Posts by Paul Campbell
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Rich I equally agree with you too - the one thing the americans got to do was throw everything away and try to craft a working whole from scratch - but they made it all so stable they sort of got stuck there.
The problem is that you want a constitutional arrangement that you can change ... but not easily ... too hard and you ossify, to easy and you're ripe for abuse - it's delicate balancing act
-
The US also considers the courts as an equal part of the "separation of powers" - theoretically the executive (president and cabinet), the congress (house and senate) and the judiciary (in particular the supreme court) are independent - but check each other through the ability of the congress to impeach, the president to veto, the supreme court to overturn laws, etc our system is a bit more messy since we didn't get a fresh start in the 1700s
-
actually technically Clinton was "impeached" - in the US impeachment is essentially the same as "indicted" - there the house acts as a Grand Jury and decides to prosecute ("impeach") while the senate acts as a court and tries the subject. In Clinton's case he was impeached by the house but not found guilty by the senate
-
There's another abuse in the US from the Grand Jury system (at least IMHO) - some places have standing Grand Juries (empaneled for a year or more) who go out looking for things to prosecute on their own - this can result in someone on the jury with a gripe pulling in people they don't like
People on standing grand juries also tend to not be representative of the public at large, while they are typically pulled at random from electoral rolls they consist of people who have the time to sit on such a thing (usually older, retired people)
-
I have to agree about O'Connor every so often he shows up in the media as if he landed from another planet, I try to persuade myself that I'm sure he doesn't represent the views of most police - the problem of course is that he does represent them
-
of course they come in Dutch .... well sort of
-
if it were done in the UK could you get the queen to appear? would she be relevant?
-
it used to, but they got old (cough Rosemary McLeod cough)
-
In some sense I feel the same about Burning Man - I don't have to see everything - I've learned to take it easy and not push myself during the day - lying in the shade and drinking is a perfectly great way to spend the day if you're with friends - I certainly don't have the stamina of a 20 yr old anymore, I can't stay up all night to dawn for a week no matter what substances are floating around
We've decided that hanging back in the shade and watching the 20-somethings work into their heat stroke is more entertaining .... every so often one wanders into camp with a story like "I had an argument with my girlfriend, and then I met this hot chick, and I spent the night in her tent, I went out for a pee and couldn't find my way back, and I need my clothes, my girlfriend's car keys are in the pocket ...." and one of us gets to play surrogate parent (that was a real story)
-
geez who on earth thinks we weren't arguing on the internet back in 1987, I certainly was