If you're in one of the 49 blighted states or dumb enough to take legal advice from/. I can't help you.
Hospital pagers and police radios work, but everything else is silence. I've seen 800 MHZ trunked radio repeaters installed to cover dead spots. For a small venu such as a theatre, it might be too expensive to impliment.
One problem: cops and EMT's use cellphones as well. Now that I'm back on patrol, my Nextel spends most of its life on "silent," but there are plenty of times that I need to make a phone call from an area which might be screened in your scenario.
Especially for detectives, who in my department generally don't carry handheld radios. No cellphone? We have a problem.
You are allowed to deny the Holocaust and freely wave the flag of the 3. Reich in the US which is a crime in Germany (one I don't oppose), but I think racism, at least origining from corporations, is forbidden in the US too?
Not quite.
Discrimination on the basis of race is forbidden in public accomodations, but that's part of the civil code. We don't arrest people. Rather, the victim (or the state Attorney General) files a civil suit to recover damages and have the court order the actor to stop. And those laws mainly just require that race, sex, ethnicity, et cetera not be a factor in business.
There are criminal "Hate Crime" codes in a few places. In my state (Colorado), our law refers to "ethnic intimidation," and is not actually much of a stand-alone issue. It only covers instances where another crime (assault, harassment, menacing, etc.) has already been committed, and race was part of the motive.
It's a useless charge, IMHO. It opens a Constitutional can of worms, for no real reason, is not all that easy to prove in court (it requires us to prove both motive and specific intent, which is hardly the easiest thing to do), and I can just arrest the actor for Third-Degree Assault. Nobody in the justice system in my state needs to look that one up to know what it is.
you have to admit that almost all of spam is targeted at usa citizens.
About 75% of the spam I get is in Chinese or Korean charsets. Considering that the dominant language in the US is English and that most of us are too damned lazy to learn a second language, and those that do learn Spanish or French or something, somehow I doubt that Americans are the major spam target.
No evidence necessary, and 9 times out of 10 a search warrant will be issued due entirely to the nature of the allegations, no matter how baseless they are.
Do you even know how a search warrant is generated? Judging by the idiotic post, I doubt it. Let me explain:
I gather information. I get specific facts from my witnesses, facts which show not just what the witness knows but exactly how he knows them. Statements like "I personally saw X get into the car." Hearsay is typically of no value. It can be used only in very rare circumstances at trial (such as where the original speaker is dead or where necessary to catch the original speaker in a lie) and not at all in a warrant affidavit.
I then have my witness/complainant/informant put these facts in writing and sign it, after explaining to him the law and jail time associated with filing false police reports.
I then complete an affidavit with these facts and submit it to a judge.
If the judge agrees that the facts constitute probable cause to support the warrant, he issues one. If not, he tells me to get lost.
And before you post your next moronic spew, confidential (names withheld, but known to police and possibly the judge) informants are worth very, very little, and anonymous informants(names not even known by police) are utterly worthless.
The Pope may be infallible, but even he can't claim to have probable cause unless he can show personal knowledge.
I think the French and Russians had the right idea about what to do with Monarchs.
Just remember what happened afterwards. I have a hard time imagining what the Bourbons could have done to justify Robespierre, or the Romanovs to justify the Communists.
As far as the contract bids, please explain to me WHY countries that provided no support to this operation (right, wrong or indifferent) should be able to prosper from the end result?
Even more to the point: Most of these contracts are to be funded by the US Government. AKA the US taxpayers, all 280 million of us. I resent the shit out of paying Social Security payroll tax for my own fellow citizens. Why the hell should I cough up for a foreign corporation?
Wrongo, China and Taiwan are separated by water. And if there is any form of warfare the U.S. does well, it's not desert fighting, it air and sea combat.
