Murder, torture, blanket domestic spying etc., are not (or have not recently been) considered crimes when the federal government is the actor. The line isn't so clear.
When they're given those labels, they are. The question is whether the actions are accurately described by those particular words. That's why phrases like "enhanced interrogation techniques" are employed, to make a distinction between that and torture, for example.
(Note, I'm not arguing that I think any particular actions are or are not criminal. I'm too ignorant of the details to meaningfully speak one way or the other.)
In the spirit of Pascal, I apologize in advance for not having a more eloquent, concise reply, though on my part its more exhaustion and laziness rather than lack of time.
People have different definitions of what constitutes torture. There is also a legal definition of torture (which may be vague, but will be determined judicially if it comes to that). By definition, torture is against the law. As people have different definitions of what constitutes torture, some acts will meet the legal definition, while others will not even though they meets the definition held by someone else.
I happen to agree with you that "enhanced interrogation techniques" is a euphemism for torture. By defining certain acts as such, it gives proponents of using such acts a legal basis of arguing that they're not torture, whether it's ultimately justified or not.
Does that make sense? I'm not asking whether or not you agree with the distinction (which would be hard to do as I haven't defined which acts fall under either). I'm just asking whether the argument follows, that you understand why the language matters.
A similar distinction is made for killing in war and murder. Some people believe all killing is wrong and murder. That said, there's a legal distinction between the two. Which term is applied is legally important.
But what we have seen is that the govt violated the rules that were supposed to constrain them, hiding the illegal acts they committed. They fight to avoid having court cases address the true legality.
This is the dream of the internet making culture available to the masses. I've loved Google Art Project for a while, and news of more art coming online is fantastic. My wife is an art teacher and this kind of news makes her giddy.
Aren't museums open to the masses already? For example I was at the Louvre about a year ago and shocked at the casualness that tourists touched hundreds of years old objects with -- even when these objects had do not touch signs on them. What scares me is that our culture will wind up in the homes and offices of the wealth, truly hidden away from the masses. Seeing the way some museums "guard" their art, I'm really surprised donors still let us mere mortals breathe on their million dollar investments.
Even if there is an art museum near you, there may not be the art museum that hosts the particular piece of art that will change your life. Your comment sounds to me like it opposes making as much work as possible available to as many people as possible, which surely isn't what you meant.
Your respect and admiration absolve him of his responsibilities.
This is something I'm seeing more and more - "Snowden is a hero, but should stand trial and face his responsibilities." It's an oxymoron as far as I can figure, and I'm deeply disturbed by it. Either we should know what was revealed, and our government needs checking, or not. But if so, outing that information is heroic and extralegal. If you truly want no one to ever take the same risk Snowden took for the citizens of the US, let the citizens be the ones to throw him to the dogs.
When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, he didn't immediately flee to a foreign country to avoid prosecution. Indeed, he willingly submitted to arrest (under the same law that Snowden is charged under).
That Snowden appears to be trying to run away from the consequences of his actions makes him less of a hero in my eyes.
Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.
There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me totally”).
[...]
He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)
When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, the United States wasn't quite so much in the habit of, among other things, legally justifying torture to extract information as it is apparently today.
The legal and political ecosystem has fundamentally shifted post-9/11, and I don't know it's fair to hold a modern whistleblower to a standard that existed in the '70s.
(That's a long-winded way of saying "I wouldn't trust the government either." ;) )
I was referring to the need for a martyr. Though if you are biblically minded, then by allowing Snowden to be crucified we are bringing a curse upon ourselves, cf Barabbas.
No, the "hero" (and I don't think Snowden is one, but I am biased from personal experience) should, if he believes himself to be in the right, defend himself in front of a jury of his peers. That's not the same thing as "suffering"; that's how the judicial system works.
Why? What's the connection between believing one's actions to be right and surrendering to the justice system? Especially if he believes, no doubt correctly, that he would be found guilty and punished severely.
Juries have many times chosen to take a more holistic view of the law, determining that sometimes prosectution is not in the public interest, known as jury nullification.
Juries are in no way bound to find even the most egregiously culpable defendants guilty of committing a crime. Choosing not to do so is not claiming the person did not break the law, but a claim that the law itself was wrong.
It happens every once in a while and is an important feature, not bug of the American judiciary.
Jury nullification is a right, yes. However, jury instruction will very deliberately claim otherwise, and most people do follow it (and if, during jury selection, anyone hints at understanding what it is, they will almost certainly be excused). So realistically it's a very inefficient check.
