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Here’s an example of how the filibuster is broken. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has placed a hold on all executive nominations until until certain, ahem, concessions are made to his state. He doesn’t have to to anything other than file the paperwork and the entire system has to stop until a cloture vote is done. And it’s not just one cloture vote that’s needed, it’s one for each nomination.

Bring back the pre-1975 rules. Let Senator Shelby stand on the floor and speak for hours on end. Make him work for his filibuster if he really cares about the people of Alabama. Instead, he’s filed some paperwork and retired back to the comfort of his offices to let the Senate bypass his filibuster.

It’s a waste of Senate time and energy. If none of the Republicans step up against this type of action, then I can’t understand how anyone can support them as “for the people” because clearly they are more concerned with their party than their government and country.

References:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/coa_20100205_3373.php

Because of an obscure foot note in the annals of the SCOTUS, corporations are considered persons for all intensive purposes.  But unlike real people, they can’t die, are not subject to criminal prosecution (members can be, but corporation can’t), and they can derive their membership from inside and outside the country (there’s no requirement that an American be the head of a corporation). Their large cash reserves and departments of lawyers can influence policies on a massive scale, and they have no reason to obey any social morals.  Instead, they are semi-parasitic entities on our society, contributing as little as possible for maximum gain (which is not a bad thing. We all do that to an extent, just not to the same effect a corporation can).  If you have any doubt, look at how copyright law has been manipulated and extended ad-infinitum to keep content owned (since they don’t actually create) by the corporation out of the public domain and protected by our government against infringement (I’m looking at you Disney!).

There was hope.  The McCain-Feingold bill and prior SCOTUS precedent put limits on corporations.  This meant that corporations, while still considered a person, were limited by what they could spend on any given election within certain periods of time.  So corporation X couldn’t spend millions to get candidate Y elected because candidate Y is willing to give them no-bid contracts.

But that changed today.  The SCOTUS issued a ruling on the Citizens United v. FEC case which basically says that corporations (and unions), because they are have personhood, are allowed the same rights as anyone else, including the First Amendment, which means that there are no limits for them.

To put this in perspective, if a quarter of the people in the state of Alaska contributed $100 each to a Congressional Senator candidate’s campaign that comes out to almost $17.5 million.  While that is not exactly chump change, it is small potatoes for any of the Fortune 500 who might have a vested interest in some Alaskan resource.  And that’s just a Federal election.  Imagine how much a corporation could out-spend on local elections.  They could probably get a complete moron elected to be Governor.

Justice Stevens had this to say in the dissenting opinion:

. . . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

I can’t agree more. With this ruling, democracy died a little bit more today and we’ve moved a little farther towards a world where only corporations have a vote.

References:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate

Everyone is entitled to their belief system.  Whether you are a Christian, Buddhist, or other faith, you have the right to believe what you want.  We as a society have decided that.  But when a news commentator, like Brit Hume evangelizes to Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity on a news show, it crosses a line.

It shows that he lacks a fundamental understanding of how faith works.  Brit may be a Christian, believing in all the tenants of the faith, but Tiger Woods is not.  A professed Buddhist, he does not believe in Jesus as the Messiah.  It’s not that Tiger is given a choice between Christianity and Buddhism, it’s a matter of faith and belief.  Just like Brit Hume does not believe in Thor or Muhammad, Tiger does not believe in the divinity of Jesus.  To say “turn to the Christian faith” would be like a Muslim turning to Brit Hume and saying “turn to Islam”.  It’s not something one easily does because the belief in the fundamental tenants are not there to support faith needed to take up a new religious world view.

Much like Pascel’s Wager, Brit Hume is assuming that there are only two choices, Christianity and “Not Christianity”.  That is not the way the world works.  Tiger may convert to Christianity (or any other religion) as a result of his troubling times, but that will be after a long road of spiritual exploration, not some newscaster saying turn to Christianity.  To believe otherwise is just plain ignorance.

I will admit I got a little misty eyed in the beginning when Kirk’s father dies saving his family (it happens in the first 10 minutes, so it’s not exactly a spoiler).  That little event though kicked off a paradox that the film (and canon) has resolved by creating an alternate timeline.  And I think that’s also fine.  Take the universe in a different direction where Kirk was raised by an abusive father (again, first 10 minutes). It will lead to an universe of possibilities.

