That's a pretty big place to be called "particularly described".

OTOH, it looks as if they are only allowed to look for evidence of one particular kind of crime. That narrows it a bit, if the restriction can be believed. Unfortunately, a lot of instances of "independent construction" have come to light, which shed a lot of doubt on how well this kind of restriction is enforced. (True, this case doesn't involve the spooks, but the same processes can be used.)

I am perfectly content to define everyone who would prefer less taxation and fewer government restrictions as libertarian. I think in a broader and practical sense that is an accurate description. But the fundamental underpinning of libertarianism is the ideal of a society that only uses government force and coercion in order to counter force and coercion.

And although therefore libertarians traditionally view just defense, police and the courts to be absolutely necessary to the function of government most libertarian leaning leaders are usually just seeking modest reductions in taxation and spending as a gradual approach to reverse long term trends.

Since the libertarian viewpoint is based on freedom, prosperity and reducing the use of force and violence in society then it isn't good to go cold turkey on government programs which could result in violence in society as people's lives and livelihood's are disrupted. Merely shifting the use of coercive force from government to individuals isn't a net gain. When it regards dismantling social programs I think it is up to libertarians to demonstrate that non-governmental charities and individuals are up to the task of that transition before we phase any of these programs out completely unless we are talking about merely shifting resources to demonstrably more effective programs.

What I do disagree with those that are critical of libertarianism is on the ideal of a libertarian society. Whether practically achievable or not to its fullest extent, to me the ideal of libertarianism is an inherently good value to strive for. And it is a given that this assumes a healthy society where charity and free will have picked up the slack in areas of social good. To me the libertarian ideal is simply like saying better parents don't beat their children, or we should treat others as we wish to be treated. The point is that you have some ideal to strive for and a system of government to perfect.

And conversely that having a society which is based on the growing use of coercive force against its own people to achieve very narrow partisan political gains is a very unhealthy path to be on.

Sort of. But they should be required to narrowly specify the information that they are looking for, and have evidence that would lead a reasonable person to conclude it is probably there. And they shouldn't be allowed to record anything that doesn't match the items described in the warrant.

And I quote: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu

The problem is that one agent of it under reckless evil can undo the work of 100 agents working selflessly for good. And that's assuming the "good" agents don't collude to protect the bad apple.

OTOH, this judge thought it quite reasonable to search an entier hard drive. And said it was established predecent. Yuck! That's NOT a narrow search.

Or maybe not. Linked from TFA:

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

Do you know that the separatist taking credit are both A: separatists and B: the ones who shot it down? For all we know they cljld be plants for disinformation. But even if they are the real deal, nnothing has linked them to being the ones who shot the missiles. For all we know, they could be cheer leading something someone else said who could have been a Ukrainian plant. Their bragging about it is not evidence of anything other than they bragged. I mean hell, plenty of people popped the cork and started celebrating in 2000 when the networks called Florida for Gore. That was all over something that wasn't true.

As for them having a missile system. That doesn't prove anything other than they had the capability to do it. Lots of parties in the area have that capability including ukraine.

Your evidence doesn't amount to any logic or factual error when someone questions it. It doesn't amount to proof either. But for what its worth, i think the rebels did it too. I'm just not willing to dismiss other possabilities based on what we are being told. You shouldn' either.

FWIW, my *GUESS* is that this wasn't planned. Somebody the other day said that this kind of rocket launcher can be set to automaticaly fire on anything passing overhead. That sounds to me quite plausible. So my guess is that somebody set it up on automatic, and took a break when they shouldn't have, or that they were assigned to do something else, so the left the launcher on automatic, or that it was lunch time, so..... etc.

As to WHO the negligent party was, it's plausibly the separtists, it's plausibly some Russian advisor who was detached to help them, it's plausibly anyone who had one of these launchers. It's the kind of stupid thing people do when they're confused and harried. It probably wasn't the Russian troops. This isn't the kind of thing people do when they're part of a standing chain of command.

Chapman's apple-planting was never about the fruit (nor did TFA go into it). What it was really about was CIDER -- hard cider in areas that didn't yet raise enough barley for beer, or lacked the quality of soil for grain crops, frex in rocky areas like the Appalachians. Beer (which then meant thick stuff with a lot of nutritional value) and cider are how you preserve grain and fruit when you don't have secure dry storage or refrigeration (not that fruit keeps very well at its best). That the end product contains alcohol, well, that was a side benefit.

The point was "without warning". Drunks generally give plenty of warning that they are getting violent. This guy was just walking down the street.

OTOH, I'm relying on third-hand information about why. Apparently he had a reputation for taking "angle dust" and then becoming violent some time later without warning. Prehaps it was an idiosyncratic reaction, sort of like the "cat" or "dot" reactions to morphine. But I was told that it's the kind of thing one needs to expect from PCP users. Is this true? I sure don't know. But the "without warning" is ... rather hard to deal with.

OTOH, I guess that if it were easily available, those who liked it would kill themselves off fairly quickly. Presuming that the information that I got was correct.

I don't see it fixing any problem. Its just busy work more or less unless it has steep penalties and i don't think min wage would be enough.

I wish I had mod points. Every time I hear about planets not being able to support life, this is my first thought.

And every time a story about extraterrestrial life gets posted on Slashdot, several dozen people say exactly the same thing, as if they've had some brilliantly original insight that the scientists researching the subject missed. No one is explicitly ruling out the possibility that there are gaseous lifeforms living in the clouds of gas giants, or silicon-based rock monsters like the one in Star Trek. Hell, it would be a huge discovery if we found something like that. But since we're presently incapable of observing such lifeforms firsthand, and have no idea what we should be looking for at a distance of light-years, we have to settle for looking for the planetary "signatures" of temperature, oceans, oxygen content, etc. It may not satisfy the pedants, but it's still extremely difficult by itself. When we're capable of actually exploring other solar systems directly, then maybe we can start to look for fantasy lifeforms on frozen airless rocks and methane clouds.

I don't think you know what that fallacy actually means. Nothing I wrote is even close to an excluded middle fallacy. The particular bit you quoted might be considered a sweeping generalization, if it weren't so blatantly evident that I was mocking your kindergarten-level understanding of economics.

Hurr, durr, ad-hominem fallacy!