Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I.e., the argument is over whether you need to be in the army to carry 
> firearms, and it's not worded in a way to make that clear.

  And of course *changing* it to make it unambiguous is a big no-no?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I.e., the argument is over whether you need to be in the army to carry 
>> firearms, and it's not worded in a way to make that clear.
> 
>   And of course *changing* it to make it unambiguous is a big no-no?

Not at all - that's what a constitutional amendment would do. It's just 
intentionally difficult. It takes something like 2/3rds of the federal 
legislators to vote for it, and then also 3/4ths of the states to also 
agree. http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/usconstitution/a/constamend.htm is a 
good summary. Note that there's a part in the constitution that talks about 
how to change the constitution. Many people credit that (in part) with the 
longevity of the government here.

It's the job of the Supreme Court to decide what ambiguous laws mean w.r.t. 
the federal Constitution. And there, there are two schools of thought. One 
is that it should be interpreted the way the original authors meant, while 
the other is that it should be interpreted in a way that makes more sense 
nowadays. So, for a simple example, the constitution says the federal 
government gets to regulate ships and trade on the open sea. Makes sense, as 
the sea isn't owned by any specific state. Then people invented airplanes. 
Are airplanes like ships, to be regulated by the federal government? Or are 
airplanes completely private, as they are unmentioned in the constitution. 
You can see how it might make sense either way. If it needs to be changed, 
then the legislators should change it, is the thought.

With the fire arms, it's more like "everyone carried guns back then, so we 
should go with what the original authors meant" vs "simply having guns 
doesn't make you able to fight an army, so the phrase should mean an actual 
army."

Unfortunately (in this case at least), the Supreme Court tends to listen to 
only the very specific arguments of the specific case and tries to avoid 
making any sweeping decisions. As a fictional example, if the court case is 
about freedom of expression for students in schools, they might decide that 
since the student was chanting lyrics from a song as a protest, that's 
copyright violation, and freedom of expression doesn't include copyright 
violation. Which of course completely ignores the question of whether in 
general schools are allowed to punish students for chanting protests on 
school grounds.

Since the supreme court's decisions have the force of law (in a default sort 
of way), there's no need for legislature to change the law if they like how 
the supreme court decided. There's really no upside to it for a typical 
politician (as opposed to an honest, principled politician), as they'd 
simply be exposing themselves to the ire of the public in order to make a 
law something that is already a law. No politician in favor of allowing 
abortions is going to try to pass a law enshrining the right to have an 
abortion in law, since the supreme court already laid out the circumstances 
of that and every pro-life nut case[1] would vote the politician out next 
election.

The lower courts also decide on ambiguous laws. For example, is a pregnant 
woman allowed to drive by herself in the car pool lane? How about a hearse 
with a dead body in the back? Etc.

The layer below the federal supreme court has a handful of different courts 
(called the federal circuit courts, because they used to actually travel 
around from city to city in the horse/steam train days), and when one of 
them decides one way on a subject, and the other decides the other way, the 
supreme court usually gets involved.

I hope that helps clarify.



[1] Which is to say, everyone where preventing abortions is more important 
to them than any other possible political feature. Not that all pro-life 
people are nut cases.
-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:03:21 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>> Don't a lot of people do that with your constitution as well? Especially when
>> talking about the Second Amendment.
>
>Not really. 

In what way? My understanding as an outsider is that the two sides interpret
your second amendment to be what they want it to mean by abbreviating it so that
it implies that any citizen can carry a firearm, hence they are or can be in a
militia (private or public) or by interpreting "well regulated militia" to mean
an army and "bear arms" meaning to carry firearms for service to the state.

>The biggest debate is over the fact that it's poorly worded. 
>People argue over whether the wording means
>
>"Because we need an army, people can carry firearms"
>vs
>"People can carry firearms in order to be in the army."
>
>I.e., the argument is over whether you need to be in the army to carry 
>firearms, and it's not worded in a way to make that clear.
>

Well at the time America had a distrust of standing armies, I believe. As did
Britain not that long before.

>>> The shining example was "This tax is not a tax..."
>>> which sounds outrageous, but the line reads more like "This tax is not a
>>> tax for the purposes of determining, via total taxes paid, how much
>>> something costs."
>> 
>> Let me guess. A lawyer made that one up or an accountant :)
>
>It's basically talking about whether you can charge others for the taxes. 
>I.e., if it's like VAT (where you pass it along to the consumer) or whether 
>it's like payroll (where your payroll costs don't go directly to the price 
>of the product).

Yes it is quite succinctly put. (I was just joshing the legal profession.)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen wrote:
> In what way? 

See my response to Warp's question posted 13 minutes before yours. It should 
clear up what I meant.

> your second amendment to be what they want it to mean by abbreviating it 

Not abbreviating it.

