Not true. All civilians are to be dealt with using the civilian court system, of either their own country or that of the occupying power. There is, purposefully, no "crack" through which someone can fall through and end up with no rights whatsoever.
This is true if you are signatory to the two supplemental protocols to the Geneva Convention. The USA is not.
Note that "people not wearing uniforms/identifying markings but carrying guns" aren't protected as either soldiers or civilians under the original Geneva Conventions. That's covered by one of the Protocols.
It is also not true if your opponent is not a signatory of the Geneva Convention - you have no Geneva Convention obligations to non-signatories, though it is usually easier to treat everyone the same (Geneva Convention) than to have to sort them out into "protected" and "not protected".
Note, by the way, that both Afghanistan and Iraq are signatories to the Geneva Convention. Therefore the USA is obligated to respect the Geneva Convention with respect to those two countries even if they do not meet their own obligations under the Conventions.
Note that the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan that ratified the Conventions were overthrown decades ago, and so those countries may no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions (which would free other countries to not treat them as protected by the Conventions). Get a lawyer who's really up on International Law to sort that one out, I won't even try.
Another difference I think is who it applies to. If I'm not mistaken the US constitution applies to the government only, in the sense that it restricts the laws the government can make. The Dutch constitution applies to everyone in the country. So not only is government not allowed to make laws which are discriminatory, or which allow discrimination, but private persons are also not allowed to discriminate against others.
Generally true. The Fourteenth Amendment has generally been contrued to mean that the protections of the Bill of Rights can't be stomped on by anyone, not just the government.
Of course, our Congress has more lawyers in it than your's, it sounds like, since they've been making laws in places they are forbidden to by the Constitution at least since 1933. And arguably much earlier.
Then why has that been allowed? Why haven't those laws been found unconstitutional by whoever's responsible to check those things (I would guess the courts)?
Long story. The short form is that back in the '30's FDR wanted to pull us out of the Great Depression. He got a friendly Congress to pass all sorts of un-Costitutional laws. When the Supreme Court (final arbiters on the Constitution here) told him his laws were un-Constitutional, he threatened to start appointing new Supreme Court judges until he got a working majority who would do what he told them. In the end, the Court wasn't packed with his toadies, but they blinked - they didn't pronounce his clearly un-Constitutional laws un-Constitutional.
Since then, the Congress has paid lip-service to the Constitution at the best of times. And ignored it when convenient.
I'm curious, though. Is the Netherlands one of those idiot countries that makes talking about the Nazis a crime? If so, it would seem that they're already on their way to violating the spirit of the Constitution - I seem to recall something about prior restraint of speech being unconstitutional.
No, it isn't. I'm not aware of any countries which are, actually. You're probably thinking of Germany, but they only make a few specific things illegal (denying the Holocaust, displaying the swastika, that sort of thing). Now personally I'm against any restrictions on freedom of speech, but I'm willing to cut Germany some slack in this because of their past. It's not nothing to have been responsible for two world wars and the attempted murder of an entire religious group.
The Germans weren't responsible for two World Wars. One of them, certainly. But World War One happened more because of Russia and railway timetables than anything Germany did. All the Germans did in WW1 was a good job of taking on France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and the USA all by their lonesome.
That, and incompetent allied generals, left the winners feeling a bit vindictive, of course. Which is why the Germans get the blame for the war...
As to countries that restrict that sort of thing. I read in the news recently about some idiot anti-semitic scholar who was jailed in Austria for denying the Holocaust. Plus Germany, as you pointed out. And didn't France have some issues with internet auctions of Nazi memorabilia a couple years back?
The parliament (or really, the "staten generaal" (states general)) doesn't govern, it keeps the government in check by amending or stopping laws or sending away ministers or even the whole government.
Do all your laws originate from the government then? Ministers propose laws, your Parliament then amends as needed and approves them? Or does your Parliament also propose laws?
It allows parliament to make laws which restrict the right (but only for the explicitly mentioned purposes, for instance to protect the public health).
Hmmm. I can accept that, in general. There are one or two places that the phrase is used without an explicitly mentioned exceptional purpose, but it looks like a pretty tight Bill of Rights.
Note that I feel there are too many qualifiers that end in "by Act of Parliament" and too few "government/Parliament shall make no laws..." for my taste.
On the other hand, if your politicians are keeping their eye on the Constitution with an intention of abiding by it (as opposed to working their way around it, as all too many of our's are), then it'll continue to work.
All the way up to the point that the politicians decide it's in their way...consider this a warning.
I notice that the phrase "without prejudice to the responsibility under the law" still appears. Does that restrict the right, or restrict the government's ability to make laws that restrict the right?
