[...] the constitutional doctrine of state sovereign immunity protects states from prosecution under federal law [...]
I never thought the day would come when I'd be happy to read those words. What with the government using sovereign immunity, among other things, to protect prosecutors who fabricate evidence and use it at trial, I'd forgotten that the doctrine can be used for good as well.
The Government would need to establish that being "violently dangerous" was just as bad as being "sexually dangerous" when it comes to confining a person indefinitely. Technically, the case today only establishes a precedent for future cases with the same facts. For example, other sex offenders wouldn't be able to challenge it (and win) if their state AG files the papers tomorrow to have them confined indefinitely, because they're "sexually dangerous". The precedent established in the case, by the highest court of the land no less, compels the result.
But in order for somebody to be put away for being "violently dangerous", that'd be an entirely different case. In all likelihood, Congress would need to pass an entirely new law for it to happen in the first place. Then there'd inevitably be another challenge to it, and yeah, in that case, the Feds would probably argue, "Hey, we did it with 'sexually dangerous' individuals and you said it was cool. The weight of precedent is on our side." In this case, yes, there's still a sort of precedent, but the court doesn't have to follow it.
I'd be watching out for random riders attached to unrelated bills... but I'm just a law student. (I am not a lawyer. If I were a lawyer, I would not necessarily be 'your' lawyer, yadda yadda yadda, &c.)
The result of this will be very telling. If the firestorm over Facebook's privacy settings dies down after they roll out two features that have absolutely nothing to do with the problems people had with them, then people are even bigger sheep than I thought they were. I weep for the future of civilization.
the burden in terms of number of voters wanting a recall for anything to happen is way too high, much more than 51%.
I was under the impression that it was much lower than that. California law, for example, requires that a recall petition be circulated and gain a number of signatures equal to 12% of total votes cast for that office the last time around. (Cal. Constitution, Art II, Sec. 14b) I'm pretty sure other state recall provisions have similar signature requirements, though I'd have to research it to be sure.
However, that's just to get the question, "Should Assemblyman X be recalled?" on the ballot. You still need 51% voting "Yes" to actually kick the person out, which seems fair.
You correctly note that no sitting Representative is ever going to vote for a bill that might allow them to be recalled... which means you need the popular initiative to be available to even start the process (i.e. circulating a petition to place a constitutional amendment allowing for the recall on the ballot, so that the recall can then be conducted under those terms.)
It's easier to shame and ostracize your representatives so mercilessly that they resign of their own accord.
I'll bet such a thing wouldn't cost much more than one of those actual-theater-looking home theaters, but I've admittedly never seen one, so I'm not sure. Anyone got a link? My mental conception of it is pretty bitchin', at least.
Because they have a multi-year term, there's absolutely nothing the people they represent can do to revoke or cancel the benefits of having won the election based on their unfulfilled contract with their constitutents, when they start to go wrong.
Actually, such a revocation exists; it's called a recall election. Unfortunately, they're available only by constitutional amendment, exist in only a handful of states, and the last time we tried one the incumbent got Terminated.
If you are within 100 miles of the border, ICE (formerly the Border Patrol) can stop and detain you until you verify your citizenship. They've had the authority to do that since about 2004. (Google the "Constitution-Free Zone".) TFA mentions the guy being released from ICE custody, that may be what happened. I've heard stories of the Border Patrol invoking the 100-mile rule in order to stop and detain entire Greyhound buses and asking everyone for ID, though that was a few years ago, I don't know if they've mellowed out since.
I probable reason is that when you compost your paper it releases either carbon dioxide (aerobic composting)
Well, yes, but then you can use the compost as fertilizer for more plants, thus making them grow faster and larger, and sequestering more carbon than they would otherwise in the same amount of time. When those die, you can compost them, which makes more fertilizer... yadda yadda yadda. As long as you use the compost again (i.e. you continue the circle of life), it's carbon-neutral.
If an Earth orbit elevator cable were to get cut, I think most of the ribbon would burn up completely as it fell, no? Especially on the second pass, it would be falling through the full thickness of the atmosphere. It might rain soot along the entire equator for a while, maybe the occasional chunk or two, but probably nothing more serious than that.
In the thinner Martian atmosphere, though... less air resistance, longer cable... yeah, that'll fuck with ya. I remember that scene too. Great book.
If I had mod points, I'd give you a big, fat up. Since I don't, I will simply steal your argument and use it where appropriate. Well played, sir, well played.
