Interpreting the Constitution In the Digital Era

oik writes "NPR's Fresh Air this week had an interesting interview with Jeffrey Rosen, one of the authors of Constitution 3.0 , which addresses a number of issues to do with interpreting the US Constitution in the face of new technologies (both present and future). Many of the topics which he touches on come up on Slashdot a lot (including the GPS tracking cases). It's well worth listening to the program (link in the main page), of which the linked article is just a summary."

Re:The real issue

[Xanny]

The power of media is just part of a recurring theme of politicians just ignoring the constitution and putting Supreme Court judges in place to keep whatever backwards legislation they pass as law.

If all three branches of government are controlled by private media dollars, there are no checks and balances left, and there is no way to enforce the constitution if all the branches are taken out of the picture like they are right now.

I mean that is the main reason for OWS, getting corporate influence out of government. The real solution is to really understand what the constitution was for - it was just a document to unify the states under a common base law. That was the reason for the 10th amendment. The states should be handling almost everything the fed is right now, and through financial mobility anyone disenfranchised with a given state could move to one that better suits their political ideology. The problem is that states have become irrelevant as amendments like direct voting of senators came about removing the states from the federal level.

It really is just a side effect of the top down politics when they should be bottom up - new ideas of political discourse should come from local attempts at new ideas and good ideas should build up across districts into state laws, and eventually if everyone starts doing the same thing it might become national law. The way it is now is just backwards

Re:KSR's Mars trilogy make me think about the now

[hort_wort]

... I've felt sad that not only is American democracy co-opted by special interests and the inevitability of a stagnant two-party system, but even at best it would be limited to a late 18th-century worldview.

It'll make you even more sad to find out that Thomas Jefferson believed the Constitution should be scrapped and rewritten every 19 years, a new set of rules that each generation decides for itself to follow. All the modern politicians that talk about the founding fathers tend to skip over that point.

You're welcome. :-\

Re:The real issue

[anagama]

My guess is that ultimately, Obama will veto the law allowing citizens to be held indefinitely without trial,

Obama did suggest he would veto this bill, but not because he cares about civil liberties. His threat was based on the notion that the President already has these powers and that the Congressional mandate would be an usurpation of and interference with those powers.

Here is a quote from the White House's position on the bill:

Detainee Matters: The Administration objects to and has serious legal and policy concerns about many of the detainee provisions in the bill. In their current form, some of these provisions disrupt the Executive branch's ability to enforce the law and impose unwise and unwarranted restrictions on the U.S. Government's ability to aggressively combat international terrorism; other provisions inject legal uncertainty and ambiguity that may only complicate the military's operations and detention practices.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf [whitehouse.gov]

Obama supporters are very neatly summed up in this cartoon: http://americanextremists.thecomicseries.com/comics/156 [thecomicseries.com]

Re:The real issue

[CrimsonAvenger]

United STATES of America.

One of those interesting bits of historical trivia - before the Civil War, "United States" was plural ("these United States"). Afterwards, it was singular ("the United States").

Which should give you a clue how the Founders intended things.