cp702

"It should be" is a poor reason to treat an American city like occupied territory. The military should only be used if the police actually have utterly failed to maintain order. It should never be used to protect against a possibility. Preventing damages of billions of dollars to government property is also a poor excuse to occupy a city: the military's job is to restore order so civilian authorities can take over again, not to defend a piece of government property (the police should be defending government property, not the army).

I'm going to ask you not to refer to people as subhumans. They aren't subhumans, they're American citizens. Let me count the issues with that: 1) This was a decision on whether to indict. Even if the grand jury returned an indictment, that does not imply guilt - it means it goes to trial. This was not a trial; it was a really stretched-out instance of the kind of proceeding that's normally routinely done. You don't hear about them very often because they very rarely do anything but indict who they're asked to indict. Indictments do not result in any sentence. 2) Even if there were an indictment, the trial almost certainly wouldn't have had evidence to support capital murder (there are very strict rules about what counts as capital murder). 3) A judge cannot convict anyone of a crime (with the possible exception of if they waive a jury trial; no one does that, though). 4) A judge cannot impose a death sentence unless a jury has found the extra aggravating factors of capital murder beyond a reasonable doubt. A jury must find the person death-eligible; the judge can't make that decision themselves. 5) There is no judge in a grand jury proceeding. The whole point of a grand jury is that a prosecutor goes to a bunch of citizens, presents evidence in secret, and asks for an indictment. There's no role there for a judge; the grand jury happens before a judge ever sees the case. As for the claim "unarmed = lethal force isn't allowed" - This is not even a little bit true. Lethal force is allowed when reasonably believed to be necessary to save a life. Someone can kill without being armed; they can give the impression they're armed without actually being so; they can attempt to obtain a weapon but fail to do so (in this case, from what I can tell, it's claimed that that last one happened). An attempt to steal a cop's gun can absolutely result in justifiable use of lethal force. Except for the part where American citizens are treated as the enemy by their own government. Is it seriously that weird an opinion that the government should generally try to use the absolute minimum amount of force to maintain order, and that the military should be the absolute last resort? That responding to riots caused by excessive use of force by police by deploying maximal force is pretty much guaranteed to solve nothing? Yup. No one's a saint, in this or any other situation.

If someone said both that they saw something and then that they weren't there, and said both under oath to the grand jury, then perjury would be a perfectly reasonable charge (it's quite easy to show someone lied if their own testimony has a blatant contradiction: there's no innocent explanation for thinking you saw something when you were far away). But there's no law against lying in the media; at most you'd have a lawsuit for libel. However, it's just about impossible for Wilson to win such a lawsuit, because courts have recognized that it's really, really dangerous to let government officials punish people who criticize them. In some cases it's possible, but there's a strong bias in favor of free speech because of the risk of abuse to prevent criticism of the government. That's why it's unreasonable to consider criminal prosecution for lying in the media: it's so, so, so open to abuse. About grand juries: I was also surprised when I first learned it wasn't incorporated; I had assumed everything was incorporated to the states. However, given that grand juries essentially always indict (the common phrase is that "a moderately competent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich"), it seems like it might be a good thing when states don't use them (when they were invented in England, prosecutions were brought by private citizens, and so the grand jury had a major role to play in deciding whose cases were enough to bring to trial. Now that prosecutions are brought by government prosecutors, with evidence collected by government agents who are part of a large police force, I could buy that they're no longer fit for purpose).

