And my point is that BOTH should be news. And that in no case should the violation of a person's rights be casually dismissed for any reason, including how much or how little money that person might have.
As soon as we choose who are worthy of protection under the law and who are socially acceptable to victimize we are doomed to fail as a culture.
It's only news because it's a rich person and his boat. When they utilize the new Homeland Security policy allowing them to seize any electronic device at the border without suspicion, and decide to hold on to your IPad or cellphone it will most certainly be your problem. And you will have enabled it to be so because you are so cavalier about a person's rights, so long as they have a different amount of wealth as you.
Isnt it fascinating that it's abhorent to violate a poor person's rights, but its chiche to promote violating the rights of the wealthy?
Even if there were to be lawsuits to stop commercial production of 3D printing tech, there's already 3D printers out there. And as the tech first started to be utilized by private citizens there were more than one project out there to help spread the tech to more and more people. You would purchase the parts to build a printer, and the first thing you'd print were the parts for another printer...
Take that paradigm and expand on it to today's much more robust tech, and you cant stop the growth. No patent enforcement can stop the expansion.
It would take an hour to disect how many ways that post was hypocrtical and self-contradicting. I bet a psychologist could write a thesis on that logic trainwreck.
I'll leave well enough alone with just saying this: A true libertarian will never promote a ban on anything unless that thing is by its nature a threat to freedom. Swimming pools, cars, and trans-fats, and guns are not threats to freedom. Bans on them are.
Defining goals and then evaluating the path to reaching them and the logistical likelyhood of success is not knee-jerk.
An Executive Order is not covered by that description. It is a MANDATE to reach an arbitrary loosely defined "goal". It is a statement that you WILL do this, by whatever means necessary, no matter how completely unbalanced the measures must be.
My reaction to this is a lot of things, but it is not knee-jerk. It is a learned response, having watching decades of beauracrats waste billions of dollars to take more and more power onto themselves at the expense of the freedoms of the people. Whether it be through malice or ineptitude they have proved with a near perfect record that they are willing to do the wrong thing over doing nothing at all.
You must be a member of Congress. Because those are the only people I can possibly imagine wwho would actually suggest that as a legitimate definition of "free" without busting out laughing mid-sentance.
Why would you suggest roads are free? Same as libraries, or traffic lights, or police. They are NOT FREE, and I've never heard anyone use the word free to describe them. They are built by government (local/state/fed) and used by all, but no one ever says they are free. They all cost money, and ultimately that money all comes from the pockets of the citizens. Only the dishonest, the dillusional or the ignorant would say anything less.
Maybe your philosophy is exactly why we're as fucked as we are. Either you're willing to lie, or willing to spin a bunch of BS that makes it sound like the taxpayer isnt actually putting out any of their income to make these "free" things possible.
I didnt suggest in any way that I was more sane than anyone else. I asked why all those capable of understanding that "free" != "paid for by taxes" (no matter how many mental gymnastics you're willing to go through to say otherwise), arent even bothering to point the simple truth of it out anymore.
It takes a pretty solid application of denial to come to any other conclusion. But what angers me is that what appears to be the majority of Americans dont even try anymore. They see "free" and say, "Hey! Great! I'm so glad I am so well cared for!" instead of actually thinking the whole thing through. Is it laziness? Intellectual dishonesty? Or do people actually believe that these services will continue to magically materialize without someone cutting the damn check for it?
How can these jackasses continue to use words like "free" to make it sound like they are giving a gift to the nation when we are the ones they will damn well expect to pay for it with taxes? And why arent each and every one of you calling them out for it?
Are you suggesting that what is required in order to impliment the President's orders is trivial? Or that the President and/or his staff are IT professionals who fully understand the technical hurdles required?
In either case you're probably not alone, but you're most certainly standing with a very small group who all either have deeds to bridges or oceanside property in Nevada.
"If [you] faced the same threats" is irrelevant. Circumstance is not a deciding factor for an inalienable right. Either you have it or you dont. The only exception to this by our rule of law is for a person that has forfeithed that right by violating the law.
