I was just being humorous. I am in favor of closing all loopholes. That said, the Fair Tax looks more questionable every time I look into its details. I don't have anything against it, but its proponents seem to engage in an awful lot of hand-waving. (Everyone will pay less tax, but we'll have the exact same tax revenue!)
Basically, we Americans are all for closing tax loopholes — except the ones that we might be able to use. As this is a tech-heavy site, I suppose many Slashdotters make money off eBay.
This is nothing more than an audit and a crackdown on unregistered businesses. In other words, the Canada Revenue Agency is doing its job (this concept may be unfamiliar to Americans when relating to governmental agencies)
Absolutely. The number one complaint we Americans have is that the IRS doesn't do its job. We all think that it doesn't audit enough people and would be truly satisfied with it if only it were more thorough.
It's definitely possible to go overboard on prevention (e.g., Minority Report), but I'm thinking here of things like incarceration. That does not help with restitution, but it does contribute (over the short term at least) to prevention. (A) This person won't commit that crime again while in jail (usually), and (B) the jail term can act as a deterrent to those contemplating such a crime.
As for going beyond our budgets and printing up funny money, I agree completely.
I agree that the goal of justice is not to punish. However, I'd argue that first and foremost the goal of justice should be prevention of harm where possible. Failing that, reparations comes second. Also, I don't want anyone lowering taxes without balancing the budget first. (This is a big gripe I have with the current batch of Republicans—starting with Reagan. They spend more than Democrats, tax less, and hence run up record deficits.) Of course, Ron Paul would only be able to veto, not write, bills that tax or spend. That said, the veto can be a very useful tool when applied judiciously.
I throw up my hands.:) When it comes to questions of philosophy, things become much harder to argue. Things that seem to make sense in an ideal world (Marxism, Ayn Rand's philosophy), don't always work so well when you factor in human foibles. That said, I definitely do not dispute the fact that our government goes far overboard in all kinds of offenses. I would have no beef in striving towards a Libertarian ideal (a la Ron Paul) on the understanding that we'll never actually achieve it.
Everyone has family, friends or even in the most extreme, and unlikely case an employer, that can file the suit in the case of death.
No, everyone doesn't. It's sad, but there are people who are so completely disenfranchised that they have none of these. As for the CIA, you'll get no disagreement from me – they've done some quite horrific things. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't state secrets that should be kept – for example, how to create nuclear weapons, or how to smuggle dirty bombs into our country. (Granted, the percentage of state secrets that are legitimate are probably less than one-tenth of one percent, but that's a different story.)
However to answer your question, just look to the constitution.
Article 3, Section 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
So, then you agree that the First Amendment did not affect Section 3?
I agree completely. I think we often sacrifice too much in the name of "fairness". We should never make things harder for those entering at the lower-end, but we should not take away advantages of those at the upper-end, either. That said, there are some ways to improve fairness (you can never really achieve fairness, only make things more fair or less fair – or both) without sacrificing anything. Perhaps something akin to information sharing could help, for example.
create a scene at which point you will be arrested for doing just that
I was merely referring to the specific charge of "resisting arrest". If they weren't arresting him then he wasn't resisting arrest. Right?
I suppose you could say that they weren't arresting him initially, but were merely trying to escort him out. He caused a scene (i.e., "disturbed the peace"), at which time they tried to arrest him, and he resisted then. At some point, however, they had to have been arresting him for him to be guilty of resisting arrest. It was really more a definitional statement than a value judgment. Personally, I think both sides acted poorly here. The guy was a bit of a loon, the cops were too quick to escort him out (they had just shut off his microphone, and he appeared to have stopped talking), he reacted poorly to the escort, and (one of) the cops overreacted to his reaction by tasering him. (I think it's important to point out that (AFAIK) only one of the six cops tasered him.)
The crime they would be charged with would depend on local laws. Presumably, it would be something like reckless endangerment or possibly even manslaughter, depending on the circumstances.
The government can not charge you with a crime for speaking, but an attendee could file a personal injury case against them and they can then prove their injuries are the result of the accused actions.
If the attendee is dead, he can't really file a personal injury suit, though, right? Sure, it's possible his family or estate could do so, but what if he has no family and never created a legal estate?
