But if all they have against you is locked-away in an encrypted phone, that means that unless they get you to decrypt it, they can't even charge you with anything, since "he wouldn't decrypt his phone" isn't an indictable offense.
Number one, if all they had on you was a locked-up, encrypted phone then it would be mighty hard for them to get a warrant, now wouldn't it?
Number two, the OP isn't talking about not decrypting the phone, he's talking about wiping the phone. Not decrypting the phone is really smart as long as you can avoid doing so without violating a valid court order. But regardless of the evidence they use to get the order, they can fairly easily prove your newly wiped phone does not match up to the data your provider gave them, which is a five-year felony in the Federal system.
But if you destroy evidence, the cops can tell that to a Jury. Generally they have to, because it would be quite unusual to have separate trials for the destruction of evidence charge and the charge that started the investigation.
So the Jury goes into that room, where the course of your life will be determined, and yes they are technically using the same standard as always (Reasonable Doubt). But your side has a huge credibility problem because you destroyed evidence.
Yeah, you can win that case (Casey Anthony, for example, got convicted of impeding the investigation but nor murdering her daughter), but if you;re actually fucking innocent and/or your phone actually does not have incriminating information on it destroying it is a really bad idea.
Fighting the Court Order in Court, using lawyers, probably makes sense; but destroying the evidence will not only give a Federal Prosecutor a free 5-year felony to pin on your ass (this one), it will also encourage the Jury to believe the Prosecutor in the main bit of the case.
Apple's got a security feature where the phone verifies all components of the fingerprint-security system installed on the thing today are the ones that were installed yesterday since iOS9, much to the chagrin of the poor fuckers who got some part of the system repaired by non-Apple shops prior to iOS9. They fixed that on 9.3, but I doubt hacking the system is actually non-trivial.
On the other hand, to get a warrant all you need is a) a limited area to search (such as a phone), b) a reason to search it (aka: "probable cause"), and c) a LEO to swear that b) is true to a Judge via "oath or affirmation."
From a law enforcement point of view a warrant is pretty much free.
The cop tells a Judge "I need that warrant," if the cop has probable cause to search the limited area he is asking for the Judge is duty-bound to grant the warrant. Since the Judicial branch is not part of the cop's budget you have to figure a half-hour of a low-0ranking FBI Agent's time.
The shit you're talking about would require a really good photographer, a stake-out, and a lot of time to get precisely the right angle.
Citizens should have a place to store shit without LEO getting its fucking hands on it.
If it's not a smart device, then where is it?
Besides your brain? Under US Law the only place you are allowed to protect information from ignore a valid warrant is your brain. That's the entire point of warrants.
That a country would try that is what I refer to as an Interesting Constitutional Theory.
"Interesting" as in it's impossible by definition. Some have lacked the clout to get info they wanted, or the technical skills; but if you set up a government that can't even verify the info it's citizens tell it is true then it's gonna be mighty tricky to enforce the tax code, and without taxes you tend to turn into Ukraine.
People say that they've got more info on their cell then they would have in their House, but I really don't see that.
There's some areas that's true, but much of that is stuff they can get from Cell towers anyway. The rest tends to be app data -- Tinder/Grindr/type-apps could be quite revealing, but Candy Crush ain't. And there's stuff in your house that nobody could figure out from your mobile.
For example, do you share a bed with your wife? Are there tampon cartridges in the trash, and how fresh are they? What kind of food is in the pantry? If you have a genealogy file it probably includes incredibly detailed personal information on your entire family, and none of it is in your phone. You probably have paper records of all your brokerage accounts in your house, as well as tax records, including shit you don't send the IRS (ie: they only ask for copies of your receipts during an audit).
Pretty much the only thing they get from the phone they wouldn't get from the House/cell tower data/etc. is a) a check that the House/towers/etc. is the actual content of your texts. And that App data, but they can generally get a lot of that from the people who make the app.
Nope. The Fifth Amendment applies to shit you say, not shit you are:
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
You can refuse to turn over passwords all you want, and they can't make you. But your finger? They need to get the proper papers filed with the Courts, but they can borrow that for five minutes.
You could argue that the finger is something testimony like, but the rules lawyers that actually run the legal system have centuries of tradition defining "witness" as being "testimonial" in nature, which means that if the info you're divulging is any place but your own mind it doesn't apply.
