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Interesting stuff. I kind of want to check out the HBO series “Rome” that came out last year or so. I thought I heard it was good.
I think that part of the reason for the distinction is electricity. Think about it – up until 1950 or so, many homes likely did not have electricity and/or many electrical appliances. Today we have many of them and our activities revolve around them (such as right now when I'm at the computer). But for the thousands of years of history before this, mankind had to find other ways of finding leisure or learning or do work or waste time.
I think that what is “unreasonable” really depend on the circumstances of a case. This issue has been a hot one in criminal procedure law especially since the 1960s. The answer to your question differs depending where a person or property is searched or seized, why the search or seizure was conducted, etc. For example, your car can be searched by a cop who pulls you over without a warrant. However, your car cannot be searched without a warrant if it's parked on the driveway at your house. Another example – a “Terry stop” (stop and frisk without a warrant) done to you by a cop is reasonable if he's got a reasonable suspicion that you're armed and dangerous and that you're engaged in criminal activities. However, a cop can't bring you into the station based on this same reasonable suspicion.There are a lot of fine lines and distinctions, so the word "unreasonable" really hangs on the facts.
So…what is this obvious measure that you're referring to? I must be missing something….From your question I wonder if the United States could have been held together with some sort of Constitutional Amendment allowing the slave states to maintain their slavery. Would this have prevented war by keeping the Union in tact? Or would this still not have been enough to keep the country together and prevent war?
I guess what I was trying to say before was that it seems as if today's poor in America is “wealthier” than the poor of days past. Today people might be considered “poor” but still use cell phones, cable TV, etc. The poor of today also has access to funds for things like education, government helping programs, etc. (even if they don't always use these). At least this is my perception of the matter. During the Great Depression, I don't think the poor had such a safety net to rely on. In fact, government spending and involvement grew as a result of FDR's attempts to remedy the poverty of that era.
So lets turn the question a bit, say it had been abolished during the countrys struggle for independence or shortly there after, how would the legacy and the bigotry effected the south? would the civil rights movment had come along earlier, if at all?
In this case I think that any "Civil Rights Movement" would have been of much lighter scope than it was. First, blacks would have had more rights to work, own property, and so forth for many more years in the U.S. than they did (about 70 to 75 years earlier than it actually happened). Second, you wouldn't have had such deeply-rooted antagonism or ideology towards blacks. Think about it - the South's drive to protect its institutional slavery seems to have gone hand in hand with its drive to protect its internal affairs from federal influence. The longer these were under attack, the deeper these views became. If slavery had been abolished in the 1790s, ingrained feelings of bias and racism would not have been as widespread or as strong as they became by the 1850s. I'm not sure if blacks in England went through a similar "Civil Rights Movement" in the U.S., but slavery was eventually outlawed there and there seems to be much better race relations in that country.
Sure, I have no problem posting the link here (as long as it's not spamming anyone's forum, lol). Another tactic I've kind of tried is making intelligent postings on people's blogs and including a link back here in case anyone is interested.
That's a good question. I think that there is a huge economic recession were to hit us that affected life across the spectrum, America would be far worse off than it was during the 1930s. Today the mentality has become one where the government provides for us when we are down and out. If the government does not have a particular program serving some need, or if there is a possibility that it will be cut, complaints can be heard, and at times they seem to be deafening. However, government would not be able to rescue the masses today if they needed it. This burden would be too great and would cause the nation's economy to collapse, inviting foreign invasion.
Interesting, looks like you are right (at least for people in England):
In Anglo-Saxon England, the tax was called the Rome shot or Romescot. Later, the term "Peter's Pence" came to be used for the penny paid to Rome.
I hadn't heard of this term before.
What's also interesting about it is how the townsfolk really have to take sides. I wonder if this was similar to reality during the 1870s and 1880s as American populations expanded westward in greater numbers….towns may have become similar to feudal kingdoms or city states of the past where justice was decided by the local authorities. In the movie, we see many in the town go after the corrupt rancher and the marshal's thugs.
I had heard that the judge's opinion was rather erroneous and that it appeared to be based on ideology (an example for the “judicial activism” thread?). Historically, the courts have come to view the Fourth Amendment as not requiring a warrant in certain cases (such as when there are exigent circumstances). I think that the last sentence of what you quoted is key here. There is a balancing act that the courts play when considering the Fourth Amendment, and the case can be made that in times of war/terrorism, the government legitimate need to protect its people is given more weight than the individual's expectation ofn privacy.
Skiguy, I checked with Wikipedia and one of the parties does have to be overseas, so this isn't about domestic-only phone calls. Here's an excerpt:
The complete details of this authorization are not known, but it is believed to cover telephone calls involving a person suspected of having links to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or its affiliates and with one party to the call outside the United States. The legality and extent of this authorization is the core of the controversy. That the NSA maintained electronic surveillance on communications between persons in the United States and suspected terrorists outside the United States without obtaining a warrant was affirmed by President Bush after it was revealed in the press.
Stumpfoot, I agree that things can snowball over time, but this plan seems to be fairly clear in what it does and does not allow. The only area that would be somewhat unclear is how they define a "suspected terrorist"....and as skiguy touched on, the definition of this term is probably defined somewhere. Likely this is included in the statute itself.
Very interesting account. Still, I'd hesitate to believe it without examining the author's work. At face value, it seems rather odd to kill 100,000 slaves. Hitler killed the Jews because he despised them as a race; to kill 100,000 slaves because they were rebellious seems far-fetched. I don't know how an economy would have survived with this kind of destruction of one's work force. Further, I don't know how they would have been able to do it on such a large scale in the 19th Century. Hitler had a systematic method for exterminating the Jews, and from what I have learned at Dachau it was not a simple task. For Napoleon do kill 100,000 would have been more difficult.
