That's been my problem with the states' rights argument, it's so heavily been used to excuse doing nothing and letting wrongs continue.
States have no rights. States have powers. The federal government also has powers, delegated to it by the states. Those powers not delegated belong to the states. However citizens are also citizens of the United States as a whole, and the federal government has an interest in preventing the rights protected by the federal constitution from being infringed.
That said, you don't get to frame everything as a rights issue in order to invoke the federal government. There is no right to marry. There is no problem with equal treatment under the law here. Gays have every right that straights have to marry a person of the opposite sex, not too closely related, of appropriate age (with parental permission requirements applying at younger ages), and not being currently married to someone else, depending on the laws of the state. As citizens they have the ability to perform the same exact action under the law. That their personal preference is for people of the same sex is irrelevant.
Much like say the old Restrictive Covenants were. Oh it's just a private right to contract, the state (government at all) can't interfere with that, let individuals be free to make that decision.
A private contract that is contrary to law or public policy is not enforceable.
Incest is prohibited not because of any traditional objections based on ideas of the past, if that were the case, then we'd have to respect the myriad of cultures that did engage in such marriages
Polygamy is also prohibited, simply because of tradition. So is homosexual marriage. Marriage is not a right. It is a fabricated legal construct deemed for the good of the society, and operating under the rules of that society.
Let's not go down the road of trying to turn everything into a constitutional right so that people get to do it. How about sex with twelve year-olds? Why not? Constitutional right to privacy should cover that. Why not marry your horse? Bestiality laws are based on tradition, basically society's "ick factor." Same with homosexual marriiage. When society wants it to change, it will change. It is not for the minority to force that change on the majority against the majority's will.
I personally don't have a problem with homosexual marriage. But what I have a problem with or not does not affect the structure of our government.
I find that argument to be one that's quite problematic as it doesn't even brook discussion.
Then by your argument everything is a federal issue. Since that eliminates the need for the states, you are obviously incorrect since our system was set up with sovereign states. You don't get to yell "rights" and magically all issues get decided by a few sympathetic guys in robes instead of the duly elected representatives of the people. That's a kritarchy, not a democracy.
As for CBS, no they were slow to back down because they got egg on their face
They were slow because they wanted their attack on Bush to succeed. It was their last chance to railroad his reelection. They admitted the story was meant to influence the election.
What I see is a bunch of people making a big deal over nothing.
That's exactly your partisan view. Complaints about what your party does are making a big deal over nothing. Complaints about what the other party does are legitimate criticisms. What your party does can never be "great injustices", only what the other party does. The partisan Republicans have the same view of your party. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in the middle and watching the outrageous conduct of both parties, amazed at how blind the loyal can be to their own party's misconduct.
No, he outright stated something utterly untrue. It wasn't one word. It was a whole idea. This is what I mean about not being responsible.
You mean utterly untrue and irresponsible, such as saying Romney was still actively running Bain in 2001, and was guilty of a felony for saying he wasn't? At least Akin had a valid point as a personal opinion (which is what his statement was, however wrong parts of it were), that the baby shouldn't be killed because of the actions of the rapist. Obama's accusation was wrong, and purely for the reason of unfairly attacking his opponent.
Allowing people of the same sex to participate in the contract as a function of saying, that its time to stop hating people who are different than you (as has always been the concept of greater freedom and liberty under our culture) makes perfect sense.
It's a policy question, not a rights question. One problem of the left and right, although more of the left, is that they fell asleep during civics class. They have no idea how our government is structured. If they did, they'd know this is not a federal issue.
I'm sorry but between FOX News and the concentration of media owned by large corporate interests
Corporate? That doesn't mean they don't push the leftist point of view. Ah yes, Fox News, the one marginally conservative news outlet among all the liberal sources. And talk radio, various radio hosts who have become popular because people like what they say. The left tried this, Radio America, and it failed despite massive cash infusions. Nobody wanted to hear them. What was their answer? "Fairness" doctrine, let's silence free talk radio! We must allow equal time for opposing views, even if nobody wants to hear them in that format.
