Yahoo! is making a business decision based on a perceived risk that if they do not capitulate to the whims of fundamentalist Muslims, they will invite threats to their business and employees.
I doubt it. Yahoo probably started banning terms like "osama", "binladen", "raghead", and "Allah" shortly after 9/11 when abuses of those terms skyrocketed. Although not many people are shedding tears over the loss of the term "raghead", I don't think that even Islamic fundamentalists are pleased that "Allah" has become a casualty of Yahoo's screen name policy. It's just a brute-force (and lame) attempt to curb a trend in abusive screen names.
I seriously doubt that terrorist organizations consider the Yahoo screen name issue a victory. After a full day of sending lackeys out to blow themselves up, what Islamic terrorist doesn't want to kick back on Yahoo and shoot the breeze with AllahIsGreat and ILoveAllah? Now they'll have to switch to MSN.
If Yahoo were to ban the use of "Jesus" in screen names then you'd see some outrage from those "kooky right wing christians". (It's a war on Jesus! We're all being persecuted!) People like you would blame it on western media bowing to Islamic extremism.
If the policeman's wife was in police custody when she was murdered by her husband, then of course the Chief of Police should take responsibility. Allowing that kind of situation to exist is a serious failure of leadership.
I suppose you think that leaders should all just assume that nothing bad could ever happen, right?
And if you elect people who's only notable vision is opposition to George Bush, you're going to have lots of failures.
Fail how? The belief that Democrats are automatically going to fail in some way seems to be an article of faith with no basis in reality. If Bush's policies are leading to disaster, then vote for those who would avert the disaster. Simple.
The problem with Republicans is their party platform has become "we can spend just as much as Democrats."
You don't care what they're spending the money on? You don't care how they've been treating the constitution and your rights? You have no moral or ethical requirements of your government? You're not bothered by corruption at the highest levels? You're not affected by failed Bush policies?
I can't imagine putting up with that much crap from my government. You seem to be letting them walk all over you. For your own sake, make them stop!
Guantanamo Bay is a playground compared to most U.S. (and European) prisons.
Our crappy criminal justice system is pretty much irrelevant, as it does attempt to (imperfectly) administer justice. Detention centers like Guantanamo Bay are used at the president's pleasure for any detention, legal or not.
And I seriously doubt that perverted sex games/abuse were ever endorsed in any government paper, anywhere.
Actually, the current attorney general has on several occasions defended the practice of prisoner torture. If what happened was illegal, then responsibility lies at the highest levels.
The notion that the vice president will be prosecuted for this is a childish fantasy.
I don't think it's childish to demand that crimes be punished, but I agree that it's quite unlikely that an executive branch with as much power as this one will ever be held truly accountable for its actions.
I think the strictly accurate term is "would-be dictator". While not technically a dictator yet, the would-be dictator actively seeks to expand his powers and eventually impose his will on a population.
The Democrats did not create the current mess that is national politics, nor have they ever created a mess quite this bad. I believe in holding people accountable for their own failures, not for the failures of others or potential failures at some point in the future.
There is no excuse for this kind of crap in the Republican party, and the Democrats are the only ones who can stand up to them and give them what they deserve.
Please cite the evidence of genetic gender differences that is being ignored. Alternatively, list the legal restrictions placed on gender studies. Find a single instance of science actually being twarted on this issue.
Throughout history there have been learned people - philosophers, theologians, scientists - who have expressed belief in creationism and have sought to prove it. These weren't just a pack of zealots repeating the same dogma ad infinitum; these were serious intellectuals who passionately believed in their religion but also recognized the importance of valid logic and scientific rigor. Even so, no alternative to evolution has emerged.
Besides, if creationists want to refine their belief then they are perfectly free to do so with the abundance of fossil evidence already available. If they'd like to propose an experiment to test creationism, or make a prediction based on creationism, then I'm sure people would listen. If they want to do nothing but throw mud at evolution then they have no one to blame but themselves for their lack of prestige.
the instant you claim that "godcanthavedunnit", you also eschew Science.
