Nope, you should learn how to use computers and read -- there's a link you can click on. I know HTML may be hard for mentally challenged individuals, but links are these things that are often underlined and, on/., followed by a hostname in clear text.
Then why did you try to do what you did?
Again, you should learn how to read. I included several factors in my comment -- unemployment was just one of them.
Unemployment rates are widely accepted as part of the measure of the strength of an economy. Of course, no single factor can generally be viewed in isolation.
As they should, because they have the largest population of any state in the US. About 1 of 8 people in the US live in California.
A more interesting statistic would be Gross State Product GSP per capita in each state. In 2012, California's GSP ranked 17 among all states and in 2015 it still only ranked 10. In 2015, California's GSP per capita was only about 11% higher than the US GDP per capita.
Income in California is also very much distributed at the upper end -- from 2012 through 2014, 48% of the state income tax was paid by the top 1% of taxpayers.
As well, according to the Department of Labor, in November 2016 California had relatively high unemployment compared to other states -- 38 states had lower unemployment rates.
The First Amendment only prevents the government (originally Federal, now all levels) from controlling (most) speech. It has NO impact on arrangements between private parties. For example, the First Amendment doesn't prevent your employer from restricting your speech in the workplace (even if you work for a car dealership).
In the my state in the US, occasionally you need to go in to get at least the vision test. Past some age, the "in person" and perhaps "driving test" becomes more frequent.
Do recall, you ARE completely free to drive your vehicle on PRIVATE land/roads without a license. No one is preventing that. However, the public roads are a shared resource and cars are large, hard, objects with a lot of momentum.
Are you against traffic signals on public roads also?
And against drunk driving laws (until you actually kill someone, you should be able to drive drunk shouldn't you?)?
And against blind people driving (until you actually kill someone, you should be able to drive without vision shouldn't you?)?
SDCs are not going to react like humans to unusual situations and humans are used to others reacting like humans. SDCs, for financial liability reasons (and, to avoid racking up so many traffic tickets that they are uneconomical), must always "work to rule" -- this, just like "work to rule" work actions whose entire intent is to destroy productivity, would be very disruptive.
Consider, for example, emergency vehicles with lights and siren are responding to a life threatening emergency. They come up on a red light or some other situation where cars are blocking their way. Every car (SDC or HDC) has pulled as far to the right as they can and stopped -- unfortunately, since they were already stopped and the light is red, they can't move further to the right (that would require both moving - oops, and ignoring a traffic control device - oops). The emergency vehicles come up behind the line of stopped cars blocking the intersection and, what they do in my area, get on their PA system and order me to drive through the red light (it's then legal for me to do so -- official emergency response personnel orders take priority over traffic control devices). Someone in the cab is also usually gesticulating with non-uniform, but understandable, gestures given the situation and the limited number of options. Even when the wind is howling and the rain is pounding down and the guy in the truck has a heavy accent, HDCs do what they are told (it sometimes takes a bit for them to grok it, but they seem to within seconds). Will SDCs do the same (and not do it when some guy, in a fit of road rage, is just yelling out the window telling them to drive through the red light)? If the SDCs fail to move, the delay could cost someone their life.
Or consider that cars approaching a signal which is out are supposed to treat it as a stop sign. But, humans are reasonable, if the signal is new, all but one of the lights is still covered by cardboard, there's no evidence of a power outage, the cross traffic still has a stop sign, humans on the main street won't stop suddenly and create a traffic hazard on the (correct) assumption that the wind just blew the cardboard cover off one of the lights. On the other hand, even if the signal is new but appears to be fully deployed, and the power in the area appears to be off, humans (usually) do the right thing. The SDC may not have gotten the message yet that the signal is active so it may make the wrong decision in this case (or the wrong decision in the prior case).
