My question was more towards why anybody would think judicial review and "setting aside" of laws passed by the legislative branch was a bad thing.
I'm perfectly fine with setting aside of laws and regulations. It's waiting until after the judicial review to do it that is the problem. We're already executing American citizens without trial, though I suppose where al-Awlaki and Samir Khan went, they'll have no shortage of lawyers to appeal their cases.
even trying to comprehend whatever it is you are saying here
The only way I can see for you to fail to comprehend is if you have absolute, unfailing, and complete trust in the government, that you view this world as a place where the government will never do anything that someone can say, in advance, "no! that's wrong! bad government!" because everything the government does is perfect and benevolent.
What keeps guardsmen from pulling the trigger on a bunch of kids in an elementary school yard
Obviously, I chose the wrong example since in your world the military has 100% accuracy and their weapons never misfire. Half of the problem is that the "unintended consequences" that our politicians claim they couldn't possibly have foreseen tends to have been foreseen and complaints about them have been dismissed as coming from crackpots.
their commander-in-chief is subject to elections and an incident like that would either get him/her fired from his job
But then the person with the wrong view on abortions would get in!!1! Besides, I thought the whole point of the experiment was to evade the tyranny of the majority. If the majority is OK with violating the Constitution, we're back where we are.
If you don't believe me, just look at what is happening at UC Davis with the pepper spraying incident, where the school chancellor is barely holding on to her job at the moment and may be replaced real soon for a similar kind of incident.
Yes, the system sometimes works after the damage was done (unless the government gets to declare that the issue is "moot"). Now imagine that you knew the Constitution was going to be violated in advance, but you did nothing to stop it because the issue was "not ripe". Now imagine if you wanted to do something to stop it, but the government will not allow you to because the issue was "not ripe", so you are forced to sit on your thumbs, wait for the inevitable, and hope it doesn't hurt any of your loved ones. Wouldn't you be frustrated?
I think you need a crash course in constitutional law.
You asked if I disagreed with your thought that changing the Constitution to include a 4th branch would just be judicial review all over again. I made two suggestions, either making the supreme law of the land have penalties for violating it (providing a disincentive for doing it so openly, if not not violating it in the first place), or provide for a fourth branch of government (another layer on the cake) to review all laws and regulations for Constitutional-ness before they are put into force so that citizens would not have to waste time, money and possibly lives to deal with it after the fact (ie not the current judicial review). Clearly the other two branches aren't always doing their job, and as I implied, there's no guarantee that a fourth would make it any better, but at least I wouldn't be standing around expecting that doing the same thing will yield different results this time.
Now that I'm re-reading it, maybe I misunderstood you, and you were saying "no matter what might be a better way of doing it, if we try to change it we'll just get the same thing over again" which I'd have to admit is certainly a possibility.
Where is the demand for an utterly focused, "frill free" curriculum directed effectively and narrowly at training for employment?
VoTech exists, but it's not the four year degree plus 6 years of experience HR demands for an entry level mop-pusher job. I'm not going to defend people who thought that a liberal arts major will get them a cup of coffee, but that still leaves about every other job above "burger flipper" asking for a college education.
Training for employment used to be something employers provided. Then they abandoned the tried-and-true method of promoting from within, to replace it with poaching from other employers (plus contracts forbidding employees to ever work again to try and prevent others from poaching from them), to whining to the government to do something about how there aren't any more people to fill senior positions now that most of the companies got rid of all the juniors.
What would a private company with no visible gov't affiliations care about any of that?
Why don't you ask Qwest's CEO, I think he gets out of jail sometime this decade for not bending over for Bush's warrantless wiretaps. Oh, sorry, I meant violating his job as CEO to make every penny possible by getting his government contracts cancelled for not bending over for Bush's warrantless wiretaps. Hmm, it doesn't sound much better that way either. How do you spin it so you can claim that these telcom companies have no visible government affiliations?
I don't see the harm is using the physical facilities of an elementary school as a shooting range or for that matter even teaching elementary school-aged children about the proper use and handling of firearms, so I fail to see your point here
I was thinking more along the lines of those old training courses where bad guys and civilians pop up and you gotta shoot the right ones without hitting the kids or the little old ladies. Only with more screaming.
