"These cars are still more safer than Corvettes, based on the fact that every time I'm following a corvette on an on-ramp"
On-ramps are curved. Corvettes, like all US muscle cars, are intended for straight roads and tend to have lousy cornering ability (especially when the weight is as lopsided as it is in the 'vette). You'll see them pull away as soon as you're on the Interstate proper.
You see, here in the states we have these things called "trunks," where we can put stuff to carry from point A to point B with us. It helps with shopping when you don't live within a kilometer (or even 10 kilometers, for that matter) of the grocery store or wherever else you find yourself going.
Because of the size of the US and the relatively uniform population distribution compared to the rest of the industrialized world, cars have to be as much about moving cargo as about moving people. Shrinking the car and filling it up with batteries forgets about one of those two functions.
And no, I don't own an SUV, I own a little Hyundai that gets around 30 mpg (or around 8 cL/km, if you insist). Back in '01 when I got it, I was tempted by the hybrid Honda had at the time, except that it had a single passenger seat and that was it! Sure, it got better mileage, but that's wasted by having to make trips more frequently (can't have more than 2 or 3 bags of groceries, God forbid) or I'd have to rent a truck that gets horrendous mileage (especially since everybody rents out gas-powered trucks instead of diesel), and let's not even talk about where the heck I'm supposed to put my computer if I want to go to a LAN party...
So this little roller skate here may be nice for those people who live in the middle of an urban hub, but most of us Americans don't.
"If you drop a booster on my house, I'll sue you into the stone age."
Assuming you survive, where are you going to live? "I'll pay you as soon as I win my court case" won't get you very far when you go apartment hunting.
"If your 6G rocket kills 90% of its passengers, and my 5G rocket kills 5% of its passengers, people will figure out the risks for themselves, and choose to fly on my rockets rather than yours, at least until you redesign your rocket to be safer than mine."
" Yes and no. The President is bound by all laws, but he cannot be tried while in office."
Um... what!?!? You're talking about the president of the United States, right? Not of France, or the prime minister of Italy? I've seen nothing like that in my constitution, and if anything it seems to fly in the face of several parts. Its members of Congress that are privileged against arrest, and only when Congress is in session.
After all, Clinton was impeached because of allegations that he perjured himself and then used his powers as president to cover it up, and the accused perjury happened when he was being tried in a court of law during his presidency.
"it seems to be standing policy by each new president to pardon the previous president,"
You can't really pardon someone unless they've been convicted (since they're innocent until then), unless you're Gerald Ford, the first and last president to pardon a former president for anything. And Ford himself may have found himself being impeached for that one had he been crazy enough to run in '76.
You seem to be confusing the US with some other country.
"I'd also love to know why it's ok for the US to hold WMDs (especially given the US's record regarding wars) but it's not ok for another nation to hold them?"
What would have to happen for this argument not to be a straw man:
The US invades Mexico, starting a long, bloody war in wich the US uses its WMD
Once the war is over, the US government bides its time by using some more WMDs on suspected Mexican sympathizers (Hispanics, Catholics, whatever) within US borders
A few years later, the US invades Canada, muttering something about the indignity of having to drive through BC to get to Alaska and some vague accusations of slant-drilling off the coast of Maine.
The UN acts, authorizing military force in ejecting US forces from Canada
After a successful UN campaign, with the implied threat of UN troops moving on to Washington, the US signs a peace deal
Because of past nastiness against Mexico, Canada, and its own people, part of the US peace deal that Washington signs says that the US will surrender its WMDs to the UN and dismantle WMD programs before UN inspectors
Conveniently enough, the US claims to have gotten rid of all of its WMD stockpiles and programs without the UN inspectors getting a chance to see anything ("Yeah, we took care of that already on our own, we don't need you here anymore.")
Because the US didn't let the inspectors oversee the dismantling as was required by the accords that ended the Canadian-American War, the UN is then stuck with trying to figure out whether or not the US really did do all the dismantling they claim to have done
The US that wanted to get rid of its WMD programs so badly that it jumped the gun befoe the inspectors could do their job now seems to be a bit less cooperative with the inspectors, causing doubt as to whether the US dismantled when they said they did.
