Its funny you say that because politician A isn't especially honest either. National defense is a constitutional responsibility of the federal government in the US, but social welfare isn't. And yet social welfare spending is about twice what national defense spending is, and social welfare spending is going to be increasing significantly over the coming years. National defense spending has been on a long decline since WW2 when it was nearly 40% of GDP whereas now it mainly bounces between 4-5%. Increasing taxes doesn't help if you don't control spending. And taxes are a drag on the economy which are slowing the recovery.
Surprisingly, despite all the attention federal spending cuts and sequestration have received, our calculations suggest they are not the main contributors to this projected drag. The excess fiscal drag on the horizon comes almost entirely from rising taxes. Specifically, we calculate that nine-tenths of that projected 1 percentage point excess fiscal drag comes from tax revenue rising faster than normal as a share of the economy.
And no, the "sheep" aren't willing to "give up anything". What has been revealed so far is far from that. It constitutes no rights or freedoms lost, and a what constitutes at most a limited intrusion on privacy as the program operates under the oversight of the FISA court.
In a real sense you aren't suggesting a bargain any different that you complain about: fear the government instead of fear the terrorists. Your preferred fiscal solution leads to serious financial problems even faster than what you decry.
That is how he made his living. Could he be insightful? At times, sure. A philosopher? To the extent that anybody can be, in an informal sense, sure. But he was certainly no Buddha or Jesus.
And he got some things very wrong that should have been obvious. After Saddam's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in 1990, the UN took action against him. The US led a military coalition of 34 nations, including the armed forces of multiple Arab nations fighting as part of the coalition, to remove Saddam's army from Kuwait and restore Kuwait's sovereignty. There is no question about who was the aggressor, or why Saddam's occupying army in Kuwait was being attacked, and UN approval was explicit and strong. And how did Carlin respond?
Carlin had a coherent analysis once, but by the mid 80s if he was still the boldest standup guy out there, never missing a chance to attack U.S. racist-imperialism abroad (his 1991 HBO special made a lot of his audience nervous and/or confused when he dismissed the Gulf War as one more case of us bombing brown people because they’re brown — which he distinguished from WWII, the last time we bombed white people, which because they were muscling in on our game) , it was in the context of an increasingly cranky and humorless misanthropy. When you spend a fair chunk of your time complaining about the annoying habits of the people around you in various settings, no matter how reasonable your arguments, it makes your more overt politics seem too damn abstract, i.e. why exactly does what the U.S. or organized religion does bother you if you don’t like people to begin with? (Bill Maher also suffers from this contradiction, never mind Lewis Black.)
He reduces the US action to racism, overlooking the fact that the US had many allied nations of the same group, Arabs, and was acting to restore the rightful government of an Arab nation after an attack by a "brother Arab." Wrong. Misleading. Dishonest.
That doesn't mean that he didn't go after other groups and ideas as well.
CARLIN: Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It's arrogant meddling. It's what got us in trouble in the first place. Doesn't anybody understand that? Interfering with nature. Over 90%, way over 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are gone. They're extinct. We didn't kill them all. They just disappeared. That's what nature does. We're so self-important, so self-important. Everybody is going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all, save the planet. What?
CARLIN: I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths, people trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. There is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The plane
The phone company isn't clueless about the location of its landlines either you know. In fact it was the loss of actual location information in moving to cell phones that resulted in them reporting GPS location. Otherwise you would need to triangulate with the towers, and they aren't necessarily set up to do that. Any act of two way communication is going to make establishing some sort of location information possible . The mechanisms for possible future oppression are being put in place for our convenience, and efficiency. Cell phones, the internet, social media, and a cashless society using some sort of payment card are building an infrastructure that can be liberating and open many creative possibilities. Or if turned to oppression it can potentially be used for oppression such as the world has never seen.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. -- philosopher George Carlin
Two things: First, George Carlin was not a philosopher, but rather a profane leftist comedian,. Second, much of the disparity of views between the typical Slashdot poster and the American public can be found in the simple fact that a significant percentage of active posters on Slashdot have more extreme political views tending towards the fringe than the American public. Some of that is due to the fact that many of the posters aren't Americans and they are indifferent to, or even applaud actions that actually damage the United States. A previous example of the result of this is the strong support on Slashdot for the document theft by Manning and the publishing by Wikileaks of over 100,000 stolen classified US government documents. As a result, over the last couple of days it has been popular to depict Snowden as a hero and bashing dissent from that view. It has also been popular to depict the entire US government based in Washington as traitors that need to be punished by execution or removed en mass. Needless to say, these are distinctly minority views among the American public. So in this case the issue isn't the stupidity of the American people as a whole so much as the tendency of the population of Slashdot towards the what would be the political fringe in the United States. It would be interesting to learn exactly which countries people on Slashdot think the general population would welcome a massive theft of government documents from the security agencies, or the unauthorized disclosure of intelligence programs after the individual performing the theft and disclosure fled to a nation which is an ideological opponent. Would Britons welcome it? Russians? French? German? Spanish? I doubt it. And yet it would likely always be cheered on Slashdot.
