The more I think of voter ID laws and their potential to disenfranchise large swaths of people, the more I think the obvious solution is in the 14th amendment.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
With the 19th and 26th amendments, presumably that includes women and anyone 18-21. It seems to me that courts could do it now, but it’s probably better if Congress decides on a reasonable formula. It seems to me if states are going to disenfranchise their citizens, they should lose some representation.
This is two funny, with a guy like Owebammma in office, you are calling on the Constitution. I mean this guy and his henchmen regularly trashes and rewrites this document every chance he gets.
@1 The poster cannot spell and he posts wild assertions without any facts or links to back up his claims.
“Back in the day”, 3/5th representation didn’t seem to prevent slavery, if anything it encouraged it.
@ 2
Pay it no mind, it has already established itself as a pathological liar. A visible lack of elementary education is just another turd floating around in that punch bowl. Typical Teabagger. No brains, all headache.
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of the Electoral College and enact proportional representation in the Senate; 226 years of allowing the slave states run this country for their own benefit to the detriment of urban populations is long enough.
And yes, we still have de jure slavery in this country; the only thing that has changed is it’s called “right to work” now.
Facebook Isn’t Private
“Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes.
“In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state’s Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.”
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_.....-passwords
Roger Rabbit Commentary: At the personal level, the obvious solution to the immediate problem is don’t have a Facebook page. But your problems with this won’t stop with Facebook. If this isn’t against the law — enforced by very severe criminal and civil penalties against violaters — it won’t stop with Facebook. There is no difference between an employer demanding your Facebook password or demanding access to your medical records or demanding your consent to their installing a phone tap on your personal phones as a condition of applying for employment. But as far as the Facebook issue goes, if this practice isn’t stopped, it will put Facebook out of business — or at least should — because nobody with any brains will have a Facebook page, no matter how innocent they think the information on it is. (Because what’s innocent in on person’s eyes may very well be guilty in a hiring manager’s eyes.)
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Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year. While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview, according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann.
@3: I think it’s different circumstances. 3/5 was a reward for owning slaves (but not as much as full citizenship), whereas this would just be punishment for disenfranchising people. Besides as much as you or I may obsess about the Civil War, I suspect the people who wrote the 14th amendment thought about it a bit more.
@5: Sorry Rog, the only things you can’t amend the Constitution to do are end the slave trade before 1808 and reduce some state’s representation in the Senate. I say eliminate it all together (not 100% sure you can for the same reason, but at least it’s a maybe).
Hopefully, everyone now knows that workplace e-mails aren’t private. The employer owns the computer network, and therefore everything on it. You should, of course, use workplace e-mail only for legitimate work-related purposes.
Now that colleges, employers, and others are attempting in a serious way to invade the private spaces of social media, people need to be aware of this and protect themselves accordingly.
This is different from workplace e-mail, because you have a legal and moral right to use private social media for personal stuff you don’t want employers or the public to see, and these attempts by schools and employers to invade this space is an invasion of privacy.
The schools and employers doing this are vulnerable, too. They clearly haven’t thought this through. If it’s legal for colleges to demand applicants’ social media passwords as a condition of admission, and then something happens — say, a student rapes another student — the school can be held legally liable by the victim for not discovering information about the perpetrator that could have been found on the perp’s Facebook page.
In other words, once this cat is out of the bag, if schools and employers are allowed to access private social media information, the negligence principles of tort law will make it mandatory they do so.
And that will make employers, schools, and other institutions legally liable for every crime committed in America, because the right to access information comes with a legal duty to do so. Trial lawyers will be all over any deep-pocketed institution that fails to maintain surveillance of anyone it has contact with, not limited just to employees.
The idea of employers and other societal institutions accessing private social media is horrible for everyone, all the way around, and needs to be outlawed. I wouldn’t entrust this to the states; we need a federal law, so it’s illegal everywhere in the country, and the rules governing online privacy are the same for everyone in every jurisdiction.
Facebook should be in the forefront of this effort, because if they can’t protect their users’ privacy, they’re out of business.
Rape Victims Sue Marine Corps
“Eight current and former U.S. service members are today accusing U.S. military officials of tolerating a ‘staggering’ level of sexual assaults within their ranks in a lawsuit that focuses in part on events at one of the most prestigious Marine Corps bases in the country — the U.S. Marine Barracks in Washington D.C.
“The lawsuit includes graphic charges by two former Marine Corps officers: One, Ariana Klay, a Naval Academy graduate and Iraq war veteran, charges she was gang-raped at the Barracks in Aug. 2010. Elle Helmer, the former Barracks public information officer, says she was raped by a superior officer at the Barracks in March 2006.”
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/.....ay_people/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The Marine Barracks now join the Air Force Academy as an institution of sexual mayhem. Lawsuits are all well and good; these women should get a million dollars apiece from the government, and the perps should be dishonorably discharged, stripped of their pensions, and thrown in Leavenworth. But as a lawyer of 40 years’ experience, I know the law isn’t very good at solving social problems, because it can’t be proactive in preventing abuse of individual rights — it can only prosecute or award compensation after harm has been done — and enforcement is piecemeal and highly uncertain. So, to solve this particular problem, I’d go with the rightwing, NRA, gun-nut solution: Wear a discreet holster (ankle or thigh is good), and when the fucker tries to rape you, put a bullet in his fucking head. He won’t do it again, either to you, or your sisters.
Heh! Just kidding! I’m not really advocating fragging military rapists. That’s just a rightwing, NRA, gun-nut joke! I’m for seeking legal remedies by prosecuting and suing them.
@7 I don’t see why we can’t amend the Constitution to (a) guarantee the right to unionize, and (b) apply the “one person, one vote” rule to the Senate.
If Republicans have their way, all US elections could be as fair and as democratic as their presidential primary process.
9 – It’s not funny but
Marines –
Behave yourselves!
Behave yourselves!
Behave yourselves!
Stop raping people!
And dutifully march off to the next Republican war for oil.
# 13: Actually, “Behave yourselves” isn’t a bad motto. In Japan the incidents of rape by U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines, particularly in Okinawa, had left such a bad impression that many Japanese asked if the U.S. bases there were worth the social costs.
As one Japanese asked me, in all seriousness: “Why don’t you train these people before you send them over here? wouldn’t you want to ensure that any servicemen you send here would be the very best examples of conduct which your country could manage to export?”
Actually, they’re not asking, they want us gone.
Where’s an example lard-ass?
“yd” wouldn’t know the Constitution if somebody rolled it up and hit him over the head with it.
@6 This could play out in some interesting ways. It all depends on whether Wall St. wants to make short-term or long-term money on the social-networking phenomenon. If the former, look for a period of relative calm post-IPO to allow a lot of 401k’s and other plebean mutual funds to gobble up a major chunk of the stock. After that, if the hammer falls, watch the major banks exercise put options on the remaining shares they’re holding to leave the real rubes holding the bag as the share price goes in the tank.
@11, the amendment article of the Constitution reads as follows (my bold):
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
So we can change everything about the Constitution except equal suffrage in the Senate (or get 100% of states to agree, I guess). If we eliminate the Senate, there’s a case to be made that the equal suffrage of 0 Senators per state would apply, but if it were proportional, it wouldn’t.