I based my post on the overwhelming evidence of every study on the subject that has ever been done.
I already provided the name of one world-renown and respected economist who pointed out that you are not wholly correct (and honestly, not wholly incorrect either). His name was Milton Friedman. Below are links to him giving a lecture on this very subject. (A lecture where he gives conclusions based on his many studies of economics, labor, and the workforce...)
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Another very well respected economist disagrees, again at least in part. His name is Thomas Sowell. He has also conducted many economic studies and evaluated economic models that disagree with several of your premises. Here are links to him speaking about his conclusions :
Interview 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Interview 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So no, not every study agrees. Not every economist agrees. But, like this administration as mastered, if you tell the lie often enough a lack wit populace will most likely start to believe you. I challenge you to read the studies from these individuals and consider their findings before speaking the lie again.
First, you assume that every immigrant has a job, which is false.
Second, you assume that there's no one else to take the jobs, which is false.(I will concede not all of them will get filled.)
Third, you assume that any impact that would occur (and I concede that there would be some) would be across the entire nation, which is false.
Fourth, you assume that I am a Trump fan, and that's about as far from the truth as you can imagine.
And fifth, you assume I support a plan to deport everyone. I dont, if for no other reason than because I think it's unrealistic. I just support closing the damn border so the issue doesnt continue to spiral into a much more major one. (See above, about immigrants and a welfare state.)
No, I will make you face the reality in the opposite direction - if you deport the current 11 million odd immigrants, you'll put pretty much the ENTIRE 350 Americans out of work. Every employed American owes his job to those immigrants.
I think perhaps you should read my whole post, and the others in this thread. I do NOT believe in a borderless paradigm for exactly the lack of respect you describe. I have a right to my property and to defend the state of that property from anyone that has no regard for the value I place in it, or the state I choose to keep it in.
I've seen the same kinds of studies. The first one McLaren suggests that for every 1 immigrant, 1.2 jobs are created. Carry that to an extreme. Would you suggest then that if 100 Million immigrants were to enter the US in a given year that there would suddenly be 20 million vacant jobs? No, of course not. The system is a balancing act, and there's a tipping point no matter which one statistic you're trying to prop up.
Milton Freidman, who was considered one of the greatest conservative economic minds of our time. He also agreed that immigration was a good thing when all else remains equal. But if you couple immigration with a welfare state, the benefits are overcome by the costs to society. He argued that immigration in a welfare state was only good if the immigration remained illegal and the immigrants not granted any of the benefits granted those of legal residents.
If he was talking about people then it's ok if I shit in his yard?
Your argument is a straw man and inherently flawed because you assume someone said "dont ever touch my shit! ever! no matter what!!". Being respectful of the property of another person does not preclude interaction with that property without permission. If I see someone spray painting your house I will jump the fence and chase them off. If I see that you left your car lights on I will check to see if your window is open or door unlocked so I can try to turn them off for you. That is being a good respectful neighbor, and I would fully hope you would do the same for me.
If illegal immigration by entering the country were ensuring unemployment didnt rise, crime didnt rise, national debt didnt rise, and made neighborhoods they take up residence in generally more pleasant places to be you wouldn't hear complaints. But you cant be intellectually honest and argue that any of those are actually the case. Quite the opposite is happening no matter what you'd like think and the quality of life in the most effected regions is falling, not rising. In that regard the analogy is somewhat apt. Just because he has a pool doesn't mean you have a right to use it, let alone jump the fence and take a shit in it and expect him to thank you for it.
And it doesnt have anything to do with race. I dont particularly care if property values and the aesthetics of an area are declining because illegal immigrants moved in, or it's cracker white nutty fucking rednecks from Louisiana or something. I dont care if the personality changes to that of a Hispanic culture or an Appalachian one. Neither is the culture I moved to a place to be a part of, and I shouldnt be expected to thank you, much less pay for you to erase what I do like.
I have this crazy idea that we're all citizens of Earth, and all policies that suggest which patch of dirt you're allowed to stand on, and for how long, are fundamentally evil and racist.
