I agree with you that people should have access to firearms, but your dismissal of the other view is disingenuous. It could be argued that you yourself aren't thinking critically enough about history. That's certainly the case if you can't defend an alternate interpretation of it. One of the hallmarks of true critical thinking is that you can muster good arguments for both sides, even if you evaluate one set as better than the other. If you did think critically about history, you could see how the message you think it sends it not so clear. Reasonable people can differ on the issue, and have it be due to something other than ignorance on one (or both) people's parts.
Most Commerce secretaries come in thinking the job is entirely trade, but close to 40 percent of Commerce's budget is NOAA.
Q: What's the first thing a Commerce secretary says when he's confirmed?
A: "Fish?"
Somehow I doubt any incoming secretaries think that. I think the most recognizable faces of the Dept. of Commerce to most people are the Census Bureau and the Patent Office. Techie-types are also likely to know NIST. It would surprise me if trade was a significant part of Commerce's activities. Aside from encouraging free markets abroad (which off the cuff I would be uncertain if that's Commerce's job, or State's), trade is mostly supposed to just take care of itself under market capitalism. Commerce does best just providing it with data and promoting standards to facilitate it. People complain that the federal government is too meddlesome, but it's a testament to just how hands-off our government is that Commerce spends more time worrying about fish than regulating trade.
The BlackBerry model by design is insecure (from a national security perspective). All of the data communication is routed through systems owned by a Canadian corporation (RIM).
You mean our partners in NORAD? I'm sorry, but if we can't trust the Canadians, we're already frakked...
That seems to be especially true of those who want to limit government to its "Constitutional tasks". Make you should take a gander at Article I, Section 8 which, like most of the Constitution, is masterful in both its simplicity and flexibility.
Also, every time someone claims to respect the Constitution while claiming the courts should not be upholding some right because the Constitution does not mention it specifically, kindly point them towards the 9th Amendment. It also helps to understand the history of the Bill of Rights, in which many argued against it not because they opposed the rights there but were afraid that by naming the specific ones there, they would cause people down the road to interpret that as meaning the rights were limited to those. The whole purpose of the 9th Amendment is to affirm that this is a wrong interpretation.
I find it highly amusing that almost every time I see someone arguing for a "strict interpretation" of the Constitution, they're usually arguing that we should pretend the 9th Amendment is meaningless -- that the Constitution would have the exact same meaning regardless of whether it was there or not, that's it's a "silent amendment". It is not silent, it speaks volumes, but of course they don't want to hear it.
Some would argue the the "General welfare" clause in the Constitution authorizes all of the above activities; an argument that doesn't make logical sense...why would the founders take time to specifically enumerate all of the things that the Federal government CAN do and then slip in an innocuous phrase that countermands basically the whole rest of the Constitution (basically saying that you can make any law that you think would help someone, enumerated powers be damned). It makes more sense (logically) that the "General welfare" clause referred to welfare to the States as it pertains to the benefits afforded by the aforementioned enumerated powers.
Hehe. It's amusing that you call someone else ignorant without knowing the answer to this fairly basic question, and one that the founders themselves wrote about, in explaining the reason for the 9th Amendment. Putting the lists of specific things in the Constitution was done to provide examples of what they're talking about, they're there to clarify. One of the fears that the founding fathers had (and why many were against doing this at all) was that people would come along later, exactly like you're doing now, and say that the rights and powers were limited specifically to that, rather than those just being examples of the general principle. The ninth amendment was added precisely to address that. One of the implications of the 9th amendment is that you're violating the constitution (specifically the 9th amendment) if you try to interpret it in the manner you're suggesting.
There's no logical problem here, since nothing is being "countermanded" here, unless you're misinterpreting the intent to begin with. The constitution does enumerate powers, but they are deliberately not too specific. It is supposed to limit, but it's not supposed to be a straight-jacket. Your repeated use of the word "specific" above is wrong in every place you use it. The powers are enumerated, but are intentionally not terribly specific.