Corrrect. If it's appropriate for any citizen to be defended by a particular class of arms then it is equally appropriate for any other citizen, so long as that citizen has not been proven guilty of a cime for which the punishement includes reliquishing this inherent inalienable right.
And at no point in history, American or otherwise, has a person in a position of authority used a law that was designed with the best of intentions to trample the lawfuly protected rights of a citizen...
Please provide the portion of the Constitution that outlines the additional rights of the President.
The President is granted "authority" to peform certain roles and functions upon his swearing in. The President will be removed from office, either at the end of his elected term, at the end of his term limit, or through impeachment. With the end of his service the former President will no longer have any authority granted to the seated President.
A "right" is inalienable. It cannot be taken from you unless you have broken the law and your punishment includes the loss of liberties.
By these verifiable definitions, authority to perform a duty or function as a part of an elected position is not a right. Therefore no authority granted specificaly to the seated President can be defined as a right. The only thing you could argue as a... perk? of the President is that he is granted protections against civil claims as a result of his actions as Presidents. This is done because many (most?) actions of a President could be argued as having an adverse impact to some citizen somewhere. It does not protect him from the legal actions of Congress or the Supreme Court in a criminal case, or in judgements of Constitutional voilations, or even in civil claims that result in his personal actions outside the bounds of Presidential actions.
No, it does not confirm your point. You said that private security was following the law. This article demonstrates that you were wrong and that private companies were breaking the law in order to secure people they felt deserve greater protections than you or I.
What you dont get is that "need" is irrelevant. I dont "need" to excerise my rights against self-incrimination right now. But that doesnt mean that my access to that right is lessoned in any way, shape or form. The same is true of every right defined by our laws, and reinforced explicitely for firearms by the 2nd Amendment.
Dont get me wrong, I completely disagree with the law and it should never have been passed the first time, let alone any subsequent time. I just cant stand it when someone ignorant of our process of law is such a condescending asshole to others on that topic.
The correct line IMO is this: Those agents are all background checked, mentally evaluated, and properly trained. They also have a legitimate use case for those weapons; that of defending a high risk target against an organized and well armed attack.
So they are proven innocent, and therefore earned the right? Isnt that kinda backward.... ?
To use the obligatory car analogy, trying to compare the Secret Service to placing armed guards in every school in America (or every home in America) is like arguing that drag racers are really fast, so we should all drive dragsters everywhere we go.
And to nulify said argument, please identify the point in the Constitution where every citizen is garaunteed right to drive anything at any speed. See, I can point to the part of the Constitution that gaurantees my right not only to right to have arms, but that the right to shall not be infringed upon.
And you have wholly failed to see the important point: Whether the man is the President or a homeless guy under a bridge in the Bronx, they both have exactly the same inalienable rights. Period. End of story. If the man in the White House has a right to purchase protection that includes M16's, then so does the man under the bridge. It can be no other way without creating an elite ruling class that are above the laws that govern the people.
If you change the criteria of "right to bear arms", and you lesson the numbers or options of those arms, you are infringing. Also a very simple and easily understood statement.
To simplify for you, if it is my right to drink any soda brand I want, and you come to me and say "Well, yeah, everything but Shasta.", you are without question or room for interpretation infringing on my right to dink soda.
So the President and all members of Congress have a "right" to security that must include full auto assault weapons. But since you and I dont absolutely require it, it is not a right?
All citizens have a right until it is lost through an unlawful act, or all citizens do not. All are treated equally under the law. Period. How often a person may or may not rely upon that right changes the existence of it by exactly zero.
Congress (legislative) is a check to the President's power, as are the courts (judicial).
2nd grade civics....
The President has the authority to veto. But that need not be the final outcome. If Congress so chooses they can (and have) override the Presidential veto by establishing a 2/3rd's majority vote in both houses of Congress, which passes the bill to law with or without the President's blessing.
4th grade civics....
I'll attempt to explain by rephrasing your statement.
