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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/state-ags-sue-to-stop-internet-transition-228893
Four Republican state attorneys general are suing to stop the Obama administration from transferring oversight of the internet to an international body, arguing the transition would violate the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit — filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court — threatens to throw up a new roadblock to one of the White House's top tech priorities, just days before the scheduled Oct. 1 transfer of the internet's address system is set to take place.
In their lawsuit, the attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas contend that the transition, lacking congressional approval, amounts to an illegal giveaway of U.S. government property. They also express fear that the proposed new steward of the system, a nonprofit known as ICANN, would be so unchecked that it could "effectively enable or prohibit speech on the Internet."
The four states further contend that ICANN could revoke the U.S. government's exclusive use of .gov and .mil, the domains used by states, federal agencies and the U.S. military for their websites. And the four attorneys general argue that ICANN's "current practices often foster a lack of transparency that, in turn, allows illegal activity to occur."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @10:01PM
Completely and absolutely wrong: a law that does not have supporting Constitutional authority, even if it was passed by a legislative body including Congress, is in exactly the same state of legality as if that law had never been passed in the first place.
Don't just take logic and my word for it - consult the judges on the US' Supreme Court:
Does this mean that individuals living in the USA are effectively required to use their own minds and in effect become judges of the law? Yes. Does this also mean that "law enforcers" who mindlessly use or threaten to use lethal force against others using such a non-law as justification are literal criminals on the same plane as muggers and home invaders? Yes. I'd rather not see it come to this, but it is also a long-established principle that using lethal force against a police who are acting as criminals is legal and justifiable [constitution.org], even when the cops were acting under orders which happened to be illegal [cornell.edu],
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday September 30 2016, @10:42PM
That's not even remotely true. That stance requires completely ignoring hundreds of years of governance and legal precedence.
The way we know that a law is unconstitutional is through a ruling by the Supreme Court. If they don't rule it to be unconstitutional, then it effectively is constitutional whether or not it makes any sense.
Also, it's funny what things are in the constitution when it's convenient to strict constructionists despite the lack of any text supporting the view as well as a lack of historical documentation suggesting that the people writing that section of the constitution took that view. I doubt very much that the founding fathers intended for money to be speech, but somehow that's now the interpretation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @10:58PM
By all means then, back up your claim. I did [soylentnews.org] - making use of very early and later period USSC decisions to back up my claims that unConstitutional laws have the same legal effect as if those same laws had never been passed in the first place.
Can't you offer a rebuttal better than "nuh uh!"?
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:43PM
Take a look around you. It was never constitutional to ban sodomy, and yet that remained on the books and enforced for years. Or, how about the draft? That was never constitutional either as women were excluded from it despite the 14th amendment.
Being able to find a couple links that in no way reflect the way that the legal system has functioned, is not an argument that I'm going to find very persuasive. Those and those are hardly the only instances, it happens regularly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @04:16PM
The fact that crimes have been committed by US government agents acting under color of law by no means nullifies the fact that such crimes have been committed. By your same logic, it's perfectly legal to legal to beat my girlfriend to a pulp as long as I can escape punishment; obviously this is a ludicrous statement and the reality is that such an act would merely make me a criminal-at-large.
Rather than covering one's eyes to reality and trying to block out the ugliness of it, the only solution that seems to have a chance to stem the tide of rampant criminality by government agents is to embrace reality via awareness of the limitations of government authority and the acknowledgement that acting outside said authority is literally illegal. This may well lead to situations where uniformed criminals need to be dissuaded from their criminal behavior with lethal force, and an example of such a case was already referenced in my first post here [soylentnews.org] in regards to John Bad Elk vs United States. Preferably, though, the knowledge that potential victims recognize criminal acts by gov agents to be the crimes they are and warnings to desist will be sufficient to curb such criminal behavior much like how "normal" home burglars state they greatly fear a confrontation with an armed homeowner.
So, what is the limit to government authority in the USA? It is limited to that of its source, which via the Constitution and the process of delegation of authority is no greater than that of a single human being's. The only exceptions are those with full and voluntary consent, consent which can be withdrawn at any time for any or no reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01 2016, @01:14AM
The way we know that a law is unconstitutional is through a ruling by the Supreme Court. If they don't rule it to be unconstitutional, then it effectively is constitutional whether or not it makes any sense.
"we"? Speak for yourself. That's how our system works in practice, but that's certainly not how reality works. We need authority figures to decide matters at the end of the day, but they can certainly be wrong. It's like you're conflating how the legal system works in practice with how reality itself works, without distinguishing between the two. You even acknowledge the fact that judges can be incorrect when you say "whether or not it makes any sense."
I'm tired of people mindlessly talking about how our legal system works when others simply wanted to talk about what is actually in the Constitution.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 01 2016, @02:49PM
Well, no, that's how it works. The constitution is rather short and they don't detail at any point exactly what you'd have to do in order to violate the constitution in many cases.
A good example would be abortion. Is it constitutional to ban abortion because the ban if you ban men from it as well? Or would that be a violation of the 14th amendment because it really only applies to women? Or, how about the 2nd amendment? That one only specifies arms, and that they be held collectively by the well-regulated militias of the country, none of those terms are defined in the constitution and as such, somebody needs to define them.
Just because you choose to not understand how the constitution works or how it was intended to work, doesn't make what I said any less true. Unless you happen to be doing something that is extremely clear cut, you do need a referee to tell you what it means. Because if we have 300 million different people taking views on what the constitution actually means, then we might as well not have one because it's going to be so watered down that only in extreme instances are we going to have consensus on the intent and meaning.