Except that's not how it works. A plea deal isn't a contract in which you get what you want in exchange for what they want.
Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony..... More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing. If Aaron pleaded to a misdemeanor, his potential sentence would be capped at one year, regardless of his guidelines calculation. However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe.
The whole Bush Obama thing has made me wonder if the true danger to our country will be some kind of civil war between the GOP and the DNC. Their policies are essentially the same (aside from edge issues like abortion and gay marriage(*)). On critical issues like the right not to be randomly jailed or murdered, on war, on domestic surveillance -- they're completely identical.
Yet GOPers loathe Obama and Democrats Loathe Bush. It's personal though -- it can't be about policies, it is only a personal hate based on the person's tribal identity (party). There is no logical basis for the two groups to hate each other because they do the identical shit. What you have is the pickup truck driving GOPer sneering at the iPad toting DNCer -- not because of an actual difference in policy, but merely because of mutual hatred. And that's dangerous because there is no reason or logic -- it's pure tribalism.
(*) I'm not saying these are unimportant, I'm saying that they don't matter if you are dead or in a gulag. There is a hierarchy of importance and there are more fundamental issues at the top of it.
Unbelievably myopic DNC apologists like you are just setting us up for ruin. Your hero won't be president forever, and the next time a Dick Cheney type is in office, do you think that precedents like due process free execution, or starting a war without congressional authorization (Libya) will go unnoticed? Obama has made the future a whole lot worse. When GWB was acting like a fuckhead, people thought at least the Democrats would work to reign in the abuse. Now that the DNC has simply embraced and extended that abuse -- we're screwed, and apologists like you are making it easy.
Don't be a retard. Al Alwaki was dead for two weeks before they killed his son. In fact, he hadn't even seen his dad in two years. Murdered by Obama without any evidence of wrongdoing on the kid's part. I mean, how deep do you want to deep throat that Federales Uber Alles propaganda cock? Here's an advance "thank you" for the police state we are soon to have where you can be jailed at the president's whim, murdered at the president's whim -- all of it based on "secret laws". How Soviet of you.
Seriously, click on the link I posted. It only takes the most minuscule effort -- way less then it takes to rationalize the gutting of the Constitution. Oh wait, you're too lazy and stupid to actually learn anything about what's going on. Here's a quote and a rag to wipe that DC jizz out of your eye -- once you can see again, read:
Gibbs wasn't entirely familiar with the situation, and didn't know that al-Awlaki's son was killed two weeks after his father was killed... *** He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all.
Google's youtube had no trouble connecting my real name to my youtube alias. I suspect that it's extremely hard to never leak information, possibly involving separate hardware (or at least virtual separate hardware), vpns for unrelated IP addresses, and never giving google your credit card info -- for each online alias. I do have an android phone and google play account so it isn't rocket science to imagine how google could cobble together who I am from that info. IP address plus credit info (which includes real name) compared to IP address plus youtube login and it is a reasonable guess I'm that alias.
I didn't realize he had gone after the families of the bad cops. I agree that that is not just wrong, but pretty sick.
Not in America it isn't sick -- certainly not according to Obama administration's explanation for why it killed Al Alwaki's innocent 16yo Colorado born son: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children."
So, if it is the position of the President of the United States, that the sins of the father are the sins of the children, how could it be sick for Dorner to believe the same thing? If it is sick for Dorner to believe as Obama does, is Obama sick?
Absolutely correct. But for the authoritarians this is the perfect opportunity --- who is going to object to throwing these drones into catching Dorner? At the end of this there will official statements about how helpful the drones were and that will be that essentially. Public support will swell even if the ultimate intended use isn't good or reasonable.
The real problem America faces, is not that authoritarians are grabbing power, it is that Americans want them to. Democrats and republicans only disagree on who should wield that power. Obama and GWB are perfect examples of this tribalism. Identical policies yet pure hatred by the opposing tribe. In the end it will lead to dictatorship, it has no where else to go and Americans for the most part crave that so long as their tribe wins. That's where the next civil war will come from. Not from civil libertarians fighting for freedom, but between the DNC and the GOP as they struggle to decide which party will be the last one to hold the dictatorship before the electoral rotation of seats ends.
To put this into a stupid slashdot car analogy, what this guy is saying is that he drives a left hand drive stick shift at work, may even have a left hand drive stick shift at work for testing, and when he gets home, he uses a left hand drive stick shift too so that his work life is easier.
Now, if he drove an automatic at work but a stick at home, he mind find himself accidentally slamming on the brakes when coming to a stop (muscle memory clutch foot coupled with an oddly wide brake pedal (that's breaks and petals if you want to troll a spelling nazi)). Or, if he drove a right hand drive MG at home, he might end up making a crazy turn into oncoming traffic at work with their left hand drive cars.
