The US has signed and ratified both Optional Protocols, though. The first deals with child soldiers, and the second with the sales of children and child prostitution and pornography.
The US gave the proper six-months' notice before withdrawing from the ABM Treaty.
Verification of US facilities under the CWC was stalled early on due to a lack of legislation and infighting amongst the Departments of State and Commerce. Since then, inspection of industrial sites and destruction facilities has commenced. The US won't make the 2012 deadline for destruction of its stockpile (the Defense Department has said that it will finish in the 2021-2023 timeframe), but this was due more to lawsuits than any desire to hold onto the inventory. The last two sites, the Blue Grass and Pueblo Chemical Depots, are expected to begin destruction of their inventories in the next few years as their disposal facilities come online.
The US has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty entirely because the Korean DMZ is heavily mined in part as a deterrence against invasion from the North. Maybe once things calm down there (if ever), it will be possible to remove the minefields and sign the treaty. In any case, not signing it means that the US is not in violation of it.
The European Union is a very different thing. The UK is an independent, self-governing state, with its own laws, foreign policy, and military forces. It has agreed by treaty to go along with certain decisions of the EU legislative and judicial bodies. No nation has yet attempted to secede from the EU so it's an unsettled matter how the EU courts would see it, but refusal to adhere to the various treaty obligations could theoretically force expulsion, a situation not found in the US.
For that matter, Scotland is also a different situation. Scotland is a country within the United Kingdom. Its legal system is in many ways separate from England's. About the only thing that Scotland doesn't have is armed forces, but the Scottish government does occasionally speak out on international matters separate from London. It's been creeping towards independence for some time now, though support has fallen with the recent economic situation. I would not be surprised at all to see a Scottish ambassador to the UN seated in my lifetime.
You need not remind me of the Declaration of Independence. However, it has no legal, binding authority. It is a document whose purpose is explanatory and inspirational in nature. It may contain truths, but the Constitution does not bow to it in a legal sense.
I suppose there's an argument for the Constitution being a contract, but it comes (especially since the Civil War) with escalating responses up to and including the threat of force if there is an attempt to violate it.
There is a mechanism to modify that contract, and if a party to that contract can get three-fourths of all of the parties to agree to it, the modification goes into place. Absent that, the prevailing opinion of the Supreme Court holds, though a state that wishes to secede can certainly pass articles of secession and then take that fight to the Supreme Court to see if they can change its doctrine.
West Virginia didn't secede from the Union. West Virginia was formed from Virginia, the rules for which are presented in Article IV, Section III:
"New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state... without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress."
The difference between Texas seceding from the Union and West Virginia seceding from Virginia is that there is a mechanism. The Court found in a split decision that it was constitutional in Virginia v. West Virginia. The Wheeling Conventions asserted that the government of Virginia had effectively removed themselves through the treasonous act of secession, and thus constructed a new government that was recognized by Congress and the President. The Restored Government went on to pass a measure allowing for the secession of West Virginia pending the approval of voters in the area that would become West Virginia. That election succeeded, the agreements between the Restored Government of Virginia and what would become the government of Virginia were sent to Congress, which approved it pending proclamation from the president, and Lincoln provided that.
As it happened mid-war, it was going to be a bit ugly no matter what, and even Lincoln questioned the constitutionality of the action. But being mid-war, sometimes such concerns give way to practicalities, and so Lincoln saw it through.
In short, the recognized government of Virginia consented to the secession by the proposed West Virginia, and it was confirmed by Congress as required.
I'm not shorting Intel's capabilities, but the IEEE has some solid people in it, too -- many of whom work at Intel -- and they're very capable of recognizing the potential problems with process shrinks. The issues that come about at the sizes they're discussing involve quantum tunneling effects that would (as I understand it) interfere in accurate computing. There is also doubt that transistors can be made to work at all at sizes below 16nm because the mechanisms that might deal with quantum tunneling may bring about other deleterious effects that may be even more difficult to solve.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, or that Intel is too optimistic. They know a lot more about it than I do. But these kinds of things do slip, and it's hard to predict advances of this sort so many years down the road.