If there is a pedestrian who wants to cross at an intersection (with, or without, a stop sign, with, or without, a painted crosswalk), cars must yield to the pedestrian. However, people stand on street corners and chat, sometimes they wave the driver on (indicating they don't want to cross but, maybe, are just waiting for someone), sometimes they are buried in their phone and showing no signs of actually crossing. In these situations humans are pretty good at figuring out the situation and responding correctly. SDCs, probably not so much yet. Recall the google car case of a google car following a garbage truck from house to house, stopping at each one as the truck picked up the trash, instead of passing it like humans do. This creates a hazard because now it's more dangerous for a HDC to pass because it has to not only pass the truck (as expected) but ten SDCs which have piled up behind the garbage truck in the past ten minutes. Or, recall the google car that was horribly confused by the bicyclist (who did not have the right of way and had stopped to yield it at a four way stop) but the bicyclist was doing a track stand -- which meant he was moving a bit and this caused the google car to "stutter step" across the intersection -- potentially confusing other drivers. Or, recall the google car that assumed (I have no idea why) that a big bus would just yield to it (even though the bus had the right of way) when it swerved into its lane to avoid a waddle (or similar) around a storm drain.
Last time I looked at this (about 40 years ago), the 85% rule and current traffic survey rule applied only to radar (and, maybe, aerial) enforcement.
At that time, I got nailed by radar so went down to the city hall and requested the survey -- indeed they had one that was quite recent and it "justified" the limit.
Oddly, though, the survey was taken on the day after Christmas and the road was a main thoroughfare to the largest regional mall in the area. This was back in the era when people flocked to brick and mortar stores the day after Christmas to buy all the crap no one had bought (again, in the days before "big" data -- or even "modest" data -- was used to predict demand more accurately and optimize profits so there was a lot more junk to get rid of in stores back then). As well, upon checking the microfilm of the local newspaper for the days around the survey, I discovered it was raining fairly hard much of the day the survey was taken (a detail that the survey failed to mention). From my personal experience, I avoided this road (and the general area) in the week or two leading up to Christmas and just after Thanksgiving because it was so congested but used it regularly the rest of the time.
When I was nailed, it was mid-morning on a clear, warm, dry, summer day nowhere near a holiday. Traffic was so light that there were maybe five cars visible to me on a three lane (each way) road, wide shoulders, a full width double-double yellow "divider lane", posted no parking on both sides, no pedestrian traffic present (and there were generous sidewalks if there had been), no residences or businesses fronting on the street (just a continuous block wall behind large housing developments, and only the occasional side street (all of which had dedicated left turn pockets onto them from the street I was on and either were signal controlled or were non-through streets with "one-way" stop signs and with clear visibility both ways).
I thought about fighting it based on the traffic survey not being representative of normal traffic flow about 350 days of the year, including the day I was driving, but was too busy with school and work so didn't. To this day I regret not fighting it as I'm sure thousands of people got unjustified tickets over the years on that stretch of road and most (in pre internet days) wouldn't have thought to research the law let alone actually get a copy of the traffic survey and known the game the city was playing.
Do you object to driver's licenses being required and being issued upon passing a series of tests? For example, blind people fail the vision test and can't get their license so can't legally operate a vehicle on public roadways. Would you like to the requirement for driver's licenses eliminated - after all, if a blind guy drives, he is "responsible" so he should be allowed to drive? How about prohibitions on driving with a BAC above 0.08? If you want to drive with a BAC of 0.25, why shouldn't you -- after all, you are responsible?
If one believes in licenses being required by human drivers, isn't it reasonable to require some sort of license (part of which involves a real-live skills test) for "robotic" drivers?
That depends on the jury. Which depends on how much you have to spend on Jury Consultants. Good Luck.
(ii) Any evidence that this, and only this, phone mysteriously exhibited this problem? If not, Good Luck. (iii) Any evidence this happened? With rare exceptions, at least one member of the jury doesn't assume, without evidence, that all LEO's are crooks. Good Luck! (iv) Yes -- if you have a partial jury where every member (before being called for jury duty) was intent on finding you "not guilty". How many people worship countach based on past media exposure? Good Luck!
Notice the common thread. Yes, O.J. got away with murder -- but, due to quirks of pensions and homestead laws, he could hand tens of millions of dollars to his lawyers (who, you might notice, were not there in Nevada where he is rotting in prison) to play the race card (are you AA?) to deflect reality. Do you have both that notoriety and those resources to corrupt the system?
Trial courts make a lot of mistakes. Appellate courts, not so much. Appellate courts are not prone (unlike juries) to being distracted by obfuscation.
I strongly urge you to consult an experienced and successful (several felony criminal triangles per year before a jury) before you bet 40 years of your life on your beliefs.
Agreed, but it would be suggestive that you may have been lying so, coupled with other evidence, could support a conviction on lying to a investigator.
