Who needs bombs?

[fbmf]

So why not just link to the relevant part of the Supremem Courts website instead of liberal nutjob's/conservative hack's blog?

Game On,
fbmf

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Yeah, why not just skip the middle man?

I personally feel that lately, the government's actions are so distasteful that we can rely on the very words they say themselves and not have to put a spin on it.

[Zherog]

I guess I'm failing my spot check, Crissa. I don't see a link to the Supreme Court in the blog entry. It could be all the inane comments - I got tired of reading those.


His blog links to a previous blog entry. That one refers to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals acting incredulously about secret laws, and has it's own link to a news story.

Further down the original blog entry, it points to this site, which is talking about his blog. Now, looking at that site a little closer, I do see that it has the briefs for the case before the 9th CCoA.

So yeah, I guess if somebody who wanted to mine your blog for links burried in links might find some evidence. Not everybody follows every link, though. I don't, for example, because I'm usually at work and I never quite know where links are going to go.

Link to the evidence, not to the commentary about the evidence.

[Zherog]

Actually, that last link has some interesting stuff on it.

the "secret laws" at issue in the Gilmore case are regulations promulgated by the FAA and TSA on who can board an airplane, such as the No-Fly list. Federal law permits the TSA/FAA to prohibit disclosure of information relating to aviation security if it would be detrimental to aviation security, and the TSA/FAA apparently has decided that the text of the legal guidance it uses internally to determine who can fly on an airplane should not circulate outside the government.

Importantly, this doesn't necessarily mean that the rules themselves are secret. At least in the Gilmore case, the relevant rule is well known: it is widely understood that you need a government-issued photo ID to board an airplane. As the TSA's website explains:

If you have a paper ticket for a domestic flight, passengers age 18 and over must present one form of photo identification issued by a local state or federal government agency (e.g.: passport/drivers license/military ID), or two forms of non-photo identification, one of which must have been issued by a state or federal agency (e.g.: U.S. social security card). For an international flight, you will need to present a valid passport, visa, or any other required documentation. Passengers without proper ID may be denied boarding. For e-tickets, you will need to show your photo identification and e-ticket receipt to receive your boarding pass.

As I understand Gilmore's claim, his view is that this isn't enough. He claims that he has a due process right to be able to see the legal authority that TSA employees were relying on when they blocked him from boarding the flight.

Now, just to be clear, I have no idea whether the TSA's decision not to publish the text of its regulations is a smart one. I can understand why they don't publish the names on the No-Fly list, but it's not obvious to me why they can't publish the regulation or rule (or the relevant part) requiring an ID. Maybe this is a misguided law, or an appropriate law being implemented in a misguided way. I don't know; as I said, this isn't my area of expertise. Further, I think reasonable people can disagree on whether TSA's practices are a big deal. Some will find them deeply troublesome, and others won't.

At the same time, I think it's important to recognize that this dispute appears to be significantly narrower than Kevin's post suggests. First, Congress isn't passing any secret laws; the undisclosed authority is a regulation, not a statute, and the TSA's requirement is widely known. Second, no one is being arrested; as I understand it, the issue is only who can be let on an airplane.

Finally, the court isn't being called on to interpret a law it has never seen. DOJ filed a motion attempting file a version of its brief under seal. According to the government's claim at oral argument, the version of the brief filed under seal would have included the text of any regulations TSA follows. The Ninth Circuit rejected the motion without comment, however, and if one judge's comment at oral argument is any sign, it may be because the actual text of the regulation isn't essential to the case. As best I can tell, then, DOJ hasn't filed the undisclosed regulations with the Court because the Court rejected its motion to do so under seal, and the alternative, filing it in open court, would have defeated the purpose of having the text of the regulations unpublished.

[Crissa]

Because our government does not post legal documents on the open internet?

There are reasons for it:
[*]This administration has reclassified much data as 'national security'
[*]It costs money to report this information
[*]It reveals their plans and deals which could remain secret (see no-bid contracts)
[*]Other companies can make money by serving up this information (see limits on NOAA's reporting)
[*]They want to edit it before posting (see Whitehouse.gov's site; nearly all the speaches will be what they intended to say, not what actually was said.)

Regular news never links. And yet... You have a problem with a news source that does have links?

I already gave you http://www.papersplease.org/gilmore/ which has actual case numbers and other details; but you don't trust them because they aren't 'FOX NEWS', I'm assuming. What, you don't believe the actual people dealing with the case? Who do you believe?