It's not cognitive dissonance when you don't believe urban legends.
Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."
If you are familiar with the work of Charlie Lineweaver's group in AU, you would be aware that not only should Earth-like planets exist but that a significant number of them are older, and potentially more advanced than we are.
Familiarity with Lineweaver's work does not make one "aware" of that "fact", it merely makes one aware that some people have argued that that is the case.:p
Lineweaver, Davis, and such have proposed a number of ideas which are intriguing, but it's all on very tiny and shaky foundations. Not saying they're wrong, but if they're reasonably close to right, that's more luck than anything, given the sample size of there real data it's all based on (e.g. estimating how many Earth-like planets develop life in their first billion years based on the one and only example we have of it happening).
That always bugs me. Isn't it an obvious problem? Wouldn't your 'magical' explanation of a 'magical' tech need some explanation of it?
If you think like Newton, yes, it's an obvious problem. If you think like Einstein, it may be a problem, or it may not, but either way, it's not obvious at all. As a general rule, if you think something is obvious, you've probably overlooked something. (The less you know, the more obvious answers seem.)
Um, was there any objection raised above that has any impact at all on a spaceship?
Earth moved relative to me. Check. Does that all the time, not a problem.
What was at the arrival point gets sent back to the departure point. Right. I'll take the one a quadrillion chance that the point of empty space at the destination is significantly different than the point of empty space I'm jumping from.
Yup, my IBM drives have been good to me, for the most part. I had one of the bad Deskstars, but I've also had a bad Conner, Quantum, Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate over the years. Sooner or later, everyone gives you a bad drive. If I never bought from anyone who's given me a bad drive before, I think I'd be unable to buy any drive at this point.
However, I would never buy anything that says "Iomega" on it...:p
It might not be as easy as eavesdropping on your neighbor's wifi, but the bottom line is that the physical transmission of information in both cases (wifi and visible/optical) is observable from a distance, and therefore both mediums face the same problems in terms of security.
If one system is eavesdroppable by driving into the parking lot and turning on the US$300 laptop I picked up off the shelf at wal-mart, and the other is observable from a distance and can even be eavesdropped on using the million dollar rig the NSA assigned me, it does not follow that both mediums face the same problems in terms of security.
Indeed, if you think security is about making your information unobtainable, you fail at basic security principles. It's not an achievable goal, and it's a pointless one. The point of security is to make the cost of obtaining the information higher than the value of the data. Your "bottom line" is an irrelevancy.
Reading along here, I came to wonder what would happen if someone block the light source such that it is no longer visible? Would the signal then be completely lost?
Yes.
My previous experiences with light is that they struggle to travel through walls...
Wouldn't this limit the utility value and application areas of such a system?
Yes. That's one of the touted features -- a wireless network that really stops at your walls.
Nothing. If it's raining hard enough to get the light fixtures inside your building wet (where his routers are installed), wireless network access is the least of your problems...
The fact that walls are opaque to visible light is one of the big advantages of this. Your wireless network can actually stop at the edge of the building. The other advantages are supposedly cost and speed. Distance is a non-issue... the router goes in a light-fixture, and one of the features of this system is that it's not accessible anymore once you leave the rooms having these fixtures (guaranteeing you can actually see everyone accessing your wireless network).
For example: If the character has 80 gigs of memory hidden in his brain, or a giant gaping plug hole in the back of his skull, or he's a time traveling stoner, etc. Then Keanu plays that role to perfection.
If you're referring to Johnny Mnemonic, then no, just no. It wasn't William Gibson's best story, but it was nowhere near as bad as that movie...
Personally, I'm more worried about the upcoming Dragonball adaptation. They didn't even try to stay close to the source material. The only connection it has with the originals is the names of the characters.
So, kinda like the animated Dragonball movies, then...
So yeah, you could make a pretty strong case that, in the strict sense, Bush's wiretapping is illegal as it is not an enumerated power.