For example, suppose the police get a secret warrant to monitor your internet traffic while you are out on bail. If they eventually find you using a password on another site that works on the phone (or clone) that they hold in evidence and find it works. Three minutes later they knock at your door to again serve the warrant for your password and you, again, claim you forgot it (even though you had obviously known it just 180 seconds earlier), a jury might find that, beyond reasonable doubt, you were lying every time you claimed to forget the password.
Actually, in general, I think if the police can convince the court that the defendant does know the location of the key, they can force him to surrender it.
However, the open question that gets litigated sometimes is the case where revealing the location of the key would do more than reveal the key, it would also reveal that the suspect was guilty because only the guilty party would know where the key was. The argument goes that, in this case, revealing the knowledge of the location of the key would be self-incriminating testimony.
No, actually, Steven's opinion (which was a dissent so has no legal weight) was that the defendant could be compelled to surrender the key but not to communicate the combination (a.k.a. password). The former was a physical object so surrendering it was not "testimonial" in nature. The latter, Stevens apparently believed, was testimonial due to Doe having to reveal a piece of information held only in his mind. See upstream comment for more detail.
Do keep in mind that making a false statement to a investigator can be a serious charge in of itself -- esp. a Federal investigator. Ask Martha Stewart about that.
I assume that this defendant had already tried (a) -- whether or not he is allowed to do that in this case is the very question the court seems to be answering.
(b) would be a false statement if you really hadn't forgotten it. Admittedly it would be hard to prove that your statement was false -- but if you eventually "remembered" it and/or bragged about how you lied, you might get nailed just for the lie to investigators.
(c) would result in the same conclusion as (a) but it's possible the courts would decide that, yes, if you were forced to give up the password it would have been a violation of your Fifth Amendment rights -- but you didn't assert your right and gave the password up voluntarily so no "get out of jail" card.
At first glance, I don't think that Doe v. United States 487 U.S. 201 (1988) is very persuasive in this case -- to either side.
The government wanted to access records of Doe's financial activities at foreign banks. Those banks, complying with their own laws, refused to do so without Doe's consent. The government then got a court order requiring Doe to sign consent directives so the foreign banks would reveal what, if anything, they knew of Doe's activities. Doe refused to sign the consent directives and the court held him in civil contempt. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's order and contempt charge with a sole dissenting justice (Stevens).
The issue of "combinations" vs. "keys" was not central to the case. The issue was brought up in the dissent:
He may in some cases be forced to surrender a key to a strongbox containing incriminating documents, but I do not believe he can be compelled to reveal the combination to his wall safe -- by word or deed.
The majority opinion, in footnote, responded to the dissent on this issue with:
We simply disagree with the dissent's conclusion that the execution of the consent directive at issue here forced petitioner to express the contents of his mind. In our view, such compulsion is more like "be[ing] forced to surrender a key to a strongbox containing incriminating documents," than it is like "be[ing] compelled to reveal the combination to [petitioner's] wall safe."
This footnote seems far off topic from the main case (Doe was being required to give "consent" to something that he actually didn't consent to except under the threat of force by the government). But, more importantly, the footnote only remarks that giving consent is more like being forced to surrender a key than to reveal a combination -- it didn't say how the court would have ruled on the "key" OR the "combination" issue had that actually been a question to be resolved.
The nuclear option can only be brought up by the majority. This is because the majority is needed to change the rules either at the beginning of the session or during the session (through the trickery of claiming that something is not "rules change" but merely an "interpretation" -- such as in "We, the majority, agree that the word 'pi' in the Senate rules should be interpreted as having the exact value of 3").
A nominee can only be kept from being voted on by either a filibuster by the minority or by the majority simply deciding they don't choose to schedule it.
The "nuclear option" was put on the table by Reid a week or two before the election (when he foolishly assumed Democrats would control the Executive AND the Senate) not to force a nominee to be put up for a vote but to make sure that the Republicans couldn't stop the confirmation from happening by invoking a filibuster.
So, putting the nuclear option on the table really had nothing to do with forcing votes on a nominee - the (assumed) Democrat majority in the Senate could do that whenever they wanted.
Like all things political, there were compromises -- but those was necessary to create the United States of America.
Had the Federalists and the Anti-federalists not compromised, today Americans would probably be sipping tea and eating finger foods at 4PM while boorishly tapping away on our iPhones and ignoring each other (and 'Trump' would be best known as a designated suit of cards in whist rather than as an international menace).
