Political scientists call this one of the most polarized elections in history. The Republican half of the electorate is just as activist as the Democratic half, and the percentage of voters who are truly "indifferent" to the election are at record lows.
Actually, house rules were not broken. As I noted below, 15 minutes was originally scheduled for the vote, but the floor rules of the House permit such a period of time to be extended.
What was done was fully within house rules. It's a simple lesson: don't trust slashdot writeups for all your information - look up the house rules yourself, or at least find a more reputable source.
"Giving the government police powers is the first step on the slippery slope towards totalitarianism. There are many cases throughout history where governments have used police powers to institute and maintain totalitarian rule - this is a very realistic danger. The government thus should not have any police powers."
There is a reason why the slippery slope argument is classified as a logical fallacy.
There is no such thing as a 15 minute "deadline" for a roll call vote. 15 minutes were simply initially scheduled for the vote to take place, and extending such a scheduled period for an additional 23 minutes is permitted by the floor rules of the House.
"They must have lost the stats on fraud from Russia, Israel and the USA itself, because Macedonia's negligible internet population cannot possibly account for that much trouble."
The author completely misses the point of why blacklisting is done. The ratio of fraudulent to legitimate purchases in Macedonia is a lot higher than it is in the US, and as the author himself notes, Macedonia's internet population is negligible anyways, so it's not like you're losing that many sales by blacklisting the country. Thus blacklisting Macedonia is a much more efficient solution than, for example, investing in verification measures as one previous poster has suggested (not to mention that verification measures still probably won't deter criminals anyways - just like you can work around a blacklist using an anonymous proxy, there's bound to be new, inexpensive ways to work around any low-cost verification system. And the system would have to be very low-cost indeed if you expect the increased profits from Macedonia's "negligible" internet userbase to justify the expense).
because of that human factor involved, and all social sciences are inherently unperfect because of it. this isn't something unique to predicting traffic flow: psychology, sociology, political science, etc. can never make 100% accurate predictions because of the human factor involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Political scientists call this one of the most polarized elections in history. The Republican half of the electorate is just as activist as the Democratic half, and the percentage of voters who are truly "indifferent" to the election are at record lows.
Actually, house rules were not broken. As I noted below, 15 minutes was originally scheduled for the vote, but the floor rules of the House permit such a period of time to be extended. What was done was fully within house rules. It's a simple lesson: don't trust slashdot writeups for all your information - look up the house rules yourself, or at least find a more reputable source.
"Giving the government police powers is the first step on the slippery slope towards totalitarianism. There are many cases throughout history where governments have used police powers to institute and maintain totalitarian rule - this is a very realistic danger. The government thus should not have any police powers." There is a reason why the slippery slope argument is classified as a logical fallacy.
There is no such thing as a 15 minute "deadline" for a roll call vote. 15 minutes were simply initially scheduled for the vote to take place, and extending such a scheduled period for an additional 23 minutes is permitted by the floor rules of the House.
"They must have lost the stats on fraud from Russia, Israel and the USA itself, because Macedonia's negligible internet population cannot possibly account for that much trouble." The author completely misses the point of why blacklisting is done. The ratio of fraudulent to legitimate purchases in Macedonia is a lot higher than it is in the US, and as the author himself notes, Macedonia's internet population is negligible anyways, so it's not like you're losing that many sales by blacklisting the country. Thus blacklisting Macedonia is a much more efficient solution than, for example, investing in verification measures as one previous poster has suggested (not to mention that verification measures still probably won't deter criminals anyways - just like you can work around a blacklist using an anonymous proxy, there's bound to be new, inexpensive ways to work around any low-cost verification system. And the system would have to be very low-cost indeed if you expect the increased profits from Macedonia's "negligible" internet userbase to justify the expense).
because of that human factor involved, and all social sciences are inherently unperfect because of it. this isn't something unique to predicting traffic flow: psychology, sociology, political science, etc. can never make 100% accurate predictions because of the human factor involved.