Minor nitpick: If you remember 1991, we do all right at desert fighting. The US military has a critical doctrinal difference over the PRC: Command judgement. Battalion and company commanders in the US (and most Western) armies are actually encouraged to think. They aren't as likely to be executed, along with their families, for deviating from the Plan(TM).
If you believe some, it's urban combat where we're weak. All you have to do is read Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden. Yeah, the administration in 1993 was a sackless disaster, but such linguini-spined failures are waiting in every election year.
All of this hinges on whether we learned the lessons of Mogaidishu and can apply them in the future. Considering that in 1993, we cut and run when we had a few helicopters shot down, and this autumn we stayed the course in light of the same threat, it's possible that our opponents watching from the sidelines may yet understand that things have changed in the last decade.
An invasion of Taiwan would require a higly visible buildup of forces across the strait, which the Taiwanese and the U.S. watch very closely.
Be even more optimistic: The sea-lift capability to drop the needed troops on Taiwan's coast just doesn't exist. Things may change in ten years, though, and I don't doubt for a minute that the thugs of Tienamien Square would happily go forth and slaughter Taiwanese people given the opportunity.
especially as the Taiwanese would be defending their Freedom against one of the world's most repressive dictatorships, with the backing of the U.S.
Good and right and motherhood and apple pie and baseball don't always prevail. This latest speech by my own President, for instance, wasn't enough to make a Democrat out of me (nothing could do that, with these nine morons), but it did make me wish for a meaningful primary challenger next year.
Whilst I guess that the people doing this will counter with "you give up your rights when you take it upon yourself to play with little kids bottoms", it kinda flies right in the face of concepts of rehabilitation, etc. Does the status of 'sex offender' have a timeout, or is it a lifetime thing, once convicted?
Can't speak to Maine, but here in Colorado, most sex offenders can petition to have their duty to register relieved. It's a certain period after completion of the rest of the sentence, and depends partly on the underlying offense.
The exception is for a category called the "sexually violent predator." There are only two people in Colorado required to register as such, and they NEVER get to stop.
And this is a case where "rehabilitation" is irrelevant. People convicted of certain crimes lose certain rights. The intent is not to punish them or to pile on to whatever sentence a court imposed, but to protect society. These are individuals who have PROVEN by their own actions that they cannot be trusted with certain freedoms. It's the same principle as the one behind the 1968 Gun Control Act, part of which forbids firearms ownership to convicted felons.
Society has a right to protect itself. Normally, I'd agree that society can go piss up a rope. We don't build web pages about people convicted of Careless Driving Resulting in Simple Bodily Injury, and for pretty good reason. However, we're not talking about unlucky drivers in this case, but rather about people who statistically are far more likely to re-offend than the average criminal, and I'd suggest that the harm done by the average rape far exceeds the harm done by an average college-bar brawl.
I can't think of any convincing reasons to take the chance, and 31 good ones not to.
I recall reading an article on CNN a couple years ago (if anyone has a link, please post -- tried to find it quickly but was unable) where a guy received a nasty C&D letter when he posted a copy of his state laws on the Internet.
Not quite that blatant. The Uniform Building Code is written and published by a private organization. Local governments will sometimes (usually) adopt the UBC "by reference," which essentially means passing an ordinance saying that the UBC published in such and so year shall have the force of law within that city.
They do so without including the UBC's text, however. My own city did that for our traffic law, passing an ordinance stating that the Colorado Model Traffic Code is adopted by reference, with homegrown penalty provisions. (For you Coloradans, it's Article Four of Title 42 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, less licensing/registration/insurance provisions and DUI. Since the MTC comes from the legislature anyway, it doesn't really matter.)
So, the publisher still owns the UBC. It's just being used by a local government. Or so the story goes.
It's also been tried here with one particular form of statute book. I have three current ones on my shelf: the Colorado Peace Officer's Handbook, the Colorado Peace Officer's Legal Sourcebook, and the Colorado Revised Statutes Pertaining to Criminal Law. Three separate compilations from three separate publishers: one for-profit and two not-for-profit. The value-added features are copyright, such that I (hypothetically: they're culled word-for-word from the standard jury instructions) can't re-sell copies of the Handbook's misdemeanor charging section.
