This has always been the case, and it has far more to do with individual state police forces and prosecutors than with the DOJ.

A cop on the street is not spending his time thinking "I want to maximize bad guy X's rights." He is thinking "X is a bad guy, so I want to find out about the crime and throw him away."

All that rights do is they give the cop a script he has to follow if he wants a conviction. If he does not follow the script, or if there is something missing that he needs for the script and he is unwilling to lie, then the case can be thrown out, and bad guy X is on the street. It's like giving a scientist a lab protocol.

So it's far better than not having rights, because (1) it regiments police behavior to some degree (2) it slightly reduces the consequences of abuse of power and (3) you can learn the script and how to use it to minimize harm. But that doesn't mean it makes sense, just that it's a lot better than it is in many places in the world.

Of course, cops lie. That's a part of their job. And juries tend to believe cops more than criminals. Which is stupid but true. So it's a pretty terrible system, but rights can still be useful.

Lawsuits exist for when there is a legitimate dispute between two people or organizations, because it's better than "finders, keepers." Here, a surveyor's is probably going to win any lawsuit unless he really should have known that something was buried there 400 years ago, like there was a giant "X" marking the spot with a headstone on it.

The only real problem is when the transaction costs of the lawsuit are too high for it to be worth defending. That's a price we pay for having a system better than "finders, keepers." And it is somewhat mitigated by insurance.

It's Okay, SCOTUS said we could. They wrote an opinion a few centuries back saying "People say this is really immoral, it probably is really immoral, but we can't say it's really immoral, because the courts of the conqueror are the courts of the conqueror."

"On information and belief" means something entirely different, and is mostly used when filing an affidavit or complaint and there is some fact of which one is reasonably sure but lacks direct knowledge.

You are interpreting his statement to have one meaning, but he was not clear enough to be certain that it is the correct one. "I am unable to affirm those details [of molecular biology] on my own knowledge or even my belief" can be read as implying that he does not believe them, as it is very unusual for an opinion to say something like that about a statement of facts, even in a technical area. In any event, that is how many people are considering it, and I have heard a number of people suggest that it is one of the "stupidest" concurrences they have ever read. As I said, I think these people are being anti-Scalia as opposed to really critiquing the opinion, but without more exposition it can definitely be read as anti-science, since it is saying "I'm not sure about all these decades of established science."

Some of us just think it's a bad idea when the NSA can pick a random person on the street and know whether they're cheating on their spouse within two minutes.

Undead Osama, is that you? Phoenix666 was a bit obvious...

Mostly Unanimous. Justice Scalia wrote a brief concurrence that, depending on how it read, suggests he doesn't believe in molecular biology. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he is just trying to say that SCOTUS should avoid pronouncing scientific facts in binding legal opinions.

(1) Not at all, it is indicated the report is biased and less reliable than an unbiased report. Whether it is accurate is an entirely different question than whether it is biased. An alleged murderer may have his mother testify that he was home with her at the time of the murder, for example, and her testimony is biased and therefore less reliable regardless of whether it is accurate.

(2) Ad hominem attacks are not nerdly.

Industry Group claims it is useful in own report, film at eleven.

Congratulations. You have just created legislation which will create a mechanical algorithm implementation industry.

Of course Canada is doing it; of course the United States is doing it; Every country that can figure out how is probably doing it. It's like sex. Everyone is doing it or trying to do it.

They should just charge a $5 fee and mail it to you if you don't want it destroyed.

It is kind of silly, though. Post 911, nobody can take over a plane with a few knives. The only reason to not allow them is that they can result in more injuries on a plane, but that seems so unlikely as to not be terribly persuasive.

I once walked into a secure federal building with a knife by accident; the guards thought about it and then didn't care. Which is really the right result.

Plausible!!

>cat .bash_history

chmod 007 F22-plans-really-secret

That happens in the U.S. too, even in places where police brutality has gotten so bad that police are required to record all arrests.