Actually, the engineering of the pyramids is still surprising us; not only was the construction of the pyramid incredible, but the actual quarrying and shaping of the stones is still unsurpassed. Sheets of paper won't fit through the gaps between blocks, and there's no mortar. Attempting to build a duplicate pyramid today would still be a massive undertaking that would take years; hardly a trivial task.
And while it is claimed that it would be technically possible for us to reproduce something like the Great Pyramid of Khufu, it will never be attempted by our society because of the enormous cost. So when taken as a group, it is the combination of engineering ability, and political, economic, and philosophical/religious abilities, made it possible for the ancients to build things as awe-inspiring, beautiful and permanent as Great Pyramid of Khufu. Even if it is possible to reproduce their efforts from an engineering point of view, it is not possible for us to do so from an economic and political point of view. It is impossible for the modern world to build something so expensive unless it will somehow pay for itself. And something that pays for itself is never going to be as beautiful, or awe-inspiring, or, for that matter, built to last as long, as something built under purer motives.
I get so tired of people praising stone-age cultures as though they were so much more advanced than we like to think just because they could pile some damn rocks really high or, given several millennia of sky-watching, could notice patterns in the night sky. None of this is special and none of it is indicative of the kind of detailed, theoretical knowledge that the modern, largely Western, world has developed and is continuing to develop. If these filthy savages had been so great, they would have colonized us and our stupid hunter-gatherer lifestyles would have been destroyed
I'm still waiting for modern society to perform a feat that is inherently greater than the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, or one of the other, non-surviving wonders of the ancient world. I agree that they didn't have the theoretical physics or chemistry that we had. So? We don't have the combination of government, culture, philosophy, religion, and engineering that the ancient Egyptians had. Until we build something as beautiful, awe inspiring, and lasting, as the Great Pyramid of Khufu, our claims to superiority based on our theoretical science rings as empty as your claim to superiority based on the fact that the British Isles were too far away and insignificant to be of interest for conquest to the Egyptian Empire. (Even the Mongols, the largest contiguous empire in history, couldn't find anything of interest in the British Isles.)
Most good cooks can't tell you the complex series of chemical reactions that result in deliciousness; they just learned via trial, error, and someone showing them what to do.
And by their learning, good cooks will acquire insight into how to accomplish deliciousness. Whereas you could take 10 years of graduate courses in chemistry and have no idea of how to make a good soup. Engineering can often gain insights from related theoretical fields, once those theoretical fields become advanced enough, but they are still separate areas of study.
It's just simple evolution. Useful ideas that strengthen communities survive, others do not.
Yes, and the same applies to modern Western society. So? The ideas still have to come from somewhere. "Simple evolution," if that's what you want to call it, also preserves good ideas amongst societies of chimps, such as tool making techniques and food sources, but they don't build bridges. The fact is that the Incas had the engineering skills necessary to clear-span a 150-foot gap when the Europeans did not.
Engineering ability of humans has historically usually far surpassed theoretical models. While Western theoretical understanding of chemistry far exceeded that of Japan and China in 1912, metal workers in those countries had understood the differences in the hardness/brittleness and the toughness of high-carbon and low-carbon steel for 1,000 years, and had been using that knowledge to make swords with an inner core of tough low-carbon steel, surrounded by an outer layer of more brittle, but hard and sharpenable high-carbon steel. Meanwhile, European engineers, without those engineering insights, built an enormous ocean liner out of high-carbon steel, that was so brittle that it sank after hitting a chunk of ice.
History has always been extremely biased (the winner writes the books) and tended to show ancient people as stupid compared to us.
Yep. Just look at the Neanderthals. Based on the evidence we have to go on (brain size), they were a lot smarter than us. Yet look how we portray them.
Admittedly part of this may be because they were discovered very shortly after the success of Darwin, and so automatically became the "missing link," and remained that way in the public consciousness. Maybe if they had only been discovered today, the general view of them would be less slanted. But maybe not. There seems to still be a strong bias against the idea that they were a more advanced species that went extinct, as we want to see ourselves as the end product of a continuous increase in advancement.
It doesn't read thoughts. We would have no idea of how to do that, or if it's even possible. It reads the signals in the motor area of Broca's Area, from which come the signals to all the anatomical parts involved in speech. So it only reads what you are trying actually say. "Speech" that is only thought, and speech that is heard, don't involve those neurons. People with damaged in that specific area would have some sort of problem speaking -- they couldn't speak the right words, or they would speak the wrong words without realizing it, or they wouldn't be able to speak them in a grammatically sequence -- but they wouldn't necessarily have any trouble thinking or writing the same "speech" correctly.