Is there any reason to believe there was even a single instance of perjury? Anything at all? Keeping in mind that perjury is an intentional lie, that honest confusion or mistake is not perjury (so "what you said suggests Y, but really not-Y" isn't automatically perjury), that nothing besides sworn testimony can be perjury, that honest opinions by experts disagree *all the time*, and that honest eyewitness reports conflict *all the time*, is there anything that would actually be perjury? Furthermore, the grand jury found that it's improbable that a crime was committed. To count that as "proof" in a criminal trial for perjury, you'd have to have it beyond a reasonable doubt that someone intentionally lied - the grand jury's finding is not to the standard needed. But even then, the fact that I said something suggesting X is true, when X is really false, does not necessarily mean I lied. Incidentally: The quote from the US Constitution that you posted (about grand juries being required) is utterly irrelevant in the states. It's among the handful of elements of the Bill of Rights that was not incorporated to the states; states need not use grand juries, and most don't in most cases. It seems like it's common in St. Louis County to use a grand jury, but it's by no means required -- a prosecutor can instead have a preliminary hearing, in which the prosecutor presents evidence to the judge to try to show probable cause. In those hearings, the defendant gets to be there, with a lawyer representing them, and with the right to cross-examine witnesses. This could legally have been done in this case; it's not necessarily usual, but there is absolutely no right under the US Constitution or the constitution of Missouri to have a grand jury.

You said it was simple. You gave an incredibly barebones argument that it would be, based on the premise that getting rid of jobs and homes for illegal immigrants is simple. Your backing for that is just asserting it; you give zero argument as to how it's simple to get rid of jobs and homes for illegal immigrants, when there are relatively strong natural incentives to hire illegal immigrants for some jobs (e.g. less risk of a complaint to the labor department, generally willing to accept lower pay and longer hours because their alternatives are worse). I'm calling bullshit. Zelyth did as well. Making it rainbow colored and in capital letters doesn't somehow make it convincing. The fact that it's in your first post doesn't mean everyone has to accept it. To have any chance at all of convincing me, you have to actually make an argument that "getting rid of jobs and homes for illegal immigrants" is somehow simple; challenging that premise is absolutely a contribution to the thread.

I don't see how his post wasn't contributing to the topic. He was literally responding to exactly the part of your post that you'd brought up (self deportation), stating that he believes it to be utterly infeasible. While he could in theory have backed it with statistics, doing so isn't necessarily required; you certainly didn't say anything to back your claim that it's simple. If he finds a claim in your post absurd and points out the specific claim with a bit of reason why he finds it absurd, that's a pretty standard thing to do. You want to say "well, show some reason why it's absurd", that's one thing; in that case, you should also show some reason why you think it'd be easy. The success of the topic doesn't require people to agree with the OP or find it non-absurd; it is absolutely valid in a debate thread to challenge arguments made in the OP. On topic now: "Get rid of jobs and homes for illegal immigrants" is probably on the "bring peace and harmony to the Middle East" level of easier-said-than-done. It's already illegal to hire illegal immigrants, with penalties for employers who do so. Employers are typically required to make you fill out an I-9 form, which requires you to state the reason you're allowed to work in the US and provide them proof of your status (e.g. if you're a citizen, you must provide proof of citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate; if you have a work visa, you show it; if you have a green card, you show it). I'm not certain how much this is enforced (I've had 2 paying jobs; one of them checked it, the other didn't. However, I was already well known to the one that didn't, and they specifically knew I was a citizen), but it's the law. From what I can tell, Obama's increased this: spending less effort on deporting illegal immigrants frees up resources to go after American employers who tend to really, really, really like illegal immigration (for starters, they're not exactly going to turn you in to the state department of labor for violating things like minimum wage laws). That's one issue with "get rid of jobs" -- there are big incentives to hire illegal immigrants for certain types of work, and getting rid of jobs means prosecuting American employers.

I'm confused now. Tax is always collected by ordering people to pay it; furthermore, the Treasury still does collect taxes, because the IRS is a part of the Treasury Department. On that wiki page, note how under "Structure" the IRS is listed as a bureau of the Treasury Department, so the Treasury is still in control of tax collection and regulations, just as much as the Justice Department is in control of FBI operations, or the State Department is in control of the Foreign Service, or the Department of Defense is in control of the US Army. As for constitutionality -- the Constitution says nothing of the sort. It doesn't say your income is private; the sole Constitutional objection back in 1895 (when some income taxes were struck down) was that a tax on income derived from property was a direct tax, meaning it would have to be apportioned based on population (instead of based on income). Taxes on wages have never been considered unconstitutional; they weren't implemented until the Civil War for reasons of public policy (tariffs were considered more desirable), not for reasons of constitutionality. After taxes on income derived from property were ruled unconstitutional, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed and ratified: I find it hard to reconcile that with a claim that an income tax is unconstitutional.