You say the government cannot charge you with a crime for speaking, so let's try a different example: what if you are guilty of speaking of state secrets to a foreign power? For example, what if you tell country X (keeping it deliberately vague, but assume country X wishes us harm) how to bypass a particular security system so that they can sneak a dirty bomb into the country? Would civil suits be appropriate here, too?
It was an explicit acknowledgment that I was simplifying the matter. Nevertheless, it's a reasonable simplification of the difference between a law and a theory.
Oh, so perhaps I should have explained what the word "semantics" means? (This is just a joke, I don't really think you're stupid.) Is that where the whole confusion arises? Again, we're saying the same freakin' thing, it's just a matter of what words we choose to use to express it. If you're concerned about the rights of those words, then you've been inhaling a little too much at those raves.;)
Let me ask you this, just to make sure I am not the one misunderstanding you. When you talk about our "increased responsibility", do you think that it would be reasonable to charge someone with a crime if they shouted "fire!" in a crowded theater (where there was no fire) and that people got hurt due to that false claim? If so, the only difference between our points of view is semantics, and life's too short to get yourself worked up over semantics.
Finally, I'm either arrogant or licking my wounds, but I can't be both. (Personally, arrogant is probably more correct as I'm having a hard time not laughing out loud.) Think about why that is, OK?
First of all, when you accuse someone of being retarded, it's probably a good idea to (a) preview your post, and (b) make sure you don't confuse words like "your" and "you're".
Secondly, what you're calling an "included responsibility to use them in a safe manner", I'm calling a "restriction on your rights". This is known as using different words to convey the same meaning, or an issue of semantics. If you want to call me "re-tar-do" for using the words I used, keep in mind that I'm in pretty damn good company, including Supreme Court justices, law professors, and other legal experts.
First of all, your answer about lawful arrest makes sense. Based on this definition of lawful arrest, I'm fairly certain that a large majority of arrests are lawful. Initially, just because this law is new, it would encourage some people to resist arrest. Once it became clear that this law only protected you from unlawful arrest, I don't think it would change much. I suppose you can divide arrests up into 3 categories: clearly lawful, borderline, and clearly unlawful. Pulling that a number out of my, um, belly button for that last one, I'd guess that less than 1% of arrests fall into the clearly unlawful category. Presumably, we want people to be able to resist here. Clearly lawful are arrests where there's a warrant or someone is caught pretty much red-handed committing an obviously unlawful act. (Speaking over the alloted time limit does not qualify, needless to say.) After a brief "getting acquainted with the new law" period, no one should resist these after the law that wasn't already resisting them before the law. Borderline cases are either where a police officer has less reason to believe that the person they're arresting is the perpetrator of the crime, or there's less reason to believe that what was perpetrated was a crime. Of these borderline cases, some are lawful and some are not. Those that are not lawful, again, we want people to feel free to resist. So the question would become: how many of these lawful borderline cases are there, where people would feel wrongfully encouraged to resist lawful arrest? My guess is that this is also a very small percentage of arrests, but I could be wrong. Some of the borderline cases the come to mind are protest rallies, but I don't think people will be resisting police any more (or less) than they already do at such rallies. Granted, this entire rant is argued purely from conjecture.
First of all, AFAIK, there's no reason that a local or state jurisdiction can't create such a rule. Although the constitution doesn't currently grant us the right to resist unlawful arrest, it doesn't deny us that right, either. So, think nationally, act locally!
Well, in practice, I imagine it would work much like it does today, with one important difference: if the arrest was found to be invalid, then they can't charge you with resisting arrest. The police are already prevented from applying lethal force (including batons) to prevent you from escaping, so when you resist arrest, either you're successful or you're not. If the arrest was valid, then in addition to the original charge, you're guilty of resisting arrest.
A question that this brings up is: what makes an arrest invalid? Is a not guilty verdict sufficient, or is there a different level required, e.g., predominance of the evidence instead of beyond a reasonable doubt?
Don't break your arm patting yourself on your back. The majority of US citizens are just as apathetic. However, we do have a higher percentage, IMO, of people who aren't apathetic. My point is, we obviously still have the same genes as our "parents", they're just in a slightly different proportion.
To simplify things a bit, a law is an observation, whereas a theory is an explanation. They are not the same thing, but you can have laws and theories dealing with the same subject matter.
