Cheech

If you could condense it down to one man, it should be a Tunisian named Mohamed Bouazizi. I won't do his story justice, just read his wikipedia. The short, short version is this guy's lighting himself on fire became the catalyst for protesting in at least 7 countries, and the direct toppling of 3 governments. A joke eh, what have you done that could stack up to this?

Seal Team 6 killed a man who was, at this point, largely irrelevant to the world. It was a moral victory for Americans to be sure, but that's about it. Steve Jobs didn't do fuck-all this year but die. Protestors (and I'm going to have to ask you to look at the global picture, not just American exceptionalism that seems to run so rampant here) toppled 3 (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya) deeply entrenched dictatorships in North Africa. 3, within the span of 8 months. We can't even seem to vote out someone who is spectacularly corrupt in the span of YEARS, yet these people simultaneously did it in 3 different places, to dictators that have been there for almost 4 DECADES. With a little more time and international pressure, they're about to notch a 4th on there, Syria. So you see, the general protestor earned the Person Of The Year nod, and then some. But, if you want to stay within the cozy confines of America, the Occupy protests have started conversations about the workings of the financial system, I can only speculate that it brought enough outrage to bear to cause a Federal judge to overturn a settlement motion from the SEC that would slap Citibank on the wrist without them admitting wrongdoing. Instead, this would go to trial which would force all sorts of lovely discovery about the inner workings, emails to be leaked, and so on. It's also started conversations about student loan debt and for-profit "universities" that are preying on it, and why exactly this debt can't be discharged in a bankruptcy proceeding. It's also started to peel back some of the layers of police brutality, showing the public exactly what modern America's police force thinks and does to people that attempt to express their Constitutional rights in public. All of these things, and you wanted Steve fucking Jobs?

The GPS one cracks my shit up every time.

Hence the need for air defenses in the event of a non-zombie apocolypse.

thread derailment complete.

are you going back to the future?

Ensure that your car is sufficiently marked so to avoid my indiscriminate bombing raids on freeway drivers that potentially pose a threat to me.

My observations have been whenever I bring up the policies of advanced European countries, and even moreso the Nordic countries, the socalist! term gets thrown out there. I was just trying to be a little proactive and get to the derp before anyone else.

Now we're talking about two different things. Speed limits/enforcement is a completely separate argument.

Fair point. Institute progressive fines like (OMGWTFBBQSOCIALIST!) Sweden that are based off yearly income.

lawl I'll construct a sidecar for the RR, raid a local gun store, and mount a Browning .50cal to it. I'll raid the DSCC and mount some 30mm gatlings (GAU-8/A Avenger) to the house with depleted uranium rounds, also tow back a trailer filled with LAW's, AT4's, Claymore mines, MRE's, some Stingers for air defense, and the super-secret Mech battle suit that I know they have in there. gen3 will be my personal pilot, flying the (raided) plane of her choosing outfitted with some Hellfires/Sidewinders/JDAMs bolted on with the help of DSCC personnel, who I will shoot after they have finished their task as they are clearly a threat to me. If it flies over the house, I shoot it. If it moves around the house, I shoot it. If I'm hungover from raiding World of Beer, I shoot everything. After I've established a sufficient defensive posture, I'll head down to OSU to shoot innocent civilians that I believe are trying to loot my stash, stop by the Cane's to relieve them of their sauce reserves and liberate the recipe, then to the Medical Center to engineer a virus that starts turning people into zombies.

Because no cop has ever pulled someone over for simply leaving a bar, and saying later that they were "weaving". Dashcam video? Yeah, that for some reason wasn't working that night, so sorry. "It doesn't work" is the understatement of the fucking year. I see just as many cops on cellphones and texting while driving as I've seen other drivers. Should there be some sort of regulation? Yes, handsfree use of phones only. You can use GPS or anything else in a dock mounted to the windshield or on the dash. Enforcement of this is a completely different story, I really can't see how cops would be able to enforce this if they can't even uniformly enforce DUI's. As for the penalties? Double the fines for speeding. Each penalty is $300 bucks. No possible jail time, no completely fucked civil forfeiture laws, just a fine that will make you think twice about doing it again.

Bingo.

