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Comment Re:It's crap (Score 1) 1633

As I posted elsethread:

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution reads in part:

The Congress shall have power...
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
[...]
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

In other words, it was intended that we have no standing army[1] and that instead we have a militia of armed citizens that could be quickly mustered to "execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions", and for this militia to be governed and regulated by rules promulgated by Congress (but ultimately under the command of the President as commander-in-chief).

The bit about "suppressing insurrections" is particularly damning of the idiots who think the intent for the Second Amendment was to give us the ability to overthrow the government. Even in George Washington's presidency the militia was used to suppress an insurrection (the Whiskey Rebellion), so it's quite obvious that the intent was to have the "well regulated militia" be our primary fighting force at least until a proper army could be mustered and fielded, and so the right for people to keep and bear arms was meant to make sure we had a militia capable of fighting.

Since we now have a permanent standing army, there's no longer any reason under the original intent for citizens to have an unrestricted right to keep and bear arms.

I am not making any arguments as to whether relying on a militia rather than a standing army is a good one, I'm just going for the "original intent" argument that gun-rights people have such a huge boner for.

[1] which is why we have the biannual vestigial fig-leaf of the National Defense Authorization bill.

Comment Re:Militia, then vs now (Score 1) 1633

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution reads in part:

The Congress shall have power...
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
[...]
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

In other words, it was intended that we have no standing army[1] and that instead we have a militia of armed citizens that could be quickly mustered to "execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions", and for this militia to be governed and regulated by rules promulgated by Congress (but ultimately under the command of the President as commander-in-chief).

The bit about "suppressing insurrections" is particularly damning of the idiots who think the intent for the Second Amendment was to give us the ability to overthrow the government. Even in George Washington's presidency the militia was used to suppress an insurrection (the Whiskey Rebellion), so it's quite obvious that the intent was to have the "well regulated militia" be our primary fighting force at least until a proper army could be mustered and fielded, and so the right for people to keep and bear arms was meant to make sure we had a militia capable of fighting.

Since we now have a permanent standing army, there's no longer any reason under the original intent for citizens to have an unrestricted right to keep and bear arms.

I am not making any arguments as to whether relying on a militia rather than a standing army is a good one, I'm just going for the "original intent" argument that gun-rights people have such a huge boner for.

[1] which is why we have the biannual vestigial fig-leaf of the National Defense Authorization bill.

Comment Whonix is another alternative (Score 1) 171

https://www.whonix.org/

Magnet links:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:A031805E690BB0E03114A8FEB52485517218D3CE&dn=Whonix-Gateway-8.1.ova&tr=http%3a%2f%2fannounce.torrentsmd.com%3a6969%2fannounce&ws=http%3a%2f%2fwebseed.whonix.org%3a8008%2f8.1%2fWhonix-Gateway-8.1.ova

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:AB89247534553946C500EDF3A78E9C30F9C956ED&dn=Whonix-Workstation-8.1.ova&tr=http%3a%2f%2fannounce.torrentsmd.com%3a6969%2fannounce&ws=http%3a%2f%2fwebseed.whonix.org%3a8008%2f8.1%2fWhonix-Workstation-8.1.ova

And here's the magnet link for Tails v0.23 for good measure:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:B7EE06A2568630EED830CFFBF45B6BFD5DE796D4&dn=tails-i386-0.23&tr=http%3a%2f%2ftorrent.gresille.org%2fannounce

Encryption

Snowden Used the Linux Distro Designed For Internet Anonymity 171

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "When Edward Snowden first emailed Glenn Greenwald, he insisted on using email encryption software called PGP for all communications. Now Klint Finley reports that Snowden also used The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) to keep his communications out of the NSA's prying eyes. Tails is a kind of computer-in-a-box using a version of the Linux operating system optimized for anonymity that you install on a DVD or USB drive, boot your computer from and you're pretty close to anonymous on the internet. 'Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn't store any data locally,' writes Finley. 'This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources.'

The developers of Tails are, appropriately, anonymous. They're protecting their identities, in part, to help protect the code from government interference. 'The NSA has been pressuring free software projects and developers in various ways,' the group says. But since we don't know who wrote Tails, how do we know it isn't some government plot designed to snare activists or criminals? A couple of ways, actually. One of the Snowden leaks show the NSA complaining about Tails in a Power Point Slide; if it's bad for the NSA, it's safe to say it's good for privacy. And all of the Tails code is open source, so it can be inspected by anyone worried about foul play. 'With Tails,' say the distro developers, 'we provide a tongue and a pen protected by state-of-the-art cryptography to guarantee basic human rights and allow journalists worldwide to work and communicate freely and without fear of reprisal.'"
Medicine

Jenny McCarthy: "I Am Not Anti-Vaccine'" 588

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Jenny McCarthy is claiming she has been misunderstood and is not anti-vaccine. In an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times, McCarthy tries to ignore everything she's been saying about vaccines for years and wipe the record clean. 'People have the misconception that we want to eliminate vaccines,' McCarthy told Time magazine science editor Jeffrey Kluger in 2009. 'Please understand that we are not an anti-vaccine group. We are demanding safe vaccines. We want to reduce the schedule and reduce the toxins.' But Kluger points out that McCarthy left the last line out of that quotation: 'If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the f--king measles.' That missing line rather changes the tone of her position considerably, writes Phil Plait and is a difficult stance to square with someone who is not anti-vaccine. As Kluger points out, her entire premise is false; since vaccines don't cause autism, no one has to make the choice between measles (and other preventable, dangerous diseases) and autism. Something else McCarthy omitted from her interview with Kluger: 'I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe,' said McCarthy. 'If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f*cking fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's sh*t. If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.' Kluger finishes with this: 'Jenny, as outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough continue to appear in the U.S.—most the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the scare stories passed around by anti-vaxxers like you—it's just too late to play cute with the things you've said.' For many years McCarthy has gone on and on and on and on and on and on about vaccines and autism. 'She can claim all she wants that she's not anti-vax,' concludes Plait, 'but her own words show her to be wrong.'"

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