If by "not federal" you mean "complicated governance, but overall policy is set by the independent federal government agency known as the Fed's Board of Governors, whose members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate [just like every *other* independent executive agency; there's a lot of them], and whose constituent banks have significant presence on their boards of directors of those designated by the Board of Governors; which is established, given its mission, and regulated by statute; and which is mostly relatively independent because politicians don't know the first thing about economics", then yeah, it's not federal. If by "foreign" you mean "has literally nothing at all to do with any other country, is entirely homegrown", then it's "foreign". I'm really not sure you know what the Fed is. Again, I'm not sure you have the slightest idea what the IRS is, or how tax law works. The Treasury department never set tax laws. Ever. They can't. Laws are set by this agency (by your standards, it's probably a "foreign" agency) known as "Congress". The Treasury sets regulations around taxes; that provides interpretations, which are given a fair amount of deference by courts, but they absolutely must follow the tax code established by Congress. In other cases, an agency has a lot of leeway in regulations (e.g. the FAA has a fairly broad mandate, because the idea is that Congress shouldn't try to be aviation safety experts; instead, the FAA's told to "make flying safe" and decides what regulations best achieve that goal. The IRS, less so - the Internal Revenue Code is fairly detailed, because tax is one of those things that's supposed to be determined by elected representatives instead of civil servants). The Treasury has always collected income tax. It does so via the IRS. The IRS is an agency of the Treasury Department. It has literally existed since the very beginning of the income tax. To claim that the Treasury, not the IRS, should collect income tax shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the basic structure of the US government. If the IRS collecting taxes means the Treasury doesn't, then the Department of Defense does not conduct any military operations, because the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines do. Or, you take the trouble to do the most basic research on your claims. Then, you come up with arguments whose premises are at least mildly true.

The federal law against felons in possession of a firearm does not prohibit it: see Small v. United States (foreign convictions don't count under 18 USC 922(g)). However, state laws vary by state; the state is perfectly free to count it as disqualifying him from possessing a firearm. He should see a lawyer.

This is absolutely false. Lots of departments get federal funding; many do not use black and white vehicles. The Connecticut State Police get federal grants and have solid grey vehicles with no markings whatsoever. The NYPD get grants and have white-with-blue-markings. The Boston police get grants and have white-with-blue-and-grey-stripes. At most, there might be particular grants which it's easier to get with a black and white livery (or grants to *establish* a black and white livery), but there's no general requirement for federal funding that police cars have a certain livery (most funding has nothing to do with vehicles, and it would be utterly ridiculous to require something random for an unrelated grant). And the sorts of small departments which would be influenced by that more than others are already the sort of department that's unlikely to have its own distinctive livery; they're likely to go with what's cheap. From what I can tell, black-and-white is getting cheaper, which is actually a big factor in becoming more common.

As a technical matter, the report is visible to all moderators (among other things, that way we can have mini-discussions about it). However, policy is that those reports have to be handled by management, and management does monitor reports to keep an eye on things (the rule is enforced via policy, not via technical means). If you want to report something a moderator did without that moderator automatically being able to see it (e.g. if you don't think it was a simple mistake, but a deliberate abuse of power), you can PM Iconography.

Moved to proper section.

Yeah, IV had extremely expensive and advanced DRM software to prevent piracy. V having it is no different. Incidentally, IV's DRM was cracked reasonably soon after release (it took longer than normal, but I think it was cracked within a month). V will, again, likely be no different.