Actually, it'd be a pretty weak case. All constitutional powers that any official in the US has are necessarily not specific. The constitution, for example, does not authorize the President to order troops to invade Canada. It does, however, authorize him to command the military, and thus he can give this order, despite that specific action not being specifically authorized by the constitution.
So, in order to argue that the wiretapping is illegal because it's not an enumerated power, you can't simply point out that it's not specifically authorized, you must also demonstrate that does not fall under the rubric of anything that is authorized. So if the president is authorized to repel attacks on the United States, you have to prove that wiretapping does nothing to repel attacks on the United States. That's not so easy a case to make.
I personally think the action in question IS illegal, but the much better and easier case to make is that it violates the 4th amendment, not that it's not an enumerated power.
If it is so clear, then why did it take until 1878, in the case of Ex parte Jackson, for the Supreme Court to decide that postal mail was protected by the fourth amendment?.
Because it took that long for anyone to bring a case before them that questioned it. Unless you can cite a case where they decided differently before 1878, there's no evidence here that it hasn't been clear all along.
The problem is, when the Bill of Rights was drafted, there was no telephone, no e-mail, not even telegraph. The authors of the Bill of Rights covered any kind of communication that could be used to pass private communications at that time. By extrapolation, it is not unreasonable to assume that, had the Founding Fathers envisioned telephones and e-mail, they would have included them in the 4th amendment as well.
Actually, no. The problem with this point of view is that, if it were true, it would make nonsense out of the ninth amendment, which exists purely to insure it is understood that when they did enumerate particular examples of the right being covered, they did NOT mean for that list to be exhaustive. The fact that they list something means it's an example of what is protected, NOT that it is limited only to that. They were very worried about enumerating examples precisely because they were afraid people would take it mean it's limited to those examples, they eventually compromised on providing examples but also making it clear that they don't mean for these rights to be so limited.
If while on vacation I knowingly AND willingly attempted to kill innocent people, I would expect to be thrown into a hole.
And, by extension of the kinds of policies I expect you advocate, if you are accused of knowingly and willingly attempting to kill innocent people, you would expect to be thrown into a hole.
As you say, there's a chance you might get released at some point. Much less of one, mind you, since you're denied fair trial and such, but hey, you're not a citizen, why should you get any such special treatment like due process, right?
I do agree about the constitutional protections only applying to US Citizens, though. I've never heard of constitutional protections extending elsewhere.
Actually, it's quite well established that they extend to non-citizens. For example, it's as illegal for the police to search the house of someone without warrant regardless of whether they're a US citizen or a UK citizen with a second house in the US. The 4th amendment says this is not allowed, and nowhere says "unless they're not a citizen".
Of course, the history books are full of examples of the US ignoring its own constitution, particularly when dealing with minorities, foreigners, undesirables, etc...
" The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not."
Despite there being Slavery at the founding of The American Government.
Despite everyone NOT having the same rights at the founding of the American Government (women couldn't vote for example).
Despit your claim that "everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not." appearing NOWHERE in the Constitution.
Now, don't presume that I disagree with the idea that equality is universal, but your claims about it being historically true in respect to the American Government are unequivocally false.
The quote you claim he made in your last paragraph is indeed false. The claim he actually made (as you quoted in your first paragraph) is unequivocally true. The three middle paragraphs cite facts that in no way contradict the original claim. They point out that we have not always (indeed have never fully, even to this day) lived up to those ideals, but say nothing that contradicts the quoted statement.
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I agree with you that people should have access to firearms, but your dismissal of the other view is disingenuous. It could be argued that you yourself aren't thinking critically enough about history. That's certainly the case if you can't defend an alternate interpretation of it. One of the hallmarks of true critical thinking is that you can muster good arguments for both sides, even if you evaluate one set as better than the other. If you did think critically about history, you could see how the message you think it sends it not so clear. Reasonable people can differ on the issue, and have it be due to something other than ignorance on one (or both) people's parts.
