This is insightful? All you've posted is that the Constitution says whatever the Supreme Court says is does.
And? That's how things are. Deal with it. As I say in my reply to his reply to the above post, there is no such thing as a platonic, ideal notion of Constitutionality. Constitutionality is entirely a concept of the law as applied, based on our English-inherited common law system -- i.e. judge-interpreted law.
The GP was pointing out that the government(all three branches) simply ignore the 10th Amendment. This goes against the entire premise of rule of written law.
No. They interpret the 10th Amendment in a way different from what you would like. Words on paper are meaningless without interpretation, and if you learn anything when studying law, there's no set of words on paper that two people can't come up with different interpretations for.
There is no One True God-Given Meaning of the 10th Amendment, and you should not mistake your interpretation for it for the one that's right nor for the one that's controlling in the law. That's for the body invested with the power to interpret the law to decide. (That's not you, by the way.)
Like I said, this statement is unequivocally false.
One can make an argument that it's not. It's really no different from from the analysis you gave, except for your faulty assumption that the 10th Amendment has strong teeth. The Constitution grants the government several powers to pass laws (removing some rights from you) and the Bill of Rights takes several powers away from the government (granting some rights to you). What it says nothing about is left alone, presumably to the states.
The 10th Amendment has long been viewed as little more than an affirmation of the obvious and not a hard limit of restraint. Beyond the limits I've mentioned on compelling action from the states, it's toothless. That changed for a while with the Usery decision but was revoked by Garcia. O'Connor's decision in the aforementioned New York v. United States is the law on the 10th Amendment currently, and I've already explained how little it restrains Congress.
And despite your stunning ability to look up cases on the internet, the Congress still has to give lip service to a grant of authority before it passes a law. Usually it's the Commerce Clause, which after Wickard v. Filburn is ridiculously broad, but the Rhenquist court did manage to reign it in just a little bit. So no, Congress can't just go off willy nilly and do whatever it wants.
Maybe. Gonzales v. Raich 545 U.S. 1 (2005) blows most of Morrison out of the water by resurrecting the rational basis test and severely muddying the waters on what is and isn't economic activity. While Congress still applies the fig leaf of "that affects interstate commerce" to the legislation it passes, what exactly is interstate commerce is once again very broad. It's hard to reconcile Raich with Lopez in my opinion, given the government's argument in the latter case.
(I'm frankly surprised you know much about what the Rehnquist court decided though, given how wrong your 10th Amendment analysis is. I was providing links because I figured (based on 2/3 of your post) that you were talking out your rear end. I again recommend reading a Con Law textbook.)
And I stand by my analysis of the New Deal. Everybody knew it was unconstitutional. They just decided it was so extraordinarily important that they were going to do it anyway.
I assume you're referring to West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish (1937). The only reason anyone would've considered the New Deal unconstitutional was because of Lochner, widely considered today to have been one of the most awful and ill-conceived Supreme Court verdicts of all time. Yes, the court was under pressure due to Roosevelt's threat to pack the court, but the writing was already on the wall with Nebbia v. New York, 3 years earlier, and even in striking down some New Deal legislation in United States v. Butler, the court upheld a relatively broad interpretation of the Spending Clause and General Welfare Clause. By the time Wickard v. Filburn was decided, the landscape had changed.
Honestly, the argument "they knew it wasn't Constitutional" presumes two things: 1) There is an inherent, natural law concept of constitutionality that objectively lies outside of the decisions of the Supreme Court. 2) That the Supreme Court chose to ignore that objective standard and place a politically motivated substitute that has no moral authority behind it.
Neither of these are the case. Constitutional is what the body reviewing constitutionality says it is. I may not like Scalia's grotesque reading out of the Constitution of the 2nd Amendment's militia requirement in District of Columbia v. Heller this year (making a mockery of his own touted philosophy of originalism), but that is the law of the land. That is what is constitutional, and all the whining in the world doesn't change that.
(And frankly, if you're honestly arguing that we should roll back our notion of Constitutionality to the pre-New Deal, Lochner era, I think you're a loon.)
Unfortunately, your understanding of the constitution is fundamentally flawed. It has a few things that it explicitly tells the federal government it can do, and the 10th amendment says, "If we didn't explicitly say you can do it, it's none of your business."
As pointed out by the above poster, the federal government *was* explicitly told that this is something they can do. The articles of the Constitution that he actual cited (as opposed to your general parapharsing) are known as the Taxing and Spending Clause and the General Welfare Clause in Constitutional Law. There is absolutely nothing in the bailout plan that was unconstitutional. Unwise or unfair, maybe, but not unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the 10th Amendment is generally considered to have little judicially enforceable restraint on Congress. Pretty much the only thing barred by the 10th Amendment currently is commanding the states to enact legislation or to enforce federal legislation (though the government is free to give incentives to do so with money spent under the Spending Clause). (See New York v. United States (1992).)
Everything else you've posted is just whining about the Supreme Court not interpreting the Constitution the way you wished they would. Well, too bad! The Constitution is what the body invested with the power to interpret it says that it is. (See Marbury v. Madison.)
In other words, when it comes to Constitutional Law: "Lurk moar, n00b."
Because of the end of civilization, the Clamp Cable Network now leaves the air. We hope you've enjoyed our programming, but more importantly, we hope you've enjoyed... life.
There's plenty of material and interpretations for anyone who wants to find controversy.
Only if you're being a sophist. The people who are upset at fetal stem cell research aren't just making up clever arguments to dump all over people's hard work and potential medical salvation -- they genuinely believe in the whole "life starts at conception" argument.