Because none of this has happened, Iraq has been held to a very different standard than the US.
If you're referring to WWII, Germany declared war on the US, several days before the US reciprocated. It's debatable whether Roosevelet could have squeezed a war declaration against Germany out of Congress had Germany not done so first.
"Plus they have weather and traffic channels for 21 major metro areas."
Sirius has 20 currently.
"Not to mention XM Live, where artists come play in their studio"
Sirius streams have artists come in to play live as well.
"What does the extra $3/month at Sirius get you?"
Rather than splitting hairs, I'll say this: It gets you a service that takes a more pro-active approach to customer satisfaction. Did XM yank the commercials out of its music streams because people don't like commercials or because it was what the competition was doing? When they were designing the service and realized they could drastically reduce the amount of commercials heard, why didn't they decide to drop them outright instead of waiting for somebody else to guilt them into it?
And speaking of which, when did XM start carrying local weather and traffic? When Sirius first started it, various FM and AM broadcasters were complaining to the FCC that Sirius was violating the terms of its charter, and in those articles I don't remember seeing XM mentioned, suggesting that it might be another XM "me, too!" feature implemented after Sirius took the initiative.
The analogy has been made that Sirius is to XM as Mac is to PC. On the surface, you're paying more money for similar features, but...
"And if you think pay-as-in-beer guarantees free speech, ask the cable channels the FCC is now illegally enforcing into their jurisdictional scope."
The argument the FCC consistently uses before the Supreme Court (and it usually gets them their way) is that a particular medium is "pervasive" and that it's difficult or impossible to keep the speech out of the home. It works on broadcast medium (or at least until Congress gave us all V-chips, not that they've seen fit to tell the FCC to cut back on the censorship stuff because of it...), and it can be applied to cable if you look at it sideways (or so it seems, I personally don't agree with the FCC censoring cable), but Sirius is different from cable in that the listeners are more or less the sole source of income for the producers of the content.
With non-premium cable channels, the viewers are paying mostly for the connection from their home to the local cable office and the descrambling equipment at said cable office. As for what's actually put onto the wire, that's decided by the networks who themselves are beholden to advertisers. If the advertisers see that tits and ass move product, they'll lean on the networks to show more skin whether the viewer likes it or not.
However, with satellite radio's listeners being the only true customers of the service, they're the ones at the helm of what's broacast and what's not. Unlike basic cable, the product being sold is the content, not the consumer. If an unhappy satellite radio listener wants to make capitalism work, they can simply drop their subscription and take away the company's income directly. With basic cable, they'll have to watch the programming they don't like in order to see what businesses' commercials are paying for the programming to figure out who to boycott this week.
Going back to the beer analogy, it's no longer a matter of "I find those beer commercials offensive," it's "This beer sucks."
"The takedown notices were sent under penalty of perjury, right? And there isn't even the wiggle room of the perjury clause only pertaining to the statement that the sender is an agent of the copyright holder, since the documents weren't covered by copyright."
"I think that the legislature rejected the first two attempts at redrawing the districts this year because they (not sure if it was the "independent board" drawing the districts or the legislature) were trying to get a bit creative."
Considering that they only did it twice, I suspect Iowa voters took them to task on that and the legislators learned their lesson.
That's nice. What happens when gold and silver prices fluctuate with respect to each other?
"I think this is an excellent idea."
Good. Now go bother your state legislature. They have the power to mint gold and silver coin to be used as currency to their heart's content and I fail to see the need for the entire Union to get involved in yet another "hard money" venture.
"It's like when the conservatives claim liberal bias is rampant on college campuses. They're saying that the most enlightened, educated, intellectual people in our nation tend to be liberal,"
I'm sorry, I'm having a real trouble associating traits like "enlightened," "educated," and "intellectual" with "college." All too many college degrees say little more than "I found the right sucker to do my work for me."