The actual text of a given law, however, is not copyright. But then, the legislature did not adopt CRS 18-3-206 "Menacing" by reference to a private publication, but instead wrote it themselves.
And either this clarified things or confused the hell out of you. Law stuff can do both at once.
now how does that work? If I call now, telemarketers as supposed to not call me starting in three months. If the telemarketers download annually, -- how will they know not to call me in 3 months,... annually won't work.
That's their problem, not yours.
As a person in the US, your responsibility is to comply with the laws of the land. How you do that is your business. It's the same deal for these thieves.
If a pharmacist doesn't know how much OxyContin is in his cabinet, that's his problem. He's responsible for keeping his controlled-substance records in order. How he does so is his concern. Even if he loses money by taking inventory rather than selling, or by hiring someone else to do so, he's responsible for having a correct inventory of his OC's.
If a pawmbroker buys stuff, he's responsible for knowing who's selling it and taking reasonable measures to ensure that it's not stolen. If he doesn't check customer's ID (required in my state) then life sucks, but he was still responsible for knowing.
And so the teleshitbags are responsible for keeping themselves in compliance. How they make it work is their concern. My concern is merely that they do.
There's no law in Vancouver that says you have to have a drivers license to be able to go to a bar. You can use any government issued ID (such as a passport). I don't think they would not be allowed to discriminate against people that don't drive or have had their license revoked.
It depends.
It's extremely rare in the US that the law will specify what forms of identification a private business will be obligated to accept, when that business' choice of ID could potentially create a liability. Admittedly, Canada is different, but it's probably not THAT different.
As a general rule, a supposed identification lacking a recent photograph is unreliable. A document whose credibility rests upon nothing but the holder's word is also unreliable. As are documents which are based upon unreliable documents. That's why there's so much concern over California issuing licenses to illegals: An illegal will not likely be presenting any credible proof of identity to Cal DMV. Accordingly, if I decide to move to California and change my name from Happy go Lucky to Gray Davis, affect an accent, and add ten years to my actual age, I'm not sure what leverage DMV would have to deny me a license.
Fine. Whatever. However, 47 of the other 49 states have made certain efforts to actually protect their driver licensing against such frauds. And we in those states are now less willing to presume that a CA DL actually means anything at all.
As for having a license revoked...here in Colorado, DMV will issue an identification card to anybody with certain proofs of identity for five bucks. It's the same fraud-proofing and same format as our driver's license, but no driving privilege included. That's hardly an excuse.
Never mind that there are only a few ways to get a license revoked in my state, and they all boil down to "Bearer screwed up." When some drives drunk, causes an accident while uninsured, or gets popped for speeding 19MPH over posted limit six times in one year, he doesn't need to be driving and probably doesn't need to be drinking.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope.
The controlling legal authority is the Fourth/Fourteenth Amendment, mandating freedom from unreasonable search. This is best viewed in the light of Katz v. United States, in which the Nine Worthies declared that searches into any area required justification, when a person had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Your car isn't the same as your home, with the same protection. It is, however, more private than not. A search by a police officer may not require a warrant, but it does require some sort of legal justification, such as probable cause (facts and circumstances which would lead a reasonable officer to believe that evidence of a crime is present)
Speeding is evidence of speeding. It could possibly be evidence of drug/alcohol impairment, depending upon what else is going on. It could be a piece of circumstantial evidence for any number of things. It does not, however, automatically justify a search.
And I never charge DUI/DUID off of a vehicle search. I charge DUI/DUID off of my observations of the driver's manual dexterity and ability to focus and concentrate, and my observations of the vehicle in motion, and the alcohol/drug test justified by said observations. The mere presence of drugs does not imply the consumption of said drugs strongly enough to charge DUI, absent other evidence.