The government decided that this was a perfect oppurtunity to do something they very much wanted to do already (disarming people). They pooled a lot of things their colleagues suggested as requirements (inter-agency sharing of information, pooled profiles, mental health reporting, etc.) and kicked out a bunch of nebulous "wouldnt it be great if" thoughts translated into mandates.
Well, it'd be great if we could all ride rainbows and unicorns to work every day. But the reality is it aint going to happen. When government dicates a thing that is unrealistic (rather than fully impossible, like unicorns) they ensure that a ridiculous amount of money will be spent to produce a "thing". After the initial uproar of public opinion wanes and the bureaucrats are no longer getting nightly soundbites on national news for the topic, they are still on the hook for translating the nebulous ideas into tangible action items. They are also required to find funding for this yet to be fully designed "thing", but they are desperately bored and have moved on to whatever new national crisis is making headlines. So their underlings are assigned to get the heads of various departments and agencies to agree on some methods to accomplish some fraction of the original idea, assuring that the "thing" that comes out of the beltway meatgrinder is a collosal expense, a half-assed solution that maybe fits some of the original requirements (sorta), and is implemented 5 different ways by 10 different groups that refuse to abdicate authority to any other party involved. No one actually owns this "thing" so it is mismanaged and ineffectual.
And this also assumes a great many things; That these nebulous ideas actually fix the crisis, that the mandates are are legal or appropriate, and that some whacko didnt hijack the whole thing for some completely unintended or unforseen political agenda.
And what's even better is that the next administration comes in and uproots half of this "thing" (or more), adding to the waste of time, sweat and money.
Two things I tell my 9 year-old son; "Dont make decisions when you're angry." and "If you dont have time to do it right the first time, you arent going to have time to fix it.", and he actually gets it. Apparently my 9 year old is able to wrap his head around these simple concepts far better than politicians.
Slashdot Mirror
Or Germany....
THAT is why you stand up to them.
And my point is that BOTH should be news. And that in no case should the violation of a person's rights be casually dismissed for any reason, including how much or how little money that person might have.
As soon as we choose who are worthy of protection under the law and who are socially acceptable to victimize we are doomed to fail as a culture.
It's only news because it's a rich person and his boat. When they utilize the new Homeland Security policy allowing them to seize any electronic device at the border without suspicion, and decide to hold on to your IPad or cellphone it will most certainly be your problem. And you will have enabled it to be so because you are so cavalier about a person's rights, so long as they have a different amount of wealth as you.
Isnt it fascinating that it's abhorent to violate a poor person's rights, but its chiche to promote violating the rights of the wealthy?
Even if there were to be lawsuits to stop commercial production of 3D printing tech, there's already 3D printers out there. And as the tech first started to be utilized by private citizens there were more than one project out there to help spread the tech to more and more people. You would purchase the parts to build a printer, and the first thing you'd print were the parts for another printer...
Take that paradigm and expand on it to today's much more robust tech, and you cant stop the growth. No patent enforcement can stop the expansion.
And by that very definition we our faith in the Obama administration should be exactly zero.
And it's worth it to point out that the pinhead making these false statements on Fox is not a policy maker elected by half of this nation...
Wow. I ... but... wow.
It would take an hour to disect how many ways that post was hypocrtical and self-contradicting. I bet a psychologist could write a thesis on that logic trainwreck.
I'll leave well enough alone with just saying this: A true libertarian will never promote a ban on anything unless that thing is by its nature a threat to freedom. Swimming pools, cars, and trans-fats, and guns are not threats to freedom. Bans on them are.
Defining goals and then evaluating the path to reaching them and the logistical likelyhood of success is not knee-jerk.
An Executive Order is not covered by that description. It is a MANDATE to reach an arbitrary loosely defined "goal". It is a statement that you WILL do this, by whatever means necessary, no matter how completely unbalanced the measures must be.
My reaction to this is a lot of things, but it is not knee-jerk. It is a learned response, having watching decades of beauracrats waste billions of dollars to take more and more power onto themselves at the expense of the freedoms of the people. Whether it be through malice or ineptitude they have proved with a near perfect record that they are willing to do the wrong thing over doing nothing at all.