"Winner takes all is there because we once believed in strong state government and a weak federal government."
No, it's there to lock in the major parties into the system, much as it was intended (and accomplished) when the scheme was used for House elections.
A "strong state government" scheme wouldn't involve a popular election at all, instead appointing electors by fiat (and probably in a way that reflected the party break-down of the legislature doing the appointing instead of majority-takes-all).
Really, how "strong" is your state government when the government has absolutely no say in the election results? Winner-takes-all may give you something of a strong state presence, but it's rigged to benefit the major parties at the detriment of both the states (who have no say at all any more, especially with the Seventeenth Amendment) and the people (since the electors are not apportioned with respect to them and electors end up serving districts they should have lost in)
"The idea was that states would all agree to basic principles and trade freely with one another."
They can only trade freely with each other so long as Congress says they can. They have the explicit constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce in the same way they regulate international commerce.
"But after the civil war this antifederalism ideal lost out, and we became a unified nation with little difference between states."
Winner-takes-all by virtue of a popular election was the norm decades before the American Civil War. Neither the Federalists nor the Democrats were all that happy with the results of presidential elections decided by Congress in the early Nineteenth Century and had their party faithful push for the system in those few states that weren't already using it at the time. South Carolina was the last holdout until secession, but everybody else had adopted the system by 1836.
If nothing else, the system is designed to take Congress out of the loop.
"The constitution doesn't prohibit a powerful federal government, nor does it grant it. People (or perhaps lawyers and bankers 120ish years ago) decided they wanted a strong federal government, and that's what we got."
Ehhh... if anything I'd say the people decided that they didn't care; take a look at voter turn-out. You also see a lot of time spent on "the issues" and not much on basic political philosophy: all tactics and no strategy.
"He is invited again along with the Constitutional party. Once again only Cobb Badnarik said they will show up."
This I find odd. Bush and Kerry won't show up becaome they don't want to give third-party candidates any sort of validation. Nader's campaign relies solely on drawing attention away from Bush and Kerry, so he won't show up where they don't show up. But why not Peroutka, the Constitution Party's candidate? Has he officially turned it down, or are they still waiting on a response? Is he trying to take a "Hurt Bush and Kerry" tact like Kerry's?
I don't have a number to suggest, but having it set that high will eventually bite them in the ass. Winning the presidency requires a majority of the electoral votes, not simply a plurality. Maine and Nebraska currently have per-district election of presidential electors, and hopefully Colorado will be following suit this year; it's only a matter of time before the country in general drops the winner-takes-all mechanism from Electoral College elections like we have already done with House elections (yes, "once upon a time...").
With that being said, in the House of Representatives the Republican Party has a majority with just under 52% of the seats, and in the Senate they have 51% even. From 2001 until 2003, no party had a majority in the Senate (there was a Democrat plurality, but that was it).
With party politics being as neck-and-neck as it is today, how long do you think it will be before no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes? It may yet even happens this year, and when it does happen whoever comes in third is very important, no matter what kind of gap is between second and third, because three is the number of candidates presented to Congress.
" I don't expect Bush to actually answer any of the points presented by Kerry this week anyway."
Which means he would be following the rules of the "debate." In the structure of the dog-and-pony show, the candidates will not be allowed to talk to/at each other, ony to the audience/cameras, and the only questions that can be asked are those prepared by the system, agreed upon by both sides, and asked by the people designated to do the asking (who are not the candidates).
About the only "answer" to "any of the points presented" by the other side allowed by the system is the gasping, huffing, hawing and incredulous looks Al Gore did during the '00 debate, perhaps with the occasional "Nuh-uh!" depending on the tolerence of the moderators.
" Do you call everyone you disagree with a troll?"
No, just the people who seem to rely mostly on platitudes in their posts with little apparent intent beyond getting a rise out of others.
"the claim that it's the punishment for being convicted is not true."
Well, considering that it doesn't happen until after conviction, what exactly is it?