Note that I use the word "government" in the American sense, not the European sense - you seem to use the word "government" the way we use "executive branch", if you count the King and his Ministers as government, but the Parliamment as not-government.
I don't know which version of which country's constitution you're looking at, but article 6 of the constitution of the Netherlands of 2002 is the freedom of religion article.
Netherlands, 1989, as I stated. However, I notice that I couldn't type when I wrote what you're responding to. That was Article 10, not Article 6.
Actually, it doesn't say that noone's rights can trespass on any others. If it said that, I wouldn't have a quibble. It says Parliament can do what it likes to your Rights, if they think they can get away with it.
The Netherlands seems to be an earthly paradise, if they have no lawyers/politicians who are willing to ignore the spirit of a law in favour of its letter when it's to their advantage to do so.
That's the point: they can't strip away the rights that the constitution gives us.
Of course they can - all it takes is a Parliament that's willing to do the deed. Or, more likely, just incrementally erode the rights away with an endless series of minor qualifiers....
I'm not saying our constitution or the situation here in general is ideal and that there are no problems. Far from it! I was just making the point that the situation is better than it is in the US or (apparently) Australia, while the parent seemed to be saying that the US and Australia are the epitome of freedom.
Umm, no. Our Bill of Rights includes absolute, inviolable rights. "Congress shall make no laws...". Of course, our Congress has more lawyers in it than your's, it sounds like, since they've been making laws in places they are forbidden to by the Constitution at least since 1933. And arguably much earlier.
I'm curious, though. Is the Netherlands one of those idiot countries that makes talking about the Nazis a crime? If so, it would seem that they're already on their way to violating the spirit of the Constitution - I seem to recall something about prior restraint of speech being unconstitutional.
But it aint that simple either; what about the costs which go down and improve your standard of living?
Quite possible. On the other hand, it hasn't happened yet. Alternative energy sources are more expensive than fossil fuels, even with their subsidies. "organic" produce is more expensive than the "normal" variety, not less.
Sure, it's possible that the Greens could LOWER costs. But frankly, farming is so marginal a business that I'd expect farmers to be grasping at any straws to lower their costs (Actually, my uncle is a farmer, and they squeeze every dime to make sure cost of production is as low as it's possible to make it) - if "organic" were a subsatantial savings, farmers would be doing it now. They're not.
It would help if you would be a bit more specific. Most of the major bill of rights articles (non-discrimination, etc.) don't have that qualifier. These supercede any other article. So for instance no law, or any other article of the constitution, can ever introduce discrimination of any kind or it will be unconstitutional.
Everyone shall have the right to respect for his privacy, without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament.
That's the first part of Article 6 of the Constitution of 1989, as translated into English by whomever. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the translation, of course. So, does "without prejudice to restrictions..." mean that your right to privacy overrides said Act of Parliament, or does it mean an Act of Parliament overrides your right to privacy?
Every Dutch national shall have an equal right to elect the members of the general representative bodies and to stand for election as a member of those bodies, subject to the limitations and exceptions prescribed by Act of Parliament.
This is Article 4 of said Constitution. What are the limits Parliament has on its ability to impose "limitations and exceptions"? If NOONE is allowed to elect members, does that meet the definition of "equal right" mentioned?
Also, keep in mind that parliament == the people. It's not the government which is allowed to make those exceptions.
So. Interesting then that your Constitution defines Parliament as the First Chamber and the Second Chamber, and talks about elections to same. Which elections can be regulated by Act of Parliament. Doesn't sound to me like Parliament is the People. The People's Representatives, perhaps, but that's true everyewhere. Do your Representatives represent you more faithfully than they do in other countries?
My big problem with rights "subject to limitations and exceptions as defined by Act of Parliament" (or by Act of Congress) is that a sufficiently motivated Parliament/Congress can strip away rights as easily as recognize them. As we've seen in the USA repeatedly over the years (Yes, Clinton did it too. And the elder Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt, etc.)...
Do not make the (foolish) mistake that Americans have made repeatedly that your Legislature has your best interests at heart. They tend to have their own best interests at heart, and if your best interests coincide with their's, well GREAT!. If not, that's too bad....
We have a very strong bill of rights in our constitution, guaranteeing freedom from discrimination, of speech, religion, press, etc.
Your Bill of Rights seems to have the qualifier "This right may be restricted by Act of Parliament" (or variants thereof) in entirely too many places for it to be a "strong bill of rights".
And I wish I knew what was trnaslated into English as "without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament." meant in the original Dutch. Since that's a qualifier to many of your rights....
If I make 12000 widgets a year, and my company's expenses are $50000000 a year, I can sell my widgets for $5000 each and make a decent amount of money. If the Green Party (or any other - a tax increase does much the same thing) increases my expenses to $60000000 to meet their mandates, I need to raise my prices to $6000 each to cover my increased costs.
