Republicans Can be A$$hats too

[AppleBonker]

And you would be wrong there. I would be just as annoyed with him praising her decision as that isn't his call to make. However, had he done that, it likely wouldn't have ended up anywhere on the news so I doubt I would've heard about it. I'm not a fan of any politician/reporter/famous person/whatever trying to convince me of anything on a moral level. I wouldn't do the same in return. You can believe whatever you want in terms of morality and it wont bother me one bit. Just don't try to get me to agree with you or force your standards on me (while Huckabee wasn't forcing anything, the original post refers to a case where it was attempted).

Edit: I don't have a problem with Portman/Huckabee/any other famous person either, as long as they stick to their job. Portman is an entertainer, and I have enjoyed a number of her works. I couldn't care any less about her opinions, however. There are even people I can kind of agree with that still bother me when they express themselves. I've seen Pearl Jam live and was furious when Eddie decided he needed to talk politics for a little while. If I was in complete agreement with him, that doesn't change the fact that I paid money to hear a musical performance. A political rant does not fall under that category.

[stebo0728]

How does the electoral college protect individual rights? The Electoral college prevents a region from beating out another region. The electoral college didn't stop slavery.

The electoral college keeps any overwhelming majority, based on population density, from overwhelming and overpowering any other minority. It helps protect smaller group interests, and by proxy, individual interests contained in those smaller groups, but while still enabling concerns of the majority to be heard as well.

I don't think that's what the 17th Amendment did. Prior to the 17th Amendment, Senators were appointed by State legislatures, on the theory that these Senators would be beholden to their State governments, who would be, hopefully, beholden to the entire citizenry of the State. The 17th Amendment was passed because it didn't work out that way - Senators were beholden to the majority of support they could conjure in Statehouses. If anything, the 17th amendment got us closer to "completely involved representation."

This is understandable as a position, but going into law, you should seek to correct it. The Senate was never designed to be any sort of representation for any citizen. The theory that Senators would be beholden to State citizenry is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the Senate. The only representation affording to the people is the House of Congress. The Senate was to be a voice for the STATE GOVERNMENTS, and their interests on the federal level. Even the thought that they should be beholden to any group of citizenry is misguided.

I don't buy it, Stebo. There are collective rights, and there have to be. Your right to run your business in exactly the way you want it is going to run right into the wall of your externalities, and the society which is forced to aggregate them. That's the very basis for regulation, and if you think it's a stretch to apply that reasoning to individuals other than businesses - try coming up with a list of things that people do that do not involve the externalization of certain costs.

Even affording some "rights" to the collective, are they then to be treated as superior to the rights of the individual? To say so places superiority upon the collective, and thus, deminutive value upon the individual. But without the individual, what society is there? When you trample the individual for the sake of the collective to a point that the productive individuals seek a more favorable collective, how will you're collective survive? How will you're collective loot when the loot bag leaves?

[stebo0728]

So back on topic, I was thinking about this rediculous bill. I know its not the first law that would do this, but this bill would create a scenario forcing someone to be guilty until proven innocent. But ... it seems that perhaps this has become the standard. Guilty until proven innocent. Not just in law either, but in everyday life. Its ASSUMED that I am going to buy 3 packs of psuedafed ONLY to cook methanfedamine, therefore I'm not allowed to buy more than 2 packs. If one of my children grab a toy I dont see in the store, and its slips out of the store, its ASSUMED I was stealing it until I can provide a decent story as to why I wasnt. Its a mentality we are being conditioned for it seems, assume the worst until you can find the best. I dont operate that way, not in my persoanl life, nor my business life. Has anyone else noticed this pattern?

[IBCoupe]

The electoral college keeps any overwhelming majority, based on population density, from overwhelming and overpowering any other minority. It helps protect smaller group interests, and by proxy, individual interests contained in those smaller groups, but while still enabling concerns of the majority to be heard as well.

That's not individual rights, Stebo, that's smaller sets of collective rights.

This is understandable as a position, but going into law, you should seek to correct it. The Senate was never designed to be any sort of representation for any citizen. The theory that Senators would be beholden to State citizenry is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the Senate. The only representation affording to the people is the House of Congress. The Senate was to be a voice for the STATE GOVERNMENTS, and their interests on the federal level. Even the thought that they should be beholden to any group of citizenry is misguided.

But it was changed by Constitutional Amendment, and as such, it is the supreme law of the land, regardless of what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. The original Constitution permitted and supported slavery with something like nine separate provisions, but the thirteenth amendment prohibited it. Should we seek to overturn the Thirteenth for no other reason than because that wasn't how it was originally set up?

And the idea behind being answerable to State governments is that state governments are answerable to state citizenry. It was never meant to be that State legislators would appoint the Senators that advanced their individual interests - they'd advance the interests of the State, as a whole, and what kept the state legislators in check was that they would be accountable to citizens. As much as you'd like it to be that there's a stark separation between how the Senate was set up and how the House was set up, you're just wrong. The difference between the Senate and the House isn't that a State government has some special interest in Congress, it's that an entire State is responsible for choosing a Senator, whereas Representatives are selected from much smaller districts, in order to capture more localized interests. The point originally was that the localized interests would get in the way of whole State interests with a direct vote on Senators, so to compile them all in the State legislatures was a nice tidy way to get around that.

But, as I explained, it didn't work out as planned, which is why we passed an Amendment about it.

Even affording some "rights" to the collective, are they then to be treated as superior to the rights of the individual? To say so places superiority upon the collective, and thus, deminutive value upon the individual. But without the individual, what society is there? When you trample the individual for the sake of the collective to a point that the productive individuals seek a more favorable collective, how will you're collective survive? How will you're collective loot when the loot bag leaves?

Stebo, if collective rights never surpassed individual rights, there'd be no point in having collective rights. There are some cases where individual rights will reign, and there are some cases where they won't. We are intelligent human beings, perfectly capable of finding a line that works, and that's what Supreme Courts have been doing in this country for the past few centuries.