That is not true. You are effectively saying that so long as a law doesn't contradict an identified right, then it is constitutional. That's absolutely not the case.

The Constitution does two things as far as defining what government can and cannot do. First off, it lists what kinds of laws the federal government can pass, which are then enforced and interpretted by the other branches. Article I Section 8 lists those powers:

Taxing
Borrow money
Regulation of foreign and interstate commerce
Paths to citizenship
Coin money
Punish counterfeiting
Post offices and roads
Copyrights and patents
etc.

However, regulation of foreign and interstate commerce can be stretched, and the last of the Powers of Congress contains the necessary and proper clause, aka the elastic clause:

"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."

Then there's the Bill of Rights that says what the gov't can't do. For a law to be constitutional, it must:

1. Show where the law is allowed in Article I, Section 8 or other Amendments.
2. Not contradict something in the Bill of Rights.

The crux of most problems that go to the Supreme Court is the language of Article I, Section 8 is vague, particularly interstate commerce clause and the elastic clause, and some laws, even if they fall under those listed powers, may violate the Bill of Rights or other amendments. Also, the Bill of Rights is vague as well. For example, when debating abortion laws, who have rights - the unborn fetus, the mother, or both? Where does it say the gov't can regulate this? Does the elastic clause or regulation of foreign or interstate commerce cover this?

It's not so simple, and the ruling for a specific issue has consequences for other rulings. Regulation of interstate commerce was the legal justification for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevented public segregation by race, but that also has the consequence of saying the federal gov't could regulate pretty much any business because goods, services, and/or customers cross state lines in just about any business. But if that's not how it's constitutional, then the federal gov't couldn't end racial segregation in public businesses.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

It is a document that limits the government's ability to impose force upon people (Or impose its will--however you want to look at it...)
You cannot take our free press; you cannot take our guns; you cannot allow us to be enslaved; you cannot torture or search without warrant. You cannot arrest or seize without due process. Etc.

If it is not prohibited, then it is allowed. Think of it like, oh, the Law, but in reverse. You cannot speed on the roads. You cannot rape or burn houses. You cannot commit fraud. However, you can swindle people if you are good and lawful about it. You can defend yourself against aggression.
In other words--Universal Health Care is just fine because it is not prohibited.

I wrote to my Senator (Orrin Hatch-R., Utah, responsible for the Protect IP Act) about SOPA and its problems and gave them a rather "cool" scathing review about its faults and errors and the public demonstrations that have taken place like GoDaddy and the fact that three major companies had pulled out from the SOPA bill (although their political alliance group is still signed into SOPA--so they can still look good in the public eye and still, really, support the bill) and got the "printing press" release as follows (which has nothing to do with what I wrote, really--I know this bill is coming, but really, an auto-send out letter for pissed constituents?):

Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act.

On May 12, 2011, Senator Patrick Leahy and I introduced the PROTECT IP Act. If enacted, S. 968 would provide law enforcement with important tools to stop foreign websites “dedicated to infringing activities.” In other words, the bill targets the most egregious offenders of online theft who profit from counterfeit products and pirated content. These goods can range from new movie and music releases to pharmaceuticals and consumer products. With this legislation, we send a strong message to those selling or distributing pirated content or counterfeit goods online that the United States will strongly protect intellectual property rights.

The bill authorizes the Department of Justice (DOJ) to file a civil action against the registrant or owner of a domain name that accesses a foreign infringing Internet site, or the foreign-registered domain name itself. However, DOJ officials must first seek approval from a federal court before taking any action. In determining whether an Internet site is “dedicated to infringing activities,” a federal judge must weigh all of the facts carefully in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure – just like what happens today in shutting down an illegal bricks and mortar storefront.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a common assumption with some online users that illegal downloads and purchases online are free and harmless. This is far from true. Fake pharmaceuticals threaten people’s lives. Stolen movies, music, and other products threaten the jobs and livelihoods of many people, and drive up costs for other consumers. Every year, these online thieves are making hundreds of millions of dollars by stealing American intellectual property, and this undermines legitimate commerce.

This also has a direct impact on Utah. As you may know, Utah is considered a very popular state for film and television production activity. Nothing compares to the red rock of Southern Utah or the sweeping grandeur of the Wasatch Mountains. Utah’s workforce is also a draw to filmmakers who come for one of the most highly educated and hardworking workforces in our country. It is estimated that the motion picture and television industries are responsible for thousands of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in wages in Utah. There is no doubt that intellectual property theft has a direct, negative impact on Utah’s economy and its workforce. This same impact can be seen nationwide.

On July 22, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported S. 968 by unanimous consent. While it is unclear when the bill will be considered by the full Senate, the legislation enjoys strong support with 39 bipartisan cosponsors to date. Please know that my Senate colleagues and I are committed to crafting consensus legislation and welcome suggestions on ways to improve the bill. Unfortunately there has been some misinformation circulated about what the PROTECT IP Act aims to accomplish. In an effort to be of assistance, I have enclosed “Fact vs. Fiction” information about the legislation. I hope this information will be helpful to you.