The IEEE figures that semiconductor tech will be at the 11nm level around 2022. Intel and Nvidia both claim that they'll be significantly further along the path than the IEEE's roadmap. Maybe they're right, and I hope they are, but there are some very significant problems that appear as the process shrinks to that level.
I wouldn't say that they had no trouble. There was significant doubt at a few points that a complete victory could be won. A lack of industry to match the North, the loss of some key generals, and the South's utter inability to prevent a naval blockade contributed significantly to the victory of Union forces.
I didn't say that secession was illegal. I said that the Supreme Court has determined that there is no allowance under the Constitution for a state to secede.
Judges do not casually overrule Supreme Court precedent. The court system relies heavily on precedent, some of it going back to English law from prior to the existence of the United States. Within the framework of the Constitution, can you explain why the majority was wrong in Texas v. White?
Texas cannot unilaterally divide into five states. The agreement allowed for Texas to be divided in order to counter the addition of states above the Missouri Compromise line that could alter the balance of power between slave and non-slave states. This likely would have been done to get Southern members of Congress to back the addition of such new states.
The words of the Supreme Court justices are not sacred, as they can (and certainly do) change their views on things. However, doing so is not something undertaken lightly, especially when it has the opportunity to cause significant upheaval, and the secession of a state falls squarely into that category.
As to your "facts":
1. The Constitution altered the form of government. It did not dissolve the union. After the first nine states adopted it, it became the form of government for those nine. The remaining four states could have rejected it and gone off on their own, but eventually did ratify the Constitution, and have always been considered to have been part of the United States during the gap.
2. The sovereignty of the individual states is limited. They have a certain amount of internal sovereignty, but have no external sovereignty. They may not make treaties, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, or coin money, for example. The limitations are all laid out in Article I, Section 10.
3. Nothing in the Constitution implies that they may leave. There is an implication that they may not leave in that rules are outlines for admission of a new state, but not for secession of an existing state or part thereof.
I tend to think of "RINOs" as those that can actually think for themselves. I'm more likely to back one of them or a Blue Dog Democrat over someone that walks the party line.
Article I, Section 9, allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it." It's not exactly martial law, but it would allow Congress to grant a great deal of power to government agencies to undertake actions normally not allowed. It will depend on how the Supreme Court interprets the "Rebellion or Invasion" phrasing. If it's a group of Americans undertaking an action that puts significant lives at risk (messing with SCADA networks, targeting significant servers connected over the Internet, etc.), that could be interpreted as rebellion sufficient to warrant such action, even if it's by a small group of people. Similar action undertaken from outside of the country could be termed an invasion, even though no foreign hostile sets foot on US soil. But there may be significant hesitation to back this if there's evidence that it's a group of five to ten people in either case.
In order to secede, you'd have to get a constitutional amendment passed. The Supreme Court's decision in Texas v. White laid out in no uncertain terms that the Constitution allows only joining the union, and does not allow for leaving it. From their decision (edited somewhat and emphasis added):
The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations.... And when these Articles [of Confederation] were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?
But the perpetuity and indissolubility of the Union by no means implies the loss of distinct and individual existence, or of the right of self-government, by the States.... And we have already had occasion to remark at this term that
the people of each State compose a State, having its own government, and endowed with all the functions essential to separate and independent existence,
and that, "without the States in union, there could be no such political body as the United States." Not only, therefore, can there be no loss of separate and independent autonomy to the States through their union under the Constitution, but it may be not unreasonably said that the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.
When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State.
BOINC automatically goes idle when the notebook goes to battery under both Windows and Linux, unless one has changed the default configuration. I run it on my notebook, and have seen this often when unplugging it.