Dude... I'm sorry but this "You guys do it too..." thing is just creepy.
The problem with partisans is that they are very selective. It's not just Biden being in the pocket of the MPAA, Obama hired MPAA shills to top DOJ spots. Obama just hasn't been around long enough to do real damage. Let's use a green energy program that Bush set up (yes, Bush) to pump 500 million to donors' pockets, and have the taxpayers pick up the tab. No-compete contracts? Continued under Obama. 9/11 happening? Ask Clinton why he didn't take Osama handed to him on a silver platter, instead leaving him to plot 9/11. Corporate personhood? Citizens United only affirmed earlier decision by the SEC, specifically the one that let ads for the anti-Bush Fahrenheit 9/11 air before the 2004 election (yes, CU was a slapdown of a conservative complaint). Bin Laden family? A generally respectable family with business interests across the world that had disowned Osama years prior. Katrina? Nobody remembers the incompetent local and state Democrat administrations that screwed everything up horribly initially, only to be made worse by later federal screw-ups. Frat house administration? How about staffing with looney leftists who haven't a clue, or the best one, hiring a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. Did you know a good chunk of Obama's top administration still owes huge in back taxes? Banking? Bush went to Congress twice before the crash, asking them to rein in these practices, but powerful Democrats on the banking committees like Frank and Dodd said, "Dont' worry, everything's fine."
I could just go on and on, but Obama has done such bad stuff in only three and a half years compared to Bush's eight, it's scary to think of what he'll do with four more.
Why do you conservatives keep bringing that kind of thing up?
"You"? I'm libertarian (small "l"). Same sex marriage isn't a constitutional right, it's defined status. Do we deny the constitutional rights of siblings by not allowing them to marry? No, because the traditional definition of marriage has always excluded siblings. It also excludes same-sex marriage. Now if you want to change that definition, I really don't care on this issue, go ahead. It doesn't affect my marriage. But that definition is made by the states, not by the federal government.
This isn't an issue of constitutional rights, so the federal government has no business in the issue except to the extent of defining how states will treat the legal acts of each other in this regard.
Sure, you can say CBS was slow to react, but why are they important to you?
This isn't about corporation in general. This is about leftists using their corporate influence in the media to promote Democrat candidates. They were slow to back down because they wanted their attack on Bush to succeed. By their own admission they wanted to influence the election.
Birtherism is interesting. It would have helped if Obama had not been so secretive about his past, as he still is. While it's obvious he was born in Hawaii, I still think he's hiding something. I agree with the deal: He releases his college records, Romney releases the tax returns. But that will never happen.
Sorry, but Republicans get away with a lot, and never take responsibility for anything.
Both sides get away with a lot, and that's my point. But since the press is generally left leaning, the left gets away with more in that arena. Here's Biden, the Vice President, running around talking about "they'll put y'all in chains", horrible race pandering with a fake accent, swept under the rug. Meanwhile some idiot obscure congressman talking about rape is the double New York Times headline. Democrat Mel Carnahan actually used to do blackface acts, and somehow that didn't matter. To a press constantly lambasting Republicans for their corporate ties, it seems no big deal that Chris Dodd is now the head of the MPAA. It didn't matter that Ted Kennedy halted the construction of clean-energy windmills because they would interfere with his view from his multi-million dollar estate.
There are only a couple major news outlets willing to go after the administration for the Fast & Furious scandal, the rest happy to repeat the lie that this tactic started under Bush, so it was his fault. Your Democrat Attorney General lies multiple times in front of Congress over this issue, no big deal according to the press. And now Obama, who criticized the Bush administration over impeding investigations by invoking executive privilege, himself invokes executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing Fast & Furious documents. Actually it has gotten so hypocritical and ridiculous that even Jon Stewart had to make fun of that.
The sheer audacity of Democrats amazes me. In an unprecedented move, they blocked Miguel Estrada from being nominated to the DC circuit, where he was obviously being groomed for the Supreme Court. The reason? Leaked in memos, they didn't want the Republicans getting the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. They screamed for a special prosecutor over the Plame leaks in the Bush administration, but block the appointment of one in the recent Obama administration leaks of classified information about the Bin Laden killing.
