End of discussion as far as the courts are concerned. What part of except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger don't you understand?
Maybe the part where the President declared he was to be killed on site (basically he put out a "hit"), and the guy was shot down by an unmanned drone while running away?
It's going to be really fun when that "jobs" bill gets passed, and they create the new pilot-less aircraft control system - then they can fly their drones all over the place, in-country included, without danger of them colliding with the commercial jets...
So we now have a perpetual "war on terror" and "war on drugs" and war on American citizens of all kinds, so we have an unending loophole to ignore human rights all over the world.
Keep on saying "it can't happen here." Tyranny can gain control anywhere.
There wasn't any scientific content at all. It was all about economics and politics.
That's pretty much what Anthropogenic Climate Change is all about now.
Railing against the science purely because you don't like the political ramifications
There you go. There ARE no "political ramifications" of the science - only political agendas USING the science to justify a new political regime.
as is trying to refute the science by claiming the Rev Al Gore will be a carbon billionaire - so what? How the hell does that affect the science?
It discredits the science and implies to the masses that the entire issue is made-up bullcrap. And the WarmMongers like Gore leave no room for debating what the best course of action might be. What Gore and his ilk never allow discussion of is whether it will cause more harm to expensive restrictions on all CO2 emissions and eliminate its use as quickly as possible, or instead put resources into mitigating the issues caused by a warming of the climate over the next 100 or 200 years.
There are plenty of "unrelated groups" that call themselves "Tea Party", since it became popular, most of them establishment Republican douchebags, PACs, and also-rans looking to make a buck. Check your dates. "Never grassroots" presupposes dates long AFTER the start of the grassroots Tea Parties.
That's just a difference in words without a distinction. "Investor capital" is the same as "income" from the other side. The only difference you've come up with is that debts to SS (Treasury notes) is written down, so we know there's a $15 trillion that has to come from new taxes to make up the money, and in a Ponzi scheme it's hidden.
I still think that's a distinction without a difference.
By that definition, every insurance policy, every bank savings account, every publicly traded business in fact, is a "ponzi scheme".
Not true. Insurance is a gamble. Some policy holders never see any return at all (if they never need to make a claim). Return on bank savings come from LOANS to different customers who repay the loans at a MUCH higher interest than the bank is paying on savings. Publicly traded business create wealth by making value products out of less valuable raw materials. The comparison is bogus. A ponzi scheme creates nothing - it spends the money invested, and only returns money to early investors to FOOL them into thinking that wealth is being created (or at least not just being lost).
Capitalism, in fact is a ponzi scheme too, by that definition.
You're stuck on this myth that nothing ever gains value, and capitalism is a zero-sum game where everyone tries to gain the largest piece of pie. That's not how it works (at least, that's not how it has worked - what the elites run today and claim is "capitalism" notwithstanding).
The main part that's missing from your definition is that the investors don't know how the scheme is working. The way social security works is public information.
Sort of. But then there's the claim about the "Social Security Trust Fund", which is really just numbers in a book that have to be paid by other taxes somewhere down the road.
Further, by definition a ponzi scheme is unsustainable. Social Security is perfectly sustainable.
Not at all. It can be reformed to last, but in its current form it will bankrupt the workers to support the retired. There will simply be too many retirees and not enough workers if the current trends (and tax / payouts) continue as-is.
It's nothing more or less than an insurance policy.
Again, unclear on the "insurance" concept. Sure, some people will die before age 65, but the average life expectancy is much higher than that today, and could keep getting longer. And everybody that lives will get benefits.
I won't get into the argument with you about whether or not the trust fund full of AAA Treasury Bonds is actually worth anything or not, because most people only know what they hear on the AM radio or Fox News, and that information is wrong.
They are as good as the willingness (and ability) of the US taxpayer to continue paying taxes. How many generations out are now required to deal with the existing liabilities?
Perhaps you should have someone help you read the definition of ponzi scheme in the dictionary then.
Perhaps you should do so yourself. Here it is as a reminder:
A Ponzi scheme is named after Charles A. Ponzi, an Italian-American swindler, and is defined by Webster's Collegiate Dictionary thusly: "an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones."
This precisely defines Social Security today. I see you took no effort to refute that, only a lame attempt at name-calling and insults, typical of unthinking defenders of ideological positions that defy common sense.
the part where if I drive my car I'm going to kill the world with melting glaciers, and if you tell me not to drive my car you're a communist hippie bent on world domination
False equivalence: the number of people who say things like the first is far, far smaller than the number who say things like the second.