There's one gas station in my area that also sells ethanol free gas and its price is basically the same as everywhere else (except for the really sketchy stations that sell gas super cheap, probably from rusty tanks). It's the only place I fill up. If I find myself running low and its inconvenient to go there, I'll pump one or two gallons at a different station, but I won't fill up. This could be a good means of marketing for gas stations to differentiate themselves. Never in my life before have I been a regular patron of any particular station -- I'd just fillup at what was near me when I needed gas. Now that there's just one station that sells the good stuff though, they get 95% of my business.
According to wikipedia, this dish was started in 1991 and and became operational in 2000. While I'll grant that wifi wasn't ubiquitous in the early part of that time frame, it was much more prevalent toward the end. Plus there were other kinds of radio technologies gaining common currency in that time frame (cell phones for example). It's a little disingenuous to hark back an additional thirty years in support of your argument, because this dish hadn't been built then.
Anyway, it seems to me it would have been reasonable to build this is a place less likely to be affected by consumer tech than on the east coast. Was it a pork project? What other sites were considered? There really isn't much info on these aspects.
That isn't "would be subject to this shit" that's IS subject to this shit and have been for years. The second article in TFS is from 2008 -- half a decade ago. Why is it taking so long for people to wake up to what is going on?
Considering the lifelong state of my penmanship, I'd have CTS from the constant vibration of the pen. I don't even attempt cursive and my printing looks like a third grader's. Somehow, I just never got good at that.
You may have a problem with true random number generation if you let a computer pick for you.
You could try diceware instead -- it's pretty unlikely you'll end up with dice that have some kind of vulnerability built into them that will compromise your password picks. Plus it costs a tiny fraction of a true random number generation card.
I guess you didn't read my post. What was decided in the civil war subsequent Supreme Court cases, was that secession required bilateral agreement between the Feds and the seceding state. A constitutional amendment clearly outlining a path for unilateral secession would make that history moot.
Your post is a little confusing to me, but I hope you haven't fallen for the lie that Obama wanted to end the practices of Gitmo. Obama did try to close Gitmo and Congress stood in the way, but it was a type of "closing" where those practices were merely imported to a Federal Supermax in Illinois, not a "closing" in the sense of ending the practice of indefinite due process free detention. It was a very clever bit of politics on Obama's part -- something an uncritical Democrat could latch on to in the tribal GOP v. DNC clownfight.
I'm a liberal (not a Democrat mind you, Democrats are just the New GOP and the old GOP is merely a parody of itself) -- but I'm totally for States' Rights. The more I see what the Federales do, the more I would love to see a secessionist movement not rooted in white supremecy groups or religious freakery. The greatest threat to liberal values in the world today is the US Federal government and a constitutional amendment allowing unilateral peaceful secession of states would be a very interesting thing to have. Even if states didn't suddenly jump ship, the very existence of that right would make the Feds a bit more circumspect (at least probably, but who knows, they're pretty stuck up).
I agree it is an extension of GWB's due process free indefinite detention policies likely rooted in the same theories. I agree that just having the CIA "handle" things is a rotten system too. I also agree that merely writing the memo, like expressing any opinion, should not be the basis for any kind of legal proceeding (certainly not execution as Al Alwaki was subjected to for youtube vids). However, we are not talking about an abstract discussion -- this has been and continues to be used to kill people in violation of fundamental principles in our Constitution that go all the way back to the Magna Carta.
One point of disagreement I do have, is that it is not a legal framework of any sort. This memo is merely the opinion of Obama's lawyers and although it is treated as a secret law (a huge can of worms on the side as ignorance is no excuse etc. etc.), it ought not be. As Glen Greenwald put it:
This memo is not a judicial opinion. It was not written by anyone independent of the president. To the contrary, it was written by life-long partisan lackeys: lawyers whose careerist interests depend upon staying in the good graces of Obama and the Democrats, almost certainly Marty Lederman and David Barron. Treating this document as though it confers any authority on Obama is like treating the statements of one's lawyer as a judicial finding or jury verdict.
I see what you are saying and being an antiwar peacenik myself, I agree with the proposition that we should not summarily execute people, citizens or not, for crimes of which they are accused. If we think they committed a crime (of which terrorism is a flavor) then they should be allowed due process.
At the same time, I have to care about the country I live in, and I see this as a real departure from what the US was envisioned to be. It's deeply disturbing to me because it feels like a slide into authoritarianism with a single branch of government wielding all the powers through one person. I don't want to live under that type of government.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that's not how it works. A plea deal isn't a contract in which you get what you want in exchange for what they want.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
The whole Bush Obama thing has made me wonder if the true danger to our country will be some kind of civil war between the GOP and the DNC. Their policies are essentially the same (aside from edge issues like abortion and gay marriage(*)). On critical issues like the right not to be randomly jailed or murdered, on war, on domestic surveillance -- they're completely identical.