All of this, yet you seem to think Republicans are the bad-guy hypocrites, the Democrats the innocent victims. I'm sure you can come up with more bad things the Republicans did, and I can too. But that's the point -- they both do it.
you would have noticed that no one actually bothered to follow up on the facts of whether he did go AWOL with administrative cove
They'd been trying to nail Bush on his guard record since the 2000 election. Four years of investigation had turned up nothing substantial. They needed a smoking gun to nail him, and those obvious forgeries (Microsoft Word? Come on!) provided it. You can't complain about no follow-up, because the investigation had already been done. Those of us with logic will notice that this was a last act of desperation to make the failed investigation produce something damaging to Bush.
The only stupidity on the part of CBS was getting caught. They knew what they were doing. They wanted a hit piece on Bush that would swing the election for Kerry. They were even in contact with the Kerry campaign about the upcoming story. Unfortunately for them, this interwebs thingy exists, and within hours people had exposed the fraud publicly. The other mainstream news outlets eventually had no choice but to pick up the story, finally forcing CBS to back down.
I merely showed that your paranoia is just that. You aren't the oppressed. You are on equal terms with the Republicans as oppressors, aggressors, liars and cheats.
C'mon dude, if Obama would have to face a libel suit over anything said about Romney
The standard mudslinging is one thing, but accusing someone of a felony is entirely different, and very actionable.
Surely at least one birther has filed enough frivolous lawsuits to merit judicial sanctions.
The left went after Bush with quite a bit of tenacity. You even had a major news outlet knowingly publishing fraudulent documents about Bush's National Guard service. Even worse, they coordinated the action with the Kerry campaign, with the admitted desire to influence the election. It took a lot of outside pressure for them to finally admit, half-assed, that they were wrong ("Fake, but accurate!").
govern on a platform of fear: "Republicans are evil racists who will oppress the minorities the first chance they get"
and self-deception: "The Republicans are the party beholden to big business" while Democrat Dodd goes off to head the MPAA and numerous Democrats are basically owned by the banks
while engaging in vitriolic and deceitful attacks: Claiming Romney's responsible for the layoff of the cancer victim's husband, when he was no longer in active management of Bain at the time. In fact, it was a major Obama bundler who was managing Bain at the time of that plant closure. Even better, his wife had her own insurance after that closure, and he got another job with the option of health insurance for her, then she got cancer and died five years later.
Obama's team has gone so far as to suggest Romney could be guilty of a felony over Bain management. That's pretty low. He should put up or face a libel suit.
Not correct at all. First of all, it is entirely possible to respect a person without bowing down to their beliefs.
This doesn't work with Islam. Example: Some college campuses have interfaith worship areas where anybody can go to worship in their own way, when they choose. In cases, Muslims have taken to using those areas for their worship. During these times they will not allow women to use the main worship area because that is offensive to Muslims. The fact that this violates the religious rights of the women seems to be of no importance to liberals.
Not accommodating their beliefs is disrespectful to them.
It was here with the Patriot Act. National Security Letters, which were supposed to be used in an emergency to get info on terrorists from third parties. There was no judicial oversight, and those given the NSLs were forbidden from disclosing the fact. After a couple years of the Patriot Act, it was found that the FBI had abused NSLs in tens of thousands of instances. Instead they were used to obtain information on Americans where they couldn't obtain a court-issued search warrant due to flimsy evidence, or they were just too lazy to get a warrant. Seriously, we have a special court to give sealed warrants in national security cases, and for the most part it's a rubber stamp. This court rejected an FBI request for one warrant multiple times because there was no probable cause and because of a free speech issue, so the FBI just issued an NSL. Their justification? We disagreed with the court, so that made it okay.
Luckily, the NLSs were eventually thrown out in court.
You give law enforcement a powerful tool, they will abuse it. Even strong oversight won't help much. You would literally need to start putting police in jail for misuse in order for there to be a disincentive. Nobody was busted for the NSL fiasco above, not even fired.
