I won't go into all the decisions throughout the history of common law that created new law, as they are myriad and fundamental to our society. And I never said that Congress could pass a resolution with the force of law. I just said that it could state the public policy of the country and the courts could elect not to permit lawsuits against phone companies in these cases. Is there some particular law that permits such lawsuits? If so, is it one that Congress can't repeal retroactively? If so, why can't it?
Fair enough. What stops Congress from passing a resolution that declares it to be the public policy of the nation that phone companies not be liable for unlawfully giving the government private information, persuading many courts to refuse to permit such lawsuits? Where exactly is the line? Moreover, what part of section 10 permits state courts to continue their common law traditions? Is it the verb "pass"?
I am referring to the common law system, not the substantive common law of England as adopted into most American colonies at the time of independence. If judges cannot fill in the gaps in existing law and apply the gap-fillers to the cases before them, then the common law system cannot continue to exist. Does that clarify what I meant enough to allow you to respond to the point that I made?
Words have both denotations and connotations. Their meanings also change with context. I am fairly willing to trust very intelligent, well-educated people who were alive and using a word when it was written to tell me what it means. Just because you can look a word up in a dictionary (be it the 2007 English dictionary or a classical Latin lexicon) does not mean that you can discern its precise meaning in a given use. While I agree that Wickard was probably not the best case, it was also decided quite a while after the words it interpreted were written. Ex post facto has been consistently interpreted to mean the same thing in the context of Article 1 since the ink was dry.
Another way to look at it is this. Your reading of the ex post facto clause would put an end to the entire common law system. Does it make sense to read the Constitution that way?
I agree that that is what the phone companies should do, but I was speaking only in terms of what the government should do if it wants to protect phone companies from such lawsuits. Your tax dollars should be dumped into a company to indemnify it from lawsuits (I don't see how this helps the phone company's bottom line any more than non-fraudulent insurance claims when your house burns down put you into a mansion) that your elected government pushed the company into, because the whole thing was (at least, in principle) your choice.
The real solution is for the government not to bully phone companies for information it's not entitled to and for the phone companies to resist the government when it tries to. Again, I am speaking only in terms of a better solution than the exact one that the government wants, which is immunity for everyone involved in unlawfully searching private data. If everyone is immune, do you really think that you're better off? I'd rather have my (and 300 million other Americans') tax dollars go toward indemnifying the phone companies than have nobody held accountable for such abuses. At least that way, there would be 300 million Americans pissed off about paying for lawsuits that the government shouldn't be triggering in the first place and, no matter how little effect one vote has, it is clear that 300 million votes would convince the government to stop digging around in the wrong places.
The courts have held since at least 1798 that the constitutional restriction on ex post facto laws applies only to criminal laws. The Constitutional Dictionary has some more specifics.
In the event that the government is more forceful, then indemnification is appropriate. If they're just asking the the phone companies are breaking the law, then it is probably not necessary (but it's at least marginally more appropriate than immunity).
What the government should do instead is require itself to indemnify phone companies for any judgments entered against them as a result of complying with the government's illegal requests.
In case anyone else is as confused as I was when I saw two AC comments in a row, both +4 Informative at the time I am writing this with links to different Supreme Court opinions: Both opinions are referred to in TFA. The article mentions the opinion linked to from this comment first and to the parent of the comment you are reading second. The first is KSR v. Teleflex; the second is Microsoft v. AT&T. Please don't mod either of them redundant, and enjoy.:)
The real irony in the song is that millions of people think that rain on your wedding day is ironic because Alanis wrote a song with the meta-irony of labeling non-ironic things as ironic, the way many people do. I won't get into the debate about evolution of language - the core concept of irony is what applies to Jack Valenti dying on World Intellectual Property Day, not the word used to denote it. For more discussion of the song's content and meaning, see its WIkipedia article. I'm just waiting for someone to sue Valenti's estate for copyright infringement to really put things over the edge.;)
Wait. What actions against YouTube are inconsistent with supporting fair use to the extent that the blurb (I didn't RTFA, and neither should you) discusses?
If that's the case, my assumption to the contrary is based on the frequent trolls who call American soldiers murderers. So, if you're right, mea culpa.