Let me see if I'm reading this right. They're using iridium oxide as a catalyst? The same element that's found in high concentrations in asteroids, but found virtually nowhere on Earth? (except at the K-T boundary, apparently.) Methinks it'll take quite a bit more energy to assemble the electrolizer than it'll eventually produce. The Second Law of Thermodynamics frowns upon your shenanigans.
SUNY Buffalo did the same thing starting this past August. Oh Gods, it broke EVERYTHING. The Law School in particular sends out torrents of daily emails, all of which go to different people, different classes, &c. When we switched to Gmail, every single one of the recipient lists had to be recreated by hand. It took two months. I, for one, wish Yale the best of luck in dealing with the shitstorm they're about to unleash.
So in addition to getting 2200+ days of science out of a rover designed to last 90, they're going to fire up Spirit's electronics again next Martian spring and do entirely new stationary experiments that they couldn't do before? Wow. I'm raising a Red Stripe in honor of the Red Stripe the rover's now permanently parked in. That's right, it's not stuck, it's f*cking PARKED. Way to go, NASA. Cheers to an absolutely smashing success.
I thought the same thing. Yes, Alice will, in fact, be able to connect with any other person that she wants to, and Bill's site will, in fact, be able to receive messages from Alice. Unfortunately, the ping will be several thousand ms each way, because neither Alice nor Bill have paid Verizon their protection money. Also, Bill's site will not be listed on Google for the same reason.
Quite right, but there is one amendment that applies to everyone, governments, corporations, and private citizens alike: the thirteenth.
"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
It's a Hail Mary, but the argument could be made that, if the RIAA has their way, we'll all be involuntarily serving them by being forced to pay up every time we hear, see, or think of a copyrighted work. Actually, it could be argued that many corporations, the record companies included, treat the American people like a resource to be exploited, not like their gorram customers.
Yes, I just drew a comparison between a repressive copyright regime and slavery. Did I just pull a super-Godwin?
I think having special shirts would tend to alienate y'all from the rest of the company if they were sufficiently different from what everyone else wears on an everyday basis. Not to mention that they would be like a target on your backs, as several other people have suggested above.
Badges, on the other hand... those might work. They're 1) less obvious; 2) removeable (in a way that a company-logo uniform is not); 3) quite stylish ifdoneright. Plus, have you heard the phrase "badge of honor"? They might give your department some swagger!
Because marijuana grows like, well, a weed. Anyone with the palest of green thumbs can grow it easily, and that doesn't sit well with the people who would like to make money off of you altering your consciousness and the people who would prefer to keep tabs on what you're putting into your body. Why buy Synthehol (a registered trademark of Pfizer) when you can grow your own danky buds in your backyard?
That don't sound like any Bible verse I've ever heard. You must be readin' from one of them damn hippy Bibles, not the true Gospel, which is all the verses we picked out to justify creationism, homophobia, murderin' baby-killers, and voting Republican.
In all seriousness, though, I really do wonder how much of their own Good Book most self-declared Christians read. You (and the poster below) appear to be in the group that has actually done so. Cheers.
I hear crickets. Either the libertards haven't noticed your post, are frantically thumbing through their copies of "Atlas Shrugged" for a half-assed rebuttal, or are figuring that if they don't respond to you, you'll go away. The fact that it's taking so long to get a response just goes to show you that there is no real-world example to point to.
As you pointed out, unbridled lassiez-faire capitalism may sound good in theory (just like communism), but it fails spectacularly in practice (see generally AIG, Enron, &c.), just like communism.
BTW: "Populous" was a game, "populace" was the word I assume you were going for. (Not trying to be mean, it's actually a testament to how good that game was that it's entered the English lexicon)
They typically can't, but it's a question of how it was worded. If they said, "We decline to comment on whether making.mp3 copies for space-shifting constitutes fair use; it may or it may not, we're not going to decide this issue today," then that's fine.
Bingo, this exactly. If this drug hit the mainstream, we'd end up with a couple billion ripped, status-obsessed douchebags. Some would begin spiking their hair and frosting the tips. It'd be like Jersey guidos, but worldwide. (In other words, it would be Hell on Earth.)
End result: Women stop liking big muscles. Slashdotters become the most desirable men on the planet. Cowboy Neal ends up on the cover of "Playgirl". Geeks begin outbreeding other social groups. They ultimately inherit the Earth.
