If you're hiring someone, and he says "let me call my lawyer", don't you get a knot in your stomach, like maybe this guy likes to sue a lot? Who calls their lawyer over an ordinary job contract (I've actually never signed a job contract; I've just been given confirmation of what I'll receive in return for my work)? Maybe he's planning on suing this company once he's hired? Maybe he's planning on suing this company for not hiring him? Maybe he's planning to slip and fall in the meeting room?
Huh, now that you mention this, perhaps it explains more why my insurance company dropped me than everything they said to my face. Basically, I had a crash, and they gave me a form to sign which would give them limited power of attorney, but would indemnify them for all acts they took while acting as my power of attorney. I crossed it out and initialed the cross out. When the person asked me if I were allowed to do that, I noted that I wasn't going to give them carte blanche to commit fraud in my name, and that the law already held them indemnified for things that were my fault, and which they were just conducting. (Like, say, I had stolen the care and faked a title, they would be held indemnified...)
I later saw a different power of attorney form from a different insurance company that stated that they would be held indemnified in accordance with state and federal law, and other such limitations that made it clear that I wouldn't stand in as at fault in a court if they decided to commit fraud in my name.
The fact that I argued with a boiler plate contract that hojillions of people have signed before probably led them to think "she's too smart, and actually reads fine print, and can deduce legal consequences of terms." Not that I think they were protecting some vast scam or anything, or even that they were doing something wrong... just that they don't want to deal with litigious people.
That of course beats the hell out of my other theory that they dropped my coverage because they were adamant Christians who were disapproving of my lifestyle choices...
What you're saying is almost EVERY University outside of the United States is just a trade school.
You see, everywhere else in the world, university is the place you go to learn and specialize in your field. They don't baby you, they don't teach you to "write", "comprehend", and "reason", that's what your high schools, and lower educational facilities are for.
Congratulations, you've hit upon the exact reason why a "diploma" from a High School in the rest of the world is equivalent to a bachelor's degree here in the US.
Why should a university be trying to teach you, what you should have already learnt? If you don't have these skills, then you're going to fail, or at the most pass very poorly.
Yes, you should have already learned those skills in High School, the rest of the world totally does. But here in the US, we don't learn shit in High School. (I knew a German foreign exchange student who took all electives while he was here, because he wasn't going to get credit for any of it anyways, and was going to have to repeat the year once he got back.)
Perhaps you don't understand just how behind the US is in education?
I don't believe my post necessarily implies that I am a chemistry geek. I am just a computer engineer changing careers to medicine who has been forced to learn more chemistry than was ever desired.
Some of it is interesting...
I don't work in linguistics, yet I'm a language geek. I don't work in law, but I'm a legal geek. Being a geek is simply about having a thirst to know more than anyone rightly should about any specific topic... regardless of the education or profession of the individual.
You mean the legal system of much of the US. It isn't universal. If you don't know that already, go try to practice law in New Orleans.
Bleh, the 8 versions I wrote before this one all had "most of the US". And it's not just New Orleans that has a Civil Law tradition, (most?) all of Louisiana does.
The context of the discussion here was the Constitution. While Common Law has a great deal to do with rights, etc., it has little bearing on what I was specifically saying in regard to the Constitution. At best, this is a straw man argument.
It has everything to do with the interpretation of the Constitution. The Constitution is evaluated, and interpreted according to Common Law traditions. Precedent matters, courts are part of the defining legal authority.
No one has overturned the fact that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution, and so therefore, they are de facto. You can argue all you want about what the interpretation of the law "ought" be, but you're still arguing against nearly every lawyer and judge in the country.
Yes, I totally goofed on the H2NO3... I was playing Alchemy Classic just recently, and HNO3 and HNO2 are a big part of the game, and thus I totally goofed. (Nota Bene: I am not a Chemistry geek)
You can argue about "interpretation" of the law all you want, but when lawyers and judges "interpret" in ways that are known to be contrary to the original meaning of the statute, they are being dishonest and downright criminal.
You do realize that the US legal system is based on Common Law, not Civil Law, right?
You're arguing against reality and precedent with your own contrived interpretations.
If you take these arguments into a court, you will be laughed out of court.
The US legal system is based on Common Law, which means that case law and precedent are potentially just as important as the written rules themselves.
