When you run a business that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If they don't like it, you could always stop using the public right of way and stop operating across state lines. That would keep the intrusions mostly out.
No it wouldn't. Name one business that is immune from federal regulations. Through broad Supreme Court decisions it is almost impossible for any type of business to avoid using a public right of way. It is also almost impossible to engage in any sort of transaction that does not fall under the category of "Interstate Commerce"
According to Supreme Court rulings, pretty much everything an individual does is considered interstate commerce. Products do not have to cross state lines or even be sold to the public to be considered "interstate commerce".
Not exactly - the value of an individual property can recalculated by the government which can make the taxes too high for the current owner to pay.
A common case occurs during redevelopment of an area. A family that may have owned a plot of land for generations may have to sell due to the revaluation of their property due to a developer building $500,000 homes or a shopping mall nearby.
Properties can also be revalued by using potential value - a large tract of land could be valued as if it were a working farm or an office park, even if it is just an empty field.
Why are you still an American citizen? If you truly preferred over a dozen other countries then you could find a way to make moving to one of the countries happen. Japan isn't the easiest country to move to, but you have a pretty big list there.
Kids and women: The original had only a SINGLE adult female. The prequels had a kid, young jedi's, young females... that is just asking for trouble. Neither kids nor young (child) women are interesting. Think about it, recall the best movie/tv moments and ask, how many had kids or women? Especially the light entertainment stuff that Star Wars most definitely is
The Phoebe Cates swimming pool scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High would certainly qualify.
I agree with your point though about kids though. Even as a kid, I hated movies or shows with kids - or at least how they are they always portrayed. The problem with women characters usually comes when the writer or director has no real experience with mainstream women in the real world, so they end up being written in a totally bizarre fashion. The love scenes and dialogue with Anakin and Padme are a great example of this.
You're describing the pathology; my interest is in seeing some/any degree of retreat from the situation you (somewhat optimistically) describe.
This is not a "disease" of the system - this is the system. From the very beginning of judicial review, the Constitution has only been used to rationalize philosophical decisions rather than used as the prime reference document.
Jefferson, Madison and later Lincoln all had huge issues with judicial review so this goes way back. The Slaughter-House decisions effectively eliminated part of the 14th amendment that had been ratified just 5 years earlier.
Like it or not, this is the reality of how judicial review works in common law jurisdictions - it's a mixed bag at best. The only "disease" here is that since at least the 1970s, both parties have nominated and confirmed justices that value the needs and desires of the state (particularly law enforcement and local government) far more than the rights of individuals.
Sotomayor shows some promise in the areas of civil liberties, law enforcement abuses and individual property rights so maybe there is hope. Alito is decent concerning 1st Amendment and property rights, but seems to totally despise the 4th amendment.
Roberts has been a huge disappointment in these areas so far as I expect Kagan to be as well. Our best hope lies with the eventual retirement of Scalia which will hopefully allow Clarence Thomas to be more open minded.
Without the (ridiculous, sophist) determination that such listings do no harm in and of themselves, the ex post facto prohibitions would come into play (as they actually should, of course.)
You deserve mod points for not quoting the Constitution in your post. Unfortunately, the vast majority of American public are totally unaware that the Constitution is totally irrelevant in determining "constitutionality" via judicial review.
SCOTUS justices are pragmatic philosphers, not objective clarifiers of the Constitution - cases are decided on personal philosophy and weighed against the impact on the government. The text of the Constitution is then mined to find justification of the decision, but it's just a formality.
If that can't be accomplished then some combination of standby terms like "interstate commerce", "general welfare", "judeo-christian values", "no rights at the border", "necessary and proper clause", "implied powers", "can't yell fire in a crowded theater", "is a privilege not a right", "exigent circumstances", "no expectation of privacy", ""stare decisis", "lacks standing", "lacks ripeness" or a parade of horrors will suffice.
It's not necessarily a bad thing as the SCOTUS has been the least oppressive of the 3 branches. Technically the Bill of Rights only applies to the federal government and without the Supreme Court's totally made up concept of "incorporation" it's doubtful this would have ever changed.