Now, YOU aren't going to get a 20% salary increase just because my costs went up 20% to make a widget (and if you did, then my employees would too, and my cost to make widgets would go up again). So your buying power is lower than it was.
Net effect - you pay for the Greens improvements to the environment with a lower standard of living.
This is not meant to imply that their goals aren't desirable. You can decide that for yourself, as can the other people affected. And implement their goals by voting them into power if you desire.
But never think that there aren't costs to increased regulation. The costs are frequently well hidden (from you), but they're there, and they're not going away. Ever. At least if US Government regulations are any guide (regulations are added, but they're not removed - even with "deregulation" what you get is just DIFFERENT regulations, not NO regulations).
am saying that the Democrats and Republicans are both responsible for this mess; don't just think that the Republicans are the bad guys and the Dems are the good guys. Even though the Dems got bit bigtime by voting problems, they still haven't done anything about it (and this is assuming that the Diebold solution is bad because of all the issues over the years). I would have expected the Dems to be raising a hue and cry about the lack of accountability in the voting machines, etc. but so far nary a peep.
Is that explicit enough for ya?
You're babbling again. There are at least five bills before this congress to revise Help America Vote Act. At least two of them require paper audit trails. Both have bipartisan backing.
As to the Dems being bit by voting problems, I point out that those problems seem to have been self-inflicted. It was Dems in power who made the infamous "buttefly ballot", and Dems who chose the voting machines used in Florida and Ohio.
This, of course, assuming that you consider those to be examples of "voting problems". Personally, being ex-Miitary, I find it more disturbing (from both the last two elections) to find that mail-in ballots (the kind many military have to use, since they're not stationed where they're registered to vote) aren't even counted a lot of the time. Both for practical reasons, and for stupid reasons (I can live with the practicals, the stupids bug me). Note that some of those stupids are also being addressed by proposed revisions to Help America Vota Act....
Before I get modded down as a troll, let me ask this: how many Democrats are there in the House? Why aren't they making a bigger noise about this? It's been nearly 6 years since "hanging chad" entered our vocabulary, but still nothing has been fixed. Do you mean to tell me the entire country is run by Republicans??
What ARE you babbling about? These machines that you dislike so much are in place (or being put in place) in so many places in response to the Help America Vote Act.
Which act had 172 co-sponsors, about evenly split between the two Parties.
Note: I did not verify Party affiliation of all the sponsors. I checked the first six in chronological order (3R, 3D), then checked those with surnames beginning with 'S' and 'T'. T's were about evenly split, S's had one Independent, and a few more Dems than Reps. Alas, Thomas.loc.gov won't give me a list of Sponsors by Party affiliation - perhaps they think that that might be divisive....
Most authors don't make 1% or even 0.5% of their book sales.
Eric Flint once stated (Baen Free Library, Prime Palaver #7),and I have no special reason to doubt him, that "The author will usually get 8% of the retail price" of a mass-market paperback book. If you're making less than that on your books, perhaps you should consider a different publisher.
No they wouldn't - slander/libel are very specific things and most lawyers won't consider litigating it, and those that do are very choosy to make sure they actually have a case.
Let's see. I'm a lawyer. My client is the Green Party. The latest Campaign Finance Reform proposed in the House will ensure the Greens never get near a ballot again. I can:
a) say "well, nothing we can do about this one"
b) fudge together some charges against EVERY politician that has spoken in favour of this bill.
Worse that can happen is my clients lose a lot of money (but it's not MY money). Best case is that some of those hundreds of congresscritters are found guilty of something (enough people dislike congresscritters on principle that it's a fair bet that some Jury somewhere will find "guilty"). Neutral case is that the finance reform bill is forgotten while hundreds of congresscritters defend themselves from a blizzard of lawsuits.
One must remember that a "normal" slander/libel suit is about a bit of money and/or a retraction/apology. Slander/libel against congresscritters is another weapon in the ongoing struggle to control $2.8 trillion dollars per year. Bigger stakes, more likely to be able to find someone willing to do the deed....
(and you're immmune from libel/slander for anything said in Congress if you're a member)....
that needs to change
Article 1, Section 6, US Constitution. That'll require an amendment. Good luck on getting Congress to remove one of its own prerogatives.
Besides, removing it would be a bad idea. If it were gone, every congresscritter would suffer under an endless barrage of lawsuits over everything they say, till it reaches the point that they wouldn't dare say anything for fear of offending someone...
Which might not be a bad thing, really. But it would render the legislative branch impotent. Note that the other branches do not enjoy this prerogative, so would be unaffected by its removal.