If they try to force their way in, I have the right and the duty to prevent them, up to and including deadly force.
You're abusing terminology here. You do not have the duty to defend your property from invasion.
There are details conditions and requirements about your rental contracts that are not declared in the explicit text of your rental agreement. Not all rental agreements state that landlords cannot enter the premises at will, but that doesn't mean that such a landlord is allowed to enter a rental property at will.
This is pretty close to accurate, but a little pessimistic. The ER is required to stabilize and treat immediate life-threatening situations. The person with lung cancer will get only partial care, unless immediate surgery is the only appropriate care. Which of course means stage IV cancer which really means that they're going to die anyway.
However, say, you break your femur. They will give you surgery to put a pin in it, and set it. (Because they couldn't discharge you with a broken femur, and putting you in a cast for a femur means traction, which they won't want to do.) But then, say you break a finger. That would be a splint/cast and you're out.
But yeah, you still get a bill that you can't afford, and a prescription that you can't afford. (I had the same incident. Went in for chest pains, got two prescriptions that I was told are $4 each to fill, and I debated telling them not to bother, because I can't afford that anyways.)
1) iPod shuffles, health monitors, hearing aidsthese are all computers that can be worn on the body and fit the prediction.
This reads like a post-hoc rationalization... if someone were given the prediction they would not describe the given items. Predictions aren't validated because you can force things to fit them after the fact, they're valid because they predict and accurately describe what will be in the future before it is actually available.
2) Speech to text is gaining ground. It’s available in hand held devices, and as (semi) popular Apps on smartphones.
The prediction was that a majority of text is done by Speech-to-Text. "Gaining ground" doesn't give you credit.
5) Like speech to text, this technology is gaining ground and has related Apps for smartphones.
Like Speech-to-Text, "it's available" is not the necessary condition. The prediction was "commonly used".
6) Drones are a major part of the war in Afghanistan. Some of their explosive ordinance is the size of birds and contain their own navigating intelligence.
Post-hoc rationalization, and the condition was not "are used" or "major part", it was "dominated".
Seriously, this post is a horrible example of post-hoc rationalization from people who want to believe... like Nostradamus apologists. I mean, Ray Kurzweil believes in "alkalinized water" and dismisses just adding sodium bicarbonate, because the HNO3- molecule won't work as well as the HO- molecule... which entirely disregards that HNO3- interacts with H2O to make H2NO3 and HO-. http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html
No, he hasn't. President Bush obtained authorizations for use of military force from Congress for the war against Al Qaeda (War on Terror), and against Saddam's Iraq. Legally they are equivalent to declarations of war.
He was not acting to repel an invasion. Congress did not make a declaration of war. (He obtained authorization for military action/force, but this does not carry the full international implications in "declaration of war".)
I happen to side with the current idea, "Congress can authorize military action without declaring full war". But that is not what the person quoted was asserting. They were asserting the strict position of authorized military action to be "a repulsion of an invasion, or a War declared by Congress." Thus, I presented the consequences of such a narrow interpretation... that Bush fulfilled neither of those two conditions, and thus is to have also committed illegal acts.
Personally, I don't think that we should be allowed to walk into another country and oust their government without declaring war. Reconcile with previous statement: ousting a government, and less than full war are different. For instance, defending and repelling invaders from Kuwait. We did all of that without committing an act of war. It's difficult to describe the events of Operation Freedom without indicating an action that constitutes what is internationally recognized as an act of war. Namely, we blockaded Cuba, that internationally recognized as an act of war, it should have required a declaration of war to carry out, we got around that by arguing that it were "merely a quarantine", yet we had no reason to establish a quarantine, and more so especially outside of our jurisdiction.
Not entirely. See my quote of Madison up above. The way it is supposed to work, is if the States decide that any legislation from the Federal government is outside its constitutional powers -- regardless of the opinion of the Supreme Court -- then it is the right and the duty of the States to either ignore or nullify said legislation.
As an aside, this argument is based entirely upon extra-legal sources, and is not "canon". We may as well take the contradictory statements between the Federalist papers, and the works of the anti-Federalists as legally enforceable text.
Oddly, I can't argue with the facts that you present here, merely the framing. Yes, it's fundamentally true that the law is whatever the person with the gun says it is. We typically speak of coercion as "having a gun pointed at your head."
