You'd have to turn on AMT to begin with in order for this to work.
Are you absolutely positive AMT cannot be remotely activated? Given the circumstances and who might be involved in this exploit existing and/or remaining unpatched for such a long time, I wouldn't trust that clicking to un-check that AMT box disables all of it, especially if the vulnerability was deliberate.
This makes me wonder what vulnerability nastiness has remained undiscovered/unreported (intentionally baked-in?) about AMD CPUs and chipsets. You know the TLAs wouldn't ignore AMD.
It will shortly be possible to build a kind of philosopher-king AI which can evaluate the credibility of various models of what's going on in the world, and thus the credibility of various assertions about the world or about what is a good plan.
Whether you're talking wetware or hardware, no matter the level of technical/biological/mental sophistication, there's no escaping "GIGO".
What, do they write treaties on gold-pressed latinum now?
Compare costs of a typical treaty negotiation meeting to a just a single strike of ~50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at ~$325M each.
Diplomacy is ^always^ the cheaper option.
Now compare that same ballpark figure of the costs of negotiating a new treaty to the cost of effectively being cut out of the economic, technical, and scientific benefits of space exploration/exploitation.
The treaty is required especially on the basis of preventing nuclear weapons use in space.
No.
*A* treaty is required, *this* one can be replaced/renegotiated. Isn't that what civilized nations do when circumstances change, renegotiate or replace a dated treaty with a new, more comprehensive one that accounts for current realities?
but there's clearly a necessity that those services be provided in some form or function, and the 538 members of Congress are clearly not up to the task of managing all of that on their own, especially once you consider that most of those agencies are far larger than Congress itself.
That's precisely the point; those who wrote the Constitution and those today who believe similarly do not believe many of those things are the job of the federal government, and for those things which are, Congress should be the only body in government with the power to pass laws, as they are elected which gives the people some direct way to keep them accountable and not appointed/hired. This delegation of powers is a large part of how the government has gone about expanding it's powers and scope.
The other problem is reinterpretation and redefining words and meanings of the Constitution to achieve political/ideological goals rather than using the means provided in the document to alter it. Maybe there's some civil right like the 2nd Amendment you disagree with (not accusing, I don't know nor care, this is just for discussion) and maybe this achieves your short-term goal(s), but it weakens all the other civil rights most people, including yourself, value, and renders them vulnerable to the same methods and strategies to effectively nullify/rewrite/abolish them. A case of "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!" for those
... they've said that it is the FCC's job to make those decisions.
If Congress can simply assign to others the power to make law, then I guess the Republican House and Senate can simply vote to give Trump the ability to make laws as he sees fit, then. Or does Congress only have that power when it's something you agree with?
Congress was never explicitly granted the power to delegate it's lawmaking authority in the Constitution, likely as it was never imagined that the Federal government would ever be allowed to grow to the size and scope that Congress could not pass enough laws alone, without a rebellion.
(And here I thought that *I* got kinda long-winded in some/many? of my old posts, LOL!)
Raising minimum wage results in price inflation as the market will better tolerate higher prices when incomes go up. Do you propose nationwide government price controls on all products/services/property/etc?
Raising minimum wages also reduces the number of low-skilled and "first jobs" (whose value as an employee to a small business employer is typically already just barely enough to justify the cost of employing them), as small businesses who supply the overwhelming majority will increasingly forego hiring new employees and eventually lay off current ones if the amount is increased sufficiently. This effect is only exacerbated by the rise of relatively affordable sophisticated automation systems able to replace many low-skill jobs. Do you propose mandatory hiring quotas?
they got billions (with a 'b') in subsidies while _also_ being allowed to charge extra fees to bring fiber to those poor neighborhoods. They pocketed the money and told us to go fuck ourselves.
Well, they did make sure to send plenty of that cash back to those politicians that agreed to the deal so the gravy train would keep rolling their way, so their *real* "customers" got what they wanted out of the deal. Subscribers and their wallets are the product, not the customers.