You must be a member of Congress. Because those are the only people I can possibly imagine wwho would actually suggest that as a legitimate definition of "free" without busting out laughing mid-sentance.
Why would you suggest roads are free? Same as libraries, or traffic lights, or police. They are NOT FREE, and I've never heard anyone use the word free to describe them. They are built by government (local/state/fed) and used by all, but no one ever says they are free. They all cost money, and ultimately that money all comes from the pockets of the citizens. Only the dishonest, the dillusional or the ignorant would say anything less.
Maybe your philosophy is exactly why we're as fucked as we are. Either you're willing to lie, or willing to spin a bunch of BS that makes it sound like the taxpayer isnt actually putting out any of their income to make these "free" things possible.
I didnt suggest in any way that I was more sane than anyone else. I asked why all those capable of understanding that "free" != "paid for by taxes" (no matter how many mental gymnastics you're willing to go through to say otherwise), arent even bothering to point the simple truth of it out anymore.
It takes a pretty solid application of denial to come to any other conclusion. But what angers me is that what appears to be the majority of Americans dont even try anymore. They see "free" and say, "Hey! Great! I'm so glad I am so well cared for!" instead of actually thinking the whole thing through. Is it laziness? Intellectual dishonesty? Or do people actually believe that these services will continue to magically materialize without someone cutting the damn check for it?
... what you think it means. "
How can these jackasses continue to use words like "free" to make it sound like they are giving a gift to the nation when we are the ones they will damn well expect to pay for it with taxes? And why arent each and every one of you calling them out for it?
Are you suggesting that what is required in order to impliment the President's orders is trivial? Or that the President and/or his staff are IT professionals who fully understand the technical hurdles required?
In either case you're probably not alone, but you're most certainly standing with a very small group who all either have deeds to bridges or oceanside property in Nevada.
"If [you] faced the same threats" is irrelevant. Circumstance is not a deciding factor for an inalienable right. Either you have it or you dont. The only exception to this by our rule of law is for a person that has forfeithed that right by violating the law.
Corrrect. If it's appropriate for any citizen to be defended by a particular class of arms then it is equally appropriate for any other citizen, so long as that citizen has not been proven guilty of a cime for which the punishement includes reliquishing this inherent inalienable right.
And at no point in history, American or otherwise, has a person in a position of authority used a law that was designed with the best of intentions to trample the lawfuly protected rights of a citizen...
Please provide the portion of the Constitution that outlines the additional rights of the President.
... perk? of the President is that he is granted protections against civil claims as a result of his actions as Presidents. This is done because many (most?) actions of a President could be argued as having an adverse impact to some citizen somewhere. It does not protect him from the legal actions of Congress or the Supreme Court in a criminal case, or in judgements of Constitutional voilations, or even in civil claims that result in his personal actions outside the bounds of Presidential actions.
The President is granted "authority" to peform certain roles and functions upon his swearing in. The President will be removed from office, either at the end of his elected term, at the end of his term limit, or through impeachment. With the end of his service the former President will no longer have any authority granted to the seated President.
A "right" is inalienable. It cannot be taken from you unless you have broken the law and your punishment includes the loss of liberties.
By these verifiable definitions, authority to perform a duty or function as a part of an elected position is not a right. Therefore no authority granted specificaly to the seated President can be defined as a right. The only thing you could argue as a
No, it does not confirm your point. You said that private security was following the law. This article demonstrates that you were wrong and that private companies were breaking the law in order to secure people they felt deserve greater protections than you or I.
What you dont get is that "need" is irrelevant. I dont "need" to excerise my rights against self-incrimination right now. But that doesnt mean that my access to that right is lessoned in any way, shape or form. The same is true of every right defined by our laws, and reinforced explicitely for firearms by the 2nd Amendment.
Dont get me wrong, I completely disagree with the law and it should never have been passed the first time, let alone any subsequent time. I just cant stand it when someone ignorant of our process of law is such a condescending asshole to others on that topic.