The headline says "Major Breakthrough." The scientist says, "we hope it will be a breakthrough." Seriously people, it's called "truthfulness." Try some.
Yes, there are concerns about network neutrality, and there are concerns about the US abusing its position.
As opposed to the UN, which would only shut the Internet down to mitigate Global Warming, and then award itself a peace prize.
Seriously, though, who's in the UN? China, where discussion of unpleasant aspects of its history will put you in jail; Germany, where denial of unpleasant aspects of its history will put you in jail... I'd rather the Internet be in a place where, though people are just as stupid as everywhere else, they have the unqualified constitutional right to express every stupid idea they have have.
This has been repeated a number of times, and I recognize the truth in this, but you need to remember that the bigger picture is that an ISP is trying to change unilaterally how (and whether) it delivers traffic based on content.
They're not doing anything based on content. They're doing to based on protocol. There's an enormous difference.
no ISP, Comcast or not, should be allowed to unilaterally decide, "Hey, we don't like this traffic, so I just won't carry it." or "This is for The Good Of The People to Prevent Piracy" (or "Prevent Undermining Our Glorious President" or whatever).
A company shouldn't be able to unilaterally decide what product or service it is going to sell? What is this frikin North Korea? Who should decide what the company is going to offer then? President Bush? The Supreme Court? Based on what does anyone other than the company have any right to make that determination?
The courts, Congress, or a federal agency has the following responsibilities:...
* Prevent unfair trade - if you throttle traffic because of some justifiable reason like bandwidth utilization, you must throttle all traffic on equal terms including your own. If you offer phone or video services you cannot give them preferential treatment.
* No discrimination based on the content of the data. A bit is a bit is a bit.
* No discrimination based on the port or protocol without a valid technical reason. "SSH triggers a bug in our routers that crashes our network" is a valid if very embarrassing technical reason. "SSH lets people hide torrents and torrents are big" is not.
Why on earth should the federal government, or any other government, enforce such a thing. As a Comcast customer it would be a disaster for me. Cable has an inherently limited upstream bandwidth. If Comcast allowed people to run their bittorrent upstreams unimpeded 24/7, I wouldn't have the upstream bandwith available that I need to the make file transfers I need to make for my livelihood as a developer. Other than hurting a business by hurting the majority of its customers, what purpose does it serve. EVERYONE loses from such a policy, except for torrent downloaders who will get them a little faster. Why should the government have the authority to enact measures that don't serve the public good?
Since it's a fraudulent packet, they could get in trouble for that.
A fraudulent packet? What is a fraudulent packet? Packets, including their IP addresses, are modified in all sorts of ways by routers and software to work the TCP/IP protocol for all sorts of purposes. Are these all fraudulent packets? Or is the problem only that it's an undesired packet? Shall we pass federal legislation outlawing the transmission of any packets that aren't desired by the owner of the endpoint address? A lot of/. posters would be in violation of that law!
I found it funny that this is tagged "!Democracy". Perhaps you share President Bush's philosophy that democracy leads to freedom. (You know, the reason why we're in Iraq?) But it's absurd to suggest that the lack of freedom implies the lack of democracy. That's the equivalent of saying that a majority could never vote in a tyrannical government, or that 51% could never vote for the oppression of the other 49%.
The opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel is binding on all the executive agencies, in no greater or lessor way than the opinion of the Supreme Court is binding on the inferior courts.
I refer you once again to the actual legal code of the U.S., where there is no mention of the AG ever making a binding legal decision. You're basically just making that up, but it holds no water.
Uh, while you were scanning the U.S. Code for the phrase "the AG can make binding legal decisions", how many times did you come across the phrase "judges can make binding legal decisions"?
The Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, sec. 35, 1 Stat. 73, 92-93 makes the Attorney General the provider of legal opinion to the President, and Article II, section 1 of the Constitution vests all executive power in the President, making such legal opinion "legal binding" on the entire executive branch and its agencies.
And more to the point, if I get called into the AG's office, and he says I'm breaking the law, I can laugh in his face and walk out. If I get called into court, and the Judge says I'm breaking the law, the bailiff will take me away. In fact the only way the AG could stop me from laughing in his face and walking out is if he first goes to a judge and asks permission to hold me. Because, as is obvious to anyone who knows anything, the AG can't issue binding legal decisions but the courts can.
