Ideally this would make no difference, as there should no more be a way for an ISP to tell "lawful" from "unlawful" content, than there was for old phone companies to tell "lawful" from "unlawful" phone calls. They're carriers, nothing else. They should have no access to the content of your communications at all, without a warrant.

Yes, it will. It's stupid, and people know it's stupid. That's why we're having this conversation today. That's why this idea has gone nowhere since the early '90s, when it was first tried (Clipper Chip + Skipjack). It was stupid then, it is stupid now. Nothing has changed in that regard. Right down to the fact that they're still putting stupid people in charge.

Why are you asking me?

And what does it have to do with government-supplied statistics?

Well, here's a statistic that many aren't aware of, but Lott does mention it. And it's a particularly compelling point when speaking to people who cite "other countries, like the UK".

Immediately after the last big gun ban in the UK, in 1998, FIREARMS violence DOUBLED... and stayed way up for 8 years. This is according to UK's own government statistics.

After that, it did start to decline... but at the same rate it was declining in other countries like the US, where gun ownership was going steadily up. So there is no valid argument that lack of guns caused the later decline.

I've argued before about this with people from the UK, who didn't seem to know about these statistics... and who suddenly shut up when they were pointed out. (I'd find a link but I'm too busy right now.)

TLA: the Terrible Liars Agency.

It can supplant the NSA, TSA, DHS, DOJ... hell, we might just make it the whole of the Obama administration.

I think you and GP are basically saying the same thing there: the court did not rule on the Constitutionality. It did not have to.

An activity can very definitely be unconstitutional. For example: if you're arrested and not read your rights before questioning, your Constitutional rights have been violated. It's not a procedure or policy to do so, nevertheless the officers involved engaged in an unconstitutional act.

What's silly about it? Much of the law is all about precedent. In this case, precedent says phone calls (and their metadata) are private, barring a judicial warrant. That's not silly at all... it's quite reasonable.

It would only be like saying that if the smoke signals were invisible to everybody but the parties at either end plus the "smoke signal carrier", and the smoke signal conversations were therefore intended to be private.

I disagree, since it's all part of the same conversation.

Quantum effects really start dominating when insulator or in some cases semiconductor (which acts as insulator) layers get to about 6 atoms thick.

Still a way to go.

Specifically, I am referring to a return to federalism, with the vast majority of citizens' government coming from the state and local levels. You know, the way this system was intended to work.

Or any soy product that has not been fermented...

Most of the time that's correct, but I see it with surprising frequency on level terrain. I think most of them are simply not paying full attention to the road; perhaps they're fiddling with a cell phone.

It's the same reason people sometimes fail to notice that the light has turned green. I mean, why should they pay attention, it's not like they're *driving* or anything...

Apparently this is confusing some of you. So I'll explain how it works in the USA.

Hypothetically, let's say you cause a car accident, as in this imaginary accident is 100% your fault. As a result of this accident, another person is injured and requires medical care. Your own car insurance policy has a line item called Bodily Injury Coverage. That coverage would pay for the injured person's medical expenses.

The injured person would not file a claim with their health insurance company (assuming they have one) because you, as the person who caused the accident, are held responsible for any expenses you caused to the injured person.

I was simply asking if car insurance works that way overseas. Instead of a private insurance company that you may or may not have, you have NHS. While the NHS is provided as a public service, the care they provide does have a cost. I wanted to know if NHS bears that cost even when there is an at-fault party who caused the problem, or whether in those specific cases, the at-fault party (via their car insurance liability policy) was expected to cover it.

You could ask me that, yes. Or you could put just a slight bit of thought into it and consider that there is a more reasonable alternative, which is that the drunk driver's insurance would cover this as part of liability coverage. Perhaps NHS could kick in if that's unavailable?

There's loads of ways this could be done, and since I am not knowledgable about the nuances of laws governing nations across the Atlantic, I ask questions instead of making assumptions. That's all.

I don't like replying to my own post, but I thought of something that was worth adding. What is happening now to the word "libertarian" is just like what happened to the word "hacker".

If you say "that guy's a hacker" the average person will imagine something nefarious, probably criminal, perhaps something involving identity theft. They aren't likely to picture a hobbyist and technology enthusiast who, by means of skill, manages to get devices (that they legitimately own) to perform creative and useful functions (which harm no one) that were never envisioned by their original makers.

The difference is, "hackers" have gotten so much negative attention in the mass media that the original term is gone and it isn't coming back. The only rational response is to accept this and move on. I don't believe "libertarian" is at that point yet, though it's heading there fast. Is reclaiming a word so important to me? In and of itself, no, not really. What's important to me is for people like you to wake up and realize how easy it is to manipulate you, to prevent you from ever entertaining entire categories of thought and philosophy and thereby to steer your thinking, merely by toying with words. I think that deserves some importance.

I'm a little-'l' libertarian and I think simple, reasonable, easily-understood regulations like this are not only perfectly acceptable, but highly desirable. As a libertarian I want minimal government. A government that does not provide reasonable regulations is less than minimal and therefore a failure. Minimal is "greater than nothing", you see, and something greater than nothing but still less than minimal is ... still a failure. I can't break it down any more simply than that.

I've never actually met or corresponded with an anarcho-capitalist who called themselves a "libertarian" (which is what you and so many others are ignorantly assuming to be representative of libertarian thought), though I have corresponded with multiple anarcho-capitalists who called themselves "anarchists" or "anarcho-capitalists". Their ideas were interesting to be sure, but just like communism, seemed designed for a species other than our own. That's why I don't count myself among them.

The problem here is that your standard "progressive" and "conservative" political schools of thought have millions of members and powerful parties backing them. That means they have great PR. Both would be quite threatened if reasonable libertarian thought really caught on. It's not exactly shocking that reasonable libertarian thought is seldom portrayed, except by individuals like me. Of course it will be distorted, misrepresented, and shown in only its most extreme and unworkable forms, until the average person finds it distasteful like an automatic reflex. Like I said, it's called PR, and it's quite common in politics. It only works because it depends on your ignorance.

Do you self-report the km driven per year, or do they have some type of system in place to track this?