You've just committed multiple felonies relating to obstructing an investigation. Moreover the reaction of Courts to "you can't prove that, the evidence is gone," is typically to assume the evidence was the most damning evidence possible.
I mean technically Apple didn't lose in Court, but the government actually got more then it wanted in terms of access to your damn phone because the hack it's using today is not tied to a single iPhone 5c.
Try typing whatever feature you;re looking for into the "help" menu. There'll actually be a big blue arrow pointing to wherever they moved the damn button.
It's got a whole lot of non-playlist shit going on (movies/TV Shows, the Store, etc.) that adds bloat. I mostly use it, and it's 100-150 MB RAM Footprint, to do the same thing I used a 3-4 MB program for back in 2000. They also retool the interface every few years because fuck customers.
And if you're one of them fancy-schmancy LINUX geeks you can just get download an open source music player from the internet, which has no bloat because it plays music and literally nothing else, and never changes the interface because that would involve work on the boring part...
Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General [wikipedia.org] doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.
The Canadian constitution doesn't give the PM that power, but rather to the Governor General. It is convention which effective gives the PM the power to prorogue the Parliament via "advisement". And what happens when a PM abuses that power like Harper did in 2008 and 2009? And glancing at the above Wikipedia page, I notice a court did indeed have to rule that someone couldn't interfere with the PM's "advice".
However, the Federal Court of Canada, in a 2009 ruling, found that tampering with the Crown's prerogatives could not be done via normal legislation, requiring instead an amendment to the constitution pursuant to Section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
Exactly.
Instead of being a matter for the Courts to decide via their (by definition) rules-lawyering, it was a matter of convention. Somebody tried to being the rules-lawyers in, and they said no.
Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.
As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.
What is bizarre here is your insistence this is somehow different than other countries. I have given examples both of gaming of the judicial system in Canada and a case where a Canadian court had to rule on the legality of interfering with a legal convention. Further, not having a multi-century old constitution is not a strength. I bet there will be several constitutions that get recycled over the next half century due to having become unworkable, France, Italy, and the EU come to mind as likely candidates.
What is the problem with the US is the laws not how the courts rule on them. It wouldn't be any different anywhere else. When they create the same laws that they will reap the same problems.
Except that I just described the Inquisitorial System, which is a Civil Law system, and virtually nothing like the Common Law system we use. Even among Common Law countries we tend to be an outlier in the amount of rules-lawyering. Many of their rules will be by convention, rather then written down, and the Court will typically have the power to comment on legal situations that are not actual cases or controversies which in turn means that instead of waiting for a specific case with unique "facts and circumstances" to guide all future cases you just get a ruling on the letter of the law.
For example, you know that San Bernandino phone thing with Apple? There's no precedent set in that case because no final decision was made by a Court that can set Binding Precedents. The Feds won two preliminary hearings and nothing else, but it's not binding. There's also no precedent from the drug-phone case in NYC because that case didn't get to a Court that can set binding precedents. Which means that, due to rigorous rule lawyering re: the Case or Contr
Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister.
That's not a compelling argument. You just dumped the mess of an executive officer into convention rather than constitution. How do you interpret or alter convention?
In this particular thread the argument is they're less rules lawyerey then us.
Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.
Whereas in the States she would have to rule he can't do that, even though it was early December and there's been an election in late October; and the Opposition had only agreed to fire Stephen Harper not agreed on a new PM, thus ensuring a January election; that she was gonna put up with Harper's bullshit for another month in the hopes that either a) he made peace with the Opposition, or b) the Opposition got it's act together and agreed on who was going to replace him.
Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.
I wouldn't brag given the power and in some cases glaring power tripping of Canadian tribunals (the first tribunal which declared that it didn't have jurisdiction, but decided to strongly imply that the defendant was guilty of certain human rights violations just the same (without any sort of proper hearing). In that second link, there was another example of a tribunal officer, Jennifer Lynch making public statements on the same complaint before her tribunal. This unprofessional behavior wouldn't occur in a US courtroom without the judge being taken off the case.
And no US Judge has ever power-tripped?
I agree commenting on the case would be strongly frowned upon in the US, but this isn't always a good thing. Remember when the NYPD was doing warrantless searches on every black man in the City, and the Judge who threw that shit out was disciplined for talking about it afterwards?