Um. One Asian-bred youth at Virginia Tech murdered 32 mostly American-bred people (modulo a Holocaust survivor here and there). And I don't even know what point you are trying to make about Iraq. You're probably just an idiot or a troll, but I did have to at least clear up that the murderer at Virginia Tech was not born in America and, if Virginia Tech were not a defenseless victim zone, he may have been the second or third to die instead of the 33rd.
You also fail it. It is perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. The interesting thing is that you cite the alt.usage.english FAQ as your first source that says that "could care less" is also correct but then claim that it is contradictory for the person who says otherwise to say that sentence-ending prepositions are okay, despite the alt.usage.english FAQ agreeing with him. Maybe you meant that it is contradictory for him to get one right and the other one wrong, but your comment taken as a whole does not support that.
Others have pointed out that you are wrong, and why. I still want to know, however, what exactly Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont actually were from July 4, 1776 until November 15, 1777, if they were not independent states. Maybe you know.
Roads are probably cheaper to build, definitely cheaper to maintain (since you can neglect them for years and get potholes instead of derailments), and make it possible for people to choose when they want to go from a point A of their choice to a point B of their choice. It's really not boneheaded.
Truck transportation solves a shortcoming in rail transportation, namely the problem of moving cargo along routes where rail doesn't run. If you put a rail through a tunnel, then driving a truck through the tunnel is a solution in search of a problem.
Not only that, but I can't comprehend anyone who claims that MySQL is easier to administer out of the box than PostgreSQL. User management alone is proof of the opposite.
Even under the Constitution and other contemporary documents, the references are generally in the plural. But even disregarding that, Texas was not the only independent nation to become part of the US. Others include:
There are probably others. But at least from July 4, 1776 until November 15, 1777 there is no doubt that there were 13 independent states in what is now the eastern USA.
I try not to edit Wikipedia unless I have specific information. Right now all I remember is that I played Sargon III and that it had both a DOS version and an Apple II version in the same box. I can't even tell you with certainty what year that would have been.
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I won't go into all the decisions throughout the history of common law that created new law, as they are myriad and fundamental to our society. And I never said that Congress could pass a resolution with the force of law. I just said that it could state the public policy of the country and the courts could elect not to permit lawsuits against phone companies in these cases. Is there some particular law that permits such lawsuits? If so, is it one that Congress can't repeal retroactively? If so, why can't it?
Fair enough. What stops Congress from passing a resolution that declares it to be the public policy of the nation that phone companies not be liable for unlawfully giving the government private information, persuading many courts to refuse to permit such lawsuits? Where exactly is the line? Moreover, what part of section 10 permits state courts to continue their common law traditions? Is it the verb "pass"?
I am referring to the common law system, not the substantive common law of England as adopted into most American colonies at the time of independence. If judges cannot fill in the gaps in existing law and apply the gap-fillers to the cases before them, then the common law system cannot continue to exist. Does that clarify what I meant enough to allow you to respond to the point that I made?
Words have both denotations and connotations. Their meanings also change with context. I am fairly willing to trust very intelligent, well-educated people who were alive and using a word when it was written to tell me what it means. Just because you can look a word up in a dictionary (be it the 2007 English dictionary or a classical Latin lexicon) does not mean that you can discern its precise meaning in a given use. While I agree that Wickard was probably not the best case, it was also decided quite a while after the words it interpreted were written. Ex post facto has been consistently interpreted to mean the same thing in the context of Article 1 since the ink was dry.
Another way to look at it is this. Your reading of the ex post facto clause would put an end to the entire common law system. Does it make sense to read the Constitution that way?
I agree that that is what the phone companies should do, but I was speaking only in terms of what the government should do if it wants to protect phone companies from such lawsuits. Your tax dollars should be dumped into a company to indemnify it from lawsuits (I don't see how this helps the phone company's bottom line any more than non-fraudulent insurance claims when your house burns down put you into a mansion) that your elected government pushed the company into, because the whole thing was (at least, in principle) your choice.
The real solution is for the government not to bully phone companies for information it's not entitled to and for the phone companies to resist the government when it tries to. Again, I am speaking only in terms of a better solution than the exact one that the government wants, which is immunity for everyone involved in unlawfully searching private data. If everyone is immune, do you really think that you're better off? I'd rather have my (and 300 million other Americans') tax dollars go toward indemnifying the phone companies than have nobody held accountable for such abuses. At least that way, there would be 300 million Americans pissed off about paying for lawsuits that the government shouldn't be triggering in the first place and, no matter how little effect one vote has, it is clear that 300 million votes would convince the government to stop digging around in the wrong places.