I consider jury nullification to be a right. I don't consider it to be a moral duty. An impartial jury, from that perspective, is the one that rules according to the law as written.
(I wouldn't do so - but I wouldn't consider myself impartial, either.)
An impartial [1] jury wouldn't immediately accept the word of the law as correct.
In US courts, the letter of the law itself is one of the disputants. It is just as vulnerable to questioning as the prosecutor's case and the defendant's case. That's why court rulings actually do affect the law itself (judicial precedence), they don't only affect a particular case. Again, this is all by design.
Regardless, your response is totally irrelevant. I didn't ask about the morality of anything. Your statement that a jury is obligated to find in any direction is totally false. There is no such obligation in the US, nor will there ever be.
[1] Impartial: Treating all rivals or disputants equally
I believe there's some confusion here between legal and moral obligations. There's no legal obligation for the jury to find in any direction, yes - that is the basis for nullification. However, whether nullification is an intentional feature, or an unavoidable but undesirable side effect of the jury trial system, is very much up for debate. If you look at juror's oaths, they generally tend to embrace the latter approach. For example:
"You must not substitute or follow your own notion or opinion as to what the law is or ought to be. It is your duty to apply the law as I explain it to you, regardless of the consequences"
So when a juror nullifies, they break that oath. Insofar as that oath exists, it sets society's expectations of what the jury does.
"Impartial" was perhaps not the best choice of word for this, I agree.
An impartial jury would recognize that breaking that law was the right thing to do because the law was wrong and unjust, and therefore should be abolished. It's not like the US legal system came down from heaven.
It will. My theory is that it comes from solar energy. As soon as electricity generation comes to a near-zero cost, and a huge part of manufacturing cost is energy, (and the other largest cost, humans, is also displaced) we start to rapidly move to a place where traditional economies as we know them start to crumble, and we are forced (perhaps kicking and screaming) to accept that we simply can't have Full Employment (maybe not even half). After that providing people with basic rights that include housing, healthcare, etc., becomes low-cost enough that not doing so is much more detrimental.
I've always found those restrictions interesting. No satellite dishes, no antennas, etc. If these antennas get a pass, does the satellite TV industry immediately lobby for similar treatment?
It really does feel like at least half. I went to buy an iPhone 7 case and they all had 50+ 4.5 star reviews... before the iPhone 7 had shipped. I filtered one case with 40+ reviews to "Verified Purchases" only, and only a single review was left.
Inserting something like this into the duct work of a normal heating or cooling system is fairly simple. The real issue is they increase construction costs and most buildings are built by people that don't use them. Further, they don't look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
> most buildings are built by people that don't use them
Having rented for the past 6 years in 4 different houses, I've become convinced that this is one of the most significant factors for why so many house aren't enjoyable to live in.
Even if the overall design and layout of the house is good (I'm talking about the Christopher Alexander sense of good design), there are always small and not-so-small features that would never have been built that way had the person designing or building the house been intending to occupy it. Or had they moved in, said problems would be remedied in short order.
A problem of insertion into ductwork of a passive-design system component, is that when the heating system runs at night, it will cause air to pass through the panels, and thus cool the building at night in winter.
Since the solar panel-system is passive in design, insertion into ductwork would be a new design issue.
No, windows fail, as can be seen by reviewing the linked pages.
Windows are not the same:
- Windows do not passively aid circulation of warmed air, which the panels are particularly designed to do.
- Windows also do not passively reduce or eliminate overnight-losses of energy (heat) on a cold night (consider negative-centigrade temperature or less), which the linked-to design does do, by passively preventing circulation of air that would cool the building overnight
The design linked-to is specifically designed to passively deal with the prevention of the transfer of heat outside on a cold night, among other things, including limited cost, simple construction, and rapid payback over the life of the building in a cold winter environment. Windows fail as a passive solar source.
Yeah I feel like science and some test strips would do the job. But eating blowfish to begin with is ridiculous, and based solely on tradition. Testing for toxins could be seen as disrespecting the tradition.
>Yeah I feel like science and some test strips would do the job. But eating blowfish to begin with is ridiculous, and based solely on tradition.
Citation needed. They ate it centuries ago too, before they even had a tradition of eating it.
It's more bravado than tradition. They don't eat it because "our ancestors ate this too", but because they like the challenge. Who with any sense of bravado wouldn't?
