I don't think you should conflate "signing statements" with any deliberate program to break the law.
You ironically emphasize one part of the Constitution over another. Congress also cannot pass laws that supplant the Constitution so how could the Constitution bind the Executive branch to a law if it is in violation of the Constitution? If such a conflict exists then it becomes the role of the Judicial branch to resolve it.
Also, since they were so willing to toss off this whopper: But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.
Since I already showed you that there simply isnt' enough details to make such sweeping statements about the legality or illegality of the program, we can see that this is in fact not a serious legal analysis.
Though you do have to worry about those evil NeoCons who use presidential signing statements to ignore the law:
I do object to the provision in the Act concerning the transmittal of abortion-related speech and information. Current law, 18 U.S.C. 1462, prohibits transmittal of this information by certain means, and the Act would extend that law to cover transmittal by interactive computer services. The Department of Justice has advised me of its long-standing policy that this and related abortion provisions in current law are unconstitutional and will not be enforced because they violate the First Amendment. The Department has reviewed this provision of S. 652 and advises me that it provides no basis for altering that policy. Therefore, the Department will continue to decline to enforce that provision of current law, amended by this legislation, as applied to abortion-related speech.
I'll give you two guesses as to who wrote that one.
Merely shouting FISA doesn't cut it. In fact the case law as examined by knowledgable people and presented over at volokh.com shows that FISA could very easily run afoul of the Executive branch's enumerated powers especially with regards to war time and defense. (Note that the Clinton admin used the same reasoning to justify warrantly PHYSICAL searches performed INSIDE the US.)
So, what law did he/they violate? Why aren't they being prosecuted on it?
Glen Greenwald isn't exactly a learned legal scholar upon which to hang one's hopes. If you want to get detailed legal analysis of the NSA program than maybe you should read up on volokh.com.
The government current collects vast quantities of information from corporations without search warrants. This includes employment statistics, financial information, hiring policies, etc. They also collect a lot of information about you that doesn't requires a warrant either. This information includes voter registrations, automobile registrations, your social security information and census data. Some of it personally identifiable, some of it not.
The point is that in this case the government was requesting information from a corporation regarding non-personally identifiable data.
While retrieving this information may satisfy the dictionary definition of search it does not satisfy the legal definition of search and thus does not run afoul of the fourth ammendment.
Simply because you choose to say "it's search" doesn't make it so.
Well, considering that a private citizen filing suit against Google could request information of this nature as part of discovery in a trial.
Aside from that your just getting yourself all tied up in legal jargon and misinterpretations of the Constitution. The government made an information request of a coporation. The government is allowed to gather certain data from coroporations without warrants. The issue now is whether the current request is within the scope of the government's powers. Apparently a number of other search companies felt it was and provided similar information. Google is balking and thus it becomes the job of a judge to decide whether the government has exceeded the scope of it's powers. Since this request does not involve a criminal complaint or prosecution than the issue isn't warrant versus no warrant since no warrant can be obtained.
The 4th Ammendment protects against unreasonable search not all unwarranted searches.
The issue in this case is that the information request in question isn't really a search as it's not being used in a criminal case. Also it is not being used to prosecute anyone and the information, by itself, does not uniquely identify anyone. So this makes the whole issue a lot more complicated than simply slapping down the "4th Ammendment Trump Card(tm)" and walking away from the table.
Of course this great defender of freedom is also busy making sure Chinese people don't see tanks with their searches. Also, do you think that China allows Google to keep the logs from search request to google.cn private?
While it's definitely nice to have a dedicated IT person for a small group of people is that person going to be responsible for ALL of your IT needs or just the desktops and group-specific programs?
Remember that IT means running the file and printer servers, the email, the HR and accounting systems, your web site, your internet connection, your firewall, etc. etc. etc. Don't forget purchasing and provisioning all new desktops and servers. Throw in backups and 24/7/365 coverage and that person will burn out pretty quickly. (Also what do you do when they're on vacation?)