The courts have held since at least 1798 that the constitutional restriction on ex post facto laws applies only to criminal laws. The Constitutional Dictionary has some more specifics.
How does this story relate to bills of attainder or ex post facto laws?
I can't impeach either one of them. You may want to talk to the House of Representatives about this.
In the event that the government is more forceful, then indemnification is appropriate. If they're just asking the the phone companies are breaking the law, then it is probably not necessary (but it's at least marginally more appropriate than immunity).
What the government should do instead is require itself to indemnify phone companies for any judgments entered against them as a result of complying with the government's illegal requests.
In case anyone else is as confused as I was when I saw two AC comments in a row, both +4 Informative at the time I am writing this with links to different Supreme Court opinions: Both opinions are referred to in TFA. The article mentions the opinion linked to from this comment first and to the parent of the comment you are reading second. The first is KSR v. Teleflex; the second is Microsoft v. AT&T. Please don't mod either of them redundant, and enjoy. :)
The real irony in the song is that millions of people think that rain on your wedding day is ironic because Alanis wrote a song with the meta-irony of labeling non-ironic things as ironic, the way many people do. I won't get into the debate about evolution of language - the core concept of irony is what applies to Jack Valenti dying on World Intellectual Property Day, not the word used to denote it. For more discussion of the song's content and meaning, see its WIkipedia article. I'm just waiting for someone to sue Valenti's estate for copyright infringement to really put things over the edge. ;)
And that, Alanis, is ironic.
Wait. What actions against YouTube are inconsistent with supporting fair use to the extent that the blurb (I didn't RTFA, and neither should you) discusses?
If that's the case, my assumption to the contrary is based on the frequent trolls who call American soldiers murderers. So, if you're right, mea culpa.
Maybe you should either (a) point out what I said that wasn't true or (b) at least make yourself look like a fool non-anonymously.
Um. One Asian-bred youth at Virginia Tech murdered 32 mostly American-bred people (modulo a Holocaust survivor here and there). And I don't even know what point you are trying to make about Iraq. You're probably just an idiot or a troll, but I did have to at least clear up that the murderer at Virginia Tech was not born in America and, if Virginia Tech were not a defenseless victim zone, he may have been the second or third to die instead of the 33rd.
You also fail it. It is perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition. The interesting thing is that you cite the alt.usage.english FAQ as your first source that says that "could care less" is also correct but then claim that it is contradictory for the person who says otherwise to say that sentence-ending prepositions are okay, despite the alt.usage.english FAQ agreeing with him. Maybe you meant that it is contradictory for him to get one right and the other one wrong, but your comment taken as a whole does not support that.
Q: What's the difference between colonies in rebellion and independent states?
A: Whether their former master government is doing the talking.
Others have pointed out that you are wrong, and why. I still want to know, however, what exactly Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont actually were from July 4, 1776 until November 15, 1777, if they were not independent states. Maybe you know.
Roads are probably cheaper to build, definitely cheaper to maintain (since you can neglect them for years and get potholes instead of derailments), and make it possible for people to choose when they want to go from a point A of their choice to a point B of their choice. It's really not boneheaded.
Truck transportation solves a shortcoming in rail transportation, namely the problem of moving cargo along routes where rail doesn't run. If you put a rail through a tunnel, then driving a truck through the tunnel is a solution in search of a problem.
Not only that, but I can't comprehend anyone who claims that MySQL is easier to administer out of the box than PostgreSQL. User management alone is proof of the opposite.
Even under the Constitution and other contemporary documents, the references are generally in the plural. But even disregarding that, Texas was not the only independent nation to become part of the US. Others include:
Republic of California
Republic of Hawaii
Confederate States of America
There are probably others. But at least from July 4, 1776 until November 15, 1777 there is no doubt that there were 13 independent states in what is now the eastern USA.
I try not to edit Wikipedia unless I have specific information. Right now all I remember is that I played Sargon III and that it had both a DOS version and an Apple II version in the same box. I can't even tell you with certainty what year that would have been.