The problem is that the court has been become filled with statists (left and right wing) that are very sympathetic to police state concepts, especially pro-active policing, and attribute little value to personal liberty. Picking justices by national lottery couldn't be any worse than whatever method presidents have been using for the last 40 years.
In the comments section of TFA, he says that he is not interested in the case at all or that his conclusion is meaningful. Below is his comment from the page...
The lesson in the Ramsey case has more to do with ACH itself than this particular case. One of the benefits of ACH is that it encourages you to think objectively about a complex case. My experience with the Ramsey case highlights this effect: when I reviewed a large (yet probably incomplete) body of evidence from the case, I was certain the evidence pointed directly at Mrs. Ramsey; I’d quickly singled her out as a likely suspect and from thereon out evaluated each piece of evidence with regards to her, instead of seeing the bigger picture. My subjectivity became very clear upon putting this data set into the software and I was able to see the case through a more logically sound lens.
I should say that I don’t work in criminal justice and have no interest in the case, and I wasn’t working with an official set of evidence, so I don’t think that the small time I spent on it should be taken into account by anyone working on the case; the lesson is more about the methodology than this case.
The parent's comment certainly deserves modding up. This is the first I had heard of this and after checking out Bugzilla found out it is a 10 year old battle where the powers that be refuse to budge because the module owner seems to be well connected.
Sadly, this just illustrates that open source projects, just like governments and corporations, can fall prey to giving power to a well connected, self-serving person who wants his own private kingdom. The organization then jumps through hoops making idiotic excuses in an attempt to justify the actions that person makes.
Ten years is still a long time though - this module owner must be very well connected within Mozilla.
Building infrastructure is one of the few areas of where government involvement in private enterprise is reasonable. That's why public utilities fall under a special set of rules and regulation and end up being quasi-governmental entities. Unfortunately, telecom has even more layers of special rules so it's ripe for corruption.
I believe the answer is to force the segregation of infrastructure providers and service providers - very similar to how many want Microsoft's OS and application divisions to be separate companies. Infrastructure providers can own the transmission medium (cables, pipes, etc), but not the content carried and cannot be a content provider. The infrastructure must be open for all service providers to use.
In many areas, this model is used to provide natural gas services. This is similar to the early railroad model in the US, but the railroads were allowed to give preferential treatment and rates to sister companies.
Would it have been legal or acceptable for the planning commission to drive around with a stepladder and peek over fences to find unlicensed pools?
Not legal, but totally acceptable to the legal system. Unfortunately, violation of the 4th amendment caries no real penalty to law enforcement. The exclusion of evidence is no real penalty at all, since very few defendants have the ability to even mount such a challenge. Even it does damage a particular case, it doesn't hurt the cop's career.
In this case, exclusion of evidence wouldn't even apply for several reasons. The existence of the pools would now be public record so they are open to being regulated or taxed. Also, defendants are not allowed to keep illegal items even if uncovered during an illegal search.
I'm on your side, but until the personal immunity that cops and prosecutors enjoy is abolished, they can do anything they want. They might not win every case, but what do they care. Law enforcement has a saying, "might beat the rap, but can't beat the ride".
A huge problem with the federales' position is that the statute involved is a criminal statute. Judges resolve doubts in the interpretation of a criminal statute in favor of the defendant. That is called the rule of lenity.
That may be true in theory but in practice, a criminal statute, especially a federal one, has a huge chilling effect on anyone trying to test the law. Instead of the FBI sending a summons to appear in court, they are far more likely to raid the place ninja style and totally screw up the lives of those that are arrested.
The Feds have a 90%+ conviction rate for a reason - they wield a big club. In the Federal system, a defendant that does not plead guilty faces an enhanced sentence if he loses the trial. Any assets that are seized are almost impossible to get back, even if later found not guilty.
The worst concept that our legal system has is "standing". It should be possible to challenge a criminal statute without having to actually violate the law and put your whole life at risk. That's why groups like the ACLU have to stage criminal violations with people without a criminal record so they will have a clean "test case" that is free of any peripheral issues that would cloud the issue.
