You might as well say the constitution is based on words, so we can do whatever we want.

Here's the legit deal: The judges get judicial power. Guilty or innocent, sentencing.

The feds, congress get enumerated powers.

The states get anything else that isn't outright forbidden to them (ex post facto laws, for instance.)

Anything left after that goes to the people.

See how those powers slide in a very particular direction? See why it's downright silly to claim that they magically slide UPHILL to the judiciary, when there's no such indication, anywhere, that such is the case? AND, to hammer it home, the thing explicitly says that if it's not in here, it belongs to the states or the people. There is NO authority for SCOTUS to do most of what it does. None whatsoever. And hell, even if there were, there they go rubber stamping the inversion of the commerce clause, ex post facto laws, rights violations left, right and sideways... you're looking right at them, and you don't see what they've done to you, and the rest of us. Pity.

This is all about direct usurpation of power that belonged to the people, frankly. Although we still have just the barest sliver of it left, which we can apply via jury nullification. Although, as you probably know, we're not even allowed to talk about that in court because judges(!) don't like it. Funny thing, that. Judges. They seem to be doing a lot of unauthorized things, don't they?

There's no such thing as a "well designed lawful age metric." Though I'm not sure you were even implying there was. But in any case:

It's about comprehension, consent, and physical development. Age cannot serve to draw such a multidimensional line effectively. There are obvious cases of young teens who know exactly what they are doing, are doing it carefully, and not in any way coming to harm. There are obvious cases of "adults" who are so unready for sex by the "comprehension" and "informed" metrics that it is painful to even consider it. And everything you can think of in between.

Verizon, as a telephone company, doesn't censor "illegal" voice traffic, does it? They do not, last I checked. That's because Verizon is a common-carrier and is not held liable for telephone content over its wires.

No, it's because they make sure every word you say is parsed by the government. The government decides if it doesn't like what you said if and when it becomes convenient for them to do so. Not only is your speech free, it's on deposit in special government accounts with your name right on them. You had just better hope it doesn't start earning "interest."

You're being disingenuous here.

We know loud sound and loss of sleep can cause direct physical harm. That's the basis for not yelling, bullhorns, and so on.

There is no sane basis for banning words, drawings, sculptures, renderings, woodcarvings and so on. None whatsoever.

The only sane basis for banning *anything* is it either causes such immediate harm to purse or person, or it is so likely to do so (ex, massively drunk driving) that the activity must be interfered with to lessen the odds of that potential becoming reality.

When speech gets loud or amplified, the legit question is not what was said. Ever. The question is what were you thinking putting people's hearing and/or sleep cycles at risk?

There is no reasonable argument that can justify a "right not to be offended", and there never, ever should be such a thing encoded in law. It should be painfully obvious as to why. If it isn't... oy.

So, when people devise these tests, are they just out of their fucking minds, or what?

Awesome. You get it. You and a few others. Everyone else has a torch in one hand, a pitchfork in the other, and they like it that way.

Yes, but it's the Supreme Court's job to decide if the law about it is Constitutional.

Only because they said so (Marbury v. Madson, ca 1802 -- they made it up out of thin air.) The constitution says they have judicial power. That's guilty or not, assign punishment if so. Not "the law is whatever I think it is today."

The constitution is crystal clear about many things that the judges, in explicit violation of their oaths, have made mean something else entirely. Previous poster is quite correct. The experiment failed.

This is a corporate oligarchy. Not a constitutional republic. It's been that way for a while, but it's right out in the open now. Corporations are people. Money is speech. Those two ideas, taken together, directly disenfranchise the people. You think you can outspend a corporation? If you can, you probably own one. Or more. And you're part of the problem. The rest of us are just along for the ride now... a brave new world, indeed.

No, a better analogy would be locking up people for having a drawing of a copyrighted song. Because, you know, people might THINK of hearing the song, and we can't have THAT.

It's. A. Drawing.

Isn't that really old news....nothing new going on there after the riots/protests finally ended is there?

You are willfully ignorant. The opposite has been proven repeatedly, that even when the diet is high-calorie, it still works.

That such a diet is unhealthy has no bearing whatsoever on whether ketosis is real.

...there is also the low-carbohydrate modified fast commonly known today as the Atkins diet, in which it is possible to eat thousands of calories of fat (difficult, but possible, I've done it ho ho ho) and still lose weight. In my case, 10lb/mo for 9mo of sitting on ass and stuffing face. I'm asthmatic and I was too fat to exercise comfortably. I went from 380 to 290 packing my maw with massive steaks the size of a plate, eggs and bacon, and mixing-bowl sized salads showered with bleu cheese dressing. My cholesterol counts, blood pressure, and heart rate? Never better.

I call being able to remain full and lose weight rapidly close enough to magic for my purposes.

Safe from the water, anyway. But diet soda may well have other health concerns, because of the crap that's in it.

Ever notice how some food additives get renamed every few years? We actually had a law protecting us from renaming of MSG and Aspartame, which had to be called those particular things, but now we don't any more and so now the former is being called "yeast extract" and the latter is being called by brand names with which people aren't familiar. This is how you know the FDA of today is evil. Labeling requirements are basically all they should even be involved with.

I spent a few years drinking 6 or more free coca-colas a day (through two employers with free soda) and wound up with an ulcer, which went away in short order when I stopped. There's many reasons not to drink sugarwater in a can. I just had an argument about this with my lady, my contention was that soda fountains were a great thing but that soda in a can is a monkey on society's back. She thought it was all bad :)

HFCS differs from regular CS by 5%. Build a bridge and get over it. HFCS is not the problem, the use of HFCS to replace vegetable oil in processed foods is the problem. It has a similar effect on final texture, believe it or not. So then they load it up with a shitload of citric acid, which also isn't good for you in excess! It's fine and even good in smaller amounts, but not in the wads necessary to kill the sweetness of the HFCS when you abuse it.

I want a gigabit cellular network so that I can buy a megabit plan. The caps will go up notably if the capacity rises dramatically, and then I can switch to cellular to replace my WISP which sucks nuts, and not erotically

It's really not surprising that someone, whipped into a froth, would make frothy decisions and statements. We do need to do something about rape culture. Handing government a club which they can use to beat people not involved in it is a move born of fear, and it will lead to abuse.