It can be done safely and nobody has to be hurt
"Can it" versus "Will it". If the national guard will be doing live fire training in the playground during recess, what can you do about it before the first shot is fired?
If you disagree, I'd be curious why you might have a contrary opinion.
I think it has to either be done outside of the judicial branch or if it's done in the judicial branch, done all the way. I'm rather in favor of the Haiti Method (violate the constitution = forcibly expelled from the country), but I'll settle for Foo v. Some Dumb Law being carried out the same way we carry out Foo v. $50,000 cash, if the $50,000 cash doesn't have the right to defend itself why should some dumb law? Solving it outside of the Judiciary means adding more layers to the cake with no guarantee that it'll taste any better, but it gives us an opportunity to deal with things that haven't gone through the judicial system, like holding citizens in prison for years without charge, welfare, or that one state I remember Pudge once whined about for allowing just anyone to come along and call themselves Republican on the ballot (where the courts ruled that the issue wasn't "ripe" until after an election was fucked up by it, i.e. the guardsmen haven't pulled their triggers yet).
It's easy: we need to know if our megacorporations are responsible or not. If not, they shouldn't be forced to pay for it, everyone else will. If they are, they need to know so they can declare bankruptcy and turn the planet into a superfund site so they won't pay for it, everyone else will.
point of ruling a law "unconstitutional" really is one of recognition
Except that this view is incomplete, and it's weaknesses make it horribly so. By cramming this act of "recognition" into the judicial system, we end up where we are now: the government can do whatever it wants until it hurts someone. Supporting this arrangement is like supporting using an elementary school as a shooting range: sometimes you have to be able to say "no, don't do that" before someone gets hurt, because no matter how hard you petition or how hard the government redresses, some grievances can't be undone.
one obvious tax increase would be to repeal Obama's tax cut
Well duh, that's what we've been saying all along! -- the Republicans
along with Bush's tax cut.
Oh hell no! -- the Republicans
Note that the biggest proponent of NOT cutting Defense Spending is Obama's Secretary of Defense, not the Republicans.
"Those who have given us so much have nothing more to give," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., promising to introduce legislation to prevent the cuts.
Sens. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the panel, said they would "pursue all options" to avoid deeper defense cuts.
source. To the Republican(?)s' credit, Rand Paul defends the "cut" (which he points out is a reduced increase, not a decrease in funding). Panetta may want his department to get as much money as possible, but it's Congress with the power to make it so.
The Democrats were willing to cut spending a little and raise taxes a lot. The Republicans were willing to cut spending a lot (but not on their programs) and raise taxes only on the middle class.
The whole thing was doomed from the start, the only time "bipartisianship" works is when both parties get to increase the power of government and fuck over everyone else. It's uncanny how, now that it's fallen apart, the Republicans are already rushing to break their promise of automatic spending cuts (but only on their programs). What principle! Of course, it's not without precedent, it's just like claiming that Medicare is saving money through cuts in doctors' pay that Congress cancels year after year.
So Microsoft is not trying to license their trivial, dubious software-patents under Fair Reasonable and NON Discriminatory terms. They are trying to drive up the cost of open source beyond what it would cost to purchase windows from them.
Alternatively, they're aware that Windows Mobile is a steaming pile of shit that nobody wants, and have priced it accordingly while they focus on making money from better goods.
there is a huge variation in the skill sets of people developing in it, with a heavy bias towards those who couldn't write an original line of code to save their ass.
That, combined with the fact that the internet is flooded with ancient javascript snippets ripe for copying and pasting despite the fact that they don't work on anything but netscape 4.
the pharma has the consumer by the balls because of FDA, because of Medicare, because of special gov't privileges.
And once they're all gone, what then?
"Pharma" will still have the consumer by the balls, because it would be terrible if little Timmy died since you refused to shell out a million dollars to prolong his life another three miserable cancer-ridden months, you monster.