While other companies make their product, Apple has pumped billions into getting those factories built, modernized and/or retooled to make Apple's products. Often, this investment comes with exclusive access to the product for Apple for a period of time. IIRC, Apple invested over $1 billion in the Sharp plant that makes the Retina iPad LCDs. Apple also recently placed orders for $5 billion in industrial robots to put into Foxconn's plants to make their gadgets, possibly tying up global robot production for a while.
Samsung had their chance to enter it into evidence, but decided to wait until after the deadline. Allowing Samsung's crap would have dragged-on the trial, messing with the judge's schedule. The judge isn't allowing either side to mess with her schedule. Samsung's not introducing late evidence, Apple's not going to get to call all the witnesses they want.
Her loyalty is to the entire justice system. Cases like this are notorious for dragging on forever as multi-billion dollar corporations pump tons of money into them. The judge is trying to prevent that by keeping hard deadlines and tight schedules, no tolerance for the games that normally occur. The comments to that end may be colorful, but this country has a long history of judges with colorful comments.
As far as settlement, that is in the best interests of justice. Where one can be reached, it stops utilizing our crowded court system's resources. Where a settlement could be reached but won't because the sides are acting like spoiled brats, it wastes the court system's resources.
The left doesn't approve of Islam's condemnation of homosexuality
The left sure doesn't speak up about it much. In fact, the left condemns those like Robertson for speaking out against various unsavory practices of Islamic countries, and beliefs of most Muslims.
The left lambasted a private company owner for stating his own religious opinion against gay marriage. However, Muslim imams call for imposition of Sharia law in this country, which means legal persecution of homosexuals, and nothing from the left. In fact, the left fights against efforts of the right to prevent the influence of Sharia law in this country.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, on the other hand, are major contributors to the American political and social agenda.
Oh yeah, Falwell does so much contribution from the grave. Talk about saying stupid things on the Internet.
I don't know why everybody thinks this. They only provide about 10% of our oil. Our largest producer is Canada. We mainly support Saudi Arabia because the government is relatively friendly with us in an unstable region that is important to global stability.
To my understanding the social left in America is about inclusion. Obviously, this means a heavily pro-gay agenda. It has also manifested in an effort to respect all religions*, including Muslims, and not only tolerate their practices and beliefs in the US, but support and embrace them. Whenever someone comes out against perceived or real moral deficiencies of Islam, the left is ready to attack that person as a right-wing hater.
But Islam condemns homosexuality. It is not only a general disapproval of homosexuals on the level of the more hardline Christians, but homosexuality is even illegal, punished up to the death penalty, in most countries with a majority Muslim population. So, how does a person on the left, which branded Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance," reconcile this "respect everyone" attitude with this? The leftist mouthpieces would be up in arms right now if Pat Robertson was making this statement, but *crickets* since it's the Muslims.
* Except Christianity for some reason. You don't usually hear them saying we should respect the Christian religion, or attempt to glorify its past and promote its accomplishments. And, FTR, I despise both Falwell and Robertson.
Everybody quotes 2007, but obviously that's not when Apple envisioned the specific iPhone product, which was in mid 2005. The all-out work started later that year for a 2007 public introduction. But Apple had been working on touch screen technology for several years prior to that, and Jobs had mentioned in 2002 that Apple was working on a smart phone.
his standard mode of operation was to observe a piece of technology being developed someplace else and then figure out how to productize and market the technology.
More like he observed product categories being marketed, determined why they sucked, figured out how to make them not suck, and then sold the de-suckified version. There is a huge amount of design and engineering in the "make it not suck" part of that.
Most people think it's just about government taxation. No, it was about crony capitalism, since the purpose of the tax was to funnel money into the influential East India Company.
"On the Uses of Torture", a short story by Piers Anthony. A sadist is recruited to establish contact with an alien society where no envoy has ever returned, and experiences some pretty gruesome torture. The ending is just sick and depressing.
