The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not.
When has the Constitution ever been held to apply to prisoners of war? Do you really mean to tell me that all those German and Japanese POWs we captured could have petitioned for habeas corpus?
I realize that we specifically designed them as unlawful combatants instead of POWs but the point still stands. You are confusing domestic law enforcement with alien combatants captured on foreign battlefields while engaged in combat with US forces. Given the fact that none of them even followed the laws of war to begin with we would have been well within our rights to summarily execute them as soon as they were captured. Don't believe this? Open a history book and find out what happened to the Germans that were captured during the Battle of the Bugle while fighting in Allied uniforms.
Sorry, but we'll never see a constitutional convention again
Why not? If 2/3'rds of the states want one then the Constitution would seem to require it:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
(Please don't bring up the FISA bill. We've been over that already. We all know what happened. It doesn't change the fact that Obama does not support illegal wiretapping, except when he supports it.)
Fixed that for you. The mods who modded down the second AC should be taken out and shot. Sarcasm notwithstanding his point was quite valid.
After a quick search it looks like Yaser Esam Hamdi was a US citizen while at Guantanamo.
If you'd bothered to do more than a "quick search" you would have learned that he wasn't kept in Gitmo once his citizenship was discovered. Never mind the fact that the GP said "you are aware that U.S. citizens are being held at Guantanamo", which sounds like present tense to me.....
We can hope with fingers crossed that one of the conservative scumbags retires or dies very soon.
Scumbags really depends on your point of view and the particular case in question. I can think of at least three cases off the top of my head where the so-called liberal justices were the scumbags:
Gonzales v. Raich: The Federal Government can arrest cancer patients for using cannabis even where such use is legal under State law. The liberals (joined by Scalia and Kennedy) all voted in favor of it. O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas opposed it.
Kelo v. City of New London: The State can seize your private property for the benefit of private (i.e: Wal-Mart) development. The Liberals (joined by Kennedy) didn't have any problems with this. Scalia, O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas all dissented.
District of Columbia v. Heller: The Liberals all dissented in this case, which held that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Apparently that's too much freedom for them.
Those are just the ones that I can think of off the top my head. Trust me when I say that the Liberal wing of the court is no better at protecting our rights.
Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited
To each their own I suppose but I would never want to see a similar situation arise in my country. I don't see how banning speech of any kind is compatible with freedom of speech.
But why is EVERYTHING he does some historic landmark?
Stop watching the cable news networks:) They need to fill airtime so I suspect you'll see everything from his swearing-in to his first use of a White House bathroom heralded as a "historic landmark"
Should we ever be cheerleaders for the success of failure of any President?
I dunno. It seemed to me like half of the country was rooting for the failure of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from the moment each one of them took office. I suppose this probably had a lot to do with the fact that Clinton never won a majority of the popular vote (in 92 he only got 43%) and neither did Bush the first time around (plus the Florida mess).
A friend of mine who is a staunch Republican said something to the affect of: "I wish it had gone the other way but I'm glad that the margin was as big as it was". For better or worse nobody can dispute that the majority of the American electorate and states wanted Obama as our next president.
Eh, depends on the boat or ship that you are on but that's a pretty valid point that I hadn't thought of. Still, you'll see more stars with the naked eye or a good set of binoculars than you will with most telescopes on land in light polluted regions.
Eh, I've been disillusioned with him ever since FISA but I'm still rooting for him in a way. I think most people are. I'll oppose him where I have to but our problems are too big to be rooting for the failure of our President. I think all the media coverage (/. included) has more to do with the hope that comes with any new administration. It'll take a few months for that to wear off and for us all to go back to being the cynical SOBs that we usually are;)
You wouldn't want to upset Galileo on this date...
When I was in Florence I actually got to go see his grave. It's located in the Basilica of Santa Croce. Michelangelo's grave is also located there. They are on opposite ends of the church within sight of each other.
Rumor has it that during one of the many floods that hit Florence the remains of each came up to the surface and they had to guess at who was who when they reburied them. I don't know if this actually true or just something they tell the tourists but I paid my respects to both graves.
I can't imagine how glorious things must have been a century ago.
Well if you have money take your telescope and get out to sea somewhere. There isn't a whole lot of light pollution in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic.
But anything over 15 characters is probably secure enough for most home users.