That said, the law is a bunch of mutual masturbation by which "civilized gentlemen" can settle disputes without risk of life or limb. Rather than taking any particular person out to a field for a duel at dawn/noon, whatever, now you can talk them to court, where matters are settled "like gentlemen".
But still, things remain as: your rights can and will be trampled upon unless you object. And in this system of redress that we have established, it certainly allows for bloodless arguments to be settled, but it really doesn't boil down to making any more sense than pistols at dawn.
Not entirely. See my quote of Madison up above. The way it is supposed to work, is if the States decide that any legislation from the Federal government is outside its constitutional powers -- regardless of the opinion of the Supreme Court -- then it is the right and the duty of the States to either ignore or nullify said legislation.
Remember: the States formed the Federal government, and delegated some of their own power to that government, not the other way around. You can't delegate what you don't possess.
This was more or less how the government did run, until the 14th amendment, which states: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States". And thus the Federal government began incorporating piecemeal all the rights afforded in the Bill of Rights upon the states as well. (Initially, the Bill of Rights only held against the Federal government. Thus, an individual state was allowed to establish and promote a state religion. Most did not elect to do so, and by the time of ratification of the US constitution, nearly all of the states had removed any sanctioned state religions anyways.)
As well, it remains that the US Constitution, and Federal government are the supreme law of the land. If a state refuses to recognize a federal law, it doesn't matter, because the federal law trumps all state law. If the states have a problem with a federal law infringing upon their rights as according to the constitution, then their redress of grievance is identical to that of all person's in the US: lawsuit.
Without invalidating the Federal law in Federal court, it still preempts all state law attempting to run contrary.
Not like states don't attempt to usurp authority that is explicitly delegated to the Federal congress. *cough*SB1070*cough*.
This should be voted up. People will always seek validation of their illegal acts, no matter what is necessary to accomplish that. Even if it requires semantic gymnastics.
I have to agree... sending in a military team to kill a person on another nation's soil without their permission is an act of war. Hell, we got around our "blockade" of Cuba being an act of war, because it was a "quarantine". It's all a bunch of semantic bullshit. We should set hard and fast rules that violating another nation's sovereignty with military action in any way is an act of war, and thus validation for them to declare war as a defender against an invader.
It's a sad matter of the position and precedent involved. Once you get into the position, even if you want to change things radically, you can't. You're stuck with what you have. And then you end up cobbling together what you want to do from what is available to you, and for the "right ends" you seek out any means necessary to justify it.
Thinking you're the only one to comment while understanding the historical insignificance of this. It's not new. Obama is continuing a legacy of Executive prerogative. The media are using the discussion as an excuse to beat up on the Pres. as they always have (it sells ads). The public is using it as an excuse to complain about whatever they can (it's what we do).
Two sane posts in a thread? WTF did you do with my slashdot?
It makes me sad to begin thinking that the set of birthers who think Obama never went to law school may be on to something.
Only a lawyer could come up with these sorts of arguments. In court and such, unless the opposing party argues against what you're arguing, it will typically be accepted without further question. It's part of the "problem" with an adversarial system: the judges aren't allowed to spontaneous say, "wait... what?!"
"I don't give a crap" is not a logical non-sequitur. Further, the Constitution already gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President. And further yet, the "War Powers Act" does not trump the Constitution, it merely clarifies Congress' policies regarding the waging of war.
The President's power over our military is generally considered to be limited to the power to repel invasion, without Congress' prior approval. However, this is neither a repulsion of an invasion, or a War declared by Congress. Therefore it is an illegal act, regardless of how "hostile" it is, or not. Nor does the President have any Constitutional authority to re-define the law.
Therefore, the President has committed an illegal act. And there is no non-sequitur in that chain of logic.
So, since Bush waged two wars without a declaration of war, nor repelling an invasion, therefore President Bush has committed at least two illegal acts?
Pretty straightforward actually. A mentalist will exude confidence to such a degree that you, I, or anyone else becomes submissive to their ideas. Being a mentalist means tapping into this primal human behavior as a method of directing. On a subconscious level, we have the ability to determine if someone's confidence is encapsulating the truth, or a lie. A mentalists however must not let their subject/s even approach the concept of questioning at that level.
One might say that a sociopath is a natural born mentalist.
