And if anybody doubts it you can point out that with the establishment of the confederacy all states joining it had to sign the declaration of confederacy, an agreement under which it would operate. The declaration of confederacy does in fact explicitly mention slavery, in fact it's mention of it makes up most of the damn document.
What does it say about slavery ?

That if you join the confederacy you must promise that you will never in any way, shape or form ban slavery, regulate slavery or interfere with people's slave-owning in any way by passing any laws except those that protect slave-owners. With a long list of things you can and cannot legislate around slavery. In short, you weren't ALLOWED to join the confederacy unless your state was willing to promise that it would never, in all eternity, end slavery.

>It's people like you who are the reason these reports come out saying people in the US have an abysmal knowledge of history.

What did you expect. Republicans support republican politicians -even AFTER they recently proved that the foreign minister of Iran knows the US constitution (and it's definition of treason and the laws passed based on that definition) better than the republicans in the Senate do.

And if ever you needed proof that congress is now a law unto themselves... had ANY citizens written that letter about the Iran negotiations they would have been sent to jail for three years for treason. The SOLE reason the writers of THIS letter aren't being prosecuted right now is that they are senators - the law does not make an exception for Senators (in fact - exactly the opposite), they just (correctly) assumed that the police and prosecutors would.

So are you surprized when Republican voters who shout constitution all the time turn out to have no idea what is in it or what it means ? Of course not, the senators they elect don't even know it !

>That being said, what exactly is your problem with requiring all information the EPA uses to set policies be open to the public and able to survive scientific scrutiny?

Nobody has ANY problem with that. Including senate democrats and the president and almost every scientific organisation in the USA who ALL oppose this bill... So why do they oppose the bill then ? Did it ever occur to you that maybe the bill isn't about what the republicans say it's about ?

What it's ACTUALLY about is that the reps are desperate to prevent regulations around air pollution and climate change. The trouble is the scientific data to support such regulations are overwhelming. So they are trying to exclude huge swaths of completely legitimate science from consideration. Specifically any science that has any part of it's data covered by patient privilege. That would be just about every large public health study ever done.

What they want to do is to stop the EPA from using the exact same, perfectly legitimate, science that is used daily by biologists, pharmaceutical companies and more.
Don't you find it odd that this is limited to the EPA while so many others use the same studies, including the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry ? Surely if the EPA cannot regulate something based on these studies then big pharma shouldn't be able to get a drug approved based on them, and the FDA shouldn't be allowing approvals based on studies like this.
Studies which are ALSO covered by patient privilege make up almost the entirety of biomedical research, it's just a fact of life when you're dealing with studies involving people.
Why are they legitimate science when Bayer uses them but NOT when the EPA uses them ?

I'll tell you why: because Bayer is a campaign contributor and the EPA is somebody that pisses campaign contributors off.

The science involved is all perfectly legitimate and in line with the scientific method. The "secret science" name is a propaganda term with no real truth to it intended to disguise what wall street's representatives are trying to really do.

A new field of study ? Geologists had confirmed this decades ago. In fact, it's the ONLY possible explanation for why the sea is salty. CO2 from the early atmosphere was dissolved in the ocean, which turned it acidic, which then reacted with metals in rocks releasing minerals like salt into the ocean. If Ocean acidification from CO2 in the atmosphere is not as fact as anything in science can ever be - then the oceans water is fresh. Go taste some. I'll wait.

Right because it's breathing we care about... you do realize that a human needs almost 5 years to produce the CO2 your car produces in a day ?

I am pretty sure that even if we give the EPA an absolute right to control CO2 levels they wouldn't be bothered about regulating breathing for decades to come. There are so many much bigger much lower hanging fruit.

>One of the effects of the bill will be to make it impossible to use data from large scale public health studie

That's not an effect, that's the GOAL. The Republicans have a problem preventing sensible regulations around things like air pollution and climate change backed up by solid scientific research - so they are trying to make the science that backs it up illegal.
Science that is not "secret" by any definition that applies to the scientific method at all - which is why scientists around the US has denounced the bill. There is no problem with reproducability at all.

What does put SOME access restriction on these large public health studies is that, because of when they were done, they were not anonymous. The only "secret" bit about them is confidential patient information. What the republicans want to do is exclude from scientific research all data that is covered by patient privilege.

Which is insane.

Just out of curiousity... why exactly should Iran NOT have a nuclear weapon ?
You got them... you have THOUSANDS of them and your track-record with them is atrocious, you've accidentally dropped some on your own people at least 50 times, you've left them unguarded and forgotten on civilian runways more than once. On at least one occasion they were discovered by the damn catering staff.

You have not been very responsible with yours. Yet you maintain you have the right to have them. If you do... so does Iran. Either EVERY country has that right, or NO country has that right.
You can't make selective laws for countries anymore than you can for people.

Now take that as a fundamental premise and rethink your entire view of hte world. You'll find you come up with one that doesn't make the rest of the world hate Americans. One that produces a world where Al Queda could never have existed. One where your nation is not seen as a bunch of arrogant imperialists comparable to Elizabethan and Victorian England.
Take it as a basic premise that your country can ONLY do what it allows EVERYBODY ELSE to do as well - if something is truly to scary for North Korea to do - you can't do it either. Give COUNTRIES equal rights.

Then maybe we can negotiate in good faith. Then maybe the world can know some peace and stability. Then you'll have gained some philosophical soundness in your arguments. Go on. Think about it. I'll wait.

>Our efforts to tell certain countries like Germany and Japan how to run their countries worked out reasonably well, actually.

I wonder what we may learn from this ? Mmm, wait a moment, the people who wrote their constitutions were Rooseveldt's cabinet... they implemented in those constitutions the second bill of Rights that Rooseveldt had championed in the USA but had died before he could do anything about it.