15 characters using the full set of letters/numbers/symbols on your keyboard works out to ~98 bits of entropy. That's probably sufficient. I usually use at least 20 characters (~131 bits) but that's probably just my paranoia. If you are worried about somebody breaking a password that secure then you have bigger problems than your neighbor using your wi-fi connection. In this case I hope you are paying your team of armed guards well and trust that they won't betray you;)
I question the wisdom of relying on a third party website to generate passwords for you. At least they are using ssl but how do you know they aren't keeping those passwords? How do you know they are generating them with real entropy?
Diceware is a better bet, IMHO. You can generate them offline and with a good set of dice you get real entropy. You can use the instructions on that webpage to generate totally random passwords or to generate passwords with words in them that are easy to remember but still pretty secure/random.
Because that will really scare the tank, aircraft, warship, satellite and reaper drone operating military of your goverment.
Yeah, when has a ragtag force armed mostly with rifles ever been able to cause grief for a modern military force......
but are many of you really niave enough as to think gun ownership has any effect on goverment behaviour?
*shrug*, I was mainly making a bad joke. I would posit a question though: Do you think that genocides/ethic cleansing campaigns like we've seen carried out in the Balkens or in Africa by ragtag militias really could have been carried out as easily if the oppressed population had been armed?
Think at the downside of that... no good medical assurances.. no serious unemployment money
I can think of a downside of what you've got now. "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
The EU may be expensive and inconvenient to some degree; the alternative is far more so.
What makes you think your only alternative is between another war and a giant stifling bureaucracy that pays lip service to individual freedoms and customs? A Federation is no guarantee of peace and the lack thereof is no guarantee of war. The lack of major wars since WW2 is probably owed more to nuclear weapons anyway -- they've made total war too destructive to contemplate.
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The American government and Constitution were founded on the idea that everyone has the same rights, whether they are citizens of the U.S. or not.
When has the Constitution ever been held to apply to prisoners of war? Do you really mean to tell me that all those German and Japanese POWs we captured could have petitioned for habeas corpus?
I realize that we specifically designed them as unlawful combatants instead of POWs but the point still stands. You are confusing domestic law enforcement with alien combatants captured on foreign battlefields while engaged in combat with US forces. Given the fact that none of them even followed the laws of war to begin with we would have been well within our rights to summarily execute them as soon as they were captured. Don't believe this? Open a history book and find out what happened to the Germans that were captured during the Battle of the Bugle while fighting in Allied uniforms.
Sorry, but we'll never see a constitutional convention again
Why not? If 2/3'rds of the states want one then the Constitution would seem to require it:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
(Please don't bring up the FISA bill. We've been over that already. We all know what happened. It doesn't change the fact that Obama does not support illegal wiretapping, except when he supports it.)
Fixed that for you. The mods who modded down the second AC should be taken out and shot. Sarcasm notwithstanding his point was quite valid.
After a quick search it looks like Yaser Esam Hamdi was a US citizen while at Guantanamo.
If you'd bothered to do more than a "quick search" you would have learned that he wasn't kept in Gitmo once his citizenship was discovered. Never mind the fact that the GP said "you are aware that U.S. citizens are being held at Guantanamo", which sounds like present tense to me.....
We can hope with fingers crossed that one of the conservative scumbags retires or dies very soon.
Scumbags really depends on your point of view and the particular case in question. I can think of at least three cases off the top of my head where the so-called liberal justices were the scumbags:
Gonzales v. Raich: The Federal Government can arrest cancer patients for using cannabis even where such use is legal under State law. The liberals (joined by Scalia and Kennedy) all voted in favor of it. O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas opposed it.
Kelo v. City of New London: The State can seize your private property for the benefit of private (i.e: Wal-Mart) development. The Liberals (joined by Kennedy) didn't have any problems with this. Scalia, O'Connor, Rehnquist and Thomas all dissented.
District of Columbia v. Heller: The Liberals all dissented in this case, which held that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Apparently that's too much freedom for them.
Those are just the ones that I can think of off the top my head. Trust me when I say that the Liberal wing of the court is no better at protecting our rights.
you are aware that U.S. citizens are being held at Guantanamo?
Citation?
Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited
To each their own I suppose but I would never want to see a similar situation arise in my country. I don't see how banning speech of any kind is compatible with freedom of speech.
But why is EVERYTHING he does some historic landmark?
Stop watching the cable news networks :) They need to fill airtime so I suspect you'll see everything from his swearing-in to his first use of a White House bathroom heralded as a "historic landmark"
Should we ever be cheerleaders for the success of failure of any President?