Most Commerce secretaries come in thinking the job is entirely trade, but close to 40 percent of Commerce's budget is NOAA. Q: What's the first thing a Commerce secretary says when he's confirmed? A: "Fish?"
Somehow I doubt any incoming secretaries think that. I think the most recognizable faces of the Dept. of Commerce to most people are the Census Bureau and the Patent Office. Techie-types are also likely to know NIST. It would surprise me if trade was a significant part of Commerce's activities. Aside from encouraging free markets abroad (which off the cuff I would be uncertain if that's Commerce's job, or State's), trade is mostly supposed to just take care of itself under market capitalism. Commerce does best just providing it with data and promoting standards to facilitate it. People complain that the federal government is too meddlesome, but it's a testament to just how hands-off our government is that Commerce spends more time worrying about fish than regulating trade.
The BlackBerry model by design is insecure (from a national security perspective). All of the data communication is routed through systems owned by a Canadian corporation (RIM).
You mean our partners in NORAD? I'm sorry, but if we can't trust the Canadians, we're already frakked...
That seems to be especially true of those who want to limit government to its "Constitutional tasks". Make you should take a gander at Article I, Section 8 which, like most of the Constitution, is masterful in both its simplicity and flexibility.
Also, every time someone claims to respect the Constitution while claiming the courts should not be upholding some right because the Constitution does not mention it specifically, kindly point them towards the 9th Amendment. It also helps to understand the history of the Bill of Rights, in which many argued against it not because they opposed the rights there but were afraid that by naming the specific ones there, they would cause people down the road to interpret that as meaning the rights were limited to those. The whole purpose of the 9th Amendment is to affirm that this is a wrong interpretation.
I find it highly amusing that almost every time I see someone arguing for a "strict interpretation" of the Constitution, they're usually arguing that we should pretend the 9th Amendment is meaningless -- that the Constitution would have the exact same meaning regardless of whether it was there or not, that's it's a "silent amendment". It is not silent, it speaks volumes, but of course they don't want to hear it.
Some would argue the the "General welfare" clause in the Constitution authorizes all of the above activities; an argument that doesn't make logical sense...why would the founders take time to specifically enumerate all of the things that the Federal government CAN do and then slip in an innocuous phrase that countermands basically the whole rest of the Constitution (basically saying that you can make any law that you think would help someone, enumerated powers be damned). It makes more sense (logically) that the "General welfare" clause referred to welfare to the States as it pertains to the benefits afforded by the aforementioned enumerated powers.
Hehe. It's amusing that you call someone else ignorant without knowing the answer to this fairly basic question, and one that the founders themselves wrote about, in explaining the reason for the 9th Amendment. Putting the lists of specific things in the Constitution was done to provide examples of what they're talking about, they're there to clarify. One of the fears that the founding fathers had (and why many were against doing this at all) was that people would come along later, exactly like you're doing now, and say that the rights and powers were limited specifically to that, rather than those just being examples of the general principle. The ninth amendment was added precisely to address that. One of the implications of the 9th amendment is that you're violating the constitution (specifically the 9th amendment) if you try to interpret it in the manner you're suggesting.
There's no logical problem here, since nothing is being "countermanded" here, unless you're misinterpreting the intent to begin with. The constitution does enumerate powers, but they are deliberately not too specific. It is supposed to limit, but it's not supposed to be a straight-jacket. Your repeated use of the word "specific" above is wrong in every place you use it. The powers are enumerated, but are intentionally not terribly specific.
Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative agency, "had found no damage to the offices of the White House's East or West Wings or EOB" and that Bush's own representatives had reported "there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration."
Source.
If you are familiar with the work of Charlie Lineweaver's group in AU, you would be aware that not only should Earth-like planets exist but that a significant number of them are older, and potentially more advanced than we are.