No it doesn't because the incumbancy advantage is removed. I think you misunderstood my idea.
Say the race is for president and the pool of money is $100m. There are three candidates -
The Incumbent
Challenger A
Challenger B
All three get 1/3 of $100m to spend on their campaign - no private money [including their own] is allowed.
Umm, no. Incumbent announces his new bill granting a tax break to all American Citizens, incumbent gets front page article in every newspaper in the country. FREE PUBLICITY!
Challenger A announces that if he is elected, he'll give a tax break to all American citizens, papers that already favour him mention it on page 3, papers that don't like him put it on page 19, or in the Obituaries.
Or Incumbent mentions his opponent in speech in Congress. Calls him a mangy dog or somesuch - more free publicity (and you're immmune from libel/slander for anything said in Congress if you're a member)....
Good joke. I've seen it applied to most of the battleships and carriers, at one time or another. I think I first saw it in the 70's, thought, not 1995. When, interestingly enough, Lincoln was part of Pacific Fleet....
As I understand it (I'm not from the area so correct me if I'm wrong), New Orleans used to get lots of hurricanes similar to Katrina, and there's simply been a remisssion for about 50 years.
Umm,no. New Orleans has been hit by ONE hurricane even closely comparable to Katrina since 1900. Betsy, in 1964, also flooded the city.
Since I've been living there, two or three little hurricanes have passed close enough to give us a "Hurricane Day" at work. One of those hurricanes actually caused RAIN in New Orleans. Almost 1/4 inch of it, if you can believe that.
Fact is, any given spot on the Gulf Coast doesn't get hit all that often. And big storms don't happen all that often. So being hit by a big storm is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, usually. Well, twice for older people in New Orleans now, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
We're expecting a busier than usual Hurricane season this year too. But the odds of New Orleans being hit by a big storm this year are low. About the same as the odds of Gulf Shore, Alabama being hit twice in a row by monster storms...oh, wait, that didn't happen, did it?
don't forget that tens of thousands of US soliders have been severely injured by wounds that would have killed them in previous conflicts.
As of last month, there were ~16600 US military wounded. That's all sorts of wounds, from "lost both arms and legs" to "flesh wound". Kerry got a Purple Heart for a wound that was treated with a bandaid, which is probably close to the lower limit of a wound recognized by our military.
So it's fair to suggest that the vast majority of those wounded do not fit "severely injured by wounds that would have killed them in previous conflicts".
Imagine: You're a single mom (bear with me, I realize this is Slashdot:) ), have a Buick that's not running well, three kids, and eak by from inadequate paycheck to inadequate paycheck. You and your children live below sea level in an area prone to hurricanes. The risk has been well-documented and -publicized. It is obvious that it will be virtually impossible for you to pack up and leave with short (2 days) notice if the impending disaster occurs. But in reality, you've had years of notice. What the hell are you doing in New Orleans?
Why shouldn't you be there? There have been two major hurricanes in New Orleans in the last century. Before Katrina, that single mother wouldn't have ever experienced a hurricane that was more than a nuisance - the other big one was in the 60's, I believe, so you'd have had to be nearly 50 to remember it.
If New Orleans isn't a safe place to live because of two hurricanes in 100 years, perhaps San Fransisco (two big earthquakes in the same span) isn't a place that poor people should live either. Or the Florida gulf coast (dozens of hits overall, and I remember a year when one town got hit by FOUR)....
Impact in New Orleans was forecast Friday afternoon (with a probability of less than 20% at that time), impact was Sunday night.
Seems to me that European heatwave started in June, and got serious in July (which would be a month's warning)....
Note, by the way, that the heatwave produced temperatures (35-40C, 95-104F) that were fairly hot by New Orleans' standards. But we routinely (every day for six+ months every year) reach temperaturs in the lower half that range....
Can any slashdotter tell me why despite the fact that Katrina was known to be coming, and that it would be huge, there was so much devastation amid confusion without clear leadership?
Might have something to do with the fact that Katrina's landfall in New Orleans wasn't predicted until 48 hours before landfall.
I left work Thursday before Katrina with the predicted landfall in Florida. By Friday afternoon, it was aiming at New Orleans, more or less. And Cat 5. Which was what made me take notice.
Of course, in the last five years, New Orleans has had several storms "aimed" at them. All of them hit elsewhere. One must remember that 48 hours before a hurricane hits it's usually 700+ miles away, and the impact cone still includes half the gulf coast.
One must also consider that one of the major routes into New Orleans was covered by 75 miles of overturned pine trees as a result of the storm cruising up that highway after it left New Orleans.