Yes, everyone must admit the possibility that invisible unicorns are at work here. In actual science, notions like that are treated as false until someone provides real evidence. If you want serious respect for your particular unicorns, go out and find some evidence. Until then, we can't disprove creationism any more than it already has been disproved.
The fact that biology as we observe it is largely systematic, I count as a point in favour of the Creationists.
This is nonsense and you should be ashamed for propagating it. The field of Complex Systems is getting considerable attention these days, and every educated churchgoer ought to be aware of its implications. Processes of natural selection are extremely systematic, and have been shown to be effective optimizers in extremely complex problems with gigantic search spaces. The development of species is such a problem.
None of the Creationist models are really mature enough to compete head-on with the well-established Evolutionist models, but the fact that they give Evolutionists such enormous trouble for a relatively recent and trifling investment of effort should terrify anyone with a vested interest in Evolutionism.
Creationism is much older than evolution, and has had far more resources dedicated to defending it. With all this time and effort, you guys haven't come up with a single scrap of evidence suggesting a creator. No crashed spaceships, no magical holy grails, not even an encoded message or signature or user's manual. In the relatively little time evolution has been around there have been numerous discoveries in fossil evidence that support the framework. I'm sorry, but your faith should be just that: faith. Leave the science to those who can practice it objectively.
Minorities' rights must be protected, and fuck me, a middle-class heterosexual white male, if I've got to lose out for them to do so.
I hear this sometimes, but it always turns out to be nothing more than a persecution complex. Hate crime legislation doesn't hurt you in any way. Women's rights don't hurt you in any way. You have the means and the freedom to get off your butt and do something about the problems in your life. The ACLU is not a nanny organization to help you feel better about yourself. It makes perfect sense that they would be fighting for rights where they are most threatened.
For the record, the ACLU has repeatedly defended the rights of middle-class heterosexual white males. You don't have to be in a national minority to have your rights threatened.
He's the top climate scientist who has been with NASA for decades. Calling him a "NASA Employee" as if he's a janitor is more misleading than you think! A better headline would be "NASA's Climate Expert Says Agency Tried To Silence Him". I guess it's more a matter of taste than anything else.
(This particular point is actually pretty interesting.) Do you really think that a round Earth is obvious? I don't. The reason it isn't obvious is that the Earth is locally flat. So, when not considering large distances, it's difficult to distinguish a flat Earth from a round one. People at one time supposed that the Earth was flat. You might think that these people were incurably stupid, but they were just making simple inferences from simple observations. (This is where I guess I'm "defending" the flat-Earth model, by not calling early scientists stupid. We love to call people stupid on slashdot, don't we?) So once larger distances were considered, it became obvious that the Earth was round.
Now you might say, "But they were originally wrong! The Earth is round!" You're right, but the topic of discussion was not distinguishing true from false. It was identifying complete reversals. (A complete reversal is an instance of a popular scientific theory being retracted and replaced with a totally unrelated theory.) It should be clear by now that a locally correct but globally incorrect (if you'll forgive the pun) theory is not an instance of a complete reversal unless it is shown to be locally incorrect as well. (It's understood that a sphere - or any smooth surface - resembles a plane at a small enough resolution. For the Earth, the resolution of the typical human was too small to properly distinguish the two possibilities.)
If you take the time to go through it, you'll find that the argument is reasonable. You can't just expect a model to disappear forever when it's been refined. In fact, there really are applications that assume a locally flat Earth. There are also applications that assume Newtonian mechanics. Both the flat-Earth model and Newtonian mechanics are false, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still valid for limited domains and resolutions.
You denied that complete reversals are rare. I believe that you are wrong. Does that make me "adamant on defending evolution"? I don't think so. I just think that you are wrong about this particular point.
Something can be "categorically wrong" without requiring a complete reversal. For example, Newtonian mechanics is just as wrong as the flat-Earth model. Despite being completely false, we haven't scrapped Newton because the theory does hold merit. Modern physics is not a reversal of Newton's laws, but a refinement. I don't believe I'm appealing to a false authority when I say that Newton's laws ought to appear in modern physics in some form. (Indeed they do appear - as an asymptote of relativity.)
