I mean, this thing does not even have good download-numbers. And a download is not a user.

And than you look at the US doing this crap for far, far longer. Bug-planting by law-enforcement has a long, long tradition in the US. The difference is that in Germany, so far, this was completely illegal for law enforcement. Whether this will stand in Berlin remains to be seen, but I doubt it.

There will be for sure a review by the Bundesverfassungsgericht. So far, the surveillance-fascists always lost.

Do you have trouble with reading comprehension? I specifically answered to "How many countries have banks the size of Credit Suisse?", nothing else. And, as it turns out, that insinuation was complete and utter nonsense.

You are just an asshole trying to move goalposts when your bullshit gets called out. How repulsive.

Why should I follow your cheap manipulation strategy? After I have pointed out your 2nd core argument is bullshit and manipulative, you want me to ignore that one?

You are a complete asshole, nothing else.

USA: 4,453,908 Muslims. Funny. Incidentally, Germany has more Muslims per capita than Switzerland.

And what does LGBTQ rights have to do with whether "Islam has always been an integral part of the Swiss experience"? Are you mentally challenged?

All I see here is that you are full of shit.

US Solicitor General John Sauer disagrees.

In the oral arguments for Trump v Slaughter, on Monday, Sauer said this isn't true when Justice Kagan pushed him on it. She said that the Founders clearly intended to have a separation of powers, to which he basically said "Yeah, but with the caveat that they created the 'unitary executive'", by which he seemed to mean that they intended the president to be able to do pretty much anything.

Kagan responded with a nuanced argument about how we have long allowed Congress to delegate limited legislative and judicial functions to the executive branch in the way we allow Congress to delegate the power to create and evaluate federal rules to executive-branch agencies, but that that strategy rests on a "deal" that both limits the scope of said rulemaking and evaluative functions and isolates them to the designated agency. She said that breaking that isolation by allowing the president detailed control over those functions abrogated and invalidated the deal, unconstitutionally concentrating power in ways that were clearly not intended by the Founders.

Sauer disagreed. I'll stop describing the discussion here and invite you to listen to it. The discussion is both fascinating and very accessible, and the linked clip is less than seven minutes long.

The court seems poised to take Sauer's view, which I think is clearly wrong. If they do, it's going to come back and bite conservatives hard when we get an active liberal president, as we inevitably will someday if the Trump administration fails to end democracy in the US.

What's very sad is that we already went through all of this and learned these lessons 150 years ago. After 100 years of experience with a thoroughly-politicized executive branch, we passed the Pentleton Civil Service Reform act in 1883 specifically to insulate most civil servants from presidential interference. Various other laws have subsequently been passed to create protections for federal workers and to establish high-level positions that are explicitly protected from the president. SCOTUS seems bent on overturning all of that and returning us to the pre-Pendleton era.

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and it's looking we're gonna repeat a lot of bad history before we re-learn those 19th-century lessons.

Yes. And when the "think of the children" lie has run its course, they will just continue with one of the other horsemen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

These are malicious people, plain and simple. They want everybody monitored and dislike anybody having freedoms. And they will stop short of nothing to get there.

It is a lot of historic reputation. But I actually know 3 (!) Swiss numbered account systems personally (don't ask). They used to be anonymous a long time ago. They are not these days. The identity of the account holders has to be verified carefully in each case and has to be given to the government. The reputation of the Swiss banks refers to a situation that does not exist anymore and has not existed for quite a while.

Indeed. But they have to win this first. So far they convinced 2% of the voters to sign and they had 18 months for that. In the end, the Swiss voters are usually pretty pragmatic.

CS has gone out of business due to management incompetence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The largest Swiss bank is rank 23: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And the 2nd largest Swiss bank is rank 97.

Funny how that goes when hallucinations collide with actual facts ...

You think half a person of teaching personnel per student is too much? Well, being one of these, I can assure you it is money well spent. In fact, every CHF spent on the universities returns 4 CHF in profits. These are current numbers, just updated. You think that somehow is a problem?

Yeah, probably.

Not more than in other parts of the world. Probably less. And yes, I actually know that. For example, the fabled "anonymous Swiss bank accounts" have been history for a long time.

And not in a good way. Looks like a rather large number of people seriously do not know what they are doing.