That is utterly wrong. The AG, or even your local police officer can -- and will -- arrest you if the officer possesses probable cause that you have committed a felony, or if the officer has witnessed you commit a misdemeanor. That arrest is precisely as "legally binding" as an arrest served from a judge's arrest warrant. In either case the arrest is exactly as "legally binding" as the probable cause.
And this is a court case, to which the Executive Branch is a party, and therefore the Court's decisions are binding on the Executive Branch, including orders to not destroy evidence.
Yes, and even the conservative Marshall Court explicitly ruled that the Supreme Court does in fact have the power to issue rulings on cases that compel an Executive officer to comply with statutes. They only ruled that in that particular case that they did not have jurisdiction, not all cases to which the government is a party, because that would be un-Constitutional.
You've obviously not read the case. I suggest you do so, before stating what it says. The opinion states that 1) The Constitution give only ORIGINAL jurisdiction to the Supreme Court in cases involving executive officers, that 2) a writ of mandamus can ONLY be given by court with appellate jurisdiction, and that therefore 3) the Supreme Court cannot, ever, unless by constitutional amendment, issue a writ of mandamus as a remedy in a suit against an executive officer.
As far as the court having the authority to order an executive officer to retain records, or otherwise direct him in matters that usually fall under his own discretion, that would have been unthinkable to Justice Marshall, as would be evident to anyone who read the opinion:
"By the constitution of the United States, the president is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience. To aid him in the performance of these duties, he is authorized to appoint certain officers, who act by his authority and in conformity with his orders.
In such cases, their acts are his acts; and whatever opinion may be entertained of the manner in which executive discretion may be used, still there exists, and can exist, no power to control that discretion. The subjects are political. They respect the nation, not individual rights, and being entruste
The DOJ has taken the position that giving up your encryption keys is not testimony, so it isn't protected by the 5th amendment.
I think I found the source of this claim in a recent blog that referenced the 1998 DOJ Encryption Policy FAQ. But that is not the DOJ position at all. What the DOJ claims was claiming to not be self-incrimination was if users of encryption products were required to store their keys with third-party escrows, in advance of using the product; so that those records could be obtained by court order in the event of a criminal trial.
They are arguably right about that, however, if such a system were mandatory, it would at best be walking an extremely fine line around the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. Besides which, it would be utterly unenforcible, as anyone with a copy of Applied Cryptography can write their own strong encryption program that doesn't escrow their key; and such rogue programs would spread too easily over the Internet, which is probably why the government for the most part gave up on their efforts to regulate encryption in the few years after that paper.
The DOJ has taken the position that giving up your encryption keys is not testimony, so it isn't protected by the 5th amendment. The issue hasn't even been resolved for forcing people to hand over paper-based personal notes (cf the Packwood case).
So, I wouldn't be so sure that the 5th amendment protects you.
I'm not aware of the specifics of the DOJ's position. If it allows for executing warrants for encryption keys on physical media, that is completely reasonable. But the idea of a warrant being able to force you to volunteer a memorized pass phrase is absurd, and I will assume the DOJ doesn't take that position until I have information to the contrary.
Fortunately, even if the DOJ takes that position, the founding fathers gave us triple protection against being forced to volunteer incriminating evidence, and the rest of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. The legislators all have a sworn duty not to pass any law requiring self-incrimination; if they do pass such a law, the President, Attorney General, and by extension the DOJ, has a sworn duty not to enforce it; if they do enforce it, the judge has a sworn duty not to convict or sentence upon it. Even in today's sorry state of creative interpretation of the Constitution, I don't see a law like this one capable of surviving in the U.S.
The law already makes it very illegal to impede the execution of a search warrant and to otherwise obstruct justice. If the police come with a search warrant, you must allow them to enter the premises. RIPA logically extends the law into the "digital age".
Search warrants are for physical objects. If judges could issue search warrants for information in people's memory, we would be in serious trouble. A warrant for physical records of the passp hrase would be fine, but a search warrant for the information itself would be problematic. Nor do search warrants compel you to tell the police where the items are that they are searching for -- at least in the US. We (almost) always have the right to remain silent.
But... they did. Congress controls the purse strings, they control what agencies the Executive Branch creates, they control the jurisdictions of the various law enforcement agencies that operate under the President
Yes, the Constitution gives Congress the power to create and fund the executive agencies. The Constitution gives the President the power to run the executive agencies.
they control when the President is able to put on his Commander in Chief hat and engage in war with other countries. You don't know anything at all if you think the legislative branch can't control executive behavior, because basically every aspect of the executive branch's apparatus is defined by the legislature.
