1. Ex post facto limitations apply to criminal cases, not civil cases.

2. Bills of attainder applies to a specific person or group of persons. I.e. a law saying Joe at 123 Maple Street has to pay 50% of his money to Small Town DPW. In England they were used to execute people, i.e. the govt would pass a law saying Bill will be executed such and such a day.

3. The problem here is due process IF they can't show you the records to justify the seizure. That's really really bad news.

Ex post facto has always been held to apply in criminal cases only.

This isn't anything like what ex post facto limitations apply to.

It could be argued that this money never belonged to you in the first place since it was an over payment.

Due process not needed.

These debts are mostly from SSI aid to dependent children. The money is sent to the parents, but strictly speaking the children are the beneficiaries.

Pretty much. Even forbids it in it's definition of treason.

This isn't a crime though. It's mistakes that were made in calculation of benefits for dependent children, The IRS is trying to collect it from the people whom the benefits were intended.

The problem is lack of due process. Their procedures are very shoddy.

This has been going on for a while. And while it's stopped right now, it's only under review.

This sort of collection should be limited to the actual recipients, and have some sort of statute of limitations.

Commercial debt dies with the probate process. It's not passed on.

1970's? Global cooling? Are you serious? The prevailing opinion at the time was 'we don't know', that is the science available at the time was not capable of modelling the effect of man's activities on climate.

In this essay written by Carl Sagan in 1980 he expresses exactly this and makes a plea for support for such work.

The idea that there was a 'global cooling' consensus in the 1970's is the sheerest poppycock. Complete wishful thinking by people with a political agenda back by no rigorous assessment of the situation.

If you really are interested in just facts, you have failed to accumulate many.

> Finland teaches whole word and is considered the best public education in the world.

O RLY?

More likely best non-Asian public education.

If you compare it to a similar sized US State like Massachusetts, not even that.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/met...

Many larger countries than Finland have much more diverse populations. Take similar sized samples and you will rapidly find that Finland is not that outstanding.

Since the dawn of man the size of political units has always been increasing.

Family
Band
Tribe
City
State
Nation
World Government(?) (If we don't have nuclear war first)

Modern farming is pretty technology intensive. Not sure current skills would be easy to translate to a post apocalypse world.

When the NSA ceases to exist, it will be because they are adsorbed by something bigger and more powerful.

Look at the KGB. They were adsorbed by the Russian Oligarchy.

To start with, because of sovereign immunity.

One thing I do think there is a possibility of is that further advances will be more difficult. We'll need to build bigger telescopes, higher powered accelerators, etc. at increasing costs.

Hopefully though increasing economic productivity will be able to pay for this.

Simply not true?

What about the Toubon Law?

The French do tend towards language chauvinism.