I'm on my tablet right now so it's a little difficult to type lengthy responses, but hopefully these are sufficient.

First, it specifies a death penalty for Murder 1st Degree -- but we all know that there are plenty of states (most?) in which you cannot be killed for this. So there's a contradiction.

Actually, it isn't a contradiction. The wording for part B (which you are referring to) states "Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States." If you are confused as to what that means you can refer to 18 USC 7 which lays out a specific definition.

18 USC 1092 is only applicable to Chapter 50a, not 18 USC 1111. However, 18 USC 1111 is applicable to states (but not part B). There are several complex nuances to this. I won't claim to know all of them, but 18 USC 454 adds better clarification than I could explain.

Ummm... maybe the 13th Amendment? Honestly, I think you're being intentionally obtuse here.

Yes, I was exaggerating. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Replace slavery with abortion, child labor, or anything... the point is still the same.

The people of each state, or their duly appointed representatives, of course.

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We can keep discussing this as this is the single most important argument overclouding this entire conversation.

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To start the discussion, do you believe that the collective taxes of one state should go to benefit another?

It looks like you're so afraid that a small portion are going to be disadvantaged that you're insisting on a one-size-fits-all solution. But experience shows that such solutions are almost always worse in the end (e.g., NCLB), and by their very nature they hurt a much broader scope of people -- better to make your experimental mistakes at a small scope. Especially since experience also shows that legislative mistakes (again, like NCLB, but there are countless other examples) are almost never rolled back, because of political gamesmanship.

First off, it's not as small of a portion as you may think. NCLB is a good example of a federal program gone awry, but fortunately this administration is putting into place several policies to fix the fundamental issues of why NCLB didn't succeed. There is no reason why federal legislation can not give leniency to the states. If you are interested in learning about these policies let me know and I can generate a few sources for you to check out.

In what way is insisting on using Article V (the amendment process) in order to patch bugs inferior to ad hoc power grabs?

I understand your argument and why you feel that Article V is a good process, but it isn't. I'll give you reasons why but first I'd like to read your response to the question posed a couple sections above.

user:	shibboleth
created:	July 22, 2011
karma:	31