Also by requiring parties to have standing before involving the courts, it cuts down both on the power of the courts and on attempts to waste the time of the courts. The "multi-century old texts" work. That's why they're still around.
Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.
As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.
Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.
We could always do what I say, that would be better. But if for some strange reason you want the benefits of a nation of laws, then you need to live in one.
Keep in mind that many countries have less rules-lawyerey legal systems, and function quite well.
Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister. It mentions a "Chair of the Privy Council," who is always also Prime Minister, but the Chair's role seems to be more shuffling paperwork between an all-powerful Queen Victoria and an angry and obstreperous Legislature then anything Trudeau actually does. Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.
In either Canada, or Europe, the court system, when faced with a party that wanted to use both public money and public election officials for it's primary while controlling whom could vote, would probably decide much differently.
But Ohio has a semi-open primary. So unless the slacktivist is willing to declare himself a Democrat on election day, he does not get the same vote I do. At which point his name gets added to our party list and I'm more then happy to share my vote with him.
You do not have an absolute Right to vote in the primary. Note the capital. I am not referring to the rights you think you have as an American, because those fond delusions tend to be more the result of unreasonably patriotic Grade School educations*, but rather the ones you actually have in Court. And in Court, the Supremes have very consistently ruled that people like me (who run the parties) have the capital-R-Right to exclude people like you from their partisan primary.
He bitched about the unfairness of the public paying for this shit, and in Canada Party leadership is determined by an internal party process. As of today (thanks to Harper) no public funding is involved, altho I rather suspect Trudeau will "fix" that soon enough.
If you're in any state that has primaries, then it's a requirement if the party wants it.
It's true there is no Federal requirement for primaries, but until voters stop bitching about the thing they can't fix (ie: whether the primary is closed or open), and start bitching about the thing the state can fix (that there is a primary at all) that's hardly likely to happen, now is it?
What do you think Trump wants from the media? His entire political persona is based on being the Big Important Guy whose fighting the elites for you.
It's a neat bit of political jujitsu. If the media is complaining about him that just proves he's who he says he is, and you should vote for him if that's what you want in a President. If the media is supporting him then he's obviously gonna be a great president. Every second he's on TV is good for him.
The difference between this run and the 2008 run is that he managed to be the center of attention longer, and the rest of the party never coalesced around an alternative.
Bernie's problem isn't that he's outside the party. He's actually been one of my favorites since High School. Several state Democratic parties actually do not have the label "Democratic party," notably Minnesota's "Democratic-Farmer-Labor," and North Dakota. One of Maine's Senators is also officially an independent who caucuses with the Dems, as was Joe Lieberman. And (except for Lieberman, who, IMHO, has no soul) they're all fine.
Bernie's problem is different. Many of his supporters are the kind of people who disdain large institutions as terribly ineffective. In some ways this is true (they never finish the to-do list), particularly in politics; in other ways it's silly (you know "Checks and Balances"? designed to stop political parties from finishing their to-do lists).
But it means some of his guys tend to refuse to re-register as Dems to vote for him, others don't plan far ahead enough to re-register in time (and yes, I will agree New York's re-registration deadline was ridiculous), and they tend to blame the large institution. When they could have easily avoided the problem by simply registering with the party they knew they were gonna vote in the first damn place.
I hate to break it to you, but the Supreme Court has ruled that publicly-funded closed primaries are a First Amendment requirement. The party nominee is not listed as independent left-winger on the ballot, they're listed with the party name, therefore they are considered to be speaking for the party membership, so the party membership gets to decide how they are chosen. That's why the Cali GOP Presidential primary is a closed primary but the Democratic primary is open.
Now in your state you could change your local laws so that there's an open primary, and most state parties will go along with the default, but even if you do that the parties retain their Capital-R-Right to insist on a closed primary.
In other words if you wanted to live in a country where anything vaguely resembling fairness was involved in public policy, you probably shoulda moved to Canada long the fuck ago. This is the United Fucking States. Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.
To the extent the media pushes anybody consistently, it pushes Trump. He gets eyeballs, therefore they give him as much free time as he asks for.