You may not agree with pro-lifers, but you're not going to convince them to change their minds or find middle ground with the ones that are on the fence about fetal stem cells with ridiculous straw man arguments. And you're never going to make a difference if you have nothing but contempt for the other side's beliefs and the honesty with which they hold them.
Really, that applies to all of politics, faith, taste, and any other subject with an emotional element that can't be reduced to a simple proof of facts.
Somehow missed in the article that it was a 3rd party vendor that was doing this. The point still stands, even if Google is not the marketing company in question.
I think a lot of people forget that one of the big revenue streams for:CueCat was the ability to identify the purchasing (or browsing) habits of its users. The devices had unique IDs and people actually gave the company their name, address, and ZIP code. Whenever a:CueCat scanned an item and went to find out information on it, that UPC code could be associated with your ID, and -- viola! -- instant profiles of what you find interesting.
For a marketing company like Google, popularizing this would be a dream come true. I have no doubt that they would make use of this information to better target ads to you. Some people like the idea of ads only being things you want to buy. Personally, I don't want ads that are actually *good* at getting me to part with my money, and I have concerns in the wake of how Preferred Shoppers databases at grocery stores were using the wake of 9/11.
This just smacks of privacy invasion to me -- or at least further temptation to abandon one's privacy. Count me as not sold on it, but I don't really matter compared to what the mass market will think about it. I hope it flops, but I worry that it won't.
As for everything else, fine... just fine. The moderators have spoken, and people who think that it's okay to write these sorts of "truthiness"-filled pieces in anticipation of events have more support than me.
So, "Dewey Defeats Truman!" and all that. You people deserve the world the media shapes for you, where it's more important to be entertaining and first to get the reader's eyeballs than to be accurate and honest -- where it's okay to write up a narrative about events without being there. Maybe they'll replace it with the real events, maybe not -- who cares? We should just trust that they're willing to do the right thing after spending so much effort having the wrong thing ready to go.
It's moments like these that I get really discouraged about the future of democracy.
The poster above me accuses people of being so gullible as to not know that and tries to confuse the issue of pre-written press releases with special effects used in the opening ceremonies.
I dispute that and say that these are two different things and that people don't mind deceptions they know about (to entertain them) but do mind deceptions they don't know about (to trick them), and I get modded a Troll?
Geez, you people got so worked up in defense of bad media practices, it's ridiculous.
So you're saying you were presenting arguments on this topic when you had no clue what was reality and were just repeating what others were saying because "All the cool kids do it too!"
Forgive me for trusting the news. I forgot I was dealing with someone who doesn't believe the news should have any integrity.
So China is to blame because NBC didn't choose better words. Also, adding special effects to a video doesn't fit most definitions of animation.
I don't care who is to blame. I still can't even get straight from reading on it who actually edited the footage -- was it China or NBC? I'm not even really worked up about this issue compared to the launch story.
Geez, you're the one who brought up the fireworks in the first place! And did so, purely as a way of mocking people who care about faked news as being too stupid to realize that a flying person would have to be faked. And you seem far more interested in that than the real issue here. Can we please get back to that instead of focusing on your ludicrous attempt to paint people as only getting upset because they're gullible?
Sure, the press release was misleading because it was accidentally posted early. But you were making the original argument that the Chinese were intentionally trying to deceive everyone, because of the filler/scripted dialog. If it were filler/scripted dialog, and the pre-written announcement was accidentally posted early, that would negate your original argument, which is what I was replying to.
I think the preponderance of evidence leads to the belief that the text was meant to go out as is. There is a cohesive narrative, dialog, and descriptions of the timing of events as if they had already happened.
This isn't the kind of stuff you'd normally prep ahead of time if you expected to fill it in with the real events later. This is a puff piece meant to tell a stirring story to brag about how awesome they are. This is PR -- and truth is often sacrificed there.
What is your explanation for the way the piece was written up? A reporter just exercising some creative talent only to wipe it all away later when the real story came in?
The people in China obviously are not dumb. If they really want to deceive everyone, they would release the press announcement after the scheduled launch. Releasing it before doesn't help them deceive people.
You're presupposing now (in contrast to previous posts) that the release must be deliberate. The puff, propaganda piece painting a story of rousing success in space flight is prepped ahead of time. The events of the launch will probably be very much *like* what is in the piece, but the authors don't care about what actually will happen unless there's a disaster. No one cares what the astronauts actually *say* as long as the story is good. In fact, they probably have alternate pieces ready in case something bad does happen.
Then, unexpectedly, the prepared piece gets released early.
The real controversy is not, "OMG! The Chinese were going to say things went great no matter what actually happened!" It's, "The Chinese news doesn't care what the real events were as long as the story is good." It's that contempt for the public that bothers me.
By Occam's razor, it's most logical that this is the accidental posting of a pre-written announcement.
Occam's Razor is that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity." In other words, don't add complications.
Why would someone write a story like this if they intended to erase it later? It just doesn't make sense to have this level of detail about the events of the launch if the person cared about replacing the story with the real events. There is no motivation for doing so. However, propaganda is an easily understood motivation -- especially for state-run media covering events of importance
*Cough* Did I at any point assert who did that or just that I thought that it was wrong to do so?
And I don't care who did it. I just care that it's wrong. This is a matter of principle and not nationalistic pride. Gah, I barely even care about the Beijing Olympics myself -- I was just trying to explain why other people might care. I haven't thought the Olympics had any integrity in YEARS, but faking the record of a historical event bothers me deeply.
The difference between dummy text and "deception" is that the dummy text is not supposed to end up published. It seems likely that this article was published by accident, which makes it likely that this is in fact dummy text. I did not read any part of the parent's post that defended the publishing of propaganda.