Why would the politicians screw with such a sweet deal? Especially when they can essentially repeat the same scam every decade or two or three, depending, just like regularly shearing sheep. It's the same with most public-sector unions as well. The politicians and the public sector unions decide through negotiation how much of our money they will divide up between them.
Verified? By whom? By whose standards? Who determines the definitions used? Do citizens get to vote for these people? How far can they go, what are their powers? What kind of checks against political/ideological-weaponization will there be?
You allow anyone the power to control what you see/read/hear, you allow them the power to make you their slave. It's always the edge-cases, the socially-repugnant extremes that authoritarians use to justify removing your choices and freedoms. It's happened over and over in nearly every country that fell to authoritarianism.
Will we sit in apathy and/or join the raging throngs drunk on identity politics and allow history to repeat itself yet again at the cost of freedom stolen from both ourselves and multiple future generations, likely accompanied by obscene numbers of human lives lost? Ultimately, only we know the answer.
We had malaria on the ropes and nearly wiped out. Then the propaganda piece "Silent Spring" with a bunch of bad science, bad data, outright lies, and heartstring-plucking was published and picked up by environmental groups who screamed at the government to "do something!", and so they did. They worked to ban the use of DDT as widely as possible and gave malaria a reprieve. The DDT ban was based on lies and those lies and the ones who knowingly used those lies in their political/ideological causes anyway are responsible for all the deaths, suffering, and economic losses from malaria since then.
Since coral polyps are one of the hardiest creatures on the planet, having survived over millions of years through both tropical and ice ages, yes. "Nothing" is the logical and scientifically-sound action to be taken.
Of course, "nothing" doesn't get scientists and universities grants, get corporations government contracts, nor gain politicians more money and power, so expect a massive government-funded program that wastes obscene amounts of people's tax money while accomplishing little, possibly even causing additional problems that the government and scientists can spend even more of your money on.
It's basic physics man. This has been understood for over 100 years. Welcome to the 19th century.
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system. The number of variables able to substantially change outcomes is staggering in a system as massively-chaotic as the Earth.
When we have the computing power to model and predict the precise orbits of every bit of rock in the asteroid belt bigger than a basketball, you *might* have sufficient computational muscle to be able to create a model accurate enough to make life-and-death decisions for billions of people. Until then all you have is hand-waving, and that's with a 'gimme' assumption that the proper data is able to be acquired to construct such a model and that the algorithms work properly.
Sorry, but humanity does not yet possess sufficient understanding of global climate nor the computing power necessary to create models with sufficiently-small margins of error to justify many of the extreme actions/measures that are being called for by alarmists.
No, those US intelligence agencies and the people who run them who broke US laws, violated US citizen's civil rights, and actively suppressed whistleblowers to avoid legal repercussions for their criminal actions are getting American spies killed by making these kinds of "dumps" of secret/classified info the only practical option to reining in their abuses.
Not all my neighbors have noisy kids, because statistics.
Not all your neighbors rent through ABnB because statistics. Why is the garage band next door OK but not someone putting a spare room on ABnB for some extra cash? ABnB guests who are noisy or otherwise objectionable are the exception because statistics.
Yup. As long as it doesn't prevent other people from enjoying their properties.
Ah see, and there's the rub! Who defines and sets the standards for what "preventing other people from enjoying their properties" constitutes exactly, and what all does that or can that cover?
Too much legal gray area has been left and so is being legislated through the court system and defined by corporate lawyers instead of being addressed and definitions/limits set by the appropriate legislature. The result is abuse of the system by those with money and legal teams and the loss of individual freedom and property rights.
AirBNB is pretty good for the customers, no real argument there.. It just forces the neighbors who signed up to live in a residential area to live like they were next to a hotel.
You mean as opposed to living next door to the houses in practically every suburban neighborhood where the kids have a garage band 'rehearsing' after school?
How about we just limit the number of properties/rooms someone can put up on ABnB and/or require the property be the primary residence of the property owner who must occupy it a minimum number of months per year to prevent commercial exploitation?
