High Court Trims Whistleblower Rights 718
iminplaya writes "In yet another blow against free speech rights, the Supreme Court decided that government employees who report wrongdoing do not enjoy 1st Amendment rights while on the job. From the article 'The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote [...] The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court's shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the arrival of Alito. [...] Stephen Kohn, chairman of the National Whistleblower Center, said: "The ruling is a victory for every crooked politician in the United States."'"
Re:America is changing.... (Score:2, Informative)
Yes.
To the Person Sitting in Darkness - Mark Twain [virginia.edu]
KFG
Re:Alito and the "deciding vote" (Score:3, Informative)
Ergo, one could reasonably call Alito the deciding vote.
This case would be about "legal" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Alito and the "deciding vote" (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA you didn't read:
Re:This case would be about "legal" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unfortunate (Score:5, Informative)
This is an illustration of how any attempt to bring a top-down reshaping of society via a powerful engine of state is doomed right from the start.
To sum it up, I submit three great American proverbs: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." and my favorite, "Authoritarian Marxists = teh dumb."
I think the best label for China would be "Gangsterocracy."
It's descriptive, accurate, and fun to say!
I think (Score:5, Informative)
The parent poster was clearly being ironic, and I fail to see how people can miss that (unless you were being double ironic, but I somehow doubt that). Granted, some people recognise this sort of humor quicker than others, but at the time he gave the link to an *US ID* article, the irony should have been obvious to everybody (barring some bible-belt twats).
Re:The real shame (Score:3, Informative)
You should write to whoever deals with your ballots to let them know there was an error on your sheet that made it so only two candidates appeared.
Re:Unfortunate (Score:3, Informative)
There's a little missconception on your comment. Communism is a political ideology which basis itself on economic and social issues, much like capitalism. When we talk about government organization and structure, communist countries have generally opted for the totalitarian and authoritarian forms of government. According to the more recent news, what the US is turning into is a fascist state, where extreme nationalism, militarism and corporatism is prevalent in the ruling party and secret police organizations are used to closely monitor the population to catch "enemies of the state".
That's why there are similarities between the communist countries. Totalitarian and authoritarian communist states share a lot of common ground with fascist states and their form of government is pretty much a carbon copy of each other.
Re:mod parent up! (Score:3, Informative)
nationalistic intermingling of corporate business and the rich elite and the gouvernmentCongradulations you also just defined communism, except fascism had not problems with various classes in of people. However that is a very poor understanding of both communism and fascism.
a strong reliance on and glorification of the military not needed for a facist state. Besides look at China or the USSR both big into glorification of the military.
A far better and more exact definition of fascism can be found by looking in dictionaries and even history. Here is a probably one of the beter ones by Robert O Paxton who wrote _Anatomy of Fascism_
And fighting against this is pretty much the premise of communism, long before even the word fascism existed.
Huh??
According the Marx the fighting of communism was against capitalism and the classes of people that resulted from it. It was only later that communism and fascism became bitter enemies, and that was mainly because they were attracting the same type of people; from a capitalist standpoint communism and fasism are two sides of the same coin.
As for your "examples"
Mussolini Italy, Hitler Germany correct
Franco Spain is considered by most political scholars as authoritarism.
Pinochet Chile is considered a military dictartorship
Peron Argentinia not even close, try Peronism. when the military junta of Jorge Videla took over they had a very hard "anti-communist" stance against the former Peronism.
Bush America that explains the changes you made to history and word definitions. When the facts don't back up the reality you want redefine them.
Re:Not pseudo-communism. Fascism. (Score:5, Informative)
Laurence W. Britt
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.
Free Inquiry readers may pause to read the "Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles" on the inside cover of the magazine. To a secular humanist, these principles seem so logical, so right, so crucial. Yet, there is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of these principles. It is fascism. And fascism's principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.
We are two-and-a-half generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, although constant reminders jog the consciousness. German and Italian fascism form the historical models that define this twisted political worldview. Although they no longer exist, this worldview and the characteristics of these models have been imitated by protofascist regimes at various times in the twentieth century. Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities.
Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.
For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Papadopoulos's Greece, Pinochet's Chile, and Suharto's Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.
Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people's attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice--relentless propaganda and disinformation--were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite "spontaneous" acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals
Re:This has nothing to do with the first amendment (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unfortunate (Score:5, Informative)
Communism is an economic theory, the people currently running the US have opposite beliefs.
Re:FreeDumb of Speech (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not pseudo-communism. Fascism. (Score:1, Informative)
the only thing that seperated americia from true fashisism, is that people were given their rights back afterword, with a few loose ends perhaps.