Because communities are often not as in charge of their police departments as they should be or think they are, because some move more slowly than others,.

That's nonsense. Cities are fully in charge of their police departments: they can limit the use of force, pass laws, hire and fire, even get rid of them. And if the "move slowly", that's their right. They may well have other, more important issues than body cams on their minds.

and because this is an important enough issue due to recent events that it warrants quick and decisive movement

It's only an "important issue" because some people are making it such for political and financial gain. There is no evidence that a body cam is needed in this case either: there is tons of physical evidence and witness statements. People are trying to fabricate a crisis in order to push through political agendas.

Cop cams are generally good. But what's the justification for making it a federal mandate?

"Folks have the impression that this is a form of low-level harassment that isn't about public safety. It's about money," he says.

Yes, and the voters of Ferguson could have changed this every local election if they had wanted to.

The reason they have race riots, all over this country, is that people go through the whole process of polite complaints and peaceful demonstrations, and get nowhere.

Polite complaints, peaceful demonstrations, and rioting is what you do in order to get handouts from a king or slave owner. We live in a democracy, and in a democracy, all those actions are meaningless. What matters in a democracy is voting, running for office, and convicing your fellow citizens.

They riot because they found out that riots are the only thing that works. When they burn down the town, the white establishment finally pays attention.

Oh, rioting certainly works for the Sharptons and Jacksons of the world: it furnishes them with money and power. For the people of Ferguson, it just means poverty and marginalization.

If the people of Ferguson don't like their "white establishment", they can vote them out every couple of years. But apparently, they have been satisfied enough with their white establishment that they didn't bother to do so.

Opposing a federal law mandating the use of police cameras isn't the same as opposing police cameras. I'm happy if my local police wear body cameras. I strongly object to such a requirement being imposed by the federal government.

Just because something is right for white middle class nerds like you doesn't mean it's right for everybody. It's your kind of hubris and ignorance that causes Washington to keep passing ineffective and harmful legislation, legislation that makes the white middle class happy and well off at the expense of everybody else. Cut it out.

The idea behind the police cameras is to prevent police brutality

There are about 400 killings by police in the US per year, not a large number to begin with. Almost all of them are found to have been justifiable in a court of law. There is no evidence of significant racial bias in those statistics (i.e., the people getting shot are representative of the relevant population of perpetrators and suspects). There is no evidence of the kind of breakdowns in local and state government that would require the federal government to step in.

Preventing police brutality isn't the job of the federal government, it is only the job of the federal government if democratic mechanisms have clearly broken down at the local and state level and can't handle that. Is there any evidence for that? No. Hence, not a job for the federal government.

There's no associated diminution of civil liberties, and clear and enormous benefit in the goal of advancing the cause of justice.

I like the idea of police wearing cameras, but you're jumping to conclusions by assuming that it has a "clear and enormous benefit". Nobody knows what the long term consequences are or how this technology may be abused. We don't know whether this is the right choice for every single community in the US either. We don't know what this law is going to look like after police lobbies are through with it.

And objecting to the specifics of this proposal is inane - the proposal of forcing cops to wear cameras is a solid and popular one.

Just because something seems like a good idea to a lot of people doesn't mean it should become federal law. Something should become federal law only if it cannot be implemented at the local or state level. Can voters decide locally that their police should carry cameras? Yes, they can. Hence, no need or justification for a federal law. If the federal government wants to help, it can offer funding to demonstrably poor communities.

Yeah, but why should anybody care, except for a few specialists in anthropology?

So if America wants banking records of a German citizen, living in Germany, they could compel Deutschbank to provide them.

Correct. At the same time, Deutsche Bank might be violating German laws if it complies with the US order. It is the responsibility of Deutsche bank to ensure that it it can comply with all laws in the countries it chooses to do business in. And it is your responsibility as a customer to pick and choose companies to do business with that operate in the way you like.

If Microsoft loses this case, it will be a terrible precedent, and a victory for oppressive governments all around the world.

Oh, of course! Because the ability of transnational corporations to evade the laws of the countries they operate in and play one country against another would be such a grand victory for liberty! Get real.

The US government has too much power to subpoena E-mails (although European governments are even worse); that power should be limited. Allowing huge global corporations like Microsoft to escape such legal orders while private citizens would have to comply (and you would) is about the worst possible outcome.

Then they should charge for it on an hourly basis, and waive that hourly fee for big customers.

Why "should" they? They aren't in the business of handholding consumers or small customers. If you think they are wrong in their business model, stop whining and vote with your dollars instead. That's what adults do in a free market.

Of course, you whine and complain because you realize that Broadcom's business model is actually working for them.

They need to realize that big players start out as little players.

Sometimes they do, but so what? It looks like Broadcom still has a good business, as do many other companies that only deal with large customers; in a healthy, diverse market, that's a reasonable strategy for some companies. I don't see why people get so pushed out of shape about this. It's not like Broadcom is the only source you can use.

a large portion of our decisions makers have not gotten past the 'is it warming?' part of all this.

They don't need to get past that, because whether it is actually warming or not has no impact on policy. Under all IPCC scenarios, there is no need in any government-initiated policies against climate change.

If we had believed the scientists 20 years ago about the warming, we could have spent the last 20 years debating what to do about it.

The reason we didn't talk about policy 20 years ago was because it was easiest to put a stop to this nonsense by pointing out that scientists didn't even have good data (actually, they still don't in terms of extrapolation).

But the policy issues are the same: the reason nothing can be done about climate change is rooted in economics and politics. And the reason nothing should be done is because whatever we could do is likely going to end up worse for humanity than simply living with warmer termperatures.

The problem with climatologists is that they are climatologists; they are not sociologists, politicians, economists, or ethicists. Anybody who advocates following the advice of climatologists on climate change is either a charlatan or a liar.

I don't have a kill file, but you certainly are in my "stupidity alert file".

We're almost certainly going to be a lot worse off if we ignore scientists talking about what will happen under certain circumstances.

Again, where did I say that we should "ignore" them? Climate scientists have made various predictions for how climate is going to change under various emission scenarios; that is their area of expertise. It's useful information that we should pay attention to. But choosing not to act on the recommendations of climate scientists isn't "ignoring" them, it is recognizing that climate scientists lack the expertise or authority to recommend policy.

It is rational to acknowledge the emission scenarios and predictions of climate scientists and completely reject any form of government action to try to reduce emissions. In fact, I think it is the only rational position.