It seems to me that a private homeowner should be given the maximum amount of freedom to do with his property as he pleases, and it should be the laws and regulations which should adapt accordingly to the extent reasonably and pragmatically possible to maintain equal protections for all while doing so, rather than limiting a homeowner's freedom and property rights as the primary option.
yep sounds like he's mistaking a grant and a loan.
Doesn't invalidate the gist of OP's post, however.
Forcing by law that all student loans to be of the government-guaranteed type means universities and colleges are free to raise their prices because the taxpayer's pockets are deep and the government doesn't effectively cap loan guarantees in such a way as to discourage educational price-gouging by the schools. This naturally translates to increases in associated costs, like textbooks in this case.
Heck they *want* a lot of heavily-indebted students because; "Want to get your government-guaranteed student debt discharged? Just come to work as $GOV/MIL/LEOJOB for $YEARS. Serve your community and your nation while becoming debt-free! Fast tracks to becoming student-debt-free available to those with security/crowd-control/corrections skills and experience."
The government gets people even less-free to object/quit than Silicon Valley H1B workers as the government might deport an H1B worker, but defaulting on a loan-repayment agreement with the IRS for your student loan debt could easily land you in jail, maybe even killed if they send a SWAT team to serve the warrant (already happened, the SWAT team for student loan default, not the 'killed' part, although it easily could have ended tragically).
How obtuse do you have to be to think it's a good idea to copy your username into the body of your post.
You use this word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. Besides, I'm so old you're lucky I didn't sign it using hieroglyphs and sent it using RFC 2549.
Serious tin foil hat time pal. You may want to install foil around your house too.
I guess you missed the whole Snowden/NSA thing, and all the other revelations about US domestic spying/mass-data collection and analysis, "parallel construction", "Stingray" IMSI-catchers, etc etc, huh?
Sorry AC, but now all but the most "fringe" people who used to be labeled tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy-theorists regarding the lengths the US government has gone and is willing to go to monitor the domestic populace are now labeled "prescient" and are running around shouting "See!? I *told* you so!!"
I'm half convinced that money is only part of what they're after. Windows 10 gives them more or less complete control over the computer; they can use your computer for whatever they want, and you have no say about it unless you yank the plug out of the wall or wipe the drive and install something else.
It also means they can put anything they want on your computer or remove anything, and they can sell this ability to the US government (and/or the highest bidder) in exchange for continuing to turn a blind eye to MS's shenanigans.
With Win10, using parallel construction to discredit/destroy/imprison government whistle-blowers, political/ideological enemies, or other "inconvenient people" is as easy as point-and-click. Ah, progress!
The only solution is to not make movies about the Armenian genocide.
Or Scientology. Or feminism.
Those are OK, relatively-speaking, compared to making a video recording of abortion providers discussing selling baby parts for profit! That will actually get your house raided, any videos there confiscated, and yourself arrested and charged. Darned pesky 1st Amendment, but at least that particular use of free press and free speech rights to expose criminal actions was crushed! Another victory for Progressives.
....and why the Federal government was meant to be extremely weak domestically, and States and local governments were intended to do nearly all domestic governing.
No. Anyone who still believes this stupid crap needs to go back to 9th grade and take US History again. The Constitution was written because the confederacy of states was exactly what you describe... weak federal, strong state.
And the US Constitution made the Federal government *somewhat* more powerful in a few select areas, but the Federal government still remained relatively weak. Now we have a government that re-interprets the plain meaning of words to expand it's power & scope, like Commerce Clause/Wickard v Filburn and requiring every citizen to purchase something from a private third-party simply to remain within the law and avoid penalties including prison under threat of lethal force, and then there's civil forfeiture where you don't even have to be charged with any crime to have cash and other valuables seized 'because reasons'.