I, for one, welcome the very brief reign of our muscly overlords.
This might be overly simplifying the matter, but Ubuntu (GNOME environment) has got multiple workspaces built in, and CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-right_arrow will throw the current window to the next workspace. Couldn't you just assign each workspace to a different monitor and be done with it?
Sounds like we need to pass a law requiring the PD's office to have the same amount of funding as the DA's office.
The Committee for an Independent Public Defense Commission has been lobbying the New York State legislature to do exactly that for years. I forget what the ratio is off the top of my head, but it's strikingly large... I vaguely recall it being in the neighborhood of 5:1. The NY Times ran an article about it a while back too and argued basically the same point.
I posted something similar to this in the comments to the article, but I thought I would start the discussion here too. For those of you who are inclined to rip on the public defender for letting this guy take the plea, bear in mind that the PD is probably handling about a thousand other cases (no exaggeration), not to mention that he barely makes a living wage. Public Defenders' offices are criminally underfunded compared to the DAs, who have the full backing of the State.
Matt White's attorney probably had no choice but to take the plea and dispose of the case quickly. The system is designed so that the PDs can't take anything to trial on account of the sheer volume of cases they have to manage; they're forced to plead everything out and pray they get a good deal. (If they took even a small fraction of their cases to trial, their other clients would be waiting for years to have their cases heard, and there's this pesky little piece of paper that guarantees people the right to a speedy trial. (Of course, it also guarantees the right to effective counsel, but the bar for what constitutes "effective" is ridiculously low.)
It's a win-win for the people who matter: the DA gets to scratch another kill mark into his desk, the prison system gets another warm body it can use to justify its budget, the politicians who depend on prisons to keep the headcounts in their districts high get another "constituent" who can't vote, plus they get to claim they're "tough on crime" and are "protecting the children".
The fact that an (arguably) innocent man has his life ruined as a result doesn't even factor into the equation. He and the public defender are pawns. It's not that the $ystem hates them, it's that, to the people who run the show, they truly, truly do not matter.
So the moral of the story is: if you accidentally download CP, pull the plug on the computer, rip out the hard drive, and destroy it immediately. (Okay, maybe you can leave it powered up for the time it takes to back up your documents, &c., but no longer. It's hammer time.)
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[...] the constitutional doctrine of state sovereign immunity protects states from prosecution under federal law [...]
I never thought the day would come when I'd be happy to read those words. What with the government using sovereign immunity, among other things, to protect prosecutors who fabricate evidence and use it at trial, I'd forgotten that the doctrine can be used for good as well.
The Government would need to establish that being "violently dangerous" was just as bad as being "sexually dangerous" when it comes to confining a person indefinitely. Technically, the case today only establishes a precedent for future cases with the same facts. For example, other sex offenders wouldn't be able to challenge it (and win) if their state AG files the papers tomorrow to have them confined indefinitely, because they're "sexually dangerous". The precedent established in the case, by the highest court of the land no less, compels the result.
But in order for somebody to be put away for being "violently dangerous", that'd be an entirely different case. In all likelihood, Congress would need to pass an entirely new law for it to happen in the first place. Then there'd inevitably be another challenge to it, and yeah, in that case, the Feds would probably argue, "Hey, we did it with 'sexually dangerous' individuals and you said it was cool. The weight of precedent is on our side." In this case, yes, there's still a sort of precedent, but the court doesn't have to follow it.
I'd be watching out for random riders attached to unrelated bills... but I'm just a law student. (I am not a lawyer. If I were a lawyer, I would not necessarily be 'your' lawyer, yadda yadda yadda, &c.)
The result of this will be very telling. If the firestorm over Facebook's privacy settings dies down after they roll out two features that have absolutely nothing to do with the problems people had with them, then people are even bigger sheep than I thought they were. I weep for the future of civilization.
the burden in terms of number of voters wanting a recall for anything to happen is way too high, much more than 51%.
... which means you need the popular initiative to be available to even start the process (i.e. circulating a petition to place a constitutional amendment allowing for the recall on the ballot, so that the recall can then be conducted under those terms.)
I was under the impression that it was much lower than that. California law, for example, requires that a recall petition be circulated and gain a number of signatures equal to 12% of total votes cast for that office the last time around. (Cal. Constitution, Art II, Sec. 14b) I'm pretty sure other state recall provisions have similar signature requirements, though I'd have to research it to be sure.