That is a very convenient position you have there, that way you never have to examine evidence or produce counter-evidence.
It is easy to see why you wouldn't want to have to produce counter-evidence against his positions. The Center for Security Policy is headed by a man with meaningful credentials, among others:
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control and U.S.-European defense relations. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Tough luck there. Life doesn't always work out the way you expect.
before mass prosecution of certain ( ethnic ) groups broke out, the government also told its citizens: "Ordinary German citizens in good standing have nothing to fear from GeStaPo or SD, which services are there to protect them".
Well, that is the problem isn't it? The National Socialist German Workers' Party didn't consider Jews to be ordinary German citizens.
Germans, Buy only from the Jew! - by Joseph Goebbels - 10 December 1928 Goebbels satirically suggests that Germans should only buy from the Jews. The title is a takeoff on a common Nazi slogan: “Germans: Don’t buy from the Jew!”
Set out the Christmas tree. Daughters of Zion, rejoice! The good Germans are forging their own chains from their hard-earned coins. The Jewish financier will use them to impose eternal slavery on Germans. Who would not want to help advance world Jewry’s great benevolent work? Why do we have a neck, if not to bear a yoke? Germany has been for sale for ten years. Who does not want to help? Does anyone ask if the toy under the Christmas tree came from the Jew Tietz or the German Müller? The Jew will grow fat from the coins you give him, the German will starve. So what? Let the light shine on the Jews, let the Germans dwell in darkness. That is what the Lord of the Jews wants, as does his lackey Finance Minister Hilferding. Property is theft, as long as it does not belong to the Jew. Not a penny for the nobility, everything for the bank and stock exchange and department store swindlers!
Christmas is the festival of love. Why should we not love the poor Jews, even make them fat? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you! When was the Jew not our enemy? When did he not hate and persecute and slander and spit on us? Who would be inhuman enough to demand that we should treat him according to the law he applies to us: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
The child whose birthday we will soon celebrate came into the world to bring love. But Christ the man learned that one cannot always get by with love. When he saw the Jewish moneychangers in the temple, he took a whip and drove them out of the temple.
Germans, buy only from Jews! Let your fellow citizens starve, and go to the Jewish department stores, especially at Christmas. The greater the injustice you do to your own people, the sooner the day will come when a man comes to take up the whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple of our fatherland
I don't believe that, but I can explain it. Many people with a faulty understanding of the US Constitution and legal system become outraged about various things, such as this. They see that both major parties generally support it and mistakenly assume that it is because there is no difference between the parties - the Demicans & Republicats nonsense. From there they decide that a third party would solve the problem as they see it. That is the genesis of the idea.
However, it is a fundamentally mistaken idea, and they would almost certainly be disappointed even if they elected a third party. The reason that the two main US parties have similar security policies is that neither party wants to be the party that lets suicide bombs and vehicle bombs become a regular occurrence in the United States. The voters will punish the party that lets that happen by voting the other party into power. Although Slashdot is thick with ignorance on the matter, both the US and UK have fairly frequent arrests of would-be terrorists that want to conduct a major bombing. Even if people on Slashdot tend to be ignorant of it, I doubt the politicians are. I expect that they get to see periodic summaries of arrests for terrorism, that sort of thing. Therefore, the two parties tend to take fairly vigorous stands about certain issues such as terrorism.