They had to pass a Constitutional Amendment to both prohibit alcohol and another to un-prohibit it, but magically, now after some dudes in funny black robes declared that silly old Constitution didn't really mean what it said, drugs can be declared 'controlled' and/or 'prohibited/illegal' and placed in, and moved around between, various levels of legal control and prohibition by unelected government bureaucrats, the Federal government ties our border agent's hands to prevent them from doing their job of stopping illegal aliens coming in, but practically no resource or manpower is spared to check carefully for trucks crossing the border with contraband toilets that flush over the legal US federal limit. Then there's domestic spying, "parallel construction", the IRS and other agencies/departments used as political weapons to suppress dissent.
The US Federal government has "gone rogue" as it no longer recognizes any limits to it's power when those limits stand in the way of one of it's primary agendas.
What we see in the US today is largely the result of too much domestic power in the hands of the central government.
Funny, because NOT using that power is exactly what people are criticizing him for doing, as the actual action taken was to repudiate a rule that had the central government forbidding the very behavior we find objectionable.
Methinks that BlueStrat is letting his ideology lead his thinking, not the actual facts and circumstances.
Emotional reactions are common on the right-wing though, so it is no surprise.
Methinks you're either being intellectually dishonest/obtuse or missing the forest for the trees, bigly. Since you post in 'coward'-mode, I find the former most likely.
The point is that if the government was not so corrupt because having tons of concentrated power attracts bad people, asshats like this Congressman would not be in office and/or saying such stupid crap because he's been co-opted by those with wealth and power.
Why the hell was this guy the Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology anyway?
The US version of "Game of Thrones", that's why and how.
Whenever there are "thrones" of power and wealth, there will be "Game of Thrones" Machiavellian politics and machinations robbing the people of their wealth and freedom. It's a part of human nature, and one that collectivist political ideologies always fail by ignoring when they place power in the hands of a few.
This is why the US Constitution was written so as to distribute power and discourage it's concentration in one area/branch/office-holder of government and why the Federal government was meant to be extremely weak domestically, and States and local governments were intended to do nearly all domestic governing.
What we see in the US today is largely the result of too much domestic power in the hands of the central government. Until the central government's powers and scope are reined-in, anything else is simply treating the symptoms at best.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd have to turn on AMT to begin with in order for this to work.
Are you absolutely positive AMT cannot be remotely activated? Given the circumstances and who might be involved in this exploit existing and/or remaining unpatched for such a long time, I wouldn't trust that clicking to un-check that AMT box disables all of it, especially if the vulnerability was deliberate.
This makes me wonder what vulnerability nastiness has remained undiscovered/unreported (intentionally baked-in?) about AMD CPUs and chipsets. You know the TLAs wouldn't ignore AMD.
Strat
It will shortly be possible to build a kind of philosopher-king AI which can evaluate the credibility of various models of what's going on in the world, and thus the credibility of various assertions about the world or about what is a good plan.
Whether you're talking wetware or hardware, no matter the level of technical/biological/mental sophistication, there's no escaping "GIGO".
Strat
You want to waste money on all that?
What, do they write treaties on gold-pressed latinum now?
Compare costs of a typical treaty negotiation meeting to a just a single strike of ~50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at ~$325M each.
Diplomacy is ^always^ the cheaper option.
Now compare that same ballpark figure of the costs of negotiating a new treaty to the cost of effectively being cut out of the economic, technical, and scientific benefits of space exploration/exploitation.
Diplomacy is far and away the better option.
Strat
The treaty is required especially on the basis of preventing nuclear weapons use in space.
No.
*A* treaty is required, *this* one can be replaced/renegotiated. Isn't that what civilized nations do when circumstances change, renegotiate or replace a dated treaty with a new, more comprehensive one that accounts for current realities?
Strat
"...for those who prefer the shorter reinterpretation path."
Wow, I don't know hth that got dropped...oh well.
but there's clearly a necessity that those services be provided in some form or function, and the 538 members of Congress are clearly not up to the task of managing all of that on their own, especially once you consider that most of those agencies are far larger than Congress itself.
That's precisely the point; those who wrote the Constitution and those today who believe similarly do not believe many of those things are the job of the federal government, and for those things which are, Congress should be the only body in government with the power to pass laws, as they are elected which gives the people some direct way to keep them accountable and not appointed/hired. This delegation of powers is a large part of how the government has gone about expanding it's powers and scope.