I suppose there has to be some happy medium between everything being handed down from on high and every small group going their own way. What's really needed is a good support group that is responsible for set groups of desktops, an IT consultancy hit-squad that can come in and launch projects, application owners, and the infrastructure maintenance people. Beats me how many people that works out to be.
Bubba was busy saying that he didn't need warrants for PHYSICAL SEARCHES of US properties. Of course he was using the excuse of the drug war instead of something inconsequential like national security, but hey...
Documents are always getting reclassified, both up and down. If you will all recall a number of previously accessible public works documents concerning dams and power plants were removed post 9/11.
The thing is that something that wasn't secret before may become sensitive in the future due to changing conditions. Also things that are secret now may become less critical in the future and thus be released. This is the whole reason for review procedures.
Only people who are constantly willing to believe the worst in the government are going to see a grand conspiracy here.
You're the one who's being bigoted. Adopting a moral holier than thou stance and refusing to even consider the fact that your moral absolutist stance may be incorrect.
The most amazing thing is that you first say that As I said: it's how you're coming across in this discussion. Feel free to state your stance explictly, but the implication most readers are going to draw from your posts here is that you are, to some degree, a homophobe. I'm not saying you are; I'm commenting on how you're coming across.
My whole point, if you'd be willing to climb down from your high horse for one minute is that you can have a civil discussion about issues like this without descending to name calling and making something more confrontational than is necessary.
But no, instead of actually listening to my point you go off on a tantrum about not sufferring a witch to live and end by calling me a homophobic bigot without knowing ONE DAMN THING about my stance on the subject. Why should I have to "clarify my stance" on the subject when my whole point was that you should simply avoid being deliberately confrontational with your language when trying to discuss the issue? No, instead you've gone past labelling the BSA as homophobes (an interesting trick ascribing a personal trait to a legal entity, btw) to directly calling me a homophobic bigot.
I actually just got involved in this because I find this tendency to label and deride those who don't agree 100% with the "PC view" merely needlessly polarizes an issue where a sensible common ground could be found.
Do you really have to go and slap the "homophobe" label on me? You're undermining any point you might make by having to sink down into personal insult while trying to impugn my morality while I'm merely trying to point out that the rush to label a person and/or group a homophobe (and even worse, a bigot) does nothing to promote a cause, instead it merely adds unnecessary polarization to a touchy issue.
Did any of my statements reveal anything about my own personal stance vis-a-vis homosexuality? No. So why are you attempting to ascribe motivations to me? Is this an attempt to assume moral superiority and try to undermine the point without actually addressing it?
I'm not going to argue with you about choice versus genetic programming as no one can resolve that. We might as well argue about why some people prefer red heads or fat people or whatever.
My whole original point, which you seem to have managed to reinforce with your further statements is that issues like this can be addressed without applying derogatory labels to people that you happen to disagree with. In fact, the use of those labels will only make it harder to find a common ground and possibly even dry moderates away from your position.
Now maybe I didn't phrase things elegantly, but the problem with labelling all people who don't actively embrace a particular group as group-phobes (homophobes in this case) is that you needlessly tar a particular person and increase the level of confrontation.
Your example actually shows where the current gay rights movement has gone wrong. The civil rights movement pushed for equality not for people having to state that this group of people is fine and I fully support their lifestyle choices.
If I don't do anything to discriminate against someone based on sexual orientation but refuse to specifically state that my anti-discrimination policy covers all the current protected groups then am I discriminating against a group and am a bigot? No.
The Boy Scouts are like any private group and have certain requirements for membership. First and foremost is that you are male. Second, is that you acknowledge a divine creator is some form or other. They also have a restriction against homosexuals. Does this make the BSA a bunch of homophobes? More so than a bunch of bible-thumping women haters? Or do they simply have restrictions on who can be a member of their group?
The BSA isn't trying to restrict the activities of homosexuals. They aren't working to remove rights from people they are just saying these are the people who we will associate with and not others. (I believe they also restrict people who have had criminal convictions from being scout leaders too.)
Homophobe would be someone who is actively scared of homosexuals. Not simply someone who doesn't approve.