If you're trying to say that evolution could be categorically false then you're tautologically correct. If you're trying to say that it's reasonable to deny evolution any role at all in describing biology (as in a complete reversal) then you're quite mistaken.
Those aren't absolute reversals. So the Plumb Pudding Model was revised. Was it wrong about electrons? Was it wrong about atoms having a source of positive charge? No. It was wrong by not being specific enough about where exactly positive charge falls in an atom. Thus it is an example of idea evolution.
Take Phlogiston. Okay, it sounds a little silly from our modern perspective, but does that make it absolutely unmitigatingly wrong? Of course not. It simply attributed to a gas what should have been attributed to the absence of a gas. Once again, when the evidence came out against it the modification was made. In fact, Phlogiston theory aided the understanding of gasses. The Phlogiston model was remarkably accurate except for the problem of identifying which direction reactions actually occur in.
The same is true of the others. You especially should have realized that the flat-Earth notion is not a full reversal; many applications today assume a flat Earth as a reasonable approximation of terrain.
Evolution will be the same. There will be certain aspects that have to be modified. Perhaps new processes will be discovered that enhance our understanding. But it is not reasonable to suppose that the entire framework will be scrapped.
Occam's Razor is not a quotation, and therefore cannot be misquoted. In any case, the two phrasings are equivalent if you allow that having fewer assumptions makes for a simpler theory and vice versa.
The real problem appears when you try to count the assumptions (or measure the simplicity) of a theory. I have a hunch that some folks would argue that the existence of a magical all-powerful being only counts as a single assumption.
Why is it that proof of God was always looked for outside of nature?
That's because God is not bound by natural law. If you're looking for an omnipotent being, you must look for omnipotent behavior. If God is bound by natural law then you're not describing God in the common sense.
Similarly, why must it be creationism _against_ evolution? Why could God not have created the evolutionary system?
That wouldn't earn any political points against those evil liberals. Remember, the ID movement is part of an effort to rally fundamentalists against secularists. A divided nation is much easier to rule. We shouldn't even be debating this ridiculous issue; I'd rather focus on the role of the church as a political entity. Should we really have tax-exempt organizations that receive money from the government in exchange for promoting government policy?
Yes, it's about time someone came out and said it. In order to be considered unbiased by this conservative group, a professor would actually have to prevent class discussion of some issues that conservatives consider sensitive (e.g. homosexuality, atheism, abortion). An equal and open discussion of these "non-negotiable issues" (as conservatives actually call them) would be completely unacceptable.
And don't forget who opposed it from the start. The ACLU fought against Reno and later Ashcroft to strike down this law. Personally, I'm glad that there's a group willing to defend our rights no matter who's President at the time.
That's right. The summary misleadingly refers to "Bush's appeal of the 2004 COPA law," which should have been phrased "Bush's 2004 appeal of the COPA law."
Bush didn't invent this one; it's a classic Republican agenda item (but not one that's really opposed by Democrats). Everyone who voted in 2000 knew that Bush would support this kind of thing if elected. The usual slashdot criticisms apply.
I'll make allowances for differences of opinion on what exactly constitutes a "search" of a US Citizen. If the intercepted calls were used only to investigate the foreign component, then there might be a gray area to consider. However, the truth is that this program was being used to effectively achieve warrantless spying on US Citizens, which as you know is not legal.
You seem to think that unlimited executive authority is a good thing. I'm not going to argue with you except to point out that the Constitution describes a separation of powers unlike the system you are describing. Hence, the demand that warrants be issued is a matter of law and not, as you say, simply a means of attacking the current President - as if no one has ever had to get a warrant before.
It is well known by now that the modern interpretation of the Constitution deems any warrantless search of US citizens unreasonable, and therefore illegal according to the Fourth Amendment. Concerns about the implications this may have for intelligence gathering have been addressed by FISA. So far, the only defense of the domestic spying program has hinged on the President's ability to interpret the Constitution as he pleases - clearly an indefensible position.
