Bush Demands Amnesty for Spying Telecoms 420
The Bush administration and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are poised to square off in front of a San Francisco federal judge Tuesday to litigate the constitutionality of legislation immunizing the nation's telecoms from lawsuits accusing them of helping the government spy on Americans without warrants. "'The legislation is an attempt to give the president the authority to terminate claims that the president has violated the people's Fourth Amendment rights,' the EFF's [Cindy] Cohn says. 'You can't do that.'"
Re:Let's Get Serious (Score:5, Funny)
What would John McClane do? (Score:5, Funny)
He'd catch the terrorists first, worry about paperwork and suspensions afterwards.
I think that's a lesson for all you Fourth Amendment Nazis.
Re:You can't do that? (Score:2, Funny)
Well, Dad did 'buy' his seat in the big house, though not with cash, with influence, which Dad has been buying, selling, and trading since the 50s or 60s. The guy is a 33rd degree Freemason and sharper than most brand new razor blades.
The son however, is not quite as sharp as most bowling balls, and thus promptly alienated Dad and refused to listen to any of Dad's brilliant instruction.
Re:You can't do that? (Score:5, Funny)
Perl Harbor
Only on Slashdot?
Re:You can't do that? (Score:5, Funny)
You have no constitutional right to privacy (Score:2, Funny)
The 'right' to privacy is a right made by the USSC and though we have a long standing tradition of following laws made on the bench there is nothing that the court can do to enforce its own laws.
If we want to live in a society free of totalitarian style thought policing and information scanning then we need more than simple rulings against warrantless wiretaps. What we must have in order to protect us from unchecked power in the executive branch is both an independent judiciary and a legislative branch that values personal freedom.
Without a constitutional amendment to hold anyone who violates our rights to privacy like this again accountable for treason we are doing nothing less than tacitly consenting to such despicable acts whenever the executive branch finds it convenient.
Re:What would John McClane do? (Score:1, Funny)
But what would Brian Boitano?
Re:You can't do that? (Score:1, Funny)
Bullshit? This is not Bullshit!
THIS! IS! SPARTA!
No (Score:3, Funny)
A law is in effect until it is repealed or invalidated. Failure to repeal or invalidate it does not mean that it is legal! It could be grossly unconstitutional, and unless and until someone successfully challenges it, it will remain in effect.
Historically, however, such laws have not lasted. Sooner or later, they have tended to be invalidated.
Re:Let's Get Serious (Score:5, Funny)
I understand that there are all kinds of open source projects out there, and some better than others. But based on my personal experience with some of the more prominent ones, I seriously believe a government run by open source types would be as terrible as what we have now. The following thoughts are based just on those projects.
It would respond to complaints about the government with comments like "Go build your own government! Ours is done right! Anybody who is not a constitutional lawyer is an idiot who just doesn't know enough about government!"
People who want to report potholes, or suggest an amendment to the constitution, would have to check their clocks. Everybody whose name starts with A through K has to file their complaint in the morning, K through P in the afternoon, and the rest have to file their complaint in the evening. Because good user experience is second to efficiency and having the complaints partially sorted as they're filed will make the database sorting algorithm run faster.
It would have a stupid name. Probably something like UNITED, which is an acronym in which the U stands for "united".
NASA would get more than 70% of all federal funding. The N would stand for NASA. Eventually it would be replaced with another organization that is exactly the same, except it's called GNASA. And even though it's NASA, the N stands for "Not NASA". Nobody really knows what the ASA stands for. Probably the same thing the NITED stands for.
The national anthem would be forked into two songs because we'd never agree on whether it should say "O'er the land of the free (as in speech)" or "O'er the land of the free (as in beer)". The pledge of allegience would be the most forked project in the history of the earth.
Boundary lines would be drawn so that every state has exactly the same number of citizens, so they make a nice Beowulf cluster.
The military would be the drones from Star Wars. The guy who set them up insists we should not complain about their horrible inaccuracy because they're still in beta.
The drones would be running android, which is actually working pretty well but none of the drones have bluetooth capability.
Some guy will come up with the best amendment to the constitution in years but he'll get locked up for killing his wife, so we won't use it.
The Chewbacca defense will actually work.
And if it were run by Slashdotters, censorship would be guaranteed by the constitution. Because censorship is basically what moderation is. You take the comments you like and make them more prominent, while taking comments you don't like and making them disappear. So whoever was in power in the beginning will crush anybody who introduces new ideas, resulting in old-boy network groupthink. I'm pretty sure that 24 hours from the time of this post, either it will be at +5 Funny, or only people browsing at -1 will see it.