On the Democratic side they tend to be schizo because each time there's a lead change it's news and they can get eyeballs. Bernie's odds haven't really changed much at any point during the process, they've always been low (but not zero if he can win some big states by enough votes); yet if you were watching the media you'd have thought that he was winning at several points, and that Hillary had knocked him completely out at several other points; because that story gets more eyeballs then "Bernie wins Michigan by enough votes to tie at the convention if he hadn't blown it in Dixie" is not a particularly compelling news story.
Bernie's not a grassroots Democratic candidate. He loses self-identified Democrats, and closed primaries, generally by extremely large margins. He's a grassroots left-wing independent candidate.
Now you might believe that encouraging such candidates is a good idea. But as somebody who has actually participated in the fairly complex, thankless, and completely unpaid work of getting all the cats in the same herd I kinda resent that a bunch of slacktivists think they should have as much influence over said coalition as I do despite the fact many of them are unwilling to change their voter registration to the Democratic party.
Interesting factoid: Everyone says this, but you know actual rules your ass actually has to obey or your ass will go to fucking jail? Every single Right that will be recognized in Courts is one of the enumerated ones. Even when given a very easy case (ie: that abortions by pill are protected as Rights under the 9th Amendment), the Courts will insist on using one of the explicit Amendments rather then the 9th (ie: that somehow stoping you from taking said pill is a "search" or seizure").
Slashdot Mirror
And how many years ago was the 5 considered the gold standard in phones?
Technology changes. All security tech from this year will be worked around eventually.
And the government will still be around when they hack your supposedly government-safe phone.
But if all they have against you is locked-away in an encrypted phone, that means that unless they get you to decrypt it, they can't even charge you with anything, since "he wouldn't decrypt his phone" isn't an indictable offense.
Number one, if all they had on you was a locked-up, encrypted phone then it would be mighty hard for them to get a warrant, now wouldn't it?
Number two, the OP isn't talking about not decrypting the phone, he's talking about wiping the phone. Not decrypting the phone is really smart as long as you can avoid doing so without violating a valid court order. But regardless of the evidence they use to get the order, they can fairly easily prove your newly wiped phone does not match up to the data your provider gave them, which is a five-year felony in the Federal system.
Thye standard doesn't change.
But if you destroy evidence, the cops can tell that to a Jury. Generally they have to, because it would be quite unusual to have separate trials for the destruction of evidence charge and the charge that started the investigation.
So the Jury goes into that room, where the course of your life will be determined, and yes they are technically using the same standard as always (Reasonable Doubt). But your side has a huge credibility problem because you destroyed evidence.
Yeah, you can win that case (Casey Anthony, for example, got convicted of impeding the investigation but nor murdering her daughter), but if you;re actually fucking innocent and/or your phone actually does not have incriminating information on it destroying it is a really bad idea.
Fighting the Court Order in Court, using lawyers, probably makes sense; but destroying the evidence will not only give a Federal Prosecutor a free 5-year felony to pin on your ass (this one), it will also encourage the Jury to believe the Prosecutor in the main bit of the case.
Remember this?
Apple's got a security feature where the phone verifies all components of the fingerprint-security system installed on the thing today are the ones that were installed yesterday since iOS9, much to the chagrin of the poor fuckers who got some part of the system repaired by non-Apple shops prior to iOS9. They fixed that on 9.3, but I doubt hacking the system is actually non-trivial.
On the other hand, to get a warrant all you need is a) a limited area to search (such as a phone), b) a reason to search it (aka: "probable cause"), and c) a LEO to swear that b) is true to a Judge via "oath or affirmation."
From a law enforcement point of view a warrant is pretty much free.
The cop tells a Judge "I need that warrant," if the cop has probable cause to search the limited area he is asking for the Judge is duty-bound to grant the warrant. Since the Judicial branch is not part of the cop's budget you have to figure a half-hour of a low-0ranking FBI Agent's time.
The shit you're talking about would require a really good photographer, a stake-out, and a lot of time to get precisely the right angle.
Citizens should have a place to store shit without LEO getting its fucking hands on it.
If it's not a smart device, then where is it?
Besides your brain? Under US Law the only place you are allowed to protect information from ignore a valid warrant is your brain. That's the entire point of warrants.
That a country would try that is what I refer to as an Interesting Constitutional Theory.