Unless you're at least a little bit of a motorhead, you might argue that all carbs look alike.
Unless you're not a human, you might argue that all binary blobs look alike. Software is judged on its output, not the process by which it achieves that output.
But going back to that carburetor. If you had a carb patent and didn't even bother to take apart my carb to see if I actually infringed before suing me, how much money would I have to spend to defend myself if my carb was different from yours. Show your work, factoring in issues like the "Doctrine of Equivalents" and "After-invented technology" as you grasp at ever thinner straws to keep your case together and try to bankrupt me or force me to settle.
No one was awarded a patent for "mixing fuel vapor and air".
A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user's perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location.
and the patent holder is using it to sue people for having in-app purchase buttons.
I stay out of the left lane because it's usually backed up by idiots who figured they were gonna go really fast to where they were going, only they forgot to get out of the lane before they got to where they were going, so they slam on their brakes while they try to negotiate exiting the freeway across four lanes of traffic.
I've posted this before, but what I really want out on my programmable thermostat is a dehumidify cycle that runs for 15 minutes or so then goes back to the default setting.
Actually, in a free market world it's pretty easy: If a company causes more damage than it can pay back, all of its officers and employees are enslaved until they earn enough money to pay back the damages. We could even chain the doors shut to keep them from running away.
Oh wait, they wanted big mommy government to save them by allowing them to just walk away from their debts and declare the area a superfund site so everyone else can pay to fix their shit when they screw up something bigger than they are? Tough tits.
Slashdot Mirror
if he was a Republican, all the trolls woulld be out about "OMG Republicans are teh evil."
Your butthurt would be less funny if it wasn't below the posts calling Lieberman a Nazi and a terrorist.
Why bother? If someone breaks in and screws up the prices, they'll just roll back all the trades that hurt Goldman Sachs.
My question was more towards why anybody would think judicial review and "setting aside" of laws passed by the legislative branch was a bad thing.
I'm perfectly fine with setting aside of laws and regulations. It's waiting until after the judicial review to do it that is the problem. We're already executing American citizens without trial, though I suppose where al-Awlaki and Samir Khan went, they'll have no shortage of lawyers to appeal their cases.
even trying to comprehend whatever it is you are saying here
The only way I can see for you to fail to comprehend is if you have absolute, unfailing, and complete trust in the government, that you view this world as a place where the government will never do anything that someone can say, in advance, "no! that's wrong! bad government!" because everything the government does is perfect and benevolent.
What keeps guardsmen from pulling the trigger on a bunch of kids in an elementary school yard
Obviously, I chose the wrong example since in your world the military has 100% accuracy and their weapons never misfire. Half of the problem is that the "unintended consequences" that our politicians claim they couldn't possibly have foreseen tends to have been foreseen and complaints about them have been dismissed as coming from crackpots.
their commander-in-chief is subject to elections and an incident like that would either get him/her fired from his job
But then the person with the wrong view on abortions would get in!!1! Besides, I thought the whole point of the experiment was to evade the tyranny of the majority. If the majority is OK with violating the Constitution, we're back where we are.
If you don't believe me, just look at what is happening at UC Davis with the pepper spraying incident, where the school chancellor is barely holding on to her job at the moment and may be replaced real soon for a similar kind of incident.
Yes, the system sometimes works after the damage was done (unless the government gets to declare that the issue is "moot"). Now imagine that you knew the Constitution was going to be violated in advance, but you did nothing to stop it because the issue was "not ripe". Now imagine if you wanted to do something to stop it, but the government will not allow you to because the issue was "not ripe", so you are forced to sit on your thumbs, wait for the inevitable, and hope it doesn't hurt any of your loved ones. Wouldn't you be frustrated?
I think you need a crash course in constitutional law.
You asked if I disagreed with your thought that changing the Constitution to include a 4th branch would just be judicial review all over again. I made two suggestions, either making the supreme law of the land have penalties for violating it (providing a disincentive for doing it so openly, if not not violating it in the first place), or provide for a fourth branch of government (another layer on the cake) to review all laws and regulations for Constitutional-ness before they are put into force so that citizens would not have to waste time, money and possibly lives to deal with it after the fact (ie not the current judicial review). Clearly the other two branches aren't always doing their job, and as I implied, there's no guarantee that a fourth would make it any better, but at least I wouldn't be standing around expecting that doing the same thing will yield different results this time.