-Crissa

[User3]

Be careful with that word "never", Crissa.

Here's a YAHOO news story with links

[Crissa]

Yahoo links are not contextual, and are produced by keywords.

If you mention anything that is a keyword, it gets links.

...They have nada to do with the article themselves, and are often out of context.

Nor is Yahoo a major news source. In fact, that have 0 reporters and 0 editors. They do have a server that receives articles from wire services processes the articles to publish in their own format, and finds words in their categories, and links to them. They're as valid of a glossary as typing words into the phone directory and linking what's found there.

-Crissa

[Zherog]

But you didn't link to a news source, Crissa. You linked to some dude's blog. That's my point.

And again - I DON'T WATCH FOX NEWS! Why you keep insisting that is beyond me. I don't even know if my cable operator has Fox News, let alone what channel it would be. My guess is it's an attempt to label me as a conservative, and therefore insult me.

[The_Hanged_Man]

1157394428[/unixtime]]Really? Did you notice that in an X-Ray machine it's no longer Solid. And in securirty, you aren 't presumed innocent. Unless you hvae a solution, please, don't complain about it.


Now, on to another comment. Out of most terrorists attacks, I can think of 2, compared to 10 that were exeucted by radical Islamic extremists. (Oklahoma Ciy, anthrax attacks. Compare that to both WTC attacks, numerous hijacks, the entire Middle East situation, killing the Israeli Olypmic Team, bombing a German discotheque..). It almost looks like a trend.

When your ethniciity tends to do more attacks, expect to be profiled more often.. Just the same as I expect to wait 2 or so hours in security, if you have something that _looks_ like a bomb, well...

Now, I disagree with profiling. You should really only limit yourself to behavioral and anything you have tips on. But don't expect a governemnt that needs to find the easiest way, quickly to do that. It's insane.

Well, let's just do some easy bullshit numbers and see how well profiling's going to work. No pretension at statistical analysis here, just trying to show you how effective profiling really is:

Number of Muslims in the world: ~ 1,300,000,000
Number of Terrorists (total): ~100,000
(Going off of "tens of thousands " from last year's combined terrorist report, and assuming they're all muslims by ignoring all the aryans, abortion clinic bombers, basques, ELF's, narcos, etc out there)
Chances any random Muslim you target is a terrorist: .0000769

Total World Populatoin: ~ 6,500,000,000
Number of terrorists (total): 100,000
Chances any random person you target is a terrorist: .0000154

I don't see that "Muslim Profiling" is a whole lot better than profiling the population as a whole, which also sucks. They both require such vast numbers of wrongful results that you might as well just send diseased howler monkeys out there and have them throw pooh at people, and then pick the pooh-stained as terrorists. At least that'd be fun to watch.

And the last five non-criminal terrorist attacks in North America were all done by Whitey. Reproductive clinic, school, college, college, school. Yeppers, white men terrorizing North America.

When do we start profiling the White Male?

[Crissa]

1158692028[/unixtime]]But you didn't link to a news source, Crissa. You linked to some dude's blog. That's my point.

No, I liked to a magazine, which happens to have a blog as the format of its front page online. You're the one who failed to read the links and context.

You're awful defensive of the 'fox news' comment - it must reach too close to home ^-^

Look, 'some guy' wrote Common Sense, too.

They're all 'Some guy'. How does that make it any worse?

Heck, I linked to the year-in-reviews from the FBI - and some guy still didn't read that muslims didn't happen to do the majority, or even many, of the terrorist acts in the US in the last five, ten, fifteen years.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1158692028[/unixtime]] My guess is it's an attempt to label me as a conservative, and therefore insult me.

That's what highly partisan people do, they insult anyone who questions them.

Pay it no mind.

(And beofre anyone comments that I'm jumping sides, I technically am on no one's side but my own, because no one has the experience or the know-how to rule my life accurately, so why follow an idiot? Plus, I feel that a radical left politician would screw me over just as bad as Bush is right now, so in either case, it sucks to be me anyhow.)

[Username17]

Look, Gonzales announced that Eco Terrrism is the number 1 domestic terrorist threat. In fact, it's apparently the only domestic terrorist threat if the DHS is to be believed. That's public knowlege. That's in the New York Fvcking Times.


