231–240 of 366 posts
> Serious question: Now that he's a US citizen on foreign soil, and an enemy of the state, is it now legal to call a drone strike against him? Not quite by my understanding. He would need to be in an area officially classed as a war zone for that. They could send them to surveil and intimidate him though, but there are less costly ways to do that which won't upset the people in the country he is currently living in n…
> Bradley Manning, a soldier who released classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, has had a very different experience. Manning was held for three years without trial, including 11 months when he was held in de facto solitary confinement. During some of this period, he was forced to sleep naked at night, allegedly as a way to prevent him from committing suicide. The United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture has…
Letting someone sleep naked is not suicide-prevention, it's abuse and humiliation.
Sadly, I think the answer is they will never come to terms with it.
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I don't disagree with you on the importance of the 1st and 4th amendments. I think the ACLU and EFF will indeed become stronger. I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters, the issue comes down to how their voice is heard. Also I don't know any of them who who wouldn't rather change things peacefully, it is a much better solution.
> I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters Are you sure? For instance, on cultural grounds, I'd guess that there are plenty of 2nd amendment supporters who would be happy to ban flag-burning...
There are indeed, and I know more than a few of them. They post on the same gun forums I do. What you see among the "pro gun" crowd is a pretty clearly ideological divide between Libertarians and traditional Conservatives. The Libertarians take the 1A, 4A, 5A, etc. just as seriously as the 2A, whereas the more traditional Conservatives tend - in my experience - to be a bit more narrowly focused. It's unfortunate, but real.
That said, I take it as encouraging that I feel like I'm seeing more libertarian thought and less of the "yee-haw, let's kill that fag" kind of stuff on one of the NC centric gun forums I post on. And lots of people take a fairly moderate approach, offering up strong defenses of the 2A, without doing the full-on "captain redneck" thing.
On a semi-related note... it's kinda sad how prevalent stereotyping - and making broad assumptions based on those stereotypes - is. For example, many people seem to assume that most active 2A advocates are, indeed, "redneck" types: from the South, with CSA flag stickers on their trucks, a Bible in their hip pocket, and a mouthful of chewing tobacco. But, while those people exist, most of the pro gun folks I know are actually well educated, level-headed, reasonable and rational.
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So is the 4th amendment, and look how much that one is abused. In the end the Constitution really is "just a piece of paper", if not the government , not the judges , not the media , and ultimately not even the people respect it, live by it, and try to protect it as soon as it's endangered by people trying to accumulate too much power. Where are all the street protests?! I also fail to understand people who so viciou…
> Where are all the street protests?! I'm going to interpret that question literally. A key thing you have to keep in mind is that in almost all of the US outside of a few very large cities, the "street" is not a useful public place. People don't gather and interact on streets in the US. They are merely channels for cars. Protesting on the streets would be as useful in most cities in the US as wandering around next t…
It is strange that the same country which cherishes its 'right to bear arms' on the grounds that it gives them a level of protection that the government is unable to provide is 'happy' to build the infrastructure which allows the same government to peek into their lives. On the one hand, we don't trust the government with the basics (physical security). On the other, we trust them with information we don't want our p…
I think part of the issue is that this kind of electronic surveillance, and the corresponding awareness of the issue, is relatively new (compared to, say, the firearms issue). I mean, I don't think a lot of people were thinking about the government capturing emails and cellphone records, 100 years ago (or probably 50 years ago, or 20 years ago, or maybe even 10 years ago). But 200+ years ago, private firearms ownership was already a big deal.
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Did you have to take a photograph and save your 10 fingerprints and disclose all your personal and economic information to get into the USA? I had to... because it seems for the USA, any Mexican that dares to enter the country is a potential criminal, so there I am in the huge Mexa database. Just because I needed to spend a week in the USA for work. Whereas the 7 years I lived in Europe (UK and Germany) I did not fee…
I had to do the photograph and fingerprints thing, and I guess they get my personal information from my passport. I wasn't asked economic information. I'm British. I would guess that every Mexican is treated as a potential illegal immigrant.
Having said that, last few times have been pretty painless. Although I must admit the idea of the fingerprinting does freak me out I'm usually in a state where I don't care when I actually get there.
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> I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters Are you sure? For instance, on cultural grounds, I'd guess that there are plenty of 2nd amendment supporters who would be happy to ban flag-burning...
Unfortunately, there are significant amounts of people on both sides of any debate, much less this one, with either blinders on or have selective vision. As a strict constructionist, I affirm the right of anyone to burn any flag, anyone to "protest" at a funeral, as well as PRISM being unconstitutional. Further, I believe that there is not an explicit "right to privacy" and therefore there is not a right to privacy.…
So are you saying that a "right" has to be explicitly spelled out in the BoR in order to be a right? If that's what you mean, then how the heck does a "strict constructionist" get that to jibe with the 9th Amendment?
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
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Guns are an important tool, but it's Improvised Explosive Devices that are causing the majority of the casualties, over 63% of them in Iraq and 66% in Afghanistan. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_explosive_device ) A lot of the guns in circulation in Iraq were liberated from the army and police, or acquired through corrupt channels, originally provided by the coalition forces themselves. You credit a well a…
Doesn't that just illustrate that their odds would have been better had they started with arms instead of acquiring them as they went though? This is somewhat similar to another argument I've had - there were some armed Jews in Germany who were able to leverage that firepower to hold off the SS and, eventually, escape. It certainly didn't stop the Nazis from committing the Holocaust, and communication / coordination…
You seem to think having piles of guns to start with puts you at an advantage. It doesn't. If anything, having piles of guns is a liability. In Libya they would just raid police stations and military depots and get all the guns they could ever want. I'm sure the same thing is going on in Syria.
Even in a place like Japan where firearms are heavily restricted, it would be only hours after some hypothetical civil war broke out before the resistance was armed.
Guns are an important tool in fighting, but there's billions of them in circulation around the world. If people want guns, they will get them. The amount of initiative lost in not having guns in the first few hours of a struggle is negligible. This kind of unrest takes years to resolve.
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I don't disagree with you on the importance of the 1st and 4th amendments. I think the ACLU and EFF will indeed become stronger. I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters, the issue comes down to how their voice is heard. Also I don't know any of them who who wouldn't rather change things peacefully, it is a much better solution.
I don't think this is true. There are many on the right who detest the ACLU as liberals trying to undermine the country.
As somebody who is an NRA member and who has donated to the ACLU, that rings true to me. :-)