Overall, and speaking as a resident of the area, the response was quite acceptable. No sane person expects a massive rescue effort to be in play 20 minutes after the storm ends. Nor does anyone seriously expect that electricity and water can be restored in a few hours, though I heard a lot of people bitching, on the day after the storm, that they STILL had no water and electricity. It was more concern that the cellphone system was down - hard to call the relatives and reassure them that you're fine when your cellphone won't work.
The levee breach was a problem. It was a worse problem than it had to be, but not nearly as bad as it could have been (BOTH sides of the levee could have had major breaches, which would have flooded MY house way worse than it was flooded).
Only really bad part was the response to the "rioting". Which, as it turns out, was entirely the imagination of a National Guardsman from far away. Apparently, some reporter interviewed him, he told some wild tale, the reporter reported it without checking, everyone else heard that and repeated it, and pretty soon the Mayor is panicking, the rescue workers are panicking, the local governments are panicking, and the National News is talking about the total breakdown of civilization in New Orleans.
Too bad there was no rioting, though. It's a much better story with the evil Americans sinking into savagery at the drop of a hat.
All in all, the immediate response was okay. Not outstanding, but not bad at all. Later on, government idiocy caused (and is still causing) issues, which I won't go into. If you live there, you know what they are, if you don't, you won't really understand them anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true if you are signatory to the two supplemental protocols to the Geneva Convention. The USA is not.
Note that "people not wearing uniforms/identifying markings but carrying guns" aren't protected as either soldiers or civilians under the original Geneva Conventions. That's covered by one of the Protocols.
It is also not true if your opponent is not a signatory of the Geneva Convention - you have no Geneva Convention obligations to non-signatories, though it is usually easier to treat everyone the same (Geneva Convention) than to have to sort them out into "protected" and "not protected".
Note, by the way, that both Afghanistan and Iraq are signatories to the Geneva Convention. Therefore the USA is obligated to respect the Geneva Convention with respect to those two countries even if they do not meet their own obligations under the Conventions.
Note that the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan that ratified the Conventions were overthrown decades ago, and so those countries may no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions (which would free other countries to not treat them as protected by the Conventions). Get a lawyer who's really up on International Law to sort that one out, I won't even try.
Power loss is described as follows:
P = IV
V = I/R
P = I(I/R)
P = I^2/R
Umm, not quite. P = IV is correct. V = I/R is not. Your chain should read:
P = IV
V = IR
P = I(IR)
P = I^2R
I must've read a different blurb. I could have sworn it said 2 tons, not 1000 tons...
The 10^6 kg was the plume of debris to be kicked up by the impact of the 2x10^3 kg impactor.
Generally true. The Fourteenth Amendment has generally been contrued to mean that the protections of the Bill of Rights can't be stomped on by anyone, not just the government.
Of course, our Congress has more lawyers in it than your's, it sounds like, since they've been making laws in places they are forbidden to by the Constitution at least since 1933. And arguably much earlier.
Then why has that been allowed? Why haven't those laws been found unconstitutional by whoever's responsible to check those things (I would guess the courts)?
Long story. The short form is that back in the '30's FDR wanted to pull us out of the Great Depression. He got a friendly Congress to pass all sorts of un-Costitutional laws. When the Supreme Court (final arbiters on the Constitution here) told him his laws were un-Constitutional, he threatened to start appointing new Supreme Court judges until he got a working majority who would do what he told them. In the end, the Court wasn't packed with his toadies, but they blinked - they didn't pronounce his clearly un-Constitutional laws un-Constitutional.
Since then, the Congress has paid lip-service to the Constitution at the best of times. And ignored it when convenient.
I'm curious, though. Is the Netherlands one of those idiot countries that makes talking about the Nazis a crime? If so, it would seem that they're already on their way to violating the spirit of the Constitution - I seem to recall something about prior restraint of speech being unconstitutional.
No, it isn't. I'm not aware of any countries which are, actually. You're probably thinking of Germany, but they only make a few specific things illegal (denying the Holocaust, displaying the swastika, that sort of thing). Now personally I'm against any restrictions on freedom of speech, but I'm willing to cut Germany some slack in this because of their past. It's not nothing to have been responsible for two world wars and the attempted murder of an entire religious group.
The Germans weren't responsible for two World Wars. One of them, certainly. But World War One happened more because of Russia and railway timetables than anything Germany did. All the Germans did in WW1 was a good job of taking on France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and the USA all by their lonesome.
That, and incompetent allied generals, left the winners feeling a bit vindictive, of course. Which is why the Germans get the blame for the war...
As to countries that restrict that sort of thing. I read in the news recently about some idiot anti-semitic scholar who was jailed in Austria for denying the Holocaust. Plus Germany, as you pointed out. And didn't France have some issues with internet auctions of Nazi memorabilia a couple years back?