"Interesting" as in it's impossible by definition. Some have lacked the clout to get info they wanted, or the technical skills; but if you set up a government that can't even verify the info it's citizens tell it is true then it's gonna be mighty tricky to enforce the tax code, and without taxes you tend to turn into Ukraine.
People say that they've got more info on their cell then they would have in their House, but I really don't see that.
There's some areas that's true, but much of that is stuff they can get from Cell towers anyway. The rest tends to be app data -- Tinder/Grindr/type-apps could be quite revealing, but Candy Crush ain't. And there's stuff in your house that nobody could figure out from your mobile.
For example, do you share a bed with your wife? Are there tampon cartridges in the trash, and how fresh are they? What kind of food is in the pantry? If you have a genealogy file it probably includes incredibly detailed personal information on your entire family, and none of it is in your phone. You probably have paper records of all your brokerage accounts in your house, as well as tax records, including shit you don't send the IRS (ie: they only ask for copies of your receipts during an audit).
Pretty much the only thing they get from the phone they wouldn't get from the House/cell tower data/etc. is a) a check that the House/towers/etc. is the actual content of your texts. And that App data, but they can generally get a lot of that from the people who make the app.
Nope. The Fifth Amendment applies to shit you say, not shit you are:
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
You can refuse to turn over passwords all you want, and they can't make you. But your finger? They need to get the proper papers filed with the Courts, but they can borrow that for five minutes.
You could argue that the finger is something testimony like, but the rules lawyers that actually run the legal system have centuries of tradition defining "witness" as being "testimonial" in nature, which means that if the info you're divulging is any place but your own mind it doesn't apply.
Dude,
Stop watching movies.
You've just committed multiple felonies relating to obstructing an investigation. Moreover the reaction of Courts to "you can't prove that, the evidence is gone," is typically to assume the evidence was the most damning evidence possible.
And how's that working out for you?
I mean technically Apple didn't lose in Court, but the government actually got more then it wanted in terms of access to your damn phone because the hack it's using today is not tied to a single iPhone 5c.
Try typing whatever feature you;re looking for into the "help" menu. There'll actually be a big blue arrow pointing to wherever they moved the damn button.
I use it too, but I get some of the hate.
It's got a whole lot of non-playlist shit going on (movies/TV Shows, the Store, etc.) that adds bloat. I mostly use it, and it's 100-150 MB RAM Footprint, to do the same thing I used a 3-4 MB program for back in 2000. They also retool the interface every few years because fuck customers.
And if you're one of them fancy-schmancy LINUX geeks you can just get download an open source music player from the internet, which has no bloat because it plays music and literally nothing else, and never changes the interface because that would involve work on the boring part...
Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General [wikipedia.org] doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.
The Canadian constitution doesn't give the PM that power, but rather to the Governor General. It is convention which effective gives the PM the power to prorogue the Parliament via "advisement". And what happens when a PM abuses that power like Harper did in 2008 and 2009? And glancing at the above Wikipedia page, I notice a court did indeed have to rule that someone couldn't interfere with the PM's "advice".
However, the Federal Court of Canada, in a 2009 ruling, found that tampering with the Crown's prerogatives could not be done via normal legislation, requiring instead an amendment to the constitution pursuant to Section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
Exactly.
Instead of being a matter for the Courts to decide via their (by definition) rules-lawyering, it was a matter of convention. Somebody tried to being the rules-lawyers in, and they said no.
Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.
As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.
What is bizarre here is your insistence this is somehow different than other countries. I have given examples both of gaming of the judicial system in Canada and a case where a Canadian court had to rule on the legality of interfering with a legal convention. Further, not having a multi-century old constitution is not a strength. I bet there will be several constitutions that get recycled over the next half century due to having become unworkable, France, Italy, and the EU come to mind as likely candidates.
What is the problem with the US is the laws not how the courts rule on them. It wouldn't be any different anywhere else. When they create the same laws that they will reap the same problems.
Except that I just described the Inquisitorial System, which is a Civil Law system, and virtually nothing like the Common Law system we use. Even among Common Law countries we tend to be an outlier in the amount of rules-lawyering. Many of their rules will be by convention, rather then written down, and the Court will typically have the power to comment on legal situations that are not actual cases or controversies which in turn means that instead of waiting for a specific case with unique "facts and circumstances" to guide all future cases you just get a ruling on the letter of the law.