So where do they compete, then? I realize that they may not have a right to compete in any specific event, especially those privately financed, but if you set aside competitions for those with genetic abnormalities, you risk reducing it to a freak show. The Special Olympics had to be very careful in how they approached competition for the disabled to avoid that, but I suspect this would be even more difficult.
Almost by definition, athletes capable of qualifying for competitions like this are exceptional human specimens. It's not just their focused training regimen that allows them to get to this level, but I expect in most cases some very good genetics are assisting.
If you did that, in most unaugmented sports, you'd get an overwhelming domination by men. There are women who can outbuff most men, but they are by far the exception, or else the gender split in athletics wouldn't exist.
I'd like to see servers that allow for older content, especially in light of events like this. Blizzard could start new servers that are further back in the storyline, allowing players old and new to (re-)experience what it was like before, and then put the servers on a storyline rotation, where every six months or so the storyline is advanced. In order to simplify the maintenance, new realms would all come up at the same time, and would thus advance at the same points.
There would probably have to be some balancing, of course, but level caps could still be enforced specific to the content.
I'm not about to try playing against even a Korean child. I've seen some of the videos. It seems like about the time my screen finishes loading, their first rush of a thousand zerglings will hit. Those games just move too fast.
I added in information about the timing of the downgrading of storms. Before I could even gather up all of the information for the prior year, my changes had been reverted, as though I had to have all of the information for every year prior to adding it for a single year.
If that's how it's intended to work -- someone who wants to make a change must make the change across all articles simultaneously instead of setting an example for others to follow, or even just getting to it in a reasonably small timeframe -- something is broken.
A couple of years ago, I tried to update the then-current Atlantic hurricane season page with information on when hurricanes had been downgraded. I felt this would be useful as we could already see the rate at which a storm grew, and had some interested in its rate of decline. Within a short period of time, the changes had been reverted on the basis that none of the other pages had that, so it shouldn't be in that one, either. Nevermind that I simply hadn't had time to edit any of the others -- they were reverted without discussion. I was frustrated enough by the event that I didn't bother arguing the point. I have since edited a few other articles, mostly for grammar or clarity, but I'm still wary of most of the admins wandering by and deciding that my edits aren't up to snuff.
Airspaces Class A through D are always controlled. If you're a pilot in Class D airspace around a small airport, you must have radio contact unless your radio is out, and even then you're expected to follow light gun signals unless you absolutely cannot do so. If you're coming into a very busy airport (Class B), you're not likely to be told to follow someone in. TraCon or the tower (depending on exact location) will provide separation, calling for altitudes and airspeeds.
A pilot of a UAV could be provided with a helmet tied into a moving camera, or else a suite of cameras whose images are stitched together, and thus be able to see that approaching Cessna. It's not that hard to do, especially when you combine modern awareness systems into the mix. I fly a Cessna 172 G1000, and I know where aircraft are around me most of the time. It can get a little shaky down on the deck because radar coverage isn't always as good (depending on where the radar itself is located), but above a few hundred feet AGL in SoCal and its hilly and mountainous terrain, I'm usually aware of every plane in the surrounding 15 miles, with details including its altitude relative to me and its heading, both displayed on the screen. Given the summer haze, it's a very nice feeling to be looking for traffic and yet know that the other guy is likely to miss you by two miles even when you're at the same altitude.
Not always. In heavily-congested areas, the WiFi capabilities offload capacity requirements from the towers. We had a Verizon rep out not long ago who mentioned that after a recent moderate quake in SoCal (magnitude 5.5 in Chino Hills), voice demand shot up to 150% of capacity, and data demand reached almost to capacity. The more of that which goes somewhere other than the towers in the first place, the better off the network will be in an emergency.
(Frankly, the idea that a cell network would freeze up on a quake like that kind of frightens me. When something serious hits -- somewhere in the range of 6.7 or above -- no one will be able to talk to anyone.)