"Historically, disenfranchisement was based in racism,"
And that disenfranchisement was written into the lawbooks to affect large segments of the population in general. Conviction of a felony is literally done on a case-by-case basis and involves due process as required by the Fifth Amendment.
"since many felons were black."
What exactly does this have to do with anything? Where is the correlation between possible problems in the legal process and the punishment prescribed for the crime? Should we shorten the jail term for all murderers because of how many of them hapen to be black?
If you're suggesting we should consider the felon's skin color before revoking their voting privileges, how does having different penalties for people of different skin color sit with that certain clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which requires equal protection under the law?
"Furthermore, convictions are done by juries, but they do not sentence. The judge has that right."
No, the legislature has that right. Sometimes they grant judges leeway in sentencing ("not less than X and not more than Y"), sometimes they don't. This is done to ensure that the punishment is tailored for the crime, not the offender. And so long as the prescribed penalty is neither cruel nor unusual...
"To my original point, how is it just that a check bouncer can get the same punishment extension that a rapist gets?"
They don't; the latter is a felony, the former is a misdemanor.
"In certain countries, the crime for stealing is removal of the stealing hand."
Ignoring the Fifth Amendment for the moment, in this country there's far more than one definition of "stealing." What was stolen? What was its value? Was another person threatened in the process? Was a deadly weapon involved? Was the robbery part of some larger illegal plan (organized crime)? Does the offender have a previous record? Depending on what the legislatlure decides (judges cannot define a crime), the act may not even be a felony.
"It's the punishment of being a second-class citizen in this country."
It's the punishment of being a felon convicted by a jury of his or her peers.
"One thing that justice strives for is a punishment measured to the crime."
The comission of a felony shows a gross indifference to the rights of others (at best), and as such those others (namely the population at large) has the right to take steps to make sure that they can't continue to abuse the rights of others in the voting booth.
"It also hurts the rest of us, because we live in a society where some people are not considered full-class citizens, and justice is not served."
It has, by definition, been served. If you're in jail you may still be able to vote; if you've never been convicted of anything worse than a misdemeanor you can still vote. Only upon conviction by a court of law of a felony are voting privileges revoked.
"It's unAmerican."
No, it's "being held accountable for your own actions."
Slashdot Mirror
"These cars are still more safer than Corvettes, based on the fact that every time I'm following a corvette on an on-ramp"
On-ramps are curved. Corvettes, like all US muscle cars, are intended for straight roads and tend to have lousy cornering ability (especially when the weight is as lopsided as it is in the 'vette). You'll see them pull away as soon as you're on the Interstate proper.
"And also it doesn't have cupholders for the giant Slurpees that you lot consume."
It's something we sip on during our 1000 km road trips. Do you have those where you live? Without the need for a passport?
You see, here in the states we have these things called "trunks," where we can put stuff to carry from point A to point B with us. It helps with shopping when you don't live within a kilometer (or even 10 kilometers, for that matter) of the grocery store or wherever else you find yourself going.
Because of the size of the US and the relatively uniform population distribution compared to the rest of the industrialized world, cars have to be as much about moving cargo as about moving people. Shrinking the car and filling it up with batteries forgets about one of those two functions.
And no, I don't own an SUV, I own a little Hyundai that gets around 30 mpg (or around 8 cL/km, if you insist). Back in '01 when I got it, I was tempted by the hybrid Honda had at the time, except that it had a single passenger seat and that was it! Sure, it got better mileage, but that's wasted by having to make trips more frequently (can't have more than 2 or 3 bags of groceries, God forbid) or I'd have to rent a truck that gets horrendous mileage (especially since everybody rents out gas-powered trucks instead of diesel), and let's not even talk about where the heck I'm supposed to put my computer if I want to go to a LAN party...
So this little roller skate here may be nice for those people who live in the middle of an urban hub, but most of us Americans don't.
What worries me is that he had to specify which eyebrow will not be raised.
"If you drop a booster on my house, I'll sue you into the stone age."
Assuming you survive, where are you going to live? "I'll pay you as soon as I win my court case" won't get you very far when you go apartment hunting.