Got that? Earth First! is a domestic terrorist organization, and Storm Front, the Sons of Liberty, are not. So I am a terrorist while Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph are not. Right Wing hit squads kill people every month in this country and I am a member of a terrorist cell. Whatever.

But is this really surprising? I mean,, the head of DHS is Michael Chertoff, who in addition to being a dumbass (seriously he said that a Katrina situation plan did not exist, when I've personally seen one in the late '90s), is also a political hack. He's the guy who did the Whitewater investigation of the Clintons. Remember the one that went on for years and found absolutely nothing?

Yep, that's our DHS head.

This isn't secret or obscure, if you don't know that the anti-terrorism rules are secret, written and enforced to stifle political debate, and specifically exclude the groups which kill the most US citizens - you're just not paying any attention at all.

Seriously, are you living in a cave lke Osama Bin Laden? What the fvck?

-Username17

[Zherog]

1158696267[/unixtime]] Pay it no mind.

I usually don't pay any attention to Crissa. I don't know why I decided to this time. It's always the same drivel.

[fbmf]

[TGFBS]
Let's tone down the snottiness, please.
[/TGFBS]

[User3]

1158692794[/unixtime]]
Number of Muslims in the world: ~ 1,300,000,000
Number of Terrorists (total): ~100,000
(Going off of "tens of thousands " from last year's combined terrorist report, and assuming they're all muslims by ignoring all the aryans, abortion clinic bombers, basques, ELF's, narcos, etc out there)
Chances any random Muslim you target is a terrorist: .0000769

Total World Populatoin: ~ 6,500,000,000
Number of terrorists (total): 100,000
Chances any random person you target is a terrorist: .0000154

I don't see that "Muslim Profiling" is a whole lot better than profiling the population as a whole, which also sucks. They both require such vast numbers of wrongful results that you might as well just send diseased howler monkeys out there and have them throw pooh at people, and then pick the pooh-stained as terrorists. At least that'd be fun to watch.

And the last five non-criminal terrorist attacks in North America were all done by Whitey. Reproductive clinic, school, college, college, school. Yeppers, white men terrorizing North America.

When do we start profiling the White Male?

Most of the profilers are white males, and there are far fewer NAmerican muslims compared to the number of terrorist acts commited by muslims than NAmerican whites (remember that whites and muslims are overlapping groups) compared to the number of terrorist acts commited by whites. This is, of course, because there are far more white NAmericans than muslim americans, but that doesn't stop the heuristic. This ties to the 'familiar differences' and 'unfamiliar similarities' effect. That is, it's easier for me to see how different I am from a neoNAZI than it is for me to see how different the guy at the counter of the Crecent Moon Bakery is from a member of Hamas (I'm white and non-muslim).

I'm not in favor of race/age/gender/religion-based profiling unless not using it is just stupid not to (e.g. if a person says they were just robbed by a white middle-aged male wearing a crucifix, you focus on white male middle aged christians--although the victim may be lying or just plain wrong). I think your point is a good one, and I'm just trying to give a reason for why it might seem so natural to think otherwise.

That said, I'm biased against all muslims just like the pope (although for different reasons). If your muslim, try not to take too much offence that that. It's just that your religion happens to be biased against me.

[Crissa]

1158724866[/unixtime]]That said, I'm biased against all muslims just like the pope (although for different reasons). If your muslim, try not to take too much offence that that. It's just that your religion happens to be biased against me.

And I hope you're not bothered that Christianity is similarly biased against everyone else, as well.

Perhaps there's a point of view that Frank and I share - being the one both religions are biased against.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Religion is designed to be exclusionary anyhow. As far as I'm concerned, they all can bite me. And that includes Atheists, because they're just as bad as the rest of them from my perspective.

[Crissa]

1158746202[/unixtime]]And that includes Atheists, because they're just as bad as the rest of them from my perspective.

Because...

I hope this isn't another alternate-reality like 'democrats are the same as republicans'.

*sigh*

-Crissa

[User3]

1158738648[/unixtime]]

1158724866[/unixtime]]That said, I'm biased against all muslims just like the pope (although for different reasons). If your muslim, try not to take too much offence that that. It's just that your religion happens to be biased against me.

And I hope you're not bothered that Christianity is similarly biased against everyone else, as well.

Perhaps there's a point of view that Frank and I share - being the one both religions are biased against.

-Crissa

Well, I'm just as biased against Christianity as Islam.