There's two valid sentences:
"Driving the cars that are green shall be illegal."
"Driving the cars, which are green, shall be illegal."

The first limits the cars being discussed to those with green paint. The 
second merely mentions that the cars are green without limiting the sentence 
to green cars.

The actual text reads
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, 
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Now that's just not grammatically correct. The first half of the sentence 
(before the second comma) is just kind of stuck on the front. So people in 
favor of control read the first half as putting a limit on the second half 
(else why would it be there?) while people in favor of freedom say that it's 
merely an explanation of why the government shouldn't interfere.

The version the 3/4ths of the states actually ratified essentially lacks the 
first comma there, so it's even less clear.

You could read it as "Since we need a militia, government should not 
regulate firearms." Does that mean that it shouldn't regulate fire arms and 
the reason is we need a militia? Or does that mean it shouldn't regulate the 
firearms of the militia?  There's a lot of argument because "The People" is 
used in specific ways in other places in the consitution as well, and those 
other places have been interpreted to mean the people here without 
limitation, rather than with the limitations from the clauses stuck on the 
front of *those* sentences.

Check out wiki for some of the other phrasings that were much more clear 
that weren't used for whatever reason. For example, the first versions 
explicitly said the militia is made up of the body of the people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

"""
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well 
armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country 
but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to 
render military service in person.
"""

It is, overall, a mess, and one that's highly politicized at that.

> Yes it is quite succinctly put. (I was just joshing the legal profession.)

Yes. It's saying "this is not a tax on stuff, but a general tax." :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:51:56 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>See my response to Warp's question posted 13 minutes before yours. It should 
>clear up what I meant.

It may come as a surprise but I'm not arguing. I just wanted to know why you
said "Not really". I understand the arguments.
I'm obviously not very good at expressing myself. But thanks for all the time
you took.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> The shining example was "This tax is not a tax..."
> which sounds outrageous, but the line reads more like "This tax is not a
> tax for the purposes of determining, via total taxes paid, how much
> something costs."
> 
> Debate would be lovely, but the video isn't debate. It is funny though.

You can't debate fools, all they do is drag you down to their level. 
And, their level is to never read the actual document, but instead read 
one of dozens of *reposted* copies of a list of supposed "problems" 
published by some moron on the Liberty University website. For those 
that don't know, this is a super-right wing, Biblical literalist, so 
called college, which recently tried to have its "Bible Science" courses 
accredited by other colleges as valid for the use as entry requirements 
for more advanced classes, like molecular biology and physics. They are 
serious nutcases.

Among their other gems have been the suggestion that the government or 
doctors could "withdraw" funds from your bank account via automatic 
payment, when the actual section refers to streamlining the process of 
doctors *paying* to and from insurance companies, instead of having to 
send them paper checks, or other less efficient stuff.

In some cases they don't just leave off sections, they exaggerate shit 
to the point of pure stupidity.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Someone's bright idea of political satire. Some people who are/were
> against increasing government spending thought they would hold a modern
> day Tea Party. Mimicking the Boston Tea Party, only this time there was
> too much Samuel Adams beer and not enough of the politician. At some
> later point, someone suggesting mailing tea bags to Washington. And with
> outsiders looking on at why they would un-ironically associate their
> movement with tea bags, the name just stuck.
> 
You fail to mention *why* it stuck. See, in some obscure sexual 
contexts, which the heavily repressed right wingers would never bother 
to look up, never mind be aware of, "tea bagging" refers to sucking on a 
guys balls. Sometimes you don't even need to create political satire, 
your enemy, when dim enough, will do it for you.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:55:04 -0700, Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom>
wrote:

>You fail to mention *why* it stuck. See, in some obscure sexual 
>contexts, which the heavily repressed right wingers would never bother 
>to look up, never mind be aware of, "tea bagging" refers to sucking on a 
>guys balls. Sometimes you don't even need to create political satire, 
>your enemy, when dim enough, will do it for you.


Ooo! that's rude. :D
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 09/05/09 12:13, Darren New wrote:
> a good summary. Note that there's a part in the constitution that talks
> about how to change the constitution. Many people credit that (in part)
> with the longevity of the government here.

	I once started a student organization. I had to draft a constitution, 
as per regulations. I had a section on the requirements for modifying 
the constitution.

	Big mistake.

	It was impossible to change it, because the majority of the folks 
involved (officers, club members, etc) never cared about the changes 
enough to vote for them.


-- 
"Hex Dump" - Where Witches put used Curses?

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On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:13:25 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> Ooo! that's rude. :D

Yeah, and shortly afterwards it became much less obscure thanks to people 
like Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert.  I'm sure there are clips (since the 
entire shows are posted) on comedycentral.com.

Jim

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