Do all your laws originate from the government then? Ministers propose laws, your Parliament then amends as needed and approves them? Or does your Parliament also propose laws?
It allows parliament to make laws which restrict the right (but only for the explicitly mentioned purposes, for instance to protect the public health).
Hmmm. I can accept that, in general. There are one or two places that the phrase is used without an explicitly mentioned exceptional purpose, but it looks like a pretty tight Bill of Rights.
Note that I feel there are too many qualifiers that end in "by Act of Parliament" and too few "government/Parliament shall make no laws..." for my taste.
On the other hand, if your politicians are keeping their eye on the Constitution with an intention of abiding by it (as opposed to working their way around it, as all too many of our's are), then it'll continue to work.
All the way up to the point that the politicians decide it's in their way...consider this a warning.
I notice that the phrase "without prejudice to the responsibility under the law" still appears. Does that restrict the right, or restrict the government's ability to make laws that restrict the right?
Note that I use the word "government" in the American sense, not the European sense - you seem to use the word "government" the way we use "executive branch", if you count the King and his Ministers as government, but the Parliamment as not-government.
Netherlands, 1989, as I stated. However, I notice that I couldn't type when I wrote what you're responding to. That was Article 10, not Article 6.
Actually, it doesn't say that noone's rights can trespass on any others. If it said that, I wouldn't have a quibble. It says Parliament can do what it likes to your Rights, if they think they can get away with it.
The Netherlands seems to be an earthly paradise, if they have no lawyers/politicians who are willing to ignore the spirit of a law in favour of its letter when it's to their advantage to do so.
That's the point: they can't strip away the rights that the constitution gives us.
Of course they can - all it takes is a Parliament that's willing to do the deed. Or, more likely, just incrementally erode the rights away with an endless series of minor qualifiers....
I'm not saying our constitution or the situation here in general is ideal and that there are no problems. Far from it! I was just making the point that the situation is better than it is in the US or (apparently) Australia, while the parent seemed to be saying that the US and Australia are the epitome of freedom.
Umm, no. Our Bill of Rights includes absolute, inviolable rights. "Congress shall make no laws...". Of course, our Congress has more lawyers in it than your's, it sounds like, since they've been making laws in places they are forbidden to by the Constitution at least since 1933. And arguably much earlier.
I'm curious, though. Is the Netherlands one of those idiot countries that makes talking about the Nazis a crime? If so, it would seem that they're already on their way to violating the spirit of the Constitution - I seem to recall something about prior restraint of speech being unconstitutional.
Quite possible. On the other hand, it hasn't happened yet. Alternative energy sources are more expensive than fossil fuels, even with their subsidies. "organic" produce is more expensive than the "normal" variety, not less.
Sure, it's possible that the Greens could LOWER costs. But frankly, farming is so marginal a business that I'd expect farmers to be grasping at any straws to lower their costs (Actually, my uncle is a farmer, and they squeeze every dime to make sure cost of production is as low as it's possible to make it) - if "organic" were a subsatantial savings, farmers would be doing it now. They're not.
Everyone shall have the right to respect for his privacy, without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament.
That's the first part of Article 6 of the Constitution of 1989, as translated into English by whomever. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the translation, of course. So, does "without prejudice to restrictions..." mean that your right to privacy overrides said Act of Parliament, or does it mean an Act of Parliament overrides your right to privacy?
Every Dutch national shall have an equal right to elect the members of the general representative bodies and to stand for election as a member of those bodies, subject to the limitations and exceptions prescribed by Act of Parliament.
This is Article 4 of said Constitution. What are the limits Parliament has on its ability to impose "limitations and exceptions"? If NOONE is allowed to elect members, does that meet the definition of "equal right" mentioned?
Also, keep in mind that parliament == the people. It's not the government which is allowed to make those exceptions.
So. Interesting then that your Constitution defines Parliament as the First Chamber and the Second Chamber, and talks about elections to same. Which elections can be regulated by Act of Parliament. Doesn't sound to me like Parliament is the People. The People's Representatives, perhaps, but that's true everyewhere. Do your Representatives represent you more faithfully than they do in other countries?
My big problem with rights "subject to limitations and exceptions as defined by Act of Parliament" (or by Act of Congress) is that a sufficiently motivated Parliament/Congress can strip away rights as easily as recognize them. As we've seen in the USA repeatedly over the years (Yes, Clinton did it too. And the elder Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt, etc.)...
Do not make the (foolish) mistake that Americans have made repeatedly that your Legislature has your best interests at heart. They tend to have their own best interests at heart, and if your best interests coincide with their's, well GREAT!. If not, that's too bad....
Your Bill of Rights seems to have the qualifier "This right may be restricted by Act of Parliament" (or variants thereof) in entirely too many places for it to be a "strong bill of rights".