Nothing could be further from the plain text of the Constitution or the behavior of the founding fathers. Congress never gave President Washington permission to go to war with the Northwest Indian confederations. Congress never gave President Jefferson permission to go to war against the Ottoman Empire. Nor did they complain when he did. Nor did they feel any need to issue a Declaration of War. (because the power of Command-in-Chief is vested by the Constitution in the President, and everyone in Congress at the time had actually read the Constitution.)
One of the most important checks placed on the legislature by the founding fathers is the fact that the President has the independent duty to not execute any law that violates Constitution, and is not the puppet of the legislature.
Go ahead and look for the Department of Justice and the Attorney General in the Constitution. These organizations, and the financing they receive, were created by Congress.
Yes, because the CONSTITUTION gives the the power to create cabinet-level agencies, and gives the Senate the power to confirm the nominees to cabinet-level positions.
Oh, this idiotic theory again. No, the opinions of the Supreme Court are only issued in binding fashion within the confines of the Supreme Court, but once issued they carry weight everywhere that is under U.S. law! Or do you seriously believe that when the Court rules on something, the parties involved in the case must only comply with that decision so long as they stand before the Court? That as soon as they walk out, the "opinion"(aka decision) of the Supreme Court no longer matters? That's so clearly not true it goes against the most basic of knowledge of how the judiciary works. Yes, they only rule on matters of law when a case is brought before them, but YES that ruling is binding across all branches of government.
Yes, that's the way the court system does, and always has, worked. The idea that the Court's opinion is binding on the other branches of government is something akin to modern urban legend, perpetuated by those who think their ideology stands to gain ground by exaggerating the power of the Court. Nothing in the history of actual U.S. legal proceedings jibes with that. The Court only has jurisdiction only over its cases. They can decide, as they have, that human fetuses aren't really people, or that blacks aren't really people, and therefore make it impossible for the executive branch to successfully prosecute any crimes against fetuses or blacks, and make it meaningless for Congress to make any laws to protect fetuses or blacks, but they can't dictate how those branches read the Constitution, or command them as to how they are to execute their elected offices. The idea that they can would be utterly absurd as it would vest ALL governmental power in that one branch. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of the
I'm Marbury v Madison, the court decided that they did not have jurisdiction over the case and that the law Congress had passed that claimed to give them jurisdiction was unconstitutional. The ENTIRE POINT of the decision was that the court did NOT want to say they didn't have the right to order the executive branch to do something, but they also didn't want to risk actually ordering them to do something and having the order ignored. This is Constitutional history 101.
It can be claimed that there was a strategic motive behind the ruling -- that they didn't want to make an order that would be ignored -- but that doesn't change what the ruling was.
You are wrong on the "entire point" of the ruling. They ruled that the law giving them the power of the writ of mandamus was unconstitutional BECAUSE it was unconstitutional for them to have that power!
Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. As the Commander-in-Chief, it's the President's job to decide how to handle the war, but he cannot unilaterally declare the war.
And just when DID Washington & Jefferson attack other nations on their own? My early American history is a bit rusty, but I don't remember any such cases.
Yes, Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. Issuing Declarations of War, and engaging enemies in battle are two entirely different things. One has never been a prerequisite for the other.
Washington launched numerous mini-wars against various confederations of Indian tribes, all without declarations of war. Jefferson unilaterally decided to end the tradition of paying tribute to the Muslim Barbary pirates out of the federal budget, went to full-scale war against the Ottoman Empire to secure the safety of our vessels from their raids. Congress didn't ever consider issuing a Declaration of War, because such declarations exist for diplomatic purposes, and so unless waging war on a European power, there was no reason for it.
"Separation of Powers" does not mean that each branch holds absolute power within its domain, and none of the other branches can tell it what to do.
"Separation of Powers" means that, of those powers enjoyed by the government, each branch wields a separate set of powers, that often oppose each other so as to create a balance. It does not mean all branches are "equal" in the sense that you meant. "Balanced" would be more appropriate.
It is entirely unclear how you mean those two statements to mean different things. There are some powers which are divided between branches, and other powers which are vested entirely in one of the three branches. The only sense that the branches were not meant to be "equal" is that the judiciary was meant to be inferior to the two representative branches.
The Legislative branch creates the legal code that define not just what is legal and illegal but also allowed government behavior. They define what the government looks like, including the executive branch. President Bush couldn't just go and create the Department of Homeland Security because he felt like it, he had to ask Congress to authorize this and more importantly to allocate government funds.
If the founders had given the legislature the power to control executive behavior, they would have completely failed at providing a check against the legislature and preventing a legislative tyranny, which was one of their greatest fears.