"If your 6G rocket kills 90% of its passengers, and my 5G rocket kills 5% of its passengers, people will figure out the risks for themselves, and choose to fly on my rockets rather than yours, at least until you redesign your rocket to be safer than mine."
Fair enough. You go first.
" Yes and no. The President is bound by all laws, but he cannot be tried while in office."
Um... what !?!? You're talking about the president of the United States, right? Not of France, or the prime minister of Italy? I've seen nothing like that in my constitution, and if anything it seems to fly in the face of several parts. Its members of Congress that are privileged against arrest, and only when Congress is in session.
After all, Clinton was impeached because of allegations that he perjured himself and then used his powers as president to cover it up, and the accused perjury happened when he was being tried in a court of law during his presidency.
"it seems to be standing policy by each new president to pardon the previous president,"
You can't really pardon someone unless they've been convicted (since they're innocent until then), unless you're Gerald Ford, the first and last president to pardon a former president for anything. And Ford himself may have found himself being impeached for that one had he been crazy enough to run in '76.
You seem to be confusing the US with some other country.
What would have to happen for this argument not to be a straw man:
Because none of this has happened, Iraq has been held to a very different standard than the US.
"Germany was never going to attack the U.S."
If you're referring to WWII, Germany declared war on the US, several days before the US reciprocated. It's debatable whether Roosevelet could have squeezed a war declaration against Germany out of Congress had Germany not done so first.
"Plus they have weather and traffic channels for 21 major metro areas."
Sirius has 20 currently.
"Not to mention XM Live, where artists come play in their studio"
Sirius streams have artists come in to play live as well.
"What does the extra $3/month at Sirius get you?"
Rather than splitting hairs, I'll say this: It gets you a service that takes a more pro-active approach to customer satisfaction. Did XM yank the commercials out of its music streams because people don't like commercials or because it was what the competition was doing? When they were designing the service and realized they could drastically reduce the amount of commercials heard, why didn't they decide to drop them outright instead of waiting for somebody else to guilt them into it?
And speaking of which, when did XM start carrying local weather and traffic? When Sirius first started it, various FM and AM broadcasters were complaining to the FCC that Sirius was violating the terms of its charter, and in those articles I don't remember seeing XM mentioned, suggesting that it might be another XM "me, too!" feature implemented after Sirius took the initiative.
The analogy has been made that Sirius is to XM as Mac is to PC. On the surface, you're paying more money for similar features, but...
"And if you think pay-as-in-beer guarantees free speech, ask the cable channels the FCC is now illegally enforcing into their jurisdictional scope."
The argument the FCC consistently uses before the Supreme Court (and it usually gets them their way) is that a particular medium is "pervasive" and that it's difficult or impossible to keep the speech out of the home. It works on broadcast medium (or at least until Congress gave us all V-chips, not that they've seen fit to tell the FCC to cut back on the censorship stuff because of it...), and it can be applied to cable if you look at it sideways (or so it seems, I personally don't agree with the FCC censoring cable), but Sirius is different from cable in that the listeners are more or less the sole source of income for the producers of the content.
With non-premium cable channels, the viewers are paying mostly for the connection from their home to the local cable office and the descrambling equipment at said cable office. As for what's actually put onto the wire, that's decided by the networks who themselves are beholden to advertisers. If the advertisers see that tits and ass move product, they'll lean on the networks to show more skin whether the viewer likes it or not.
However, with satellite radio's listeners being the only true customers of the service, they're the ones at the helm of what's broacast and what's not. Unlike basic cable, the product being sold is the content, not the consumer. If an unhappy satellite radio listener wants to make capitalism work, they can simply drop their subscription and take away the company's income directly. With basic cable, they'll have to watch the programming they don't like in order to see what businesses' commercials are paying for the programming to figure out who to boycott this week.
Going back to the beer analogy, it's no longer a matter of "I find those beer commercials offensive," it's "This beer sucks."