Now that I'm re-reading it, maybe I misunderstood you, and you were saying "no matter what might be a better way of doing it, if we try to change it we'll just get the same thing over again" which I'd have to admit is certainly a possibility.
thoughtful people are asking why
As my best friend, I'd be very interested in your thoughts on what people can do to prevent others from associating themselves with you.
Where is the demand for an utterly focused, "frill free" curriculum directed effectively and narrowly at training for employment?
VoTech exists, but it's not the four year degree plus 6 years of experience HR demands for an entry level mop-pusher job. I'm not going to defend people who thought that a liberal arts major will get them a cup of coffee, but that still leaves about every other job above "burger flipper" asking for a college education.
Training for employment used to be something employers provided. Then they abandoned the tried-and-true method of promoting from within, to replace it with poaching from other employers (plus contracts forbidding employees to ever work again to try and prevent others from poaching from them), to whining to the government to do something about how there aren't any more people to fill senior positions now that most of the companies got rid of all the juniors.
What would a private company with no visible gov't affiliations care about any of that?
Why don't you ask Qwest's CEO, I think he gets out of jail sometime this decade for not bending over for Bush's warrantless wiretaps. Oh, sorry, I meant violating his job as CEO to make every penny possible by getting his government contracts cancelled for not bending over for Bush's warrantless wiretaps. Hmm, it doesn't sound much better that way either. How do you spin it so you can claim that these telcom companies have no visible government affiliations?
I don't see the harm is using the physical facilities of an elementary school as a shooting range or for that matter even teaching elementary school-aged children about the proper use and handling of firearms, so I fail to see your point here
I was thinking more along the lines of those old training courses where bad guys and civilians pop up and you gotta shoot the right ones without hitting the kids or the little old ladies. Only with more screaming.
It can be done safely and nobody has to be hurt
"Can it" versus "Will it". If the national guard will be doing live fire training in the playground during recess, what can you do about it before the first shot is fired?
If you disagree, I'd be curious why you might have a contrary opinion.
I think it has to either be done outside of the judicial branch or if it's done in the judicial branch, done all the way. I'm rather in favor of the Haiti Method (violate the constitution = forcibly expelled from the country), but I'll settle for Foo v. Some Dumb Law being carried out the same way we carry out Foo v. $50,000 cash, if the $50,000 cash doesn't have the right to defend itself why should some dumb law? Solving it outside of the Judiciary means adding more layers to the cake with no guarantee that it'll taste any better, but it gives us an opportunity to deal with things that haven't gone through the judicial system, like holding citizens in prison for years without charge, welfare, or that one state I remember Pudge once whined about for allowing just anyone to come along and call themselves Republican on the ballot (where the courts ruled that the issue wasn't "ripe" until after an election was fucked up by it, i.e. the guardsmen haven't pulled their triggers yet).
It's easy: we need to know if our megacorporations are responsible or not. If not, they shouldn't be forced to pay for it, everyone else will. If they are, they need to know so they can declare bankruptcy and turn the planet into a superfund site so they won't pay for it, everyone else will.
point of ruling a law "unconstitutional" really is one of recognition
Except that this view is incomplete, and it's weaknesses make it horribly so. By cramming this act of "recognition" into the judicial system, we end up where we are now: the government can do whatever it wants until it hurts someone. Supporting this arrangement is like supporting using an elementary school as a shooting range: sometimes you have to be able to say "no, don't do that" before someone gets hurt, because no matter how hard you petition or how hard the government redresses, some grievances can't be undone.
one obvious tax increase would be to repeal Obama's tax cut
Well duh, that's what we've been saying all along! -- the Republicans
along with Bush's tax cut.