However, that's just to get the question, "Should Assemblyman X be recalled?" on the ballot. You still need 51% voting "Yes" to actually kick the person out, which seems fair.
You correctly note that no sitting Representative is ever going to vote for a bill that might allow them to be recalled
It's easier to shame and ostracize your representatives so mercilessly that they resign of their own accord.
I'll bet such a thing wouldn't cost much more than one of those actual-theater-looking home theaters, but I've admittedly never seen one, so I'm not sure. Anyone got a link? My mental conception of it is pretty bitchin', at least.
Because they have a multi-year term, there's absolutely nothing the people they represent can do to revoke or cancel the benefits of having won the election based on their unfulfilled contract with their constitutents, when they start to go wrong.
Actually, such a revocation exists; it's called a recall election. Unfortunately, they're available only by constitutional amendment, exist in only a handful of states, and the last time we tried one the incumbent got Terminated.
If you are within 100 miles of the border, ICE (formerly the Border Patrol) can stop and detain you until you verify your citizenship. They've had the authority to do that since about 2004. (Google the "Constitution-Free Zone".) TFA mentions the guy being released from ICE custody, that may be what happened. I've heard stories of the Border Patrol invoking the 100-mile rule in order to stop and detain entire Greyhound buses and asking everyone for ID, though that was a few years ago, I don't know if they've mellowed out since.
I probable reason is that when you compost your paper it releases either carbon dioxide (aerobic composting)
Well, yes, but then you can use the compost as fertilizer for more plants, thus making them grow faster and larger, and sequestering more carbon than they would otherwise in the same amount of time. When those die, you can compost them, which makes more fertilizer... yadda yadda yadda. As long as you use the compost again (i.e. you continue the circle of life), it's carbon-neutral.
So, basically, a pipe tied to a static IP address? Sounds good to me.
If an Earth orbit elevator cable were to get cut, I think most of the ribbon would burn up completely as it fell, no? Especially on the second pass, it would be falling through the full thickness of the atmosphere. It might rain soot along the entire equator for a while, maybe the occasional chunk or two, but probably nothing more serious than that. In the thinner Martian atmosphere, though... less air resistance, longer cable... yeah, that'll fuck with ya. I remember that scene too. Great book.
If I had mod points, I'd give you a big, fat up. Since I don't, I will simply steal your argument and use it where appropriate. Well played, sir, well played.
Let me see if I'm reading this right. They're using iridium oxide as a catalyst? The same element that's found in high concentrations in asteroids, but found virtually nowhere on Earth? (except at the K-T boundary, apparently.) Methinks it'll take quite a bit more energy to assemble the electrolizer than it'll eventually produce. The Second Law of Thermodynamics frowns upon your shenanigans.
SUNY Buffalo did the same thing starting this past August. Oh Gods, it broke EVERYTHING. The Law School in particular sends out torrents of daily emails, all of which go to different people, different classes, &c. When we switched to Gmail, every single one of the recipient lists had to be recreated by hand. It took two months. I, for one, wish Yale the best of luck in dealing with the shitstorm they're about to unleash.
So in addition to getting 2200+ days of science out of a rover designed to last 90, they're going to fire up Spirit's electronics again next Martian spring and do entirely new stationary experiments that they couldn't do before? Wow. I'm raising a Red Stripe in honor of the Red Stripe the rover's now permanently parked in. That's right, it's not stuck, it's f*cking PARKED. Way to go, NASA. Cheers to an absolutely smashing success.
I thought the same thing. Yes, Alice will, in fact, be able to connect with any other person that she wants to, and Bill's site will, in fact, be able to receive messages from Alice. Unfortunately, the ping will be several thousand ms each way, because neither Alice nor Bill have paid Verizon their protection money. Also, Bill's site will not be listed on Google for the same reason.
Quite right, but there is one amendment that applies to everyone, governments, corporations, and private citizens alike: the thirteenth.
"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
It's a Hail Mary, but the argument could be made that, if the RIAA has their way, we'll all be involuntarily serving them by being forced to pay up every time we hear, see, or think of a copyrighted work. Actually, it could be argued that many corporations, the record companies included, treat the American people like a resource to be exploited, not like their gorram customers.
Yes, I just drew a comparison between a repressive copyright regime and slavery. Did I just pull a super-Godwin?
I think having special shirts would tend to alienate y'all from the rest of the company if they were sufficiently different from what everyone else wears on an everyday basis. Not to mention that they would be like a target on your backs, as several other people have suggested above.