"The takedown notices were sent under penalty of perjury, right? And there isn't even the wiggle room of the perjury clause only pertaining to the statement that the sender is an agent of the copyright holder, since the documents weren't covered by copyright."
It all hinges on what's the definition of "is."
"I think that the legislature rejected the first two attempts at redrawing the districts this year because they (not sure if it was the "independent board" drawing the districts or the legislature) were trying to get a bit creative."
Considering that they only did it twice, I suspect Iowa voters took them to task on that and the legislators learned their lesson.
"I'd like to see the moderator chuck out the debate rulebook in the middle of the debate. What would happen, I wonder?"
Technical Difficulties: Please Stand By.
"backed by gold and silver."
That's nice. What happens when gold and silver prices fluctuate with respect to each other?
"I think this is an excellent idea."
Good. Now go bother your state legislature. They have the power to mint gold and silver coin to be used as currency to their heart's content and I fail to see the need for the entire Union to get involved in yet another "hard money" venture.
"Congresscritter" takes up less space than "congressman/congresswoman" or "member of Congress," and actually looks less silly than "congressperson."
"It's like when the conservatives claim liberal bias is rampant on college campuses. They're saying that the most enlightened, educated, intellectual people in our nation tend to be liberal,"
I'm sorry, I'm having a real trouble associating traits like "enlightened," "educated," and "intellectual" with "college." All too many college degrees say little more than "I found the right sucker to do my work for me."
And we've seen how well that one worked. Why develop for a platform when the competition is willing to do some of the work for you?
"Winner takes all is there because we once believed in strong state government and a weak federal government."
No, it's there to lock in the major parties into the system, much as it was intended (and accomplished) when the scheme was used for House elections.
A "strong state government" scheme wouldn't involve a popular election at all, instead appointing electors by fiat (and probably in a way that reflected the party break-down of the legislature doing the appointing instead of majority-takes-all).
Really, how "strong" is your state government when the government has absolutely no say in the election results? Winner-takes-all may give you something of a strong state presence, but it's rigged to benefit the major parties at the detriment of both the states (who have no say at all any more, especially with the Seventeenth Amendment) and the people (since the electors are not apportioned with respect to them and electors end up serving districts they should have lost in)
"The idea was that states would all agree to basic principles and trade freely with one another."
They can only trade freely with each other so long as Congress says they can. They have the explicit constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce in the same way they regulate international commerce.
"But after the civil war this antifederalism ideal lost out, and we became a unified nation with little difference between states."
Winner-takes-all by virtue of a popular election was the norm decades before the American Civil War. Neither the Federalists nor the Democrats were all that happy with the results of presidential elections decided by Congress in the early Nineteenth Century and had their party faithful push for the system in those few states that weren't already using it at the time. South Carolina was the last holdout until secession, but everybody else had adopted the system by 1836.
If nothing else, the system is designed to take Congress out of the loop.
"The constitution doesn't prohibit a powerful federal government, nor does it grant it. People (or perhaps lawyers and bankers 120ish years ago) decided they wanted a strong federal government, and that's what we got."
Ehhh... if anything I'd say the people decided that they didn't care; take a look at voter turn-out. You also see a lot of time spent on "the issues" and not much on basic political philosophy: all tactics and no strategy.
"He is invited again along with the Constitutional party. Once again only Cobb Badnarik said they will show up."
This I find odd. Bush and Kerry won't show up becaome they don't want to give third-party candidates any sort of validation. Nader's campaign relies solely on drawing attention away from Bush and Kerry, so he won't show up where they don't show up. But why not Peroutka, the Constitution Party's candidate? Has he officially turned it down, or are they still waiting on a response? Is he trying to take a "Hurt Bush and Kerry" tact like Kerry's?
"Where would you suggest they set the limit?"
I don't have a number to suggest, but having it set that high will eventually bite them in the ass. Winning the presidency requires a majority of the electoral votes, not simply a plurality. Maine and Nebraska currently have per-district election of presidential electors, and hopefully Colorado will be following suit this year; it's only a matter of time before the country in general drops the winner-takes-all mechanism from Electoral College elections like we have already done with House elections (yes, "once upon a time...").
