I can think of other politicians who would have that kind of courage: Russ Feingold (who had the courage to vote against it to begin with), Bernie Sanders (listen to him talk, you'll see exactly why), Dennis Kucinich (who's also been against it all along, and has taken tougher stands before), and Ralph Nader.
The thing is, those guys are all seen as dangerous by the Democratic and Republican Party leadership, so their chance of getting elected president is basically nil.
Besides, if the government hasn't done anything wrong, it should have nothing to hide? I mean, those rules work for citizens, why wouldn't they work for the government?
He's been in pre-trial confinement for far longer than is standard (8 months and counting). The right to a speedy trial is part of his Sixth Amendment protections, which apply to military personnel under the UCMJ.
By comparison, Timothy McVeigh was kept confined for about 2 months prior to initial court proceedings, and trial started within 6 months.
It's worth noting that the other complicating factor here is that the reason Manning is imprisoned under harsh conditions right now is that the prosecutors are trying to get him to testify that Wikileaks (and Assange in particular) contacted him and convinced him to release the cables. In other words, they want Wikileaks to become his accomplice, and Wikileaks may think that contributing huge sums to his legal defense would help the prosecutors make that argument.
I have a major problem with the process the prosecution is using here: Arrest person A for a crime, then hold him without trial under harsh conditions until he testifies against person B (who just happens to be a political enemy of the government). That's a popular way for totalitarian governments who want to create evidence for show trials, not a valid police tactic in a free country.
I know you're making a joke, but the EU could muster about 1.5 million active troops if they really needed them, and 7 million if they called up their reserves. They also have much of the best hardware (in part because they're our allies, so we tend to sell them the latest and greatest), including 7000 tanks, 3500 combat aircraft, and a few aircraft carriers. Plus some of the more significant nuclear arsenals with France and the UK.
That sounds really smart to me. The Nasa managers can be reasonably certain that the Congresscritters won't notice it's the same damn plan over and over, and won't have to start at square 1 each time a new set of politicians come in.
The usual problem with Nasa projects is that Nasa projects take longer than a typical politician's term of office. It would be sort of like working in a company where the Big Cheese changed every 2 years, and each one wanted a completely different product produced in a completely different part of the world.
Actually, if anything, the evidence suggests that hiring contractors costs money rather than saves money.
On the upside, you get competition. On the downside, you get a massive incentive to award the contract to somebody's no-good brother-in-law and overpay for the service, or in particularly inventive areas start kickback schemes and the like.
It sounds like they're trying to test it first, and see this as a way to avoid the "After you, sucker" problem. If the test works, it's likely they'll make the move permanently relatively quickly. If it fails miserably, they'll do their best to fix what went wrong and try again.
It didn't stop me from learning about that stuff. But assembler taught me that kind of stuff far more in depth.
As far as whether I expected C++ to teach me CS, I wasn't thinking along those lines, because I was 10 years old. I was thinking "Hey, I can make this machine do all sorts of nifty things!"
"We don't like him" wasn't a valid reason for shipping to Gitmo or executions
Does it matter whether there's a valid reason or not? The way Gitmo is structured, you get sent there by the executive branch without ever receiving trial, and remain there occasionally getting a kangaroo court to say "yeah, keep him locked up" every year or so. There have been innocent people, including some US citizens, subjected to this sort of treatment in a blatant violation of the US Constitution.
Assange has been very clear through all of this that the reason he doesn't trust the US government is precisely because they've shown no inclination to follow their own laws.
Yes, I did, and it really came in handy when I started learning other bits-and-bytes kind of stuff. Concepts like registers, memory blocks, the CPU cycle, etc. Learning MIPS assembler 10 years later in college was a breeze after this stuff.
I started in on C++ as my second programming language, back in my larval days on a classic IBM PC.
My first impression of it was "Wow, this OOP stuff is fantastic, it makes everything so much more clear!" My second impression of it once I started to build more complex things was "Yeaargh, this is so inconsistent and confusing!".
So I switched to something easier, and learned old-school Intel assembler which I used to mess around with DOS internals.
A most basic example: Let's say we're neighbors in a fairly rural area. Because it's a rural area, we both get our water from wells.
Now I make a deal with a waste management company to put a landfill on my property, in an area that is right next to your property. I profit nicely from the deal, and have made the decision that I'd rather have the landfill (along with the smell, need for bottled drinking water, etc) and the money than not.
However, you had no part of that transaction, and made no decision about it. You too have to deal with the drawbacks of living next to a landfill, but unlike me, you didn't get any money for that, and didn't have the power to refuse the transaction. Since there's a cost you paid for the decision of me and the waste management company, we're effectively stealing from you.
Externalities definitely aren't just a figment of liberal economist's imagination. There's disagreement over how common they are and how much of a difference it makes, but there's no question they exist.
Do they really need the money? Australia is a rich country, no one is going to go hungry as a result of this flood, and those who've lost their homes will be housed -- in the worst case -- by the government.
Yes, I'm sure the head of the Australian emergency management agency will do a heckuva job.
Well, sorta works. If you mean that a free market always produces economically optimal results, you're dead wrong - there are many well-known reasons why it won't, most of them related to externalities.
A very high percentage of the Fortune 500 companies have been convicted of felonies, sometimes serious felonies, in relatively recent history. The reason is simple: The cost of getting caught is lower than the extra profits they can make by breaking the law. That's assuming 100% enforcement, which almost never happens.
Slashdot Mirror
What, did he kill Kenny or something?
I can think of other politicians who would have that kind of courage: Russ Feingold (who had the courage to vote against it to begin with), Bernie Sanders (listen to him talk, you'll see exactly why), Dennis Kucinich (who's also been against it all along, and has taken tougher stands before), and Ralph Nader.