Saying it's based on the fundamental principles of science is not the same as saying that correlations and observations are worthless, and I'm not sure where you get that out of what I'm saying. I think your particle accelerator example is excellent. We have fundamental principles of science there that allow us to make predictions. The accelerators allow us to make observations that allow us to test those predictions. This sometimes results in changes to those fundamental principles. However, we are not talking about post-hoc analyses here or in the case of global warming. Do you understand the distinction?
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I was just being humorous. I am in favor of closing all loopholes. That said, the Fair Tax looks more questionable every time I look into its details. I don't have anything against it, but its proponents seem to engage in an awful lot of hand-waving. (Everyone will pay less tax, but we'll have the exact same tax revenue!)
You misspelled "invade". ;)
Basically, we Americans are all for closing tax loopholes — except the ones that we might be able to use. As this is a tech-heavy site, I suppose many Slashdotters make money off eBay.
Absolutely. The number one complaint we Americans have is that the IRS doesn't do its job. We all think that it doesn't audit enough people and would be truly satisfied with it if only it were more thorough.
It's definitely possible to go overboard on prevention (e.g., Minority Report), but I'm thinking here of things like incarceration. That does not help with restitution, but it does contribute (over the short term at least) to prevention. (A) This person won't commit that crime again while in jail (usually), and (B) the jail term can act as a deterrent to those contemplating such a crime.
As for going beyond our budgets and printing up funny money, I agree completely.
I agree that the goal of justice is not to punish. However, I'd argue that first and foremost the goal of justice should be prevention of harm where possible. Failing that, reparations comes second. Also, I don't want anyone lowering taxes without balancing the budget first. (This is a big gripe I have with the current batch of Republicans—starting with Reagan. They spend more than Democrats, tax less, and hence run up record deficits.) Of course, Ron Paul would only be able to veto, not write, bills that tax or spend. That said, the veto can be a very useful tool when applied judiciously.
I throw up my hands. :) When it comes to questions of philosophy, things become much harder to argue. Things that seem to make sense in an ideal world (Marxism, Ayn Rand's philosophy), don't always work so well when you factor in human foibles. That said, I definitely do not dispute the fact that our government goes far overboard in all kinds of offenses. I would have no beef in striving towards a Libertarian ideal (a la Ron Paul) on the understanding that we'll never actually achieve it.
I agree completely. I think we often sacrifice too much in the name of "fairness". We should never make things harder for those entering at the lower-end, but we should not take away advantages of those at the upper-end, either. That said, there are some ways to improve fairness (you can never really achieve fairness, only make things more fair or less fair – or both) without sacrificing anything. Perhaps something akin to information sharing could help, for example.
I was merely referring to the specific charge of "resisting arrest". If they weren't arresting him then he wasn't resisting arrest. Right?
I suppose you could say that they weren't arresting him initially, but were merely trying to escort him out. He caused a scene (i.e., "disturbed the peace"), at which time they tried to arrest him, and he resisted then. At some point, however, they had to have been arresting him for him to be guilty of resisting arrest. It was really more a definitional statement than a value judgment. Personally, I think both sides acted poorly here. The guy was a bit of a loon, the cops were too quick to escort him out (they had just shut off his microphone, and he appeared to have stopped talking), he reacted poorly to the escort, and (one of) the cops overreacted to his reaction by tasering him. (I think it's important to point out that (AFAIK) only one of the six cops tasered him.)
The crime they would be charged with would depend on local laws. Presumably, it would be something like reckless endangerment or possibly even manslaughter, depending on the circumstances.
If the attendee is dead, he can't really file a personal injury suit, though, right? Sure, it's possible his family or estate could do so, but what if he has no family and never created a legal estate?
You say the government cannot charge you with a crime for speaking, so let's try a different example: what if you are guilty of speaking of state secrets to a foreign power? For example, what if you tell country X (keeping it deliberately vague, but assume country X wishes us harm) how to bypass a particular security system so that they can sneak a dirty bomb into the country? Would civil suits be appropriate here, too?
It was an explicit acknowledgment that I was simplifying the matter. Nevertheless, it's a reasonable simplification of the difference between a law and a theory.
It's not like our government has ever stooped to recording embarrassing information about prominent people!