It was all about beating the Soviets. The world had learned in WWII that air superiority is the key to winning a war and space superiority was considered to be the next step.
Sputnik scared the hell out of the western world. This allowed NASA to be more aggressive and take risks that would not be acceptable in today's social climate so progress was made at a pace quick enough to excite the public.
The public also had an unrealistic idea of space as well - they expected day trips on a TWA shuttle to colonies on the moon, venus and mars within 20 years.
The worst thing to happen to NASA and manned space travel was the failure of the Soviets to reach the moon soon after the US did.
Apparently you didn't even read the post that you're responding to and instead just wanted to go on some rant.
Going over 100 miles in a day doesn't require living on a farm and it certainly isn't some bizarre outlier situation. For any person that lives in the suburbs of Atlanta or any other large metropolitan area like LA, Houston, Dallas or Miami - it can easily occur once a week.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with American suburbs and urban sprawl. Running errands to the city or other suburbs can easily be 60 or 70 miles round trip. Going into the city for entertainment, drinks or dining is hardly a rare thing.
Your "stats" are beyond meaningless. Averages tell you nothing - it's the size of the distribution that matters. Your "stretch commute" is 100 miles round trip - not the 40-50 mile commute that was being discussed.
Pretty much anyone in the US that doesn't live in NYC could easily drive over 100 miles spontaneously in a day and consider it a normal day.
A 40-50 mile round trip work commute is hardly rare for those in the US. Adding anything like a seeing a doctor, picking your kid up at school, visiting friends or family, running some other errand or even going on a date can easily put the total over 100 miles.
The Atlanta airport is around an 80 mile round trip from the heavily populated northern suburbs. Picking up or dropping off a friend at the airport would hardly considered a extraordinary event.
On the weekends, spontaneously deciding to take a day trip to somewhere more than 50 miles away isn't rare either.
The second cost would be the loss of the profit that would have been made on the oil that was retrieved. On the hand, the risk of another disastrous oil leak would drop to zero as well.
That's not correct as the United States does not control the entire gulf. Mexico had a similar incident in 1979 that was one of the largest oil spills on record. Cuba also controls areas that could affect the US coast.
I agree with you on how things should work, but unfortunately the United States government doesn't need due process at all when it comes to asset seizure. If the government seizes your assets, you have to sue the government to get it back - even if you are never convicted of a crime.
The US Government could easily claim that BP has been engaging in a criminal enterprise and sieze assets that are under US jurisdiction. A conviction isn't neccesary. Even if BP found a sympathetic federal judge, the Supreme Court has been very friendly toward government asset seizures for generations.
The fear that the US would be regarded as a hostile place to do business is the only real protection that BP or any other company has. A company or person that is not politically well connected has no real protection at all.
Insanely, the government actually lists the assets being seized as the defendant - not the owner of the assets. During a traffic stop, a cop could seize all the cash you have on you and you would never get it back. Never travel with large sums of cash or let a cop know - it will be siezed since it is "obviously" drug money.
All this of course is moot, because it's not reported in a field marked: "Illegal Income"... it's lumped into a field marked: "Income from Other Sources:"
That is not accurate. The "Other Income" box requires you to break out the types and amounts.
This is the text from Form 1040 Line 21...
Other income. List type and amount (see page 29)
While it is accurate that the IRS has strong limitations on who it can share information with, one exception is reporting the commission of federal crimes. If any federal agency wants the information, they can get easily jump through the hoops necessary to get it.
Also the IRS shares the information with state and local tax agencies. States can also gather their own information through their own tax forms.
There are no constitutional protections from the information on your tax returns being used against you in a non-tax related criminal trial.
Then why did the Feds use the Commerce Clause during their arguments as the basis for having the power to ban the possession of the machine gun?
If the federal government was not restrained in this case by the protections in the 2nd Amendment then it would not have needed to establish a Commerce Clause link to empower its position.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if a Nigerian prince needs your assistance in getting some of his money out of the country and is willing to share it with you?