For example, you know that San Bernandino phone thing with Apple? There's no precedent set in that case because no final decision was made by a Court that can set Binding Precedents. The Feds won two preliminary hearings and nothing else, but it's not binding. There's also no precedent from the drug-phone case in NYC because that case didn't get to a Court that can set binding precedents. Which means that, due to rigorous rule lawyering re: the Case or Contr
Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister.
That's not a compelling argument. You just dumped the mess of an executive officer into convention rather than constitution. How do you interpret or alter convention?
In this particular thread the argument is they're less rules lawyerey then us.
Constitutional Conventions are inherently flexible, thus if the PM decides to do something like Prorogue Parliament earlier then he should do by convention, specifically to prevent the Opposition from firing him, the Governor General doesn't have to rule that he can't do that shit.
Whereas in the States she would have to rule he can't do that, even though it was early December and there's been an election in late October; and the Opposition had only agreed to fire Stephen Harper not agreed on a new PM, thus ensuring a January election; that she was gonna put up with Harper's bullshit for another month in the hopes that either a) he made peace with the Opposition, or b) the Opposition got it's act together and agreed on who was going to replace him.
Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.
I wouldn't brag given the power and in some cases glaring power tripping of Canadian tribunals (the first tribunal which declared that it didn't have jurisdiction, but decided to strongly imply that the defendant was guilty of certain human rights violations just the same (without any sort of proper hearing). In that second link, there was another example of a tribunal officer, Jennifer Lynch making public statements on the same complaint before her tribunal. This unprofessional behavior wouldn't occur in a US courtroom without the judge being taken off the case.
And no US Judge has ever power-tripped?
I agree commenting on the case would be strongly frowned upon in the US, but this isn't always a good thing. Remember when the NYPD was doing warrantless searches on every black man in the City, and the Judge who threw that shit out was disciplined for talking about it afterwards?
Also by requiring parties to have standing before involving the courts, it cuts down both on the power of the courts and on attempts to waste the time of the courts. The "multi-century old texts" work. That's why they're still around.
Interestingly enough, most countries have Court systems that are much more powerful then the Canadian. Typically Prosecutors will be ensconced in the Judicial branch, it's not unusual that whether a given official is the Prosecutor or the Judge in a case is luck of the draw, and rather then lengthy arguments about standing before any hearing on an interesting topic they'll just have the damn hearing. Which can be quicker then having months of hearings on standing, then appeals of those hearings, appeals of the appeals, etc.
As for how well the system works, it works quite well in America. We like legalistic bullshit. We really like that, since the Judiciary is too weak to change most rules (and refuses to change the rules it can change), the system is game-able. Other countries that try similar systems tend to collapse. Which is why nobody has a Judicial system like ours.
Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.
We could always do what I say, that would be better. But if for some strange reason you want the benefits of a nation of laws, then you need to live in one.
Keep in mind that many countries have less rules-lawyerey legal systems, and function quite well.
Canada's Constitution, for example, gives no opportunity to argue over whether a particular action was within the powers of the Prime Minister because it does not actually mention the Prime Minister. It mentions a "Chair of the Privy Council," who is always also Prime Minister, but the Chair's role seems to be more shuffling paperwork between an all-powerful Queen Victoria and an angry and obstreperous Legislature then anything Trudeau actually does. Since it also gives the Court system the right to rule on the Constitutionality of theoretical actions, it follows that a Canadian ObamaCare would be declared Constitutional or not prior to implementation rather then requiring years of litigation over the exact details of very specific cases.
In either Canada, or Europe, the court system, when faced with a party that wanted to use both public money and public election officials for it's primary while controlling whom could vote, would probably decide much differently.
In the general.
But Ohio has a semi-open primary. So unless the slacktivist is willing to declare himself a Democrat on election day, he does not get the same vote I do. At which point his name gets added to our party list and I'm more then happy to share my vote with him.
You have a right to vote in November.
You do not have an absolute Right to vote in the primary. Note the capital. I am not referring to the rights you think you have as an American, because those fond delusions tend to be more the result of unreasonably patriotic Grade School educations*, but rather the ones you actually have in Court. And in Court, the Supremes have very consistently ruled that people like me (who run the parties) have the capital-R-Right to exclude people like you from their partisan primary.