There are other issues that tend to produce similar behavior in the parties as well, such as wanting to be reelected. They also need to seek support from donors to fund their campaigns. Once you get past that though the differences quickly accumulate on many topics. Even on national security policy, once you get beyond terrorism, which is a direct threat to voters, the parties can diverge significantly.
A fair amount of this will apply to the UK as well. UK parties by and large don't want to be the party that can be blamed for the next 7/7. Once you get beyond the immediate physical security of the voters the range on policy questions will open up quite a bit. Some parties want to remove the UK's nuclear deterrent for example. The possible future nuclear blackmail of the UK 20-30 years in the future is a different question from voters being killed by a suicide vest wearing extremist this summer.
No, I won't. I can't imagine how dense you must be to actually be afraid of the terrorist bogeyman.
Bogeymen don't have a bodycount, do they? Al Qaida and associates do. In the UK that is at least 53 dead and 700 injured. In the US it is approximately 3,000 dead. The reason it has been this limited is due to the hard work of the security services. There have been many arrests and plots broken up in each country. At the moment you take little chance due to the overall success of anti-terrorism efforts.
"Reasonable" to me means that no one's rights or privacy will be violated,
Not even with good cause and a warrant? You're a bit of an extremist then.
and that the constitution will be followed.
It has been followed as determined by the courts, and yet you complain bitterly. Your private interpretation of the constitution has no legal force.
Gathering everyone's data isn't following the constitution at all, even if they have to get warrants from secret courts to actually look at the data.
As noted above. Does this mean that you oppose the Census as well? And the income tax? Both of those require massive amounts of data going to the Federal government. The Census is a bit of a trick question. I have little doubt you oppose it, but it is constitutionally mandated.
You're just someone who ignores history. People with power will abuse it. This is a fact.
It's not clear to me that you understand history, or the workings of democracy, or the workings of the courts. Maybe you could list for us the abuses of power by President Washington? He is a person, he had power. By your reckoning he abused his power. Since your statement is unqualified in any way, there must be some abuses there you have in mind.
Oh, you are quite mistaken. The theater of the day is Civil Rights Theater. There are all sorts of mistaken beliefs being spouted about the Constitution, criminal law, the courts, rights, and how it will all be put right by burning Washington DC and hanging various "traitors." Farcical.
Checks and balances are part of the democratic system. If you don't want those then you are probably the one that would be happier in China.
If you think that at the end of this as an ordinary American not employed by the NSA you will be getting to stop by the NSA and help make decisions on cases, perform personal oversight of their activities, and make actual decisions, you may be overdoing whatever recreational chemicals you use. You probably don't want to take those with you to China, they can be a bit harsh about that.
If that is your objection, then you fundamentally misunderstand the process for obtaining a warrant, even in a regular court. And remember, the FISA court issues warrants, it doesn't conduct trials which is an adversarial process. Requesting warrants isn't.
Only judges may issue search warrants. To obtain a warrant, law enforcement officers must show that there is probable cause to believe a search is justified. Officers must support this showing with sworn statements (affidavits), and must describe in particularity the place they will search and the items they will seize. Judges must consider the totality of the circumstances when deciding whether or not to issue the warrant. When issuing a search warrant, the judge may restrict the when and how the police may conduct the search.
The Fourth Amendment does not require officers seeking a warrant to show that the people or places to be searched committed any crime. Rather, they merely need to show probable cause that the sought-after evidence is there. For example, in Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978), the Supreme Court allowed police to search a student newspaper, where the newspaper was not implicated in any criminal activity but police suspected it had photographic evidence of the identities of demonstrators who assaulted police officers. However, some jurisdictions responded by passing laws restricting or forbidding these kinds of searches. See, e.g., CA Penal Code 1524.
You also misunderstand the question of ruling against the government. The FISA court has done so, but rarely. The reason it is rare is not because it is a rubber stamp, but because the government attorneys are cautious about making the requests, and gather the proper proof that it is needed. If there is doubt, they will do more preparation rather than submit a warrant request that will be rejected. In the last couple of days I've seen an old article that indicated the typical paperwork to make a FISA request is a couple of inches high. There is an old rule among layers - never ask a question that you don't know the answer to. You can see similar behavior play out in prosecutions at the county level in the US. Prosecutors tend to only bring cases to court that they believe they are likely to win. That way they have a high conviction rate, and they don't waste time on marginal cases. Their time and resources are limited. That is one of the reasons plea bargaining is so common - it keeps them out of court where they might lose.