I'll definitely grant you that. I had the misfortune to face off against a psychopath/sociopath, and I never got the same story twice from him. Everyone else wrote these differences off, likely because he was simply confident about his assertions that this version is the correct one, and he was simply mistaken before.
The first time working with him, I had no baseline to work from. The second time, his stories didn't line up, but I wrote it off as "people have imperfect memories", the third time, I realized "memories are not THAT imperfect".
But yeah, since I left my boyfriend (whose sociopath brother was abusing him, and thus why I ended up involved) the boyfriend has managed to end up right back where he was when I met him: being abused by his sociopath brother... confidence can really give one an incredible ability to predict, and affect their behavior.
If you're thinking of Derren Brown or anyone similar, I hope you're aware that every word from his mouth about how he does what he does is a lie. Half the times he "suggests" things to people it's definitely just a magic trick and the NLP bullshit he pulls is for the audience's benefit (so you feel clever for spotting it). The other half of the time it's probably a magic trick but maybe he just filmed it fifty times and picked the one time it worked.
He's very good, but he's a magician.
I imagine the Deception thing on Discovery, when he says, "I can't tell you how I did it", it's possibly because they took 50 takes and only picked the one that worked.
I don't doubt that Mentalists are magicians. In a way, it's a bit of a "duh" statement to make. Magicians don't work like magic, they just use real phenomena and distract us away from that phenomena.
But it remains that people are indeed easily susceptible to persuasion. I don't think it's any sort of "magic" or anything like that, or that there is any sort of NLP crap going on. But if I say "nurse" and then ask you for a word, you're probably going to say "doctor". It's a simple fact of relevance. As another example, the easiest way to get you to think about an elephant is to tell you to not think about an elephant. (See? You just did!)
It's all about priming ideas, and then asking for a person to make a choice... we here on Slashdot should all be aware from Cryptonomicon or general security practices in general: humans are horrible at making truly random, and unpredictable choices.
Slashdot Mirror
This world needs more people like you. I applaud you good Sir!
If you're hiring someone, and he says "let me call my lawyer", don't you get a knot in your stomach, like maybe this guy likes to sue a lot? Who calls their lawyer over an ordinary job contract (I've actually never signed a job contract; I've just been given confirmation of what I'll receive in return for my work)? Maybe he's planning on suing this company once he's hired? Maybe he's planning on suing this company for not hiring him? Maybe he's planning to slip and fall in the meeting room?
Huh, now that you mention this, perhaps it explains more why my insurance company dropped me than everything they said to my face. Basically, I had a crash, and they gave me a form to sign which would give them limited power of attorney, but would indemnify them for all acts they took while acting as my power of attorney. I crossed it out and initialed the cross out. When the person asked me if I were allowed to do that, I noted that I wasn't going to give them carte blanche to commit fraud in my name, and that the law already held them indemnified for things that were my fault, and which they were just conducting. (Like, say, I had stolen the care and faked a title, they would be held indemnified...)
I later saw a different power of attorney form from a different insurance company that stated that they would be held indemnified in accordance with state and federal law, and other such limitations that made it clear that I wouldn't stand in as at fault in a court if they decided to commit fraud in my name.
The fact that I argued with a boiler plate contract that hojillions of people have signed before probably led them to think "she's too smart, and actually reads fine print, and can deduce legal consequences of terms." Not that I think they were protecting some vast scam or anything, or even that they were doing something wrong... just that they don't want to deal with litigious people.
That of course beats the hell out of my other theory that they dropped my coverage because they were adamant Christians who were disapproving of my lifestyle choices...
Holy shit!
What you're saying is almost EVERY University outside of the United States is just a trade school.
You see, everywhere else in the world, university is the place you go to learn and specialize in your field. They don't baby you, they don't teach you to "write", "comprehend", and "reason", that's what your high schools, and lower educational facilities are for.
Congratulations, you've hit upon the exact reason why a "diploma" from a High School in the rest of the world is equivalent to a bachelor's degree here in the US.
Why should a university be trying to teach you, what you should have already learnt? If you don't have these skills, then you're going to fail, or at the most pass very poorly.
Yes, you should have already learned those skills in High School, the rest of the world totally does. But here in the US, we don't learn shit in High School. (I knew a German foreign exchange student who took all electives while he was here, because he wasn't going to get credit for any of it anyways, and was going to have to repeat the year once he got back.)
Perhaps you don't understand just how behind the US is in education?
