A "Beyond belief" talk on the topic of atheism (and much much more) given by Neil deGrasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History) which makes its case with stunning comprehensive incisiveness, humor and the kind of eye widening wonder at the sheer majesty of the universe presented in a way I have not seen since Carl Sagan himself. The sort of second half of this post (which I consider significantly better even than the above) is here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2417032549356504070&q but starts only at 58 minutes in; I couldn't find his speech alone from that session in a separate video.

I took a trip to new york recently and had the pleasure of seeing a similar talk to this one featuring Dr. Tyson and Ann Druyan. Turns out he was a student of Carl Sagan's at Cornell and runs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Very personable guy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson , the new host of the PBS-TV program "NOVA scienceNOW", is director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center For Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.

Another video of his - Stupid Design: God Is A Lousy Engineer

Neil deGrasse Tyson , the new host of the PBS-TV program "NOVA scienceNOW", is director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center For Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.

http://beyondbelief2006.org/

("An entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system" made me LOL.)

" So, to paraphrase Mr. Hayden's stance on the subject, if the government considers a search/seizure to be reasonable, the persons/houses/papers/effects being searched/seized have no right to not be violated, so warrants _may_ be issued without probable cause and without describing the place/person being searched/seized. By that interpretation, the government can simply consider any search/seizure to be reasonable and, therefore, never require probable cause."

No. He isn't saying warrants can be issued without probable cause. Warrants MUST be based on probable cause, and he isn't saying otherwise.

He is claiming that the WARRANTLESS wire tapping constitutes legal searches and seizures because it is reasonable. Read my above post...he is interpreting the 4th Amendment's clauses separately. Hayden is wrong because he doesn't recognize that probable cause is the standard for whether a search or seizure is reasonable. So, police can act without a warrant in some cases, BUT, they need probable cause in order for that action to be reasonable. There are some very narrowly defined circumstances where an officer can act without a warrant and without probable cause, but wire tapping isn't one of them.

In a way, Hayden is correct. There are two clauses to the 4th Amendment: First, the search and seizure clause, and second, the warrant clause. The biggest issue in 4th Amendment law is whether those two clauses should be read together or read separately.

If they are read together, then ALL searches and seizures without a warrant are illegal. And since all warrants must be issued on probable cause, all searches and seizures must be based on probable cause.

If they are read separately, then there can be some instances where searches and seizures without a warrant are ok. Whether or not those warrantless searches and seizures are ok IS a question of reasonableness like Hayden said. However, he left out the part that courts have determined that the legal standard for reasonableness is generally probable cause. So if an officer searches or seizes someone without a warrant under circumstances where he has been given the right to do so, he would generally need probable cause in order for that search or seizure to be valid and legal.

There are some scenarios where an officer can act based on a "reasonable suspicion"(a less stringent standard than probable cause) or under exigent circumstances, but those instances don't apply to the wiretapping stuff.

So, to paraphrase Mr. Hayden's stance on the subject, if the government considers a search/seizure to be reasonable, the persons/houses/papers/effects being searched/seized have no right to not be violated, so warrants _may_ be issued without probable cause and without describing the place/person being searched/seized. By that interpretation, the government can simply consider any search/seizure to be reasonable and, therefore, never require probable cause.

Nice.

The line in the vid where they go on about "pull" amazed me because I immediately thought "right, pull out" from the operation; funny that moments later they came up with the alternate explanation.
More on pulling:
http://911myths.com/html/wtc7_pulled.html
Also refer to Chief Hayden's comments, which show that this line in the video is absolute B.S. (down-vote for this fragment alone)

Fire much larger than this video suggests:
http://911myths.com/html/wtc7_fire.html

No water pressure:
http://911myths.com/html/wtc7_water_supply.html

Not a profitable venture, as described by some:
http://911myths.com/html/windfall.html

(v. interesting first-hand account) http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/norman.html
"You couldn�t really see from where we were on the west face of the building, but at the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged."
We have guys trying to make their way up into the pile, and they�re telling us that 7 is going to fall down � and that was one of the directions from the command post, to make sure we clear the collapse zone from 7 and this is a 600-foot-tall building, so we had to clear a 600-foot radius from that building. Guys are looking at me when I�m telling them to move away, we�re over by the north tower and we got to get out of here."

If you read on, you hit the really sad story about how he found the original firefighters' command post...


http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/hayden.html
Chief Hayden (who escaped just barely the second tower's collapse):
"By now, this is going on into the afternoon, and we were concerned about additional collapse, not only of the Marriott, because there was a good portion of the Marriott still standing, but also we were pretty sure that 7 World Trade Center would collapse. Early on, we saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13, and we had put a transit on that and we were pretty sure she was going to collapse. You actually could see there was a visible bulge, it ran up about three floors. It came down about 5 o�clock in the afternoon, but by about 2 o�clock in the afternoon we realized this thing was going to collapse."
Firehouse: Was there heavy fire in there right away?
Hayden: No, not right away, and that�s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn�t make any attempt to fight it. That was just one of those wars we were just going to lose. We were concerned about the collapse of a 47-story building there. We were worried about additional collapse there of what was remaining standing of the towers and the Marriott, so we started pulling the people back after a couple of hours of surface removal and searches along the surface of the debris. We started to pull guys back because we were concerned for their safety."
Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7� did you have to get all of those people out?
Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn�t want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn�t even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn�t know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o�clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then."