Actually, it's my perception that not only are the number people who say (or imply) the first is much larger than the second, but they have a much larger voice in the media as well. But you seem rather certain - perhaps you have some evidence?
and also for speaking his mind on social security, even if you don't agree with him.
So now all it takes to get respect is to have an opinion, however stupid?
Well, it is my opinion that is ridiculous.
I believe what he was criticized for was calling social security a ponzi scheme. Other than the fact that all the "investors" are compelled into participating, I fail to see how SS is not like a ponzi scheme.
using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate
This would be much more convincing if the rest of your post weren't exactly the kind of ignorant, paranoid rant that causes people to be labeled deniers in the first place.
I thought his post was very insightful, and pointed out a lot of the issues around why people are skeptical that there's any AGW issue at all. But of course here on/., a one-sentence name-calling bash with no basis can get modded up as "Insightful", while a well thought-out, rational discussion of an issue with reference can get modded as "Flamebait", just because of the topic.
I'd expect now to get this modded "off-topic" since I've diverted into a discussion of post moderation, but the moderation system never seems to work on AGW stories, so I should really just expect randomness.
Actually, credit default swaps were a way for investment banks to reduce risk. Being an entirely unregulated instrument, some people decided they could buy them up even without holding the securities they were protecting. It became like a giant, unregulated way to short stocks, but it could be done so that short bets were many times greater than the value of an entire company. They're not really comparable to carbon credit markets, other than another way for the usual suspects to make money without creating any value.
A better comparison would be the mortgage-backed securities (even though, initially, there was some real value). They were trading these things and saying they were worth $X. But very soon, since these things were trading in a huge bubble, it was clear that the basis of these securities (the ability of the working people to continue paying on over-inflated mortgages with increasing interest rates) simply didn't exist. Not only that, much of the funding for the entire bubble came from the same middle-class workers as tax-deferred retirement and other savings. So when the house of cards finally fell, it meant the middle class lost their homes and savings, and a bunch of the elites became much wealthier and the Federal government got more powerful. This is by design.
The design for "Carbon Credits" is exactly the same. It's a scheme that assumes the working middle class will have the ability to pay higher and higher prices for energy of all kinds. The traders (same elites that made all the money in the last scam) will be the only ones making money. Some people buy the notion that these new increasing costs will somehow cause a miracle to occur and carbon-neutral energy will be suddenly cheap and abundant, but all the schemes devised so far ONLY shift costs for producers - the costs to consumers - because of the way the grid, consumer goods, transportation infrastructure, etc - always goes up for all energy use, even if some producers are shifting more to "carbon free" energy generation.
So, yes, it's a scam, it won't work because the people that work for a living simply won't be able to come up with the resources to fund it, and in the end it just means even greater wealth disparity and an even more decimated middle class. But, of course, that's what most of the elites want - no middle class. They just need enough serfs to keep the systems working.
Well, the RIAA and MPAA have infiltrated the government pretty well, and it seems to fit with their ideals....
Good point. Canada already does this to their citizens, sort of - they are required to pay for music and movies whether they ever listen/watch or not, but they have a slightly higher standard in that you aren't paying unless you buy some kind of writable digital media.
I'm sure you can site innumerable examples of the right trying to increase executive power - but note the ones you mentioned do not. They are legislative, and yes, they reduce the power of the judiciary, but do not increase the power of the executive at all. At least the legislators are accountable to the people, unlike many judges.
As far as the left support (or not ) of executive power - consider that the left decried Bush's "Executive signing statements" (as they should), but they're not a problem when Obama decides they are okay after all.
And when no legislative solution was forthcoming for Net Neutrality (probably not a partisan issue, until fairly recently), and reducing carbon emissions, the left pushed for (and got) administrative (controlled by the executive) solutions. Consider Yucca Mountain - nuclear storage facility mandated (and funded) by Congress, upheld (and ordered implemented) by the highest courts, yet the executive (via direct control of the Department of Energy) refused to carry out the necessary work.
Remember the recent "debt ceiling crisis"? What I remember about it was the calls from the left for Obama to unilaterally raise the ceiling through executive order, via some odd interpretation of the 14th amendment.