Nope.
A Federal Special Police Officer has little or no police powers off of Federal property. However, under the Assimilative Crimes Act he has the power to enforce state and local laws, when such laws apply on Federal property.
A Federal Special Agent can enforce Federal law anywhere in the United States, but only those specific Federal laws which his agency is chartered to enforce. For instance, a special agent from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement can't do anything with the Pure Food and Drug Act, or the 1968 Gun Control Act.
A state officer (State Troopers, &etc.) can enforce federal or state laws, but only within their own state. So they can pull you over for speeding or issue warrants, but they can't go into other states to get you. (For that, they just call the next jurisdiction over. :)
Negative. Staties and locals are rarely-to-never commissioned to enforce Federal laws. And their jurisdictional boundaries are set by each individual state's laws. For instance, here in Colorado, I, as a local cop, essentially have statewide arrest powers which would exceed citizen's arrest powers. State Troopers are actually constrained to enforcing specific statutes. It's very rare that they can act as peace officers in contexts with no connection to traffic, transportation, public roads, motor vehicles, or the safety of the Governor and the Legislature.
As for jurisdictional boundaries, there's a doctrine called "Fresh Pursuit." It says basically that, if I'm pursuing someone who I reasonably believe has committed a crime, I can follow him no matter how far he runs, so long as my pursuit is continuous and uninterrupted and I have jurisdiction over the place where the original crime occurred.
At least- that's how the system was designed.
It wasn't really designed. Our system of justice, viewed as a US-wide whole, is a clusterfsck. It's confused and muddled and you can tell that it originated with something confused and muddled like the English Common Law as interpreted by fifty-one different sovereign entities. It just sort of happened.
It's a way of constraining them. If you ever go to a federal building and see a bunch of people standing around claiming to be the "Federal Police," they're actually titled "special
police officers." The reason for this is that no Fed actually has true general police powers. The way the statute is written, they have the powers of "sheriffs and constables" when in the course of some other duties.
However, they're walked on an amazingly short leash compared to, say, your city's police department. And for good reason: the feds have a large proportion of people too stupid to function as real cops.
I believe that "Special Agents" are the same situation. They have arrest and warrant powers when in the course of investigating certain matters explicitly given them by statute, but they don't get to just roll up and arrest you if you slug your wife while driving drunk or whatever.
For the "Special Police Officers," see 40 USC 318. I don't know how that affects "Special Agents."
I use 719-111-1111. And my City Market (what Kroger's is called in most of Colorado) card belongs to Phineas Q. Spankenstein. And works just fine.
That's not so much the judge as the legislature.
In my state (Colorado), DUI is always a misdemeanor, unless there's an accident with serious bodily injury. The judge doesn't even have the option to sentence the defendant to 12 months plus one day.
It would take an act of the legislature, followed by Guv Owens signature, to change that.
Now, our judges are still soft, but that's because the law allows them to be.
On the outside, as a corrections client, he PROBABLY gets punished again if he re-offends. On the inside, he won't have a chance to re-offend.
Imagine a courtroom. It's inside a courthouse. Between the courtroom door and the exterior door to the courthouse is the rest of the building interior.
You can't put metal detectors and X-ray machines outside on the front stoop. Snow tends to leave them somewhat used up.
Not all of the subjects were outside of the US.
Also, a few dozen of the larger US embassies do have an official with the title "Legal Attache." He's actually an FBI agent with the assigment of coordinating with local agencies.
The remainder of US missions at least have some non-cop who's supposed to be able to pass information along.
As for the question about finding a USSS agent within the US, try your phone book. It's in the blue pages, and will be under "Federal."
That's a good question. Let's ponder this.
Iraq's tanks were made primarily in a place named Chelyabinsk. Let me suggest something: That is not a General Motors facility.