I think you're referring to the criminal child neglect charges against Jerri Gray, whose son Alexander Draper reached a weight of 550 pounds by age 14. No results have come of that case, but the case is still pending. She's not the first parent to be accused of child abuse in this fashion, but no other parents have served jail time if they were convicted.
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The US has signed and ratified both Optional Protocols, though. The first deals with child soldiers, and the second with the sales of children and child prostitution and pornography.
The US gave the proper six-months' notice before withdrawing from the ABM Treaty.
Verification of US facilities under the CWC was stalled early on due to a lack of legislation and infighting amongst the Departments of State and Commerce. Since then, inspection of industrial sites and destruction facilities has commenced. The US won't make the 2012 deadline for destruction of its stockpile (the Defense Department has said that it will finish in the 2021-2023 timeframe), but this was due more to lawsuits than any desire to hold onto the inventory. The last two sites, the Blue Grass and Pueblo Chemical Depots, are expected to begin destruction of their inventories in the next few years as their disposal facilities come online.
The US has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty entirely because the Korean DMZ is heavily mined in part as a deterrence against invasion from the North. Maybe once things calm down there (if ever), it will be possible to remove the minefields and sign the treaty. In any case, not signing it means that the US is not in violation of it.
The European Union is a very different thing. The UK is an independent, self-governing state, with its own laws, foreign policy, and military forces. It has agreed by treaty to go along with certain decisions of the EU legislative and judicial bodies. No nation has yet attempted to secede from the EU so it's an unsettled matter how the EU courts would see it, but refusal to adhere to the various treaty obligations could theoretically force expulsion, a situation not found in the US.
For that matter, Scotland is also a different situation. Scotland is a country within the United Kingdom. Its legal system is in many ways separate from England's. About the only thing that Scotland doesn't have is armed forces, but the Scottish government does occasionally speak out on international matters separate from London. It's been creeping towards independence for some time now, though support has fallen with the recent economic situation. I would not be surprised at all to see a Scottish ambassador to the UN seated in my lifetime.
You need not remind me of the Declaration of Independence. However, it has no legal, binding authority. It is a document whose purpose is explanatory and inspirational in nature. It may contain truths, but the Constitution does not bow to it in a legal sense.
I suppose there's an argument for the Constitution being a contract, but it comes (especially since the Civil War) with escalating responses up to and including the threat of force if there is an attempt to violate it.
There is a mechanism to modify that contract, and if a party to that contract can get three-fourths of all of the parties to agree to it, the modification goes into place. Absent that, the prevailing opinion of the Supreme Court holds, though a state that wishes to secede can certainly pass articles of secession and then take that fight to the Supreme Court to see if they can change its doctrine.
West Virginia didn't secede from the Union. West Virginia was formed from Virginia, the rules for which are presented in Article IV, Section III:
"New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state ... without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress."
The difference between Texas seceding from the Union and West Virginia seceding from Virginia is that there is a mechanism. The Court found in a split decision that it was constitutional in Virginia v. West Virginia. The Wheeling Conventions asserted that the government of Virginia had effectively removed themselves through the treasonous act of secession, and thus constructed a new government that was recognized by Congress and the President. The Restored Government went on to pass a measure allowing for the secession of West Virginia pending the approval of voters in the area that would become West Virginia. That election succeeded, the agreements between the Restored Government of Virginia and what would become the government of Virginia were sent to Congress, which approved it pending proclamation from the president, and Lincoln provided that.
As it happened mid-war, it was going to be a bit ugly no matter what, and even Lincoln questioned the constitutionality of the action. But being mid-war, sometimes such concerns give way to practicalities, and so Lincoln saw it through.
In short, the recognized government of Virginia consented to the secession by the proposed West Virginia, and it was confirmed by Congress as required.
