Important to remember: politics is not a fire-and-forget system. If you don't hold "your" party's feet to the fire then you're not doing your job as a citizen.
Was it Keynes who said that politics was a choice between the unpalatable and the disastrous?
Insightful. That's a good description of the problems we have. I have an unusual solution in mind.
When I hear people talk about conservative bias or liberal bias in the media, I wish they were right. Bias would be an improvement over what we have now. Biased people have some incentive to dig up facts if that will help them persuade people. The US court system is built on the theory that two attorneys, biased in opposite directions, will between them dig up enough truth to serve the interests of justice. That requires a referee and has notorious breakdowns, but it does sort of work.
The Economist is biased. They're up front about their biases and will call a policy "lunatic" in a news article if that's what they believe. They also hire reporters who go out and get stories.
I'll take bias, preferably with honesty but in a pinch just with testability, over the mindless distractions we have now.
This one's a Trojan, though, not an exploit. If your platform allows installing general-purpose software then the possible countermeasures (warnings, administrator password prompts, requiring chmod +x, sandboxing) are all kind of flimsy. Sandboxing is at odds with the "general purpose software" part -- imagine that this had been masquerading as a privacy tool that protected your files by encrypting them. Either you have a sandbox the user can't override that blocks legitimate encryption software, or you have one the user can override that the user then will override.
Signed packages in well-maintained repositories are a good countermeasure, but closed source vendors could do that too.
The cool part of this article is that scientists are now using GPS receivers (cheap, ubiquitous) to study events in the ionosphere, which used to require fixed ground-based ionosondes or worse yet sounding rockets.
Not so, explicitly: Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7--"Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States".
This is by design. Impeachments in England could lead to criminal punishment, but the founders didn't want to recreate that here.
Jail time would have to be the result of a separate criminal prosecution, which is authorized in the Constitution but is not part of impeachment.
>unless the U.S. specifiably signed a treaty saying that it would follow that guideline
The US Senate ratified the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. We committed to not making war except in self-defense or as part of action agreed on by the Security Council.
>and they have to decise that he has committed a crime
That was a good summary but this particular point leaves out something important.
An impeachable offense does not have to be a crime. Some, such as bribery and treason, definitely are. Historically, others aren't. We got the idea of impeachment from the English, whose history included the 1450 impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk for "obtaining offices for unfit persons and delaying justice by stopping writs of appeal". Official misconduct and misuse of power were among the problems impeachment was meant to solve but which were beyond the criminal code. Hamilton in the 65th Federalist Paper described impeachable offenses as those "which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
>wording that gives any member nation unilateral authority to ensure compliance with existing resolutions.
While carefully and deliberately avoiding phrasing that would authorize military force. The Security Council removed "all necessary means", the diplomatic code for using force, and substituted "serious consequences".
The Founders, after all, had just been through a political war. One of their major goals was to build a system robust enough to prevent another one.
They put impeachment in place to *prevent* political strife. Quote from Edmund Randolph:
"The Executive will have great opportunitys of abusing his power; particularly in time of war when the military force, and in some respects the public money will be in his hands. Should no regular punishment be provided it will be irregularly inflicted by tumults & insurrections."
It doesn't have to be. Impeachment can't fine someone or put him in jail, and it was deliberately designed to catch offenses that were not specifically criminal. "High crimes and misdemeanors" is a technical term from English law that refers to breaches of duty when executing a public office.
"The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made".
The Downing Street memo observed that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. "
The intelligence agencies tried to warn that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was fabricating his testimony but the administration used the known-unreliable intelligence to persuade the public of an Iraq-al Qaeda link.
One of the delegates at the constitutional convention said that the President "Must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them, - in this case, I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor upon such an account, the Senate would probably favor him."
There's no provision in the Constitution for an appeal, getting impeachment to the floor would require going through the Judiciary Committee, and there's a provision in the Constitution that says treaties carry the force of law. That would include the UN Charter.
>Everyone knows Bush will be gone in seven months. What's the point?
There's a value beyond the symbolic one. Article I, Section 3 allows the outcome of impeachment and conviction to include "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States". We've had convicted felons re-hired into the Executive branch before. Impeachment and conviction could remove the risk of something like that happening.
Why not use a direct measurement of what you're interested in? And check for yourself how well it does or doesn't correlate with the same time period in the temperature record?
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I thought too, until the 2007 hijacking of a Turkish jetliner:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1824462620070819
The passengers went along with it until the plane landed.
Important to remember: politics is not a fire-and-forget system. If you don't hold "your" party's feet to the fire then you're not doing your job as a citizen.
Was it Keynes who said that politics was a choice between the unpalatable and the disastrous?
A fun site, with alternative economic numbers and an explanation of how they're derived, is http://www.shadowstats.com/
Insightful. That's a good description of the problems we have. I have an unusual solution in mind.
When I hear people talk about conservative bias or liberal bias in the media, I wish they were right. Bias would be an improvement over what we have now. Biased people have some incentive to dig up facts if that will help them persuade people. The US court system is built on the theory that two attorneys, biased in opposite directions, will between them dig up enough truth to serve the interests of justice. That requires a referee and has notorious breakdowns, but it does sort of work.
The Economist is biased. They're up front about their biases and will call a policy "lunatic" in a news article if that's what they believe. They also hire reporters who go out and get stories.