Maybe you noticed how President Bush had to get his own choice for Attorney General approved by Congress? That's because the law that establishes the Department of Justice says so. This is case of one branch wielding direct power over another.
No! Cabinet-level positions must be confirmed by the Senate because the CONSTITUTION gives them that power, not because they gave themselves that power.
They are the only branch with this power -- any claim by Bush or the AG or anyone else that something is or is not legal is merely an opinion with zero weight until the court rules on it.
You are making Thomas Jefferson spin in his grave. The OPINIONS of the Supreme Court have weight only for the Supreme Court and their inferior courts. The only legal opinion that matters or carries any weight in the exercise of executive power, is the opinion of the AG, or by extension the Office of Legal Counsel. Thomas Jefferson is on record making emotional tirades against those who share your opinion of a super-court that lords over the elected government.
And when someone -- including a member of another branch in government -- is seen not to be in compliance with the law, the court absolutely has the power to order them to cease.
Not according to the Supreme Court itself in Marbury v. Madison. It said, in fact, that it did not have constitutional authority to order an officer of the government to obey a statute, and that the act of Congress that sought to give them that power was in fact unconstitutional.
Well, the President of the USA isn't supposed to be able to decide on his own to attack other nations. But Congress, in its infinite stupidity & wimpiness, has allowed the Prez to do just that! "Checks and Balances" only work if the other branches of government use them!
The President of the USA is ABSOLUTELY able to decide on his own to attack other nations. That's what commander-in-chief means. If the words of the Constitution are too confusing, just look at the actions of its writers. Presidents Washington and Jefferson BOTH decided on their own to attack other nations.
Parent seems to think that the Supreme Court stands above the law, which obviously, it does not, and is grossly ignorant of Federal case law, and is engaging in abuse of the moderation system to quash truthful information that is inconvenient to his ideology.
Marbury v. Madison determined that Congress could not give the Court the power to issue writs of mandamus, because the Court's constitutional jurisdiction excludes the power of issuing writs of mandamus. The power of issuing writs of mandamus is the power to order a public officer to perform his duty as required by statute. So yes, this was exactly what Marbury v. Madison was about.
You have it backwards. At issue was a writ of mandamus, which is an order to an officer to execute his duty as required by statute. James Madison was statutorily required to deliver a commission to Marbury, and the court scolded him for not doing it. But it correctly concluded that it did not have the jurisdiction to order him to do it, and the commission was never delivered.
The ACLU routinely sues to get courts to order schools to desist from any practices that pertain to religion, or at least to Christianity. They sue to get public prayers forbidden from graduations, from sporting events, they sue to get even minor references to the Bible removed from classroom lessons. A comprehensive list would be an undertaking to compile. Here's a page that details some of their specific harmful actions: top ten reasons to stop the ACLU.
Cheney, Addington, and Yoo are American heroes for their part in restoring the constitutional balance of power between the branches of government, a balance that was significantly assaulted after Watergate. GWB will be remembered as the one who restored the constitutional balance of powers between the executive and legislative, but you're right that it should be Cheney that gets most the credit.
The waterboarding of the five or six high-level Al Qaeda leaders who otherwise did not talk was the right thing to do. Whether or not you call it "torture" is irrelevant. However, you are are wrong in your assertion that it is still authorized to this day.
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And while it is claimed that it would be technically possible for us to reproduce something like the Great Pyramid of Khufu, it will never be attempted by our society because of the enormous cost. So when taken as a group, it is the combination of engineering ability, and political, economic, and philosophical/religious abilities, made it possible for the ancients to build things as awe-inspiring, beautiful and permanent as Great Pyramid of Khufu. Even if it is possible to reproduce their efforts from an engineering point of view, it is not possible for us to do so from an economic and political point of view. It is impossible for the modern world to build something so expensive unless it will somehow pay for itself. And something that pays for itself is never going to be as beautiful, or awe-inspiring, or, for that matter, built to last as long, as something built under purer motives.
I'm still waiting for modern society to perform a feat that is inherently greater than the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, or one of the other, non-surviving wonders of the ancient world. I agree that they didn't have the theoretical physics or chemistry that we had. So? We don't have the combination of government, culture, philosophy, religion, and engineering that the ancient Egyptians had. Until we build something as beautiful, awe inspiring, and lasting, as the Great Pyramid of Khufu, our claims to superiority based on our theoretical science rings as empty as your claim to superiority based on the fact that the British Isles were too far away and insignificant to be of interest for conquest to the Egyptian Empire. (Even the Mongols, the largest contiguous empire in history, couldn't find anything of interest in the British Isles.)