I bet if I let my dog shit on your lawn every day you'd change your tune in a big fucking hurry.
I actually have no arguments with what you've said, whatsoever.
It is, in fact, a perfect demonstration that it is most appropriately the role of a parent to teach the child, beyond just manners and moral foundations, and is not appropriate to even consider the notion that the state must teach, or should I instead say train our kids.
The parents whoms kids you kicked out also want an education for their kids.
No, they dont. And that's the god damn problem. They dont want shit for their kids. They laugh when the kids are belligerent assholes. They encourage them to be bullies. They allow them to show disrespect. They teach them to protest every god damn thing under the sun, and to shift any and all possible blame for any situation they find themselves in to some other evil, imagined or otherwise, and give them no understanding at all about fixing the god damn problem themselves.
So it is the parents fault if kids don't "integrate", get no education end up in crimes and jail? Can't be as you obviously think it is the kids fault? Or is it the teachers fault? Or the fault of idiots like you?
It is the parent's fault. Entirely the parent's fault. It is not the state's responsibility to raise well-mannered kids. The lack of education stems very first from the lack of value parent's place in education. At the worst school in the country, a child with a parent who emphasizes education will receive a usable education. Better still, a parent who does not assume that education ends in a classroom will further that education at home, even if its as simple as instilling a habit in a child to look up a word they dont know in the god damn dictionary. I can blame the child for bad behavior right up to the point that the realization sinks in that the parent didn't properly discourage bad behavior. I will give a certain degree of leeway in the case of systemically cancerous environments like the inner cities, because the child is bombarded by bad influences. But at that point I place the remainder of the blame on the state which has fed the cancer at every turn with well-meaning but disastrous policies.
If kids can't behave and sit quiet, put them into sports, lots of sports. Probably in a martial arts class, too! Prevent them from drinking coke and coffee and tea.
I agree! absolutely! The god damn PARENTS should do exactly this ! I do! My kids have been in competitive travel hockey since age 6. (Their idea, btw, so dont start with the parent living vicariously thru the kid, over aggressive sports bullshit.) We've spent a fortune keeping them in the programs, flying them out of state for tournaments and driving them to thousands of practices and games. We invested in them. They have summer jobs. They have chores they must complete every week or their cellphone just magically stops working, or their car just magically lost it's wheels. They have learned the joys of success in being competitive, and they pain of failing to live up to their responsibilities. This is MY job.
Not a teacher!
Not a school administrator!
Not the fucking mayor or some other elected jackass!
It is not the responsibility of every taxpayer to even pay for a person to direct kids to those activities, let alone pay for the activities!
This is MY job, as it is the job of every parent.
Get a damn clue what is wrong with them. And when you are in a teaching position, you god damn care for them and don't kick them out because their parents suck.
You're a fucking idiot if you think anyone is going to suggest booting a kid out of school for occasionally talking in class, or for sometimes doing stupid shit. Every kid no matter how well behaved does that. I'm obviously talking about the kid who is constanatly disruptive, constantly fails to perform, and refuses any assistance to modify behavior or achieve. Yes, ultimately it's the parent's fault. Yes, ultimately its the kid who suffers. But quite frankly, better that kid who is being a jackass than every kid around him who is attempting to get something out of their education.
You are an idiot and I hope you never have kids or are someone caring for other peoples kids.
I am a parent, and I have two very well-behaved, happy, healt
Requiring a standard of behavior at school and punishing failure to meet it, and teaching morality are two entirely different scenarios. One expects the child to apply manners he learns at home or to quickly learn the standards and meet them. The other disregards what the child learns at home as irrelevant and attempts to tell them how to think on particular subjects.