The FISA court is staffed by judges that rotate through from other courts. If the FISA court isn't a court, than which one is? Should we just abandon courts then?
The information the court handles is secret, not the court itself. Judges from other courts rotate through it. If that court can't be trusted for its limited function of approving warrants, not trials, what court can be?
Nothing new there. I'm surprised you bother to comment on it. But if you think that is oppressive, you probably don't have much understanding of genuine oppression. In the Soviet Union, making a joke about Stalin being drunk could get you sent to the gulag for 10 years. A significant number of people didn't survive the experience.
The reach of the 1st Amendment is pretty broad, but there are some justifiable carve-outs. Experiments I strongly suggest you don't try include making jokes about bombs at an airport, or publicly making statements about killing the President. Either stands a very good chance of getting you into an immense amount of trouble.
Between your loose talk of "treason" and wild claims about the judiciary, it's clear that you don't really know what you are talking about. Furthermore, the crime of treason is explicitly defined in the Constitution and in law. Here is the definition:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. -- 18 USC 2381 - Treason
And the Constitution adds this:
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. -- Section 3: Treason
Nothing that has gone on meets either the Constitutional or statutory definition of treason. You're talking nonsense.
There is one item of concern though. You seem to be bordering on advocating the violent overthrow of the US government. You may be committing a breach of 18 USC 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government. I hope you don't mean that.
One more thing, in order to resemble post-war Germany, the US would at some point have to resemble pre-war Germany. It doesn't. Not by a long stretch.
Its funny that you bring up warrants, since they had to go to the FISA court for authorizations as part of the program. The court was also overseeing them. I would say you made a significant error yourself.
Get your requests in for the hobbyist licenses and for any emulators you want to run. Grab the patches and licenses while they are available.
A pity HP was so indifferent to VMS. Its user base was as loyal as any I've seen, often foreswearing all suitors. The VMS documentation is enviable to anyone accustomed to Unix. I could appreciate much of its magnificence even if I didn't have the heart to love it.
Obama must be impeached. The Congressmen and Senators who support his actions must be impeached. The courts who OK this must be removed.
There is a problem with your desired outcome. If the Congressmen are all removed, there is nobody to impeach the President. If the Senate is removed, there is nobody available to convict the President if he is impeached. If the court is removed, it will be impossible to replace if there is no President and Senate. Under the procedures of the Senate, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides at any trial of the President. If there is no Chief Justice there is no presiding judge for the trial. There really doesn't seem to be a way to accomplish your desired outcome. Ironically you want to destroy the government for what you believe to be improper conduct, which seems a rather improper desire. Can't they just be voted out of office in two years?
I notice you don't seem to have any vitriol for the media which painted the halo on candidate Obama and has long obscured the warts of President Obama. Are they faultless in this matter?
Washington D.C. must be burned to the ground and rebuilt if there are none there who will honor their oaths to defend and uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Burn down the capital city of the United States, the White House, the capital building, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the Smithsonian, all of it, because there was a policy decision that was apparently judged to be constitution that you disagree with? Burning the US capital was tried as a solution to problems with Washington in 1814 and it didn't help much. Do you think this might be a little overboard?
Should you have one, God help your wife if she burns the toast. I'm sure that sort of "rebellion" won't be tolerated.
Slashdot Mirror
Politician A should win, but politician B will.
Its funny you say that because politician A isn't especially honest either. National defense is a constitutional responsibility of the federal government in the US, but social welfare isn't. And yet social welfare spending is about twice what national defense spending is, and social welfare spending is going to be increasing significantly over the coming years. National defense spending has been on a long decline since WW2 when it was nearly 40% of GDP whereas now it mainly bounces between 4-5%. Increasing taxes doesn't help if you don't control spending. And taxes are a drag on the economy which are slowing the recovery.
Fiscal Headwinds: Is the Other Shoe About to Drop?
Surprisingly, despite all the attention federal spending cuts and sequestration have received, our calculations suggest they are not the main contributors to this projected drag. The excess fiscal drag on the horizon comes almost entirely from rising taxes. Specifically, we calculate that nine-tenths of that projected 1 percentage point excess fiscal drag comes from tax revenue rising faster than normal as a share of the economy.
