Well... the largest beneficiaries of charitable giving in the United States are religious organizations. Some portion of that probably gets passed on to those in need, through religion-based soup kitchens, etc., but it would probably be more accurate to say that we give what we do to charity because our tax code categorizes religious giving as charitable.

This article disagrees with the parents' claim, however. I'm not willing to pay enough attention to this topic to figure out that discrepancy, but... there you go.

It's not entirely obvious: the president nominates all of the commissioners, and only three are allowed to be from the president's own party. Ajit Pai was originally nominated by Obama, in order to fill one of the two opposition seats during his presidency.

My father's perspective has become skewed enough that he doesn't understand what a healthy weight looks like. It's not surprising to me that his dogs are all fat, though he denies it and decries other people for under-feeding their dogs because, "You can see their ribs."

Well I did read some of it, that's why I wrote what I said above. What convinced me that he was partisan though, was not the fact that his economic beliefs line up with party dogma. What convinced me was that everything else I read by him also seemed to go that way - he's a climate denier, for example. He loves charter schools and Betsy DeVos, he talks about "the left" and how horrible they are, many articles about how much he hates Obama, etc.

If he's not a partisan shill, then he's indistinguishable from a partisan shill.

If you say so. The video is just an excerpt from an audiobook, so I went looking for something a little more substantial in video form... which I did not find. I did find a lot of articles though, and this guy is partisan as shit. If he "started as a Marxist," it was a very long time ago.

This is the world we now live in. Activation is ubiquitous in software, why not food?

I don't know what you're going on about now. I talked about what the parent and the article were saying, specifically that there are some regulations which exist to ensure that drones are visible to pilots. You come along and say that those regulations don't exist. Ergo: the article which claimed that they exist, which you didn't bother to read, is lying.

You do understand that these two statements are not equivalent, right?

Maybe you don't. I don't care.

You're claiming that the article is just outright lying? Without even bothering to read it? That seems awfully negligent. But, whatever. This story is more than a day old now, so no one is ever going to read this.

The court said that the mandate wasn't unconstitutional, because the constitution grants the government the right to tax. This is not the same thing as declaring it to be a tax. Think how the constitution protects speech, but implicitly also protects writing. Strictly speaking writing isn't speech, since it isn't spoken, but the understanding is that "speech" is that case just means communication. This doesn't mean that the court is declaring that writing is something other than writing, only that the intent of the constitution is broader than it specifies.

So some people still call the healthcare penalty a mandate, and some people call it a tax. Most people shrug and say that it doesn't matter what it's called, because regardless of what you call it the court says that it isn't unconstitutional. The politicians, of course, say that what you cal it is critically important .

You're doing this backwards. You start with a hypothesis, then you conduct your experiment. The order is very important. Making a baseless assumption about how the researchers did it is bad enough, but then you just turn around and do the same thing yourself. If you're going to slander these people then you could at least make an effort to set a good example.

... Did you read the article? You should read the article.

Yes, this is why motivation doesn't factor into criminality: people can't be faulted for having different opinions. Only intent factors into criminality.

I don't know what you're talking about with the frequency thing. Who brought up frequency?

This is not true in general, mens rea is a well established factor in establishing guilt, but I understand that you're talking specifically about bills / laws / executive orders here. I'm no expert on this, but... intent certainly does matter for bills / laws / executive orders too. This is easy to see in any discussion of a law old enough that the original authors can't be consulted - endless arguments over what the law says vs. what the law intended. There are many instances where language has changed over time and people try to figure out the meaning of a given word at the time the law was written, etc.

This claim, "When possible the courts Must pick the interpretation of the intent of all laws or orders in a manner that the result is constitutional and/or legal, if it is possible for there to be a constitutional and legal intent of the law or order." sounds pretty crazy. I can't say for sure that it's wrong, but I suspect that it's wrong. What you're suggesting is that when a bill is unconstitutional, rather than rejecting the bill the court must twist the meaning of the bill until they have something which is not unconstitutional, no matter how ridiculous that result may be.

I don't think that's what you really meant.

This is what the order states. The intent is what that order is trying to accomplish: "to protect the country" or "to spite certain cultures." The motivation is why this order was made - there's an assumption that the motivation is a fear/hatred of Muslims, but while motivation can act as evidence it doesn't make a crime.

You're confusing motive and intent, intent factors heavily into our legal system. Intent is: "What was this order trying to accomplish?" Motive is: "Why was this order made in the first place?"