So who is the "we" in all of this, and by what process do "we" actually do all of these things?

What you're describing is what we had prior to Marbury v. Madison, which is why the Supreme Court took it upon itself to actually carry out the actions you describe (except for the part where legislators that pass unconstitutional laws are punished).

We don't need a vague demand for justice, but an actual accountable process for determining and doing away with unconstitutional laws.

That's quite the one-sided viewpoint. The Constitution is a contract between the citizens of the US and the government. If the interpretation of that contract as held by the government and the citizens diverge too much, it ceases to be valid.

Ultimately, "your (and my, and any individual citizen's) personal interpretation of the Constitution" is the only absolute measure, because the US government only exists at the behest of the people. It entirely and completely derives its authority from the people.

I'm not sure how else to explain my position without repeating myself, so I guess I'll just let it drop. I think I've made my case better than just indicating that I want to undermine the government because I'm sore about an ancient court case, but if that's all thats getting through then I'm just wasting my time here.

Cheers.

Have you seen the guy? This is one case where he might be using the term correctly!

Oh, I totally agree with you there. The driver behind the intermediate cartridges was logistics, carry weight, and overall handling. Decreased lethality is only ever cited as a rationalization or consolation. In practice, it only works out to be a disadvantage. Even if the switch did carry some advantages, that's not one of them.

That's somewhat of a stretch to say, considering that the language in Article III isn't as explicit as you claim and even Jefferson disagreed with the court's original claim on that power. (It's even quite ironic that the court claimed the power of judicial review in a case that centered on the limited Article III powers of the court!)

I emphatically agree that judicial review is necessary. Judicial review, as it is currently stands however, allows four people to renegotiate (or reinterpret) the terms of the contract between the government and the citizens in a way which would require a constitutional amendment (deliberately the most arduous undertaking in our system of government) to reverse. This gives the court vastly more power than intended (as supported by Jefferson's words on the case) and has no effective check in any other branch (which makes it stand out as suspect anyway).

Instead of just crying about the current implementation being a fait accompli, what should be done is defining a more balanced judicial review process that has proper checks. Of course, I know that I'm way too idealistic and there's no way that our current government (or even the citizens) would do anything to fix this situation. So it is the de facto law of the land, even though its constitutionality is questionable.

My entry into this conversation started by me saying that the "law of the land" is on pretty shaky ground, constitutionally, to which you quipped that it is the de facto law of the land (non sequitur much?). In the same post, I specifically conceded that the Supreme Court is probably best suited for judicial review, though certain cases make me skeptical. We appear to be arguing past each other.

My entire argument is that judicial review, as it is, is not constitutional. As such, the framework surrounding it is not adequately designed and the power is not properly checked. Certain cases illustrate that well, where the only real check would be a constitutional amendment which could be further misinterpreted.

Your entire argument seems to be that the Constitution should have no bearing on the powers claimed by our government. It sure seems that's the case in practice, but if so we're no longer a constitutional state.

Well, an actual mouse is using a great deal of its resources controlling its mouse body. He wasn't talking about shoving an actual mouse brain into a car, but using something with the overall computing capabilities of a mouse to pilot the car.

Animals deal poorly with unfamiliar situations because they are highly adapted to, and trained on, specific situations. You wouldn't expect an actual mouse to be able to drive a car anymore than you'd expect a word processing program to drive a car. Yet, an actual mouse brain has more raw computing capability than the computers that are currently driving the self-driving cars.

I'm convinced that people do this on purpose, not out of forgetfulness.

It's the Hague Convention of 1899 that prohibited expanding bullets.

Jacketing, and FMJ, was implemented before that to allow for higher velocity bullets that don't quickly foul the barrels.

The constitutionality of judicial review isn't determined by the degree of contest from other branches of government, but from the powers delegated by the Constitution. If your argument is that any power usurped by the government that isn't contested by that same government is the law of the land, then you're no longer discussing a constitutional state.

To bring this back on topic, I think that the zany antics displayed in Wickard v. Filburn, and the near complete absence of a check on that sort of topsy-turvy decision, pretty clearly demonstrate that the Supreme Court is not really suited to handle judicial review.

The public discussion of judicial review is pretty sparse, partly because it's been around for so long that most people genuinely think that it's an enumerated power (an easily corrected mistake that is pretty pathetic in its own right), but that doesn't mean that the process is universally accepted. Of course the government, which is benefitting greatly by not being bound by a constitution, isn't debating the validity of the process. They get to claim the validity of being a constitutional state while simultaneously acting free from any well defined constitutional rules. What's to complain about?

Well, the Supreme Court also said that the Supreme Court gets to decide the Constitutionality of laws, even though that power isn't assigned to them in the Constitution.

I agree with them that someone should be in charge of judicial review and they are probably the best equipped to handle it, but at the same time they seem to be taking on a lot of authority that wasn't delegated to them and using that to give undelegated powers to other branches.

What actually is the "law of the land" is on pretty shaky ground, constitutionally.

He didn't say it was bad, only weird. And it is pretty weird.

Anyway, I though Buddha specifically taught us how to become a "living Buddha". That's pretty much entirely what his teachings were about and nowhere in them did he mention encasing yourself in a statue of him like some sort of creepy stalker.

One of the ways that religions become weird is when they blow off the teachings of the great master/prophet/god/whatever and concentrate more on worshiping them. Given time, it seems like that's where all religions end up.

His "universal developer rule" has nothing do with agriculture. He's talking about developers putting up houses on flood plains.

In fact, that land was probably bought from the farmers leaving less food grown in that fertile plain. So yeah, turning farmland that can tolerate the occasional flood and produces cheap food into tracts of cheap housing that gets developers rich and costs the taxpayers after a predictable flood totally "works out nicely for everyone".

I assume he's talking about people who are taking up more than a fair share of the space to walk (ie negotiating equitable space). Situations like people walking down the center of a busy sidewalk so that everybody else has to step aside or bump into them or people walking two or three abreast and taking up the whole sidewalk. They're either oblivious or abusing people's desire to avoid confrontation.

His approach is similar to what I've noticed, too. If people are occupying so much of the sidewalk that you can't walk normally (to one side of the sidewalk) without walking into them, it's almost your social duty to not yield to them. Be prepared to walk right into them. It's not acceptable for them to be so oblivious or such an asshole in public and expect others to go out of their way to accommodate them.

It's the other people in this thread who are talking about backing up their "right" to be an asshole by shooting/stabbing people who don't yield to them that are claiming that might makes right.

If I come out and directly say that I like electric vehicles and wish that we could stop burning gasoline in cars, could I get some replies to my comments that are actually replying to my comment and not refuting weird arguments that I'm not actually making? I see now why people put those disclaimers at the end of their posts to try and head off these kinds of replies.

You do see that nowhere, in any of my posts in this thread, was I comparing the efficiency of gas engines to electric drive systems, right? I was merely referencing the technical implementation of heating systems in gas burning cars and being a pedant about the use of the terms efficiency vs inefficiency.

Ugh. The posts here aren't even about nerdish oneupsmanship and pedantry anymore. Slashdot is increasingly driven by boring ideological quibbles and a dearth of reading comprehension.