58 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2024
  2. Mar 2024
    1. Male orphans were taught to hold a musket as soon as they werephysically able.44

      based on context, this is presumably in Georgia in the mid-to-late 1700s.

    2. The misnamed Culpeper’s Rebellion (1677–79) isparticularly instructive. In a contest with Thomas Miller, an ambitioustrader and tobacco planter who wanted to crack down on smugglers, collectcustoms duties, and gain favor with proprietors, Thomas Culpeper, asurveyor, sided with the poorer settlers.

      Note that Culpeper's Rebellion involved Thomas Culpeper organizing an informal militia to oust Thomas Miller, a petty tyrant with an armed guard.

      There is obviously a class division at the root of this dispute.

  3. Feb 2024
  4. Sep 2023
    1. Another important legal development was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

      Post slavery. Cites due process clause as further defining 2nd Amendment.Caims that the 2nd only restricted the federal government not the state governments.

  5. Aug 2023
  6. Jun 2023
    1. Citation

      Duane, James, The Right to Remain Silent: A New Answer to an Old Question (February 2, 2012). Criminal Justice, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1998119

  7. Mar 2023
    1. The benefit of decentralized moderation is that it can satisfy both thosethose that want to speak and those that don’t want to listen. By empoweringusers, through their choice of instance, to avoid content they find objection-able, the Fediverse operationalizes the principle that freedom of speech is notthe same as freedom of reach

      Decentralized moderation satisfies freedom to speak and freedom not to listen

  8. Feb 2023
    1. reserved powers
    2. Tenth Amendment

      Is clarity between the relationship of the Constitution and the Federal Government. That if the ("paperwork") Constitution doesn't specify it the power to be delegated by the Federal Govt, that power belongs to the state and/or the people. This comes in handy when there are concurrent powers(powers shared between the state and federal govt, the tenth amendment with come into play to divide the specifics.Limiting the powers of the Fed Govt.

  9. Nov 2022
    1. “There is growing evidence that the legislative and executive branch officials are using social media companies to engage in censorship by surrogate,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, who has written about the lawsuit. “It is axiomatic that the government cannot do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly. If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship, it raises serious First Amendment questions.”

      Censorship by surrogate

      Is the government using private corporations to censor the speech of Americans?

  10. Sep 2022
    1. Working backwards, Google isn’t legally compelled to give Mark a hearing about his digital life (Sixth Amendment); they are wrong not to. Google isn’t legally compelled to give Mark due process before permanently deleting his digital life (Fifth Amendment); they are wrong not to. Google isn’t legally compelled to not search all of the photographs uploaded to Google (by default, if you click through all of the EULA’s); they are…well, this is where it gets complicated.

      Ben Thompson makes the case that although Google is acting within legal bounds, morally their behavior is wrong and incompatible with the spirit of the Fifth, Sixth and possibly Fourth Amendments.

  11. Jun 2022
    1. Ohio does not have CAP laws

      Ohio already has scores of other laws that can be applied where warranted. From negligent homicide to child endangering. Application of existing law is up to prosecutors.

      Statists who seek to rule others based on their emotions think "one more law" would ensure that they never have bad feelings ever again - if their opinion is forced upon enough people.

      This ignores the reality that the situations they're fretting about are already covered by existing law. The objective reality that "laws don't actually prevent bad things from happening" is lost on these fools.

    2. CAP laws were passed to protect children without taking away the Second Amendment right

      Requiring firearms to be locked such that they cannot be effectively used in an emergency has been found to violate the Second Amendment, so she's either ignorant or intentionally misleading.

    1. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

      Oh the ironies of this as he was talking about a small proportion of the population at the time, a large swath of which (namely enslaved persons with no power) had no arms to protect themselves against him.

      His definition of "freemen" was painfully limiting for someone speaking about freedom in such lofty terms.

    1. “If they neglect or refuse”: “Document: Patrick Henry Speech BeforeVirginia Ratifying Convention (June 5, 1788),” Teaching American History.
    2. Professor Carl Bogus: Carl T. Bogus, “Was Slavery a Factor in the SecondAmendment?” e New York Times, May 24, 2018.

      Professor Carl Bogus: Carl T. Bogus, “Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment?” The New York Times, May 24, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html

    3. Patrick Henry and George Mason: Dave Davies, “Historian Uncovers eRacist Roots of the 2nd Amendment,” NPR, June 2, 2021.

      https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment

      Transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1002107670 Audio: <audio src="">

      <audio controls> <source src="https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2021/06/20210602_fa_01.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"> <br />

      Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio. Here is a link to the audio instead.

