Perri Nelson's Website 

Wednesday

This linkfest is for the 6th of June, 2007.

If you have something interesting you'd like to share, feel free to link it here and leave a trackback.

Just remember the trackback policy .

For the best exposure, go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.

The role of the states

A couple of weeks ago, Jeannine left the following comment on one of my posts:

I never understood why individual states need to have their individual laws... Either we are one nation or we are not!

My answer to her was that it's because we are a Federal Republic and not a Democracy. There's actually more to it than that though. A logical extension of her question could be "Why do individual cities need to have their own individual laws?".

We need laws to govern human behavior. Laws by themselves don't actually govern behavior, but their enforcement does. We have local laws because different communities have different standards of what is and what isn't acceptable behavior.

But why state laws? The answer to this question goes back to the founding of our nation, and even to the founding of European style civilization on our continent. When Europeans first settled here, they formed colonies. Each of the colonies had it's own form of government based upon the colonial charter. These governments were still under the authority of the nation that granted the charters.

With the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies that belonged to Great Britain broke their ties with the "mother country" and declared themselves to be "Free and Independent States". The term "State" as used in that document referred to a sovereign nation with "full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."

Put quite simply, the individual states were originally individual countries. In other words, a state like Virginia was on equal footing with a state like France, or Germany, or Russia, or even Great Britain.

After the revolutionary war, the thirteen individual nations joined together in a loose confederacy. Each of these nations retained its national sovereignty. It was the weaknesses of this confederacy which prompted the constitutional convention that ultimately resulted in the single nation now known as the United States of America.

When the Constitution of the United States was ratified by each of the states, the states gave up their sovereignty to the new nation. The states lost their powers to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, and to establish Commerce with other nations or states, giving these powers up to the federal government. In return, the Constitution guaranteed that the federal government would provide to each of the states a Republican form of government, and would protect each of them against Invasion, and under certain circumstances, domestic violence.

Another thing the Constitution did was to promise each state "equal Suffrage in the Senate". The Senate was intended to represent the states, as the states were originally sovereign nations, rather than the people. The federal government was not intended to govern the people of the several states. Rather it was intended to govern the several states and to represent them before the world.

This is why, originally, Senators were elected not by the people of the states they represented, but by the state legislatures. Senators were intended to represent the states. This is also why the electors of the President and Vice President were not originally elected by the people of the states, but "in such a Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct."

With the "progressive" movement, this structure began to change, first with the passage of the 12th amendment, then with the 14th amendment. Probably the single biggest change to this structure was the 17th amendment. These amendments had the effect of changing who elects Senators and Presidential Electors. They began a long slide away from the notion of state rights and toward a larger and more intrusive federal government.

As it stands now, the state governments still govern their people, but the federal government has taken more and more of that power away from them over the decades. States have their own laws and constitutions because they were always intended to govern the people. Federal power and the federal government was never intended to be as strong as it is today.

Yes, we're a single nation. Even so, with the ever increasing trend toward more centralized government, and a more socialist form of government, the Constitution's Article 4 promise to the states is coming ever closer to being broken. We are a Federal Republic. How long we remain one remains to be seen.

Comment UI modified...

I've modified the UI for commenting on posts. There's a bit of text that asks you to read my Comment Policy before commenting. This text also tells you that anonymous comments will be deleted.

I've also changed the way that comment text is handled. Previously if you wanted a formatted comment, you had to code all of the HTML formatting yourself. You still have to do most of your own comment formatting, but if you want to break your comment up into paragraphs, all you really need to do is enter a newline between paragraphs. Newlines will automatically be translated into <br> tags.

Another change is that now you should be able to subscribe to the comment thread for a particular post. So far, you must comment in order to subscribe, and you won't receive a notification of your initial comment, but you should receive a notification for every subsequent comment to the posts you subscribe to.

As always, if you have problems with the new features, send me some e-mail at perri at perrinelson dot com. Bug reports, rants, and raves are welcome.

I'm working on adding a comments Atom feed to every post too. I just don't have that change implemented yet.

Updated: I've implemented the Atom feed for comments now. When you view a post's entry page (via the permalink), your browser's auto-discovery (if your browser supports it) should indicate to you that there's a feed available. That feed is the comments feed.

I've also added a link, just above the comments that allows you to subscribe to the comment feed. There do not need to be any comments to subscribe to the comment feed. As new comments are added and your feed reader refreshes the feed you should pick up the new comments.

Time to change your default browser

Maybe it's time to switch to Opera. There's a new version of Opera out that's supposed to be pretty secure. I just downloaded and installed it, after all I like to use multiple different browsers. I do it mainly to ensure my software is cross-browser compatible, but this news may be enough to make me switch.

We all know about the many problems with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, from their somewhat wonky standards support to the innumerable security flaws that have been found and patched. Now there's two new "zero-day" vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, neither of which have been patched.

For Firefox fans that are so proud of Firefox's record as compared to Internet Explorer, don't think you're safe either. There are also two new zero-day vulnerabilities that have been discovered in Firefox.

The news appeared in Computerworld:

June 04, 2007 (Computerworld) -- A noted security researcher today disclosed four new zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp. and Mozilla Corp.'s browsers, including a critical flaw in Internet Explorer (IE) and a "major" bug in Firefox.

...

The most serious of the four, said Zalewski, is an IE6 and IE7 flaw he rated "critical." Dubbing it a "bait-and-switch" vulnerability, he said that the Microsoft browser gives hackers a window of opportunity to run malicious JavaScript to hijack the PC.

... 

But Mozilla's browser also suffered at Zalewski's hands. A new IFrame vulnerability in Firefox 2.0 can let attackers plant keyloggers or drop malicious content into a legitimate Web site. The flaw, rated as "major," is related to a similar bug discovered last year; although Mozilla patched that problem, Zalewski said the fix hadn't plugged all the holes.

Zalewski posted information about two other bugs, both rated "medium." A Firefox vulnerability could lead to unauthorized downloads, while IE6 is open to yet another address bar-spoofing flaw. "IE7 is not affected because of certain high-level changes in the browser," Zalewski said of the fourth vulnerability.

Both Mozilla and Microsoft are looking into the issues, but no fixes are available for either browser... yet.

Another viewpoint

The discussion of the Sound Transit proposal has got my blood boiling, and it's lead me to ask the following question: What do the following things have in common?

• The "taking" of private property through eminent-domain;
• A heavily progressive graduated income tax;
• The estate tax;
• Centralized banks;
• Government regulated telecommunications industries;
• Government controlled mass transit systems.

Come on... I'm sure you can guess... give it a try... No? Would a quote from a famous author help?

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

That's right... The items in my first list all have this list from the Communist Manifesto in common. They ALL, every one of them are part of the ten measures leading to Communist revolution outlined by Marx and Engels. The only item in the first six of those measures not in my list is the confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels. Of course, we don't really need to worry about that one here. We'll just confiscate the property of American citizens and give it to illegal immigrants through social programs. That'll have the same effect.

The world has been fighting this battle since the 1840s. Our liberal friends have added a few things to the list in the name of "social welfare". We're on a downward slide. Bigger government won't solve our problems, whether it's in the realm of health care or transportation. Instead it will only lead to despotism, those "despotic inroads on the rights of property" that Marx was talking about.