I don't believe my post necessarily implies that I am a chemistry geek. I am just a computer engineer changing careers to medicine who has been forced to learn more chemistry than was ever desired.
Some of it is interesting...
I don't work in linguistics, yet I'm a language geek. I don't work in law, but I'm a legal geek. Being a geek is simply about having a thirst to know more than anyone rightly should about any specific topic... regardless of the education or profession of the individual.
static data don't evolve
Nothing in the real world is truly static over time. You think your /etc config files are static data? Ever done a series of in-place system upgrades?
I installed my router, and then applied the system immutable flag to all of my /etc directory. So, my /etc data has been static for 10 years! ...
and has been hacked 42 times...
You mean the legal system of much of the US. It isn't universal. If you don't know that already, go try to practice law in New Orleans.
Bleh, the 8 versions I wrote before this one all had "most of the US". And it's not just New Orleans that has a Civil Law tradition, (most?) all of Louisiana does.
The context of the discussion here was the Constitution. While Common Law has a great deal to do with rights, etc., it has little bearing on what I was specifically saying in regard to the Constitution. At best, this is a straw man argument.
It has everything to do with the interpretation of the Constitution. The Constitution is evaluated, and interpreted according to Common Law traditions. Precedent matters, courts are part of the defining legal authority.
No one has overturned the fact that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution, and so therefore, they are de facto. You can argue all you want about what the interpretation of the law "ought" be, but you're still arguing against nearly every lawyer and judge in the country.
Yes, I totally goofed on the H2NO3... I was playing Alchemy Classic just recently, and HNO3 and HNO2 are a big part of the game, and thus I totally goofed. (Nota Bene: I am not a Chemistry geek)
Awesomely informative tangent though! :)
You can argue about "interpretation" of the law all you want, but when lawyers and judges "interpret" in ways that are known to be contrary to the original meaning of the statute, they are being dishonest and downright criminal.
You do realize that the US legal system is based on Common Law, not Civil Law, right?
You're arguing against reality and precedent with your own contrived interpretations.
If you take these arguments into a court, you will be laughed out of court.
The US legal system is based on Common Law, which means that case law and precedent are potentially just as important as the written rules themselves.
If they try to force their way in, I have the right and the duty to prevent them, up to and including deadly force.
You're abusing terminology here. You do not have the duty to defend your property from invasion.
There are details conditions and requirements about your rental contracts that are not declared in the explicit text of your rental agreement. Not all rental agreements state that landlords cannot enter the premises at will, but that doesn't mean that such a landlord is allowed to enter a rental property at will.
This is pretty close to accurate, but a little pessimistic. The ER is required to stabilize and treat immediate life-threatening situations. The person with lung cancer will get only partial care, unless immediate surgery is the only appropriate care. Which of course means stage IV cancer which really means that they're going to die anyway.
However, say, you break your femur. They will give you surgery to put a pin in it, and set it. (Because they couldn't discharge you with a broken femur, and putting you in a cast for a femur means traction, which they won't want to do.) But then, say you break a finger. That would be a splint/cast and you're out.
But yeah, you still get a bill that you can't afford, and a prescription that you can't afford. (I had the same incident. Went in for chest pains, got two prescriptions that I was told are $4 each to fill, and I debated telling them not to bother, because I can't afford that anyways.)
1) iPod shuffles, health monitors, hearing aidsthese are all computers that can be worn on the body and fit the prediction.
This reads like a post-hoc rationalization... if someone were given the prediction they would not describe the given items. Predictions aren't validated because you can force things to fit them after the fact, they're valid because they predict and accurately describe what will be in the future before it is actually available.
2) Speech to text is gaining ground. It’s available in hand held devices, and as (semi) popular Apps on smartphones.
The prediction was that a majority of text is done by Speech-to-Text. "Gaining ground" doesn't give you credit.
5) Like speech to text, this technology is gaining ground and has related Apps for smartphones.
Like Speech-to-Text, "it's available" is not the necessary condition. The prediction was "commonly used".
6) Drones are a major part of the war in Afghanistan. Some of their explosive ordinance is the size of birds and contain their own navigating intelligence.
Post-hoc rationalization, and the condition was not "are used" or "major part", it was "dominated".