In this instance, I can understand #4. A reasonable person could look at that situation and see that the protestors were preventing the police from free movement. #2, I can't. If they are in a public park, what is the determining standard for noise? Either way, they're still in violation of the law by virtue of #4. Of course the charges were dropped due to the bad publicity. My point is, the entire thing was unconstitutional from the start, from the arresting, to the illegal detainment, all of it. On top of that, the arresting body (UC Davis) doesn't want to press charges, so it basically turned into "you are annoying us, so we're going to violate your rights so you'll move, then act like nothing happened afterwards. Oh yeah, qualified immunity, you have no recourse. Suck it." The orders were unlawful for the original protestors, the ones arrested prior to the encircling that I imagine were arrested for failing to vacate the campsite/original assembly area. However, this would be valid for the people who should have been moved from the circle to create a exit path.

At this point you'd be better off milling a block of aluminum and wearing it as a helmet. You can use it to block rubber bullets from hitting you in the head. To your point though, I guess I don't know how to make this system better. Half the police don't know the law outside of the sections involving automobile moving violations, and the other half seem to just accept orders from above. You have ignorance coupled with blind acceptance, with no one asking if I *should* be following/giving these orders. I really have to think that someone in the chancellor's office had a legal consult while constructing these orders, and if it didn't happen there, I sure as hell hope it happened at the police station. Clearly, if it did happen, no one payed attention, because I can't imagine a experienced lawyer telling anyone that this action would pass Constitutional muster.

I'm a little fuzzy on this, so you'll have to bear with me. First off, I'm in agreement with you that the proper way to open a hole for the police encircled inside would be to physically move the protestors. Not manhandling (see NYPD), but moving them with as little force as possible so that you create an exit with which you leave. The arresting, I have a problem with. Failure to comply would insinuate that the order to disperse was lawful, which, Constitutionally, it's not. If it was, then I have to ask why charges were dropped against those arrested. Obstruction is the thing I need a little more clarification on.

Its sponsors (whom I'm sure by some obscure legislative rule are secret, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now) need to be openly put on trial (a real trial, not some internal Congressional bullshits) for breaching the Congressional oath. Again, give Paul points for consistency.

what the hell are you on about?

Because shooting non-violent protestors is sooo cool. Nice Internet tough guy. The amount of cognitive dissonance that some of you have regarding Constitutional measures just floors me. Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Seriously, how hard is that to understand? Unlawful assembly on a college campus park? Give me a fucking break. It softens my viewpoint of the UC Davis PD in that they did make a good-faith attempt to explain to the protestors that they needed to move from the spot they were sitting so that the police can be freed. This, however, does fuck-all to explain why peaceful protestors demonstrating under Constitutional authority were thrown in the paddywagon to begin with. Speaking of them, UC Davis dropped all those charges anyway. Looks like UC Davis is just like every other police force out there, if someone's pissing you off, arrest them, charge them with disorderly conduct (or some similar incredibly nebulous charge), throw them in jail for the maximum amount of days until an arraignment hearing (ask the NYPD about this), rinse and repeat. Fuck everything about that.

so by some transitive property does that make you also the smartest person in the world?

If they were in Afghanistan to begin with, we might be out of there by now. DOD has attack plans for everyone. That's what makes a good defense department, putting a bunch of people in a room and coming up with scenarios for attack and defense of everyone. I'm willing to bet there's an attack plan for Canada (that may or may not be mirrored off of Canadian Bacon, but I digress) The differentiating factor here is that Obama's not looking for some obscure reason he can manufacture into a rationale for a full-scale military invasion. If Israel wants to whip out their cock (and from what I know about Jews, I'd advise against this) and smack Iran around, that should be none of our business.

Fuck, you mean Battle:LA could be REAL?! Time to buy that SCAR and AA12...

Obama never lied to get us into a major military engagement, and also never used shady accounting to mask the true cost of said engagement. We're now pulled out of Iraq. Not "ended major combat operations" like Chimpy McFlightSuit announced 7 fucking years ago, OUT. (And before someone pipes up about Libya, that was a NATO incursion and is also done and over.) No arguements about illegal detention. However, Congress completely stonewalled on closing Gitmo, using what I'll term as the Magneto defense in that the detainees are really super-soldiers, and that no facility in the continental US can keep them properly contained.

someone told me it was 6,000 years. time to hit conservapedia to do some research...

An interesting point.