Interestingly changing the Senate so that states don't all have equal power is the only feature of the Constitution that can't be amended via the ordinary amendment process (which requires only ¾ states to agree). EVERY state would have to agree with such a change for it to happen. Although, the Senate could just be eliminated or made powerless (such as removing all of its responsibilities and duties and making it only a ceremonial entity) via the ordinary amendment process.
but defecting electors could set a precedent that might come back and bite us later.
Sort of like some Democrats are now probably regretting Reid saying just a couple weeks before the election that Senate Democrats should exercise the nuclear option (get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees) if Republicans interfered with confirming Clinton's (oops...) SCOTUS nominees. I, however, look forward to Reid speaking out in favor of Republicans when they exercise the nuclear option to prevent Democrats from interfering with Trump's SCOTUS nominees (unless, of course, he happens to be a hypocritical scumbag).
On the one hand, Lessig relies (correctly) on the fact that the Constitution places no restrictions on how electors vote and that it was expected that they would be citizens exercising judgement.
On the other hand, he disagrees with a very fundamental feature of the Constitution -- that states, by the fact they are states, have power beyond just the mass of their population. This is directly evidenced in the Constitution as it defines how the Electoral College and Senate work. The Founders felt so strongly that each state have an equal vote in the Senate independent of the population of the state that the ONLY thing that can't be amended in the Constitution with approval of ¾ of the states (NO state can lose equal suffrage in the Senate without approval of that state).
It seems quite odd to rely on the Constitution for one argument and then completely dismiss one of its most fundamental concepts that protected the less populous states from being run roughshod over at the Federal level by the more populous states. One might go so far as to label such a viewpoint as hypocritical.
I don't see why if it is legal to have a voluntary abortion during the 26th week (for example), it should not also be legal for a mother and her doctor to humanely terminate the life of a baby born prematurely prior to that as long as it's done before the end of the 26th week of gestation. Any other view seems illogical to me.
They are all different and there isn't enough time (or interest on my part) to talk to all of them. But, I believe I gave a fairly accurate description of the view of some I have listened to.
True. I should have said a 'life with a 'soul' and that destroying it is morally equivalent to murdering a 40 year old mother with 3 kids". My apologies for the shorthand.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, you should learn how to use computers and read -- there's a link you can click on. I know HTML may be hard for mentally challenged individuals, but links are these things that are often underlined and, on /., followed by a hostname in clear text.
Again, you should learn how to read. I included several factors in my comment -- unemployment was just one of them.
Unemployment rates are widely accepted as part of the measure of the strength of an economy. Of course, no single factor can generally be viewed in isolation.
As they should, because they have the largest population of any state in the US. About 1 of 8 people in the US live in California.
A more interesting statistic would be Gross State Product GSP per capita in each state. In 2012, California's GSP ranked 17 among all states and in 2015 it still only ranked 10. In 2015, California's GSP per capita was only about 11% higher than the US GDP per capita.
Income in California is also very much distributed at the upper end -- from 2012 through 2014, 48% of the state income tax was paid by the top 1% of taxpayers.
As well, according to the Department of Labor, in November 2016 California had relatively high unemployment compared to other states -- 38 states had lower unemployment rates.
Overall, California's economy isn't particularly impressive.
The First Amendment only prevents the government (originally Federal, now all levels) from controlling (most) speech. It has NO impact on arrangements between private parties. For example, the First Amendment doesn't prevent your employer from restricting your speech in the workplace (even if you work for a car dealership).
In the my state in the US, occasionally you need to go in to get at least the vision test. Past some age, the "in person" and perhaps "driving test" becomes more frequent.
You really should have used an automobile scenario - this is /.
Do recall, you ARE completely free to drive your vehicle on PRIVATE land/roads without a license. No one is preventing that. However, the public roads are a shared resource and cars are large, hard, objects with a lot of momentum.
Are you against traffic signals on public roads also?
And against drunk driving laws (until you actually kill someone, you should be able to drive drunk shouldn't you?)?
And against blind people driving (until you actually kill someone, you should be able to drive without vision shouldn't you?)?
Not necessarily.