This is a big problem in the gay right's movement that earns them more enemies than they deserve. A push for tolerance should not be overrun by a push for acceptance. These two things may sound the same, but they're worlds apart.
After a brief standoff, FBI officials relented and sought a warrant from a judge. Meanwhile, Ms. Glick-Weil allowed an FBI computer-forensics examiner to work with information-technology specialists at the library to narrow down which computers might have been used to send the threatening message. They determined that three computers were implicated in the alleged crime.
It would appear that the issue was one of convenience versus privacy. This wasn't any great stand against the "Evil[tm] PATRIOT Act", it was a librarian trying to keep from losing 30 computers.
At worst the local FBI officials could be accused of being a bit heavy-handed but they were investigating a crime and they did obtain a warrant when they could not obtain voluntary cooperation.
Actually lots of non-dieting overweight people are malnourished. A steady diet of Ho-Ho's and what not does not make for very good nutrition.
There are a couple of issues with weight gain. First is metabolism. Some people just don't use/burn food as fast as others. That can just be the way they are or aggravated by something like Thyroid disease.
The second is more psychological where some people just don't feel full. This can be a simple brain trigger that's missing or bad eating habbits like eating too fast or eating in front of the TV/other distraction.
Finally, the biggest contributor is life style. We're busy people and we don't always take the time to cook. Prepared foods are just loaded with lots of stuff that we don't need. Portions are also usually much larger than necessary. Combine that with late dinners and not enough time to exercise and we're all going to put on a few pounds.
Your rather absurd example is in fact covered by the Fourth Ammendment and the penumbras of privacy if you like too. Though it is worth pointing out that you can lose that right when sent to prison or detained in jail.
Reducto ad absurdum is a bad way to make an argument.
Slashdot Mirror
You ironically emphasize one part of the Constitution over another. Congress also cannot pass laws that supplant the Constitution so how could the Constitution bind the Executive branch to a law if it is in violation of the Constitution? If such a conflict exists then it becomes the role of the Judicial branch to resolve it.
Also, since they were so willing to toss off this whopper:
But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.
Since I already showed you that there simply isnt' enough details to make such sweeping statements about the legality or illegality of the program, we can see that this is in fact not a serious legal analysis.
Though you do have to worry about those evil NeoCons who use presidential signing statements to ignore the law:
I'll give you two guesses as to who wrote that one.
Merely shouting FISA doesn't cut it. In fact the case law as examined by knowledgable people and presented over at volokh.com shows that FISA could very easily run afoul of the Executive branch's enumerated powers especially with regards to war time and defense. (Note that the Clinton admin used the same reasoning to justify warrantly PHYSICAL searches performed INSIDE the US.)
5 _12_24.shtml#11350297225 _12_24.shtml#1135189430
Here's two rather detailed analyses from the site that come down somewhere in the middle with a big caveat that we lack sufficient details to draw conclusions one way or another (THAT being the significant point when someone from either side claims this is completely legal or obviously illegal):
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_18-200
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_18-200
So, what law did he/they violate? Why aren't they being prosecuted on it?
Glen Greenwald isn't exactly a learned legal scholar upon which to hang one's hopes. If you want to get detailed legal analysis of the NSA program than maybe you should read up on volokh.com.
How did Bush violate the law and the Constitution? Really, be VERY specific.
(I remain amazed how a blanket statement like that gets a +3 Insightful...)
I'm glad you know the grand truths that people seem unable to internalize.
Just one thing: If Bush was so damned bad then why was he re-elected?
Really, if he was such a lying jerk-wad then why wasn't there a huge voter revolt that threw him and all those horrible Rethuglicans out of office?
It's the MS Sledge-Hammer (XP?)
It'll also kill cell phones, PDA's, and errant fingers and toes.
The government current collects vast quantities of information from corporations without search warrants. This includes employment statistics, financial information, hiring policies, etc. They also collect a lot of information about you that doesn't requires a warrant either. This information includes voter registrations, automobile registrations, your social security information and census data. Some of it personally identifiable, some of it not.
The point is that in this case the government was requesting information from a corporation regarding non-personally identifiable data.