Familiarity with Lineweaver's work does not make one "aware" of that "fact", it merely makes one aware that some people have argued that that is the case. :p
Lineweaver, Davis, and such have proposed a number of ideas which are intriguing, but it's all on very tiny and shaky foundations. Not saying they're wrong, but if they're reasonably close to right, that's more luck than anything, given the sample size of there real data it's all based on (e.g. estimating how many Earth-like planets develop life in their first billion years based on the one and only example we have of it happening).
That always bugs me. Isn't it an obvious problem? Wouldn't your 'magical' explanation of a 'magical' tech need some explanation of it?
If you think like Newton, yes, it's an obvious problem. If you think like Einstein, it may be a problem, or it may not, but either way, it's not obvious at all. As a general rule, if you think something is obvious, you've probably overlooked something. (The less you know, the more obvious answers seem.)
Um, was there any objection raised above that has any impact at all on a spaceship?
Earth moved relative to me. Check. Does that all the time, not a problem.
What was at the arrival point gets sent back to the departure point. Right. I'll take the one a quadrillion chance that the point of empty space at the destination is significantly different than the point of empty space I'm jumping from.
What was the problem supposed to be?
Yup, my IBM drives have been good to me, for the most part. I had one of the bad Deskstars, but I've also had a bad Conner, Quantum, Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate over the years. Sooner or later, everyone gives you a bad drive. If I never bought from anyone who's given me a bad drive before, I think I'd be unable to buy any drive at this point.
However, I would never buy anything that says "Iomega" on it... :p
It might not be as easy as eavesdropping on your neighbor's wifi, but the bottom line is that the physical transmission of information in both cases (wifi and visible/optical) is observable from a distance, and therefore both mediums face the same problems in terms of security.
If one system is eavesdroppable by driving into the parking lot and turning on the US$300 laptop I picked up off the shelf at wal-mart, and the other is observable from a distance and can even be eavesdropped on using the million dollar rig the NSA assigned me, it does not follow that both mediums face the same problems in terms of security.
Indeed, if you think security is about making your information unobtainable, you fail at basic security principles. It's not an achievable goal, and it's a pointless one. The point of security is to make the cost of obtaining the information higher than the value of the data. Your "bottom line" is an irrelevancy.
Reading along here, I came to wonder what would happen if someone block the light source such that it is no longer visible? Would the signal then be completely lost?
Yes.
My previous experiences with light is that they struggle to travel through walls... Wouldn't this limit the utility value and application areas of such a system?
Yes. That's one of the touted features -- a wireless network that really stops at your walls.
*rolls eyes* If you'd ever lived in St. Cloud, Minnesota, you'd understand.
Every state, even blue states, have a bit of Alabama in them somewhere. Stearns County is Minnesota's Alabama.
Nothing. If it's raining hard enough to get the light fixtures inside your building wet (where his routers are installed), wireless network access is the least of your problems...
Can you image how annoying it would be to have light flickering around you all the time from your communicating devices?
Yeah... das blinkenlights were the reason the BeBox was so unpopular. Everyone hates blinking lights...
The fact that walls are opaque to visible light is one of the big advantages of this. Your wireless network can actually stop at the edge of the building. The other advantages are supposedly cost and speed. Distance is a non-issue... the router goes in a light-fixture, and one of the features of this system is that it's not accessible anymore once you leave the rooms having these fixtures (guaranteeing you can actually see everyone accessing your wireless network).
For example: If the character has 80 gigs of memory hidden in his brain, or a giant gaping plug hole in the back of his skull, or he's a time traveling stoner, etc. Then Keanu plays that role to perfection.
If you're referring to Johnny Mnemonic, then no, just no. It wasn't William Gibson's best story, but it was nowhere near as bad as that movie...
Personally, I'm more worried about the upcoming Dragonball adaptation. They didn't even try to stay close to the source material. The only connection it has with the originals is the names of the characters.
So, kinda like the animated Dragonball movies, then...