SDCs are not going to react like humans to unusual situations and humans are used to others reacting like humans. SDCs, for financial liability reasons (and, to avoid racking up so many traffic tickets that they are uneconomical), must always "work to rule" -- this, just like "work to rule" work actions whose entire intent is to destroy productivity, would be very disruptive.
Consider, for example, emergency vehicles with lights and siren are responding to a life threatening emergency. They come up on a red light or some other situation where cars are blocking their way. Every car (SDC or HDC) has pulled as far to the right as they can and stopped -- unfortunately, since they were already stopped and the light is red, they can't move further to the right (that would require both moving - oops, and ignoring a traffic control device - oops). The emergency vehicles come up behind the line of stopped cars blocking the intersection and, what they do in my area, get on their PA system and order me to drive through the red light (it's then legal for me to do so -- official emergency response personnel orders take priority over traffic control devices). Someone in the cab is also usually gesticulating with non-uniform, but understandable, gestures given the situation and the limited number of options. Even when the wind is howling and the rain is pounding down and the guy in the truck has a heavy accent, HDCs do what they are told (it sometimes takes a bit for them to grok it, but they seem to within seconds). Will SDCs do the same (and not do it when some guy, in a fit of road rage, is just yelling out the window telling them to drive through the red light)? If the SDCs fail to move, the delay could cost someone their life.
Or consider that cars approaching a signal which is out are supposed to treat it as a stop sign. But, humans are reasonable, if the signal is new, all but one of the lights is still covered by cardboard, there's no evidence of a power outage, the cross traffic still has a stop sign, humans on the main street won't stop suddenly and create a traffic hazard on the (correct) assumption that the wind just blew the cardboard cover off one of the lights. On the other hand, even if the signal is new but appears to be fully deployed, and the power in the area appears to be off, humans (usually) do the right thing. The SDC may not have gotten the message yet that the signal is active so it may make the wrong decision in this case (or the wrong decision in the prior case).
If there is a pedestrian who wants to cross at an intersection (with, or without, a stop sign, with, or without, a painted crosswalk), cars must yield to the pedestrian. However, people stand on street corners and chat, sometimes they wave the driver on (indicating they don't want to cross but, maybe, are just waiting for someone), sometimes they are buried in their phone and showing no signs of actually crossing. In these situations humans are pretty good at figuring out the situation and responding correctly. SDCs, probably not so much yet. Recall the google car case of a google car following a garbage truck from house to house, stopping at each one as the truck picked up the trash, instead of passing it like humans do. This creates a hazard because now it's more dangerous for a HDC to pass because it has to not only pass the truck (as expected) but ten SDCs which have piled up behind the garbage truck in the past ten minutes. Or, recall the google car that was horribly confused by the bicyclist (who did not have the right of way and had stopped to yield it at a four way stop) but the bicyclist was doing a track stand -- which meant he was moving a bit and this caused the google car to "stutter step" across the intersection -- potentially confusing other drivers. Or, recall the google car that assumed (I have no idea why) that a big bus would just yield to it (even though the bus had the right of way) when it swerved into its lane to avoid a waddle (or similar) around a storm drain.
Where I live, w
Last time I looked at this (about 40 years ago), the 85% rule and current traffic survey rule applied only to radar (and, maybe, aerial) enforcement.
At that time, I got nailed by radar so went down to the city hall and requested the survey -- indeed they had one that was quite recent and it "justified" the limit.
Oddly, though, the survey was taken on the day after Christmas and the road was a main thoroughfare to the largest regional mall in the area. This was back in the era when people flocked to brick and mortar stores the day after Christmas to buy all the crap no one had bought (again, in the days before "big" data -- or even "modest" data -- was used to predict demand more accurately and optimize profits so there was a lot more junk to get rid of in stores back then). As well, upon checking the microfilm of the local newspaper for the days around the survey, I discovered it was raining fairly hard much of the day the survey was taken (a detail that the survey failed to mention). From my personal experience, I avoided this road (and the general area) in the week or two leading up to Christmas and just after Thanksgiving because it was so congested but used it regularly the rest of the time.
When I was nailed, it was mid-morning on a clear, warm, dry, summer day nowhere near a holiday. Traffic was so light that there were maybe five cars visible to me on a three lane (each way) road, wide shoulders, a full width double-double yellow "divider lane", posted no parking on both sides, no pedestrian traffic present (and there were generous sidewalks if there had been), no residences or businesses fronting on the street (just a continuous block wall behind large housing developments, and only the occasional side street (all of which had dedicated left turn pockets onto them from the street I was on and either were signal controlled or were non-through streets with "one-way" stop signs and with clear visibility both ways).