It's not a false equivalence - it only seems that way to you because you base your trust on the (D) behind politicians' names. I guess to you Rick Perry used to be a good guy but now he's evil? I see him as the same old self-serving statist he has always been.
"Tyrannies" created by laws which outlined a principle instead of detailing specifics? Cite examples, please (so we can laugh at them).
Laugh at this, then, next time you're traveling in I-20 and the local cops pull you over, and "arrest" your property because it's "suspected of criminal involvement". Asset forfeiture laws create a good example, of how laws are abused in this way. Everyone can be said to be open to suspicion of having drug-tainted property, and jurisdictions that find ways to take advantage of it certainly act like tyrants.
You have a point about overly broad and ambiguous legislation. But as you note, the courts in the U.S. throw those laws out, leaving those that are merely broad (like this) intact.
Maybe. If you're a judge and decide it's okay as written, then uphold it. There are plenty of judges that would disagree. And I was really commenting on the OP's comment that sound legislation is always written to allow subjective interpretation that requires citizens, police, judges, etc., to use their own subjective ideas to decide when the law is being violated.
If you want to know whether you're violating a law or not, you can; you just need to do the research by consulting all three branches of government.
So you have to break the law and get arrested and go to court to decide whether you're breaking the law or not? Because that's the typical method for "consulting" the three branches. In fact, you generally cannot consult a court about a law unless you have "standing" - that is, you must demonstrate some harm, or be under prosecution for a violation. That's exceedingly impractical, risky, and the antithesis of the rule of law. The US is (or... was) a country of laws, not men. But when laws are so (yes, numerous) and broad that anyone can be said to be breaking the law at any time, it concentrates power to the executive, and they will SOLELY decide when to enforce the law and against whom. You MAY have some chance of avoiding a conviction - but when prosecutors have a long list of laws they can throw at a subject they are likely to get something to stick even in front of the fairest judge. (Here is how "too many" and "too broad" work together - not in opposing directions at all).
However, if the local police officer and prosecutor happen to decide you do have this intent [which is entirely in your head], to a judge or jury, you have to prove you don't have this intent.
If that's the case, then this is another good example of a law that, while well-intentioned, is too ambiguous. If "everybody" is breaking the law (or the law can be interpreted that way), then it's bad law, plain and simple.
Your statement exposes the real problem: in the US, accused are provided the presumption of innocence, and the burden of proof is on the prosecution. If a law is written such that it turns that basic principle on it's head, it's obviously a bad law.
You are incorrect. The type of law that you want to see is the type that is ALWAYS gamed; laws that disallow interpretation are the tools of tyranny. That's why the founders of the US specifically made the judicial system a separate branch of government on a par with the legislative and executive, rather than a simple tool of the executive, as the right would like it to be.
I hate to tell you this, but the right AND left have a clear history of demanding increased power for the executive. Each only does it when their guy is in the office, but of course when the party changes, all that extra power is retained.
Oh, the situation with MPEG-LA is worse than that. If you capture video on any kind of MPEG camera, even high-end "professional" models, you've now got a video that is encumbered and you can't use it for ANY commercial purpose without a license from MPEG-LA.
Yes, this is how sound legislation is always written. Rather than trying to spell things out in technical details that will immediately be obsolete and also provide a roadmap for how to get around the letter of the law, they use subjective terms like "unreasonable discrimination" to allow judicial rulings to define and redefine it over time in keeping with the spirit of the law.
No, it's not. It's how tyrannies are built. It's a way for an oppressive police state to arbitrarily decide when and against whom they are going to enforce the law. Fail to provide the right media support or bribe... err, I mean "contribution", and you're targetted - and the law is simply made to apply.
Sound legislation must disallow discrimination, provide equal protection, and enforce the tenets of the rule of law. It should be clear to anyone whether an action they take will violate the law or not. It should be unambiguous. In fact, overly broad or ambiguous legislation is often overturned on Constitutional grounds, and should be.
It's a simple idea - if the laws are so many and confusing and open to interpretation, it means anyone and everyone can be said to be breaking the law at any time. And it's up to the enforcers to decide who to actually bring down.
Slashdot Mirror
End of discussion as far as the courts are concerned. What part of except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger don't you understand?
Maybe the part where the President declared he was to be killed on site (basically he put out a "hit"), and the guy was shot down by an unmanned drone while running away?
It's going to be really fun when that "jobs" bill gets passed, and they create the new pilot-less aircraft control system - then they can fly their drones all over the place, in-country included, without danger of them colliding with the commercial jets...