That's not even remotely what libertarianism is. Libertarians view government interference as generally bad, and something that should be limited to the handful of situations where it's actually needed; it's a view about policy, not on politics. My view on parties is that political parties are too simplistic a system for actual policy, and politics should be less like "I have 51% so I can do whatever I want" and more like "let's negotiate to come up with something that generally satisfies people". That's a view about politics, not policy. They're really not the same class of views. That's...pretty much what US political parties are, modulo the difference between "generally agree on things" and "an actual coalition intended to do well as a coalition, where individual views are subsumed into the party platform". The thing is, there's no such thing as the "liberal" set of opinions or the "conservative" set of opinions; people need not believe X just because they believe Y and both are stereotypically "liberal" or "conservative" views. There are loose associations between viewpoints, but the point of a party is to have a coherent platform, where members broadly work to get that platform implemented instead of just to get what they want on their pet issue. You couldn't have a party composed of "the liberals" or "the conservatives", because the whole idea of a political party is that party members don't all have to have the exact same views on everything (in fact, politics works better if they don't; things are better when the Democratic caucus has conservative members and the Republicans have liberal members, because that moderates individual platforms).

Simple: it's now considered assault, and can lead to criminal charges.

This. I don't really like the whole idea of "their party is all that matters" (my ballot was split between parties). Admittedly, this is easier in state-level elections, where candidates can actually tailor their policies to their constituency instead of parroting the national party line because otherwise they have zero influence in anything (for basically that reason, governor's races tend to actually be competitive far more often than most other races). Also, thread moved.

Something went wrong with your post.

A quick search suggests swords are not inherently illegal to possess in public, as long as it's clear you have no dangerous intent (which would likely be the case here).

Just a quick note: Mexico has a major problem with weapons flowing into the country from the US. Arms smuggling into the US would be unusual (it's easier to buy weapons here on the black market); arms smuggling into Mexico is common. You're rarely "locked" on a one-way street; a car is capable of going the wrong way on a one-way street, and doing so is better than committing an extremely serious crime. Furthermore, if he *were* smuggling weapons, letting him return to the US wouldn't solve anything -- he'd just try again on a later day. A country is not, as a rule, expected to deport people for committing a crime within its borders; the standard procedure for serious crimes is to arrest and try them locally, and only after their trial has ended are they sent back (if they're acquitted they probably want to leave anyway; if convicted, they might be deported at the end of their prison sentence, or they may be transferred to the prison system of their home country under a prisoner transfer agreement).

You appear to be claiming that everyone disagreeing with you means that you're more likely to be correct. This is not really a justifiable assumption. It is entirely possible that many people, each independently thinking about the issue, all come to the same conclusion (in fact, you claim that exact thing is the case for the quote: according to you, it is inconceivable that someone could fully understand the quote and disagree. This is only in fact the case for tautologies, which that quote is not). It's true that you're unlikely to be blindly agreeing if you oppose everyone else (it's certainly still possible, for all we know you could be repeating talking points from elsewhere, but I'm acting under the assumption that you're not). It does not then follow that your views are somehow better than the majority's; at most, you have some people in the majority not really thinking, but you certainly do not have everyone in the majority not really thinking. EDIT: If you are instead saying "everyone disagreeing with me doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong, because some of those people are likely not expressing reasoned views", then I misunderstood you, and no argument with that point. That was a singularly non-constructive addition to this thread. Please actually respond to people with something besides swearing and saying they annoy you; at the very least, give some reason why they annoy you.