My mother is a great example of how this goes off the rails. She is fully a proponent of the schools telling the kids how to think on a broad array of subjects, particularly social ones. Right up to the point that someone tells her kid something that counters what she thinks. It might simply be the economics of supply and demand and how that applies to the quality of goods. If it doesnt meet her "everyone should have everything they need and value should not be a factor" rainbows and unicorns thinking, then she doesn't want it taught. How the fuck do you teach kids the consequences of not budgeting, of saving, or staying within your means, of avoiding a spiral of buying shit just to impress your neighbors or because you think it'll impress people and get your friends if you cant teach real world economics?
In school, you teach the kids that if they are disruptive there are consequences. You tell them to sit down, shut up, do the work, and you grade them according to the quality of the work they produce. If they repeatedly prove they are incapable of doing that, you kicked them out and get them right the fuck out of the way of the kids who want an education. Or at least out of the way of the kids whose parents want them to have an education. Those would be the parents who have chosen to teach their children how to be good members of society.
When the kids fail to be decent human beings, you hold them accountable. But you also hold the parents accountable. When a mom gets to have a chat with social services the first couple of times their kid ends up in deep shit maybe they will start to care. When they have to spend a weekend in jail when their kid gets arrested, maybe they will make whatever adjustments are needed to make sure that kid doesn't keep doing shit to get arrested. Maybe, in the inner cities when this is so much more deeply a problem, if the parents no longer qualify for social programs like welfare or WIC when their kids are known to be gang members or delinquents, maybe those parents will do something about their kid's behavior.
Holding people's hands and patting them on the head and telling them they are special and that they should never ever feel offended by anything anyone ever says has proven to be a disastrously failed process to develop well-mannered citizens. It's producing spoiled fucking brats. And you can bet if there are education programs approved and implemented by the political correctness zealots in government, that's exactly the process they will continue. Because god knows we cant tell people to sit down, shut the fuck up, pay attention, or get the fuck out. That might bruise their little psyches.
I will say that there should be a much greater emphasis on history, and a reinforcement that it tends to repeat itself. Because we're certainly falling victims to patterns that have proved horrible in the past, over and over again both over vast periods of time and in the past 50-100 years. But I have zero faith anymore that the current base of teachers or administrators are willing to teach history in any light other than "White men are greedy and evil, and here's another story that demonstrates it.".
My child is living pretty damn well, and doing so in enormous part due to the technological advances over the last 200 years. My kid could well have died from smallpox or another of thousands of ailments or conditions that killed millions of kids world wide before industrialization and commercialization. So before you decry all that has come before as evil, perhaps consider that it has set a stage making it possible for mankind to [i]continue[/] technological evolution, and find new, better, cleaner, cheaper and easier ways to live.
Of course 500 years from now I'm sure some other self-righteous self-appointed Earth savior will be yelling at my decedents because they use that is killing the planet and putting all their grandchildren at risk of genocide. That is of course if the nearly inevitable planet-killing asteroid or plague or super-volcano or world war hasn't beaten them to it.
In the end its much like a wise man once said:
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet will be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance. - George Carlin
That was kinda my point. Relying on one source virtually guarantees you receive biased information, even from the most respectable and "unbiased" source.
There are those, certainly. But there are still a few people who actually read. Who research. Who examine the positions on all sides and try to determine the truth that lies somewhere in the middle for themselves rather than regurgitating something they were fed. It's those people who are looking around at all the front-running candidates right now and wondering what in the holy hell is going on.
Unfortunately it seems an appreciable number of US youth do get their political information from FB, Twitter and other such apps. They get a snarky 200-ish character post about an important issue and act as if they are actually informed. What's worse, they act on it with passion, and charge off to the voting booth or a protest or a boycott.
When deciding in hindsight if a particular act under a particular set of circumstances was appropriate, and if it will be allowed as an on-going policy position, then the judges are where we must turn.
It's all well and good that the Obama administration's lawyers and appointed officials, and law enforcement at a more local level (guided by the FBI) believe that they have the authority to do a thing to the people without due process. It's another for the courts to uphold it.