I thought about fighting it based on the traffic survey not being representative of normal traffic flow about 350 days of the year, including the day I was driving, but was too busy with school and work so didn't. To this day I regret not fighting it as I'm sure thousands of people got unjustified tickets over the years on that stretch of road and most (in pre internet days) wouldn't have thought to research the law let alone actually get a copy of the traffic survey and known the game the city was playing.
Do you object to driver's licenses being required and being issued upon passing a series of tests? For example, blind people fail the vision test and can't get their license so can't legally operate a vehicle on public roadways. Would you like to the requirement for driver's licenses eliminated - after all, if a blind guy drives, he is "responsible" so he should be allowed to drive? How about prohibitions on driving with a BAC above 0.08? If you want to drive with a BAC of 0.25, why shouldn't you -- after all, you are responsible?
If one believes in licenses being required by human drivers, isn't it reasonable to require some sort of license (part of which involves a real-live skills test) for "robotic" drivers?
That depends on the jury. Which depends on how much you have to spend on Jury Consultants. Good Luck.
(ii) Any evidence that this, and only this, phone mysteriously exhibited this problem? If not, Good Luck.
(iii) Any evidence this happened? With rare exceptions, at least one member of the jury doesn't assume, without evidence, that all LEO's are crooks. Good Luck!
(iv) Yes -- if you have a partial jury where every member (before being called for jury duty) was intent on finding you "not guilty". How many people worship countach based on past media exposure? Good Luck!
Notice the common thread. Yes, O.J. got away with murder -- but, due to quirks of pensions and homestead laws, he could hand tens of millions of dollars to his lawyers (who, you might notice, were not there in Nevada where he is rotting in prison) to play the race card (are you AA?) to deflect reality. Do you have both that notoriety and those resources to corrupt the system?
Trial courts make a lot of mistakes. Appellate courts, not so much. Appellate courts are not prone (unlike juries) to being distracted by obfuscation.
I strongly urge you to consult an experienced and successful (several felony criminal triangles per year before a jury) before you bet 40 years of your life on your beliefs.
Agreed, but it would be suggestive that you may have been lying so, coupled with other evidence, could support a conviction on lying to a investigator.
For example, suppose the police get a secret warrant to monitor your internet traffic while you are out on bail. If they eventually find you using a password on another site that works on the phone (or clone) that they hold in evidence and find it works. Three minutes later they knock at your door to again serve the warrant for your password and you, again, claim you forgot it (even though you had obviously known it just 180 seconds earlier), a jury might find that, beyond reasonable doubt, you were lying every time you claimed to forget the password.
All very fact specific though...
Actually, in general, I think if the police can convince the court that the defendant does know the location of the key, they can force him to surrender it.
However, the open question that gets litigated sometimes is the case where revealing the location of the key would do more than reveal the key, it would also reveal that the suspect was guilty because only the guilty party would know where the key was. The argument goes that, in this case, revealing the knowledge of the location of the key would be self-incriminating testimony.
No, actually, Steven's opinion (which was a dissent so has no legal weight) was that the defendant could be compelled to surrender the key but not to communicate the combination (a.k.a. password). The former was a physical object so surrendering it was not "testimonial" in nature. The latter, Stevens apparently believed, was testimonial due to Doe having to reveal a piece of information held only in his mind. See upstream comment for more detail.
Steven's statement was in a dissent and has NO legal weight. See comment upstream for details.
Do keep in mind that making a false statement to a investigator can be a serious charge in of itself -- esp. a Federal investigator. Ask Martha Stewart about that.
I assume that this defendant had already tried (a) -- whether or not he is allowed to do that in this case is the very question the court seems to be answering.
(b) would be a false statement if you really hadn't forgotten it. Admittedly it would be hard to prove that your statement was false -- but if you eventually "remembered" it and/or bragged about how you lied, you might get nailed just for the lie to investigators.
(c) would result in the same conclusion as (a) but it's possible the courts would decide that, yes, if you were forced to give up the password it would have been a violation of your Fifth Amendment rights -- but you didn't assert your right and gave the password up voluntarily so no "get out of jail" card.