I'm not biased against Atheism because its only coherent belief is that religions are wrong, which I agree with. Atheists aren't like Republicans or Democrats (or some other religion). They're more like people who can't see why victimless crimes are illegal. They aren't acually a 'party' and they don't have a 'platform.' They just share one specific belief.

But I'm not Atheist, I'm just agnostic (a 'know-nothing').

[Draco_Argentum]

1158781138[/unixtime]]

Because...

I hope this isn't another alternate-reality like 'democrats are the same as republicans'.

*sigh*

-Crissa

Because they hold moral opinions that are opposed to mine by definition.

[Username17]

There is nothing supernatural, nor isit possible for there to be any. If something existed, it would by definition by natural. The fact that we don't know that something exists doesn't make it supernatural. There is nothing supernatural about the coelacanth, nor was there when modern science had seen them only in ancient fossil records.

There is no magic, only physics. Whatever capabilities any creatures have, they are a result of the physics which actually govern our universe, even if those rules aren't what we think they are.

The attheist point of view, therefore, is necessarily true. Even if the wood spirits that the Shinto light candles to are real, they aren't supernatural. The atheist stance is logically proven even if one or more religions is telling the truth.

Infinite power is logically impossible. It's not just that such a thing doesn't exist, it's that it literally doesn't make any sense to even consider the option of its existence. Can an infinitely powerful being create a rock so big it can't lift it? Since the answers of yes and no imply a limit to its power, the claim of infinite power is itself ridiculous.

The monotheists therefore, are lying to you. Even if their god is real, the stories they tell about it are false. Their core belief is something that it doesn't make any sense to believe. Their stories are contradictory. You don't have to do any scientific research to disprove their sermons - they are false on first principles alone. The monotheists are seriously demanding that their believers accept A and ~A.

It's just like 1984, once you accept that 2 + 2 = 5, you'll accept anything. We've always been at war with Oceania. Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. Monotheism is able to rally people to do horrible things to innocent people so easily because it starts by getting people to believe a contradiction.

Polytheist beliefs are unlikely. I do not think that lightning bolts are in any way mediated by invisible dudes that live on a decently large mountain in Greece. It's not impossible, it's just stupid and I have no reason to believe it. Monotheism is logically impossible. The falseness of their stories is trivially easy to prove with certainty.

And the truth of Atheism is itself obvious. It's easy to prove, because the claims about the world that it makes are so modest. Everything that exists, exists. Holy shit! That's a tautology, no wonder it's so amazingly obvious that it's true.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

There are still a set of rules governing our universe. That those rules aren't in the from of a bearded old man up in the clouds doesn't make this any less true.

[Crissa]

1158824733[/unixtime]]Because they hold moral opinions that are opposed to mine by definition.

And they force you to accept them before involving you in anything?

They require you to throw away all your superstitions before voting for you, hiring you, buying vegetables from you, etc?

They force you into their moments of silence, their somatic rituals, to vocalize their lines before allowing you to eat, to participate, to be granted civil rights?

Atheists hold so much sway that they control any force or administration over you?

Do you even know any atheists?

What morals do atheists have that you disagree with? Are there even any morals associated with atheism?

There's no morals attached to atheism. ...However, it does mean that atheists have to decide upon ethics. That's it. Gotta think. Not even a moral. Hehe.

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

Actually that was a response to your dems=reps response to Arioch. He was talking about religion and tacked on Atheism. My post was mostly concerned with religion although atheists can join the group when they have more of a unifying theme than a really dumb grave marker at Arlington.

Since the answers of yes and no imply a limit to its power, the claim of infinite power is itself ridiculous.

Actually making a rock so big you can't lift it is another way of saying "able to relinquish your omnipotence". By definition an omnipotent being could do so.

[Username17]

Actually making a rock so big you can't lift it is another way of saying "able to relinquish your omnipotence". By definition an omnipotent being could do so.

No it would also have to be able to get it back, so the power is never relinquishable, simply voluntarily not used. Christian philosophers have tried to come up with an actual answer as to why their faith isn't a set of intractible contradictions for two thousand years and failed miserably. I doubt that we're going to see the breakthrough here on a message board.

Although ifyou can find a legitimate out where you can have an All Knowing, All Powerful, All Benevolent sky father and have a world that still has Evil and Choice in it - I'm sure that a number of Christian nd Islamic organizations will give you billions of dollars.

I'm not holding my breath however, because the entire concept is on the face of it absurd. You might as well be arguing for something being real and not real.

-Username17