CRA didn't force lenders to lend to high-risk borrowers, it enabled them to lend in a predatory fashion.
You're right, forced isn't the right word. Created an environment that encouraged it is more like it. But then there was the pressure from the government to stop the practice of redlining (not lending in high-risk areas).
n.The financiers had a fucking field day repackaging and trading on subprime mortgages
That's another one, the government making Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take on more risky investments.
The lie of the left here is that government social intervention had no bearing on the housing crash. They don't want to admit that their meddling always has negative unintended consequences, because otherwise people would try to stop the meddling they're doing right now. The real lie of the right is that they do meddling too, just for their own pet causes. Libertarians are outside that mess, just wanting the meddling on both sides to cease.
Any monstrously successful idea has to be built on the shoulders of giants, with the support of the public. At some point, it becomes prudent for society to tell you 'you have had enough, this is now a cultural artifact, and is public domain
That's called the patent expiring.
I believe 'Happy Birthday' song is the prime example of something that should be stripped of its monopoly because its cultural ubiquity is so very high.
Talk about the epitome of the concept of punishing success. You can come up with something successful, but don't be too successful or we'll take it away from you. It's absurd.
That is aside from the issue of absurdly long copyright terms. Happy Birthday should be in the public domain because the term should have expired decades ago, not because it's popular.
Slashdot Mirror
If Android had retained the Blackberry knockoff form factor and function of the initial prototypes?
It seems obvious now, but the tablets on the market didn't look like that until after Apple's design patent (note, design patent, not utility patent).
States have no rights. States have powers. The federal government also has powers, delegated to it by the states. Those powers not delegated belong to the states. However citizens are also citizens of the United States as a whole, and the federal government has an interest in preventing the rights protected by the federal constitution from being infringed.
That said, you don't get to frame everything as a rights issue in order to invoke the federal government. There is no right to marry. There is no problem with equal treatment under the law here. Gays have every right that straights have to marry a person of the opposite sex, not too closely related, of appropriate age (with parental permission requirements applying at younger ages), and not being currently married to someone else, depending on the laws of the state. As citizens they have the ability to perform the same exact action under the law. That their personal preference is for people of the same sex is irrelevant.
A private contract that is contrary to law or public policy is not enforceable.
Polygamy is also prohibited, simply because of tradition. So is homosexual marriage. Marriage is not a right. It is a fabricated legal construct deemed for the good of the society, and operating under the rules of that society.
Let's not go down the road of trying to turn everything into a constitutional right so that people get to do it. How about sex with twelve year-olds? Why not? Constitutional right to privacy should cover that. Why not marry your horse? Bestiality laws are based on tradition, basically society's "ick factor." Same with homosexual marriiage. When society wants it to change, it will change. It is not for the minority to force that change on the majority against the majority's will.
I personally don't have a problem with homosexual marriage. But what I have a problem with or not does not affect the structure of our government.
Then by your argument everything is a federal issue. Since that eliminates the need for the states, you are obviously incorrect since our system was set up with sovereign states. You don't get to yell "rights" and magically all issues get decided by a few sympathetic guys in robes instead of the duly elected representatives of the people. That's a kritarchy, not a democracy.
They were slow because they wanted their attack on Bush to succeed. It was their last chance to railroad his reelection. They admitted the story was meant to influence the election.
That's exactly your partisan view. Complaints about what your party does are making a big deal over nothing. Complaints about what the other party does are legitimate criticisms. What your party does can never be "great injustices", only what the other party does. The partisan Republicans have the same view of your party. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in the middle and watching the outrageous conduct of both parties, amazed at how blind the loyal can be to their own party's misconduct.
You mean utterly untrue and irresponsible, such as saying Romney was still actively running Bain in 2001, and was guilty of a felony for saying he wasn't? At least Akin had a valid point as a personal opinion (which is what his statement was, however wrong parts of it were), that the baby shouldn't be killed because of the actions of the rapist. Obama's accusation was wrong, and purely for the reason of unfairly attacking his opponent.
