Unlike in school, finding code off the internet isn't cheating, it's being efficient. It's also not without skill. A given person needs to really understand the problem to not only find a solution but be able to recognize whether it will work and tinker with the inputs and outputs to suit the particular problem.

I'm not in the military, but I'd join to fight the CowboyNeal menace.

What a colorful message! I've tried to think of some example of a Constitution-level issue that the Obama administration was involved in, and besides those that the Bush administration began (such as warrantless wiretapping) the only thing I can think of is Obamacare. And the Supreme Court upheld the one part of it - and there was only one part - that was at all questionable. I know there's a lot of disrespect nowadays for learned people, but don't you think that nine people who've been through law school and decades of legal experience would know better what's constitutional than you, I, some (other) random guy on the internet, or even your favorite politician?

Oh, and if you're one of those people who sadly believes that Obama is out to take your guns away, solely because he's a liberal and that's just what liberals do, may I suggest that you take a look at exactly how tiny an issue gun control has been for the last four years and is likely to be for the next four? Obama has done absolutely nothing related to the second amendment that a conservative wouldn't have done (you can't tell me that following a UN anti-terrorism resolution to restrict the sale of 10,000's of bullets at a time is something only a liberal would have done). There are far more important issues at stake to be afraid of what the black guy might do with your guns.

I don't think a reasonable person would ever come to those same conclusions just from reading the bible. It's possible to prove damn near anything with a few well-sourced bible passages, but that doesn't mean you're following the intent. A great deal of those bible passages have to do with the time in which they were written, where in my opinion the writer was interpreting any supposedly divine inspiration within his own cultural expectations (though many Christians prefer to believe that God essentially took over human bodies while they wrote scripture and the scripture was never revised thereafter). In old times it was certainly within cultural expectations that homos were bad and slavery was acceptable. That doesn't mean God wanted it that way.

To get back to my point though, your father clearly had some predefined beliefs coming from his upbringing and his experience. He chose to justify those beliefs through scripture rather than to redefine himself by the love of Jesus. It's depressingly common for people to do this, but all the harm religion does in this case is it lets those people feel self-righteous about their bigotry. I do feel sorry for you, and perhaps that extra self-righteousness is what gave your father the conviction to hurt others based on his bigotry. Hating the bible is a reasonable conclusion, but I don't agree that it's the best one. The best conclusion I can come up with, though, is that the catholics were justified in decreeing that common people shouldn't read the bible themselves. It's a complicated book where the smaller details tend to quite often contradict the larger themes.

I for one had never heard of a "Constitution Party" and was excited at the prospect, but greatly disappointed when I read their platform. Why is abortion such an important issue to them? The Constitution never even hinted at a position on the issue. In my opinion the founding fathers probably would have supported eugenics (that is, forced sterilizations and abortions) like most everyone before 1940. And I would have thought that if they intended to define marriage as between one man and one woman, they would have done so; they probably never thought the government would get that involved in marriage anyway (and another part of their platform, the abolition of federal income tax, would seem to negate anyway the strongest reason for the government to care).

I'm also terribly concerned by their seeming insistence that the constitution was perfect when it was written and has since then been corrupted by amendments and Supreme Court decisions. If the founding fathers thought they were creating a perfect document, they wouldn't have created a process for amendment or a Supreme Court. We might be better off with the system of government we had in 1800, but I don't think anybody should support failing to learn from our mistakes.

Oh, and what the bloody hell is up with the God stuff? They know that Jefferson was a deist right? That the founding fathers could best be described as agnostics in the era of rationalism, using language inherited from a Christian legacy to describe purely secular ideas? I'm pretty sure that even though the Declaration of Independence (which by the way isn't actually part of the constitution anyway and had to do with independence from Britain, not at all to do with individual independence) said we believed our "creator" endowed us all with certain inalienable rights, they didn't bother to bring in a scripture reference and in fact there is no scripture to support that statement. It's an 18th century rationalist idea. Nothing in the constitution is informed by Christianity.

No, the original still applies, because if you're not rich under Republicans you don't have enough money to do what you want anyway, and regardless of the party around the rich people can't do whatever they want in the bedroom 'cause we have tabloids.

all because of values written in a book of iron age myth.

I have to take issue with this. I've been learning about Christianity lately and heard something surprisingly true, the source of which I can't remember: the majority of so-called "Christian" beliefs have no basis in the bible and are entirely rooted in tradition. Jesus hates fags? No, Jesus said exactly nothing on the subject. Creation story is huge and important? Well, no, it takes about three paragraphs in perhaps the largest book ever written; hardly the most important part. The whole Christmas story? Theologians almost universally agree that there's no chance Jesus was born in winter; the wise men arrived several months after the birth; the birth itself isn't even mentioned in two out of four of the books of the Gospel; this holiday was definitely far less important than Easter for early Christians, if observed at all, until it got merged with Yuletide to bring those savage northern European pagans into the faith. Over half the things that Benjamin Franklin said are wrongly attributed to Jesus.

