Congress absolutely controls the militias (as far as the federal militia is concerned, STATE unorganized militias are covered by their own various constitutional rules), yes, that's exactly as written in the Constitution. Nobody is arguing that?

What's your point?

This is about gun control, and the 2nd amendment.
The Supremes have routinely found that the 2nd amendment ISN'T interpreted the way leftists/progressives believe it "should be". Not even close.

USSC has repeatedly stated that this is a right held by the PEOPLE, and that the militia comment is is justificatory but not obligatory.

I expect that even if you could somehow magically get congress to disband the unorganized militia the US Supreme Court *still* wouldn't re-interpret the 2nd Amendment your imaginary way.

Unless you get more dipshit Brown-Jacksons, lol. She doesn't really care much about that silly Constitution anyway. You WOULD have to get her to STOP TALKING first.

""The right to keep and bear arms" by such a (state) militia SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED"

Except, that's not what it says, is it?
I am pretty sure the exact words are "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"

Fully agree re l4/l5. I don't have anything against a mid-route station, there are some compelling arguments.

That they hand-waved "orbital refueling" as if it's no more complicated than topping off your car otw to the WI Dells bothered me; I am fairly certain - even to this day, for a moon landing that was supposed to be 2 launches away - they STILL don't know how many loads of fuel need to be in orbit, how they get it there, how they store it there.

This was from 2 years ago, and I applaud his bravery https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

In a sense, this is pure Gramsci: take anything literally or colloquially sacred, and shit on it. Not actually - this would spur resistance and a sense of martyrdom. Better to shit on it by undercutting it, replacing it, tainting it, corrupting it and who better to serve that mission than a "victim" of the current leader of the right? LotR franchise already set this up by their rather extensive wrecking of The Hobbit, of course.

are automakers responsible when someone breaks the speed limit and kills someone?

What's funny is that there's no such thing as "vicarious speeding" or "contributory reckless driving," but with copyright, there is. Analogously, sometimes the automaker is liable for drivers speeding!

But even so, Cox's behavior didn't fit contributory infringement.

The court just said T17 S501 is an ok law that they're not striking it down or anything like that, but it doesn't apply to this case!

A very good thing has happened.

The people who say that, never supply a reason. It's just dogma.

My counter-dogma: nuh uh.

So you're asserting the applicability of amendments is constrained by time/technology?
So...freedom of speech doesn't apply to the internet?
Freedom of assembly doesn't apply if it's posted on facebook?
Freedom of religion doesn't apply to amplified preaching?

What a radical concept?

Of course, with equivalent mental gymnastics one could point out that when the 2nd amendment was written, muzzle loading arms were the state of the art...and militia members were allowed to keep these state of the art weapons at home. They were even allowed to put cannons on their private vehicles and build warships themselves, by that same token US citizens today should be able to own the most lethal weapons technologically available, right?

If going to prohibit guns being owned by people who shoot other people ... I think you'd be called racist because it would be black people that are most likely to shoot others, according to FBI statistics? And trans people are pretty damned dangerous too.

If he's 17-45, male, and is or has declared intention to be a US citizen, he's a member of the unorganized militia, smart-pants.

Sort of sexist of you to insist that women can't carry guns in 2026, but you be you.

Per US code:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ"
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

That article - setting aside the usual specious bullshit of the Brennan center - is about PRIVATE militias vs STATE militias, and about them being regulated. And yes, obviously the state has a significant interest in the limiting of private armies within its boundaries.

"The right to keep and bear arms" by such a (state) militia SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
This certainly means that militia members should be able to keep (ie own) and bear (ie wield) arms, yes?

Therefore, all US men 17-45 who are or who are in the process of becoming citizens should be able to keep and bear arms without restriction.*

It's sort of a weird take for you to be so blatantly sexist in 2026 but you be you.

*https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ"
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia. ...that's all men 17-45.

There IS a compelling military argument: there are precisely 2 places on the moon that have a) 24/7 solar power, b) more-or-less constant line of sight to earth (as well as ideal positioning for surveilling the entire side of the ecliptic) as well as c) potential reserves of water ice locally.

The advantages of polar locations are many and abundant; I believe the S pole is significantly more likely to have water ice and large quantities, meaning "first" to build a base is going to have a major advantage.

And with the genuine pressure from the Chinese, the US space program needs to quit fucking around.

This will be as critical for the next century or two (or more) as Gibraltar was for the last several.

It's illegal but laws aren't currently enforced, so I don't know why you're bringing the law up.

Let's perform a natural experiment: keep saying reappropriation is illegal, and then wait for the executive to do it anyway. Then watch to see if Congress gives a fuck, by impeaching the executive (or credibly threatening to impeach if the embezzled funds aren't returned in n hours).

My hypothesis is that Congress won't do anything about it, and is fine with whatever new powers that the president decides he wants.

What's your hypothesis?

Surprise: we're actually going to do that experiment. In fact, we started it last year.

It's not in society's interests, but it is in government's interests. Society and government are orthogonal teams who often conflict with each other. In the US, we spelled that out explicitly in the late 1700s, but docs go back at least as far as the Magna Carta.

Alas, "spelling out" government limitations isn't the same thing as believing limits are a good idea and enforcing them, as we're occasionally reminded. The Constitution is just ink on a page, until people give a fuck about it. And in America, the constitution is currently very unpopular. Society wants to surrender to government, or if it doesn't want that, it's sure acting like it wants that.

That's pretty neat!

The danger with using unallocated space, is that sometimes you might accidentally overwrite it. But if that happens, I guess it just means you need to figure out what your new size needs to be, make a new hidden volume, and then restore from backup. It's that last step that I never remember as a possibility, probably due to my horrible backup habits. ;-)

I think that might be a bad idea, because when thugs say "hand over your phone" and you hand them a brand new phone that you have apparently never used, you're going to get wrench-based cryptanalysis. You need to be able to hand them the keys to a realistic environment that looks like it's being used. Thugs wanna see recent timestamps.

Ideally, we need to have some casual, boring (but constantly-touched!) environment that can launch encrypted environments, but somehow not have anything that references those environments.

The biggest problem I see is storage allocation. We need to be able to plausibly deny the existence of something, but also keep it from being overwritten by not-denied environments. How do you hide "don't write to these blocks, because something else uses them"?

Some might suggest hiding in plain sight with steganography, but at some point thugs will notice that everyone they suspect, just happens to have an unnecessarily-large gigaphoto. ;-)

Having alt environments that are detectable, but can be quickly destroyed the way you suggest, might be a decent compromise as long as it keeps an innocent and recently-used one around as cover. You enter the oh-fuck PIN, and it logs you into the innocent host environment but then it immediately deletes its encrypted guests, leaving you with a truly innocent machine as far as anyone can tell. And then you just really hope you can enter that duress code (or you can trick thugs into entering it) before they image your storage.

"National Security" means anything the government wants. Anything you would consider to be an abuse, they would consider to be within bounds, because there are no bounds.