Think again: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/28/media-matters-reportedly-uses-illegal-guns-to-protect-organization-leader/
The correct line IMO is this: Those agents are all background checked, mentally evaluated, and properly trained. They also have a legitimate use case for those weapons; that of defending a high risk target against an organized and well armed attack.
So they are proven innocent, and therefore earned the right? Isnt that kinda backward.... ?
To use the obligatory car analogy, trying to compare the Secret Service to placing armed guards in every school in America (or every home in America) is like arguing that drag racers are really fast, so we should all drive dragsters everywhere we go.
And to nulify said argument, please identify the point in the Constitution where every citizen is garaunteed right to drive anything at any speed. See, I can point to the part of the Constitution that gaurantees my right not only to right to have arms, but that the right to shall not be infringed upon.
And you have wholly failed to see the important point: Whether the man is the President or a homeless guy under a bridge in the Bronx, they both have exactly the same inalienable rights. Period. End of story. If the man in the White House has a right to purchase protection that includes M16's, then so does the man under the bridge. It can be no other way without creating an elite ruling class that are above the laws that govern the people.
"...shall not be infringed..."
Pretty simple statement, right?
If you change the criteria of "right to bear arms", and you lesson the numbers or options of those arms, you are infringing. Also a very simple and easily understood statement.
To simplify for you, if it is my right to drink any soda brand I want, and you come to me and say "Well, yeah, everything but Shasta.", you are without question or room for interpretation infringing on my right to dink soda.
So the President and all members of Congress have a "right" to security that must include full auto assault weapons. But since you and I dont absolutely require it, it is not a right?
All citizens have a right until it is lost through an unlawful act, or all citizens do not. All are treated equally under the law. Period. How often a person may or may not rely upon that right changes the existence of it by exactly zero.
Congress (legislative) is a check to the President's power, as are the courts (judicial).
2nd grade civics....
The President has the authority to veto. But that need not be the final outcome. If Congress so chooses they can (and have) override the Presidential veto by establishing a 2/3rd's majority vote in both houses of Congress, which passes the bill to law with or without the President's blessing.
4th grade civics....
I'll attempt to explain by rephrasing your statement.
The government decided that this was a perfect oppurtunity to do something they very much wanted to do already (disarming people). They pooled a lot of things their colleagues suggested as requirements (inter-agency sharing of information, pooled profiles, mental health reporting, etc.) and kicked out a bunch of nebulous "wouldnt it be great if" thoughts translated into mandates.
Well, it'd be great if we could all ride rainbows and unicorns to work every day. But the reality is it aint going to happen. When government dicates a thing that is unrealistic (rather than fully impossible, like unicorns) they ensure that a ridiculous amount of money will be spent to produce a "thing". After the initial uproar of public opinion wanes and the bureaucrats are no longer getting nightly soundbites on national news for the topic, they are still on the hook for translating the nebulous ideas into tangible action items. They are also required to find funding for this yet to be fully designed "thing", but they are desperately bored and have moved on to whatever new national crisis is making headlines. So their underlings are assigned to get the heads of various departments and agencies to agree on some methods to accomplish some fraction of the original idea, assuring that the "thing" that comes out of the beltway meatgrinder is a collosal expense, a half-assed solution that maybe fits some of the original requirements (sorta), and is implemented 5 different ways by 10 different groups that refuse to abdicate authority to any other party involved. No one actually owns this "thing" so it is mismanaged and ineffectual.
And this also assumes a great many things; That these nebulous ideas actually fix the crisis, that the mandates are are legal or appropriate, and that some whacko didnt hijack the whole thing for some completely unintended or unforseen political agenda.
And what's even better is that the next administration comes in and uproots half of this "thing" (or more), adding to the waste of time, sweat and money.
Two things I tell my 9 year-old son; "Dont make decisions when you're angry." and "If you dont have time to do it right the first time, you arent going to have time to fix it.", and he actually gets it. Apparently my 9 year old is able to wrap his head around these simple concepts far better than politicians.