It's a policy question, not a rights question. One problem of the left and right, although more of the left, is that they fell asleep during civics class. They have no idea how our government is structured. If they did, they'd know this is not a federal issue.
Corporate? That doesn't mean they don't push the leftist point of view. Ah yes, Fox News, the one marginally conservative news outlet among all the liberal sources. And talk radio, various radio hosts who have become popular because people like what they say. The left tried this, Radio America, and it failed despite massive cash infusions. Nobody wanted to hear them. What was their answer? "Fairness" doctrine, let's silence free talk radio! We must allow equal time for opposing views, even if nobody wants to hear them in that format.
The problem with partisans is that they are very selective. It's not just Biden being in the pocket of the MPAA, Obama hired MPAA shills to top DOJ spots. Obama just hasn't been around long enough to do real damage. Let's use a green energy program that Bush set up (yes, Bush) to pump 500 million to donors' pockets, and have the taxpayers pick up the tab. No-compete contracts? Continued under Obama. 9/11 happening? Ask Clinton why he didn't take Osama handed to him on a silver platter, instead leaving him to plot 9/11. Corporate personhood? Citizens United only affirmed earlier decision by the SEC, specifically the one that let ads for the anti-Bush Fahrenheit 9/11 air before the 2004 election (yes, CU was a slapdown of a conservative complaint). Bin Laden family? A generally respectable family with business interests across the world that had disowned Osama years prior. Katrina? Nobody remembers the incompetent local and state Democrat administrations that screwed everything up horribly initially, only to be made worse by later federal screw-ups. Frat house administration? How about staffing with looney leftists who haven't a clue, or the best one, hiring a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. Did you know a good chunk of Obama's top administration still owes huge in back taxes? Banking? Bush went to Congress twice before the crash, asking them to rein in these practices, but powerful Democrats on the banking committees like Frank and Dodd said, "Dont' worry, everything's fine."
I could just go on and on, but Obama has done such bad stuff in only three and a half years compared to Bush's eight, it's scary to think of what he'll do with four more.
"You"? I'm libertarian (small "l"). Same sex marriage isn't a constitutional right, it's defined status. Do we deny the constitutional rights of siblings by not allowing them to marry? No, because the traditional definition of marriage has always excluded siblings. It also excludes same-sex marriage. Now if you want to change that definition, I really don't care on this issue, go ahead. It doesn't affect my marriage. But that definition is made by the states, not by the federal government.
This isn't an issue of constitutional rights, so the federal government has no business in the issue except to the extent of defining how states will treat the legal acts of each other in this regard.
This isn't about corporation in general. This is about leftists using their corporate influence in the media to promote Democrat candidates. They were slow to back down because they wanted their attack on Bush to succeed. By their own admission they wanted to influence the election.
Birtherism is interesting. It would have helped if Obama had not been so secretive about his past, as he still is. While it's obvious he was born in Hawaii, I still think he's hiding something. I agree with the deal: He releases his college records, Romney releases the tax returns. But that will never happen.
Both sides get away with a lot, and that's my point. But since the press is generally left leaning, the left gets away with more in that arena. Here's Biden, the Vice President, running around talking about "they'll put y'all in chains", horrible race pandering with a fake accent, swept under the rug. Meanwhile some idiot obscure congressman talking about rape is the double New York Times headline. Democrat Mel Carnahan actually used to do blackface acts, and somehow that didn't matter. To a press constantly lambasting Republicans for their corporate ties, it seems no big deal that Chris Dodd is now the head of the MPAA. It didn't matter that Ted Kennedy halted the construction of clean-energy windmills because they would interfere with his view from his multi-million dollar estate.
There are only a couple major news outlets willing to go after the administration for the Fast & Furious scandal, the rest happy to repeat the lie that this tactic started under Bush, so it was his fault. Your Democrat Attorney General lies multiple times in front of Congress over this issue, no big deal according to the press. And now Obama, who criticized the Bush administration over impeding investigations by invoking executive privilege, himself invokes executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing Fast & Furious documents. Actually it has gotten so hypocritical and ridiculous that even Jon Stewart had to make fun of that.