1) Dummy text and deception differ in that dummy text isn't intended to be published. 2) The article was accidentally published. 3) Therefore the text in the article was dummy text and can't be an attempt at deception.
That's nonsense. You presuppose that scripted events can't be accidentally released and that the accidental release of the article proves that it's not deliberate falsehood. Your logic is built on a foundation of sand.
Just because the article was published by accident doesn't mean that what's in the article isn't propaganda that was going to go out later if the accident hadn't occurred. The level of specific detail -- including conversations and comments on the timing of events -- suggest a finished story, reporting on facts that could not be determined until after the events actually happened. Frankly, the effort at scripting the story before it happened smacks of a disregard for what would come later.
If they'd published it after the launch, most people would not have known -- after all, the conversations between the craft and ground control are unlikely to be independently recorded by observers and double-checked. Fact is, there's little chance they would've gotten caught, so why not fake things? Only their slip in publishing let people know that it was going on.
Frankly, we have every reason to be suspicious of a state-run newspaper in an autocratic country reporting on events deeply tied up in national pride.
Perhaps you wrote your reply in advance, not reading what you replied to, and accidentally posted it.
Cute. Do they still give gold stars for cleverness at your grade level?
NBC commentators said during the scene: "Your looking at a cinematic device, employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation. " What's part of that didn't you understand? Additionally, if that wasn't clear, it's hardly the fault of the Chinese that the commentators didn't make it clear for you.
I didn't actually watch the opening ceremonies. I'm not a big pageantry fan. If they made a comment that that's what was being done, then I don't see what the fuss was about, but all the articles I read in the news gave the impression that that wasn't mentioned.
However, if those were the words spoken, then that's not very clear at all. A "cinematic device" could mean practically anything -- from an admission of computer-edited broadcast to a description of "real, live" special effects on the ground like one would use in making a non-CGFX movie to a commentary on the way he was telling the story in the pageant, and "actually almost animation" makes it seems like it's not actually animation. Do you see how ambiguous those words are and why people might've been confused?
Numerous people have pointed out this is probably either filler dialog or scripted dialog that is expected to be said, a practice employed by media outlets around the world. Why do you feel the need to ignore this and jump to the conclusion of deception?
A) Because being "filler" or "scripted" dialog in no way makes this not deception -- in fact that makes it explicitly deception.
B) "All the cool kids do it too!" is no defense for any kind of wrongdoing.
C) Maybe it hasn't dawned on you that we don't *like* the practice of faking dialog and presenting it to the public as real, no matter the motivations behind it.
Why are you so quick to jump to defend the practice of pulling the wool over the public's eyes with scripted, PR spin of a historical event? Is this something you support the media doing (state-run or not)? Would Apollo 11 have been better if NASA had actually recorded the conversations with Neil Armstrong on a sound-stage?
Doing a little prep-work for a final article is one thing. Putting the words into the mouths of real people connected with real historical events and passing them off as the truth is another.
Do we really live in such a cynical, post-truth world that this doesn't matter at all to you?
And as for the "fake fireworks", I have another revelation for everyone - did you see that man who ran in the air all around the stadium? See him? Well, prepare to have your mind blown. Are you ready? Sure you're really ready? OK, get this:
He wasn't really flying!
Prepare to have your mind blown: We all know that!
The problem is not that they used special effects for the crowd. The problem is that they showed up something different from what the live audience saw and pretended that that's what they really saw.
There's a difference between how people would feel about: a) Here, have a tasty veggie burger!...and... b) Here, have a tasty, juicy burger! (Which I'm not telling you is a veggie burger.)
It's not that veggie burgers are bad. It's just that people don't like being lied to, and it's even worse when something is *successfully* passed off on you, and you later learn you were suckered.
This is the problem here. They wrote up an article with completely fake dialog that might have plausibly happened and expected to deceive us all. If they'd said, "The conversation in the cockpit when something like this..." we'd be fine, because we'd be on notice that this is a fictional telling. It's the intent to pull the wool over our eyes that offends in a way that an impressible special effect or magic trick does not.
That is close to what I was thinking. The main difference is that I don't think it was so much, "I don't care if malware is installed on someone else's machine," as, "I don't care what this dialog says on the crappy computer they gave me to work with."
My first thought upon seeing such a dialog on a machine someone else set up for me to use for a limited, low-importance task would be irritation that they don't properly maintain their systems. If it were my system, I would pay more attention to the dialog, but on someone else's seemingly buggy Windows system, I couldn't give two cents for what the dialogs say -- that's their problem.
On the other hand, if I noticed that the dialogs were suspicious, I would actually try not to install malware on their system -- again, if I even bothered to pay attention. I'm grouchy about other people's (perceived) sloppiness -- not a jerk who'd deliberately screw someone else's machine over out of laziness.
None of that matters - what's important is the false positive rate, ie. the proportion of people with no malicious intent who get flagged up. If it's as high as 1% the system will be pretty much unworkable.
Do you honestly think that relying on a system that lets 1 out of 5 "potential terrorists" pass unchallenged is no real problem? The system's gotta work in *both* directions to be usable.
Does this sound idiotic to anyone else? Of course it's going to work for people who are told how to act in order to get the device to flag them.
Three reasons to be concerned with how they're testing it:
1) Even when told to act funny, it misses 20-22% of targets, giving it a terrible success rate.
2) We know the false negatives are bad, but how are the false positives, or does DHS not even bother to test that?
3) If they're calibrating it to pick up on "acting suspicious" instead of being actually nervous, stressed, or hostile, then it's effing useless for picking up on real terrorists and is yet another way for DHS to annoy law-abiding citizens to make them feel "safe" while spending massive amounts of taxpayer dollars on administration friendly contractors. Yay!
