121–130 of 134 posts
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Not if NSA has enough dirt on each congress-person (or their family)
Or if they use their secret NSA drones to drone strike them.
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Like you, I'd like to consider myself decently well-versed on the issues and able to sympathize with both sides. However, I'm also coming from the position of hearing Greenwald describe an imminent set of leaks that describe the wholesale collection of phone conversation contents [1] (not just metadata) which IMO changes things drastically. You have to be reading from a dictionary of antonyms to find that under the d…
Do you know what scares me (as they say "with all due respect") statements like this: "I'm just coming off the tails of the rally yesterday." (Emotion involved in your thinking process? We're not talking about a brutal attack that you yourself witnessed. We are talking about being at a rally and hearing what someone is saying. A great thing about HN is the discourse on both sides and even then there can be a echo cha…
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Seems perfectly accurate to me. You seem to be quibbling over "lifetime" and "power to shape" while at the same time getting bogged down with legal issues. I find this strange since you have a reputation for being good at security, so it seems odd that you are missing what is effectively a social engineering attack on our legal code base. Everything you said makes sense from a legal point of view, and yet, this shit…
Yes, I'm quibbling over "lifetime" when the power he has isn't lifetime, "exclusive" when it's a power delegated to him by the discretion of Congress, and "unaccountable" when his role is as an instrument of Congress. Congress cannot effectively recall Roberts from the Supreme Court, but the same majority of Congress that could pass a national fuel standard law could remove Roberts from the FISC.
- Congress may revoke the power over the FISC, so it isn't irrevocable.
But the FISC Chief is a lifetime appointment, by definition, since the Chief Justice is a lifetime appointment. It is exclusive, because he has executive authority, he does not have to take advice from anyone before making a decision. Whether it is unaccountable is a matter for debate since the operation of the court, and its activities are carried out in secret. It is certainly unaccountable in the normal sense of the word.
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Do you know what scares me (as they say "with all due respect") statements like this: "I'm just coming off the tails of the rally yesterday." (Emotion involved in your thinking process? We're not talking about a brutal attack that you yourself witnessed. We are talking about being at a rally and hearing what someone is saying. A great thing about HN is the discourse on both sides and even then there can be a echo cha…
Why does that scare you? The commenter made an honest disclosure of a relevant activity, indicating that they have strong feelings about the subject. Discouraging such disclosures doesn't prevent parties from having strong feelings, but rather may encourage them to conceal their motivations. People can have feelings, and still maintain honesty in their arguments. Expecting everyone to have a detached objectiveness mi…
What scares me is that people get riled up by a rally in that way based upon crowd psychology http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology
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Congress could do a great many things--and yet, here we are. I think you have too much faith in our legislative branch. (Consider the turnout for the briefings on this nonsense a couple of weeks ago--most skipped out to catch flights home.)
>(Consider the turnout for the briefings on this nonsense a couple of weeks ago--most skipped out to catch flights home.) Attending those briefings is a poison pill. Before being briefed, members must swear not to reveal any of the content of the briefing.
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> Congress could probably ban all foreign surveillance (that might create a Constitutional crisis, since foreign spying is a war power allocated to the Executive). That would be an ironic constitutional crisis, since the Constitution makes it clear that the decision to exercise war powers is allocated to the Legislative.
No, Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. That's it.
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Pretty much ^^^ I think this is an interesting but (apparently) subtle argument, so lets take it a step further for illustration purposes. The US could repeal the first amendment, and explicitly make being a buddhist illegal, if enough congressmen got on board. There is a clear well known process for this, and in fact even precedent as previous amendments have been repealed. This does not make it incorrect to say 'fr…
> The US could repeal the first amendment, and explicitly make being a buddhist illegal, if enough congressmen got on board. This actually ties into the anti-federalist argument against the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to make laws regarding the practice of religion?
The Commerce Clause, of course! I imagine they would argue that money donated to churches would otherwise be used to purchase goods and services. Or that time spent worshipping would otherwise be used in production.
I'm only half joking.
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Pretty much ^^^ I think this is an interesting but (apparently) subtle argument, so lets take it a step further for illustration purposes. The US could repeal the first amendment, and explicitly make being a buddhist illegal, if enough congressmen got on board. There is a clear well known process for this, and in fact even precedent as previous amendments have been repealed. This does not make it incorrect to say 'fr…
Pedantic and tangential, but in your example, the statement would still be incorrect, as a revocable right is, by definition...well, alienable.
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Why does that make the statement "non-senscial"? Is it not factually accurate that the FISC doesn't hear opposing arguments? >Granting warrants isn't an adversarial process in any U.S. court, neither are similar things like grand jury subpoenas. The distinguishing factor is that normal court decisions and the outcome of grand jury proceedings are generally published for review by the public. If the court is too consi…
It's non-sensical in the way it would be non-sensical of me to complain that the new Macbook Air doesn't have any 3.5" drive bays. Factually true, but how do you think people would react if they saw that in the Ars Technica review?
There is none of that with the FISC. If the court makes a bad ruling, nobody is ever officially supposed to know, the government just starts hoovering up the data of American citizens under cover of darkness and anybody who brings this to the attention of the voting public will be accused of treason and then have their passport revoked and be stranded in a Russian airport.
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" That power is unaccountable; if anyone in the US Government decides that SCOTUS is abusing judicial review (and many people frequently do decide that, which is what they mean when they say the courts are "legislating from the bench"), there's nothing they can do except to ensure that the next judges appointed to the courts are more congenial to their views" This is theoretically true, and in practice, completely fa…
I defer to you on this stuff, but my current sense is that Congress packing the Supreme Court is approximately as likely as Congress impeaching a Supreme Court justice.
Other than that, the number has fluctuated from five to ten, and there admittedly hasn't been overt court packing, though congress did drop the number from 10 to 7 in 1866 to avoid andrew johnson from naming any supreme court justices since he was about to be impeached.
Past that, the main reason they haven't is due to the approval rating of the supreme court being so high. Nowadays, there are recent rumblings about packing again, since the supreme court's approval rating has dropped.
Given the politics of today's congress, I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen.