Another is for all government interaction to be done in some electronic fashion with the screen displaying whatever language the user selects, probably up to and including Klingon.
If Klingon culture comes to voting, can I challenge the winner to a fight to the death if I don't approve of his policies? I'll wager that neither BHO or WMR have experience handling a Bat'leth.
I already listed some of the reasons why. In no particular order:
1) It will undermine the NPT.
2) It will ignite a regional arms race with Iran's Sunni neighbors, encouraging them to seek their own nuclear deterrent.
3) Israel will have to publicly declare her nuclear arsenal, which will further undermine the NPT, and make it that much more likely that the Sunni states pursue nuclear arms of their own.
4) The destabilization of the Middle East will inflate oil prices, which will encourage further Great Power (the EU, the US, China, Japan, India) meddling in the region, with unpredictable consequences.
5) Europe, Russia, India, and China will be forced to pursue missile defense technology, which has the potential of igniting a nuclear arms race that would put the Cold War to shame.
It's not "world ending" but nothing good can come of it. There is a reason why the entire civilized world is united behind economic and diplomatic sanctions. Russia and China watered them down more than the West wanted, but they still supported them. What does that tell you?
It's a complex package, I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I know it does more than "simply takes the current system and mandates that everyone participate in it."
Well, to pick one of my many pet peeves with the legislation, they imposed excise taxes on medical devices, which covers everything from pacemakers to hearing aids to contact lenses. How exactly are new taxes on medical products going to bring down costs? Why should a pacemaker be taxed at all? It's not exactly a luxury item.
And the mandate could lower healthcare costs as well. People skipping out on their bill, not getting preventative care, or having to deal with collections agencies, these are things which could be reduced or eliminated with the mandate.
Except they won't be. For starters, the legislation specifically denies the IRS any enforcement power whatsoever. You can simply refuse to pay the penalty and the most they can do is send you a strongly worded letter. They can't put liens on your property, haul you into court, audit you, or use any of the other enforcement mechanisms at their disposal. More to the point, it's cheaper to pay the penalty than it is to carry health insurance. With guaranteed issue why bother having insurance at all, until you need it? An analogy here would be if you had the ability to buy flood insurance as the upstream levee failed, or the ability to purchase homeowners insurance after the house caught on fire.
Notwithstanding all of the above, the costs imposed on the medical system by deadbeats are vastly overstated, and even at that the mandate won't do much to address them. Deadbeats play a small part in the inflation of healthcare costs, bigger issues not addressed by the ACA include the ever increasing cost of malpractice insurance, an overly burdensome regulatory system, a broken patent system, a shortage of primary care providers, and the incomprehensible nightmare that is medical billing. The latter is something that nobody outside of the industry ever talks about, as a overly simple analogy, imagine the PITA it would be to go through your car insurance carrier to pay for oil changes and wiper blades.
This is one of the best articles I've ever read about our healthcare system. It does not push a left or right wing agenda. It outlines issues with the system that both the Republicans and Democrats refuse to talk about. Give it a read, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about it.
I'm sorry that you are completely blind to the consequences of a nuclear armed Iran. This isn't some neo-con fantasy, virtually the entire world is opposed to the concept of a nuclear armed Iran. The Europeans don't want it -- they are already within range of Iranian missiles. The Chinese and Japanese don't want it -- anything that disrupts the flow of Middle Eastern oil/raises prices will hurt their economies. The prospect of the NPT going down in flames is something that concerns all civilized nations, even those without economic interests in the Middle East.
The only real question at this point is will the Mullahs back down? If they don't, the best they can hope for is to become the North Korea of the Middle East. They'll be completely isolated both economically and diplomatically. War may still come, though I earnestly hope that it doesn't get to that point.
There is every chance that Iran will upset the balance of power in the Middle East, which is what the ageing cold warriors still battling Russia and now China in their own minds truly fear.
You don't have to be an "aging cold warrior" to fear the geopolitical consequences of a nuclear armed Iran. One of the biggest fears is that her Sunni neighbors would feel compelled to obtain their own nuclear deterrent. The resulting arms race would further destabilize the region, undermine the NPT, and increase the odds of a nuclear device falling into the hands of non-state actors.
Of course this means leaving a power vacuum for Russia or China to step into, according to some, so the US will never allow it.
China actually likes the status quo, she spends none of her own blood and treasure, yet has full access to the oil she needs to grow her economy. China, Japan, and the EU all rely on Middle Eastern oil to fuel their economies. The power vacuum would be filled by all three of the aforementioned superpowers, with unpredictable geopolitical consequences. A particularly scary scenario is Japan renouncing Article 9 in order to deploy forces to the Middle East. Such a move would inflame passions in China (and other Asian countries), further destabilize an already tenuous relationship between two economic superpowers, and ignite an arms race that ends with a nuclear-armed Japan. India is in there too, they already have nuclear weapons, and a billion people, so that's one hell of a geopolitical wild card to consider.
For the time being at least, the United States remaining engaged in the Middle East is the least lousy of the available options. As an American, I'm not particularly fond of my tax dollars subsidizing the defense of China's oil, but hey, it sure beats the hell out of WW3.
As I said, it's within the margin of error, which is generally 3 to 5 points, depending on the poll. I originally said, "MI may well prove to be competitive." It's certainly more competitive than BHO having a 97+% chance of victory. Even Intrade (where people have to put up real money, would Mr. Silver be willing to do that?) doesn't give him those kinds of odds.
That said, I think the government should build and Run Nuclear power plants.
I'd might willing to get behind the notion of turning it over to the US Navy; decades of reactor operation without any significant radioactive releases or (nuclear related) accidents. Not so sure that we want to see it turned over a civilian bureaucracy though.
To quote my wife, "I really wish Hillary had won, she a great job the last time she was running the country."
Of course, there is a reason why everybody is waxing nostalgically for him. Our wars looked like video games, with zero American casualties, we had a growing economy, and the reality TV show that is Washington DC was incredibly entertaining to say the least. Today the economy sucks, we've lost thousands of troops, and the ratings for Washington DC are in the toilet.
I'd give him credit for making an honest effort and expending political capital to do so, I don't fault him for the end result being less than ideal
I fault him for spending political capital on it. By his own admission, in the 2nd debate against McCain, education and energy independence were more important issues than healthcare. Spending political capital on either of those would have laid a better foundation for the next generation. A bipartisan consensus would have been easier to find on those issues, so he might have been able to tackle both of them, while having political capital left over to tackle other pressing issues (i.e., entitlement reforms and the deficit) that are far more important to our long term success than healthcare.
The ACA doesn't live up to its billing anyway. It's called the Affordable Care Act, but it doesn't do a damn thing to rein in costs. Some would argue that the coverage mandates and guaranteed issue requirement will further increase costs. This is the issue that most needed to be addressed. Guaranteed issue is nice, but in the long term it won't accomplish anything if healthcare is priced further out of reach. Here's a metric for you: In 1960 we spent <3% of GDP on healthcare, and we had a life expectancy at birth of 69. Today we spend close to 20% of GDP, with a life expectancy at birth of 77. Are eight extra years worth seven times as much money? More to the point, can you even credit the increase to the extra spending, or is it owed more to lifestyle changes, the most obvious of which would be the fact that more than half of the population smoked in 1960.
Our healthcare system needs serious structural reforms but the ACA simply takes the current system and mandates that everybody participate in it. Worse, it has further politicized healthcare. Now you can look forward to your healthcare changing every two/four/six years with the whims of the Federal electorate. This is a bad thing, regardless of which side of the aisle you call home.
Michigan may well prove to be competitive, but yes, I do think there's something seriously wrong when a candidate can't convince the voters of his own state that he's worthy of being President.
The election in New Mexico was decided by less than 400 votes, but nobody gave a shit about it. Why is that? It's called math.
Take Al Gore's 267 electoral votes and add Tennessee's 11 to the total. Guess what? Florida becomes irrelevant, as does New Mexico. Al Gore stops caring about "all the votes" (which really meant all the votes in Democratic strongholds, because he never asked for a statewide recount) and is sworn into office the following January.
Actually, I supported and voted for Al Gore, but don't let that inconvenient truth get in the way of your stereotyping.:)
The fact is, Al Gore ran one of the worst campaigns of the 20th century. Winning his own state, or even New Hampshire, would have rendered FL moot. You can cry "election abuse" all you want, but it's worth noting that charge can easily be leveled in the opposite direction. The sad truth is that we'll never know who might have won Florida absent outside interference. How many voters in the panhandle (a GOP leaning area) declined to vote after the media incorrectly called the election while the panhandle polls were still open? How many voters were confused by the butterfly ballot? These questions can never be completely answered.
Nor can "election abuse" explain away the series of stupid decisions made by Al Gore, like cynically seeking recounts only in Democratic strongholds, rather than the entire state. Distancing himself from a popular outgoing President was a huge mistake that was apparent even then, and doubly so in hindsight. His debate performances were atrocious. The guy didn't deserve to be President, and if the GOP had nominated someone less divisive than GWB the election would have been a rout.
Elections are run by the States, not the Feds -- except in D.C. and other Federal areas.
Yes and no. Article I, Section 5: Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members
Congress does have some power to regulate Federal Elections. In the extreme example they could simply refuse to recognize an obviously corrupt election by refusing to seat the winner of said election. The US Senate was going to refuse to sit Roland Burris, though they backpedaled for reasons unknown.
SCOTUS case law has held that treaties do not trump the US Constitution. The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution says:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
It's simple enough to understand when you parse it out:
The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
Federal laws and treaties made under the authority of the Constitution have supremacy over state laws and state constitutions.
State judges are bound to respect the aforementioned supremacy.
The bolded part is particularly relevant and is the origin of the case law that says treaties can't trump the Constitution. The US Senate could not ratify a treaty that changed the structure of the Federal Government, or negated the 1st or 2nd amendments. Such things could only be done via the amendment process, which requires the permission of 3/4th of the States, not simply a super-majority in the US Senate.
This is all moot though, because an earlier poster quoted the OSCE treaty, which contains a clause that says their monitoring efforts have to comply with local law. In New York State (where I was a poll worker for nine years) they would have to register themselves as poll-watchers with the local Board of Elections, otherwise we'd be well within our rights to kick them out. Poll-watchers have to be affiliated with a political candidate and/or party, and there are limits to how many can be present in each polling place.
Of course, in practice we wouldn't care, provided they didn't try to influence voters or disrupt our operations. I had the media in my polling place on multiple occasions, without poll watching certificates, and I never did anything about it because they stayed out of the way and didn't harass my voters. Usually they were there to shoot background footage for stories about the election or the like.
Maybe Gore should have won his own state, thus rendering Florida and any alleged shenanigans there irrelevant. If you can't convince the voters who know you best to send you to the White House.....
But we're talking about a presidential elections, the future of the national government rests on this.
Then the UN should be sending their observers to Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, or Colorado. Texas is not going to determine the outcome of this race.
Direct election of the president would no more "undermine the very theory" of the U.S. any more than the direct election of Senators did
The direct election of US Senators has undermined the Republic. The Federal Government routinely dictates terms to the States, on issues ranging from the drinking age to school lunches. "Do what we want or we'll cut billions of dollars of highway/education/medicaid funding from you." This would not happen if half of the US Congress was directly accountable to their State Legislature.
There is no compelling reason, in my mind, to ditch the electoral college. A small part of me is rooting for BHO to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, which is a plausible scenario if the polls are to be believed. He's not my preferred candidate but think of how amusing it would be to see the role reversal from 2000.
What kind of backwards system allows only voters in the small number of "swing states" to have a vote that actually ends up mattering in deciding you president.
The United States is a Republic, a collection of 50 individual and fully sovereign states. Each state is entitled to a number of votes in the electoral collage, roughly based on their population. You may think it would be preferable to base the election of POTUS on the popular vote alone, but that would ultimately undermine the very theory of the United States. Do you also regard it as "backwards" that Pennsylvania (population: 12.7 million) has the same number of US Senators as Vermont (population: 630k)?
Why limit it to an educational facility? These guys have a plan to make a functional spacecraft out of the basic design, with technology that's available today, albeit never used on this scale before. It's quite the interesting read, and I believe it's been mentioned on/. before.
The solution is to give up the right to nuke anybody, so everyone can live with the threat of having ones home converted into a blue ashtray eliminated.
Excellent idea, then we can go back to the good old days of industrialized total warfare! By taking away nuclear weapons you remove the only thing that places limitations on the willingness of nations to use force to meet their political objections. What do you purpose to replace MAD with? History tells us that political/international institutions won't preclude war, recall the League of Nations. Nor will treaties that purport to limit the allowable conduct during war remain effective once the balloon goes up. As a random example, unrestricted submarine warfare was outlawed after WW1, so naturally both sides employed it to maximum effect during WW2.
Mutually assured destruction is the only thing that will prevent war, or at the very least manage it to the extent that it doesn't turn into total warfare. The proxy wars of the Cold War era weren't a lot of fun, but they beat the hell out of out of the alternative of total war between east and west.
*shrug*, I base my viewpoint on the prerogative of one to control what happens with their body, I make no comment on the wisdom or lack thereof of our child support system.
Of course, there are two bulletproof methods of ensuring that one doesn't father unwanted children. Failing that, there is a nearly perfect method of accomplishing the same. I guess it comes down to risk vs. reward; one should to weigh the value of an intravaginal ejaculation against the possibility of an 18 year commitment to rear a child.
He only resigned when he was convicted for corruption
Actually, he was defeated at the polls, he never resigned. His "trial" was a sham, the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense that may well have resulted in an acquittal or outright dismissal of the indictments against him. The conviction was ultimately thrown out on this basis, and the process that lead to it was corrupt enough to convince Eric Holder (a Democrat) not to pursue a retrial.
Now, I don't happen to have liked the guy very much, nor did I care for his political positions, but if you're going to badmouth him about a "conviction" for corruption it's only fair to tell the whole story.
Incidentally, if Sen. Stevens had been given a fair shake from the get-go, it's probable that he would have been acquitted, after which he almost certainly would have been re-elected. Had that happened the ACA (e.g., Obamacare) would never have passed the US Senate and we'd be looking at an entirely different political landscape. One might even argue a better landscape for President Obama, given the divisiveness of the ACA, and the lost political capital that could have been spent on more pressing matters.
The other group says if an individual hasn't been seen yet, it doesn't exist, and thus executing said individual is fine and not murder.
This is something that a lot of pro-choicers have to tell themselves so they feel better about themselves. By any reasonable definition a fetus is a human being, all of the arguments to the contrary to hold water, IMHO. "It's just a collection of cells!", yeah, well, so are you. "It doesn't even have a brain yet!", well, neither does someone in a persistent vegetative state, but it's still considered murder to put a bullet in their head.
Now I happen to be pro-choice, I believe that the issue is one of balancing the rights of the Mother vs. the rights of the unborn child. I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death? Of course not, my right to control my body is paramount. Likewise, I don't believe we have the right to tell a woman that she MUST carry a baby to term.
One can be pro-choice without rationizing their position with moral hair-splitting about the fetus not being a person.
It might interest you to know that as a foreigner, on foreign soil, he is not rightfully bound by US law.
You don't have to be on American soil to come under the jurisdiction of the United States Government. Mail and wire fraud laws apply whenever you use an American telecommunications system and/or common carrier to commit a criminal act.
It's all a moot point though. There is no ongoing investigation of Mr. Assange in the United States, nor has a Grand Jury handed down any indictments against him. If enough evidence existed for a US Attorney to obtain such indictments it would have already happened and he would be fighting extradition to the United States rather than Sweden. He's just a canny enough PR operator to know that "I'm afraid of what the scary Americans will do to me!" sounds better than "I couldn't keep it zipped and my penis may have broken Swedish law!"
It's a mystery to me why people even care about this egomaniac. Many of the people who worked alongside him have nothing but bad things to say about him. His vendetta against the United States distracted Wikileaks from its original mission to assist corporate whistle-blowers and those living under oppressive regimes.
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Another is for all government interaction to be done in some electronic fashion with the screen displaying whatever language the user selects, probably up to and including Klingon.
If Klingon culture comes to voting, can I challenge the winner to a fight to the death if I don't approve of his policies? I'll wager that neither BHO or WMR have experience handling a Bat'leth.
I already listed some of the reasons why. In no particular order:
1) It will undermine the NPT.
2) It will ignite a regional arms race with Iran's Sunni neighbors, encouraging them to seek their own nuclear deterrent.
3) Israel will have to publicly declare her nuclear arsenal, which will further undermine the NPT, and make it that much more likely that the Sunni states pursue nuclear arms of their own.
4) The destabilization of the Middle East will inflate oil prices, which will encourage further Great Power (the EU, the US, China, Japan, India) meddling in the region, with unpredictable consequences.
5) Europe, Russia, India, and China will be forced to pursue missile defense technology, which has the potential of igniting a nuclear arms race that would put the Cold War to shame.
It's not "world ending" but nothing good can come of it. There is a reason why the entire civilized world is united behind economic and diplomatic sanctions. Russia and China watered them down more than the West wanted, but they still supported them. What does that tell you?
It's a complex package, I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I know it does more than "simply takes the current system and mandates that everyone participate in it."
Well, to pick one of my many pet peeves with the legislation, they imposed excise taxes on medical devices, which covers everything from pacemakers to hearing aids to contact lenses. How exactly are new taxes on medical products going to bring down costs? Why should a pacemaker be taxed at all? It's not exactly a luxury item.
And the mandate could lower healthcare costs as well. People skipping out on their bill, not getting preventative care, or having to deal with collections agencies, these are things which could be reduced or eliminated with the mandate.
Except they won't be. For starters, the legislation specifically denies the IRS any enforcement power whatsoever. You can simply refuse to pay the penalty and the most they can do is send you a strongly worded letter. They can't put liens on your property, haul you into court, audit you, or use any of the other enforcement mechanisms at their disposal. More to the point, it's cheaper to pay the penalty than it is to carry health insurance. With guaranteed issue why bother having insurance at all, until you need it? An analogy here would be if you had the ability to buy flood insurance as the upstream levee failed, or the ability to purchase homeowners insurance after the house caught on fire.
Notwithstanding all of the above, the costs imposed on the medical system by deadbeats are vastly overstated, and even at that the mandate won't do much to address them. Deadbeats play a small part in the inflation of healthcare costs, bigger issues not addressed by the ACA include the ever increasing cost of malpractice insurance, an overly burdensome regulatory system, a broken patent system, a shortage of primary care providers, and the incomprehensible nightmare that is medical billing. The latter is something that nobody outside of the industry ever talks about, as a overly simple analogy, imagine the PITA it would be to go through your car insurance carrier to pay for oil changes and wiper blades.
This is one of the best articles I've ever read about our healthcare system. It does not push a left or right wing agenda. It outlines issues with the system that both the Republicans and Democrats refuse to talk about. Give it a read, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about it.
I'm sorry that you are completely blind to the consequences of a nuclear armed Iran. This isn't some neo-con fantasy, virtually the entire world is opposed to the concept of a nuclear armed Iran. The Europeans don't want it -- they are already within range of Iranian missiles. The Chinese and Japanese don't want it -- anything that disrupts the flow of Middle Eastern oil/raises prices will hurt their economies. The prospect of the NPT going down in flames is something that concerns all civilized nations, even those without economic interests in the Middle East.
The only real question at this point is will the Mullahs back down? If they don't, the best they can hope for is to become the North Korea of the Middle East. They'll be completely isolated both economically and diplomatically. War may still come, though I earnestly hope that it doesn't get to that point.
There is every chance that Iran will upset the balance of power in the Middle East, which is what the ageing cold warriors still battling Russia and now China in their own minds truly fear.
You don't have to be an "aging cold warrior" to fear the geopolitical consequences of a nuclear armed Iran. One of the biggest fears is that her Sunni neighbors would feel compelled to obtain their own nuclear deterrent. The resulting arms race would further destabilize the region, undermine the NPT, and increase the odds of a nuclear device falling into the hands of non-state actors.
Of course this means leaving a power vacuum for Russia or China to step into, according to some, so the US will never allow it.
China actually likes the status quo, she spends none of her own blood and treasure, yet has full access to the oil she needs to grow her economy. China, Japan, and the EU all rely on Middle Eastern oil to fuel their economies. The power vacuum would be filled by all three of the aforementioned superpowers, with unpredictable geopolitical consequences. A particularly scary scenario is Japan renouncing Article 9 in order to deploy forces to the Middle East. Such a move would inflame passions in China (and other Asian countries), further destabilize an already tenuous relationship between two economic superpowers, and ignite an arms race that ends with a nuclear-armed Japan. India is in there too, they already have nuclear weapons, and a billion people, so that's one hell of a geopolitical wild card to consider.
For the time being at least, the United States remaining engaged in the Middle East is the least lousy of the available options. As an American, I'm not particularly fond of my tax dollars subsidizing the defense of China's oil, but hey, it sure beats the hell out of WW3.
As I said, it's within the margin of error, which is generally 3 to 5 points, depending on the poll. I originally said, "MI may well prove to be competitive." It's certainly more competitive than BHO having a 97+% chance of victory. Even Intrade (where people have to put up real money, would Mr. Silver be willing to do that?) doesn't give him those kinds of odds.
That said, I think the government should build and Run Nuclear power plants.
I'd might willing to get behind the notion of turning it over to the US Navy; decades of reactor operation without any significant radioactive releases or (nuclear related) accidents. Not so sure that we want to see it turned over a civilian bureaucracy though.
To quote my wife, "I really wish Hillary had won, she a great job the last time she was running the country."
Of course, there is a reason why everybody is waxing nostalgically for him. Our wars looked like video games, with zero American casualties, we had a growing economy, and the reality TV show that is Washington DC was incredibly entertaining to say the least. Today the economy sucks, we've lost thousands of troops, and the ratings for Washington DC are in the toilet.
I'd give him credit for making an honest effort and expending political capital to do so, I don't fault him for the end result being less than ideal
I fault him for spending political capital on it. By his own admission, in the 2nd debate against McCain, education and energy independence were more important issues than healthcare. Spending political capital on either of those would have laid a better foundation for the next generation. A bipartisan consensus would have been easier to find on those issues, so he might have been able to tackle both of them, while having political capital left over to tackle other pressing issues (i.e., entitlement reforms and the deficit) that are far more important to our long term success than healthcare.
The ACA doesn't live up to its billing anyway. It's called the Affordable Care Act, but it doesn't do a damn thing to rein in costs. Some would argue that the coverage mandates and guaranteed issue requirement will further increase costs. This is the issue that most needed to be addressed. Guaranteed issue is nice, but in the long term it won't accomplish anything if healthcare is priced further out of reach. Here's a metric for you: In 1960 we spent <3% of GDP on healthcare, and we had a life expectancy at birth of 69. Today we spend close to 20% of GDP, with a life expectancy at birth of 77. Are eight extra years worth seven times as much money? More to the point, can you even credit the increase to the extra spending, or is it owed more to lifestyle changes, the most obvious of which would be the fact that more than half of the population smoked in 1960.
Our healthcare system needs serious structural reforms but the ACA simply takes the current system and mandates that everybody participate in it. Worse, it has further politicized healthcare. Now you can look forward to your healthcare changing every two/four/six years with the whims of the Federal electorate. This is a bad thing, regardless of which side of the aisle you call home.
RCP has MI within the margin of error on most polls. Nate Silver has admitted his own bias towards Obama, so I'm not inclined to take him seriously.
Michigan may well prove to be competitive, but yes, I do think there's something seriously wrong when a candidate can't convince the voters of his own state that he's worthy of being President.
The election in New Mexico was decided by less than 400 votes, but nobody gave a shit about it. Why is that? It's called math.
Take Al Gore's 267 electoral votes and add Tennessee's 11 to the total. Guess what? Florida becomes irrelevant, as does New Mexico. Al Gore stops caring about "all the votes" (which really meant all the votes in Democratic strongholds, because he never asked for a statewide recount) and is sworn into office the following January.
Actually, I supported and voted for Al Gore, but don't let that inconvenient truth get in the way of your stereotyping. :)
The fact is, Al Gore ran one of the worst campaigns of the 20th century. Winning his own state, or even New Hampshire, would have rendered FL moot. You can cry "election abuse" all you want, but it's worth noting that charge can easily be leveled in the opposite direction. The sad truth is that we'll never know who might have won Florida absent outside interference. How many voters in the panhandle (a GOP leaning area) declined to vote after the media incorrectly called the election while the panhandle polls were still open? How many voters were confused by the butterfly ballot? These questions can never be completely answered.
Nor can "election abuse" explain away the series of stupid decisions made by Al Gore, like cynically seeking recounts only in Democratic strongholds, rather than the entire state. Distancing himself from a popular outgoing President was a huge mistake that was apparent even then, and doubly so in hindsight. His debate performances were atrocious. The guy didn't deserve to be President, and if the GOP had nominated someone less divisive than GWB the election would have been a rout.
Elections are run by the States, not the Feds -- except in D.C. and other Federal areas.
Yes and no. Article I, Section 5: Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members
Congress does have some power to regulate Federal Elections. In the extreme example they could simply refuse to recognize an obviously corrupt election by refusing to seat the winner of said election. The US Senate was going to refuse to sit Roland Burris, though they backpedaled for reasons unknown.
SCOTUS case law has held that treaties do not trump the US Constitution. The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution says:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
It's simple enough to understand when you parse it out:
The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
Federal laws and treaties made under the authority of the Constitution have supremacy over state laws and state constitutions.
State judges are bound to respect the aforementioned supremacy.
The bolded part is particularly relevant and is the origin of the case law that says treaties can't trump the Constitution. The US Senate could not ratify a treaty that changed the structure of the Federal Government, or negated the 1st or 2nd amendments. Such things could only be done via the amendment process, which requires the permission of 3/4th of the States, not simply a super-majority in the US Senate.
This is all moot though, because an earlier poster quoted the OSCE treaty, which contains a clause that says their monitoring efforts have to comply with local law. In New York State (where I was a poll worker for nine years) they would have to register themselves as poll-watchers with the local Board of Elections, otherwise we'd be well within our rights to kick them out. Poll-watchers have to be affiliated with a political candidate and/or party, and there are limits to how many can be present in each polling place.
Of course, in practice we wouldn't care, provided they didn't try to influence voters or disrupt our operations. I had the media in my polling place on multiple occasions, without poll watching certificates, and I never did anything about it because they stayed out of the way and didn't harass my voters. Usually they were there to shoot background footage for stories about the election or the like.
Maybe Gore should have won his own state, thus rendering Florida and any alleged shenanigans there irrelevant. If you can't convince the voters who know you best to send you to the White House.....
But we're talking about a presidential elections, the future of the national government rests on this.
Then the UN should be sending their observers to Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, or Colorado. Texas is not going to determine the outcome of this race.
Direct election of the president would no more "undermine the very theory" of the U.S. any more than the direct election of Senators did
The direct election of US Senators has undermined the Republic. The Federal Government routinely dictates terms to the States, on issues ranging from the drinking age to school lunches. "Do what we want or we'll cut billions of dollars of highway/education/medicaid funding from you." This would not happen if half of the US Congress was directly accountable to their State Legislature.
There is no compelling reason, in my mind, to ditch the electoral college. A small part of me is rooting for BHO to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote, which is a plausible scenario if the polls are to be believed. He's not my preferred candidate but think of how amusing it would be to see the role reversal from 2000.
What kind of backwards system allows only voters in the small number of "swing states" to have a vote that actually ends up mattering in deciding you president.
The United States is a Republic, a collection of 50 individual and fully sovereign states. Each state is entitled to a number of votes in the electoral collage, roughly based on their population. You may think it would be preferable to base the election of POTUS on the popular vote alone, but that would ultimately undermine the very theory of the United States. Do you also regard it as "backwards" that Pennsylvania (population: 12.7 million) has the same number of US Senators as Vermont (population: 630k)?
Why limit it to an educational facility? These guys have a plan to make a functional spacecraft out of the basic design, with technology that's available today, albeit never used on this scale before. It's quite the interesting read, and I believe it's been mentioned on /. before.
The solution is to give up the right to nuke anybody, so everyone can live with the threat of having ones home converted into a blue ashtray eliminated.
Excellent idea, then we can go back to the good old days of industrialized total warfare! By taking away nuclear weapons you remove the only thing that places limitations on the willingness of nations to use force to meet their political objections. What do you purpose to replace MAD with? History tells us that political/international institutions won't preclude war, recall the League of Nations. Nor will treaties that purport to limit the allowable conduct during war remain effective once the balloon goes up. As a random example, unrestricted submarine warfare was outlawed after WW1, so naturally both sides employed it to maximum effect during WW2.
Mutually assured destruction is the only thing that will prevent war, or at the very least manage it to the extent that it doesn't turn into total warfare. The proxy wars of the Cold War era weren't a lot of fun, but they beat the hell out of out of the alternative of total war between east and west.
*shrug*, I base my viewpoint on the prerogative of one to control what happens with their body, I make no comment on the wisdom or lack thereof of our child support system.
Of course, there are two bulletproof methods of ensuring that one doesn't father unwanted children. Failing that, there is a nearly perfect method of accomplishing the same. I guess it comes down to risk vs. reward; one should to weigh the value of an intravaginal ejaculation against the possibility of an 18 year commitment to rear a child.
He only resigned when he was convicted for corruption
Actually, he was defeated at the polls, he never resigned. His "trial" was a sham, the prosecution withheld evidence from the defense that may well have resulted in an acquittal or outright dismissal of the indictments against him. The conviction was ultimately thrown out on this basis, and the process that lead to it was corrupt enough to convince Eric Holder (a Democrat) not to pursue a retrial.
Now, I don't happen to have liked the guy very much, nor did I care for his political positions, but if you're going to badmouth him about a "conviction" for corruption it's only fair to tell the whole story.
Incidentally, if Sen. Stevens had been given a fair shake from the get-go, it's probable that he would have been acquitted, after which he almost certainly would have been re-elected. Had that happened the ACA (e.g., Obamacare) would never have passed the US Senate and we'd be looking at an entirely different political landscape. One might even argue a better landscape for President Obama, given the divisiveness of the ACA, and the lost political capital that could have been spent on more pressing matters.
The other group says if an individual hasn't been seen yet, it doesn't exist, and thus executing said individual is fine and not murder.
This is something that a lot of pro-choicers have to tell themselves so they feel better about themselves. By any reasonable definition a fetus is a human being, all of the arguments to the contrary to hold water, IMHO. "It's just a collection of cells!", yeah, well, so are you. "It doesn't even have a brain yet!", well, neither does someone in a persistent vegetative state, but it's still considered murder to put a bullet in their head.
Now I happen to be pro-choice, I believe that the issue is one of balancing the rights of the Mother vs. the rights of the unborn child. I don't believe that soceity has a right to tell one person that they MUST do something to keep another person alive. The analogy that I like to make is organ donation -- can I be compelled to give you a kidney, blood, or bone marrow if I'm the only compatible donor and the alternative is your death? Of course not, my right to control my body is paramount. Likewise, I don't believe we have the right to tell a woman that she MUST carry a baby to term.
One can be pro-choice without rationizing their position with moral hair-splitting about the fetus not being a person.
It might interest you to know that as a foreigner, on foreign soil, he is not rightfully bound by US law.
You don't have to be on American soil to come under the jurisdiction of the United States Government. Mail and wire fraud laws apply whenever you use an American telecommunications system and/or common carrier to commit a criminal act.
It's all a moot point though. There is no ongoing investigation of Mr. Assange in the United States, nor has a Grand Jury handed down any indictments against him. If enough evidence existed for a US Attorney to obtain such indictments it would have already happened and he would be fighting extradition to the United States rather than Sweden. He's just a canny enough PR operator to know that "I'm afraid of what the scary Americans will do to me!" sounds better than "I couldn't keep it zipped and my penis may have broken Swedish law!"
It's a mystery to me why people even care about this egomaniac. Many of the people who worked alongside him have nothing but bad things to say about him. His vendetta against the United States distracted Wikileaks from its original mission to assist corporate whistle-blowers and those living under oppressive regimes.