(d) has the same problems as (b)
At first glance, I don't think that Doe v. United States 487 U.S. 201 (1988) is very persuasive in this case -- to either side.
The government wanted to access records of Doe's financial activities at foreign banks. Those banks, complying with their own laws, refused to do so without Doe's consent. The government then got a court order requiring Doe to sign consent directives so the foreign banks would reveal what, if anything, they knew of Doe's activities. Doe refused to sign the consent directives and the court held him in civil contempt. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's order and contempt charge with a sole dissenting justice (Stevens).
The issue of "combinations" vs. "keys" was not central to the case. The issue was brought up in the dissent:
The majority opinion, in footnote, responded to the dissent on this issue with:
This footnote seems far off topic from the main case (Doe was being required to give "consent" to something that he actually didn't consent to except under the threat of force by the government). But, more importantly, the footnote only remarks that giving consent is more like being forced to surrender a key than to reveal a combination -- it didn't say how the court would have ruled on the "key" OR the "combination" issue had that actually been a question to be resolved.
The nuclear option can only be brought up by the majority. This is because the majority is needed to change the rules either at the beginning of the session or during the session (through the trickery of claiming that something is not "rules change" but merely an "interpretation" -- such as in "We, the majority, agree that the word 'pi' in the Senate rules should be interpreted as having the exact value of 3").
A nominee can only be kept from being voted on by either a filibuster by the minority or by the majority simply deciding they don't choose to schedule it.
The "nuclear option" was put on the table by Reid a week or two before the election (when he foolishly assumed Democrats would control the Executive AND the Senate) not to force a nominee to be put up for a vote but to make sure that the Republicans couldn't stop the confirmation from happening by invoking a filibuster.
So, putting the nuclear option on the table really had nothing to do with forcing votes on a nominee - the (assumed) Democrat majority in the Senate could do that whenever they wanted.
Like all things political, there were compromises -- but those was necessary to create the United States of America.
Had the Federalists and the Anti-federalists not compromised, today Americans would probably be sipping tea and eating finger foods at 4PM while boorishly tapping away on our iPhones and ignoring each other (and 'Trump' would be best known as a designated suit of cards in whist rather than as an international menace).
Interestingly changing the Senate so that states don't all have equal power is the only feature of the Constitution that can't be amended via the ordinary amendment process (which requires only ¾ states to agree). EVERY state would have to agree with such a change for it to happen. Although, the Senate could just be eliminated or made powerless (such as removing all of its responsibilities and duties and making it only a ceremonial entity) via the ordinary amendment process.
Sort of like some Democrats are now probably regretting Reid saying just a couple weeks before the election that Senate Democrats should exercise the nuclear option (get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees) if Republicans interfered with confirming Clinton's (oops...) SCOTUS nominees. I, however, look forward to Reid speaking out in favor of Republicans when they exercise the nuclear option to prevent Democrats from interfering with Trump's SCOTUS nominees (unless, of course, he happens to be a hypocritical scumbag).
On the one hand, Lessig relies (correctly) on the fact that the Constitution places no restrictions on how electors vote and that it was expected that they would be citizens exercising judgement.
On the other hand, he disagrees with a very fundamental feature of the Constitution -- that states, by the fact they are states, have power beyond just the mass of their population. This is directly evidenced in the Constitution as it defines how the Electoral College and Senate work. The Founders felt so strongly that each state have an equal vote in the Senate independent of the population of the state that the ONLY thing that can't be amended in the Constitution with approval of ¾ of the states (NO state can lose equal suffrage in the Senate without approval of that state).
It seems quite odd to rely on the Constitution for one argument and then completely dismiss one of its most fundamental concepts that protected the less populous states from being run roughshod over at the Federal level by the more populous states. One might go so far as to label such a viewpoint as hypocritical.
I don't see why if it is legal to have a voluntary abortion during the 26th week (for example), it should not also be legal for a mother and her doctor to humanely terminate the life of a baby born prematurely prior to that as long as it's done before the end of the 26th week of gestation. Any other view seems illogical to me.
They are all different and there isn't enough time (or interest on my part) to talk to all of them. But, I believe I gave a fairly accurate description of the view of some I have listened to.
True. I should have said a 'life with a 'soul' and that destroying it is morally equivalent to murdering a 40 year old mother with 3 kids". My apologies for the shorthand.