Again, thank you for writing. I welcome your continued input on issues of concern.



Complete BULLSHIT. I hate my politicians, they're fucking half-wits!

sorry guys, we had to cut the half an hour of advertisements before your movie starts. Counterfeiters took our jerbs.

What about the jobs created by the counterfeiters?

>> ^BoneRemake:

Yea well just the opposite can be said about their closing statement, not buying counterfeit product takes away jobs from people in countries that cannot feed themselves.
What is so special about English talking DVD manufacturers employees.



Think about it as choosing who you want to support with your dollars. In either case you will get the same product. Will you support the artists who created the product and will go on to create more products for you to enjoy. Or will you support the guy who downloaded it for free and is just making pure profit off of the experience. In my mind, he is the only criminal in the transaction but your action can enable that crime to continue to occur.

Yea well just the opposite can be said about their closing statement, not buying counterfeit product takes away jobs from people in countries that cannot feed themselves.

What is so special about English talking DVD manufacturers employees.

My exact criticism is that if you're going to criticize anyone for being dishonest about history, you should do it in a very earnest way so as not to create a self defeating argument.


I fully agree here. Obviously American intervention has worked out bad in lots of places - but every one of the situations in the video was complicated, and summing them up as "Americans made X people die" is ridiculous - just as dishonest as pretending America's hands are clean.

The other thing which seems to be in question now (in general Internet discussion) is whether the Cold War was real or serious or something. It was. It was a complicated political and military battle, with fantastically high stakes. It looks different now because now we know how it ended. It never exploded, but it could have. If it had, if there had been anything resembling total war, it would have killed billions. The US did some horrible things, but many of them were earnest steps to try to avoid something unimaginably worse. Really.

People now are used to America having trumped up wars - Wars on Terrorism and Drugs and Counterfeit Goods. The Cold War wasn't a war like that, it was a real war and a very messy one. And for that I give US leadership from 1945-1989 a lot of leeway on some very important and sometimes very bad decisions.

If I was looking forward from 1960, I would be pretty happy with the state of the world in 2011. Sure it could be better but it could have easily been a lot worse - a lot more people could have died, and its hard to blame America if its decisions have resulted in more people dying "elsewhere" rather than among its own people (who've had a pretty safe 70 years).

Well.

I have several thoughts regarding this video:
1) Yes, the CGI could have been better, it detracts from the experience.
2) This is a thinly veiled commercial (as already pointed out)
3) The fact that this is a commercial makes it kind of silly to go the sci-fi route. If this were just a simple sci-fi short, I would let it slide, but seeing as this is trying to get a commercialized message across, I have to say the "science" behind the "fiction" ia a bit improbable. Frankly, I think unfair to make up dramatic stuff like this to get their point across; its misleading at best. (Note, I say this as a biochemist, and a person with both friends and relatives in big and small pharma)

All of that said, I enjoyed it. Cool concept, but NOT as a viral marketing campaign.
Also, as a former employee of a certain regulatory agency for some country, I can tell you that all generics are required to be just as safe and effective as their primo-name counterparts. The "danger" occurs when people are acquiring generics (or for that matter, counterfeit drugs from e-retailers) through atypical channels (as they mentioned in the video). HOWEVER; the likelihood that they could activate genes or pathways to cause mutations like this is implausible.

They'll just kill you because they're contaminated with heavy metal, or something.

All of the world religions will come together to worship the antichrist. There will be a one world government, a one world economy and a one world religion. The antichrist will have the power to do signs and wonders, and all of the world will be deceived by them and follow him.

Revelation 13:8

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie
and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Meaning, if you have decided to reject Jesus before the tribulation, you will be convinced of the deception and by no means be saved. People who had not yet rejected the Lord will still have a chance to be saved. Anyone who takes the mark of the beast will end up in hell.


>> ^luxury_pie:
So when he reigns the holy spirit out of everyone, will there be these other religions too? What is going to happen to them, when your/ our lord comes over?
I mean they will probably have a chance to accept him then right?

"unauthorized mint"

See? It's unauthorized because it'd be competing with the USD. If I wanted to open my own phone company, would it be fair to have AT&T "authorize" my operation?

And no checks and credit cards still use USD, so they're not competing currencies. Follow the money. If at the end of it it's USD, then it's not a competing currency. It goes like this. I purchase a gift card for $20 USD. That gift card isn't its own currency with its own value, it's only valued in USD, so it's essentially $20 in USD. Watch me turn this US Dollar into a US Dollar! Abracadabra!

Lastly, not sure why you think the Liberty Dollar was counterfeit. They never claimed they were legal tender. Only a competing currency backed by a valued commodity: gold. But every monopoly hates competition, so the US Government decided to not only stop the Liberty Dollary, they also confiscated stole the company's gold reserves.

Not being hostile. Just bringing the slaps across the cheeks with my ball sacks.

@blankfist you're obviously still in one of these really hostile moods.

First, I said "The way I understand it..." which is to say, I myself was indicating I didn't know for sure.

