What about laws that state only Congress can declare war or the rules of the War Powers Resolution? These don't stop the executive branch from engaging in war. Similarly, Buffet's simplistic solution wouldn't stop future deficits, because the ruling party could so easily redefine what a deficit is or what the GDP numbers are.
Retracktable iPhone connector? Yuck. My phone & MBP can both wirelessly communicate with devices half way around the globe, yet they need a special USB cord to talk to each other?
Plus, more than 50% of iPhone users never even bother syncing with a computer after the initial activation. Wired syncing & backups will probably be dead soon.
As a casual visitor, I really preferred seeing scores. Yes, I can read through every comment and judge for myself what's best (note: this is still possible even when scores were shown). But I prefer scanning the comments and just reading what the crowd liked most.
The whole point of laws is that it doesn't matter what your take or my take or the President's take is. The statute for the FBI Director's tenure is clear:
"...the term of service of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall be ten years. A Director may not serve more than one ten-year term."
There's nothing about extending the term with Congressional approval. If the President wants to keep Mueller around, the only way to legal do it would be to change the law. It doesn't matter what the reason for term limits was. At this point, it's simply a public law regardless of intent.
Is there really that much difference between getting Congressional approval for Mueller to stay for two more years, and getting Congressional ratification of a law allowing Mueller to stay for two more years? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm not familiar with the American system.
One option relies on the rule of law; the other relies on the ad-hoc whim of whoever is in charge. While the result would be the same, there is a huge difference.
Nowhere in the law does Congress even have the authority to extend Mueller's stay for two years. If we're OK with that, we're essentially OK with Congress granting themselves powers outside the law. Congress certainly has the power to pass a new law removing or extending tenure. They do not have the authority to extend Mueller's tenure.
They can pass an act designated as "private law" (aka slip laws), which can apply to specific individuals and afford relief from another law or grant benefits/powers that are not available under the general law. So Congress actually does have the authority to extend his tenure.
Your example requires that Congress pass legislation, which is exactly what I'm making a case for. In practice, and after reading this article, I doubt that will be the way it goes down.
When was the last time you crawled? Probably much longer ago than that cursive paper, yet crawling, like cursive handwriting, is an important age-appropriate skill to learn. Sure, you could skip cursive and teach kindergarteners to type, but the motor skills kids learn THROUGH cursive is so much more important. Similarly, children that walk without ever learning the motor skills of crawling often have difficulties learning other things later in life.
The problem is not lobbying. A lobbyist should be free to ask a member of Congress if their organization can have a tax break. The problem is the Congressman who grants the tax break. We need to stop thinking of our representatives as innocent victims of lobbyist culture.
This is an interesting chicken-and-egg question we had not so long before - is it legislature or is it business that produces corruption? The answer is not black and white and depends on jurisdiction.
I think it's incredibly black & white. It must be the legislators. They are the ones with power to pass laws. Even if businesses "encourage" (not "produce") corruption, the law makers must have some control over their own actions, right? Why don't defense contracts lobby Dennis Kucinich? Why doesn't Monsanto lobby Ron Paul? If there were 535 legislators who respected the constitution, there wouldn't be a lobbying industry.
The corporations control both fiscal (tax revenue) and political (jobs) levers of the legislature. The politicians in the US (or most democratic countries for that matter) cannot simply say no to the money from large multinationals. Especially in the US where any interference with the business e.g. nationalisation is considered communist taboo topic.
You're missing the core point. The politician doesn't need to say no to corporate money. He can, and should, say yes to all the money that any person or business wants to donate. The problem is when the politician writes into law a regulation, tariff, or rule that benefits a specific donor.
I fundraise for my kid's school. A local bank, ABC Savings, makes a considerable donation. There's no expectation that the school will pass a rule where we only accept students if their parents bank at ABC Savings. There's a difference between accepting campaign fundraising and quid pro quo.
I don't see how (s)he can be saying yes to all the money coming in and NOT be favoring one over another. It's not like everyone is giving equal amounts of money?
In your own example - it's not like school will not accept somebody if they're not using ABC Savings. But they sure as hell will cater more to those who do, than to those who don't?
For the vast majority of parents, it doesn't matter. If you're worried about it, invest in a baby scale and weigh regularly (keep in mind that babies lose weight immediately after birth, though.) Doctors can give you a chart for normal weight gain.
For a minority of parents, the child will be "failure to thrive" and for that you will need to measure intake, but the child will also be on special high calorie formula anyway. So at this point the advantage is irrelevant.
"Measuring" is a really stupid reason to deny your kid the other benefits of breast feeding. However, there are many viable reasons not to breastfeed, such as it's just not working, or the mother needs to work/have a life, or it's painful, etc.
I'm not seeing an issue here though -- that profile information was readily available in html (if you have a facebook cookie) and is now even more accessible via json.
In fact, the json api gives out less information than the html frontend (e.g. all 18 pages you currently follow).
Like he said, the discrepancy is when you are not logged in. I can see his info and his private profile pic although I don't even have a facebook account and the html version gives me a 404.