The other problem is reinterpretation and redefining words and meanings of the Constitution to achieve political/ideological goals rather than using the means provided in the document to alter it. Maybe there's some civil right like the 2nd Amendment you disagree with (not accusing, I don't know nor care, this is just for discussion) and maybe this achieves your short-term goal(s), but it weakens all the other civil rights most people, including yourself, value, and renders them vulnerable to the same methods and strategies to effectively nullify/rewrite/abolish them. A case of "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!" for those
Strat
... they've said that it is the FCC's job to make those decisions.
If Congress can simply assign to others the power to make law, then I guess the Republican House and Senate can simply vote to give Trump the ability to make laws as he sees fit, then. Or does Congress only have that power when it's something you agree with?
Congress was never explicitly granted the power to delegate it's lawmaking authority in the Constitution, likely as it was never imagined that the Federal government would ever be allowed to grow to the size and scope that Congress could not pass enough laws alone, without a rebellion.
Strat
tl;dr
(And here I thought that *I* got kinda long-winded in some/many? of my old posts, LOL!)
Raising minimum wage results in price inflation as the market will better tolerate higher prices when incomes go up. Do you propose nationwide government price controls on all products/services/property/etc?
Raising minimum wages also reduces the number of low-skilled and "first jobs" (whose value as an employee to a small business employer is typically already just barely enough to justify the cost of employing them), as small businesses who supply the overwhelming majority will increasingly forego hiring new employees and eventually lay off current ones if the amount is increased sufficiently. This effect is only exacerbated by the rise of relatively affordable sophisticated automation systems able to replace many low-skill jobs. Do you propose mandatory hiring quotas?
Strat
they got billions (with a 'b') in subsidies while _also_ being allowed to charge extra fees to bring fiber to those poor neighborhoods. They pocketed the money and told us to go fuck ourselves.
Well, they did make sure to send plenty of that cash back to those politicians that agreed to the deal so the gravy train would keep rolling their way, so their *real* "customers" got what they wanted out of the deal. Subscribers and their wallets are the product, not the customers.
Why would the politicians screw with such a sweet deal? Especially when they can essentially repeat the same scam every decade or two or three, depending, just like regularly shearing sheep. It's the same with most public-sector unions as well. The politicians and the public sector unions decide through negotiation how much of our money they will divide up between them.
Strat
"Clearly we need to invent a new electric flying taxi!"
I, for one, just can't wait until...
"Welcome aboard, Mr. Dallas. Fuel level ten. You have one point left on your license."
Strat
...without it being verified first.
Verified? By whom? By whose standards? Who determines the definitions used? Do citizens get to vote for these people? How far can they go, what are their powers? What kind of checks against political/ideological-weaponization will there be?
You allow anyone the power to control what you see/read/hear, you allow them the power to make you their slave. It's always the edge-cases, the socially-repugnant extremes that authoritarians use to justify removing your choices and freedoms. It's happened over and over in nearly every country that fell to authoritarianism.
Will we sit in apathy and/or join the raging throngs drunk on identity politics and allow history to repeat itself yet again at the cost of freedom stolen from both ourselves and multiple future generations, likely accompanied by obscene numbers of human lives lost? Ultimately, only we know the answer.
Strat
what if it causes autism?
We had malaria on the ropes and nearly wiped out. Then the propaganda piece "Silent Spring" with a bunch of bad science, bad data, outright lies, and heartstring-plucking was published and picked up by environmental groups who screamed at the government to "do something!", and so they did. They worked to ban the use of DDT as widely as possible and gave malaria a reprieve. The DDT ban was based on lies and those lies and the ones who knowingly used those lies in their political/ideological causes anyway are responsible for all the deaths, suffering, and economic losses from malaria since then.
Strat
So your proposal is... do nothing?
Since coral polyps are one of the hardiest creatures on the planet, having survived over millions of years through both tropical and ice ages, yes. "Nothing" is the logical and scientifically-sound action to be taken.