I'm not shorting Intel's capabilities, but the IEEE has some solid people in it, too -- many of whom work at Intel -- and they're very capable of recognizing the potential problems with process shrinks. The issues that come about at the sizes they're discussing involve quantum tunneling effects that would (as I understand it) interfere in accurate computing. There is also doubt that transistors can be made to work at all at sizes below 16nm because the mechanisms that might deal with quantum tunneling may bring about other deleterious effects that may be even more difficult to solve.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, or that Intel is too optimistic. They know a lot more about it than I do. But these kinds of things do slip, and it's hard to predict advances of this sort so many years down the road.
The IEEE figures that semiconductor tech will be at the 11nm level around 2022. Intel and Nvidia both claim that they'll be significantly further along the path than the IEEE's roadmap. Maybe they're right, and I hope they are, but there are some very significant problems that appear as the process shrinks to that level.
I wouldn't say that they had no trouble. There was significant doubt at a few points that a complete victory could be won. A lack of industry to match the North, the loss of some key generals, and the South's utter inability to prevent a naval blockade contributed significantly to the victory of Union forces.
I didn't say that secession was illegal. I said that the Supreme Court has determined that there is no allowance under the Constitution for a state to secede.
Judges do not casually overrule Supreme Court precedent. The court system relies heavily on precedent, some of it going back to English law from prior to the existence of the United States. Within the framework of the Constitution, can you explain why the majority was wrong in Texas v. White?
Texas cannot unilaterally divide into five states. The agreement allowed for Texas to be divided in order to counter the addition of states above the Missouri Compromise line that could alter the balance of power between slave and non-slave states. This likely would have been done to get Southern members of Congress to back the addition of such new states.
The words of the Supreme Court justices are not sacred, as they can (and certainly do) change their views on things. However, doing so is not something undertaken lightly, especially when it has the opportunity to cause significant upheaval, and the secession of a state falls squarely into that category.
As to your "facts":
1. The Constitution altered the form of government. It did not dissolve the union. After the first nine states adopted it, it became the form of government for those nine. The remaining four states could have rejected it and gone off on their own, but eventually did ratify the Constitution, and have always been considered to have been part of the United States during the gap.
2. The sovereignty of the individual states is limited. They have a certain amount of internal sovereignty, but have no external sovereignty. They may not make treaties, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, or coin money, for example. The limitations are all laid out in Article I, Section 10.
3. Nothing in the Constitution implies that they may leave. There is an implication that they may not leave in that rules are outlines for admission of a new state, but not for secession of an existing state or part thereof.
I tend to think of "RINOs" as those that can actually think for themselves. I'm more likely to back one of them or a Blue Dog Democrat over someone that walks the party line.
Article I, Section 9, allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it." It's not exactly martial law, but it would allow Congress to grant a great deal of power to government agencies to undertake actions normally not allowed. It will depend on how the Supreme Court interprets the "Rebellion or Invasion" phrasing. If it's a group of Americans undertaking an action that puts significant lives at risk (messing with SCADA networks, targeting significant servers connected over the Internet, etc.), that could be interpreted as rebellion sufficient to warrant such action, even if it's by a small group of people. Similar action undertaken from outside of the country could be termed an invasion, even though no foreign hostile sets foot on US soil. But there may be significant hesitation to back this if there's evidence that it's a group of five to ten people in either case.
In order to secede, you'd have to get a constitutional amendment passed. The Supreme Court's decision in Texas v. White laid out in no uncertain terms that the Constitution allows only joining the union, and does not allow for leaving it. From their decision (edited somewhat and emphasis added):
BOINC automatically goes idle when the notebook goes to battery under both Windows and Linux, unless one has changed the default configuration. I run it on my notebook, and have seen this often when unplugging it.
So where do they compete, then? I realize that they may not have a right to compete in any specific event, especially those privately financed, but if you set aside competitions for those with genetic abnormalities, you risk reducing it to a freak show. The Special Olympics had to be very careful in how they approached competition for the disabled to avoid that, but I suspect this would be even more difficult.