And no, the "sheep" aren't willing to "give up anything". What has been revealed so far is far from that. It constitutes no rights or freedoms lost, and a what constitutes at most a limited intrusion on privacy as the program operates under the oversight of the FISA court.
In a real sense you aren't suggesting a bargain any different that you complain about: fear the government instead of fear the terrorists. Your preferred fiscal solution leads to serious financial problems even faster than what you decry.
Have you ever actually listened to George Carlin?
Yes. Did you know that he has a long history of releasing recorded comedy routines on various media? They are available on Amazon.
Have you seen his "Al Sleet the "Hippy Dippy Weatherman" routine?
He was still doing it years later: George Carlin 'The Hippy Dippy Weatherman'
That is how he made his living. Could he be insightful? At times, sure. A philosopher? To the extent that anybody can be, in an informal sense, sure. But he was certainly no Buddha or Jesus.
And he got some things very wrong that should have been obvious. After Saddam's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in 1990, the UN took action against him. The US led a military coalition of 34 nations, including the armed forces of multiple Arab nations fighting as part of the coalition, to remove Saddam's army from Kuwait and restore Kuwait's sovereignty. There is no question about who was the aggressor, or why Saddam's occupying army in Kuwait was being attacked, and UN approval was explicit and strong. And how did Carlin respond?
Carlin: Most overrated comic ever?
Carlin had a coherent analysis once, but by the mid 80s if he was still the boldest standup guy out there, never missing a chance to attack U.S. racist-imperialism abroad (his 1991 HBO special made a lot of his audience nervous and/or confused when he dismissed the Gulf War as one more case of us bombing brown people because they’re brown — which he distinguished from WWII, the last time we bombed white people, which because they were muscling in on our game) , it was in the context of an increasingly cranky and humorless misanthropy. When you spend a fair chunk of your time complaining about the annoying habits of the people around you in various settings, no matter how reasonable your arguments, it makes your more overt politics seem too damn abstract, i.e. why exactly does what the U.S. or organized religion does bother you if you don’t like people to begin with? (Bill Maher also suffers from this contradiction, never mind Lewis Black.)
He reduces the US action to racism, overlooking the fact that the US had many allied nations of the same group, Arabs, and was acting to restore the rightful government of an Arab nation after an attack by a "brother Arab." Wrong. Misleading. Dishonest.
That doesn't mean that he didn't go after other groups and ideas as well.
CARLIN: Let me tell you about endangered species, all right? Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It's arrogant meddling. It's what got us in trouble in the first place. Doesn't anybody understand that? Interfering with nature. Over 90%, way over 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are gone. They're extinct. We didn't kill them all. They just disappeared. That's what nature does. We're so self-important, so self-important. Everybody is going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all, save the planet. What?
CARLIN: I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths, people trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. There is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The plane
There have been terrorists operating in China, and I believe actual attacks as well. I don't think that is going to help.
The phone company isn't clueless about the location of its landlines either you know. In fact it was the loss of actual location information in moving to cell phones that resulted in them reporting GPS location. Otherwise you would need to triangulate with the towers, and they aren't necessarily set up to do that. Any act of two way communication is going to make establishing some sort of location information possible
.
The mechanisms for possible future oppression are being put in place for our convenience, and efficiency. Cell phones, the internet, social media, and a cashless society using some sort of payment card are building an infrastructure that can be liberating and open many creative possibilities. Or if turned to oppression it can potentially be used for oppression such as the world has never seen.
There is enough information out there to know it is absolute rubbish.
That is a rare insight. It is a pity it is seen at all.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
-- philosopher George Carlin
Two things: First, George Carlin was not a philosopher, but rather a profane leftist comedian,. Second, much of the disparity of views between the typical Slashdot poster and the American public can be found in the simple fact that a significant percentage of active posters on Slashdot have more extreme political views tending towards the fringe than the American public. Some of that is due to the fact that many of the posters aren't Americans and they are indifferent to, or even applaud actions that actually damage the United States. A previous example of the result of this is the strong support on Slashdot for the document theft by Manning and the publishing by Wikileaks of over 100,000 stolen classified US government documents. As a result, over the last couple of days it has been popular to depict Snowden as a hero and bashing dissent from that view. It has also been popular to depict the entire US government based in Washington as traitors that need to be punished by execution or removed en mass. Needless to say, these are distinctly minority views among the American public. So in this case the issue isn't the stupidity of the American people as a whole so much as the tendency of the population of Slashdot towards the what would be the political fringe in the United States. It would be interesting to learn exactly which countries people on Slashdot think the general population would welcome a massive theft of government documents from the security agencies, or the unauthorized disclosure of intelligence programs after the individual performing the theft and disclosure fled to a nation which is an ideological opponent. Would Britons welcome it? Russians? French? German? Spanish? I doubt it. And yet it would likely always be cheered on Slashdot.