The thing is, those guys are all seen as dangerous by the Democratic and Republican Party leadership, so their chance of getting elected president is basically nil.
Didn't you get the memo? Next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.
Besides, if the government hasn't done anything wrong, it should have nothing to hide? I mean, those rules work for citizens, why wouldn't they work for the government?
It is if you're Sir Gallahad of Camelot at the Bridge of Death.
It's not like this sort of thing hasn't been tried before. I'm sure it will work about as well now as it did then.
They both only have one organization to truly fear: The Crimson Permanent Assurance!
He's been in pre-trial confinement for far longer than is standard (8 months and counting). The right to a speedy trial is part of his Sixth Amendment protections, which apply to military personnel under the UCMJ.
By comparison, Timothy McVeigh was kept confined for about 2 months prior to initial court proceedings, and trial started within 6 months.
It's worth noting that the other complicating factor here is that the reason Manning is imprisoned under harsh conditions right now is that the prosecutors are trying to get him to testify that Wikileaks (and Assange in particular) contacted him and convinced him to release the cables. In other words, they want Wikileaks to become his accomplice, and Wikileaks may think that contributing huge sums to his legal defense would help the prosecutors make that argument.
I have a major problem with the process the prosecution is using here: Arrest person A for a crime, then hold him without trial under harsh conditions until he testifies against person B (who just happens to be a political enemy of the government). That's a popular way for totalitarian governments who want to create evidence for show trials, not a valid police tactic in a free country.
I know you're making a joke, but the EU could muster about 1.5 million active troops if they really needed them, and 7 million if they called up their reserves. They also have much of the best hardware (in part because they're our allies, so we tend to sell them the latest and greatest), including 7000 tanks, 3500 combat aircraft, and a few aircraft carriers. Plus some of the more significant nuclear arsenals with France and the UK.
That sounds really smart to me. The Nasa managers can be reasonably certain that the Congresscritters won't notice it's the same damn plan over and over, and won't have to start at square 1 each time a new set of politicians come in.
The usual problem with Nasa projects is that Nasa projects take longer than a typical politician's term of office. It would be sort of like working in a company where the Big Cheese changed every 2 years, and each one wanted a completely different product produced in a completely different part of the world.
Actually, if anything, the evidence suggests that hiring contractors costs money rather than saves money.
On the upside, you get competition. On the downside, you get a massive incentive to award the contract to somebody's no-good brother-in-law and overpay for the service, or in particularly inventive areas start kickback schemes and the like.
It sounds like they're trying to test it first, and see this as a way to avoid the "After you, sucker" problem. If the test works, it's likely they'll make the move permanently relatively quickly. If it fails miserably, they'll do their best to fix what went wrong and try again.
Trolltech's made QT
which makes a bit of awesome
desktop tooling work.
It didn't stop me from learning about that stuff. But assembler taught me that kind of stuff far more in depth.
As far as whether I expected C++ to teach me CS, I wasn't thinking along those lines, because I was 10 years old. I was thinking "Hey, I can make this machine do all sorts of nifty things!"
"We don't like him" wasn't a valid reason for shipping to Gitmo or executions
Does it matter whether there's a valid reason or not? The way Gitmo is structured, you get sent there by the executive branch without ever receiving trial, and remain there occasionally getting a kangaroo court to say "yeah, keep him locked up" every year or so. There have been innocent people, including some US citizens, subjected to this sort of treatment in a blatant violation of the US Constitution.
Assange has been very clear through all of this that the reason he doesn't trust the US government is precisely because they've shown no inclination to follow their own laws.
Yes, I did, and it really came in handy when I started learning other bits-and-bytes kind of stuff. Concepts like registers, memory blocks, the CPU cycle, etc. Learning MIPS assembler 10 years later in college was a breeze after this stuff.
I started in on C++ as my second programming language, back in my larval days on a classic IBM PC.
My first impression of it was "Wow, this OOP stuff is fantastic, it makes everything so much more clear!" My second impression of it once I started to build more complex things was "Yeaargh, this is so inconsistent and confusing!".
So I switched to something easier, and learned old-school Intel assembler which I used to mess around with DOS internals.
You see, land fills are already regulated by the EPA and state authority panels that have to at minimum comply with federal EPA regulation standards.
Those regulations exist because in the absence of those regulations, the exact problems I described happen.
A most basic example: Let's say we're neighbors in a fairly rural area. Because it's a rural area, we both get our water from wells.
Now I make a deal with a waste management company to put a landfill on my property, in an area that is right next to your property. I profit nicely from the deal, and have made the decision that I'd rather have the landfill (along with the smell, need for bottled drinking water, etc) and the money than not.
However, you had no part of that transaction, and made no decision about it. You too have to deal with the drawbacks of living next to a landfill, but unlike me, you didn't get any money for that, and didn't have the power to refuse the transaction. Since there's a cost you paid for the decision of me and the waste management company, we're effectively stealing from you.
Externalities definitely aren't just a figment of liberal economist's imagination. There's disagreement over how common they are and how much of a difference it makes, but there's no question they exist.
No, more like "Burger King".
Do they really need the money? Australia is a rich country, no one is going to go hungry as a result of this flood, and those who've lost their homes will be housed -- in the worst case -- by the government.
Yes, I'm sure the head of the Australian emergency management agency will do a heckuva job.
But ... but ... how else can those with lots of cash but no scientific leg to stand on cover up their mistakes?
Capitalism works
Well, sorta works. If you mean that a free market always produces economically optimal results, you're dead wrong - there are many well-known reasons why it won't, most of them related to externalities.
A very high percentage of the Fortune 500 companies have been convicted of felonies, sometimes serious felonies, in relatively recent history. The reason is simple: The cost of getting caught is lower than the extra profits they can make by breaking the law. That's assuming 100% enforcement, which almost never happens.