And by their learning, good cooks will acquire insight into how to accomplish deliciousness. Whereas you could take 10 years of graduate courses in chemistry and have no idea of how to make a good soup. Engineering can often gain insights from related theoretical fields, once those theoretical fields become advanced enough, but they are still separate areas of study.
Yes, and the same applies to modern Western society. So? The ideas still have to come from somewhere. "Simple evolution," if that's what you want to call it, also preserves good ideas amongst societies of chimps, such as tool making techniques and food sources, but they don't build bridges. The fact is that the Incas had the engineering skills necessary to clear-span a 150-foot gap when the Europeans did not.
Engineering ability of humans has historically usually far surpassed theoretical models. While Western theoretical understanding of chemistry far exceeded that of Japan and China in 1912, metal workers in those countries had understood the differences in the hardness/brittleness and the toughness of high-carbon and low-carbon steel for 1,000 years, and had been using that knowledge to make swords with an inner core of tough low-carbon steel, surrounded by an outer layer of more brittle, but hard and sharpenable high-carbon steel. Meanwhile, European engineers, without those engineering insights, built an enormous ocean liner out of high-carbon steel, that was so brittle that it sank after hitting a chunk of ice.
Yep. Just look at the Neanderthals. Based on the evidence we have to go on (brain size), they were a lot smarter than us. Yet look how we portray them.
Admittedly part of this may be because they were discovered very shortly after the success of Darwin, and so automatically became the "missing link," and remained that way in the public consciousness. Maybe if they had only been discovered today, the general view of them would be less slanted. But maybe not. There seems to still be a strong bias against the idea that they were a more advanced species that went extinct, as we want to see ourselves as the end product of a continuous increase in advancement.
It doesn't read thoughts. We would have no idea of how to do that, or if it's even possible. It reads the signals in the motor area of Broca's Area, from which come the signals to all the anatomical parts involved in speech. So it only reads what you are trying actually say. "Speech" that is only thought, and speech that is heard, don't involve those neurons. People with damaged in that specific area would have some sort of problem speaking -- they couldn't speak the right words, or they would speak the wrong words without realizing it, or they wouldn't be able to speak them in a grammatically sequence -- but they wouldn't necessarily have any trouble thinking or writing the same "speech" correctly.
The headline says "Major Breakthrough." The scientist says, "we hope it will be a breakthrough." Seriously people, it's called "truthfulness." Try some.
As opposed to the UN, which would only shut the Internet down to mitigate Global Warming, and then award itself a peace prize.
Seriously, though, who's in the UN? China, where discussion of unpleasant aspects of its history will put you in jail; Germany, where denial of unpleasant aspects of its history will put you in jail... I'd rather the Internet be in a place where, though people are just as stupid as everywhere else, they have the unqualified constitutional right to express every stupid idea they have have.
They're not doing anything based on content. They're doing to based on protocol. There's an enormous difference.
A company shouldn't be able to unilaterally decide what product or service it is going to sell? What is this frikin North Korea? Who should decide what the company is going to offer then? President Bush? The Supreme Court? Based on what does anyone other than the company have any right to make that determination?
Why on earth should the federal government, or any other government, enforce such a thing. As a Comcast customer it would be a disaster for me. Cable has an inherently limited upstream bandwidth. If Comcast allowed people to run their bittorrent upstreams unimpeded 24/7, I wouldn't have the upstream bandwith available that I need to the make file transfers I need to make for my livelihood as a developer. Other than hurting a business by hurting the majority of its customers, what purpose does it serve. EVERYONE loses from such a policy, except for torrent downloaders who will get them a little faster. Why should the government have the authority to enact measures that don't serve the public good?
A fraudulent packet? What is a fraudulent packet? Packets, including their IP addresses, are modified in all sorts of ways by routers and software to work the TCP/IP protocol for all sorts of purposes. Are these all fraudulent packets? Or is the problem only that it's an undesired packet? Shall we pass federal legislation outlawing the transmission of any packets that aren't desired by the owner of the endpoint address? A lot of
Are you saying... you're not human? Or are you planning on dying off-planet?
I found it funny that this is tagged "!Democracy". Perhaps you share President Bush's philosophy that democracy leads to freedom. (You know, the reason why we're in Iraq?) But it's absurd to suggest that the lack of freedom implies the lack of democracy. That's the equivalent of saying that a majority could never vote in a tyrannical government, or that 51% could never vote for the oppression of the other 49%.