Libel is defamation in print (/permanent) form. To prove defamation, you need to show the following:
1) That the statements were false and defamatory. 2) That the person was at least negligent to the truth of their words. 3) That the statement was an unprivileged publication to a third party.
-- You'd be surprised what cases turn on "publication." 4) Economic harm (most slander) or liability irrespective of harm (usually the case in libel).
You don't have to know that the words are false or have malicious intent necessarily, though the bar to prove defamation may be raised if (a) the subject is a public figure and/or (b) the matter is on of public interest.
For example, libel per quod happens when one publishes a statement that is libelous because of attendant circumstances and is frequently accidental. For example, if you write some fluff in an article saying that someone is a regular Joe who likes tossing back a cold brew with friends, and it comes out that that person is court-ordered after a DUI to stay sober, then you've committed libel due to the circumstances. You didn't mean any harm, and you didn't know that he didn't actually drink (but didn't bother to check up on things), but you're still on the hook for libel.
(Libel per quod is more common in the press than libel per se because newspapers are generally unwilling to publish things they *know* would be harmful to reputation without odd circumstances without making sure they're true first.)
If you're libeling a public figure on a matter of public interest in the press, then actual malice is required as well as knowing falsity. Otherwise, the standard is lower. It used to in fact be strict liability with respect to the falsity of the statement (but not to the act of publishing). However, now it's generally recognized that at least negligence on truth is required when defaming private persons.
But what's especially troubling is that it can be used as precedent to shut down corporate/government whistleblowers. If an institution's rules apply even when you're outside of that institution, your employer owns you.
No it can't.
1) The law allows some use of analogous situations, but the law governing student's rights vs. school administration's rights and the law involving worker's rights vs. the freedom to hire at will are two separate and mature areas of the law.
2) The law protecting whistleblowers at work is also quite distinct from how the law would treat a worker who libeled their manager, got fired, and tried to sue over it. (Especially considering the kid wasn't "fired," aka expelled, but just disciplined.)
You seem to think that the law and the judges applying it are blind to the differences between a kid who defames someone and an employee who does a public good. It's not. Judges aren't idiots. That's not what the mean by, "Justice is blind."
It doesn't matter; if a teenager libels the principal outside the school, the principal's legitimate response would be a libel suit. NOT to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner himself. That's corruption on the principal's part, using his official power to address a personal wrong.
I do sympathize with your POV that the principle should've recused himself in the matter. However, depending on the size of the school and it's disciplinary system, that may have not been possible in a manner that would fully separate the principal's personal influence from the decision making process.
What if this situation were a little different? What if the student was caught fighting with another student off campus? Should the student be punished as if they were on campus (with a suspension) or should they be tossed the the court system and spend time in juvenile hall?
Now what if the kid had instead swung a fist at the principal himself? Would it be best handled through the courts or would a suspension still be the more fair and balanced solution?
I have some mixed feelings on the case. When a kid commits a (minor) criminal or tortious act, I think that they should be disciplined by a school authority figure -- whether that act happens on or off campus if it affects someone within the school. Part of being a principle *is* being judge, jury, and executioner in a system that is basically a "for kids" version of the law. It's training wheels for the real world, and it has less rigid separation of decision making process because the consequences are so much less dire than those in the real world.
You could leave it up to the parents to discipline, but cases like this show why that doesn't always work. When faced with a kid that basically libeled another person online in a despicable manner, they didn't say, "Man, what a irresponsible little s--- my kid is. They should be happy that they got off with a slap on the wrist." No, instead they decided to eat up the money of the school district fighting to protect "their little angel."
My parents are both school teachers. I see this kind of "My child can do no wrong" attitude a LOT from parents nowadays. It's frankly disgusting, and it's reason numero uno why schools have to be there to provide a little discipline and moral backbone for the kids that aren't getting it at home.
On the other hand, I think the principal getting involved himself with the case smacks of a lack of professional detachment, and even the most unrealistically defensive parents don't actually *sue* unless there's some sort of breakdown in personal relations with the school administration. (It's kind of like the way that most malpractice suits arise not because of the horrible medical errors but because the patients felt insulted by the way their doctor handled their case.) I think it's highly likely that the principal may have acted unprofessionally here. (Lord knows how many principals act like little lords over a fiefdom. I've seen principals both principled and despotic as a a child of teachers and unfortunately more of the latter than the former.)
So, in summary: - I think it's perfectly reasonable for schools to apply some discipline here. - I am suspicious of the principal not stepping aside to avoid conflicts of interest. - I think the parents are being jerks, but that might be a sign that the principal is one too.
The special damages requirement is only necessary for slander, which requires a showing of specific, economic harm due to loss of reputation. Both slander pe se (which this would've been if spoken) and libel allow general damages, including pain and suffering.
The bigger legal defense, in my mind, would be over whether or not the principal is enough of a public figure and the slandered matter one of enough public interest for NY Times v. Sullivan or Gertz v. Robert Welch to give Free Press protections to internet postings. My instincts tend towards the principal not being a public figure at the time (though accusations of pedophilia towards a school principal being one of public interest) as well as towards a fake MySpace account not being legitimately press, but I could see a court going the other way.
I think he could win, but one rarely recovers enough money in cases like these to make up for the legal costs without some form of economic harm. (In other words, the point mostly stands about it being a bad idea to sue over this.)
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This is insightful? All you've posted is that the Constitution says whatever the Supreme Court says is does.
And? That's how things are. Deal with it. As I say in my reply to his reply to the above post, there is no such thing as a platonic, ideal notion of Constitutionality. Constitutionality is entirely a concept of the law as applied, based on our English-inherited common law system -- i.e. judge-interpreted law.