Yet GOPers loathe Obama and Democrats Loathe Bush. It's personal though -- it can't be about policies, it is only a personal hate based on the person's tribal identity (party). There is no logical basis for the two groups to hate each other because they do the identical shit. What you have is the pickup truck driving GOPer sneering at the iPad toting DNCer -- not because of an actual difference in policy, but merely because of mutual hatred. And that's dangerous because there is no reason or logic -- it's pure tribalism.
(*) I'm not saying these are unimportant, I'm saying that they don't matter if you are dead or in a gulag. There is a hierarchy of importance and there are more fundamental issues at the top of it.
Unbelievably myopic DNC apologists like you are just setting us up for ruin. Your hero won't be president forever, and the next time a Dick Cheney type is in office, do you think that precedents like due process free execution, or starting a war without congressional authorization (Libya) will go unnoticed? Obama has made the future a whole lot worse. When GWB was acting like a fuckhead, people thought at least the Democrats would work to reign in the abuse. Now that the DNC has simply embraced and extended that abuse -- we're screwed, and apologists like you are making it easy.
No. I'm a liberal and I'm more than a little resentful about the New GOP (aka Democrats -- with the emphasis on "rats").
A body of Federal laws so vast and vague that it is unknowable and any random person commits a federal crime unwittingly probably every day.
President tells his minions to go after "X" group.
Prosecutors find random law and prosecute the person.
Result: unlimited presidential power.
Welcome to the new American Paradigm.
President: Legislator, executive, judge, jury, and executioner.
True, but I didn't think of it at the time which is an example of how leaking info is so easy.
Don't be a retard. Al Alwaki was dead for two weeks before they killed his son. In fact, he hadn't even seen his dad in two years. Murdered by Obama without any evidence of wrongdoing on the kid's part. I mean, how deep do you want to deep throat that Federales Uber Alles propaganda cock? Here's an advance "thank you" for the police state we are soon to have where you can be jailed at the president's whim, murdered at the president's whim -- all of it based on "secret laws". How Soviet of you.
Seriously, click on the link I posted. It only takes the most minuscule effort -- way less then it takes to rationalize the gutting of the Constitution. Oh wait, you're too lazy and stupid to actually learn anything about what's going on. Here's a quote and a rag to wipe that DC jizz out of your eye -- once you can see again, read:
Google's youtube had no trouble connecting my real name to my youtube alias. I suspect that it's extremely hard to never leak information, possibly involving separate hardware (or at least virtual separate hardware), vpns for unrelated IP addresses, and never giving google your credit card info -- for each online alias. I do have an android phone and google play account so it isn't rocket science to imagine how google could cobble together who I am from that info. IP address plus credit info (which includes real name) compared to IP address plus youtube login and it is a reasonable guess I'm that alias.
Not in America it isn't sick -- certainly not according to Obama administration's explanation for why it killed Al Alwaki's innocent 16yo Colorado born son: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-al-awlaki_n_2012438.html
So, if it is the position of the President of the United States, that the sins of the father are the sins of the children, how could it be sick for Dorner to believe the same thing? If it is sick for Dorner to believe as Obama does, is Obama sick?
Absolutely correct. But for the authoritarians this is the perfect opportunity --- who is going to object to throwing these drones into catching Dorner? At the end of this there will official statements about how helpful the drones were and that will be that essentially. Public support will swell even if the ultimate intended use isn't good or reasonable.
The real problem America faces, is not that authoritarians are grabbing power, it is that Americans want them to. Democrats and republicans only disagree on who should wield that power. Obama and GWB are perfect examples of this tribalism. Identical policies yet pure hatred by the opposing tribe. In the end it will lead to dictatorship, it has no where else to go and Americans for the most part crave that so long as their tribe wins. That's where the next civil war will come from. Not from civil libertarians fighting for freedom, but between the DNC and the GOP as they struggle to decide which party will be the last one to hold the dictatorship before the electoral rotation of seats ends.
To put this into a stupid slashdot car analogy, what this guy is saying is that he drives a left hand drive stick shift at work, may even have a left hand drive stick shift at work for testing, and when he gets home, he uses a left hand drive stick shift too so that his work life is easier.
Now, if he drove an automatic at work but a stick at home, he mind find himself accidentally slamming on the brakes when coming to a stop (muscle memory clutch foot coupled with an oddly wide brake pedal (that's breaks and petals if you want to troll a spelling nazi)). Or, if he drove a right hand drive MG at home, he might end up making a crazy turn into oncoming traffic at work with their left hand drive cars.