Seems to have worked out pretty well for Japan and Germany though...
The most liberal president you ever had, and you tried all his ideas in OTHER countries, where they worked fantastically well - while rejecting them at home.

Charles Dickens would have wept.

>The reality is that we're not just trying to keep nukes out of the hands of the Iranians, we're trying to make sure that the rest of the ME doesn't enter an arms race which puts nukes in the hands of other countries.

And who exactly appointed you to do that ? Americans elect an American government to govern America. It has no jurisdiction anywhere else and "protecting your interests" should have been unconstitutional. Unless somebody actively asks for your help, stay the hell out of everybody else's business and America would be a lot less hated.
Do I like the government of Iran ? Hell no, I live in a free country and I despise autocracies, but I also don't believe I have a right to interfere in Iran's business unless Iranian people ask my help.

Seriously - the US should watch a lot of Star Trek and simply replace their ENTIRE foreign relations doctrine with the prime directive and not only would the rest of the world be a lot happier, the US would be too.
You fear chaos ? I am quite confident that there will be a lot less suffering around the world for which you are (rightfully) blamed, and thus a lot less people who want to kill you. If you believe the Iranian style theocratic autocracy is primitive, fine, believe that, but stop interfering in their natural development - they won't thank you for it, nobody has EVER thanked you for it.

America has more than enough problems to solve at home - like when you're going to do SOMETHING about Puerto Rico - either give them statehood or given them back their independence but right now you're conquering overlords there - no better than Iran's government.

Let me put it very simply: because I have no power to vote for or against American politicians, they should have NO power to influence my life.

You are still thinking wrong. Sure a line from Australia to the Sahara wouldn't work... but a line to Japan would who could add tidal energy or even nuclear in exhale for what they use, then a line from there to India which adds wind. Each country adding what their resources can provided for their neighbours and taking what they need. Some will have net negatives and some will add surpluses. It doesn't matter because it's not a trade. It's goal is to get power to everyone.

Most environmentalists already support nuclear at least as a bridge technology. It has issues: fuel mining for it is terrible, it causes localised oceanic heating that massively disrupts the ecology (when you cool a reactor the heat has to go somewhere ) and more. But it's far better than coal. Environmentalists are rarely misanthropes and the vast majority are far more rational than the caricature you imply. Actually the greatest problem for nuclear has never been environmentalist opposition but rather it is nimbyism. That said it's got another huge problem. My country just signed a deal for a dozen new reactors... and I'm against it. Not because we don't need the power or I oppose nuclear (hell I lived in sight of a nuclear plant) but because it won't help us. It will take 15 years to get the first plant online (in the impossible best case scenario where it's finished on time)... we have brownouts now. We don't have time for nuclear. On the other hand we have among the most sun of any country in the world. Solar plants of the same output as that first nuclear can be online in two years for a quarter of the cost. Ironically we already have an entirely privately funded (in fact non-profit-making funded) molten salt plant about to come online with about a quarter of the power the nuclear plants can put out. Completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Solar is simply more economical and it's available fast.

If I could buy a Tesla for the price of my Audi A3 - I wouldn't be driving the A3.
The thing is - new - their cost difference is neglible and over the lifetime of the car, the Tesla is actually a LOT cheaper... but I don't want to make the kind of debts that can buy a NEW A3, so mine is a 2006 model which will be 10 years old next year.

In 3 years or so when I retire it, I probably WILL buy a Model-S which by then, should be available second hand for the money I can get back on the A3 plus not much more than I spent on it initially.

The problem with cars is that buying new is always an idiotic thing to do. REALLY idiotic, making a debt to buy something that loses 25% of it's value as soon as you take possession and depreciates continuously there-after is insane.
So, like most smart consumers I let suckers with more money and ego than brains take that hit and buy my cars used. Price matters - a lot. More than driving the most awesome car that exists does, which is why I don't- but I will, when I can get it second hand.

There is actually a valid point there. If you took a cooperative rather than competitive approach solar could become a lot more economical and viable a lot faster.

I read a PHD disertation that calculated that a solar farm a mere hundred hectares in size in the Sahara could supply the energy needs for the entirety of the E.U.

The problem is- it would under current thinking have to be sold - expensively to countries that would much prefer not to pay for imports. But what if it wasn't.... what if instead of selling it, it just went into a global grid which everybody has access to, and when the sun sets in the Sahara the one in the Australian Outback is just about hitting peak production, with a Nevada one coming on as it starts to go down, and for the dips in between where no large plant has good sun - you can fill those in with supplies of other types from the rest of the countries (in return for sharing in this global grid).
Whatever your country has, you contribute, in return you get all the energy you need. Since no two timezones peak at the same time - staggered production is feasible if you spread it globally- because that gives you staggered consumption to go with it.

Sure this is blue-sky dreaming and it rather depends on politicians being able to think beyond the ends of their noses and Americans being able to figure out that sometimes things that look vaguely like socialism (to use their definition of "not trying to maximize individual profit for somebody") can actually be the best solution. Something they generally only accept when they've had the socialist idea for so long that they don't think about it anymore (in which case they will happily tolerate and even cheer for even genuine socialism - like they do with public libraries).

  It would be expensive to build (not hugely - there is already a global grid - but restructuring the entire principle on which we switch the power around won't be cheap) and it would require international agreements on a scale we have very rarely seen - and investment of a lot of tax dollars, but it could be worth it, the challenges are not technical.
It's a space elevator - except that we actually DO have the technology to build it, today.

While I agree with you - there is one major difference.
When a coal plant blows up - it doesn't render a city uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Not even potentially.

Of course the answer to that difference is better reactors with better designs - already breeder reactors greatly reduce that risk and their waste is a lot easier to manage because it has a half-life of decades rather than milenia.