Given that the President has confessed to the act (if not the crime) of warrantless domestic spying, the only thing left to do is apply the due process set forth in the Constitution and let Justice be served. A lawsuit is a fine thing to have, but it doesn't address the issue that concerns so many US citizens. A message needs to be sent to this administration (and all future administrations) that they are not above the law and specifically that warrantless domestic spying will not be tolerated.
Unfortunately for us, it is understandably difficult to impeach a president from your own party. This particular congress has been especially lax in its duty to keep the president in check. The only realistic way to achieve Justice would be to start voting in congresspeople with the backbone to stand up for their constituents against a misguided administration.
The real issue is that these people think wind turbines will decrease their property value.
I suspect that even this is not the "real" issue. Let me summarize the important points of the article:
We have a Republican billionaire preparing a run for governor.
We have a number of voters in upstate New York who are itching for a reason to hate the city liberals.
We have an eco-friendly alternative energy proposal (i.e. a liberal project in upstate NY).
Do the math. This guy's trying to rile the people up against wind energy to get out the vote. Just as the Bush campaign successfully used the gay marriage issue, this Golisano fellow is trying to ride the wave of anti-environmentalism into office.
This explains why we're hearing extremist rhetoric (emotional references to Nazis and bogus menstruation claims). It's such a tragedy that these people ate letting themselves be used in this way. As the summary says, this is a problem with education. But instead of teaching them about wind energy they should be trained to defend themselves from con artists.
Actually, no. At worst, the lack of guns will give an alien superpower the impression that humans are weak, and it will decide to blow up the entire planet. So you'd better pray that your neighbor has an Uzi or else the aliens will get you! (I mean, just think of the children!)
At best, people will realize that violence is senseless, starting a grassroots movement that will lead to a new reign of peace and harmony among mankind. The secrets of eternal life and happiness will be discovered, and we will all live in utter bliss for the rest of our completely meaningful lives. So you'd better get rid of your neighbor's slingshot or else eternal life wil be lost! (I mean, just think of the children!)
Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo! is making a business decision based on a perceived risk that if they do not capitulate to the whims of fundamentalist Muslims, they will invite threats to their business and employees.
I doubt it. Yahoo probably started banning terms like "osama", "binladen", "raghead", and "Allah" shortly after 9/11 when abuses of those terms skyrocketed. Although not many people are shedding tears over the loss of the term "raghead", I don't think that even Islamic fundamentalists are pleased that "Allah" has become a casualty of Yahoo's screen name policy. It's just a brute-force (and lame) attempt to curb a trend in abusive screen names.
I seriously doubt that terrorist organizations consider the Yahoo screen name issue a victory. After a full day of sending lackeys out to blow themselves up, what Islamic terrorist doesn't want to kick back on Yahoo and shoot the breeze with AllahIsGreat and ILoveAllah? Now they'll have to switch to MSN.
If Yahoo were to ban the use of "Jesus" in screen names then you'd see some outrage from those "kooky right wing christians". (It's a war on Jesus! We're all being persecuted!) People like you would blame it on western media bowing to Islamic extremism.
If the policeman's wife was in police custody when she was murdered by her husband, then of course the Chief of Police should take responsibility. Allowing that kind of situation to exist is a serious failure of leadership.
I suppose you think that leaders should all just assume that nothing bad could ever happen, right?
And if you elect people who's only notable vision is opposition to George Bush, you're going to have lots of failures.
Fail how? The belief that Democrats are automatically going to fail in some way seems to be an article of faith with no basis in reality. If Bush's policies are leading to disaster, then vote for those who would avert the disaster. Simple.
The problem with Republicans is their party platform has become "we can spend just as much as Democrats."
You don't care what they're spending the money on? You don't care how they've been treating the constitution and your rights? You have no moral or ethical requirements of your government? You're not bothered by corruption at the highest levels? You're not affected by failed Bush policies?