So we now have a perpetual "war on terror" and "war on drugs" and war on American citizens of all kinds, so we have an unending loophole to ignore human rights all over the world.
Keep on saying "it can't happen here." Tyranny can gain control anywhere.
There wasn't any scientific content at all. It was all about economics and politics.
That's pretty much what Anthropogenic Climate Change is all about now.
Railing against the science purely because you don't like the political ramifications
There you go. There ARE no "political ramifications" of the science - only political agendas USING the science to justify a new political regime.
as is trying to refute the science by claiming the Rev Al Gore will be a carbon billionaire - so what? How the hell does that affect the science?
It discredits the science and implies to the masses that the entire issue is made-up bullcrap. And the WarmMongers like Gore leave no room for debating what the best course of action might be. What Gore and his ilk never allow discussion of is whether it will cause more harm to expensive restrictions on all CO2 emissions and eliminate its use as quickly as possible, or instead put resources into mitigating the issues caused by a warming of the climate over the next 100 or 200 years.
Bingo. If the current trends (and tax / payouts) continue as is, we're going to have a lot bigger problems than the social security system.
Do you have a reason to believe the current trends will continue?
All recent (a couple of decades) of history?
There are plenty of "unrelated groups" that call themselves "Tea Party", since it became popular, most of them establishment Republican douchebags, PACs, and also-rans looking to make a buck. Check your dates. "Never grassroots" presupposes dates long AFTER the start of the grassroots Tea Parties.
Reading comprehension failure.
That's just a difference in words without a distinction. "Investor capital" is the same as "income" from the other side. The only difference you've come up with is that debts to SS (Treasury notes) is written down, so we know there's a $15 trillion that has to come from new taxes to make up the money, and in a Ponzi scheme it's hidden.
I still think that's a distinction without a difference.
By that definition, every insurance policy, every bank savings account, every publicly traded business in fact, is a "ponzi scheme".
Not true. Insurance is a gamble. Some policy holders never see any return at all (if they never need to make a claim). Return on bank savings come from LOANS to different customers who repay the loans at a MUCH higher interest than the bank is paying on savings. Publicly traded business create wealth by making value products out of less valuable raw materials. The comparison is bogus. A ponzi scheme creates nothing - it spends the money invested, and only returns money to early investors to FOOL them into thinking that wealth is being created (or at least not just being lost).
Capitalism, in fact is a ponzi scheme too, by that definition.
You're stuck on this myth that nothing ever gains value, and capitalism is a zero-sum game where everyone tries to gain the largest piece of pie. That's not how it works (at least, that's not how it has worked - what the elites run today and claim is "capitalism" notwithstanding).
The main part that's missing from your definition is that the investors don't know how the scheme is working. The way social security works is public information.
Sort of. But then there's the claim about the "Social Security Trust Fund", which is really just numbers in a book that have to be paid by other taxes somewhere down the road.
Further, by definition a ponzi scheme is unsustainable. Social Security is perfectly sustainable.
Not at all. It can be reformed to last, but in its current form it will bankrupt the workers to support the retired. There will simply be too many retirees and not enough workers if the current trends (and tax / payouts) continue as-is.
It's nothing more or less than an insurance policy.
Again, unclear on the "insurance" concept. Sure, some people will die before age 65, but the average life expectancy is much higher than that today, and could keep getting longer. And everybody that lives will get benefits.
I won't get into the argument with you about whether or not the trust fund full of AAA Treasury Bonds is actually worth anything or not, because most people only know what they hear on the AM radio or Fox News, and that information is wrong.
They are as good as the willingness (and ability) of the US taxpayer to continue paying taxes. How many generations out are now required to deal with the existing liabilities?
Perhaps you should have someone help you read the definition of ponzi scheme in the dictionary then.
Perhaps you should do so yourself. Here it is as a reminder:
This precisely defines Social Security today. I see you took no effort to refute that, only a lame attempt at name-calling and insults, typical of unthinking defenders of ideological positions that defy common sense.
When someone is able to predict roughly what the climate, not local weather, will do for a few years - then I might take them seriously.
Errm, thanks for proving you have no idea what you are talking about. "A few years" isn't climate, it's random fluctuations.