What's my point? That all of this shit you're saying is coming from "a book of iron age myth" really comes from traditionally held non-Biblical beliefs. Firstly, all of the old testament laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, including the only references to homosexuality, were essentially struck down for non-Jews in the New Testament book of Acts (the apostles decided that gentiles need not become Jews - and be circumcised and subject to Jewish law - in order to become Christians). The remainder of the Old Testament is a combination of the history of the old state of Israel and plenty of stories about trusting God no matter how scary, dangerous, or ridiculous God's way seems to be. There are also a few prophecies at the end describing the coming of Jesus (though not by that name), which some of the Gospels went to great pains to show had come to pass.

The overarching theme of the bible is that God is love. The two things are actually one thing. Even the bloody salvation narrative of relatively modern origin - that you can be saved from eternal damnation simply by accepting Jesus into your life, being coated by the blood of that innocent soul and therefore appearing innocent yourself (in my opinion a seriously butchered interpretation) - has at its core the idea that God made a great sacrifice (his son) in order to save his creations (us) as an expression of love. Surely there are biblical stories of God smiting people - mostly the enemies of the Israelites. I would interpret these as how ancient people would perceive a God that loves them. An awful lot of psalms express how awesome God is because he smites our enemies.

I'm certainly not trying to convert anyone. I just get really annoyed whenever anyone - Christian or not - tries to claim that bigotry, selfishness, hatred, or neglect are in any way a valid teaching of the bible. They're not. There are Christians who want to believe in those things who have found a way to justify themselves with the bible. There are even more non-Christians who have come to believe as I used to that this is the majority of Christians (it's not) and that it's the natural conclusion of reading the bible (it's not). Make no mistake. These people may have tried to justify their bigotry with the bible, but the bible does not justify their bigotry.

I don't buy that the court's reason is to simply parse existing bad laws and derive more bullshit bad laws from it.

The courts aren't supposed to make (derive) laws. The constitutional purpose of the justice system is to clarify laws and set precedents for how they apply in specific situations. Law-making is reserved for elected officials, so that those laws presumably come from citizens. It would be cumbersome and potentially tyrannical for citizens or their elected proxies to pass judgements in individual circumstances; such was the practice in ancient Greece and it's responsible for, among other things, the death of Socrates.

This is how the US constitution treats the justice system, but I admit that individual states don't have to treat it the same way. South Carolina may well give some legislative authority to its courts. I doubt it, though.

So what does a court do when it comes across a bad law? It's not the court's responsibility to determine what a "bad law" is. Is it bad because it hurts people? Or is it bad because we think it goes against common sense? Is a bad law one that hurts more people than it helps? Or is a bad law one that hurts us, specifically, everyone else be damned? Usually these concerns are not distinguishable to individual judges. The population is responsible for determining whether it's a bad law, not the court. Therefore the court must uphold the law to the letter, and if the result is bad, let the citizens and the elected officials change it.

Take the infamous Citizens United case. The Supreme Court justices were completely out of touch with the campaign finance system: the majority opinion expresses incredulity at why corporations might have motives bad for the country, or why allowing individual entities to make huge donations might harm campaign finance in general. Did they rule that corporations are people because that was the letter of the law, or because that was what they believed? If it was the letter of the law, the blame rests solely on the law makers, who may well have intended for corporations to be people. If it was their personal beliefs, however, then the blame rests with the court, which is probably setting precedent against the intent of the law.

Furthermore, the way to overturn a court decision is to write a new law that supersedes it. If the courts are allowed to create law, what happens when the law makers respond to a court case by making a new law (maybe even a constitutional amendment) that deals with the specific situation in that case? Can the judge simply overturn the new law? Do we want unelected officials to have that authority?

So yes, the court's reason to exist is to parse existing laws and derive the (bullshit) implications. Don't think you want judges to try and "correct" bad law; you and the judges might vociferously disagree on exactly what makes a "bad law".

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tl;dr: constitutional law making and judging, what makes a law bad and who says it is, Citizens United, how to fix bad laws; read the last paragraph.

In that case, the summary is wrong.

Shocking! This just in: a slashdot summary is wrong/misleading!

It's too bad you didn't mention Cobol. This is an old language that nobody wants to learn and nobody wants to program in. But, plenty of organizations have TONS of legacy code in Cobol that is central to their organization, and Cobol programmers are in demand for maintenance and sometimes reengineering.

Don't try too hard to break into the world of trendy hi-tech companies. There's a lot of agism around. You should try to find a job where people will see you age as a sign of wisdom and not a sign of senility.