I'll take bias, preferably with honesty but in a pinch just with testability, over the mindless distractions we have now.
This one's a Trojan, though, not an exploit. If your platform allows installing general-purpose software then the possible countermeasures (warnings, administrator password prompts, requiring chmod +x, sandboxing) are all kind of flimsy. Sandboxing is at odds with the "general purpose software" part -- imagine that this had been masquerading as a privacy tool that protected your files by encrypting them. Either you have a sandbox the user can't override that blocks legitimate encryption software, or you have one the user can override that the user then will override.
Signed packages in well-maintained repositories are a good countermeasure, but closed source vendors could do that too.
>they can confiscate the person's computer with no possible recourse for the victim? Sure a charge won't come from it
If they're allowed to examine the computer, what are the odds that they could find something on it that violates some law or other?
is what you're listening for.
The cool part of this article is that scientists are now using GPS receivers (cheap, ubiquitous) to study events in the ionosphere, which used to require fixed ground-based ionosondes or worse yet sounding rockets.
After the Speaker of the House comes the president pro tem of the Senate, who is Robert Byrd (D-WV).
Byrd on Iraq February 12 2003
Byrd on Iraq, February 26 2003
98% consider his presidency a failure. The percentage who think he's the worst ever is only 61% (http://hnn.us/articles/48916.html).
>Btw an impeachment can also result in jail time
Not so, explicitly: Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7--"Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States".
This is by design. Impeachments in England could lead to criminal punishment, but the founders didn't want to recreate that here.
Jail time would have to be the result of a separate criminal prosecution, which is authorized in the Constitution but is not part of impeachment.
>unless the U.S. specifiably signed a treaty saying that it would follow that guideline
The US Senate ratified the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. We committed to not making war except in self-defense or as part of action agreed on by the Security Council.
>and they have to decise that he has committed a crime
That was a good summary but this particular point leaves out something important.
An impeachable offense does not have to be a crime. Some, such as bribery and treason, definitely are. Historically, others aren't. We got the idea of impeachment from the English, whose history included the 1450 impeachment of the Duke of Suffolk for "obtaining offices for unfit persons and delaying justice by stopping writs of appeal". Official misconduct and misuse of power were among the problems impeachment was meant to solve but which were beyond the criminal code. Hamilton in the 65th Federalist Paper described impeachable offenses as those "which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
>wording that gives any member nation unilateral authority to ensure compliance with existing resolutions.
While carefully and deliberately avoiding phrasing that would authorize military force. The Security Council removed "all necessary means", the diplomatic code for using force, and substituted "serious consequences".
Legal opinion on UN resolution 1441.
No matter how cynical you are, throwing the bums out is a Good Thing. Even if you install equally bad bums you've avoided getting entrenched bums.
>Of course, at least cyanide isn't phsyiologically addictive, nor are multivitamins. Guess what is?
Alcohol.
Tobacco.
Oxycontin.
Benzodiazepines (http://www.medicinenet.com/alprazolam/article.htm).
>Clinton LIED under oath in a federal court after taking an oath to tell the truth.
Bush took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
US documentary about Iraq war profiteering.
The Founders, after all, had just been through a political war. One of their major goals was to build a system robust enough to prevent another one.
They put impeachment in place to *prevent* political strife. Quote from Edmund Randolph:
"The Executive will have great opportunitys of abusing his power; particularly in time of war when the military force, and in some respects the public money will be in his hands. Should no regular punishment be provided it will be irregularly inflicted by tumults & insurrections."
>lying isn't against the law
It doesn't have to be. Impeachment can't fine someone or put him in jail, and it was deliberately designed to catch offenses that were not specifically criminal. "High crimes and misdemeanors" is a technical term from English law that refers to breaches of duty when executing a public office.
"The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made".
PDF:
http://oversight.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord/pdf_admin_iraq_on_the_record_rep.pdf
Searchable database:
http://oversight.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord/
The Downing Street memo observed that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. "
The intelligence agencies tried to warn that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was fabricating his testimony but the administration used the known-unreliable intelligence to persuade the public of an Iraq-al Qaeda link.
One of the delegates at the constitutional convention said that the President
"Must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them, - in this case, I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor upon such an account, the Senate would probably favor him."
This was put together during the Clinton impeachment proceedings: it's a long and fascinating account of what the authors of the Constitution had in mind as grounds for impeachment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc_3.htm
There's no provision in the Constitution for an appeal, getting impeachment to the floor would require going through the Judiciary Committee, and there's a provision in the Constitution that says treaties carry the force of law. That would include the UN Charter.
>all that is needed is approval from the Attorney General
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, requires approval from a judge for eavesdropping.
Even if the Attorney General could repeal laws, in this case the Justice Department had decided the program was illegal and Ashcroft refused to sign off on it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html
>Everyone knows Bush will be gone in seven months. What's the point?
There's a value beyond the symbolic one. Article I, Section 3 allows the outcome of impeachment and conviction to include "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States". We've had convicted felons re-hired into the Executive branch before. Impeachment and conviction could remove the risk of something like that happening.
Why use temperature trends on Jupiter as a source when there are multiple overlapping direct exoatmospheric measurements of solar irradiance?
Why not use a direct measurement of what you're interested in? And check for yourself how well it does or doesn't correlate with the same time period in the temperature record?
Why distract people from the best data?