And I wish I knew what was trnaslated into English as "without prejudice to restrictions laid down by or pursuant to Act of Parliament." meant in the original Dutch. Since that's a qualifier to many of your rights....
If I make 12000 widgets a year, and my company's expenses are $50000000 a year, I can sell my widgets for $5000 each and make a decent amount of money. If the Green Party (or any other - a tax increase does much the same thing) increases my expenses to $60000000 to meet their mandates, I need to raise my prices to $6000 each to cover my increased costs.
Now, YOU aren't going to get a 20% salary increase just because my costs went up 20% to make a widget (and if you did, then my employees would too, and my cost to make widgets would go up again). So your buying power is lower than it was.
Net effect - you pay for the Greens improvements to the environment with a lower standard of living.
This is not meant to imply that their goals aren't desirable. You can decide that for yourself, as can the other people affected. And implement their goals by voting them into power if you desire.
But never think that there aren't costs to increased regulation. The costs are frequently well hidden (from you), but they're there, and they're not going away. Ever. At least if US Government regulations are any guide (regulations are added, but they're not removed - even with "deregulation" what you get is just DIFFERENT regulations, not NO regulations).
"The true test of another man's intelligence is how much he agrees with you."
Is that explicit enough for ya?
You're babbling again. There are at least five bills before this congress to revise Help America Vote Act. At least two of them require paper audit trails. Both have bipartisan backing.
As to the Dems being bit by voting problems, I point out that those problems seem to have been self-inflicted. It was Dems in power who made the infamous "buttefly ballot", and Dems who chose the voting machines used in Florida and Ohio.
This, of course, assuming that you consider those to be examples of "voting problems". Personally, being ex-Miitary, I find it more disturbing (from both the last two elections) to find that mail-in ballots (the kind many military have to use, since they're not stationed where they're registered to vote) aren't even counted a lot of the time. Both for practical reasons, and for stupid reasons (I can live with the practicals, the stupids bug me). Note that some of those stupids are also being addressed by proposed revisions to Help America Vota Act....
What ARE you babbling about? These machines that you dislike so much are in place (or being put in place) in so many places in response to the Help America Vote Act.
Which act had 172 co-sponsors, about evenly split between the two Parties.
Note: I did not verify Party affiliation of all the sponsors. I checked the first six in chronological order (3R, 3D), then checked those with surnames beginning with 'S' and 'T'. T's were about evenly split, S's had one Independent, and a few more Dems than Reps. Alas, Thomas.loc.gov won't give me a list of Sponsors by Party affiliation - perhaps they think that that might be divisive....
Eric Flint once stated (Baen Free Library, Prime Palaver #7),and I have no special reason to doubt him, that "The author will usually get 8% of the retail price" of a mass-market paperback book. If you're making less than that on your books, perhaps you should consider a different publisher.
Let's see. I'm a lawyer. My client is the Green Party. The latest Campaign Finance Reform proposed in the House will ensure the Greens never get near a ballot again. I can:
a) say "well, nothing we can do about this one"
b) fudge together some charges against EVERY politician that has spoken in favour of this bill.
Worse that can happen is my clients lose a lot of money (but it's not MY money). Best case is that some of those hundreds of congresscritters are found guilty of something (enough people dislike congresscritters on principle that it's a fair bet that some Jury somewhere will find "guilty"). Neutral case is that the finance reform bill is forgotten while hundreds of congresscritters defend themselves from a blizzard of lawsuits.
One must remember that a "normal" slander/libel suit is about a bit of money and/or a retraction/apology. Slander/libel against congresscritters is another weapon in the ongoing struggle to control $2.8 trillion dollars per year. Bigger stakes, more likely to be able to find someone willing to do the deed....
that needs to change
Article 1, Section 6, US Constitution. That'll require an amendment. Good luck on getting Congress to remove one of its own prerogatives.
Besides, removing it would be a bad idea. If it were gone, every congresscritter would suffer under an endless barrage of lawsuits over everything they say, till it reaches the point that they wouldn't dare say anything for fear of offending someone...
Which might not be a bad thing, really. But it would render the legislative branch impotent. Note that the other branches do not enjoy this prerogative, so would be unaffected by its removal.
Say the race is for president and the pool of money is $100m. There are three candidates -
The Incumbent
Challenger A
Challenger B
All three get 1/3 of $100m to spend on their campaign - no private money [including their own] is allowed.
Umm, no. Incumbent announces his new bill granting a tax break to all American Citizens, incumbent gets front page article in every newspaper in the country. FREE PUBLICITY!