That is a very convenient position you have there, that way you never have to examine evidence or produce counter-evidence.
It is easy to see why you wouldn't want to have to produce counter-evidence against his positions. The Center for Security Policy is headed by a man with meaningful credentials, among others:
Frank Gaffney
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control and U.S.-European defense relations. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Tough luck there. Life doesn't always work out the way you expect.
It is oversight. The main reason the rejection rate is so low is found in the last paragraph of this post.
before mass prosecution of certain ( ethnic ) groups broke out, the government also told its citizens: "Ordinary German citizens in good standing have nothing to fear from GeStaPo or SD, which services are there to protect them".
Well, that is the problem isn't it? The National Socialist German Workers' Party didn't consider Jews to be ordinary German citizens.
Mein Kampf - 1925/1926
Germans, Buy only from the Jew! - by Joseph Goebbels - 10 December 1928
Goebbels satirically suggests that Germans should only buy from the Jews.
The title is a takeoff on a common Nazi slogan: “Germans: Don’t buy from the Jew!”
Set out the Christmas tree. Daughters of Zion, rejoice! The good Germans are forging their own chains from their hard-earned coins. The Jewish financier will use them to impose eternal slavery on Germans. Who would not want to help advance world Jewry’s great benevolent work? Why do we have a neck, if not to bear a yoke? Germany has been for sale for ten years. Who does not want to help? Does anyone ask if the toy under the Christmas tree came from the Jew Tietz or the German Müller? The Jew will grow fat from the coins you give him, the German will starve. So what? Let the light shine on the Jews, let the Germans dwell in darkness. That is what the Lord of the Jews wants, as does his lackey Finance Minister Hilferding. Property is theft, as long as it does not belong to the Jew. Not a penny for the nobility, everything for the bank and stock exchange and department store swindlers!
Christmas is the festival of love. Why should we not love the poor Jews, even make them fat? Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you! When was the Jew not our enemy? When did he not hate and persecute and slander and spit on us? Who would be inhuman enough to demand that we should treat him according to the law he applies to us: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
The child whose birthday we will soon celebrate came into the world to bring love. But Christ the man learned that one cannot always get by with love. When he saw the Jewish moneychangers in the temple, he took a whip and drove them out of the temple.
Germans, buy only from Jews! Let your fellow citizens starve, and go to the Jewish department stores, especially at Christmas. The greater the injustice you do to your own people, the sooner the day will come when a man comes to take up the whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple of our fatherland
Deutsche denkt daran!
Anti-Jewish parade float - "Grumblers and Trouble-Makers go under the Roller"
I assure you there is more if you go looking.
Might be.
What happened to global warming?
Curry: less warming than predicted. Models seem wrong
I don't believe that, but I can explain it. Many people with a faulty understanding of the US Constitution and legal system become outraged about various things, such as this. They see that both major parties generally support it and mistakenly assume that it is because there is no difference between the parties - the Demicans & Republicats nonsense. From there they decide that a third party would solve the problem as they see it. That is the genesis of the idea.
However, it is a fundamentally mistaken idea, and they would almost certainly be disappointed even if they elected a third party. The reason that the two main US parties have similar security policies is that neither party wants to be the party that lets suicide bombs and vehicle bombs become a regular occurrence in the United States. The voters will punish the party that lets that happen by voting the other party into power. Although Slashdot is thick with ignorance on the matter, both the US and UK have fairly frequent arrests of would-be terrorists that want to conduct a major bombing. Even if people on Slashdot tend to be ignorant of it, I doubt the politicians are. I expect that they get to see periodic summaries of arrests for terrorism, that sort of thing. Therefore, the two parties tend to take fairly vigorous stands about certain issues such as terrorism.