Iraq's fighter aircraft were a mixture of MiGs and Mirages. One made by Russia. The other, France. (What, France may have sold weapons to someone who shouldn't have had them? Zut alors!)
Iraq's small arms were largely AK-pattern rifles. Made in a dozen countries, but not by Colt or Bushmaster or Olympic Arms. Nor by any other US maker.
So, who armed Hussein? Someone who makes Russian tanks and French aircraft. You do the math.
For members of the House of Representatives, every even-numbered year is an election year. All 435 of them face the voters every even year.
Whose vest are you talking about? My vest (Safariland Zero-G level III-A) should actually stop bullets. It's rated for that, anyway.
I'm not sure if they're effective against the .223 rounds in question, but I can test this easily enough. I replace the vest anyway around Halloween, and shooting the old vests is a time-honored cop tradition. :)
So, anybody want to pony up for a few boxes of SS109?
And reading about how military ballistic vests don't actually stop bullets, has anybody ever wondered why an EMT-Basic working for AMR has a better (lighter AND more effective) vest than most soldiers? Someone should pass on to the Army that it's really not that hard to get decent body armor. Even a dumb-assed ticket-writing nazi pig like me can manage it.
There's a few hundred people in Cuba with no-doubt strong opinions on the subject.
FWIW: In my department, essentially all records are public record once approved by a supervisor, unless they're private personnel files, juvenile identifying information, work product, or their release would jeopardize an ongoing investigation (and we can get a judge to agree).
Pretty much a requirement in an open society.
In a free society,
At least in Colorado, it's not an issue of exceptions. Ignorance of the law ("Mistake of Law" is the term used in our statute) is essentially no excuse. The only way to claim that you didn't know is if you can show a different provision of law which explicitly authorized the conduct.
Neither here nore there, however. There's a separate category: "Mistake of Fact," to use the Colorado term. That protects you if you knew the laws governing your situation, but there was a fact or circumstance which you did not know, and that fact or circumstance converted a lawful act on your part into an unknowing violation.
The classic example is buying a used stereo at a swap meet and it turns out to have been stolen. If a reasonable person should have known it to be stolen, then you've committed a crime ("Theft by Receiving," some states call it "Possession of Stolen Property"). However, if there was no reasonable way for you to know that the stereo was stolen, then you're in the clear.
IANAL, natch. If you're in one of the 49 blighted states or dumb enough to take legal advice from /. I can't help you.
One problem: cops and EMT's use cellphones as well. Now that I'm back on patrol, my Nextel spends most of its life on "silent," but there are plenty of times that I need to make a phone call from an area which might be screened in your scenario.
Especially for detectives, who in my department generally don't carry handheld radios. No cellphone? We have a problem.
Not quite.
Discrimination on the basis of race is forbidden in public accomodations, but that's part of the civil code. We don't arrest people. Rather, the victim (or the state Attorney General) files a civil suit to recover damages and have the court order the actor to stop. And those laws mainly just require that race, sex, ethnicity, et cetera not be a factor in business.
There are criminal "Hate Crime" codes in a few places. In my state (Colorado), our law refers to "ethnic intimidation," and is not actually much of a stand-alone issue. It only covers instances where another crime (assault, harassment, menacing, etc.) has already been committed, and race was part of the motive.
It's a useless charge, IMHO. It opens a Constitutional can of worms, for no real reason, is not all that easy to prove in court (it requires us to prove both motive and specific intent, which is hardly the easiest thing to do), and I can just arrest the actor for Third-Degree Assault. Nobody in the justice system in my state needs to look that one up to know what it is.
About 75% of the spam I get is in Chinese or Korean charsets. Considering that the dominant language in the US is English and that most of us are too damned lazy to learn a second language, and those that do learn Spanish or French or something, somehow I doubt that Americans are the major spam target.
No evidence necessary, and 9 times out of 10 a search warrant will be issued due entirely to the nature of the allegations, no matter how baseless they are.