Second, you've not actually invalidated what I said at all. A guy who wants to start his own currency, but then gets indicted and convicted for running an unauthorized coin mint, and fraudulently presenting those coins as legal tender, doesn't prove that making your own currency is illegal, it means running an unauthorized mint and using the coins as counterfeit dollars is illegal.

On your other link, all it says is that you need a license to transmit currency across state lines, and describes the regulations that apply. Nothing from that link says you have to conduct your transactions in dollars.

You also haven't addressed the examples I provided. Are you saying credit cards and checks are illegal? Are you saying WoW gold and gift cards are illegal? That they're not currency? What about Ithaca Hours? What about all of these?

I honestly don't care whether it's illegal to use alternative currencies or not. I'm mostly just trying to cheer you up by trying to convince you that you're not actually as oppressed as you think you are.

>> ^Sagemind:

Can someone explain what we are watching happen. I know nothing about what Bitcoin is.


Bitcoins are a decentralized cryptographic digital cash system. The specifics are complicated, but in practice it is non-counterfeitable, low transaction cost, online money.

The website Mt.Gox was the first and largest place to trade bitcoins for dollars.

Mt.Gox got too big too fast, and never bothered to properly security audit their site, as a result there were a number of compromised accounts. This allowed a hacker to go in and sell bitcoins from the compromised accounts at $0.01 each, thereby driving down the price, and allowing the hacker, and anybody else who was paying attention, to buy them up at $0.01, when they are functionally worth between $10-20.

We are watching a live feed of these hacker sell off transactions taking place on the exchange, which is basically an almost unregulated stock market that only trades in bitcoins(BTC).

>> ^bobknight33:

The Fed Fucked us.
The Fed is a group of private bankers and not a government entity. They look after themselves not the citizens of America
Let the USA print their own money supply as per the constitution.


Nobody owns the Fed. It's not just "some other private business". It was created in 1913 by law. Their powers are exclusive and granted by congress. In fact, according to most constitutional scholars, the government is not given the power to give powers they don't have to someone else. That would make them all powerful and defeat the purpose of the document. Remember, the constitution is a privilege system. Whatever isn't explicitly granted to the government is implicitly denied. Article I does not say that the government can print money, it says it can coin money. That wording was used at a time when government notes not backed by metal had just blown up in everyone's face. And if the government can't print money, what gives them the authority to create a virtual GSE that can? Somehow, the government got around that article by endowing a bunch of powers it didn't have to a "private" entity, continuing to call it private, and going from there. It doesn't make sense to anyone with a brain, but to a dumbfuck populace, it's plenty complex to achieve subversion. Government have always wanted to spend as much of the people's money as they can without eliciting the resistance of taxation. And inflation is what allows them to do it.

We don't want currency to be counterfeited by its issuer while everyone else has to produce to obtain it. That's the purpose of having 100% gold-backed notes in milligram denominations. The scarcity of gold cannot be reduced like a dollar unit. If the Fed started issuing denominations with extra zeroes, any dollars you hold buy 10% what they did before. They print money, buy government bond debt, and by the time it filters down to you, prices have gone up.

>> ^spoco2:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/ForgedReality" title="member since March 13th, 2009" class="profilelink">ForgedReality
a) I was just saying how hard it is for BLIND people to tell apart your notes and you tell me to look at them... sigh Also, if I have a wallet with a number of denominations in it, here in Aus I can pull out the one I want just from seeing the edge of the notes in my wallet as I can tell by the colour... you have to fan them out and flick through them looking for the number.
b) The point of Polypropylene notes is that they last longer, much, much longer than 'paper' notes, and so don't need to be discarded nearly as much, so create less waste, and even if they do, they can be recycled. Also, they are far less prone to be counterfeit.
So... yeah, um, perhaps this nostalgic inability to handle change that American has ('NO, don't take our Pennies', 'NO don't take our imperial measurement', 'NO, don't take our paper, all the same money') really needs to be looked at.


Okay. Fair enough. All good points, sir. I didn't mean to make it sound like I disagree with you, but sometimes one solution isn't always the best solution. Your argument makes it more appealing.

However, we are fast approaching an economy which has no need for physical money at all. What if the whole concept of physical money that people can hold in their hands is already outmoded, and the only reason any of it still exists is for reasons of nostalgia?

edit - omg I hate what vs has done with the quote system. It's broken half the time, but this time I didn't even touch any of the tags or anything. *sigh* I'm not going to bother fixing it.

@ForgedReality
a) I was just saying how hard it is for BLIND people to tell apart your notes and you tell me to look at them... *sigh* Also, if I have a wallet with a number of denominations in it, here in Aus I can pull out the one I want just from seeing the edge of the notes in my wallet as I can tell by the colour... you have to fan them out and flick through them looking for the number.
b) The point of Polypropylene notes is that they last longer, much, much longer than 'paper' notes, and so don't need to be discarded nearly as much, so create less waste, and even if they do, they can be recycled. Also, they are far less prone to be counterfeit.

So... yeah, um, perhaps this nostalgic inability to handle change that American has ('NO, don't take our Pennies', 'NO don't take our imperial measurement', 'NO, don't take our paper, all the same money') really needs to be looked at.