finknottle

Joe Biden told me my patriotic duty is to help less fortunate fellow Americans by paying a larger part of my income in taxes to roads, schools, and public services. Fine. Are you telling me it is my patriotic duty to subsidize non-Americans too?

Ok, so the challenge on 'reasonable suspicion' is upheld. Guess what happens next? The administration issues new guidelines and policies. Maybe these are challenged again, and further modifications happen. Eventually you wind up with proceedures that satisfy the courts. This process has happened time and time again in police proceedure, and has resulted in working proceedures for everything from knowing when you can search a suspects car to what constitutes a Miranda warning. It will be no different here.

I follow the department guidelines. Why is it so impossible for you to understand that - whatever they wind up being - merely looking Latino is not not going to be it? If I accuse you of watching Jon Stewart it is only because your description of what this means in practice mirrors his hyperbolic spin. How is this for reasonable suspicion: 1. Neighbors repeatadly complain about a house in which 15 unrelated people are boarding, and that they are all illegal immigrants. The police investigate possible zoning violations. Once there they find a house that has indeed been subdivided, and the residents have limited English and appear to be foreign. In light of the neighbors otherwise correct information, is it not a reasonable suspicion that they might indeed be illegal immigrants? 2. A politician employs gardners whom the newspapers identify as being illegal aliens in an expose. Is this not grounds for reasonable suspicion? 3. A company which has had false social security numbers submitted for its workers on several occasions. Is it not reasonable to investigate further? You claim that the unanimous Supreme Court ruling doesn't apply. Then tell me: how is it possible to have a policy for reasonable suspicion about an employer hiring illegal aliens, when you seem to feel that you can't reasonably suspect it of those very same workers?

You say that the law permits police to question law abiding people. No - it instructs them to do it when reasonable suspicion exists. This is precisely the condition which you say makes investigating a potential shoplifter ok. Your dismissal of the constitutionality is misplaced. You are actually objecting on entirely different grounds, practical rather than legal: the question of whether the authorities will be able to fashion a workable policy on reasonable suspicion which passes the various legal challanges that are sure to arise. Maybe they will, maybe the won't. But you presume that they cannot. How is it you know that, once the AZ executive branch gets through defining a policy for applying the law, what they will come up with is instructions to "question alien status based on [physical] appearance"? Is that what Jon Stewart told you? Is that what AZ came up with for investigating other crimes? Have their policies on investigating things like gangs, drugs, and ponzi schemes been open season to accost every teenager, minority, or old guy at the golf course that they see?

No, it allows them to question people under reasonable suspicion. Can police question you if they have a reasonable suspicion that you committed a crime - say, shoplifting? Even if you are acting LAWFULLY when they accost you? Can they make you empty your pockets if the store manager told them he saw you put something there? I would conjecture that even you would agree that they can. Why is this different? You also say this law is not in harmony with the US Constitution. In what way? Would you say that the law behind De Canas v Bica was?

Back to the topic at hand. Here is something you won't hear on Jon Stewart, MSNBC, Letterman, or your usual new sources. There was a Supreme Court decision on states making laws about illegal immigrants. http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/424/351/ In the early 1970's California passed legislation which imposed fines on employers who knowingly employ illegal aliens. The State was sued by migrant workers (De Canas v Bica), claiming that the law was infringing on a federal perogative (immigration). The state court ruled in their favor, but the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. In 1973 SCOTUS unanimously upheld the original law. The leader of the liberal wing, Justice Brennan, wrote the opinion of the court, stating "Power to regulate immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power. But the Court has never held that every state enactment which in any way deals with aliens is a regulation of immigration and thus per se pre-empted by this constitutional power, whether latent or exercised." They explicitely ruled that California may investigate the status of workers and fine employers who have knowingly employed them. In essence, the court said that when state laws are harmonous with federal regulations, the states are not excluded from enforcing them. The exception to this is when the Courts deem Congress' intention behind legislation to have been to uniquivacably grant itself exclusive domain. (Thus, while kidnapping is by law a federal crime, local authorities may also investigate such cases and make arrests on their own. Indeed, some plucky legislators may even require them to investigate where reasonable suspicion of a crime exists!)

Do I forsee a stacked Base Closing Commission? Kill two birds with one stone?

2010 budget, in billions: 743 Medicare/Medicaid 695 Social Security 664 DOD 164 Interest on the Debt 79 Dept Health & Human Services 73 Dept Transportation 53 Veterans Affairs 52 Dept State 48 HUD 47 Dept Education : [* When compared to previous years these figures don't seem to include Welfare/Unemployment. I'm not sure why.] DOD+VA spending is 20% of the budget. Social services related spending (SS, Medicare/Medicaid, DHHS, HUD) is almost half. I'll make the math simple: half the budget is two and a half times as big as 20%. And for the record, the numbers are not appreciably different in the Bush years.

You forgot "high income earners."