The GP was pointing out that the government(all three branches) simply ignore the 10th Amendment. This goes against the entire premise of rule of written law.
No. They interpret the 10th Amendment in a way different from what you would like. Words on paper are meaningless without interpretation, and if you learn anything when studying law, there's no set of words on paper that two people can't come up with different interpretations for.
There is no One True God-Given Meaning of the 10th Amendment, and you should not mistake your interpretation for it for the one that's right nor for the one that's controlling in the law. That's for the body invested with the power to interpret the law to decide. (That's not you, by the way.)
Like I said, this statement is unequivocally false.
One can make an argument that it's not. It's really no different from from the analysis you gave, except for your faulty assumption that the 10th Amendment has strong teeth. The Constitution grants the government several powers to pass laws (removing some rights from you) and the Bill of Rights takes several powers away from the government (granting some rights to you). What it says nothing about is left alone, presumably to the states.
The 10th Amendment has long been viewed as little more than an affirmation of the obvious and not a hard limit of restraint. Beyond the limits I've mentioned on compelling action from the states, it's toothless. That changed for a while with the Usery decision but was revoked by Garcia. O'Connor's decision in the aforementioned New York v. United States is the law on the 10th Amendment currently, and I've already explained how little it restrains Congress.
And despite your stunning ability to look up cases on the internet, the Congress still has to give lip service to a grant of authority before it passes a law. Usually it's the Commerce Clause, which after Wickard v. Filburn is ridiculously broad, but the Rhenquist court did manage to reign it in just a little bit. So no, Congress can't just go off willy nilly and do whatever it wants.
Maybe. Gonzales v. Raich 545 U.S. 1 (2005) blows most of Morrison out of the water by resurrecting the rational basis test and severely muddying the waters on what is and isn't economic activity. While Congress still applies the fig leaf of "that affects interstate commerce" to the legislation it passes, what exactly is interstate commerce is once again very broad. It's hard to reconcile Raich with Lopez in my opinion, given the government's argument in the latter case.
(I'm frankly surprised you know much about what the Rehnquist court decided though, given how wrong your 10th Amendment analysis is. I was providing links because I figured (based on 2/3 of your post) that you were talking out your rear end. I again recommend reading a Con Law textbook.)
And I stand by my analysis of the New Deal. Everybody knew it was unconstitutional. They just decided it was so extraordinarily important that they were going to do it anyway.
I assume you're referring to West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parish (1937). The only reason anyone would've considered the New Deal unconstitutional was because of Lochner, widely considered today to have been one of the most awful and ill-conceived Supreme Court verdicts of all time. Yes, the court was under pressure due to Roosevelt's threat to pack the court, but the writing was already on the wall with Nebbia v. New York, 3 years earlier, and even in striking down some New Deal legislation in United States v. Butler, the court upheld a relatively broad interpretation of the Spending Clause and General Welfare Clause. By the time Wickard v. Filburn was decided, the landscape had changed.
Honestly, the argument "they knew it wasn't Constitutional" presumes two things:
1) There is an inherent, natural law concept of constitutionality that objectively lies outside of the decisions of the Supreme Court.
2) That the Supreme Court chose to ignore that objective standard and place a politically motivated substitute that has no moral authority behind it.
Neither of these are the case. Constitutional is what the body reviewing constitutionality says it is. I may not like Scalia's grotesque reading out of the Constitution of the 2nd Amendment's militia requirement in District of Columbia v. Heller this year (making a mockery of his own touted philosophy of originalism), but that is the law of the land. That is what is constitutional, and all the whining in the world doesn't change that.
(And frankly, if you're honestly arguing that we should roll back our notion of Constitutionality to the pre-New Deal, Lochner era, I think you're a loon.)
Republicans want into your bedroom. Democrats want into your wallet. Libertarians want neither.
Republicans want into your bedroom.
Democrats want into your wallet.
Libertarians don't care if you have a bedroom or wallet anymore.
Unfortunately, your understanding of the constitution is fundamentally flawed. It has a few things that it explicitly tells the federal government it can do, and the 10th amendment says, "If we didn't explicitly say you can do it, it's none of your business."
As pointed out by the above poster, the federal government *was* explicitly told that this is something they can do. The articles of the Constitution that he actual cited (as opposed to your general parapharsing) are known as the Taxing and Spending Clause and the General Welfare Clause in Constitutional Law. There is absolutely nothing in the bailout plan that was unconstitutional. Unwise or unfair, maybe, but not unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the 10th Amendment is generally considered to have little judicially enforceable restraint on Congress. Pretty much the only thing barred by the 10th Amendment currently is commanding the states to enact legislation or to enforce federal legislation (though the government is free to give incentives to do so with money spent under the Spending Clause). (See New York v. United States (1992).)
Everything else you've posted is just whining about the Supreme Court not interpreting the Constitution the way you wished they would. Well, too bad! The Constitution is what the body invested with the power to interpret it says that it is. (See Marbury v. Madison.)
In other words, when it comes to Constitutional Law: "Lurk moar, n00b."
A denial of public service attack?
(Oh no, wait... denial of public service is what Congress is doing now...)
Never should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque...
Because of the end of civilization, the Clamp Cable Network now leaves the air. We hope you've enjoyed our programming, but more importantly, we hope you've enjoyed... life.
There's plenty of material and interpretations for anyone who wants to find controversy.
Only if you're being a sophist. The people who are upset at fetal stem cell research aren't just making up clever arguments to dump all over people's hard work and potential medical salvation -- they genuinely believe in the whole "life starts at conception" argument.
You may not agree with pro-lifers, but you're not going to convince them to change their minds or find middle ground with the ones that are on the fence about fetal stem cells with ridiculous straw man arguments. And you're never going to make a difference if you have nothing but contempt for the other side's beliefs and the honesty with which they hold them.