Of course, "nothing" doesn't get scientists and universities grants, get corporations government contracts, nor gain politicians more money and power, so expect a massive government-funded program that wastes obscene amounts of people's tax money while accomplishing little, possibly even causing additional problems that the government and scientists can spend even more of your money on.
Strat
It's basic physics man. This has been understood for over 100 years. Welcome to the 19th century.
As another reply above points out, this is about making predictions about specific behaviors and trends in a super-massively-chaotic system. The number of variables able to substantially change outcomes is staggering in a system as massively-chaotic as the Earth.
When we have the computing power to model and predict the precise orbits of every bit of rock in the asteroid belt bigger than a basketball, you *might* have sufficient computational muscle to be able to create a model accurate enough to make life-and-death decisions for billions of people. Until then all you have is hand-waving, and that's with a 'gimme' assumption that the proper data is able to be acquired to construct such a model and that the algorithms work properly.
Sorry, but humanity does not yet possess sufficient understanding of global climate nor the computing power necessary to create models with sufficiently-small margins of error to justify many of the extreme actions/measures that are being called for by alarmists.
Strat
but we got American spies killed in the process
No, those US intelligence agencies and the people who run them who broke US laws, violated US citizen's civil rights, and actively suppressed whistleblowers to avoid legal repercussions for their criminal actions are getting American spies killed by making these kinds of "dumps" of secret/classified info the only practical option to reining in their abuses.
Strat
Not all my neighbors have noisy kids, because statistics.
Not all your neighbors rent through ABnB because statistics. Why is the garage band next door OK but not someone putting a spare room on ABnB for some extra cash? ABnB guests who are noisy or otherwise objectionable are the exception because statistics.
Yup. As long as it doesn't prevent other people from enjoying their properties.
Ah see, and there's the rub! Who defines and sets the standards for what "preventing other people from enjoying their properties" constitutes exactly, and what all does that or can that cover?
Too much legal gray area has been left and so is being legislated through the court system and defined by corporate lawyers instead of being addressed and definitions/limits set by the appropriate legislature. The result is abuse of the system by those with money and legal teams and the loss of individual freedom and property rights.
Strat
AirBNB is pretty good for the customers, no real argument there.. It just forces the neighbors who signed up to live in a residential area to live like they were next to a hotel.
You mean as opposed to living next door to the houses in practically every suburban neighborhood where the kids have a garage band 'rehearsing' after school?
How about we just limit the number of properties/rooms someone can put up on ABnB and/or require the property be the primary residence of the property owner who must occupy it a minimum number of months per year to prevent commercial exploitation?
It seems to me that a private homeowner should be given the maximum amount of freedom to do with his property as he pleases, and it should be the laws and regulations which should adapt accordingly to the extent reasonably and pragmatically possible to maintain equal protections for all while doing so, rather than limiting a homeowner's freedom and property rights as the primary option.
Strat
yep sounds like he's mistaking a grant and a loan.
Doesn't invalidate the gist of OP's post, however.
Forcing by law that all student loans to be of the government-guaranteed type means universities and colleges are free to raise their prices because the taxpayer's pockets are deep and the government doesn't effectively cap loan guarantees in such a way as to discourage educational price-gouging by the schools. This naturally translates to increases in associated costs, like textbooks in this case.
Heck they *want* a lot of heavily-indebted students because; "Want to get your government-guaranteed student debt discharged? Just come to work as $GOV/MIL/LEOJOB for $YEARS. Serve your community and your nation while becoming debt-free! Fast tracks to becoming student-debt-free available to those with security/crowd-control/corrections skills and experience."
The government gets people even less-free to object/quit than Silicon Valley H1B workers as the government might deport an H1B worker, but defaulting on a loan-repayment agreement with the IRS for your student loan debt could easily land you in jail, maybe even killed if they send a SWAT team to serve the warrant (already happened, the SWAT team for student loan default, not the 'killed' part, although it easily could have ended tragically).