While I understand what you're getting at, for the conversation at hand we are talking about whether this process will continue to be allowed. Yes, the FBI should have known it wasnt ok. Yes, they likely knew that they were treading a fine line and chose to pursue it anyway. Yes, local law enforcement should have known better. Yes, the judges giving warrants should have asked for more clarity on where the evidence supporting a warrant came from. Every individual should have applied more diligence. But they didnt, and now we must rely on the courts and not the same bureaucrats to set things straight.
Except the only thing which should be visible in transit is the IP address, size, and time.
How is that unlike what is written on an envelope and dropped in a mailbox? Why would the Constitution be upheld in the use of one but not the other? Aside from the obvious answer that it's because government wants to take advantage of the laziness and ignorance of the citizens, that is.
The people who protect the police, empower the police, arm the police, militarize the police, set the policies of the police, and cede authority to federal police, are.
Hate to tell you this, but when you send an email, connect to a website, make a cell call, you are handing an entity a message, saying "Please deliver this request to XYZ and bring the reply back to be at ZYX.". The only difference is the technology that is in use.
Your argument is about as valid as if you were to say that none of the protections for freedom of movement across the US apply because you're using a car instead of a horse.
When opinion trumps the Constitution then the Constitution is no longer being upheld and protected by the government servants sworn to do precisely that.
The Constitution was deliberately crafted to limit what the government may do to the people without due process. Your argument here, is that because those in government who have power think its ok to weild that power against the people, then it is inherently ok for those with power to weild it against the people. That is precisely the thing that the Constitution was built to protect against, and anyone unwilling to see that or to do the mental gymnastics necessary to dismiss it is intellectually lazy, intellectually dishonest or morally corrupt.
The opinions of any individual bureaucrat isnt even relevant. What is relevant is the opinion of the judges in the courts. These days I dont have a hell of a lot of faith in them either, since so many are activist judges. However, they do get it right on occasion, and more than a couple have found Stingray to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-stingray-court-decision-20160331-story.html)
Slashdot Mirror
I based my post on the overwhelming evidence of every study on the subject that has ever been done.
I already provided the name of one world-renown and respected economist who pointed out that you are not wholly correct (and honestly, not wholly incorrect either). His name was Milton Friedman. Below are links to him giving a lecture on this very subject. (A lecture where he gives conclusions based on his many studies of economics, labor, and the workforce...)
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Another very well respected economist disagrees, again at least in part. His name is Thomas Sowell. He has also conducted many economic studies and evaluated economic models that disagree with several of your premises. Here are links to him speaking about his conclusions :
Interview 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Interview 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So no, not every study agrees. Not every economist agrees. But, like this administration as mastered, if you tell the lie often enough a lack wit populace will most likely start to believe you. I challenge you to read the studies from these individuals and consider their findings before speaking the lie again.
First, you assume that every immigrant has a job, which is false.
Second, you assume that there's no one else to take the jobs, which is false.(I will concede not all of them will get filled.)
Third, you assume that any impact that would occur (and I concede that there would be some) would be across the entire nation, which is false.
Fourth, you assume that I am a Trump fan, and that's about as far from the truth as you can imagine.
And fifth, you assume I support a plan to deport everyone. I dont, if for no other reason than because I think it's unrealistic. I just support closing the damn border so the issue doesnt continue to spiral into a much more major one. (See above, about immigrants and a welfare state.)
No, I will make you face the reality in the opposite direction - if you deport the current 11 million odd immigrants, you'll put pretty much the ENTIRE 350 Americans out of work. Every employed American owes his job to those immigrants.
Logical evidence please.
I think perhaps you should read my whole post, and the others in this thread. I do NOT believe in a borderless paradigm for exactly the lack of respect you describe. I have a right to my property and to defend the state of that property from anyone that has no regard for the value I place in it, or the state I choose to keep it in.
I've seen the same kinds of studies. The first one McLaren suggests that for every 1 immigrant, 1.2 jobs are created. Carry that to an extreme. Would you suggest then that if 100 Million immigrants were to enter the US in a given year that there would suddenly be 20 million vacant jobs? No, of course not. The system is a balancing act, and there's a tipping point no matter which one statistic you're trying to prop up.