I can't imagine putting up with that much crap from my government. You seem to be letting them walk all over you. For your own sake, make them stop!
Guantanamo Bay is a playground compared to most U.S. (and European) prisons.
Our crappy criminal justice system is pretty much irrelevant, as it does attempt to (imperfectly) administer justice. Detention centers like Guantanamo Bay are used at the president's pleasure for any detention, legal or not.
And I seriously doubt that perverted sex games/abuse were ever endorsed in any government paper, anywhere.
Actually, the current attorney general has on several occasions defended the practice of prisoner torture. If what happened was illegal, then responsibility lies at the highest levels.
The notion that the vice president will be prosecuted for this is a childish fantasy.
I don't think it's childish to demand that crimes be punished, but I agree that it's quite unlikely that an executive branch with as much power as this one will ever be held truly accountable for its actions.
I think the strictly accurate term is "would-be dictator". While not technically a dictator yet, the would-be dictator actively seeks to expand his powers and eventually impose his will on a population.
The Democrats did not create the current mess that is national politics, nor have they ever created a mess quite this bad. I believe in holding people accountable for their own failures, not for the failures of others or potential failures at some point in the future.
There is no excuse for this kind of crap in the Republican party, and the Democrats are the only ones who can stand up to them and give them what they deserve.
Please cite the evidence of genetic gender differences that is being ignored. Alternatively, list the legal restrictions placed on gender studies. Find a single instance of science actually being twarted on this issue.
Throughout history there have been learned people - philosophers, theologians, scientists - who have expressed belief in creationism and have sought to prove it. These weren't just a pack of zealots repeating the same dogma ad infinitum; these were serious intellectuals who passionately believed in their religion but also recognized the importance of valid logic and scientific rigor. Even so, no alternative to evolution has emerged.
Besides, if creationists want to refine their belief then they are perfectly free to do so with the abundance of fossil evidence already available. If they'd like to propose an experiment to test creationism, or make a prediction based on creationism, then I'm sure people would listen. If they want to do nothing but throw mud at evolution then they have no one to blame but themselves for their lack of prestige.
the instant you claim that "godcanthavedunnit", you also eschew Science.
Yes, everyone must admit the possibility that invisible unicorns are at work here. In actual science, notions like that are treated as false until someone provides real evidence. If you want serious respect for your particular unicorns, go out and find some evidence. Until then, we can't disprove creationism any more than it already has been disproved.
The fact that biology as we observe it is largely systematic, I count as a point in favour of the Creationists.
This is nonsense and you should be ashamed for propagating it. The field of Complex Systems is getting considerable attention these days, and every educated churchgoer ought to be aware of its implications. Processes of natural selection are extremely systematic, and have been shown to be effective optimizers in extremely complex problems with gigantic search spaces. The development of species is such a problem.
None of the Creationist models are really mature enough to compete head-on with the well-established Evolutionist models, but the fact that they give Evolutionists such enormous trouble for a relatively recent and trifling investment of effort should terrify anyone with a vested interest in Evolutionism.
Creationism is much older than evolution, and has had far more resources dedicated to defending it. With all this time and effort, you guys haven't come up with a single scrap of evidence suggesting a creator. No crashed spaceships, no magical holy grails, not even an encoded message or signature or user's manual. In the relatively little time evolution has been around there have been numerous discoveries in fossil evidence that support the framework. I'm sorry, but your faith should be just that: faith. Leave the science to those who can practice it objectively.
Minorities' rights must be protected, and fuck me, a middle-class heterosexual white male, if I've got to lose out for them to do so.
I hear this sometimes, but it always turns out to be nothing more than a persecution complex. Hate crime legislation doesn't hurt you in any way. Women's rights don't hurt you in any way. You have the means and the freedom to get off your butt and do something about the problems in your life. The ACLU is not a nanny organization to help you feel better about yourself. It makes perfect sense that they would be fighting for rights where they are most threatened.
For the record, the ACLU has repeatedly defended the rights of middle-class heterosexual white males. You don't have to be in a national minority to have your rights threatened.