Really, that applies to all of politics, faith, taste, and any other subject with an emotional element that can't be reduced to a simple proof of facts.
Somehow missed in the article that it was a 3rd party vendor that was doing this. The point still stands, even if Google is not the marketing company in question.
Or a CueCat. We know how big of a killer app.
I think a lot of people forget that one of the big revenue streams for :CueCat was the ability to identify the purchasing (or browsing) habits of its users. The devices had unique IDs and people actually gave the company their name, address, and ZIP code. Whenever a :CueCat scanned an item and went to find out information on it, that UPC code could be associated with your ID, and -- viola! -- instant profiles of what you find interesting.
For a marketing company like Google, popularizing this would be a dream come true. I have no doubt that they would make use of this information to better target ads to you. Some people like the idea of ads only being things you want to buy. Personally, I don't want ads that are actually *good* at getting me to part with my money, and I have concerns in the wake of how Preferred Shoppers databases at grocery stores were using the wake of 9/11.
This just smacks of privacy invasion to me -- or at least further temptation to abandon one's privacy. Count me as not sold on it, but I don't really matter compared to what the mass market will think about it. I hope it flops, but I worry that it won't.
No I didn't. I joined the conversation after...
Yeah, my bad. You're not level4.
As for everything else, fine... just fine. The moderators have spoken, and people who think that it's okay to write these sorts of "truthiness"-filled pieces in anticipation of events have more support than me.
So, "Dewey Defeats Truman!" and all that. You people deserve the world the media shapes for you, where it's more important to be entertaining and first to get the reader's eyeballs than to be accurate and honest -- where it's okay to write up a narrative about events without being there. Maybe they'll replace it with the real events, maybe not -- who cares? We should just trust that they're willing to do the right thing after spending so much effort having the wrong thing ready to go.
It's moments like these that I get really discouraged about the future of democracy.
The poster above me accuses people of being so gullible as to not know that and tries to confuse the issue of pre-written press releases with special effects used in the opening ceremonies.
I dispute that and say that these are two different things and that people don't mind deceptions they know about (to entertain them) but do mind deceptions they don't know about (to trick them), and I get modded a Troll?
Geez, you people got so worked up in defense of bad media practices, it's ridiculous.
So you're saying you were presenting arguments on this topic when you had no clue what was reality and were just repeating what others were saying because "All the cool kids do it too!"
Forgive me for trusting the news. I forgot I was dealing with someone who doesn't believe the news should have any integrity.
So China is to blame because NBC didn't choose better words. Also, adding special effects to a video doesn't fit most definitions of animation.
I don't care who is to blame. I still can't even get straight from reading on it who actually edited the footage -- was it China or NBC? I'm not even really worked up about this issue compared to the launch story.
Geez, you're the one who brought up the fireworks in the first place! And did so, purely as a way of mocking people who care about faked news as being too stupid to realize that a flying person would have to be faked. And you seem far more interested in that than the real issue here. Can we please get back to that instead of focusing on your ludicrous attempt to paint people as only getting upset because they're gullible?
Sure, the press release was misleading because it was accidentally posted early. But you were making the original argument that the Chinese were intentionally trying to deceive everyone, because of the filler/scripted dialog. If it were filler/scripted dialog, and the pre-written announcement was accidentally posted early, that would negate your original argument, which is what I was replying to.
I think the preponderance of evidence leads to the belief that the text was meant to go out as is. There is a cohesive narrative, dialog, and descriptions of the timing of events as if they had already happened.
This isn't the kind of stuff you'd normally prep ahead of time if you expected to fill it in with the real events later. This is a puff piece meant to tell a stirring story to brag about how awesome they are. This is PR -- and truth is often sacrificed there.
What is your explanation for the way the piece was written up? A reporter just exercising some creative talent only to wipe it all away later when the real story came in?
The people in China obviously are not dumb. If they really want to deceive everyone, they would release the press announcement after the scheduled launch. Releasing it before doesn't help them deceive people.
You're presupposing now (in contrast to previous posts) that the release must be deliberate. The puff, propaganda piece painting a story of rousing success in space flight is prepped ahead of time. The events of the launch will probably be very much *like* what is in the piece, but the authors don't care about what actually will happen unless there's a disaster. No one cares what the astronauts actually *say* as long as the story is good. In fact, they probably have alternate pieces ready in case something bad does happen.
Then, unexpectedly, the prepared piece gets released early.
The real controversy is not, "OMG! The Chinese were going to say things went great no matter what actually happened!" It's, "The Chinese news doesn't care what the real events were as long as the story is good." It's that contempt for the public that bothers me.
By Occam's razor, it's most logical that this is the accidental posting of a pre-written announcement.
Occam's Razor is that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity." In other words, don't add complications.
Why would someone write a story like this if they intended to erase it later? It just doesn't make sense to have this level of detail about the events of the launch if the person cared about replacing the story with the real events. There is no motivation for doing so. However, propaganda is an easily understood motivation -- especially for state-run media covering events of importance
No, THEY didn't, your media outlet did.
*Cough* Did I at any point assert who did that or just that I thought that it was wrong to do so?
And I don't care who did it. I just care that it's wrong. This is a matter of principle and not nationalistic pride. Gah, I barely even care about the Beijing Olympics myself -- I was just trying to explain why other people might care. I haven't thought the Olympics had any integrity in YEARS, but faking the record of a historical event bothers me deeply.
The difference between dummy text and "deception" is that the dummy text is not supposed to end up published. It seems likely that this article was published by accident, which makes it likely that this is in fact dummy text. I did not read any part of the parent's post that defended the publishing of propaganda.