      </audio>

    1. General Daniel E. Sickles, the commanding Union officer enforcing Reconstruction in South Carolina, ordered in January 1866 that “the constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed.” When South Carolinians ignored Sickles’s order and others like it, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of July 1866, which assured ex-slaves the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty … including the constitutional right to bear arms.”
    2. After losing the Civil War, Southern states quickly adopted the Black Codes, laws designed to reestablish white supremacy by dictating what the freedmen could and couldn’t do. One common provision barred blacks from possessing firearms. To enforce the gun ban, white men riding in posses began terrorizing black communities. In January 1866, Harper’s Weekly reported that in Mississippi, such groups had “seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen” in parts of the state. The most infamous of these disarmament posses, of course, was the Ku Klux Klan.
    1. The Mulford Act was a 1967 California bill that prohibited public carrying of loaded firearms without a permit.[2] Named after Republican assemblyman Don Mulford, and signed into law by governor of California Ronald Reagan, the bill was crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods, in what would later be termed copwatching.[3][4] They garnered national attention after Black Panthers members, bearing arms, marched upon the California State Capitol to protest the bill.

      WTF!

    1. Elie Mystal writes in Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution:

      There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn't to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery. (p36)

      He indicates that there are quotes from Patrick Henry and George Mason, governor of Virginia. They needed the ability to raise an armed militia to put down slave revolts and didn't want to rely on the federal government to do it.


      • [ ] Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal #wanttoread

      link to 1967 Mulford Act signed by Ronald Reagan see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

    1. War assault weapons have no place except with military?

      It's strange how the same people who imagine a disarmed populace as a good thing are playing catch-up to arm Ukranian civilians against a military. I've lost count of the children massacred by militaries that are the only groups of people magically trustworthy enough to be armed apparently.

      If you left a murderer alone with a room full of kids and a knife for 77 minutes, you'd have the same result - and if you're a student of recent history, you'd know that's exactly the kind of attack that has happened time and again in gun-free victim zones around the world.

      To address this issue properly, citizens must understand the #JustPowers Clause of The Declaration of Independence, the foundation that the US Constitution is laid upon; and a universal document that recognizes the rights of ALL humans.

      Put simply, it states that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else may justly grant powers to others that we do not have.

      If you or I stole our neighbors' firearms, even if we claimed it was for "safety" or "the common good", we'd face criminal charges. We all know this, and the evidence is in our conduct.

      Instead, why not focus just powers such has holding adults responsible for the safety of others accountable for negligence?

  12. May 2022
    1. We're not currently seeing a debate about "free speech". What we're actually witnessing is just a debate about who controls the norms of a social network, and who gets free promotion from that network.

      Private Social Space

      The First Amendment ("free speech") guides what speech the government can control. The social networks are private companies, so the control is over who gets to say what in that private, social space. Is there an analog about who gets to say what in a bar...is it the bar owner? (The bar being an example of another public, social space.)

  13. Apr 2022
    1. a child had gone missing in our town and the FBI came to town to investigate immediately and had gone to the library. They had a tip and wanted to seize and search the library’s public computers. And the librarians told the FBI that they needed to get a warrant. The town was grief stricken and was enraged that the library would, at a time like that, demand that the FBI get a warrant. Like everyone in town was like, are you kidding me? A child is missing and you’re– and what? This town meeting afterwards, the library budget, of course, is up for discussion as it is every year, and the people were still really angry with the library, but a patron and I think trustee of the library – again, a volunteer, someone living in town – an elderly woman stood up and gave the most passionate defense of the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties to the people on the floor that I have ever witnessed.

      An example of how a library in Vermont stood up to a warrantless request from the FBI to seize and search public library computers. This could have impacted the library's budget when the issue was brought to a town meeting, but a library patron was a passionate advocate for the 4th amendment.

  14. Mar 2022
    1. Others, including law enforcement groups, warn that the bill could make things more dangerous for Ohioans and first responders.

      It should be noted that these people have said the same time every time reform of firearms laws have been proposed.

      They have been tremendously wrong every single time.

      So why listen to others when they have only been wrong every time?

  15. Jan 2022
    1. Even if you are a political junkie, there’s a good chance you didn’t realize that the United States Constitution grew 58 words longer this week.Those words, which begin, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” are the text of the Equal Rights Amendment. Section 3 of the amendment states that it takes effect two years after its ratification, which happened on Jan. 27, 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to sign on. By its own terms, then, the 28th Amendment went into force on Thursday. American women are, at long last, equal to men in the eyes of the law. Hallelujah.

      I'd totally missed this in the news this week.