Oh, so perhaps I should have explained what the word "semantics" means? (This is just a joke, I don't really think you're stupid.) Is that where the whole confusion arises? Again, we're saying the same freakin' thing, it's just a matter of what words we choose to use to express it. If you're concerned about the rights of those words, then you've been inhaling a little too much at those raves. ;)
Let me ask you this, just to make sure I am not the one misunderstanding you. When you talk about our "increased responsibility", do you think that it would be reasonable to charge someone with a crime if they shouted "fire!" in a crowded theater (where there was no fire) and that people got hurt due to that false claim? If so, the only difference between our points of view is semantics, and life's too short to get yourself worked up over semantics.
Finally, I'm either arrogant or licking my wounds, but I can't be both. (Personally, arrogant is probably more correct as I'm having a hard time not laughing out loud.) Think about why that is, OK?
This is why it would make more sense to start locally. (See my comment up a few threads about that.)
First of all, when you accuse someone of being retarded, it's probably a good idea to (a) preview your post, and (b) make sure you don't confuse words like "your" and "you're".
Secondly, what you're calling an "included responsibility to use them in a safe manner", I'm calling a "restriction on your rights". This is known as using different words to convey the same meaning, or an issue of semantics. If you want to call me "re-tar-do" for using the words I used, keep in mind that I'm in pretty damn good company, including Supreme Court justices, law professors, and other legal experts.First of all, your answer about lawful arrest makes sense. Based on this definition of lawful arrest, I'm fairly certain that a large majority of arrests are lawful. Initially, just because this law is new, it would encourage some people to resist arrest. Once it became clear that this law only protected you from unlawful arrest, I don't think it would change much. I suppose you can divide arrests up into 3 categories: clearly lawful, borderline, and clearly unlawful. Pulling that a number out of my, um, belly button for that last one, I'd guess that less than 1% of arrests fall into the clearly unlawful category. Presumably, we want people to be able to resist here. Clearly lawful are arrests where there's a warrant or someone is caught pretty much red-handed committing an obviously unlawful act. (Speaking over the alloted time limit does not qualify, needless to say.) After a brief "getting acquainted with the new law" period, no one should resist these after the law that wasn't already resisting them before the law. Borderline cases are either where a police officer has less reason to believe that the person they're arresting is the perpetrator of the crime, or there's less reason to believe that what was perpetrated was a crime. Of these borderline cases, some are lawful and some are not. Those that are not lawful, again, we want people to feel free to resist. So the question would become: how many of these lawful borderline cases are there, where people would feel wrongfully encouraged to resist lawful arrest? My guess is that this is also a very small percentage of arrests, but I could be wrong. Some of the borderline cases the come to mind are protest rallies, but I don't think people will be resisting police any more (or less) than they already do at such rallies. Granted, this entire rant is argued purely from conjecture.
First of all, AFAIK, there's no reason that a local or state jurisdiction can't create such a rule. Although the constitution doesn't currently grant us the right to resist unlawful arrest, it doesn't deny us that right, either. So, think nationally, act locally!
Well, in practice, I imagine it would work much like it does today, with one important difference: if the arrest was found to be invalid, then they can't charge you with resisting arrest. The police are already prevented from applying lethal force (including batons) to prevent you from escaping, so when you resist arrest, either you're successful or you're not. If the arrest was valid, then in addition to the original charge, you're guilty of resisting arrest.
A question that this brings up is: what makes an arrest invalid? Is a not guilty verdict sufficient, or is there a different level required, e.g., predominance of the evidence instead of beyond a reasonable doubt?
Don't break your arm patting yourself on your back. The majority of US citizens are just as apathetic. However, we do have a higher percentage, IMO, of people who aren't apathetic. My point is, we obviously still have the same genes as our "parents", they're just in a slightly different proportion.
To simplify things a bit, a law is an observation, whereas a theory is an explanation. They are not the same thing, but you can have laws and theories dealing with the same subject matter.
Saying it's based on the fundamental principles of science is not the same as saying that correlations and observations are worthless, and I'm not sure where you get that out of what I'm saying. I think your particle accelerator example is excellent. We have fundamental principles of science there that allow us to make predictions. The accelerators allow us to make observations that allow us to test those predictions. This sometimes results in changes to those fundamental principles. However, we are not talking about post-hoc analyses here or in the case of global warming. Do you understand the distinction?
I'll put the humour back in posthumous!