When you run a business that uses public property to operate you agree to give up some control. If they don't like it, you could always stop using the public right of way and stop operating across state lines. That would keep the intrusions mostly out.
No it wouldn't. Name one business that is immune from federal regulations. Through broad Supreme Court decisions it is almost impossible for any type of business to avoid using a public right of way. It is also almost impossible to engage in any sort of transaction that does not fall under the category of "Interstate Commerce"
According to Supreme Court rulings, pretty much everything an individual does is considered interstate commerce. Products do not have to cross state lines or even be sold to the public to be considered "interstate commerce".
Not exactly - the value of an individual property can recalculated by the government which can make the taxes too high for the current owner to pay.
A common case occurs during redevelopment of an area. A family that may have owned a plot of land for generations may have to sell due to the revaluation of their property due to a developer building $500,000 homes or a shopping mall nearby.
Properties can also be revalued by using potential value - a large tract of land could be valued as if it were a working farm or an office park, even if it is just an empty field.
Why are you still an American citizen? If you truly preferred over a dozen other countries then you could find a way to make moving to one of the countries happen. Japan isn't the easiest country to move to, but you have a pretty big list there.
Very wrong. According to 2000 census the US has 215 million English speakers but only 28 million Spanish speakers.
Kids and women: The original had only a SINGLE adult female. The prequels had a kid, young jedi's, young females... that is just asking for trouble. Neither kids nor young (child) women are interesting. Think about it, recall the best movie/tv moments and ask, how many had kids or women? Especially the light entertainment stuff that Star Wars most definitely is
The Phoebe Cates swimming pool scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High would certainly qualify.
I agree with your point though about kids though. Even as a kid, I hated movies or shows with kids - or at least how they are they always portrayed. The problem with women characters usually comes when the writer or director has no real experience with mainstream women in the real world, so they end up being written in a totally bizarre fashion. The love scenes and dialogue with Anakin and Padme are a great example of this.
You're describing the pathology; my interest is in seeing some/any degree of retreat from the situation you (somewhat optimistically) describe.
This is not a "disease" of the system - this is the system. From the very beginning of judicial review, the Constitution has only been used to rationalize philosophical decisions rather than used as the prime reference document.
Jefferson, Madison and later Lincoln all had huge issues with judicial review so this goes way back. The Slaughter-House decisions effectively eliminated part of the 14th amendment that had been ratified just 5 years earlier.
Like it or not, this is the reality of how judicial review works in common law jurisdictions - it's a mixed bag at best. The only "disease" here is that since at least the 1970s, both parties have nominated and confirmed justices that value the needs and desires of the state (particularly law enforcement and local government) far more than the rights of individuals.
Sotomayor shows some promise in the areas of civil liberties, law enforcement abuses and individual property rights so maybe there is hope. Alito is decent concerning 1st Amendment and property rights, but seems to totally despise the 4th amendment.
Roberts has been a huge disappointment in these areas so far as I expect Kagan to be as well. Our best hope lies with the eventual retirement of Scalia which will hopefully allow Clarence Thomas to be more open minded.
Without the (ridiculous, sophist) determination that such listings do no harm in and of themselves, the ex post facto prohibitions would come into play (as they actually should, of course.)
You deserve mod points for not quoting the Constitution in your post. Unfortunately, the vast majority of American public are totally unaware that the Constitution is totally irrelevant in determining "constitutionality" via judicial review.
SCOTUS justices are pragmatic philosphers, not objective clarifiers of the Constitution - cases are decided on personal philosophy and weighed against the impact on the government. The text of the Constitution is then mined to find justification of the decision, but it's just a formality.
If that can't be accomplished then some combination of standby terms like "interstate commerce", "general welfare", "judeo-christian values", "no rights at the border", "necessary and proper clause", "implied powers", "can't yell fire in a crowded theater", "is a privilege not a right", "exigent circumstances", "no expectation of privacy", ""stare decisis", "lacks standing", "lacks ripeness" or a parade of horrors will suffice.