Milton Freidman, who was considered one of the greatest conservative economic minds of our time. He also agreed that immigration was a good thing when all else remains equal. But if you couple immigration with a welfare state, the benefits are overcome by the costs to society. He argued that immigration in a welfare state was only good if the immigration remained illegal and the immigrants not granted any of the benefits granted those of legal residents.
If he was talking about people then it's ok if I shit in his yard?
Your argument is a straw man and inherently flawed because you assume someone said "dont ever touch my shit! ever! no matter what!!". Being respectful of the property of another person does not preclude interaction with that property without permission. If I see someone spray painting your house I will jump the fence and chase them off. If I see that you left your car lights on I will check to see if your window is open or door unlocked so I can try to turn them off for you. That is being a good respectful neighbor, and I would fully hope you would do the same for me.
If illegal immigration by entering the country were ensuring unemployment didnt rise, crime didnt rise, national debt didnt rise, and made neighborhoods they take up residence in generally more pleasant places to be you wouldn't hear complaints. But you cant be intellectually honest and argue that any of those are actually the case. Quite the opposite is happening no matter what you'd like think and the quality of life in the most effected regions is falling, not rising. In that regard the analogy is somewhat apt. Just because he has a pool doesn't mean you have a right to use it, let alone jump the fence and take a shit in it and expect him to thank you for it.
And it doesnt have anything to do with race. I dont particularly care if property values and the aesthetics of an area are declining because illegal immigrants moved in, or it's cracker white nutty fucking rednecks from Louisiana or something. I dont care if the personality changes to that of a Hispanic culture or an Appalachian one. Neither is the culture I moved to a place to be a part of, and I shouldnt be expected to thank you, much less pay for you to erase what I do like.
I have this crazy idea that we're all citizens of Earth, and all policies that suggest which patch of dirt you're allowed to stand on, and for how long, are fundamentally evil and racist.
I bet if I let my dog shit on your lawn every day you'd change your tune in a big fucking hurry.
Sounds pretty much exactly like the last two elections, doesn't it?
I actually have no arguments with what you've said, whatsoever.
It is, in fact, a perfect demonstration that it is most appropriately the role of a parent to teach the child, beyond just manners and moral foundations, and is not appropriate to even consider the notion that the state must teach, or should I instead say train our kids.
The parents whoms kids you kicked out also want an education for their kids.
No, they dont. And that's the god damn problem. They dont want shit for their kids. They laugh when the kids are belligerent assholes. They encourage them to be bullies. They allow them to show disrespect. They teach them to protest every god damn thing under the sun, and to shift any and all possible blame for any situation they find themselves in to some other evil, imagined or otherwise, and give them no understanding at all about fixing the god damn problem themselves.
So it is the parents fault if kids don't "integrate", get no education end up in crimes and jail? Can't be as you obviously think it is the kids fault? Or is it the teachers fault? Or the fault of idiots like you?
It is the parent's fault. Entirely the parent's fault. It is not the state's responsibility to raise well-mannered kids. The lack of education stems very first from the lack of value parent's place in education. At the worst school in the country, a child with a parent who emphasizes education will receive a usable education. Better still, a parent who does not assume that education ends in a classroom will further that education at home, even if its as simple as instilling a habit in a child to look up a word they dont know in the god damn dictionary. I can blame the child for bad behavior right up to the point that the realization sinks in that the parent didn't properly discourage bad behavior. I will give a certain degree of leeway in the case of systemically cancerous environments like the inner cities, because the child is bombarded by bad influences. But at that point I place the remainder of the blame on the state which has fed the cancer at every turn with well-meaning but disastrous policies.
If kids can't behave and sit quiet, put them into sports, lots of sports. Probably in a martial arts class, too! Prevent them from drinking coke and coffee and tea.