There are other issues that tend to produce similar behavior in the parties as well, such as wanting to be reelected. They also need to seek support from donors to fund their campaigns. Once you get past that though the differences quickly accumulate on many topics. Even on national security policy, once you get beyond terrorism, which is a direct threat to voters, the parties can diverge significantly.
A fair amount of this will apply to the UK as well. UK parties by and large don't want to be the party that can be blamed for the next 7/7. Once you get beyond the immediate physical security of the voters the range on policy questions will open up quite a bit. Some parties want to remove the UK's nuclear deterrent for example. The possible future nuclear blackmail of the UK 20-30 years in the future is a different question from voters being killed by a suicide vest wearing extremist this summer.
Anyway, that is my take on it.
No, I won't. I can't imagine how dense you must be to actually be afraid of the terrorist bogeyman.
Bogeymen don't have a bodycount, do they? Al Qaida and associates do. In the UK that is at least 53 dead and 700 injured. In the US it is approximately 3,000 dead. The reason it has been this limited is due to the hard work of the security services. There have been many arrests and plots broken up in each country. At the moment you take little chance due to the overall success of anti-terrorism efforts.
"Reasonable" to me means that no one's rights or privacy will be violated,
Not even with good cause and a warrant? You're a bit of an extremist then.
and that the constitution will be followed.
It has been followed as determined by the courts, and yet you complain bitterly. Your private interpretation of the constitution has no legal force.
Gathering everyone's data isn't following the constitution at all, even if they have to get warrants from secret courts to actually look at the data.
As noted above. Does this mean that you oppose the Census as well? And the income tax? Both of those require massive amounts of data going to the Federal government. The Census is a bit of a trick question. I have little doubt you oppose it, but it is constitutionally mandated.
You're just someone who ignores history. People with power will abuse it. This is a fact.
It's not clear to me that you understand history, or the workings of democracy, or the workings of the courts. Maybe you could list for us the abuses of power by President Washington? He is a person, he had power. By your reckoning he abused his power. Since your statement is unqualified in any way, there must be some abuses there you have in mind.
Oh, you are quite mistaken. The theater of the day is Civil Rights Theater. There are all sorts of mistaken beliefs being spouted about the Constitution, criminal law, the courts, rights, and how it will all be put right by burning Washington DC and hanging various "traitors." Farcical.
Checks and balances are part of the democratic system. If you don't want those then you are probably the one that would be happier in China.
If you think that at the end of this as an ordinary American not employed by the NSA you will be getting to stop by the NSA and help make decisions on cases, perform personal oversight of their activities, and make actual decisions, you may be overdoing whatever recreational chemicals you use. You probably don't want to take those with you to China, they can be a bit harsh about that.
If that is your objection, then you fundamentally misunderstand the process for obtaining a warrant, even in a regular court. And remember, the FISA court issues warrants, it doesn't conduct trials which is an adversarial process. Requesting warrants isn't.
Obtaining a Search Warrant
Only judges may issue search warrants. To obtain a warrant, law enforcement officers must show that there is probable cause to believe a search is justified. Officers must support this showing with sworn statements (affidavits), and must describe in particularity the place they will search and the items they will seize. Judges must consider the totality of the circumstances when deciding whether or not to issue the warrant. When issuing a search warrant, the judge may restrict the when and how the police may conduct the search.
The Fourth Amendment does not require officers seeking a warrant to show that the people or places to be searched committed any crime. Rather, they merely need to show probable cause that the sought-after evidence is there. For example, in Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978), the Supreme Court allowed police to search a student newspaper, where the newspaper was not implicated in any criminal activity but police suspected it had photographic evidence of the identities of demonstrators who assaulted police officers. However, some jurisdictions responded by passing laws restricting or forbidding these kinds of searches. See, e.g., CA Penal Code 1524.