It's not necessarily a bad thing as the SCOTUS has been the least oppressive of the 3 branches. Technically the Bill of Rights only applies to the federal government and without the Supreme Court's totally made up concept of "incorporation" it's doubtful this would have ever changed.
The problem is that the court has been become filled with statists (left and right wing) that are very sympathetic to police state concepts, especially pro-active policing, and attribute little value to personal liberty. Picking justices by national lottery couldn't be any worse than whatever method presidents have been using for the last 40 years.
In the comments section of TFA, he says that he is not interested in the case at all or that his conclusion is meaningful. Below is his comment from the page...
The parent's comment certainly deserves modding up. This is the first I had heard of this and after checking out Bugzilla found out it is a 10 year old battle where the powers that be refuse to budge because the module owner seems to be well connected.
Sadly, this just illustrates that open source projects, just like governments and corporations, can fall prey to giving power to a well connected, self-serving person who wants his own private kingdom. The organization then jumps through hoops making idiotic excuses in an attempt to justify the actions that person makes.
Ten years is still a long time though - this module owner must be very well connected within Mozilla.
Building infrastructure is one of the few areas of where government involvement in private enterprise is reasonable. That's why public utilities fall under a special set of rules and regulation and end up being quasi-governmental entities. Unfortunately, telecom has even more layers of special rules so it's ripe for corruption.
I believe the answer is to force the segregation of infrastructure providers and service providers - very similar to how many want Microsoft's OS and application divisions to be separate companies. Infrastructure providers can own the transmission medium (cables, pipes, etc), but not the content carried and cannot be a content provider. The infrastructure must be open for all service providers to use.
In many areas, this model is used to provide natural gas services. This is similar to the early railroad model in the US, but the railroads were allowed to give preferential treatment and rates to sister companies.
Would it have been legal or acceptable for the planning commission to drive around with a stepladder and peek over fences to find unlicensed pools?
Not legal, but totally acceptable to the legal system. Unfortunately, violation of the 4th amendment caries no real penalty to law enforcement. The exclusion of evidence is no real penalty at all, since very few defendants have the ability to even mount such a challenge. Even it does damage a particular case, it doesn't hurt the cop's career.
In this case, exclusion of evidence wouldn't even apply for several reasons. The existence of the pools would now be public record so they are open to being regulated or taxed. Also, defendants are not allowed to keep illegal items even if uncovered during an illegal search.
I'm on your side, but until the personal immunity that cops and prosecutors enjoy is abolished, they can do anything they want. They might not win every case, but what do they care. Law enforcement has a saying, "might beat the rap, but can't beat the ride".
A huge problem with the federales' position is that the statute involved is a criminal statute. Judges resolve doubts in the interpretation of a criminal statute in favor of the defendant. That is called the rule of lenity.
That may be true in theory but in practice, a criminal statute, especially a federal one, has a huge chilling effect on anyone trying to test the law. Instead of the FBI sending a summons to appear in court, they are far more likely to raid the place ninja style and totally screw up the lives of those that are arrested.
The Feds have a 90%+ conviction rate for a reason - they wield a big club. In the Federal system, a defendant that does not plead guilty faces an enhanced sentence if he loses the trial. Any assets that are seized are almost impossible to get back, even if later found not guilty.
The worst concept that our legal system has is "standing". It should be possible to challenge a criminal statute without having to actually violate the law and put your whole life at risk. That's why groups like the ACLU have to stage criminal violations with people without a criminal record so they will have a clean "test case" that is free of any peripheral issues that would cloud the issue.
It was all about beating the Soviets. The world had learned in WWII that air superiority is the key to winning a war and space superiority was considered to be the next step.
Sputnik scared the hell out of the western world. This allowed NASA to be more aggressive and take risks that would not be acceptable in today's social climate so progress was made at a pace quick enough to excite the public.
The public also had an unrealistic idea of space as well - they expected day trips on a TWA shuttle to colonies on the moon, venus and mars within 20 years.
The worst thing to happen to NASA and manned space travel was the failure of the Soviets to reach the moon soon after the US did.