Only if the police share your prejudices: that a latino in a pickup truck with a lawnmower is (based on reasonable suspicion) a likely unlawfull alien. I have news for you. Arizona is full of lawfull immigrants, many of whom drive pickup trucks and own lawnmowers. So if the local police implement that stereotype as policy, then sure - they will probably lose the battle over reasonable suspicion. But if they are not fools and do indeed implement a sane policy, then so what? How is this any different than their obligation to investigate other situations where they have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed? If (to make up an example) people with the middle name of Wayne are more likely to be killers than other people, are the police rounding up all of those namesakes for questioning now? Are they routinely sending SWAT the teams to post offices? There is a difference between being statistically more likely to have property A and being reasonably suspected of having property A. And presumably the AZ lawyers who will flesh out the policy know their jobs well enough to adhere to the latter. (True, that is not always the case. But that adjudication is what the courts are for.)

You do need time in order to check down, right?

Looks like we've just added some exciting and expensive playmaking at PR/KR.

CYA makes it "less bad" in some perverse way. If it were a bit of conscious regulating, I wouldn't want the originator to slink away unrecognized for his work.

I thought it was high-earners investing in banks who gave mortgages to people who couldn't afford their mortgages.

I was in the Pharmacy picking up a prescription today, and as usual I was asked if I had any questions. I said no, and they produced a separate piece of paper for me to date and sign, attesting that I had been offered verbal instructions and had declined. I signed, and no doubt that piece of paper is now wandering hither and yon through the healthcare system, being passed, handled, recorded, processed, and archived by specialists in that sort of thing. This mandatory waiver was introduced about a year ago I think, and I assume it is a prescription thing and not just a Kaiser thing. Am I correct that it is now universal? If I am, then when you consider that this mindless bit of theater is repeated with every transcation everywhere in the country, it adds up to a measurable loss of productivity. But I'm sure that as long as one live is saved (or rather, one lawsuit forstalled), it is all worth it. So my question is this: how did this all come about? What there a regulator who mandated this? Or did a congressman introduce some kind of patients rights regulation? What is the name of the individual who we should associate with this improvement to our lives?

I think some of the frustration is this: his position on NASA has changed several times since the campaign. At this point it is less about whether his vision is right or wrong, but rather whether he has a genuine committment to anything space-related at all. Saying we are goint to the asteroids or Mars by 2030 has about as much weight as promising us that the deficit will be eliminated by then. It looks like empty promises, with a few activities and some money thrown about to relieve political pressure. Like a 20 year plan to eliminate the deficit, space activities take continuity of committment. I didn't have much faith in Bush's plan, but he stuck with it. Obama ripped it up and assures us of a new plan. I am even more certain that the next president will come in, brush Obama's half-hearted plan aside, and announce his own program. It is the worst of all worlds: we are going nowhere, and spending money doing it.

I'm not finding the data in the lead story or the full article link. Any help?

Nice talking points. On what exactly to you base your comments on? If anything, the scant details provided point to the differences between the TP and mainstream Republican positions. There are no demographic breakdowns and no data, beyond the unsubstantiated claims that Tea Partiers tend to be wealthier and more educated then the general public; and that they tend to be Rebublican, white, male, maried, and over 40. Do you buy all of that? Or just the bits you like? Btw, did you realize that Democrats tend to be White? Are you outraged?

I'll remember that next time I'm about to give money to a homeless person. This reminds me of why I stopped giving to PBS. They lead you to believe that you are contributing to save the programming you like. Maybe it is something non-political like Dr Who. But they take your money and use it to support politically-charged programing like Frontline instead. Your show doesn't stay on if it merely pays for itself, it has to be a cash-cow for things you may not support.

No, the moon is potentially very valuable. Space-based industry could be very profitable if certain resources are present. In particular, a convenient source of water is key to a permanent presence - people and industry both need it, and it can be a source of reaction mass for travel. The problem is that you cannot afford to ship water up from earth. You need a convenient source already up there. (By analogy, consider colonizing the New World, if you needed to bring your own soil for crops.) There might be recoverable water under the lunar poles in usefull quantities. If you could claim it *and keep it,* you would likely monopolize initial expansion throughout the solar system. That's some sweet action, even for the likes of Paul Allen. Lotta if's there, but it is no coincidence that the US, Japan, China and India have each launched lunar water probes in the last few years.

Remind me which president GE is in bed with? I bought energy stocks under Bush, and windmill stocks under Obama. I guess I should be punished for being a savy investor instead of, say, buying a house I couldn't afford.

That's also known as "Watergate."

I have, and my atheism never wavered for a second. * This should in no way be construed as a defense of either Gene Frenkle or his odious views.

That ignore's the effect of government regulation, which limits who can launch what, and how, in a way that early experimental aviation was never limited. There is also every reason to believe that a lunar venture set up to exploit the moons resources would not be able to hold their claims. Suppose I had an expensive and risky venture which successfully set up a moon base at the South Pole, and found and mined the water resources thought to be there. Would my monopoly be recognized? Ask yourself this: is Antartica valuable? Why has there been no commercial development there?

That had nothing to do with Watergate. Try thinking for a change.