Seriously, this post is a horrible example of post-hoc rationalization from people who want to believe... like Nostradamus apologists. I mean, Ray Kurzweil believes in "alkalinized water" and dismisses just adding sodium bicarbonate, because the HNO3- molecule won't work as well as the HO- molecule... which entirely disregards that HNO3- interacts with H2O to make H2NO3 and HO-. http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html
No, he hasn't. President Bush obtained authorizations for use of military force from Congress for the war against Al Qaeda (War on Terror), and against Saddam's Iraq. Legally they are equivalent to declarations of war.
He was not acting to repel an invasion. Congress did not make a declaration of war. (He obtained authorization for military action/force, but this does not carry the full international implications in "declaration of war".)
I happen to side with the current idea, "Congress can authorize military action without declaring full war". But that is not what the person quoted was asserting. They were asserting the strict position of authorized military action to be "a repulsion of an invasion, or a War declared by Congress." Thus, I presented the consequences of such a narrow interpretation... that Bush fulfilled neither of those two conditions, and thus is to have also committed illegal acts.
Personally, I don't think that we should be allowed to walk into another country and oust their government without declaring war. Reconcile with previous statement: ousting a government, and less than full war are different. For instance, defending and repelling invaders from Kuwait. We did all of that without committing an act of war. It's difficult to describe the events of Operation Freedom without indicating an action that constitutes what is internationally recognized as an act of war. Namely, we blockaded Cuba, that internationally recognized as an act of war, it should have required a declaration of war to carry out, we got around that by arguing that it were "merely a quarantine", yet we had no reason to establish a quarantine, and more so especially outside of our jurisdiction.
Not entirely. See my quote of Madison up above. The way it is supposed to work, is if the States decide that any legislation from the Federal government is outside its constitutional powers -- regardless of the opinion of the Supreme Court -- then it is the right and the duty of the States to either ignore or nullify said legislation.
As an aside, this argument is based entirely upon extra-legal sources, and is not "canon". We may as well take the contradictory statements between the Federalist papers, and the works of the anti-Federalists as legally enforceable text.
Oddly, I can't argue with the facts that you present here, merely the framing. Yes, it's fundamentally true that the law is whatever the person with the gun says it is. We typically speak of coercion as "having a gun pointed at your head."
That said, the law is a bunch of mutual masturbation by which "civilized gentlemen" can settle disputes without risk of life or limb. Rather than taking any particular person out to a field for a duel at dawn/noon, whatever, now you can talk them to court, where matters are settled "like gentlemen".
But still, things remain as: your rights can and will be trampled upon unless you object. And in this system of redress that we have established, it certainly allows for bloodless arguments to be settled, but it really doesn't boil down to making any more sense than pistols at dawn.
Not entirely. See my quote of Madison up above. The way it is supposed to work, is if the States decide that any legislation from the Federal government is outside its constitutional powers -- regardless of the opinion of the Supreme Court -- then it is the right and the duty of the States to either ignore or nullify said legislation.
Remember: the States formed the Federal government, and delegated some of their own power to that government, not the other way around. You can't delegate what you don't possess.
This was more or less how the government did run, until the 14th amendment, which states: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States". And thus the Federal government began incorporating piecemeal all the rights afforded in the Bill of Rights upon the states as well. (Initially, the Bill of Rights only held against the Federal government. Thus, an individual state was allowed to establish and promote a state religion. Most did not elect to do so, and by the time of ratification of the US constitution, nearly all of the states had removed any sanctioned state religions anyways.)
As well, it remains that the US Constitution, and Federal government are the supreme law of the land. If a state refuses to recognize a federal law, it doesn't matter, because the federal law trumps all state law. If the states have a problem with a federal law infringing upon their rights as according to the constitution, then their redress of grievance is identical to that of all person's in the US: lawsuit.
Without invalidating the Federal law in Federal court, it still preempts all state law attempting to run contrary.
Not like states don't attempt to usurp authority that is explicitly delegated to the Federal congress. *cough*SB1070*cough*.
This should be voted up. People will always seek validation of their illegal acts, no matter what is necessary to accomplish that. Even if it requires semantic gymnastics.
I have to agree... sending in a military team to kill a person on another nation's soil without their permission is an act of war. Hell, we got around our "blockade" of Cuba being an act of war, because it was a "quarantine". It's all a bunch of semantic bullshit. We should set hard and fast rules that violating another nation's sovereignty with military action in any way is an act of war, and thus validation for them to declare war as a defender against an invader.
It's a sad matter of the position and precedent involved. Once you get into the position, even if you want to change things radically, you can't. You're stuck with what you have. And then you end up cobbling together what you want to do from what is available to you, and for the "right ends" you seek out any means necessary to justify it.
It's the sad state of how power itself works.
Thinking you're the only one to comment while understanding the historical insignificance of this. It's not new. Obama is continuing a legacy of Executive prerogative. The media are using the discussion as an excuse to beat up on the Pres. as they always have (it sells ads). The public is using it as an excuse to complain about whatever they can (it's what we do).
Two sane posts in a thread? WTF did you do with my slashdot?
It makes me sad to begin thinking that the set of birthers who think Obama never went to law school may be on to something.
Only a lawyer could come up with these sorts of arguments. In court and such, unless the opposing party argues against what you're arguing, it will typically be accepted without further question. It's part of the "problem" with an adversarial system: the judges aren't allowed to spontaneous say, "wait... what?!"
"I don't give a crap" is not a logical non-sequitur. Further, the Constitution already gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President. And further yet, the "War Powers Act" does not trump the Constitution, it merely clarifies Congress' policies regarding the waging of war.
The President's power over our military is generally considered to be limited to the power to repel invasion, without Congress' prior approval. However, this is neither a repulsion of an invasion, or a War declared by Congress. Therefore it is an illegal act, regardless of how "hostile" it is, or not. Nor does the President have any Constitutional authority to re-define the law.
Therefore, the President has committed an illegal act. And there is no non-sequitur in that chain of logic.
So, since Bush waged two wars without a declaration of war, nor repelling an invasion, therefore President Bush has committed at least two illegal acts?
Pretty straightforward actually. A mentalist will exude confidence to such a degree that you, I, or anyone else becomes submissive to their ideas. Being a mentalist means tapping into this primal human behavior as a method of directing. On a subconscious level, we have the ability to determine if someone's confidence is encapsulating the truth, or a lie. A mentalists however must not let their subject/s even approach the concept of questioning at that level.
One might say that a sociopath is a natural born mentalist.
I'll definitely grant you that. I had the misfortune to face off against a psychopath/sociopath, and I never got the same story twice from him. Everyone else wrote these differences off, likely because he was simply confident about his assertions that this version is the correct one, and he was simply mistaken before.
The first time working with him, I had no baseline to work from. The second time, his stories didn't line up, but I wrote it off as "people have imperfect memories", the third time, I realized "memories are not THAT imperfect".
But yeah, since I left my boyfriend (whose sociopath brother was abusing him, and thus why I ended up involved) the boyfriend has managed to end up right back where he was when I met him: being abused by his sociopath brother... confidence can really give one an incredible ability to predict, and affect their behavior.
If you're thinking of Derren Brown or anyone similar, I hope you're aware that every word from his mouth about how he does what he does is a lie. Half the times he "suggests" things to people it's definitely just a magic trick and the NLP bullshit he pulls is for the audience's benefit (so you feel clever for spotting it). The other half of the time it's probably a magic trick but maybe he just filmed it fifty times and picked the one time it worked.
He's very good, but he's a magician.
I imagine the Deception thing on Discovery, when he says, "I can't tell you how I did it", it's possibly because they took 50 takes and only picked the one that worked.
I don't doubt that Mentalists are magicians. In a way, it's a bit of a "duh" statement to make. Magicians don't work like magic, they just use real phenomena and distract us away from that phenomena.
But it remains that people are indeed easily susceptible to persuasion. I don't think it's any sort of "magic" or anything like that, or that there is any sort of NLP crap going on. But if I say "nurse" and then ask you for a word, you're probably going to say "doctor". It's a simple fact of relevance. As another example, the easiest way to get you to think about an elephant is to tell you to not think about an elephant. (See? You just did!)
It's all about priming ideas, and then asking for a person to make a choice... we here on Slashdot should all be aware from Cryptonomicon or general security practices in general: humans are horrible at making truly random, and unpredictable choices.
I actually wonder how susceptible I am to all of this, myself...
I hope everyone liked the post I made snowgirl make.
I totally didn't get this until like a full two minutes after I read it...
...that can be used for good or for evil.
Like The Force!