Apparently you didn't even read the post that you're responding to and instead just wanted to go on some rant.
Going over 100 miles in a day doesn't require living on a farm and it certainly isn't some bizarre outlier situation. For any person that lives in the suburbs of Atlanta or any other large metropolitan area like LA, Houston, Dallas or Miami - it can easily occur once a week.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with American suburbs and urban sprawl. Running errands to the city or other suburbs can easily be 60 or 70 miles round trip. Going into the city for entertainment, drinks or dining is hardly a rare thing.
Your "stats" are beyond meaningless. Averages tell you nothing - it's the size of the distribution that matters. Your "stretch commute" is 100 miles round trip - not the 40-50 mile commute that was being discussed.
Pretty much anyone in the US that doesn't live in NYC could easily drive over 100 miles spontaneously in a day and consider it a normal day.
A 40-50 mile round trip work commute is hardly rare for those in the US. Adding anything like a seeing a doctor, picking your kid up at school, visiting friends or family, running some other errand or even going on a date can easily put the total over 100 miles.
The Atlanta airport is around an 80 mile round trip from the heavily populated northern suburbs. Picking up or dropping off a friend at the airport would hardly considered a extraordinary event.
On the weekends, spontaneously deciding to take a day trip to somewhere more than 50 miles away isn't rare either.
The same thing applies to labor unions as well. They are free to spend money on political candidates even though its members may be very much opposed.
I don't think that either should be allowed to contribute, but if unions are allowed, then corporations should too.
That's not correct as the United States does not control the entire gulf. Mexico had a similar incident in 1979 that was one of the largest oil spills on record. Cuba also controls areas that could affect the US coast.
I agree with you on how things should work, but unfortunately the United States government doesn't need due process at all when it comes to asset seizure. If the government seizes your assets, you have to sue the government to get it back - even if you are never convicted of a crime.
The US Government could easily claim that BP has been engaging in a criminal enterprise and sieze assets that are under US jurisdiction. A conviction isn't neccesary. Even if BP found a sympathetic federal judge, the Supreme Court has been very friendly toward government asset seizures for generations.
The fear that the US would be regarded as a hostile place to do business is the only real protection that BP or any other company has. A company or person that is not politically well connected has no real protection at all.
Insanely, the government actually lists the assets being seized as the defendant - not the owner of the assets. During a traffic stop, a cop could seize all the cash you have on you and you would never get it back. Never travel with large sums of cash or let a cop know - it will be siezed since it is "obviously" drug money.
Umm, there was no crash in 1920. The great stock market crash was in 1929 and lead to the great depression that lasted years.
Umm, you make want to research that a little further. He was talking about the Depression of 1920-1921, not the Great Depression.
The bailout was due to the fact that most of the affected financial institutions had a huge presence in NYC - even the ones not headquartered there.
Instead of being bailed out, the "too big to fail" institutions should have broken up into much smaller institutions.
No company should ever be allowed to use mergers and acquisitions to become "too big to fail".
If you get sued for sampling, it's because you didn't get it cleared.
Better have really good lawyers if you sample anything by the Rolling Stones because they'll sue you even you do get it cleared by them beforehand.
All this of course is moot, because it's not reported in a field marked: "Illegal Income"... it's lumped into a field marked: "Income from Other Sources:"
That is not accurate. The "Other Income" box requires you to break out the types and amounts.
This is the text from Form 1040 Line 21... Other income. List type and amount (see page 29)
While it is accurate that the IRS has strong limitations on who it can share information with, one exception is reporting the commission of federal crimes. If any federal agency wants the information, they can get easily jump through the hoops necessary to get it.
Also the IRS shares the information with state and local tax agencies. States can also gather their own information through their own tax forms.
There are no constitutional protections from the information on your tax returns being used against you in a non-tax related criminal trial.
How did you figure that one out?
Then why did the Feds use the Commerce Clause during their arguments as the basis for having the power to ban the possession of the machine gun?
If the federal government was not restrained in this case by the protections in the 2nd Amendment then it would not have needed to establish a Commerce Clause link to empower its position.