Uh, while you were scanning the U.S. Code for the phrase "the AG can make binding legal decisions", how many times did you come across the phrase "judges can make binding legal decisions"?
The Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, sec. 35, 1 Stat. 73, 92-93 makes the Attorney General the provider of legal opinion to the President, and Article II, section 1 of the Constitution vests all executive power in the President, making such legal opinion "legal binding" on the entire executive branch and its agencies.
That is utterly wrong. The AG, or even your local police officer can -- and will -- arrest you if the officer possesses probable cause that you have committed a felony, or if the officer has witnessed you commit a misdemeanor. That arrest is precisely as "legally binding" as an arrest served from a judge's arrest warrant. In either case the arrest is exactly as "legally binding" as the probable cause.
You've obviously not read the case. I suggest you do so, before stating what it says. The opinion states that 1) The Constitution give only ORIGINAL jurisdiction to the Supreme Court in cases involving executive officers, that 2) a writ of mandamus can ONLY be given by court with appellate jurisdiction, and that therefore 3) the Supreme Court cannot, ever, unless by constitutional amendment, issue a writ of mandamus as a remedy in a suit against an executive officer.
As far as the court having the authority to order an executive officer to retain records, or otherwise direct him in matters that usually fall under his own discretion, that would have been unthinkable to Justice Marshall, as would be evident to anyone who read the opinion:
"By the constitution of the United States, the president is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience. To aid him in the performance of these duties, he is authorized to appoint certain officers, who act by his authority and in conformity with his orders.
In such cases, their acts are his acts; and whatever opinion may be entertained of the manner in which executive discretion may be used, still there exists, and can exist, no power to control that discretion. The subjects are political. They respect the nation, not individual rights, and being entruste
I think I found the source of this claim in a recent blog that referenced the 1998 DOJ Encryption Policy FAQ. But that is not the DOJ position at all. What the DOJ claims was claiming to not be self-incrimination was if users of encryption products were required to store their keys with third-party escrows, in advance of using the product; so that those records could be obtained by court order in the event of a criminal trial.
They are arguably right about that, however, if such a system were mandatory, it would at best be walking an extremely fine line around the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. Besides which, it would be utterly unenforcible, as anyone with a copy of Applied Cryptography can write their own strong encryption program that doesn't escrow their key; and such rogue programs would spread too easily over the Internet, which is probably why the government for the most part gave up on their efforts to regulate encryption in the few years after that paper.
I'm not aware of the specifics of the DOJ's position. If it allows for executing warrants for encryption keys on physical media, that is completely reasonable. But the idea of a warrant being able to force you to volunteer a memorized pass phrase is absurd, and I will assume the DOJ doesn't take that position until I have information to the contrary.
Fortunately, even if the DOJ takes that position, the founding fathers gave us triple protection against being forced to volunteer incriminating evidence, and the rest of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. The legislators all have a sworn duty not to pass any law requiring self-incrimination; if they do pass such a law, the President, Attorney General, and by extension the DOJ, has a sworn duty not to enforce it; if they do enforce it, the judge has a sworn duty not to convict or sentence upon it. Even in today's sorry state of creative interpretation of the Constitution, I don't see a law like this one capable of surviving in the U.S.
Search warrants are for physical objects. If judges could issue search warrants for information in people's memory, we would be in serious trouble. A warrant for physical records of the passp hrase would be fine, but a search warrant for the information itself would be problematic. Nor do search warrants compel you to tell the police where the items are that they are searching for -- at least in the US. We (almost) always have the right to remain silent.
Yes, the Constitution gives Congress the power to create and fund the executive agencies. The Constitution gives the President the power to run the executive agencies.
Nothing could be further from the plain text of the Constitution or the behavior of the founding fathers. Congress never gave President Washington permission to go to war with the Northwest Indian confederations. Congress never gave President Jefferson permission to go to war against the Ottoman Empire. Nor did they complain when he did. Nor did they feel any need to issue a Declaration of War. (because the power of Command-in-Chief is vested by the Constitution in the President, and everyone in Congress at the time had actually read the Constitution.)
One of the most important checks placed on the legislature by the founding fathers is the fact that the President has the independent duty to not execute any law that violates Constitution, and is not the puppet of the legislature.
Yes, because the CONSTITUTION gives the the power to create cabinet-level agencies, and gives the Senate the power to confirm the nominees to cabinet-level positions.