Who said anything about open or Democratic?
He bitched about the unfairness of the public paying for this shit, and in Canada Party leadership is determined by an internal party process. As of today (thanks to Harper) no public funding is involved, altho I rather suspect Trudeau will "fix" that soon enough.
If you're in any state that has primaries, then it's a requirement if the party wants it.
It's true there is no Federal requirement for primaries, but until voters stop bitching about the thing they can't fix (ie: whether the primary is closed or open), and start bitching about the thing the state can fix (that there is a primary at all) that's hardly likely to happen, now is it?
What do you think Trump wants from the media? His entire political persona is based on being the Big Important Guy whose fighting the elites for you.
It's a neat bit of political jujitsu. If the media is complaining about him that just proves he's who he says he is, and you should vote for him if that's what you want in a President. If the media is supporting him then he's obviously gonna be a great president. Every second he's on TV is good for him.
The difference between this run and the 2008 run is that he managed to be the center of attention longer, and the rest of the party never coalesced around an alternative.
Bernie's problem isn't that he's outside the party. He's actually been one of my favorites since High School. Several state Democratic parties actually do not have the label "Democratic party," notably Minnesota's "Democratic-Farmer-Labor," and North Dakota. One of Maine's Senators is also officially an independent who caucuses with the Dems, as was Joe Lieberman. And (except for Lieberman, who, IMHO, has no soul) they're all fine.
Bernie's problem is different. Many of his supporters are the kind of people who disdain large institutions as terribly ineffective. In some ways this is true (they never finish the to-do list), particularly in politics; in other ways it's silly (you know "Checks and Balances"? designed to stop political parties from finishing their to-do lists).
But it means some of his guys tend to refuse to re-register as Dems to vote for him, others don't plan far ahead enough to re-register in time (and yes, I will agree New York's re-registration deadline was ridiculous), and they tend to blame the large institution. When they could have easily avoided the problem by simply registering with the party they knew they were gonna vote in the first damn place.
I hate to break it to you, but the Supreme Court has ruled that publicly-funded closed primaries are a First Amendment requirement. The party nominee is not listed as independent left-winger on the ballot, they're listed with the party name, therefore they are considered to be speaking for the party membership, so the party membership gets to decide how they are chosen. That's why the Cali GOP Presidential primary is a closed primary but the Democratic primary is open.
Now in your state you could change your local laws so that there's an open primary, and most state parties will go along with the default, but even if you do that the parties retain their Capital-R-Right to insist on a closed primary.
In other words if you wanted to live in a country where anything vaguely resembling fairness was involved in public policy, you probably shoulda moved to Canada long the fuck ago. This is the United Fucking States. Rules Lawyering, based on rigorous adherence to a multi-century old texts is everything here.
To the extent the media pushes anybody consistently, it pushes Trump. He gets eyeballs, therefore they give him as much free time as he asks for.
On the Democratic side they tend to be schizo because each time there's a lead change it's news and they can get eyeballs. Bernie's odds haven't really changed much at any point during the process, they've always been low (but not zero if he can win some big states by enough votes); yet if you were watching the media you'd have thought that he was winning at several points, and that Hillary had knocked him completely out at several other points; because that story gets more eyeballs then "Bernie wins Michigan by enough votes to tie at the convention if he hadn't blown it in Dixie" is not a particularly compelling news story.
Bernie's not a grassroots Democratic candidate. He loses self-identified Democrats, and closed primaries, generally by extremely large margins. He's a grassroots left-wing independent candidate.
Now you might believe that encouraging such candidates is a good idea. But as somebody who has actually participated in the fairly complex, thankless, and completely unpaid work of getting all the cats in the same herd I kinda resent that a bunch of slacktivists think they should have as much influence over said coalition as I do despite the fact many of them are unwilling to change their voter registration to the Democratic party.
Interesting factoid:
Everyone says this, but you know actual rules your ass actually has to obey or your ass will go to fucking jail? Every single Right that will be recognized in Courts is one of the enumerated ones. Even when given a very easy case (ie: that abortions by pill are protected as Rights under the 9th Amendment), the Courts will insist on using one of the explicit Amendments rather then the 9th (ie: that somehow stoping you from taking said pill is a "search" or seizure").