Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (598152)	1/15/2011 3:36:25 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574267

I'm hardly rejecting civility, and the proposed law is itself a rejection of sanity. you can be at a rifle range shooting your weapon and a politician is driving by when he gets a flat within a 1000 feet of range. He wouldn't have to get a flat, if he drives by and is withing 1000 feet for a half second as he goes around a bend, everyone at the range (except maybe law enforcement who would probably be exempt) would theoretically be in violation (technically they would be but only a crazy prosecutor would try to bring the case, and if he did it should be struck down as unconstitutional). If you want to simply ban private ownership of firearms be honest about it (and use the right method, campaign for a repeal of the 2nd amendment rather than for ignoring it). I'd oppose you strongly but there would be honesty and even some (seriously misguided) reasonableness in the attempt. If instead you want to have some formal symbolic measure against murder, then you could support something that does no harm, like congress passing a resolution deploring this crime, or murder, or violence in general. But putting every gun owner in the country (except maybe law enforcement, and perhaps selected groups of body guards for judges or senior politicians, and the officials themselves, who would apparently have some privileged elite status) at risk of violating the law at random times (including when they are at home asleep) despite their best efforts to follow it is crazy. The law is unreasonable, unconstitutional, unenforceable, and useless. It has nothing to do with civility or sanity, it would just randomly turn groups of law abiding gun owners in to felons, without their intention or knowledge (until and unless they are arrested for the "crime"). The felonies would probably be expunged from their record when the law was found to be unconstitutional (assuming a prosecutor was unreasonable enough to bring the case forward in the first place). Also if it was in effect at the time of the Tuscon shooting, at best it would have done nothing to protect anyone. There is a decent chance it would have resulted in more death (the perp was disarmed when he was reloading by a gun carrier who approached the scene to try to stop the shooting. A brave man, but I don't think he would have been so foolhardy as to deliberately approach the shooter unarmed, he would not know that he would arrive as the shooter was reloading). If you want to reduce the severity and perhaps even the incidence, of such crimes in the future you should support shall issue concealed carry laws.

To: tejek who wrote (598152)	1/15/2011 4:09:35 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1574267

Tribal ruling raises dispute over slaves owned by Indians By Ben Fenwick OKLAHOMA CITY \| Sat Jan 15, 2011 3:49pm EST OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - A tribal court ruling that the Cherokee Nation must allow descendants of former slaves owned by Indians to be tribal members, has again raised the painful history of the forcible removal of the Indians to Oklahoma in the nineteenth century. A Cherokee Nation tribal court ruled on Friday that the nation cannot exclude the so-called "Freedmen" from tribal membership even though some of them are not blood descendants of the Indians. The issue arises because when the U.S. government forced Indian tribes to walk from the Southeast U.S. to Oklahoma in 1831, in what the Indians described as the "Trail of Tears", some of them brought their African-American slaves with them. They brought them because the Cherokee owned plantations in the U.S. South. When the tribe was ejected from the land they were allowed to take their possessions with them, including the slaves. After the Civil War, those slaves were freed and an 1866 treaty with the U.S. required the Cherokee to admit to the tribe the slaves and their descendants, some with Cherokee blood because plantation owners had fathered children with slave women, and some with no Indian blood. In 2007, the Cherokee tribe voted for a tribal constitutional amendment that revoked the membership of the slave descendants who could not prove Cherokee blood. This stripped more than 2,800 Freedmen descendants of tribal membership, most of them African-Americans. Friday's ruling invalidates the Amendment. The case is being heard separately in a U.S. Federal court. "We have received the (tribal court) decision with which we respectfully disagree," said Diane Hammons, Attorney General for the Cherokee Nation. She said the tribe might appeal. Marilyn Vann, a member of the Cherokee Freedmen and president of the organization that represents descendants of the former slaves, said the Friday decision was a step in the right direction but action in U.S. Federal court was more important. "This shows that some in the Cherokee Nation want to rule by law instead of inciting base interest for their own political gain," Vann said. Vann said some in the Cherokee tribe did not want to allow the descendants of slaves to vote on issues such as distributing the millions of dollars of tribal income from gambling casinos. "It's about control of the money," Vann said. "They have casinos and hundreds of millions of dollars they don't have to pay taxes on. They don't want to have to account for what they spend that money on." reuters.com