Constitution

Congress Critters aren’t Immune Either

This entry was posted in Constitution Economics Law Law Enforcement Libertarianism Regulation on by

Immune to what? The same thing as the police in the last post: wasting their time (not worth much) and ours with laws that should not exist in the first place.
Nick at Hit & Run tells us about Rep. Doug Ose’s (R-Calif.) current important legislation:

to increase the FCC’s infamous seven dirty words to eight (by doubling up on versions of “asshole”).
No grammatical novice, Ose wants to ban noun forms as well as “verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms” of the words too terrible to speak. Ose is pissed–excuse me, peeved–that U2 frontman Bono got away with saying “fucking” during the Golden Globes Award broadcast a while back.

Ose is not alone in his concern nastiness on the airwaves:

The FCC’s enforcement bureau ruled that Bono’s utterance was neither indecent nor obscene because it did not describe a sexual function.
Sens. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and 11 Republicans, including Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), introduced a resolution last week blasting the FCC’s ruling on Bono.

These critters need to spend more time at home relaxing instead of worrying about our sensitve ears. Get rid of the rules/laws and let folks use the tuner to listen to whatever makes them happy.
Nick closes his post with this question:

Question for all you amateur lawyers out there: Would it be illegal to go on TV and call Ose a fucking asshole who’s wasting everyone’s time with shit like this?

I don’t know about the legality but I do know that the expletives whether used as above or by Bono add no value to the discourse so why use them in the first place.

Raise Taxes for This?

This entry was posted in Constitution Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Alex Knapp is right on with this:

Don’t the cops in Cleburne have anything better to do with their time? Well, don’t get me wrong–I don’t really blame the cops. They’re just doing their job. It’s whoever assigned them to the damn job that deserves the blame.

He is referring to this story from Cleburne, Texas:

A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator to a pair of undercover cops

You’d think Texans would have learned something from Lawrence v Texas (PDF). On the other hand maybe this one will go to the supremes as well and they will eliminate another bunch of laws that are both unconstitutional and unacceptable in a free country.
On the lighter side my first reading of Alex’s post had me wondering about the context of this police scam: were they raiding an adult products store? Or what?
You guessed it! I’ll bet both husbands and wives might find the demonstrations quite interesting:

For the past year, Webb has sold the company’s line of vibrators, gels, lubricants, strawberry-flavored nipple cream and “edible passion puddings.” The merchandise is offered for sale in private, Tupperware-style parties to women who may be reluctant to visit an adult novelty store.

I wonder if these sales folks use any special techniques to maximize audience participation.
Update (12/16): Howard Bashman has been covering this in detail and I learn from him that we don’t need this case to go to the supremes as there is already an Alabama case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Go check out Howard’s posts.

Warding off door-to-door peddlers

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Economics Libertarianism Privacy Regulation on by

The Age has some suggestions for warding off door-to-door sales folks of all varieties. For instance:

If Witnesses, Mormons, and other evangelists, such as mobile phone salespeople, provided some notice then things would be different. Forewarned, you could answer the door wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt, carrying a copy of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law in one hand and a dead chicken in the other, with Alice Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare blaring out of the stereo. Or you could answer the door dressed as a Teletubbie, gently cradling a tissue box full of chopped liver. Either strategy would work.

There more, enjoy.
Via The Pagan Prattle.

More on Patents

This entry was posted in Constitution Economics Patents Technology on by

Jonathon Krim explores some of the problems with patents and the US Patent Office in this long Washington Post article.
Regular readers already know that I take a very dim view of some of the patents being approved. For instance, see here, here and here.
Krim tells us that

Patents are granted for inventions deemed unique, useful and non-obvious, and the system has periodically yielded curious inventions, such as a diaper for pet birds.

There are some types of patents that have only sprung up in the last 20-30 years:

Software patents, for instance, can protect a single line of code that tells a computer to do a specific task.
Internet method patents, meanwhile, allow companies to protect broad ways of doing business on the Internet, rather than a specific product or its underlying technology. These controversial patents include Amazon.com’s method of “one-click” shopping and the use of online shopping carts.

Most of these types of patents should never have been issued.
Apparently the Patent Office has a huge backlog of applications and argues that they need more money and more staff to get them processed. There is an easy way to reduce the flow of applications and thus get a handle on the backlog: simply stop issuing these types of patents.
Via beSpacific.

Voting Machines

This entry was posted in Constitution Democracy Election 2004 Technology on by

Please do not forget that there are issues with electronic voting machines that must be resolved before these machines can be trusted.
John Williams of Thudfactor has posts here and at OSPolitics (which includes a neat simulator) that discuss some of the issues.
Ask for audited open source software and clear paper trails now.
Via Notes on the Atrocities.
Update: Talkleft notes that Florida will not require paper trails (surely no one is surprized by this) and Jeralyn provides several links to good reference material.