The sheer audacity of Democrats amazes me. In an unprecedented move, they blocked Miguel Estrada from being nominated to the DC circuit, where he was obviously being groomed for the Supreme Court. The reason? Leaked in memos, they didn't want the Republicans getting the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. They screamed for a special prosecutor over the Plame leaks in the Bush administration, but block the appointment of one in the recent Obama administration leaks of classified information about the Bin Laden killing.
All of this, yet you seem to think Republicans are the bad-guy hypocrites, the Democrats the innocent victims. I'm sure you can come up with more bad things the Republicans did, and I can too. But that's the point -- they both do it.
They'd been trying to nail Bush on his guard record since the 2000 election. Four years of investigation had turned up nothing substantial. They needed a smoking gun to nail him, and those obvious forgeries (Microsoft Word? Come on!) provided it. You can't complain about no follow-up, because the investigation had already been done. Those of us with logic will notice that this was a last act of desperation to make the failed investigation produce something damaging to Bush.
The only stupidity on the part of CBS was getting caught. They knew what they were doing. They wanted a hit piece on Bush that would swing the election for Kerry. They were even in contact with the Kerry campaign about the upcoming story. Unfortunately for them, this interwebs thingy exists, and within hours people had exposed the fraud publicly. The other mainstream news outlets eventually had no choice but to pick up the story, finally forcing CBS to back down.
I merely showed that your paranoia is just that. You aren't the oppressed. You are on equal terms with the Republicans as oppressors, aggressors, liars and cheats.
The standard mudslinging is one thing, but accusing someone of a felony is entirely different, and very actionable.
The left went after Bush with quite a bit of tenacity. You even had a major news outlet knowingly publishing fraudulent documents about Bush's National Guard service. Even worse, they coordinated the action with the Kerry campaign, with the admitted desire to influence the election. It took a lot of outside pressure for them to finally admit, half-assed, that they were wrong ("Fake, but accurate!").
This doesn't work with Islam. Example: Some college campuses have interfaith worship areas where anybody can go to worship in their own way, when they choose. In cases, Muslims have taken to using those areas for their worship. During these times they will not allow women to use the main worship area because that is offensive to Muslims. The fact that this violates the religious rights of the women seems to be of no importance to liberals.
Not accommodating their beliefs is disrespectful to them.
It was here with the Patriot Act. National Security Letters, which were supposed to be used in an emergency to get info on terrorists from third parties. There was no judicial oversight, and those given the NSLs were forbidden from disclosing the fact. After a couple years of the Patriot Act, it was found that the FBI had abused NSLs in tens of thousands of instances. Instead they were used to obtain information on Americans where they couldn't obtain a court-issued search warrant due to flimsy evidence, or they were just too lazy to get a warrant. Seriously, we have a special court to give sealed warrants in national security cases, and for the most part it's a rubber stamp. This court rejected an FBI request for one warrant multiple times because there was no probable cause and because of a free speech issue, so the FBI just issued an NSL. Their justification? We disagreed with the court, so that made it okay.
Luckily, the NLSs were eventually thrown out in court.
You give law enforcement a powerful tool, they will abuse it. Even strong oversight won't help much. You would literally need to start putting police in jail for misuse in order for there to be a disincentive. Nobody was busted for the NSL fiasco above, not even fired.
Apple sources the displays from Samsung, LG and Sharp. Apple brought Sharp up to speed so they could be an extra source for a critical part.
Talk about repeating whatever wrongness they've heard as fact.
While other companies make their product, Apple has pumped billions into getting those factories built, modernized and/or retooled to make Apple's products. Often, this investment comes with exclusive access to the product for Apple for a period of time. IIRC, Apple invested over $1 billion in the Sharp plant that makes the Retina iPad LCDs. Apple also recently placed orders for $5 billion in industrial robots to put into Foxconn's plants to make their gadgets, possibly tying up global robot production for a while.