Yes, you can't dismiss AGW simply because random fluctuations depart from the warming predictions!! The science is incontrovertible!
the part where if I drive my car I'm going to kill the world with melting glaciers, and if you tell me not to drive my car you're a communist hippie bent on world domination
False equivalence: the number of people who say things like the first is far, far smaller than the number who say things like the second.
Actually, it's my perception that not only are the number people who say (or imply) the first is much larger than the second, but they have a much larger voice in the media as well. But you seem rather certain - perhaps you have some evidence?
Right on. It's incontrovertible!!
So now all it takes to get respect is to have an opinion, however stupid?
Well, it is my opinion that is ridiculous.
I believe what he was criticized for was calling social security a ponzi scheme. Other than the fact that all the "investors" are compelled into participating, I fail to see how SS is not like a ponzi scheme.
WarmMonger
+1
As a non teabagger I fuckin love it! Nothing I have seen of Perry elicits any respect at all.
As a member of the original grassroots Ron Paul Tea Party of 2007, I couldn't agree with you more.
using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate
This would be much more convincing if the rest of your post weren't exactly the kind of ignorant, paranoid rant that causes people to be labeled deniers in the first place.
I thought his post was very insightful, and pointed out a lot of the issues around why people are skeptical that there's any AGW issue at all. But of course here on /., a one-sentence name-calling bash with no basis can get modded up as "Insightful", while a well thought-out, rational discussion of an issue with reference can get modded as "Flamebait", just because of the topic.
I'd expect now to get this modded "off-topic" since I've diverted into a discussion of post moderation, but the moderation system never seems to work on AGW stories, so I should really just expect randomness.
Actually, credit default swaps were a way for investment banks to reduce risk. Being an entirely unregulated instrument, some people decided they could buy them up even without holding the securities they were protecting. It became like a giant, unregulated way to short stocks, but it could be done so that short bets were many times greater than the value of an entire company. They're not really comparable to carbon credit markets, other than another way for the usual suspects to make money without creating any value.
A better comparison would be the mortgage-backed securities (even though, initially, there was some real value). They were trading these things and saying they were worth $X. But very soon, since these things were trading in a huge bubble, it was clear that the basis of these securities (the ability of the working people to continue paying on over-inflated mortgages with increasing interest rates) simply didn't exist. Not only that, much of the funding for the entire bubble came from the same middle-class workers as tax-deferred retirement and other savings. So when the house of cards finally fell, it meant the middle class lost their homes and savings, and a bunch of the elites became much wealthier and the Federal government got more powerful. This is by design.
The design for "Carbon Credits" is exactly the same. It's a scheme that assumes the working middle class will have the ability to pay higher and higher prices for energy of all kinds. The traders (same elites that made all the money in the last scam) will be the only ones making money. Some people buy the notion that these new increasing costs will somehow cause a miracle to occur and carbon-neutral energy will be suddenly cheap and abundant, but all the schemes devised so far ONLY shift costs for producers - the costs to consumers - because of the way the grid, consumer goods, transportation infrastructure, etc - always goes up for all energy use, even if some producers are shifting more to "carbon free" energy generation.
So, yes, it's a scam, it won't work because the people that work for a living simply won't be able to come up with the resources to fund it, and in the end it just means even greater wealth disparity and an even more decimated middle class. But, of course, that's what most of the elites want - no middle class. They just need enough serfs to keep the systems working.
It's INCONTROVERTIBLE!!
Well, the RIAA and MPAA have infiltrated the government pretty well, and it seems to fit with their ideals....
Good point. Canada already does this to their citizens, sort of - they are required to pay for music and movies whether they ever listen/watch or not, but they have a slightly higher standard in that you aren't paying unless you buy some kind of writable digital media.
Self-filtered information FTW!
I'm sure you can site innumerable examples of the right trying to increase executive power - but note the ones you mentioned do not. They are legislative, and yes, they reduce the power of the judiciary, but do not increase the power of the executive at all. At least the legislators are accountable to the people, unlike many judges.
As far as the left support (or not ) of executive power - consider that the left decried Bush's "Executive signing statements" (as they should), but they're not a problem when Obama decides they are okay after all.
And when no legislative solution was forthcoming for Net Neutrality (probably not a partisan issue, until fairly recently), and reducing carbon emissions, the left pushed for (and got) administrative (controlled by the executive) solutions. Consider Yucca Mountain - nuclear storage facility mandated (and funded) by Congress, upheld (and ordered implemented) by the highest courts, yet the executive (via direct control of the Department of Energy) refused to carry out the necessary work.