He's the top climate scientist who has been with NASA for decades. Calling him a "NASA Employee" as if he's a janitor is more misleading than you think! A better headline would be "NASA's Climate Expert Says Agency Tried To Silence Him". I guess it's more a matter of taste than anything else.
(This particular point is actually pretty interesting.) Do you really think that a round Earth is obvious? I don't. The reason it isn't obvious is that the Earth is locally flat. So, when not considering large distances, it's difficult to distinguish a flat Earth from a round one. People at one time supposed that the Earth was flat. You might think that these people were incurably stupid, but they were just making simple inferences from simple observations. (This is where I guess I'm "defending" the flat-Earth model, by not calling early scientists stupid. We love to call people stupid on slashdot, don't we?) So once larger distances were considered, it became obvious that the Earth was round.
Now you might say, "But they were originally wrong! The Earth is round!" You're right, but the topic of discussion was not distinguishing true from false. It was identifying complete reversals. (A complete reversal is an instance of a popular scientific theory being retracted and replaced with a totally unrelated theory.) It should be clear by now that a locally correct but globally incorrect (if you'll forgive the pun) theory is not an instance of a complete reversal unless it is shown to be locally incorrect as well. (It's understood that a sphere - or any smooth surface - resembles a plane at a small enough resolution. For the Earth, the resolution of the typical human was too small to properly distinguish the two possibilities.)
If you take the time to go through it, you'll find that the argument is reasonable. You can't just expect a model to disappear forever when it's been refined. In fact, there really are applications that assume a locally flat Earth. There are also applications that assume Newtonian mechanics. Both the flat-Earth model and Newtonian mechanics are false, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still valid for limited domains and resolutions.
You denied that complete reversals are rare. I believe that you are wrong. Does that make me "adamant on defending evolution"? I don't think so. I just think that you are wrong about this particular point.
Something can be "categorically wrong" without requiring a complete reversal. For example, Newtonian mechanics is just as wrong as the flat-Earth model. Despite being completely false, we haven't scrapped Newton because the theory does hold merit. Modern physics is not a reversal of Newton's laws, but a refinement. I don't believe I'm appealing to a false authority when I say that Newton's laws ought to appear in modern physics in some form. (Indeed they do appear - as an asymptote of relativity.)
If you're trying to say that evolution could be categorically false then you're tautologically correct. If you're trying to say that it's reasonable to deny evolution any role at all in describing biology (as in a complete reversal) then you're quite mistaken.
Those aren't absolute reversals. So the Plumb Pudding Model was revised. Was it wrong about electrons? Was it wrong about atoms having a source of positive charge? No. It was wrong by not being specific enough about where exactly positive charge falls in an atom. Thus it is an example of idea evolution.
Take Phlogiston. Okay, it sounds a little silly from our modern perspective, but does that make it absolutely unmitigatingly wrong? Of course not. It simply attributed to a gas what should have been attributed to the absence of a gas. Once again, when the evidence came out against it the modification was made. In fact, Phlogiston theory aided the understanding of gasses. The Phlogiston model was remarkably accurate except for the problem of identifying which direction reactions actually occur in.
The same is true of the others. You especially should have realized that the flat-Earth notion is not a full reversal; many applications today assume a flat Earth as a reasonable approximation of terrain.
Evolution will be the same. There will be certain aspects that have to be modified. Perhaps new processes will be discovered that enhance our understanding. But it is not reasonable to suppose that the entire framework will be scrapped.
Occam's Razor is not a quotation, and therefore cannot be misquoted. In any case, the two phrasings are equivalent if you allow that having fewer assumptions makes for a simpler theory and vice versa.
The real problem appears when you try to count the assumptions (or measure the simplicity) of a theory. I have a hunch that some folks would argue that the existence of a magical all-powerful being only counts as a single assumption.
Why is it that proof of God was always looked for outside of nature?
That's because God is not bound by natural law. If you're looking for an omnipotent being, you must look for omnipotent behavior. If God is bound by natural law then you're not describing God in the common sense.