Your argument is known as "begging the question."
1) Dummy text and deception differ in that dummy text isn't intended to be published.
2) The article was accidentally published.
3) Therefore the text in the article was dummy text and can't be an attempt at deception.
That's nonsense. You presuppose that scripted events can't be accidentally released and that the accidental release of the article proves that it's not deliberate falsehood. Your logic is built on a foundation of sand.
Just because the article was published by accident doesn't mean that what's in the article isn't propaganda that was going to go out later if the accident hadn't occurred. The level of specific detail -- including conversations and comments on the timing of events -- suggest a finished story, reporting on facts that could not be determined until after the events actually happened. Frankly, the effort at scripting the story before it happened smacks of a disregard for what would come later.
If they'd published it after the launch, most people would not have known -- after all, the conversations between the craft and ground control are unlikely to be independently recorded by observers and double-checked. Fact is, there's little chance they would've gotten caught, so why not fake things? Only their slip in publishing let people know that it was going on.
Frankly, we have every reason to be suspicious of a state-run newspaper in an autocratic country reporting on events deeply tied up in national pride.
Perhaps you wrote your reply in advance, not reading what you replied to, and accidentally posted it.
Cute. Do they still give gold stars for cleverness at your grade level?
NBC commentators said during the scene: "Your looking at a cinematic device, employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation. "
What's part of that didn't you understand? Additionally, if that wasn't clear, it's hardly the fault of the Chinese that the commentators didn't make it clear for you.
I didn't actually watch the opening ceremonies. I'm not a big pageantry fan. If they made a comment that that's what was being done, then I don't see what the fuss was about, but all the articles I read in the news gave the impression that that wasn't mentioned.
However, if those were the words spoken, then that's not very clear at all. A "cinematic device" could mean practically anything -- from an admission of computer-edited broadcast to a description of "real, live" special effects on the ground like one would use in making a non-CGFX movie to a commentary on the way he was telling the story in the pageant, and "actually almost animation" makes it seems like it's not actually animation. Do you see how ambiguous those words are and why people might've been confused?
Numerous people have pointed out this is probably either filler dialog or scripted dialog that is expected to be said, a practice employed by media outlets around the world. Why do you feel the need to ignore this and jump to the conclusion of deception?
A) Because being "filler" or "scripted" dialog in no way makes this not deception -- in fact that makes it explicitly deception.
B) "All the cool kids do it too!" is no defense for any kind of wrongdoing.
C) Maybe it hasn't dawned on you that we don't *like* the practice of faking dialog and presenting it to the public as real, no matter the motivations behind it.
Why are you so quick to jump to defend the practice of pulling the wool over the public's eyes with scripted, PR spin of a historical event? Is this something you support the media doing (state-run or not)? Would Apollo 11 have been better if NASA had actually recorded the conversations with Neil Armstrong on a sound-stage?
Doing a little prep-work for a final article is one thing. Putting the words into the mouths of real people connected with real historical events and passing them off as the truth is another.
Do we really live in such a cynical, post-truth world that this doesn't matter at all to you?
And as for the "fake fireworks", I have another revelation for everyone - did you see that man who ran in the air all around the stadium? See him? Well, prepare to have your mind blown. Are you ready? Sure you're really ready? OK, get this:
He wasn't really flying!
Prepare to have your mind blown: We all know that!
The problem is not that they used special effects for the crowd. The problem is that they showed up something different from what the live audience saw and pretended that that's what they really saw.
There's a difference between how people would feel about: ...and...
a) Here, have a tasty veggie burger!
b) Here, have a tasty, juicy burger! (Which I'm not telling you is a veggie burger.)
It's not that veggie burgers are bad. It's just that people don't like being lied to, and it's even worse when something is *successfully* passed off on you, and you later learn you were suckered.
This is the problem here. They wrote up an article with completely fake dialog that might have plausibly happened and expected to deceive us all. If they'd said, "The conversation in the cockpit when something like this..." we'd be fine, because we'd be on notice that this is a fictional telling. It's the intent to pull the wool over our eyes that offends in a way that an impressible special effect or magic trick does not.
That is close to what I was thinking. The main difference is that I don't think it was so much, "I don't care if malware is installed on someone else's machine," as, "I don't care what this dialog says on the crappy computer they gave me to work with."
My first thought upon seeing such a dialog on a machine someone else set up for me to use for a limited, low-importance task would be irritation that they don't properly maintain their systems. If it were my system, I would pay more attention to the dialog, but on someone else's seemingly buggy Windows system, I couldn't give two cents for what the dialogs say -- that's their problem.
On the other hand, if I noticed that the dialogs were suspicious, I would actually try not to install malware on their system -- again, if I even bothered to pay attention. I'm grouchy about other people's (perceived) sloppiness -- not a jerk who'd deliberately screw someone else's machine over out of laziness.
None of that matters - what's important is the false positive rate, ie. the proportion of people with no malicious intent who get flagged up. If it's as high as 1% the system will be pretty much unworkable.
Do you honestly think that relying on a system that lets 1 out of 5 "potential terrorists" pass unchallenged is no real problem? The system's gotta work in *both* directions to be usable.
Does this sound idiotic to anyone else? Of course it's going to work for people who are told how to act in order to get the device to flag them.
Three reasons to be concerned with how they're testing it:
1) Even when told to act funny, it misses 20-22% of targets, giving it a terrible success rate.
2) We know the false negatives are bad, but how are the false positives, or does DHS not even bother to test that?
3) If they're calibrating it to pick up on "acting suspicious" instead of being actually nervous, stressed, or hostile, then it's effing useless for picking up on real terrorists and is yet another way for DHS to annoy law-abiding citizens to make them feel "safe" while spending massive amounts of taxpayer dollars on administration friendly contractors. Yay!