    1. We’re not a place—it’s very difficult to come to Xbox Live and say, ‘Okay, I want to go create a political party on the platform’. You could kind of twist the tools and try to get there, but it’s just not set up for general-purpose conversations or community.

      My Xbox 360 display picture is a Libertarian Party one created by the Xbox team for a past election cycle. They had them for GOP and Dem as well.

      There are also a few groups centered around politics for coordinating gameplay together premised on a common interest - so it seems that to that extent he doesn't know his own system?

      I don't know that Xbox as a social platform would be favorable for "creating a political party" whatever that means. Government's control what political parties are created - they only allow the ones they approve of to exist anyway.

  16. Sep 2021
    1. 2015, c. 3, s. 110

      Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, 2014, SC 2015, c 3, https://canlii.ca/t/52m35, s. 110, amends IRPA s. 63(2) and (3) to read:

      Right to appeal — visa and removal order

      (2) A foreign national who holds a permanent resident visa may appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division against a decision to make a removal order against them made under subsection 44(2) or made at an admissibility hearing.

      Right to appeal removal order

      (3) A permanent resident or a protected person may appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division against a decision to make a removal order against them made under subsection 44(2) or made at an admissibility hearing.

      Previously they had read:

      Right to appeal — visa and removal order

      (2) A foreign national who holds a permanent resident visa may appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division against a decision at an examination or admissibility hearing to make a removal order against them.

      Right to appeal — removal order

      (3) A permanent resident or a protected person may appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division against a decision at an examination or admissibility hearing to make a removal order against them.

    2. 2015, c. 3, s. 109(E)

      Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, 2014, SC 2015, c 3, https://canlii.ca/t/52m35, s. 109(E) amends the English version of IRPA s. 37(1)(b) to read:

      (b) engaging, in the context of transnational crime, in activities such as people smuggling, trafficking in persons or laundering of money or other proceeds of crime.

      Previously it had read:

      (b) engaging, in the context of transnational crime, in activities such as people smuggling, trafficking in persons or money laundering.

    3. 2015, c. 3, s. 108(E)

      Miscellaneous Statute Law Amendment Act, 2014, SC 2015, c 3, https://canlii.ca/t/52m35, s. 108(E) amends the English version of IRPA s. 16(3) to read:

      Evidence relating to identity (3) An officer may require or obtain from a permanent resident or a foreign national who is arrested, detained, subject to an examination or subject to a removal order, any evidence — photographic, fingerprint or otherwise — that may be used to establish their identity or compliance with this Act.

      Previously it had read:

      Evidence relating to identity (3) An officer may require or obtain from a permanent resident or a foreign national who is arrested, detained or subject to a removal order, any evidence — photographic, fingerprint or otherwise — that may be used to establish their identity or compliance with this Act.

  17. Aug 2021
    1. The First Amendment precludes lawmakers from forcing platforms to take down many kinds of dangerous user speech, including medical and political misinformation.

      Compare social media with the newspaper business from this perspective.

      People joined social media not knowing the end effects, but now don't have a choice of platform after-the-fact. Social platforms accelerate the disinformation using algorithms.

      Because there is choice amongst newspapers, people can easily move and if they'd subscribed to a racist fringe newspaper, they could easily end their subscription and go somewhere else. This is patently not the case for any social media. There's a high hidden personal cost for connectivity that isn't taken into account. The government needs to regulate this and not the speech portion.

      Social media should be considered a common carrier and considered as such. It was an easier and more logical process in the telephone, electricity and other areas to force this as the cost of implementation for them was magnitudes of order higher. The data formats and storage for social should be standardized (potentially even in three or more formats) and that should be the common carrier imposed. Would this properly skirt the First Amendment issues?

    2. Francis Fukuyama has called "middleware": content-curation services that could give users more control over the material they see on internet platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
  18. Jan 2021
    1. § 101-49. Amendment or repeal No section or provision of this charter may be repealed or amended unless the act making the repeal or amendment refers specifically to this charter and to the sections or provisions so repealed. Any amendment to this charter must be submitted to the voters for their approval and, upon approval, submitted as provided by statutes. Amendments may be placed on the ballot by the Selectboard, a duly authorized Charter Review Commission appointed by the Selectboard, or upon petition filed with the Town Clerk by 10 percent of the voters. The petition must clearly state the amendment and must be filed at least 45 days before any annual or special Town election, but the Town shall not be required to hold a special Town election solely for the purpose of considering a proposed charter amendment. (Amended 2019, No. M-1, § 2, eff. April 19, 2019.)