Remember the recent "debt ceiling crisis"? What I remember about it was the calls from the left for Obama to unilaterally raise the ceiling through executive order, via some odd interpretation of the 14th amendment.
It's not a false equivalence - it only seems that way to you because you base your trust on the (D) behind politicians' names. I guess to you Rick Perry used to be a good guy but now he's evil? I see him as the same old self-serving statist he has always been.
"Tyrannies" created by laws which outlined a principle instead of detailing specifics? Cite examples, please (so we can laugh at them).
Laugh at this, then, next time you're traveling in I-20 and the local cops pull you over, and "arrest" your property because it's "suspected of criminal involvement". Asset forfeiture laws create a good example, of how laws are abused in this way. Everyone can be said to be open to suspicion of having drug-tainted property, and jurisdictions that find ways to take advantage of it certainly act like tyrants.
You have a point about overly broad and ambiguous legislation. But as you note, the courts in the U.S. throw those laws out, leaving those that are merely broad (like this) intact.
Maybe. If you're a judge and decide it's okay as written, then uphold it. There are plenty of judges that would disagree. And I was really commenting on the OP's comment that sound legislation is always written to allow subjective interpretation that requires citizens, police, judges, etc., to use their own subjective ideas to decide when the law is being violated.
If you want to know whether you're violating a law or not, you can; you just need to do the research by consulting all three branches of government.
So you have to break the law and get arrested and go to court to decide whether you're breaking the law or not? Because that's the typical method for "consulting" the three branches. In fact, you generally cannot consult a court about a law unless you have "standing" - that is, you must demonstrate some harm, or be under prosecution for a violation. That's exceedingly impractical, risky, and the antithesis of the rule of law. The US is (or ... was) a country of laws, not men. But when laws are so (yes, numerous) and broad that anyone can be said to be breaking the law at any time, it concentrates power to the executive, and they will SOLELY decide when to enforce the law and against whom. You MAY have some chance of avoiding a conviction - but when prosecutors have a long list of laws they can throw at a subject they are likely to get something to stick even in front of the fairest judge. (Here is how "too many" and "too broad" work together - not in opposing directions at all).
However, if the local police officer and prosecutor happen to decide you do have this intent [which is entirely in your head], to a judge or jury, you have to prove you don't have this intent.
If that's the case, then this is another good example of a law that, while well-intentioned, is too ambiguous. If "everybody" is breaking the law (or the law can be interpreted that way), then it's bad law, plain and simple.
Your statement exposes the real problem: in the US, accused are provided the presumption of innocence, and the burden of proof is on the prosecution. If a law is written such that it turns that basic principle on it's head, it's obviously a bad law.
You are incorrect. The type of law that you want to see is the type that is ALWAYS gamed; laws that disallow interpretation are the tools of tyranny. That's why the founders of the US specifically made the judicial system a separate branch of government on a par with the legislative and executive, rather than a simple tool of the executive, as the right would like it to be.
I hate to tell you this, but the right AND left have a clear history of demanding increased power for the executive. Each only does it when their guy is in the office, but of course when the party changes, all that extra power is retained.
Oh, the situation with MPEG-LA is worse than that. If you capture video on any kind of MPEG camera, even high-end "professional" models, you've now got a video that is encumbered and you can't use it for ANY commercial purpose without a license from MPEG-LA.
Yes, this is how sound legislation is always written. Rather than trying to spell things out in technical details that will immediately be obsolete and also provide a roadmap for how to get around the letter of the law, they use subjective terms like "unreasonable discrimination" to allow judicial rulings to define and redefine it over time in keeping with the spirit of the law.
No, it's not. It's how tyrannies are built. It's a way for an oppressive police state to arbitrarily decide when and against whom they are going to enforce the law. Fail to provide the right media support or bribe ... err, I mean "contribution", and you're targetted - and the law is simply made to apply.
Sound legislation must disallow discrimination, provide equal protection, and enforce the tenets of the rule of law. It should be clear to anyone whether an action they take will violate the law or not. It should be unambiguous. In fact, overly broad or ambiguous legislation is often overturned on Constitutional grounds, and should be.
It's a simple idea - if the laws are so many and confusing and open to interpretation, it means anyone and everyone can be said to be breaking the law at any time. And it's up to the enforcers to decide who to actually bring down.