With that being said, in the House of Representatives the Republican Party has a majority with just under 52% of the seats, and in the Senate they have 51% even. From 2001 until 2003, no party had a majority in the Senate (there was a Democrat plurality, but that was it).
With party politics being as neck-and-neck as it is today, how long do you think it will be before no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes? It may yet even happens this year, and when it does happen whoever comes in third is very important, no matter what kind of gap is between second and third, because three is the number of candidates presented to Congress.
" I don't expect Bush to actually answer any of the points presented by Kerry this week anyway."
Which means he would be following the rules of the "debate." In the structure of the dog-and-pony show, the candidates will not be allowed to talk to/at each other, ony to the audience/cameras, and the only questions that can be asked are those prepared by the system, agreed upon by both sides, and asked by the people designated to do the asking (who are not the candidates).
About the only "answer" to "any of the points presented" by the other side allowed by the system is the gasping, huffing, hawing and incredulous looks Al Gore did during the '00 debate, perhaps with the occasional "Nuh-uh!" depending on the tolerence of the moderators.
" Do you call everyone you disagree with a troll?"
No, just the people who seem to rely mostly on platitudes in their posts with little apparent intent beyond getting a rise out of others.
"the claim that it's the punishment for being convicted is not true."
Well, considering that it doesn't happen until after conviction, what exactly is it?
"Historically, disenfranchisement was based in racism,"
And that disenfranchisement was written into the lawbooks to affect large segments of the population in general. Conviction of a felony is literally done on a case-by-case basis and involves due process as required by the Fifth Amendment.
"since many felons were black."
What exactly does this have to do with anything? Where is the correlation between possible problems in the legal process and the punishment prescribed for the crime? Should we shorten the jail term for all murderers because of how many of them hapen to be black?
If you're suggesting we should consider the felon's skin color before revoking their voting privileges, how does having different penalties for people of different skin color sit with that certain clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which requires equal protection under the law?
"Furthermore, convictions are done by juries, but they do not sentence. The judge has that right."
No, the legislature has that right. Sometimes they grant judges leeway in sentencing ("not less than X and not more than Y"), sometimes they don't. This is done to ensure that the punishment is tailored for the crime, not the offender. And so long as the prescribed penalty is neither cruel nor unusual...
"To my original point, how is it just that a check bouncer can get the same punishment extension that a rapist gets?"
They don't; the latter is a felony, the former is a misdemanor.
"In certain countries, the crime for stealing is removal of the stealing hand."
Ignoring the Fifth Amendment for the moment, in this country there's far more than one definition of "stealing." What was stolen? What was its value? Was another person threatened in the process? Was a deadly weapon involved? Was the robbery part of some larger illegal plan (organized crime)? Does the offender have a previous record? Depending on what the legislatlure decides (judges cannot define a crime), the act may not even be a felony.
"Prisons are full to overflowing"
Not everybody in prison is a convicted felon. Some are awaiting the completion of their trial, others were convicted of misdemeanors.
Nice troll.
"It's the punishment of being a second-class citizen in this country."
It's the punishment of being a felon convicted by a jury of his or her peers.
"One thing that justice strives for is a punishment measured to the crime."
The comission of a felony shows a gross indifference to the rights of others (at best), and as such those others (namely the population at large) has the right to take steps to make sure that they can't continue to abuse the rights of others in the voting booth.
"It also hurts the rest of us, because we live in a society where some people are not considered full-class citizens, and justice is not served."
It has, by definition, been served. If you're in jail you may still be able to vote; if you've never been convicted of anything worse than a misdemeanor you can still vote. Only upon conviction by a court of law of a felony are voting privileges revoked.
"It's unAmerican."
No, it's "being held accountable for your own actions."
"I personally can't comprehend how people become so attached to celebrities that they collect things about or belonging to them."
It has something to do with hot grits, I think. That, and in the last SW movie it was shown that she goes for the freaky, psychotic stalker type.