No kidding.
Alternative entertainment: http://www.zdnet.com/anonymous-reveals-ample-fed-access-fbi-opens-criminal-investigation-7000011073/
There's one gas station in my area that also sells ethanol free gas and its price is basically the same as everywhere else (except for the really sketchy stations that sell gas super cheap, probably from rusty tanks). It's the only place I fill up. If I find myself running low and its inconvenient to go there, I'll pump one or two gallons at a different station, but I won't fill up. This could be a good means of marketing for gas stations to differentiate themselves. Never in my life before have I been a regular patron of any particular station -- I'd just fillup at what was near me when I needed gas. Now that there's just one station that sells the good stuff though, they get 95% of my business.
According to wikipedia, this dish was started in 1991 and and became operational in 2000. While I'll grant that wifi wasn't ubiquitous in the early part of that time frame, it was much more prevalent toward the end. Plus there were other kinds of radio technologies gaining common currency in that time frame (cell phones for example). It's a little disingenuous to hark back an additional thirty years in support of your argument, because this dish hadn't been built then.
Anyway, it seems to me it would have been reasonable to build this is a place less likely to be affected by consumer tech than on the east coast. Was it a pork project? What other sites were considered? There really isn't much info on these aspects.
That isn't "would be subject to this shit" that's IS subject to this shit and have been for years. The second article in TFS is from 2008 -- half a decade ago. Why is it taking so long for people to wake up to what is going on?
Just click the second link in TFS. Nice diagram with the stats.
Considering the lifelong state of my penmanship, I'd have CTS from the constant vibration of the pen. I don't even attempt cursive and my printing looks like a third grader's. Somehow, I just never got good at that.
You may have a problem with true random number generation if you let a computer pick for you.
You could try diceware instead -- it's pretty unlikely you'll end up with dice that have some kind of vulnerability built into them that will compromise your password picks. Plus it costs a tiny fraction of a true random number generation card.
http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html
I guess you didn't read my post. What was decided in the civil war subsequent Supreme Court cases, was that secession required bilateral agreement between the Feds and the seceding state. A constitutional amendment clearly outlining a path for unilateral secession would make that history moot.
Perhaps these or something like them would do the trick?
http://www.usfireworks.biz/category/mortars.htm
Your post is a little confusing to me, but I hope you haven't fallen for the lie that Obama wanted to end the practices of Gitmo. Obama did try to close Gitmo and Congress stood in the way, but it was a type of "closing" where those practices were merely imported to a Federal Supermax in Illinois, not a "closing" in the sense of ending the practice of indefinite due process free detention. It was a very clever bit of politics on Obama's part -- something an uncritical Democrat could latch on to in the tribal GOP v. DNC clownfight.
see: "Welcom to Gitmo North"
http://www.salon.com/2009/12/15/gitmo_3/
I'm a liberal (not a Democrat mind you, Democrats are just the New GOP and the old GOP is merely a parody of itself) -- but I'm totally for States' Rights. The more I see what the Federales do, the more I would love to see a secessionist movement not rooted in white supremecy groups or religious freakery. The greatest threat to liberal values in the world today is the US Federal government and a constitutional amendment allowing unilateral peaceful secession of states would be a very interesting thing to have. Even if states didn't suddenly jump ship, the very existence of that right would make the Feds a bit more circumspect (at least probably, but who knows, they're pretty stuck up).
I agree it is an extension of GWB's due process free indefinite detention policies likely rooted in the same theories. I agree that just having the CIA "handle" things is a rotten system too. I also agree that merely writing the memo, like expressing any opinion, should not be the basis for any kind of legal proceeding (certainly not execution as Al Alwaki was subjected to for youtube vids). However, we are not talking about an abstract discussion -- this has been and continues to be used to kill people in violation of fundamental principles in our Constitution that go all the way back to the Magna Carta.
One point of disagreement I do have, is that it is not a legal framework of any sort. This memo is merely the opinion of Obama's lawyers and although it is treated as a secret law (a huge can of worms on the side as ignorance is no excuse etc. etc.), it ought not be. As Glen Greenwald put it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo
I see what you are saying and being an antiwar peacenik myself, I agree with the proposition that we should not summarily execute people, citizens or not, for crimes of which they are accused. If we think they committed a crime (of which terrorism is a flavor) then they should be allowed due process.
At the same time, I have to care about the country I live in, and I see this as a real departure from what the US was envisioned to be. It's deeply disturbing to me because it feels like a slide into authoritarianism with a single branch of government wielding all the powers through one person. I don't want to live under that type of government.