While retrieving this information may satisfy the dictionary definition of search it does not satisfy the legal definition of search and thus does not run afoul of the fourth ammendment.
Simply because you choose to say "it's search" doesn't make it so.
Well, considering that a private citizen filing suit against Google could request information of this nature as part of discovery in a trial.
Aside from that your just getting yourself all tied up in legal jargon and misinterpretations of the Constitution. The government made an information request of a coporation. The government is allowed to gather certain data from coroporations without warrants. The issue now is whether the current request is within the scope of the government's powers. Apparently a number of other search companies felt it was and provided similar information. Google is balking and thus it becomes the job of a judge to decide whether the government has exceeded the scope of it's powers. Since this request does not involve a criminal complaint or prosecution than the issue isn't warrant versus no warrant since no warrant can be obtained.
The 4th Ammendment protects against unreasonable search not all unwarranted searches.
The issue in this case is that the information request in question isn't really a search as it's not being used in a criminal case. Also it is not being used to prosecute anyone and the information, by itself, does not uniquely identify anyone. So this makes the whole issue a lot more complicated than simply slapping down the "4th Ammendment Trump Card(tm)" and walking away from the table.
Of course this great defender of freedom is also busy making sure Chinese people don't see tanks with their searches. Also, do you think that China allows Google to keep the logs from search request to google.cn private?
Hillarious. You respond to a comment rated +5 Insightful and get rated Off-Topic because you didn't toe the party line.
Hint: The people who call it the "domestic spieing" program haven't bothered to understand the issue.
You make good points though I'd recommend dropping the Clinton insult next time as people will just zero in on that and dismiss you.
While it's definitely nice to have a dedicated IT person for a small group of people is that person going to be responsible for ALL of your IT needs or just the desktops and group-specific programs?
Remember that IT means running the file and printer servers, the email, the HR and accounting systems, your web site, your internet connection, your firewall, etc. etc. etc. Don't forget purchasing and provisioning all new desktops and servers. Throw in backups and 24/7/365 coverage and that person will burn out pretty quickly. (Also what do you do when they're on vacation?)
I suppose there has to be some happy medium between everything being handed down from on high and every small group going their own way. What's really needed is a good support group that is responsible for set groups of desktops, an IT consultancy hit-squad that can come in and launch projects, application owners, and the infrastructure maintenance people. Beats me how many people that works out to be.
Of course if you ask them to run some cartoons that are responsible for world-wide protest and violence they'll hem and haw and quake in their boots.
Bubba was busy saying that he didn't need warrants for PHYSICAL SEARCHES of US properties. Of course he was using the excuse of the drug war instead of something inconsequential like national security, but hey...
Heh, the "Hot Pink" of computers?
Documents are always getting reclassified, both up and down. If you will all recall a number of previously accessible public works documents concerning dams and power plants were removed post 9/11.
The thing is that something that wasn't secret before may become sensitive in the future due to changing conditions. Also things that are secret now may become less critical in the future and thus be released. This is the whole reason for review procedures.
Only people who are constantly willing to believe the worst in the government are going to see a grand conspiracy here.
The Plus! edition is the one that gives you screen savers and more desktop themes.
The Enterprise edition is to boldly go where no Office program has gone before.
You're the one who's being bigoted. Adopting a moral holier than thou stance and refusing to even consider the fact that your moral absolutist stance may be incorrect.
The most amazing thing is that you first say that
As I said: it's how you're coming across in this discussion. Feel free to state your stance explictly, but the implication most readers are going to draw from your posts here is that you are, to some degree, a homophobe. I'm not saying you are; I'm commenting on how you're coming across.
My whole point, if you'd be willing to climb down from your high horse for one minute is that you can have a civil discussion about issues like this without descending to name calling and making something more confrontational than is necessary.
But no, instead of actually listening to my point you go off on a tantrum about not sufferring a witch to live and end by calling me a homophobic bigot without knowing ONE DAMN THING about my stance on the subject. Why should I have to "clarify my stance" on the subject when my whole point was that you should simply avoid being deliberately confrontational with your language when trying to discuss the issue? No, instead you've gone past labelling the BSA as homophobes (an interesting trick ascribing a personal trait to a legal entity, btw) to directly calling me a homophobic bigot.