I agree! absolutely! The god damn PARENTS should do exactly this ! I do! My kids have been in competitive travel hockey since age 6. (Their idea, btw, so dont start with the parent living vicariously thru the kid, over aggressive sports bullshit.) We've spent a fortune keeping them in the programs, flying them out of state for tournaments and driving them to thousands of practices and games. We invested in them. They have summer jobs. They have chores they must complete every week or their cellphone just magically stops working, or their car just magically lost it's wheels. They have learned the joys of success in being competitive, and they pain of failing to live up to their responsibilities. This is MY job.
Not a teacher!
Not a school administrator!
Not the fucking mayor or some other elected jackass!
It is not the responsibility of every taxpayer to even pay for a person to direct kids to those activities, let alone pay for the activities!
This is MY job, as it is the job of every parent.
Get a damn clue what is wrong with them. And when you are in a teaching position, you god damn care for them and don't kick them out because their parents suck.
You're a fucking idiot if you think anyone is going to suggest booting a kid out of school for occasionally talking in class, or for sometimes doing stupid shit. Every kid no matter how well behaved does that. I'm obviously talking about the kid who is constanatly disruptive, constantly fails to perform, and refuses any assistance to modify behavior or achieve. Yes, ultimately it's the parent's fault. Yes, ultimately its the kid who suffers. But quite frankly, better that kid who is being a jackass than every kid around him who is attempting to get something out of their education.
You are an idiot and I hope you never have kids or are someone caring for other peoples kids.
I am a parent, and I have two very well-behaved, happy, healt
Requiring a standard of behavior at school and punishing failure to meet it, and teaching morality are two entirely different scenarios. One expects the child to apply manners he learns at home or to quickly learn the standards and meet them. The other disregards what the child learns at home as irrelevant and attempts to tell them how to think on particular subjects.
My mother is a great example of how this goes off the rails. She is fully a proponent of the schools telling the kids how to think on a broad array of subjects, particularly social ones. Right up to the point that someone tells her kid something that counters what she thinks. It might simply be the economics of supply and demand and how that applies to the quality of goods. If it doesnt meet her "everyone should have everything they need and value should not be a factor" rainbows and unicorns thinking, then she doesn't want it taught. How the fuck do you teach kids the consequences of not budgeting, of saving, or staying within your means, of avoiding a spiral of buying shit just to impress your neighbors or because you think it'll impress people and get your friends if you cant teach real world economics?
You dont draw a line at all.
In school, you teach the kids that if they are disruptive there are consequences. You tell them to sit down, shut up, do the work, and you grade them according to the quality of the work they produce. If they repeatedly prove they are incapable of doing that, you kicked them out and get them right the fuck out of the way of the kids who want an education. Or at least out of the way of the kids whose parents want them to have an education. Those would be the parents who have chosen to teach their children how to be good members of society.
When the kids fail to be decent human beings, you hold them accountable. But you also hold the parents accountable. When a mom gets to have a chat with social services the first couple of times their kid ends up in deep shit maybe they will start to care. When they have to spend a weekend in jail when their kid gets arrested, maybe they will make whatever adjustments are needed to make sure that kid doesn't keep doing shit to get arrested. Maybe, in the inner cities when this is so much more deeply a problem, if the parents no longer qualify for social programs like welfare or WIC when their kids are known to be gang members or delinquents, maybe those parents will do something about their kid's behavior.
Holding people's hands and patting them on the head and telling them they are special and that they should never ever feel offended by anything anyone ever says has proven to be a disastrously failed process to develop well-mannered citizens. It's producing spoiled fucking brats. And you can bet if there are education programs approved and implemented by the political correctness zealots in government, that's exactly the process they will continue. Because god knows we cant tell people to sit down, shut the fuck up, pay attention, or get the fuck out. That might bruise their little psyches.
I will say that there should be a much greater emphasis on history, and a reinforcement that it tends to repeat itself. Because we're certainly falling victims to patterns that have proved horrible in the past, over and over again both over vast periods of time and in the past 50-100 years. But I have zero faith anymore that the current base of teachers or administrators are willing to teach history in any light other than "White men are greedy and evil, and here's another story that demonstrates it.".