Badges, on the other hand... those might work. They're 1) less obvious; 2) removeable (in a way that a company-logo uniform is not); 3) quite stylish if done right. Plus, have you heard the phrase "badge of honor"? They might give your department some swagger!
Because marijuana grows like, well, a weed. Anyone with the palest of green thumbs can grow it easily, and that doesn't sit well with the people who would like to make money off of you altering your consciousness and the people who would prefer to keep tabs on what you're putting into your body. Why buy Synthehol (a registered trademark of Pfizer) when you can grow your own danky buds in your backyard?
That don't sound like any Bible verse I've ever heard. You must be readin' from one of them damn hippy Bibles, not the true Gospel, which is all the verses we picked out to justify creationism, homophobia, murderin' baby-killers, and voting Republican.
In all seriousness, though, I really do wonder how much of their own Good Book most self-declared Christians read. You (and the poster below) appear to be in the group that has actually done so. Cheers.
I hear crickets. Either the libertards haven't noticed your post, are frantically thumbing through their copies of "Atlas Shrugged" for a half-assed rebuttal, or are figuring that if they don't respond to you, you'll go away. The fact that it's taking so long to get a response just goes to show you that there is no real-world example to point to.
As you pointed out, unbridled lassiez-faire capitalism may sound good in theory (just like communism), but it fails spectacularly in practice (see generally AIG, Enron, &c.), just like communism.
BTW: "Populous" was a game, "populace" was the word I assume you were going for. (Not trying to be mean, it's actually a testament to how good that game was that it's entered the English lexicon)
They typically can't, but it's a question of how it was worded. If they said, "We decline to comment on whether making .mp3 copies for space-shifting constitutes fair use; it may or it may not, we're not going to decide this issue today," then that's fine.
Bingo, this exactly. If this drug hit the mainstream, we'd end up with a couple billion ripped, status-obsessed douchebags. Some would begin spiking their hair and frosting the tips. It'd be like Jersey guidos, but worldwide. (In other words, it would be Hell on Earth.)
End result: Women stop liking big muscles. Slashdotters become the most desirable men on the planet. Cowboy Neal ends up on the cover of "Playgirl". Geeks begin outbreeding other social groups. They ultimately inherit the Earth.
I, for one, welcome the very brief reign of our muscly overlords.
This might be overly simplifying the matter, but Ubuntu (GNOME environment) has got multiple workspaces built in, and CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-right_arrow will throw the current window to the next workspace. Couldn't you just assign each workspace to a different monitor and be done with it?
The Committee for an Independent Public Defense Commission has been lobbying the New York State legislature to do exactly that for years. I forget what the ratio is off the top of my head, but it's strikingly large... I vaguely recall it being in the neighborhood of 5:1. The NY Times ran an article about it a while back too and argued basically the same point.
I posted something similar to this in the comments to the article, but I thought I would start the discussion here too. For those of you who are inclined to rip on the public defender for letting this guy take the plea, bear in mind that the PD is probably handling about a thousand other cases (no exaggeration), not to mention that he barely makes a living wage. Public Defenders' offices are criminally underfunded compared to the DAs, who have the full backing of the State.
Matt White's attorney probably had no choice but to take the plea and dispose of the case quickly. The system is designed so that the PDs can't take anything to trial on account of the sheer volume of cases they have to manage; they're forced to plead everything out and pray they get a good deal. (If they took even a small fraction of their cases to trial, their other clients would be waiting for years to have their cases heard, and there's this pesky little piece of paper that guarantees people the right to a speedy trial. (Of course, it also guarantees the right to effective counsel, but the bar for what constitutes "effective" is ridiculously low.)
It's a win-win for the people who matter: the DA gets to scratch another kill mark into his desk, the prison system gets another warm body it can use to justify its budget, the politicians who depend on prisons to keep the headcounts in their districts high get another "constituent" who can't vote, plus they get to claim they're "tough on crime" and are "protecting the children".
The fact that an (arguably) innocent man has his life ruined as a result doesn't even factor into the equation. He and the public defender are pawns. It's not that the $ystem hates them, it's that, to the people who run the show, they truly, truly do not matter.
So the moral of the story is: if you accidentally download CP, pull the plug on the computer, rip out the hard drive, and destroy it immediately. (Okay, maybe you can leave it powered up for the time it takes to back up your documents, &c., but no longer. It's hammer time.)