Strat
How obtuse do you have to be to think it's a good idea to copy your username into the body of your post.
You use this word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. Besides, I'm so old you're lucky I didn't sign it using hieroglyphs and sent it using RFC 2549.
My lawn, off it you'll get!
Strat
Serious tin foil hat time pal. You may want to install foil around your house too.
I guess you missed the whole Snowden/NSA thing, and all the other revelations about US domestic spying/mass-data collection and analysis, "parallel construction", "Stingray" IMSI-catchers, etc etc, huh?
Sorry AC, but now all but the most "fringe" people who used to be labeled tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy-theorists regarding the lengths the US government has gone and is willing to go to monitor the domestic populace are now labeled "prescient" and are running around shouting "See!? I *told* you so!!"
Strat
I'm half convinced that money is only part of what they're after. Windows 10 gives them more or less complete control over the computer; they can use your computer for whatever they want, and you have no say about it unless you yank the plug out of the wall or wipe the drive and install something else.
It also means they can put anything they want on your computer or remove anything, and they can sell this ability to the US government (and/or the highest bidder) in exchange for continuing to turn a blind eye to MS's shenanigans.
With Win10, using parallel construction to discredit/destroy/imprison government whistle-blowers, political/ideological enemies, or other "inconvenient people" is as easy as point-and-click. Ah, progress!
Strat
Those are OK, relatively-speaking, compared to making a video recording of abortion providers discussing selling baby parts for profit! That will actually get your house raided, any videos there confiscated, and yourself arrested and charged. Darned pesky 1st Amendment, but at least that particular use of free press and free speech rights to expose criminal actions was crushed! Another victory for Progressives.
Strat
And the US Constitution made the Federal government *somewhat* more powerful in a few select areas, but the Federal government still remained relatively weak. Now we have a government that re-interprets the plain meaning of words to expand it's power & scope, like Commerce Clause/Wickard v Filburn and requiring every citizen to purchase something from a private third-party simply to remain within the law and avoid penalties including prison under threat of lethal force, and then there's civil forfeiture where you don't even have to be charged with any crime to have cash and other valuables seized 'because reasons'.
They had to pass a Constitutional Amendment to both prohibit alcohol and another to un-prohibit it, but magically, now after some dudes in funny black robes declared that silly old Constitution didn't really mean what it said, drugs can be declared 'controlled' and/or 'prohibited/illegal' and placed in, and moved around between, various levels of legal control and prohibition by unelected government bureaucrats, the Federal government ties our border agent's hands to prevent them from doing their job of stopping illegal aliens coming in, but practically no resource or manpower is spared to check carefully for trucks crossing the border with contraband toilets that flush over the legal US federal limit. Then there's domestic spying, "parallel construction", the IRS and other agencies/departments used as political weapons to suppress dissent.
The US Federal government has "gone rogue" as it no longer recognizes any limits to it's power when those limits stand in the way of one of it's primary agendas.
Strat
Methinks you're either being intellectually dishonest/obtuse or missing the forest for the trees, bigly. Since you post in 'coward'-mode, I find the former most likely.
The point is that if the government was not so corrupt because having tons of concentrated power attracts bad people, asshats like this Congressman would not be in office and/or saying such stupid crap because he's been co-opted by those with wealth and power.
Strat
Why the hell was this guy the Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology anyway?
The US version of "Game of Thrones", that's why and how.
Whenever there are "thrones" of power and wealth, there will be "Game of Thrones" Machiavellian politics and machinations robbing the people of their wealth and freedom. It's a part of human nature, and one that collectivist political ideologies always fail by ignoring when they place power in the hands of a few.
This is why the US Constitution was written so as to distribute power and discourage it's concentration in one area/branch/office-holder of government and why the Federal government was meant to be extremely weak domestically, and States and local governments were intended to do nearly all domestic governing.
What we see in the US today is largely the result of too much domestic power in the hands of the central government. Until the central government's powers and scope are reined-in, anything else is simply treating the symptoms at best.
Strat