Well, to be fair, Kuwait is more about the profits than the prophet.
Thank God we fought so hard to keep like minded people from under the yoke of tyranny!
USA! USA! USA!
Close, but not quite:
Libel is defamation in print (/permanent) form. To prove defamation, you need to show the following:
1) That the statements were false and defamatory.
2) That the person was at least negligent to the truth of their words.
3) That the statement was an unprivileged publication to a third party.
-- You'd be surprised what cases turn on "publication."
4) Economic harm (most slander) or liability irrespective of harm (usually the case in libel).
You don't have to know that the words are false or have malicious intent necessarily, though the bar to prove defamation may be raised if (a) the subject is a public figure and/or (b) the matter is on of public interest.
For example, libel per quod happens when one publishes a statement that is libelous because of attendant circumstances and is frequently accidental. For example, if you write some fluff in an article saying that someone is a regular Joe who likes tossing back a cold brew with friends, and it comes out that that person is court-ordered after a DUI to stay sober, then you've committed libel due to the circumstances. You didn't mean any harm, and you didn't know that he didn't actually drink (but didn't bother to check up on things), but you're still on the hook for libel.
(Libel per quod is more common in the press than libel per se because newspapers are generally unwilling to publish things they *know* would be harmful to reputation without odd circumstances without making sure they're true first.)
If you're libeling a public figure on a matter of public interest in the press, then actual malice is required as well as knowing falsity. Otherwise, the standard is lower. It used to in fact be strict liability with respect to the falsity of the statement (but not to the act of publishing). However, now it's generally recognized that at least negligence on truth is required when defaming private persons.
But what's especially troubling is that it can be used as precedent to shut down corporate/government whistleblowers. If an institution's rules apply even when you're outside of that institution, your employer owns you.
No it can't.
1) The law allows some use of analogous situations, but the law governing student's rights vs. school administration's rights and the law involving worker's rights vs. the freedom to hire at will are two separate and mature areas of the law.
2) The law protecting whistleblowers at work is also quite distinct from how the law would treat a worker who libeled their manager, got fired, and tried to sue over it. (Especially considering the kid wasn't "fired," aka expelled, but just disciplined.)
You seem to think that the law and the judges applying it are blind to the differences between a kid who defames someone and an employee who does a public good. It's not. Judges aren't idiots. That's not what the mean by, "Justice is blind."
It doesn't matter; if a teenager libels the principal outside the school, the principal's legitimate response would be a libel suit. NOT to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner himself. That's corruption on the principal's part, using his official power to address a personal wrong.
I do sympathize with your POV that the principle should've recused himself in the matter. However, depending on the size of the school and it's disciplinary system, that may have not been possible in a manner that would fully separate the principal's personal influence from the decision making process.
What if this situation were a little different? What if the student was caught fighting with another student off campus? Should the student be punished as if they were on campus (with a suspension) or should they be tossed the the court system and spend time in juvenile hall?
Now what if the kid had instead swung a fist at the principal himself? Would it be best handled through the courts or would a suspension still be the more fair and balanced solution?
I have some mixed feelings on the case. When a kid commits a (minor) criminal or tortious act, I think that they should be disciplined by a school authority figure -- whether that act happens on or off campus if it affects someone within the school. Part of being a principle *is* being judge, jury, and executioner in a system that is basically a "for kids" version of the law. It's training wheels for the real world, and it has less rigid separation of decision making process because the consequences are so much less dire than those in the real world.
You could leave it up to the parents to discipline, but cases like this show why that doesn't always work. When faced with a kid that basically libeled another person online in a despicable manner, they didn't say, "Man, what a irresponsible little s--- my kid is. They should be happy that they got off with a slap on the wrist." No, instead they decided to eat up the money of the school district fighting to protect "their little angel."
My parents are both school teachers. I see this kind of "My child can do no wrong" attitude a LOT from parents nowadays. It's frankly disgusting, and it's reason numero uno why schools have to be there to provide a little discipline and moral backbone for the kids that aren't getting it at home.
On the other hand, I think the principal getting involved himself with the case smacks of a lack of professional detachment, and even the most unrealistically defensive parents don't actually *sue* unless there's some sort of breakdown in personal relations with the school administration. (It's kind of like the way that most malpractice suits arise not because of the horrible medical errors but because the patients felt insulted by the way their doctor handled their case.) I think it's highly likely that the principal may have acted unprofessionally here. (Lord knows how many principals act like little lords over a fiefdom. I've seen principals both principled and despotic as a a child of teachers and unfortunately more of the latter than the former.)
So, in summary:
- I think it's perfectly reasonable for schools to apply some discipline here.
- I am suspicious of the principal not stepping aside to avoid conflicts of interest.
- I think the parents are being jerks, but that might be a sign that the principal is one too.
The special damages requirement is only necessary for slander, which requires a showing of specific, economic harm due to loss of reputation. Both slander pe se (which this would've been if spoken) and libel allow general damages, including pain and suffering.
The bigger legal defense, in my mind, would be over whether or not the principal is enough of a public figure and the slandered matter one of enough public interest for NY Times v. Sullivan or Gertz v. Robert Welch to give Free Press protections to internet postings. My instincts tend towards the principal not being a public figure at the time (though accusations of pedophilia towards a school principal being one of public interest) as well as towards a fake MySpace account not being legitimately press, but I could see a court going the other way.
I think he could win, but one rarely recovers enough money in cases like these to make up for the legal costs without some form of economic harm. (In other words, the point mostly stands about it being a bad idea to sue over this.)