Why in the world should they have just deported him? He committed a serious crime in Mexico (the maximum sentence possible is over 20 years in prison); the standard way to handle that diplomatically is just to let him talk to the US Consulate, and there is absolutely no general rule that someone who commits a crime in a foreign country is deported instead of facing punishment there (in fact, the norm would be against that in many cases; if you want to bring a criminal case against someone, you don't let them out of the country, and you often don't deport them until they've served their punishment). The "single person" who ordered his release was a judge, which is exactly the "single person" who would ordinarily be expected to order the release of a prisoner in any country. As for trial delays and pretrial detention: A few months is not an unusual time to wait for a case to go to trial, and pretrial detention is fairly standard in Mexico. One can argue against high usage of pretrial detention, but it's by no means unfair to apply the same standard to citizens and foreigners (if anything, it's more reasonable to keep an American in jail before trial, because you could make a good case they're more of a flight risk). What you're seeing here is precisely what is expected of any country which has a foreigner commit a serious crime within its borders: they are arrested and tried locally according to local standards, they are not allowed to go home (even if they were released on bail, it's generally not legal to leave the country on bail), the suspect's government worked to assist him, and ultimately a judge decided whether to dismiss charges.

If that's a fact, please give a definition of "corrupt". Because according to one of the most widely accepted measures of corruption (Transparency International), the least corrupt countries in the world generally have some manner of firearms restrictions, which would likely prohibit someone who is neither citizen nor permanent resident from having firearms in public. The UK, which has extremely strict firearms regulations, is ranked as less corrupt than the US, which has looser firearms laws than most of the world.

As someone else mentioned, some counties have county police departments. Where they exist, they patrol the whole county (acting roughly like most local police departments), and (depending on where you are and how much of the county is incorporated) may be essentially the main law enforcement agency in the county (e.g. where I'm from, there are only a handful of incorporated towns, and the county government handles most local government functions for most of the county, so [for instance] the county PD is what most people in the county consider "the police". For National Guard: Eh, they seem to only really be called in for cases of civil unrest (aside from their substantial role in dealing with natural disasters); I'm not sure what federal police do elsewhere, but National Guardsmen don't perform a traditional police role (for instance, they wouldn't be called out to track down one person; they're called out if there are mass riots that need large quantities of people carrying large guns to encourage people to obey the law). Guardsmen are not police officers; they are soldiers. Also, note that the National Guard are generally under state, not federal, control; the Guard under federal control is severely restricted in performing law enforcement acts (it can do it in some cases, but it's more complicated than when under state control). For police actions, you're much more likely to see the FBI (by the time there's a huge standoff, odds are a federal crime has been committed), but they have to be specifically called out (they don't patrol), and can't even arrest for state crimes in general -- if you commit murder in front of an FBI agent, they can only make a citizen's arrest in most states, unless you killed a federal employee or witness or otherwise violated some federal law. In many countries most criminal law is national; in the US, federal law mostly covers more regulatory-type matters, and most "regular" crimes are state.

From what I can tell through Google (NB: I am not any form of lawyer, this is not legal advice), it's something of an open question when a re-master is a derivative work. Record labels are trying to claim that it is, because starting in 2013 musicians became able to revoke copyright transfers made starting in 1978 (the rule is 35 years after, for a copyright on a sound recording made after 1978), which would normally mean the record label would not be allowed to sell the sound recording anymore. If the record label makes a derivative work before the author terminates the transfer, they can keep a copyright on the derivative work even if the author revokes the transfer (the label would have no control over the original recording and couldn't stop the author from doing what they please with it, but would have control over the derivative work). So, labels want a remastered work to count as a derivative, because they often remastered it anyway for a digital version and want to keep selling the remaster. Artists want it to not count, because that would mean they could keep the label from selling the remastered version (so only the author's version would be on the market). From what I can tell, remixes have often been considered derivative works; remasters have not generally been, but there is some argument they could be under some conditions. It really depends on specifics; you'd have to talk to a lawyer for the specifics of your case.

An updated version is considered a derivative work; the copyright on it only extends to whatever new material is added. The material in the original work is still under the original copyright; its copyright date does not change. If something is just re-released without changes, the copyright does not change at all (as there's no new creative material to copyright); only if it was changed is there any new copyright, and that is only on the new material (e.g. a new edition of Frankenstein might have a foreword, which would be copyright from when it was first published, but the basic text of Frankenstein is still public domain). If the work is in fact a derivative, a copyright notice should have the year the derivative was first published, but it's only a derivative if it was changed.