New Boss, Same As the Old Boss
Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
261–270 of 321 posts
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they made what they thought was the best choice among the only two viable choices. This is a wrong methodology. If you don't accept them - don't make such choice at all. There were other alternatives, but the current voting system prevents anything from competing with the two dominant parties.
Logic dictates making the best choice over not choosing.
I disagree. Making "best choice" you endorse the wrong one. If you didn't like it, you could vote for alternative candidates which you preferred, even though the logic dictates that they had low chances to win.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Carlin was a great comedian and I'm a big fan but I'm not about to agree with this simply because the late great George Carlin said it. This is totally backwards and you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe it. In the end, this is what it is, a joke. If you don't vote you have done nothing to even try to elect someone who you, in good faith, believe will do what you deem the right thing. Yeah, politicians are…
>This is totally backwards and you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe it. I think he was pretty much dead on on this one. Swap Republican/Democrat politics for another any other choice and the "you have no right to complain" point makes less sense. Take a fictional encounter with a Doctor... Dr: You're going to get testicular cancer. Would you prefer it in the left testicle or the right? Me: I don't want ca…
This is a stupid comparison, and it contributes to the dumbing down of politics and political thought.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, Samuel Goldwyn. "If you vote for me, I will " sounds like an oral contract to me, since it involves consideration in the form of a vote. Oral contracts when done before witnesses may be enforceable in some jurisdictions, except when the type of contract in question explicitly requires a written counterpart, such as in the conveyance of property. I'm curious if this could be solved at the federal level via che…
> I'm curious if this could be solved at the federal level via checks and balances provided at the state level. i.e. could a State legislate that it is illegal for candidate for US federal office to make false campaign claims when in that state. No, states can't enforce laws which would penalize federal officials for how they perform official duties. This is pretty well established Constitutional jurisprudence.
Examples please. I would like to read more.
Plus, I wasn't suggesting that we create laws that penalize federal officials for how they perform official duties. I was suggesting that we penalize US citizens for things done prior to them becoming federal officials. I wasn't suggesting that we prosecute them for how they do their job but prosecute them for false claims made to help them achieve that job. How they did their job would merely be used as evidence to support any claims made against them when they were ordinary US citizens. Their actions in office would be evidence to a crime, not the crime itself.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference between a third party getting 1% of the vote versus 10% could have some impact on politics even if it doesn't affect the outcome of the election.
But just voting to vote is useless. People seem to have the mentality that you pick the lesser of two evils, which is BS. I'm not going to vote for somebody if I don't feel like they are completely up for the job. I'm not going to vote for a 3rd party just so they can get funding because guess what, this years candidate may be great but the funding would be for the next round and who knows who they will have then.
If you're left with the choice between the lesser or two evils on how to run the country. It is very _very_ important that you get the _lesser_ of those two evils.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
"and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth." No joke. These are not idle words. I grew up in Eastern Europe looking up to the great US of A, where hippies stopped a war and abolished the draft, where people can sue the government and win, where privacy and human rights are enshrined in the Constitution, which more than 200 hundred years ago prompted other nations to adopt something similar many years lat…
It's just the nerve that gets me. "We can tell our children this day" --stop it right there. That's bullshit, and he knows it. A president can't do anything without Congress, and when Congress is crap, nothing but a downward spiral is going to be the outlook.
Well the Democrats did control Congress from 2008-2010...
And much of what's happening in the Justice Department and IRS, for instance, belong squarely to the Executive. Something could be done, but this administration is not doing it.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Powers under the Constitution are generally read to be complete within a particular domain except to the extent they are counter-balanced by affirmative rights. See Gibbons v. Ogden ("If, as has always been understood, the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects...").
Yes, but you missed the part that "common Defense" occurs in the preamble discussing purpose, not powers, and in a phrase limiting the purposes of the Taxing power. Its not itself an enumerated Congressional power (Congress does have more narrow enumerated defense related powers), so its irrelevant, in discussing it, that grants of power to Congress are generally plenary except within express limitations.
Look at another clause in that section:
"To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States..."
By your method of interpretation, this clause gives Congress the right to exercise legislative jurisdiction over D.C., but not the right to build the city. A more sensible interpretation is that it grants Congress the power to build the city in the same breath as granting it exclusive legislative jurisdiction over it. The embedding of the power to provide for the common being embedded within the power to tax can be seen as operating similarly. Note that this drafting reflects history. There was no doubt under the articles of confederation that Congress had the power to provide for the common defense. The sticking point was that it did not have the power to tax to achieve that end.
Also, the preamble is not legally inoperative. It can be read as establishing "common defense" as an umbrella term for powers mentioned within.
Finally, providing for the common defense was considered at the time and today an inherent aspect of sovereignty, and the Constitution through the preamble shows the intent to invest that aspect in the federal government.
I can see the point you're getting at, but I don't think it works. You're comparing a power that's mentioned twice in the Constitution (archaic drafting aside), was considered an inherent function of government at the time, and was clearly motivated by by contemporary events as supported by the historical record, to an umbrella "right" that isn't mentioned explicitly by the Constitution, isn't a neat generalization of the rights that are explicit in the Constitution, and wasn't part of the historical understanding at the time.
I think there's some Occam's Razor analysis that needs to happen here. The simplest explanation of the text is that the common defense was intended to be a fundamental function of the federal government, while the various rights that arguably go to privacy were really derived either from a response to specific injustices at the hands of the British or from common law understandings of due process rather than some unstated general umbrella right of privacy.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Logic dictates making the best choice over not choosing.
I disagree. Making "best choice" you endorse the wrong one. If you didn't like it, you could vote for alternative candidates which you preferred, even though the logic dictates that they had low chances to win.
Without instant run-offs, voting for an alternative candidate is tantamount to voting for your worst of the two viable choices. In 2000, Gore would have won the US presidential election if not for Nader voters whose second choice was Gore.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can have the best of both worlds: vote, but don't leave the democratic / political process alone after that for the remaining part of the year.
Or don't vote, and take every opportunity to peacefully undermine the government by educating people, participating in alternate currencies and black markets, striving to be self-sufficient, etc.
I don't believe in this. It's not that it doesn't make sense it's that it seems like fighting a losing battle. To me it seems the only way to change things is from within. Trying to affect change the way you describe makes you the "other" and its easy for them to take steps to either make your life harder or shut you down completely. It's this same kind of mentality that I think makes the whole copyright issue a losing battle. The more you fight it the more everyone loses. The minute you win a battle they make the means by which you won it illegal or a tedious process.
Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)
#270"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up,…
George Carlin is (was) a right fool. The whole problem is that people don't have enough control over the government. Not voting only allows those who would have control over you to have more power. Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote.
It's a joke.