Similarly, why must it be creationism _against_ evolution? Why could God not have created the evolutionary system?
That wouldn't earn any political points against those evil liberals. Remember, the ID movement is part of an effort to rally fundamentalists against secularists. A divided nation is much easier to rule. We shouldn't even be debating this ridiculous issue; I'd rather focus on the role of the church as a political entity. Should we really have tax-exempt organizations that receive money from the government in exchange for promoting government policy?
Yes, it's about time someone came out and said it. In order to be considered unbiased by this conservative group, a professor would actually have to prevent class discussion of some issues that conservatives consider sensitive (e.g. homosexuality, atheism, abortion). An equal and open discussion of these "non-negotiable issues" (as conservatives actually call them) would be completely unacceptable.
And don't forget who opposed it from the start. The ACLU fought against Reno and later Ashcroft to strike down this law. Personally, I'm glad that there's a group willing to defend our rights no matter who's President at the time.
That's right. The summary misleadingly refers to "Bush's appeal of the 2004 COPA law," which should have been phrased "Bush's 2004 appeal of the COPA law."
Bush didn't invent this one; it's a classic Republican agenda item (but not one that's really opposed by Democrats). Everyone who voted in 2000 knew that Bush would support this kind of thing if elected. The usual slashdot criticisms apply.
I'll make allowances for differences of opinion on what exactly constitutes a "search" of a US Citizen. If the intercepted calls were used only to investigate the foreign component, then there might be a gray area to consider. However, the truth is that this program was being used to effectively achieve warrantless spying on US Citizens, which as you know is not legal.
You seem to think that unlimited executive authority is a good thing. I'm not going to argue with you except to point out that the Constitution describes a separation of powers unlike the system you are describing. Hence, the demand that warrants be issued is a matter of law and not, as you say, simply a means of attacking the current President - as if no one has ever had to get a warrant before.
It is well known by now that the modern interpretation of the Constitution deems any warrantless search of US citizens unreasonable, and therefore illegal according to the Fourth Amendment. Concerns about the implications this may have for intelligence gathering have been addressed by FISA. So far, the only defense of the domestic spying program has hinged on the President's ability to interpret the Constitution as he pleases - clearly an indefensible position.
Given that the President has confessed to the act (if not the crime) of warrantless domestic spying, the only thing left to do is apply the due process set forth in the Constitution and let Justice be served. A lawsuit is a fine thing to have, but it doesn't address the issue that concerns so many US citizens. A message needs to be sent to this administration (and all future administrations) that they are not above the law and specifically that warrantless domestic spying will not be tolerated.
Unfortunately for us, it is understandably difficult to impeach a president from your own party. This particular congress has been especially lax in its duty to keep the president in check. The only realistic way to achieve Justice would be to start voting in congresspeople with the backbone to stand up for their constituents against a misguided administration.
We don't need a lawsuit; we need Justice.
I suspect that even this is not the "real" issue. Let me summarize the important points of the article:
Do the math. This guy's trying to rile the people up against wind energy to get out the vote. Just as the Bush campaign successfully used the gay marriage issue, this Golisano fellow is trying to ride the wave of anti-environmentalism into office.
This explains why we're hearing extremist rhetoric (emotional references to Nazis and bogus menstruation claims). It's such a tragedy that these people ate letting themselves be used in this way. As the summary says, this is a problem with education. But instead of teaching them about wind energy they should be trained to defend themselves from con artists.
Actually, no. At worst, the lack of guns will give an alien superpower the impression that humans are weak, and it will decide to blow up the entire planet. So you'd better pray that your neighbor has an Uzi or else the aliens will get you! (I mean, just think of the children!)
At best, people will realize that violence is senseless, starting a grassroots movement that will lead to a new reign of peace and harmony among mankind. The secrets of eternal life and happiness will be discovered, and we will all live in utter bliss for the rest of our completely meaningful lives. So you'd better get rid of your neighbor's slingshot or else eternal life wil be lost! (I mean, just think of the children!)