Congratulations.
Nice punchline.
I actually just got involved in this because I find this tendency to label and deride those who don't agree 100% with the "PC view" merely needlessly polarizes an issue where a sensible common ground could be found.
Do you really have to go and slap the "homophobe" label on me? You're undermining any point you might make by having to sink down into personal insult while trying to impugn my morality while I'm merely trying to point out that the rush to label a person and/or group a homophobe (and even worse, a bigot) does nothing to promote a cause, instead it merely adds unnecessary polarization to a touchy issue.
Did any of my statements reveal anything about my own personal stance vis-a-vis homosexuality? No. So why are you attempting to ascribe motivations to me? Is this an attempt to assume moral superiority and try to undermine the point without actually addressing it?
I'm not going to argue with you about choice versus genetic programming as no one can resolve that. We might as well argue about why some people prefer red heads or fat people or whatever.
My whole original point, which you seem to have managed to reinforce with your further statements is that issues like this can be addressed without applying derogatory labels to people that you happen to disagree with. In fact, the use of those labels will only make it harder to find a common ground and possibly even dry moderates away from your position.
It's not bigotry.
Now maybe I didn't phrase things elegantly, but the problem with labelling all people who don't actively embrace a particular group as group-phobes (homophobes in this case) is that you needlessly tar a particular person and increase the level of confrontation.
Your example actually shows where the current gay rights movement has gone wrong. The civil rights movement pushed for equality not for people having to state that this group of people is fine and I fully support their lifestyle choices.
If I don't do anything to discriminate against someone based on sexual orientation but refuse to specifically state that my anti-discrimination policy covers all the current protected groups then am I discriminating against a group and am a bigot? No.
The Boy Scouts are like any private group and have certain requirements for membership. First and foremost is that you are male. Second, is that you acknowledge a divine creator is some form or other. They also have a restriction against homosexuals. Does this make the BSA a bunch of homophobes? More so than a bunch of bible-thumping women haters? Or do they simply have restrictions on who can be a member of their group?
The BSA isn't trying to restrict the activities of homosexuals. They aren't working to remove rights from people they are just saying these are the people who we will associate with and not others. (I believe they also restrict people who have had criminal convictions from being scout leaders too.)
Homophobe would be someone who is actively scared of homosexuals. Not simply someone who doesn't approve.
This is a big problem in the gay right's movement that earns them more enemies than they deserve. A push for tolerance should not be overrun by a push for acceptance. These two things may sound the same, but they're worlds apart.
Come back to us when you've got uuencoded jpg's on your 'fridge using those magnetic letters...
It would appear that the issue was one of convenience versus privacy. This wasn't any great stand against the "Evil[tm] PATRIOT Act", it was a librarian trying to keep from losing 30 computers.
At worst the local FBI officials could be accused of being a bit heavy-handed but they were investigating a crime and they did obtain a warrant when they could not obtain voluntary cooperation.
Actually lots of non-dieting overweight people are malnourished. A steady diet of Ho-Ho's and what not does not make for very good nutrition.
There are a couple of issues with weight gain. First is metabolism. Some people just don't use/burn food as fast as others. That can just be the way they are or aggravated by something like Thyroid disease.
The second is more psychological where some people just don't feel full. This can be a simple brain trigger that's missing or bad eating habbits like eating too fast or eating in front of the TV/other distraction.
Finally, the biggest contributor is life style. We're busy people and we don't always take the time to cook. Prepared foods are just loaded with lots of stuff that we don't need. Portions are also usually much larger than necessary. Combine that with late dinners and not enough time to exercise and we're all going to put on a few pounds.
Your rather absurd example is in fact covered by the Fourth Ammendment and the penumbras of privacy if you like too. Though it is worth pointing out that you can lose that right when sent to prison or detained in jail.
Reducto ad absurdum is a bad way to make an argument.