Almost by definition, athletes capable of qualifying for competitions like this are exceptional human specimens. It's not just their focused training regimen that allows them to get to this level, but I expect in most cases some very good genetics are assisting.
If you did that, in most unaugmented sports, you'd get an overwhelming domination by men. There are women who can outbuff most men, but they are by far the exception, or else the gender split in athletics wouldn't exist.
I'd like to see servers that allow for older content, especially in light of events like this. Blizzard could start new servers that are further back in the storyline, allowing players old and new to (re-)experience what it was like before, and then put the servers on a storyline rotation, where every six months or so the storyline is advanced. In order to simplify the maintenance, new realms would all come up at the same time, and would thus advance at the same points.
There would probably have to be some balancing, of course, but level caps could still be enforced specific to the content.
I'm not about to try playing against even a Korean child. I've seen some of the videos. It seems like about the time my screen finishes loading, their first rush of a thousand zerglings will hit. Those games just move too fast.
I added in information about the timing of the downgrading of storms. Before I could even gather up all of the information for the prior year, my changes had been reverted, as though I had to have all of the information for every year prior to adding it for a single year.
If that's how it's intended to work -- someone who wants to make a change must make the change across all articles simultaneously instead of setting an example for others to follow, or even just getting to it in a reasonably small timeframe -- something is broken.
A couple of years ago, I tried to update the then-current Atlantic hurricane season page with information on when hurricanes had been downgraded. I felt this would be useful as we could already see the rate at which a storm grew, and had some interested in its rate of decline. Within a short period of time, the changes had been reverted on the basis that none of the other pages had that, so it shouldn't be in that one, either. Nevermind that I simply hadn't had time to edit any of the others -- they were reverted without discussion. I was frustrated enough by the event that I didn't bother arguing the point. I have since edited a few other articles, mostly for grammar or clarity, but I'm still wary of most of the admins wandering by and deciding that my edits aren't up to snuff.
Airspaces Class A through D are always controlled. If you're a pilot in Class D airspace around a small airport, you must have radio contact unless your radio is out, and even then you're expected to follow light gun signals unless you absolutely cannot do so. If you're coming into a very busy airport (Class B), you're not likely to be told to follow someone in. TraCon or the tower (depending on exact location) will provide separation, calling for altitudes and airspeeds.
A pilot of a UAV could be provided with a helmet tied into a moving camera, or else a suite of cameras whose images are stitched together, and thus be able to see that approaching Cessna. It's not that hard to do, especially when you combine modern awareness systems into the mix. I fly a Cessna 172 G1000, and I know where aircraft are around me most of the time. It can get a little shaky down on the deck because radar coverage isn't always as good (depending on where the radar itself is located), but above a few hundred feet AGL in SoCal and its hilly and mountainous terrain, I'm usually aware of every plane in the surrounding 15 miles, with details including its altitude relative to me and its heading, both displayed on the screen. Given the summer haze, it's a very nice feeling to be looking for traffic and yet know that the other guy is likely to miss you by two miles even when you're at the same altitude.
Not always. In heavily-congested areas, the WiFi capabilities offload capacity requirements from the towers. We had a Verizon rep out not long ago who mentioned that after a recent moderate quake in SoCal (magnitude 5.5 in Chino Hills), voice demand shot up to 150% of capacity, and data demand reached almost to capacity. The more of that which goes somewhere other than the towers in the first place, the better off the network will be in an emergency.
(Frankly, the idea that a cell network would freeze up on a quake like that kind of frightens me. When something serious hits -- somewhere in the range of 6.7 or above -- no one will be able to talk to anyone.)
I think you're referring to the criminal child neglect charges against Jerri Gray, whose son Alexander Draper reached a weight of 550 pounds by age 14. No results have come of that case, but the case is still pending. She's not the first parent to be accused of child abuse in this fashion, but no other parents have served jail time if they were convicted.