I dunno. It seemed to me like half of the country was rooting for the failure of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush from the moment each one of them took office. I suppose this probably had a lot to do with the fact that Clinton never won a majority of the popular vote (in 92 he only got 43%) and neither did Bush the first time around (plus the Florida mess).
A friend of mine who is a staunch Republican said something to the affect of: "I wish it had gone the other way but I'm glad that the margin was as big as it was". For better or worse nobody can dispute that the majority of the American electorate and states wanted Obama as our next president.
why are the cute ones always dumb?
Take comfort in Judge Judy's quote: Beauty fades, but dumb is forever.
The thing is you cannot have freedom of speech and censorship at the same time
It seems that many European countries have decided that this isn't the case.
Eh, depends on the boat or ship that you are on but that's a pretty valid point that I hadn't thought of. Still, you'll see more stars with the naked eye or a good set of binoculars than you will with most telescopes on land in light polluted regions.
every time obama wipes his arse?
Eh, I've been disillusioned with him ever since FISA but I'm still rooting for him in a way. I think most people are. I'll oppose him where I have to but our problems are too big to be rooting for the failure of our President. I think all the media coverage (/. included) has more to do with the hope that comes with any new administration. It'll take a few months for that to wear off and for us all to go back to being the cynical SOBs that we usually are ;)
He's also the first President with ears that large. At least we've finally broken the glass ceiling that kept Ross Perot out of the White House ;)
You wouldn't want to upset Galileo on this date...
When I was in Florence I actually got to go see his grave. It's located in the Basilica of Santa Croce. Michelangelo's grave is also located there. They are on opposite ends of the church within sight of each other.
Rumor has it that during one of the many floods that hit Florence the remains of each came up to the surface and they had to guess at who was who when they reburied them. I don't know if this actually true or just something they tell the tourists but I paid my respects to both graves.
I can't imagine how glorious things must have been a century ago.
Well if you have money take your telescope and get out to sea somewhere. There isn't a whole lot of light pollution in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic.
But anything over 15 characters is probably secure enough for most home users.
15 characters using the full set of letters/numbers/symbols on your keyboard works out to ~98 bits of entropy. That's probably sufficient. I usually use at least 20 characters (~131 bits) but that's probably just my paranoia. If you are worried about somebody breaking a password that secure then you have bigger problems than your neighbor using your wi-fi connection. In this case I hope you are paying your team of armed guards well and trust that they won't betray you ;)
Ricardo Montalban Dead At 88 [slashdot.org]
In his defense he probably thinks that it hasn't gotten sufficient coverage because we haven't seen two or three dupes yet ;)
Where do you get that strange idea?
Apparently the wink at the end of my remark wasn't sufficient indication that I was being a wiseass. Next time I'll use the <sarcasm> tags......
I question the wisdom of relying on a third party website to generate passwords for you. At least they are using ssl but how do you know they aren't keeping those passwords? How do you know they are generating them with real entropy?
Diceware is a better bet, IMHO. You can generate them offline and with a good set of dice you get real entropy. You can use the instructions on that webpage to generate totally random passwords or to generate passwords with words in them that are easy to remember but still pretty secure/random.
Because that will really scare the tank, aircraft, warship, satellite and reaper drone operating military of your goverment.
Yeah, when has a ragtag force armed mostly with rifles ever been able to cause grief for a modern military force......
but are many of you really niave enough as to think gun ownership has any effect on goverment behaviour?
*shrug*, I was mainly making a bad joke. I would posit a question though: Do you think that genocides/ethic cleansing campaigns like we've seen carried out in the Balkens or in Africa by ragtag militias really could have been carried out as easily if the oppressed population had been armed?
It's usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
Think at the downside of that... no good medical assurances.. no serious unemployment money
I can think of a downside of what you've got now. "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
Given it takes around 30% and never more than 50% to get voted in candidates only need to convince the dumpiest 30% to 50% of voters.
Starting with the ones that can't spell the word dumbest ;)
The EU may be expensive and inconvenient to some degree; the alternative is far more so.
What makes you think your only alternative is between another war and a giant stifling bureaucracy that pays lip service to individual freedoms and customs? A Federation is no guarantee of peace and the lack thereof is no guarantee of war. The lack of major wars since WW2 is probably owed more to nuclear weapons anyway -- they've made total war too destructive to contemplate.