Yes, that's the way the court system does, and always has, worked. The idea that the Court's opinion is binding on the other branches of government is something akin to modern urban legend, perpetuated by those who think their ideology stands to gain ground by exaggerating the power of the Court. Nothing in the history of actual U.S. legal proceedings jibes with that. The Court only has jurisdiction only over its cases. They can decide, as they have, that human fetuses aren't really people, or that blacks aren't really people, and therefore make it impossible for the executive branch to successfully prosecute any crimes against fetuses or blacks, and make it meaningless for Congress to make any laws to protect fetuses or blacks, but they can't dictate how those branches read the Constitution, or command them as to how they are to execute their elected offices. The idea that they can would be utterly absurd as it would vest ALL governmental power in that one branch. As Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of the
It can be claimed that there was a strategic motive behind the ruling -- that they didn't want to make an order that would be ignored -- but that doesn't change what the ruling was.
You are wrong on the "entire point" of the ruling. They ruled that the law giving them the power of the writ of mandamus was unconstitutional BECAUSE it was unconstitutional for them to have that power!
Yes, Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. Issuing Declarations of War, and engaging enemies in battle are two entirely different things. One has never been a prerequisite for the other.
Washington launched numerous mini-wars against various confederations of Indian tribes, all without declarations of war. Jefferson unilaterally decided to end the tradition of paying tribute to the Muslim Barbary pirates out of the federal budget, went to full-scale war against the Ottoman Empire to secure the safety of our vessels from their raids. Congress didn't ever consider issuing a Declaration of War, because such declarations exist for diplomatic purposes, and so unless waging war on a European power, there was no reason for it.
It is entirely unclear how you mean those two statements to mean different things. There are some powers which are divided between branches, and other powers which are vested entirely in one of the three branches. The only sense that the branches were not meant to be "equal" is that the judiciary was meant to be inferior to the two representative branches.
If the founders had given the legislature the power to control executive behavior, they would have completely failed at providing a check against the legislature and preventing a legislative tyranny, which was one of their greatest fears.
No! Cabinet-level positions must be confirmed by the Senate because the CONSTITUTION gives them that power, not because they gave themselves that power.
You are making Thomas Jefferson spin in his grave. The OPINIONS of the Supreme Court have weight only for the Supreme Court and their inferior courts. The only legal opinion that matters or carries any weight in the exercise of executive power, is the opinion of the AG, or by extension the Office of Legal Counsel. Thomas Jefferson is on record making emotional tirades against those who share your opinion of a super-court that lords over the elected government.
Not according to the Supreme Court itself in Marbury v. Madison. It said, in fact, that it did not have constitutional authority to order an officer of the government to obey a statute, and that the act of Congress that sought to give them that power was in fact unconstitutional.
The President of the USA is ABSOLUTELY able to decide on his own to attack other nations. That's what commander-in-chief means. If the words of the Constitution are too confusing, just look at the actions of its writers. Presidents Washington and Jefferson BOTH decided on their own to attack other nations.
Parent seems to think that the Supreme Court stands above the law, which obviously, it does not, and is grossly ignorant of Federal case law, and is engaging in abuse of the moderation system to quash truthful information that is inconvenient to his ideology.
Marbury v. Madison determined that Congress could not give the Court the power to issue writs of mandamus, because the Court's constitutional jurisdiction excludes the power of issuing writs of mandamus. The power of issuing writs of mandamus is the power to order a public officer to perform his duty as required by statute. So yes, this was exactly what Marbury v. Madison was about.
You have it backwards. At issue was a writ of mandamus, which is an order to an officer to execute his duty as required by statute. James Madison was statutorily required to deliver a commission to Marbury, and the court scolded him for not doing it. But it correctly concluded that it did not have the jurisdiction to order him to do it, and the commission was never delivered.
The ACLU routinely sues to get courts to order schools to desist from any practices that pertain to religion, or at least to Christianity. They sue to get public prayers forbidden from graduations, from sporting events, they sue to get even minor references to the Bible removed from classroom lessons. A comprehensive list would be an undertaking to compile. Here's a page that details some of their specific harmful actions: top ten reasons to stop the ACLU.
Cheney, Addington, and Yoo are American heroes for their part in restoring the constitutional balance of power between the branches of government, a balance that was significantly assaulted after Watergate. GWB will be remembered as the one who restored the constitutional balance of powers between the executive and legislative, but you're right that it should be Cheney that gets most the credit.
The waterboarding of the five or six high-level Al Qaeda leaders who otherwise did not talk was the right thing to do. Whether or not you call it "torture" is irrelevant. However, you are are wrong in your assertion that it is still authorized to this day.