Challenger A announces that if he is elected, he'll give a tax break to all American citizens, papers that already favour him mention it on page 3, papers that don't like him put it on page 19, or in the Obituaries.
Or Incumbent mentions his opponent in speech in Congress. Calls him a mangy dog or somesuch - more free publicity (and you're immmune from libel/slander for anything said in Congress if you're a member)....
And Manny wasn't old. Professor de la Paz was old, but he didn't do the maintenance on Mike.
Note also that transistors had been around for a very long time when that story was written - Mike wasn't made with vacuum tubes or any such rot....
Good joke. I've seen it applied to most of the battleships and carriers, at one time or another. I think I first saw it in the 70's, thought, not 1995. When, interestingly enough, Lincoln was part of Pacific Fleet....
Umm,no. New Orleans has been hit by ONE hurricane even closely comparable to Katrina since 1900. Betsy, in 1964, also flooded the city.
Since I've been living there, two or three little hurricanes have passed close enough to give us a "Hurricane Day" at work. One of those hurricanes actually caused RAIN in New Orleans. Almost 1/4 inch of it, if you can believe that.
Fact is, any given spot on the Gulf Coast doesn't get hit all that often. And big storms don't happen all that often. So being hit by a big storm is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, usually. Well, twice for older people in New Orleans now, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
We're expecting a busier than usual Hurricane season this year too. But the odds of New Orleans being hit by a big storm this year are low. About the same as the odds of Gulf Shore, Alabama being hit twice in a row by monster storms...oh, wait, that didn't happen, did it?
As of last month, there were ~16600 US military wounded. That's all sorts of wounds, from "lost both arms and legs" to "flesh wound". Kerry got a Purple Heart for a wound that was treated with a bandaid, which is probably close to the lower limit of a wound recognized by our military.
So it's fair to suggest that the vast majority of those wounded do not fit "severely injured by wounds that would have killed them in previous conflicts".
Why shouldn't you be there? There have been two major hurricanes in New Orleans in the last century. Before Katrina, that single mother wouldn't have ever experienced a hurricane that was more than a nuisance - the other big one was in the 60's, I believe, so you'd have had to be nearly 50 to remember it.
If New Orleans isn't a safe place to live because of two hurricanes in 100 years, perhaps San Fransisco (two big earthquakes in the same span) isn't a place that poor people should live either. Or the Florida gulf coast (dozens of hits overall, and I remember a year when one town got hit by FOUR)....
Impact in New Orleans was forecast Friday afternoon (with a probability of less than 20% at that time), impact was Sunday night.
Seems to me that European heatwave started in June, and got serious in July (which would be a month's warning)....
Note, by the way, that the heatwave produced temperatures (35-40C, 95-104F) that were fairly hot by New Orleans' standards. But we routinely (every day for six+ months every year) reach temperaturs in the lower half that range....
Might have something to do with the fact that Katrina's landfall in New Orleans wasn't predicted until 48 hours before landfall.
I left work Thursday before Katrina with the predicted landfall in Florida. By Friday afternoon, it was aiming at New Orleans, more or less. And Cat 5. Which was what made me take notice.
Of course, in the last five years, New Orleans has had several storms "aimed" at them. All of them hit elsewhere. One must remember that 48 hours before a hurricane hits it's usually 700+ miles away, and the impact cone still includes half the gulf coast.
One must also consider that one of the major routes into New Orleans was covered by 75 miles of overturned pine trees as a result of the storm cruising up that highway after it left New Orleans.
Overall, and speaking as a resident of the area, the response was quite acceptable. No sane person expects a massive rescue effort to be in play 20 minutes after the storm ends. Nor does anyone seriously expect that electricity and water can be restored in a few hours, though I heard a lot of people bitching, on the day after the storm, that they STILL had no water and electricity. It was more concern that the cellphone system was down - hard to call the relatives and reassure them that you're fine when your cellphone won't work.
The levee breach was a problem. It was a worse problem than it had to be, but not nearly as bad as it could have been (BOTH sides of the levee could have had major breaches, which would have flooded MY house way worse than it was flooded).
Only really bad part was the response to the "rioting". Which, as it turns out, was entirely the imagination of a National Guardsman from far away. Apparently, some reporter interviewed him, he told some wild tale, the reporter reported it without checking, everyone else heard that and repeated it, and pretty soon the Mayor is panicking, the rescue workers are panicking, the local governments are panicking, and the National News is talking about the total breakdown of civilization in New Orleans.
Too bad there was no rioting, though. It's a much better story with the evil Americans sinking into savagery at the drop of a hat.
All in all, the immediate response was okay. Not outstanding, but not bad at all. Later on, government idiocy caused (and is still causing) issues, which I won't go into. If you live there, you know what they are, if you don't, you won't really understand them anyway.