Samsung had their chance to enter it into evidence, but decided to wait until after the deadline. Allowing Samsung's crap would have dragged-on the trial, messing with the judge's schedule. The judge isn't allowing either side to mess with her schedule. Samsung's not introducing late evidence, Apple's not going to get to call all the witnesses they want.
Her loyalty is to the entire justice system. Cases like this are notorious for dragging on forever as multi-billion dollar corporations pump tons of money into them. The judge is trying to prevent that by keeping hard deadlines and tight schedules, no tolerance for the games that normally occur. The comments to that end may be colorful, but this country has a long history of judges with colorful comments.
As far as settlement, that is in the best interests of justice. Where one can be reached, it stops utilizing our crowded court system's resources. Where a settlement could be reached but won't because the sides are acting like spoiled brats, it wastes the court system's resources.
The left sure doesn't speak up about it much. In fact, the left condemns those like Robertson for speaking out against various unsavory practices of Islamic countries, and beliefs of most Muslims.
The left lambasted a private company owner for stating his own religious opinion against gay marriage. However, Muslim imams call for imposition of Sharia law in this country, which means legal persecution of homosexuals, and nothing from the left. In fact, the left fights against efforts of the right to prevent the influence of Sharia law in this country.
Oh yeah, Falwell does so much contribution from the grave. Talk about saying stupid things on the Internet.
I don't know why everybody thinks this. They only provide about 10% of our oil. Our largest producer is Canada. We mainly support Saudi Arabia because the government is relatively friendly with us in an unstable region that is important to global stability.
To my understanding the social left in America is about inclusion. Obviously, this means a heavily pro-gay agenda. It has also manifested in an effort to respect all religions*, including Muslims, and not only tolerate their practices and beliefs in the US, but support and embrace them. Whenever someone comes out against perceived or real moral deficiencies of Islam, the left is ready to attack that person as a right-wing hater.
But Islam condemns homosexuality. It is not only a general disapproval of homosexuals on the level of the more hardline Christians, but homosexuality is even illegal, punished up to the death penalty, in most countries with a majority Muslim population. So, how does a person on the left, which branded Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance," reconcile this "respect everyone" attitude with this? The leftist mouthpieces would be up in arms right now if Pat Robertson was making this statement, but *crickets* since it's the Muslims.
* Except Christianity for some reason. You don't usually hear them saying we should respect the Christian religion, or attempt to glorify its past and promote its accomplishments. And, FTR, I despise both Falwell and Robertson.
Everybody quotes 2007, but obviously that's not when Apple envisioned the specific iPhone product, which was in mid 2005. The all-out work started later that year for a 2007 public introduction. But Apple had been working on touch screen technology for several years prior to that, and Jobs had mentioned in 2002 that Apple was working on a smart phone.
More like he observed product categories being marketed, determined why they sucked, figured out how to make them not suck, and then sold the de-suckified version. There is a huge amount of design and engineering in the "make it not suck" part of that.
Most people think it's just about government taxation. No, it was about crony capitalism, since the purpose of the tax was to funnel money into the influential East India Company.
I guess it's good I got it dead tree from a used book store.
"On the Uses of Torture", a short story by Piers Anthony. A sadist is recruited to establish contact with an alien society where no envoy has ever returned, and experiences some pretty gruesome torture. The ending is just sick and depressing.
You're right, forced isn't the right word. Created an environment that encouraged it is more like it. But then there was the pressure from the government to stop the practice of redlining (not lending in high-risk areas).
That's another one, the government making Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take on more risky investments.
The lie of the left here is that government social intervention had no bearing on the housing crash. They don't want to admit that their meddling always has negative unintended consequences, because otherwise people would try to stop the meddling they're doing right now. The real lie of the right is that they do meddling too, just for their own pet causes. Libertarians are outside that mess, just wanting the meddling on both sides to cease.
That's called the patent expiring.
Talk about the epitome of the concept of punishing success. You can come up with something successful, but don't be too successful or we'll take it away from you. It's absurd.
That is aside from the issue of absurdly long copyright terms. Happy Birthday should be in the public domain because the term should have expired decades ago, not because it's popular.