Oh hell no! -- the Republicans
Note that the biggest proponent of NOT cutting Defense Spending is Obama's Secretary of Defense, not the Republicans.
source. To the Republican(?)s' credit, Rand Paul defends the "cut" (which he points out is a reduced increase, not a decrease in funding). Panetta may want his department to get as much money as possible, but it's Congress with the power to make it so.
with the exception of the Supreme Court who has the power to oversee the constitutionality of their lawmaking
The founding fathers didn't even think of that, that's a power it took for itself after Marbury v. Madison.
The Democrats were willing to cut spending a little and raise taxes a lot. The Republicans were willing to cut spending a lot (but not on their programs) and raise taxes only on the middle class.
The whole thing was doomed from the start, the only time "bipartisianship" works is when both parties get to increase the power of government and fuck over everyone else. It's uncanny how, now that it's fallen apart, the Republicans are already rushing to break their promise of automatic spending cuts (but only on their programs). What principle! Of course, it's not without precedent, it's just like claiming that Medicare is saving money through cuts in doctors' pay that Congress cancels year after year.
USians pay for their medicine so they most likely are not prescribed as many by their doctors.
"USians" pay for their doctors, and if the doctor won't prescribe them what they want, they'll take their money to one that will.
So Microsoft is not trying to license their trivial, dubious software-patents under Fair Reasonable and NON Discriminatory terms. They are trying to drive up the cost of open source beyond what it would cost to purchase windows from them.
Alternatively, they're aware that Windows Mobile is a steaming pile of shit that nobody wants, and have priced it accordingly while they focus on making money from better goods.
there is a huge variation in the skill sets of people developing in it, with a heavy bias towards those who couldn't write an original line of code to save their ass.
That, combined with the fact that the internet is flooded with ancient javascript snippets ripe for copying and pasting despite the fact that they don't work on anything but netscape 4.
Is it commerce if you're not paying anything for the goods?
Only if you can smoke it. Then it's interstate commerce even if you found it in your own back yard and kept it yourself.
the pharma has the consumer by the balls because of FDA, because of Medicare, because of special gov't privileges.
And once they're all gone, what then?
"Pharma" will still have the consumer by the balls, because it would be terrible if little Timmy died since you refused to shell out a million dollars to prolong his life another three miserable cancer-ridden months, you monster.
Unless you're at least a little bit of a motorhead, you might argue that all carbs look alike.
Unless you're not a human, you might argue that all binary blobs look alike. Software is judged on its output, not the process by which it achieves that output.
But going back to that carburetor. If you had a carb patent and didn't even bother to take apart my carb to see if I actually infringed before suing me, how much money would I have to spend to defend myself if my carb was different from yours. Show your work, factoring in issues like the "Doctrine of Equivalents" and "After-invented technology" as you grasp at ever thinner straws to keep your case together and try to bankrupt me or force me to settle.
No one was awarded a patent for "mixing fuel vapor and air".
No, but they were awarded a patent for
and the patent holder is using it to sue people for having in-app purchase buttons.
I stay out of the left lane because it's usually backed up by idiots who figured they were gonna go really fast to where they were going, only they forgot to get out of the lane before they got to where they were going, so they slam on their brakes while they try to negotiate exiting the freeway across four lanes of traffic.
check indoor and out door humidity
I've posted this before, but what I really want out on my programmable thermostat is a dehumidify cycle that runs for 15 minutes or so then goes back to the default setting.
I've got two years' experience now. In two years, I'll have four, so I'm covered!
Now I just need to figure out how to get 4 years' experience in the two years after that...
Found one in Georgia. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/sex14.htm Guilty of consensual sodomy.
if sued and bankrupted
Bankruptcy is a government interference.
The Capitalistically Correct term for enslavement for debts owed is "Indentured Servitude".
Actually, in a free market world it's pretty easy: If a company causes more damage than it can pay back, all of its officers and employees are enslaved until they earn enough money to pay back the damages. We could even chain the doors shut to keep them from running away.
Oh wait, they wanted big mommy government to save them by allowing them to just walk away from their debts and declare the area a superfund site so everyone else can pay to fix their shit when they screw up something bigger than they are? Tough tits.