Seriously, how can any fan of the original be excited about this news? I expect a disaster of "Aeon Flux" proportions, personally...
To be fair... there's simply no way an Aeon Flux movie was even remotely possible... it was an idea that barely translated to a half-hour format...
A good Cowboy Bebop movie is at least possible. It won't happen, mind you, but it's theoretically possible...
So yeah, you could make a pretty strong case that, in the strict sense, Bush's wiretapping is illegal as it is not an enumerated power.
Actually, it'd be a pretty weak case. All constitutional powers that any official in the US has are necessarily not specific. The constitution, for example, does not authorize the President to order troops to invade Canada. It does, however, authorize him to command the military, and thus he can give this order, despite that specific action not being specifically authorized by the constitution.
So, in order to argue that the wiretapping is illegal because it's not an enumerated power, you can't simply point out that it's not specifically authorized, you must also demonstrate that does not fall under the rubric of anything that is authorized. So if the president is authorized to repel attacks on the United States, you have to prove that wiretapping does nothing to repel attacks on the United States. That's not so easy a case to make.
I personally think the action in question IS illegal, but the much better and easier case to make is that it violates the 4th amendment, not that it's not an enumerated power.
If it is so clear, then why did it take until 1878, in the case of Ex parte Jackson, for the Supreme Court to decide that postal mail was protected by the fourth amendment?.
Because it took that long for anyone to bring a case before them that questioned it. Unless you can cite a case where they decided differently before 1878, there's no evidence here that it hasn't been clear all along.
The problem is, when the Bill of Rights was drafted, there was no telephone, no e-mail, not even telegraph. The authors of the Bill of Rights covered any kind of communication that could be used to pass private communications at that time. By extrapolation, it is not unreasonable to assume that, had the Founding Fathers envisioned telephones and e-mail, they would have included them in the 4th amendment as well.
Actually, no. The problem with this point of view is that, if it were true, it would make nonsense out of the ninth amendment, which exists purely to insure it is understood that when they did enumerate particular examples of the right being covered, they did NOT mean for that list to be exhaustive. The fact that they list something means it's an example of what is protected, NOT that it is limited only to that. They were very worried about enumerating examples precisely because they were afraid people would take it mean it's limited to those examples, they eventually compromised on providing examples but also making it clear that they don't mean for these rights to be so limited.
If while on vacation I knowingly AND willingly attempted to kill innocent people, I would expect to be thrown into a hole.
And, by extension of the kinds of policies I expect you advocate, if you are accused of knowingly and willingly attempting to kill innocent people, you would expect to be thrown into a hole.
As you say, there's a chance you might get released at some point. Much less of one, mind you, since you're denied fair trial and such, but hey, you're not a citizen, why should you get any such special treatment like due process, right?
I do agree about the constitutional protections only applying to US Citizens, though. I've never heard of constitutional protections extending elsewhere.
Actually, it's quite well established that they extend to non-citizens. For example, it's as illegal for the police to search the house of someone without warrant regardless of whether they're a US citizen or a UK citizen with a second house in the US. The 4th amendment says this is not allowed, and nowhere says "unless they're not a citizen".
Of course, the history books are full of examples of the US ignoring its own constitution, particularly when dealing with minorities, foreigners, undesirables, etc...
" The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not."
Despite there being Slavery at the founding of The American Government.
Despite everyone NOT having the same rights at the founding of the American Government (women couldn't vote for example).
Despit your claim that "everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not." appearing NOWHERE in the Constitution.
Now, don't presume that I disagree with the idea that equality is universal, but your claims about it being historically true in respect to the American Government are unequivocally false.
The quote you claim he made in your last paragraph is indeed false. The claim he actually made (as you quoted in your first paragraph) is unequivocally true. The three middle paragraphs cite facts that in no way contradict the original claim. They point out that we have not always (indeed have never fully, even to this day) lived up to those ideals, but say nothing that contradicts the quoted statement.