And yet you engaged, because apparently that's the level you're comfortable debating at.
My child is living pretty damn well, and doing so in enormous part due to the technological advances over the last 200 years. My kid could well have died from smallpox or another of thousands of ailments or conditions that killed millions of kids world wide before industrialization and commercialization. So before you decry all that has come before as evil, perhaps consider that it has set a stage making it possible for mankind to [i]continue[/] technological evolution, and find new, better, cleaner, cheaper and easier ways to live.
Of course 500 years from now I'm sure some other self-righteous self-appointed Earth savior will be yelling at my decedents because they use that is killing the planet and putting all their grandchildren at risk of genocide. That is of course if the nearly inevitable planet-killing asteroid or plague or super-volcano or world war hasn't beaten them to it.
In the end its much like a wise man once said:
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet will be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance. - George Carlin
That was kinda my point. Relying on one source virtually guarantees you receive biased information, even from the most respectable and "unbiased" source.
There are those, certainly. But there are still a few people who actually read. Who research. Who examine the positions on all sides and try to determine the truth that lies somewhere in the middle for themselves rather than regurgitating something they were fed. It's those people who are looking around at all the front-running candidates right now and wondering what in the holy hell is going on.
Unfortunately it seems an appreciable number of US youth do get their political information from FB, Twitter and other such apps. They get a snarky 200-ish character post about an important issue and act as if they are actually informed. What's worse, they act on it with passion, and charge off to the voting booth or a protest or a boycott.
When deciding in hindsight if a particular act under a particular set of circumstances was appropriate, and if it will be allowed as an on-going policy position, then the judges are where we must turn.
It's all well and good that the Obama administration's lawyers and appointed officials, and law enforcement at a more local level (guided by the FBI) believe that they have the authority to do a thing to the people without due process. It's another for the courts to uphold it.
While I understand what you're getting at, for the conversation at hand we are talking about whether this process will continue to be allowed. Yes, the FBI should have known it wasnt ok. Yes, they likely knew that they were treading a fine line and chose to pursue it anyway. Yes, local law enforcement should have known better. Yes, the judges giving warrants should have asked for more clarity on where the evidence supporting a warrant came from. Every individual should have applied more diligence. But they didnt, and now we must rely on the courts and not the same bureaucrats to set things straight.
Sweet. So they legalized identity theft?
Except the only thing which should be visible in transit is the IP address, size, and time.
How is that unlike what is written on an envelope and dropped in a mailbox? Why would the Constitution be upheld in the use of one but not the other? Aside from the obvious answer that it's because government wants to take advantage of the laziness and ignorance of the citizens, that is.
The people who protect the police, empower the police, arm the police, militarize the police, set the policies of the police, and cede authority to federal police, are.
Quit electing them.
Hate to tell you this, but when you send an email, connect to a website, make a cell call, you are handing an entity a message, saying "Please deliver this request to XYZ and bring the reply back to be at ZYX.". The only difference is the technology that is in use.
Your argument is about as valid as if you were to say that none of the protections for freedom of movement across the US apply because you're using a car instead of a horse.
When opinion trumps the Constitution then the Constitution is no longer being upheld and protected by the government servants sworn to do precisely that.
The Constitution was deliberately crafted to limit what the government may do to the people without due process. Your argument here, is that because those in government who have power think its ok to weild that power against the people, then it is inherently ok for those with power to weild it against the people. That is precisely the thing that the Constitution was built to protect against, and anyone unwilling to see that or to do the mental gymnastics necessary to dismiss it is intellectually lazy, intellectually dishonest or morally corrupt.
The opinions of any individual bureaucrat isnt even relevant. What is relevant is the opinion of the judges in the courts. These days I dont have a hell of a lot of faith in them either, since so many are activist judges. However, they do get it right on occasion, and more than a couple have found Stingray to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-stingray-court-decision-20160331-story.html)
See my response to the Anonymous Coward's reply above.