You also misunderstand the question of ruling against the government. The FISA court has done so, but rarely. The reason it is rare is not because it is a rubber stamp, but because the government attorneys are cautious about making the requests, and gather the proper proof that it is needed. If there is doubt, they will do more preparation rather than submit a warrant request that will be rejected. In the last couple of days I've seen an old article that indicated the typical paperwork to make a FISA request is a couple of inches high. There is an old rule among layers - never ask a question that you don't know the answer to. You can see similar behavior play out in prosecutions at the county level in the US. Prosecutors tend to only bring cases to court that they believe they are likely to win. That way they have a high conviction rate, and they don't waste time on marginal cases. Their time and resources are limited. That is one of the reasons plea bargaining is so common - it keeps them out of court where they might lose.
The FISA court is staffed by judges that rotate through from other courts. If the FISA court isn't a court, than which one is? Should we just abandon courts then?
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
It wasn't that many years ago that it was at least a billion dollar a year business for HP alone. It might have grown if HP would have cared.
You thinking about taking that act to Vegas? Don't give up your day job.
The information the court handles is secret, not the court itself. Judges from other courts rotate through it. If that court can't be trusted for its limited function of approving warrants, not trials, what court can be?
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
The Congress, the courts, and the executive branch all perform various sorts of oversight over NSA.
I'm curious - will you next complain that the targets of surveillance aren't notified that they are under investigation?
It's much bigger than you think. I was surprised myself.
Nothing new there. I'm surprised you bother to comment on it. But if you think that is oppressive, you probably don't have much understanding of genuine oppression. In the Soviet Union, making a joke about Stalin being drunk could get you sent to the gulag for 10 years. A significant number of people didn't survive the experience.
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
Soviets Face Up to the Gulag
Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened
The reach of the 1st Amendment is pretty broad, but there are some justifiable carve-outs. Experiments I strongly suggest you don't try include making jokes about bombs at an airport, or publicly making statements about killing the President. Either stands a very good chance of getting you into an immense amount of trouble.
Between your loose talk of "treason" and wild claims about the judiciary, it's clear that you don't really know what you are talking about. Furthermore, the crime of treason is explicitly defined in the Constitution and in law. Here is the definition:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. -- 18 USC 2381 - Treason
And the Constitution adds this:
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. -- Section 3: Treason
Nothing that has gone on meets either the Constitutional or statutory definition of treason. You're talking nonsense.
There is one item of concern though. You seem to be bordering on advocating the violent overthrow of the US government. You may be committing a breach of 18 USC 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government. I hope you don't mean that.
One more thing, in order to resemble post-war Germany, the US would at some point have to resemble pre-war Germany. It doesn't. Not by a long stretch.
Enjoy your day.
Its funny that you bring up warrants, since they had to go to the FISA court for authorizations as part of the program. The court was also overseeing them. I would say you made a significant error yourself.
Get your requests in for the hobbyist licenses and for any emulators you want to run. Grab the patches and licenses while they are available.
A pity HP was so indifferent to VMS. Its user base was as loyal as any I've seen, often foreswearing all suitors. The VMS documentation is enviable to anyone accustomed to Unix. I could appreciate much of its magnificence even if I didn't have the heart to love it.
Now comes the decent into the long dark.
Obama must be impeached. The Congressmen and Senators who support his actions must be impeached. The courts who OK this must be removed.
There is a problem with your desired outcome. If the Congressmen are all removed, there is nobody to impeach the President. If the Senate is removed, there is nobody available to convict the President if he is impeached. If the court is removed, it will be impossible to replace if there is no President and Senate. Under the procedures of the Senate, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides at any trial of the President. If there is no Chief Justice there is no presiding judge for the trial. There really doesn't seem to be a way to accomplish your desired outcome. Ironically you want to destroy the government for what you believe to be improper conduct, which seems a rather improper desire. Can't they just be voted out of office in two years?
I notice you don't seem to have any vitriol for the media which painted the halo on candidate Obama and has long obscured the warts of President Obama. Are they faultless in this matter?
Washington D.C. must be burned to the ground and rebuilt if there are none there who will honor their oaths to defend and uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Burn down the capital city of the United States, the White House, the capital building, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the Smithsonian, all of it, because there was a policy decision that was apparently judged to be constitution that you disagree with? Burning the US capital was tried as a solution to problems with Washington in 1814 and it didn't help much. Do you think this might be a little overboard?
Should you have one, God help your wife if she burns the toast. I'm sure that sort of "rebellion" won't be tolerated.
Thank goodness this post is being modded up. I was worried that thoughtful discussion was going to break out. "Bend over" indeed.