We can buy an iPhone direct from Apple instead of a wireless provider just as much as buying a TV directly from Samsung or an infinite amount of other goods and services on the internet or in showrooms dedicated to a certain product or line of products. Why are cars the exception??

I guess its no surprise considering that its still illegal to pump your own gas in NJ.

can't someone just install firefox themselves? It would take like 1 minute tops.....

some people have like wives and kids..ya know families. So when its time to get off work, family should be #1. not coding when ive already been coding all day. That doesnt mean that you cant do 'something' on the side but of course there was no definition of 'coding in their spare time' when the amount of spare time could mean 4 or 5 hours a week or less.

All their goals that they want to achieve in that statement would come to fruition by actually allowing open municipal networks and thus creating competition. I dont understand why they think by hindering more networks to be created would somehow not create competition ....

i havent seen any documentation of that at all. was just looking. Im surprised they didnt have any setback from the animal agencies./etc/etc

i dont think they killed live rabbits, if thats what are you suggesting?

I am not sure - I havent seen that movie in a long time in its entirety. I only know about it because it was on some tv channel in the middle of the night and i just happened to be up and scrolling through the channels. VERY SLOW movie.

Night Of the Lepus

Carnivorous rabbits at your service.

Just because someone has a channel on doesn't mean they are watching it. Doesnt mean its not on mute. Someone could be taking a whiz, making dinner or any number of things. Does DVR recording count as "watching"? because if thats the case you can FF through all the commercials anyway. I dont know how television networks get so much money from advertisers when actual viewership is just, at best, a liberal estimate of how many people are actually watching anything at all.

How can SCOTUS make it a tax out of thin air when thats not what the bill spelled it out to be? I dont see how they redefine it to be a tax instead of a penalty just to save unconstitutional merits. Your line about deferring to Congress is really exactly what i was confused about. Shouldn't congress have had to go back and write it as a tax and vote on it again since originally it was going to be a penalty?

the general idea was is that if it had been written as a Tax instead of a penalty it wouldnt have made it to the presidents desk to sign because people didnt want to be taxed more to basically fund other peoples healthcare - so they were going through with it as a penalty.... this is what i remember so please correct me.

then why did SCOTUS even have to say "its unconstitutional for it to be a penalty, but its legal for it to be a tax." That was basically the premise behind the swing vote. I thought it was originally written to be a penalty.

maybe i need a history refresher but why does a company have to be part of a dealership program to sell cars?

What I don't get is that the bill that was written had it as a PENALTY. Thats what was voted on in congress. SCOTUS ruled that it is constitutional as a TAX yet I find it odd that congress didn't have to go back and vote on the bill with the clarity of it being a tax.

Perhaps a dumb question but: How is it that the Affordable Care Act is being implemented when the congress voted on it based on penalties but that was found to be unconstitutional....and congress didn't have to re-vote on the bill to be passed after the SCOTUS ruling that said it had to be a tax?? I've been wondering that now for some time.

"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

I dont see anywhere where it says , No bill... shale be passed... except when talking about Copyright. Did they just make that part up on a whim? I know that they have made up things in the past, like declaring that somehow there is a "separation of church and state" in the constitution where that phrase never is mentioned in any founding document. Not only did they have to go outside of the any of the founding documents to declare this clause part of the constitution but the intent behind the Danbury letter had a totally different context/meaning/circumstance that is well documented in history and they, (SCOTUS) chose to ignore/were ignorant of the facts.

Again, in the Ashcroft case, it looks like they just made up laws on the whim which is not their job anyway.