We always hear about how the US does a ton of good around the world -- what do you have for valid citations for the good the US does that others don't?

So for example, shifting rubble in Nepal wouldn't count because lots of other nations have such helpers. Aid in the form of arms to $randomWarlord doesn't count because that's just a symptom of the military-industrial complex. I want to hear about what the US government does around the world that nobody else does, that is objectively a "good", and an estimation of the value of that service, because let's be honest, spending a billion (or whatever -- number totally made up) on droning random people per year is not balanced by spending a million on digging wells in the Sahara.

Awesome post.

Maybe, but there is also a bias in favor of women during sentencing.

If you're a criminal defendant, it may helpâ"a lotâ"to be a woman. At least, that's what Prof. Sonja Starr's research on federal criminal cases suggests. Prof. Starr's recent paper, "Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases," looks closely at a large dataset of federal cases, and reveals some significant findings. After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen areâ¦twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper.

https://www.law.umich.edu/news...

It will be long fucking time till the US runs out of workers and demand for labor boosts wages -- there's what, 7 or 8 billion people in the world to import at the behest of big business.

That's a lot to assume based on nothing and in fact contrary to plain language of the document.

But that's really a side issue. No law should be passed in secret, or the text sequestered in a special room where only a representative or senator can read it and can't take notes or copies or get expert guidance on unfamiliar topics -- the congresspeople can't even discuss what they remember reading.

http://www.politico.com/story/...

The ONLY reason this is being done in secret, is because the special corporate interests it is designed to further know people would bitch about it if it was public. That's anti-democratic and the entire process surrounding this bill should be enough of a basis, on its own, to reject it out of hand.

The final laws aren't secret, but during some parts of the lawmaking process, their details may be kept secret, for exactly the reason in TFS.

Actually, and incredibly, the final law will be secret for a while:

The chapter in the draft of the trade deal, dated Jan. 20, 2015, and obtained by The New York Times in collaboration with the group WikiLeaks, is certain to kindle opposition from both the political left and the right. The sensitivity of the issue is reflected in the fact that the cover mandates that the chapter not be declassified until four years after the Trans-Pacific Partnership comes into force or trade negotiations end, should the agreement fail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03...

Not only is it outrageous and unconstitutional, it's totally valueless. The Feds can't even stand in the way of people for whom they have good information that they might be interested in doing harm, let alone find anything new. The real purpose of a program that is so ineffective, can only be to retroactively find dirt on political outcasts and then put them in prison.

Citations:

• Feds warned about Boston bombers: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
• The Feds monitored one of the Texas shooters, and he spent time in jail: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/p...
• Uselessness of the mass surveillance program:
  http://www.tomsguide.com/us/rs...
  http://articles.chicagotribune...

I second the motion.

More to the point, Amazon or Google can't lock you up in prison or legally kill you. The government can. That's not a small difference.

This is a correlation thing. It is conceivable that whatever caused him to commit suicide is the same thing that caused him to use drugs and that instead of cutting his life short, the drugs made his life tolerable enough to stay in it longer.

re soul.

What does that even mean really?

Why do people grieve when a loved one is rendered brain dead? If all that matters is that the cells are human, it makes no sense to grieve for a brain dead person. Under that paradigm, having thought, emotion, memory, intellect, etc. is simply not relevant because all nonthinking human cells are magically transformed into something uber-special.

In reality, the brain matters -- a lot -- and everyone knows this intrinsically. To apply a different standard to embryos is irrational and inconsistent. We don't have a funeral every time we get a haircut and millions of human cells get lopped off and tossed into landfills.

If there is a soul, our sorrow tells us it is in the brain.

Many of us _inside_ the US can hardly tell the difference between them either? Basically, Republicans propose lousy policies, fail to pass them, and then Democrats get those policies made into law. Exhibit A? Nixoncare (aka Obmacare).

Are you sure you belong on /.?

Oh come on -- that's baloney. The Feds can dream up any reason they want to go after people they don't like. The free book linked to in the summary gives advice to CIA/NSA/FBI test takers too, no different than what is being prosecuted. You seem to fail to understand that a tool of our tyranny is for the Feds to _say_ you have the right to X -- and then nail your ass for some seemingly irrelevant violation of A. The advantage of our massive criminal code base for tyranny, is that the Feds can take you down anytime they want if they don't like you and they don't care if they are sending you to PMITA prison for the reason they hate you, they just care to take you down.

And what does freedom of speech have to do with trying to make sure an intelligence agency isn't hiring double agents?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

http://constitution.findlaw.co...

This is not a "yelling fire in a crowded theater" situation involving immediate clear harm. Rather, it's about freedom of the press in exposing polygraphy as a pseudoscience that is as valid as drowning women to find out if they are witches. The polygraphy book does this by showing exactly how polygraphy doesn't work.

The Government is using its substantial power to suppress this information contrary to the mandatory dictates of the First Amendment. When the US government ignores the Constitution, that is a far graver threat to America and its purported values than any terrorist or double agent could ever achieve, because it decouples the massive power the Feds have from any limitations at all -- it is in essence, the destruction of America from within.

Think about it like this: There is USA, the place, and America the vision as embodied by our Constitution. Given the US Federal Gov's all-out assault on the Bill of Rights, it's fair to say that _it_ is the greatest threat to the freedoms we as Americans are said to hold dear, in favor of protection of USA the place. It is of course a totally dubious assertion that the pseudoscience of polygraphy is even effective at protection of USA the place, but even if it was a valid technique, we should be asking if we want to have a Federal Government that is totally unrestrained in its exercise of power. If that is where we are heading, we should just acknowledge that post-constitutional USA is just another authoritarian dictatorship, and quit giving lip service to being a constitutional republic that values freedom and justice. It would save a lot of people a lot of prison time to know we are just another China, and to keep their mouths shut.