It was still a state gerrymandered for the benefit of the Democrats as of 2010, and the Republicans won despite the gerrymandering.

>The current power of the Republican party stems from the gerrymandered districts.

Democrats ran North Carolina for over 100 years and gerrymandered their districts to their advantage. It was in this environment that the Republican party came to power in 2010.

Actually, artillery was privately owned too. Ben Franklin bought some cannon for the defense of Philadelphia without government permission.

The first gun control laws were in the 1700s to keep guns away from blacks.

ahem, Acura.

Like in Pulp Fiction when Mr. Wolf drives away in the Lotus in the end. They didn't record the Lotus, they added sound later. Problem is that sound was of constant straight-line acceleration while the video had the car accelerating, slowing, turning a corner, and re-accelerating.

it's designed to make people second-class citizens simply because of who they are, a quality they can not (nor should not) change

So nobody has ever gone from gay to straight, or straight to gay?

And that can't happen until you get rid of the current SCOTUS

Or, you know, go the proper way and just change the Constitution. They didn't decide that way because they want an oligarchy, they did it because, OMG!, they decided based on what the Constitution actually says. That doesn't change based on the circumstances. I don't like the results of the decision either, but it's a solid one based in fact, not the dreams of the court's left wing. If somebody found a huge loophole, then we modify the Constitution to fix it. We don't just interpret the problem away, because that means the Constitution's protections are meaningless.

Please sign my petition to restore gun-ownership to convicted felons and the mentally ill.

Conviction of a cime historically is a basis for suspending the rights of the offender. First of all, the offender usually loses his right to freedom, since he gets locked up. At this point, he usually loses his right to vote too. Upon release, many rights are still restricted, such as freedom of movement while on parole. Voting and gun rights can remain restricted.

However, there certainly should be a mechanism to proclaim someone rehabilitated and regain his voting and gun rights. Once off probation, voting rights shouldn't be affected anymore. I know someone who as a dumb young man was convicted in the 1960s and lost his gun rights. He's pushing 70 now, and is a danger to no one, yet he can't buy a gun.

Mental illness is definitely another issue though. However, it has been long accepted that a narrowly tailored law that is the least restrictive means to address a definite issue can survive even strict scrutiny when it comes to restricting a constitutional right. So someone who has been declared a danger by a competent medical professional could be denied possession of guns, subject to the ability of that person to appeal, to be examined by alternate medical professionals, and to have regular reviews of his status. You'll have a hard time finding a pro-gun person who disagrees with this.

Or my other initiative, which seeks to relieve the financial pressures that de facto restrict low-income citizens from gun ownership by providing a means-tested system of subsidies to ensure that self defense is accessible to all

We shouldn't fund people for transportation to voting places, we shouldn't fund them to acquire guns, we shouldn't give them free printing presses. It's a right you have -- it doesn't have to be provided for you. However, it should be unconstitutional for the government to make firearms more expensive than necessary, or to ban less expensive firearms so that the poor can afford them. The government has done both.

Remember Enemy of the State with Will Smith? All that surveillance was illegal and was being done by a lose cannon within the agency. Once the agency found out what he was doing, he was history. The movie was made when we still respected the NSA.

Fast forward not too much to today, we find such surveillance is SOP.

I'm not aligned with either party. I agree with one on some issues, on the other with other issues, and with neither on other issues. I have never registered with either party, and have voted for politicians in both.

But even I can see the pattern. Generally with news of wrongdoing, party affiliation is less prominently displayed, or not displayed at all, with Democrats.

It seems a stretch that these guys are the only ones that say "where's the beef?" in the future, when we know that humans of today do it all the time

The point is that they only speak in "where's the beef" phrases. There is no way they could explain the meaning of their phrases using non-metaphorical words like every language we know can.

Basically, the universal translator probably could translate their language if their history were dumped into it for reference.

In short, they usually ensure there's enough plausible deniability built up around the top officers to avoid prosecution.

Fast and Furious was ATF trying (ineffectively) to gain intelligence about illegal activity for the purpose of stopping it.

That's the story, from somebody we know has no problem lying about the program under oath.

Think about this: The big PR blitz trying to ban "assault weapons" because they're flowing to Mexico began after the F&F program started shipping these guns to Mexico in large quantities. Once the nature of the program was revealed, the big PR quieted down.

Change a character in the metadata fields, hash changes. If they're scanning the actual video portion of files, add a byte at the end. I don't think that would affect playback.