Do you even know how a search warrant is generated? Judging by the idiotic post, I doubt it. Let me explain:
I gather information. I get specific facts from my witnesses, facts which show not just what the witness knows but exactly how he knows them. Statements like "I personally saw X get into the car." Hearsay is typically of no value. It can be used only in very rare circumstances at trial (such as where the original speaker is dead or where necessary to catch the original speaker in a lie) and not at all in a warrant affidavit.
I then have my witness/complainant/informant put these facts in writing and sign it, after explaining to him the law and jail time associated with filing false police reports.
I then complete an affidavit with these facts and submit it to a judge.
If the judge agrees that the facts constitute probable cause to support the warrant, he issues one. If not, he tells me to get lost.
And before you post your next moronic spew, confidential (names withheld, but known to police and possibly the judge) informants are worth very, very little, and anonymous informants(names not even known by police) are utterly worthless.
The Pope may be infallible, but even he can't claim to have probable cause unless he can show personal knowledge.
Just remember what happened afterwards. I have a hard time imagining what the Bourbons could have done to justify Robespierre, or the Romanovs to justify the Communists.
Even more to the point: Most of these contracts are to be funded by the US Government. AKA the US taxpayers, all 280 million of us. I resent the shit out of paying Social Security payroll tax for my own fellow citizens. Why the hell should I cough up for a foreign corporation?
Minor nitpick: If you remember 1991, we do all right at desert fighting. The US military has a critical doctrinal difference over the PRC: Command judgement. Battalion and company commanders in the US (and most Western) armies are actually encouraged to think. They aren't as likely to be executed, along with their families, for deviating from the Plan(TM).
If you believe some, it's urban combat where we're weak. All you have to do is read Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden. Yeah, the administration in 1993 was a sackless disaster, but such linguini-spined failures are waiting in every election year.
All of this hinges on whether we learned the lessons of Mogaidishu and can apply them in the future. Considering that in 1993, we cut and run when we had a few helicopters shot down, and this autumn we stayed the course in light of the same threat, it's possible that our opponents watching from the sidelines may yet understand that things have changed in the last decade.
An invasion of Taiwan would require a higly visible buildup of forces across the strait, which the Taiwanese and the U.S. watch very closely.
Be even more optimistic: The sea-lift capability to drop the needed troops on Taiwan's coast just doesn't exist. Things may change in ten years, though, and I don't doubt for a minute that the thugs of Tienamien Square would happily go forth and slaughter Taiwanese people given the opportunity.
especially as the Taiwanese would be defending their Freedom against one of the world's most repressive dictatorships, with the backing of the U.S.
Good and right and motherhood and apple pie and baseball don't always prevail. This latest speech by my own President, for instance, wasn't enough to make a Democrat out of me (nothing could do that, with these nine morons), but it did make me wish for a meaningful primary challenger next year.
In China, it's the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. They also have the Hang Seng, if you want to count Hong Kong as China.
Cuba actually has one, called the Cuba Stock Exchange.
I can't find one for NK. However, at its heart a stock exchange is just a place where people buy and sell ownership of stuff.
Can't speak to Maine, but here in Colorado, most sex offenders can petition to have their duty to register relieved. It's a certain period after completion of the rest of the sentence, and depends partly on the underlying offense.
The exception is for a category called the "sexually violent predator." There are only two people in Colorado required to register as such, and they NEVER get to stop.
And this is a case where "rehabilitation" is irrelevant. People convicted of certain crimes lose certain rights. The intent is not to punish them or to pile on to whatever sentence a court imposed, but to protect society. These are individuals who have PROVEN by their own actions that they cannot be trusted with certain freedoms. It's the same principle as the one behind the 1968 Gun Control Act, part of which forbids firearms ownership to convicted felons.