But the problem with alternate timelines is that they are just that: alternate.  They branch out from their point of origin taking with them the element that created the alternate timeline (in this case Nero).  <spoilers ahead> The sticking point for me with this is that future-Spock travels to this timeline from the original at a later time.  Nero arrived in 2233, creating the alternate timeline; future-Spock arrives in the alternate timeline in 2258.  The question is how?  If you go to Star Trek Online, you can see a nice illustration showing the branching and when Spock arrives.  But the problem is that Future-Spock didn’t just travel in time, he traveled between timelines.  Think of it like driving down a road, following an evil genius bent on the destruction of the world.  The two of you come to an exit that will leads to Fargo, North Dakota.  The evil genius takes the exit, but you don’t.  Instead you speed down the highway until you reach an exit that lead to Reno, Nevada, which you take.  You’ve taken a different road.  And no matter how far you drive along that road, it’s not going to intersect the Fargo exit.  The same thing happens in time travel (assuming multiple timelines, time travel, etc.).  Nero created one timeline with his trip (taking the Fargo exit), while future-Spock traveled to a point later in the prime timeline (the Reno exit), creating his own timeline.  At no point would these new timelines intersect, at no point could one jump to another (except in a transporter accident but then Spock would have to grow a goatee).  So how did Future-Spock end up in Nero’s timeline?  The magic of bad plotting, I’d guess.  It’s a nit-picky detail, but one that hit me when I saw the timeline image.

In reality (movie-wise) Nero would have appeared in 2233 and realized he was in the past.  He would then go on a rampage with his powerful weapons (comparatively), destroying what he could until he calmed down or was defeated.  Or maybe he’d realize he was in an alternate timeline and give the Romulans a big boost in technology by flying to the homeworld and giving them his ship.

Future-Spock, meanwhile, would have appeared in his new reality with a whole bunch of Red Matter (seriously, what was up with that?  They couldn’t come up with a plot device?) and never encountered Nero.  Maybe he would have traveled to that Galaxy-threatening supernova and dropped the Red Matter there, eliminating it as a threat altogether and then lived out his years on Vulcan (since he had already created a new timeline).  Or maybe he would have looped around a star and traveled back to the future to minimize his effect on the timeline.

However it would have happened, I came away from the movie disappointed.  Not by the plot points or the acting, but by the story on a whole.  That and the lens flare really annoyed me.

The notion of privacy died with, well, the invention of society.  We have this illusion that somehow we are protected by inalienable rights that prevent people from finding out information about our little worlds.  I recently had someone write a check using my name and address, both freely available on the Internet and in a phone book or two (not to mention the hundreds of forms I’ve filled out in my life).  I’m not out any money (so far), but it proves a point.  Privacy, unless you live in a cave, is a difficult thing to maintain.

That said, I don’t think people should be rooting around digging up information on people.  Nor do I think that the government should be routinely scanning my search records in the hope that they might glean some bit of information to protect “national security” (not that there’s anything to find).

But what really annoys me are the people who stand there and say privacy is unimportant and then get upset when their privacy is invaded.  Justice Scalia is a stanch anti-privacy judge who said “Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly.”

Of course, he didn’t realize how much of his (and most pubic figures) life was available on the Internet.  A law professor assigned his class project to create a dossier on Scalia.  And they did so with a gusto, gathering up information like his movie habits, food favorites, his home address, and other bits of information.  Let’s just say that Scalia was unhappy.  Suddenly his privacy had been invaded.  He issued a rather pissy statement saying “Professor Reidenberg’s exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any”.  So as long as his privacy is respected, everything is okay, but when you invade his it’s poor judgment.

Then there’s the case of the Portland Oregon Willamette Weekly article on police rifling through peoples garbage.  Mark McDonnell (Portland Prosecutor), Police Chief Mark Kroeker, and (then) Mayor Vera Katz all believed that , al least until their garbarge was ransacked.  Then Kroeker and Katz became upset and felt it was an invasion of their privacy.  So when the government does it, it’s legal, but when a private organization does it, it’s not.  I wonder if that applies to the individual as well.  Could I, as a constituent rummage through my representatives garbage?  Maybe not.

But the point of this is two fold.  One, there is no privacy for most of us.  Someone can look up my information in public records.  I’m sure my social security number is written on a public document somewhere or published on the Internet.  Two, politicians can’t expect special treatment because they are “in power”.  They are as vulnerable as any of us, they just need to accept that.

Now I’m going to go google my neighbors name before I rummage through the trash.  Where did I put my gloves?