      Town of Barre

      Charter Amendment requires 10%

    1. § 2645. Charters; adoption, repeal, or amendment; procedure (a) A municipality may propose to the General Assembly to adopt, repeal, or amend its charter by majority vote of the legal voters of the municipality present and voting at any annual or special meeting warned for that purpose in accordance with the following procedure: (1) A proposal to adopt, repeal, or amend a municipal charter (charter proposal) may be made by the legislative body of the municipality or by petition of five percent of the voters of the municipality. (2) An official copy of the charter proposal shall be filed as a public record in the office of the clerk of the municipality at least 10 days before the first public hearing. The clerk shall certify the date on which he or she received the official copy, and the dated copies thereof shall be made available to members of the public upon request.

      VT Constitution

      Charter amendment by Council OR by petition of five percent of the voters of the municipality

  19. Jun 2020
    1. James Tallmadge Jr. t acked an amendment onto a bill a dmitting Missouri t o the Union that would have barred the admission of enslaved Africans into the new state.
  20. Sep 2018
  21. Jul 2018
    1. pervasively hostile environment. But merely offensive or bigoted speech does not rise to that level

      uh, yes it does for the person who the hate speech is directed against.

  22. Apr 2018
    1. In contemporary debates, gun control advocates often respond to assertion of second amendment individual rights to gun ownership by emphasizing the amendment’s reference to a “well regulated militia.”

      Hopefully this suggestion will be accepted in the spirit it is offered (gently!) and if acted upon, would not lengthen the intro too much, but rather help clarify the "anticipatory set" of the reading. Although the first sentence is quite accurate, as someone who has been doing extensive reading on the 2nd Amendment lately, I had to re - read this to be sure I understood the assertion. Bouncing back & forth from references to 1) gun control advocates 2) individual rights to gun ownership and back to 3) reference to a well regulated militia is likely to confuse H.S. readers who may have little interest or grasp of the ideas.

      Suggest: First of all - since it is so brief, it might be useful to actually provide the complete wording of Amendment Two. (Perhaps above the green "About this text" box.)

      Secondly - a note suggesting that gun control advocates tend to focus upon the "militia" clause while gun owner rights advocates often prefer to focus on the second clause re: right to own.

      Thirdly - a (brief) suggestion that the two sides do not even agree upon what constitutes a "militia" and that the context and historical evidence for each side's arguments are lengthy and complex.

      The second sentence beginning " In the excerpt below, is critical to help set the context of the reading, however, there seems to be room to minimize the verbiage without losing meaning.

    1. Let him therefore consider with himself: when taking a journey, he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow citizens,

      Knowing that the founders were mindful of Hobbes, is it also possible that this (pessimistic) passage might have been among the considerations behind the second amendment? An additional document with an interesting passage relating to armed citizenry arguments (for those interested in that question) might be found in the English Bill of Rights (1689) " . . . subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense . . ." Does this passage have anything to do with the 2nd amendment appearing immediately after the establishment and free exercise clauses of Amendment one? http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp[](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp)

  23. Feb 2018
    1. “These are unprecedented, brazen acts of censorship by a corporate monopoly that controls a primary channel of public communication,” said Nehlen, who’s running against Ryan in the GOP congressional primaries in Wisconsin. “It has severely compromised the integrity of our election processes, and Congress needs to hold public hearings and conduct a full investigation into these matters without delay.”

      This language is ripe for studying.

  24. Sep 2017
  25. Jul 2016
    1. This is a bit heartbreaking. Their facebook page is heavily monitored as well. I know folks that have been blocked from commenting there at Yes on 1. Thank goodness for hypothes.is.

    1. I am seeking opinions as to the nature of this amendment. Is this good for homeowners or good for only big business? Is this Yes on 1? Or is this the REAL amendment?

    1. Yes On 1 For The Sun

      This FB page and amendment has said to be a sneaky back door legislation that will actually ensure power to the big dogs and make it harder for us to get solar. Please correct me if wrong.

  26. Feb 2016
  27. Sep 2014
    1. What level of knowledge of rap and understanding of its complicated conventions is a defendant-speaker to assume, in advance of communication, that a hypothetically reasonable person possesses in order to properly understand a rap message? Because the answer is anything but clear and because a speaker’s First Amendment rights should not hang on what amounts to guesswork about an audience’s hypothetically reasonable knowledge of a complex artistic and political genre of expression, the actual subjective intent of the defendant-speaker must be considered in both the First Amendment and statutory true threats analyses.
  28. Jan 2014
    1. 2. Electric Company Infrastructure Improvement Financing Act of Committee on Finance and 2013 Revenue (Bill 20-387) w/Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute Chairperson Evans and the Committee on Government Operations Chairperson McDuffie

      McDuffie ANS adopted during COW