Society has a right to protect itself. Normally, I'd agree that society can go piss up a rope. We don't build web pages about people convicted of Careless Driving Resulting in Simple Bodily Injury, and for pretty good reason. However, we're not talking about unlucky drivers in this case, but rather about people who statistically are far more likely to re-offend than the average criminal, and I'd suggest that the harm done by the average rape far exceeds the harm done by an average college-bar brawl.
I can't think of any convincing reasons to take the chance, and 31 good ones not to.
Not quite that blatant. The Uniform Building Code is written and published by a private organization. Local governments will sometimes (usually) adopt the UBC "by reference," which essentially means passing an ordinance saying that the UBC published in such and so year shall have the force of law within that city.
They do so without including the UBC's text, however. My own city did that for our traffic law, passing an ordinance stating that the Colorado Model Traffic Code is adopted by reference, with homegrown penalty provisions. (For you Coloradans, it's Article Four of Title 42 of the Colorado Revised Statutes, less licensing/registration/insurance provisions and DUI. Since the MTC comes from the legislature anyway, it doesn't really matter.)
So, the publisher still owns the UBC. It's just being used by a local government. Or so the story goes.
It's also been tried here with one particular form of statute book. I have three current ones on my shelf: the Colorado Peace Officer's Handbook, the Colorado Peace Officer's Legal Sourcebook, and the Colorado Revised Statutes Pertaining to Criminal Law. Three separate compilations from three separate publishers: one for-profit and two not-for-profit. The value-added features are copyright, such that I (hypothetically: they're culled word-for-word from the standard jury instructions) can't re-sell copies of the Handbook's misdemeanor charging section.
The actual text of a given law, however, is not copyright. But then, the legislature did not adopt CRS 18-3-206 "Menacing" by reference to a private publication, but instead wrote it themselves.
And either this clarified things or confused the hell out of you. Law stuff can do both at once.
That's their problem, not yours.
As a person in the US, your responsibility is to comply with the laws of the land. How you do that is your business. It's the same deal for these thieves.
If a pharmacist doesn't know how much OxyContin is in his cabinet, that's his problem. He's responsible for keeping his controlled-substance records in order. How he does so is his concern. Even if he loses money by taking inventory rather than selling, or by hiring someone else to do so, he's responsible for having a correct inventory of his OC's.
If a pawmbroker buys stuff, he's responsible for knowing who's selling it and taking reasonable measures to ensure that it's not stolen. If he doesn't check customer's ID (required in my state) then life sucks, but he was still responsible for knowing.
And so the teleshitbags are responsible for keeping themselves in compliance. How they make it work is their concern. My concern is merely that they do.
It depends.
It's extremely rare in the US that the law will specify what forms of identification a private business will be obligated to accept, when that business' choice of ID could potentially create a liability. Admittedly, Canada is different, but it's probably not THAT different.
As a general rule, a supposed identification lacking a recent photograph is unreliable. A document whose credibility rests upon nothing but the holder's word is also unreliable. As are documents which are based upon unreliable documents. That's why there's so much concern over California issuing licenses to illegals: An illegal will not likely be presenting any credible proof of identity to Cal DMV. Accordingly, if I decide to move to California and change my name from Happy go Lucky to Gray Davis, affect an accent, and add ten years to my actual age, I'm not sure what leverage DMV would have to deny me a license.
Fine. Whatever. However, 47 of the other 49 states have made certain efforts to actually protect their driver licensing against such frauds. And we in those states are now less willing to presume that a CA DL actually means anything at all.
As for having a license revoked...here in Colorado, DMV will issue an identification card to anybody with certain proofs of identity for five bucks. It's the same fraud-proofing and same format as our driver's license, but no driving privilege included. That's hardly an excuse.
Never mind that there are only a few ways to get a license revoked in my state, and they all boil down to "Bearer screwed up." When some drives drunk, causes an accident while uninsured, or gets popped for speeding 19MPH over posted limit six times in one year, he doesn't need to be driving and probably doesn't need to be drinking.