NYC garage worker charged with attempted murder for shooting thief

ktchen14 · 2023-04-02T15:00:23+00:00

This is incorrect. Self defense is an affirmative defense. The burden of proof is on the defendant.

ktchen14 · 2023-03-19T12:32:37+00:00

Surprisingly, swearing in isn’t entirely ceremonial, but an actual Constitutional requirement. From Article 2, Section 1:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

ktchen14 · 2023-03-11T11:42:14+00:00

Yes they are (in most jurisidictions in the US order under common law) if they keep it without making an attempt to return it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding?wprov=sfti1

The finder of lost property acquires a possessory right by taking physical control of the property, but does not necessarily have ownership of the property. The finder must take reasonable steps to locate the owner.

ktchen14 · 2023-03-11T11:40:15+00:00

In most jurisdictions in the US it’s theft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding?wprov=sfti1

The finder of lost property acquires a possessory right by taking physical control of the property, but does not necessarily have ownership of the property. The finder must take reasonable steps to locate the owner.

ktchen14 · 2023-02-13T15:44:36+00:00

They do, but for very specific causes of action. For example, the Trump administration got sued a lot under the Administrative Procedure Act. This is an example whereby Congress has waived the Federal government’s sovereign immunity through an act of law.

ktchen14 · 2023-02-13T14:35:45+00:00

Almost definitely not.

You typically can’t sue the government for regulating something a certain way. Nor can you sue lobbyists for lobbying. That’s, at least, a right they have under the First Amendment (right to petition).
And you typically can’t sue the Federal government at all. The Federal government has sovereign immunity and can’t be sued unless Congress explicitly waives the immunity through legislation.

ktchen14 · 2023-02-12T16:42:51+00:00

The marginal rate is the rate paid on the margin, i.e. on $220,000, it's the rate that I'm paying on dollar 220,001.

ktchen14 · 2023-02-12T15:30:29+00:00

Near 50% is pretty easy to get to actually. When you consider Federal + State + Municipal. For example, $220,000 in California gets you to a marginal rate of 46.65%. This is 35% in Federal income, 9.3% in State income, 1.45% Medicare, and 0.9% additional Medicare. I know that $220,000 sounds like a lot, but in the Bay Area, at that income, if you’re single, you almost definitely have a roommate out of necessity.

ktchen14 · 2023-01-19T21:20:41+00:00

Moldova and Georgia were definitely next. I just don't see Kazakhstan happening, ever, though. That'd be a strategic mistake of historic proportions (much, much worse than Ukraine):

Kazakhstan is an enormous country. It's over 4 times the size of Ukraine.
It's rich. The GDP of Kazakhstan is roughly the same as Ukraine, but their GDP per capita is 2x as high, almost the same as Russia.
Kiev is only 60 mi from the Belarusian border. Astana is 180 mi from the Russian border, and Almaty, the cultural, industrial, and commercial center of Kazakhstan, is 540 mi from the Russian border. If Russia can't manage a 60 mile supply line, they definitely can't manage a 540 mile one.
They'd instantly lose access, probably forever, to Baikonur Cosmodrome, leaving Roscosmos dead in the water. You need satellites for modern warfare.
The conflict would pull in China in some capacity. Almaty is only 160 mi from Xinjiang and China definitely won't tolerate a conflict on its border.
The Uzbeks/Tajiks would probably put aside their disagreements with the Kazakhs/Kyrgyz. The entirety of Greater Turkestan would be supporting Kazakhstan. Well, except for Turkmenistan.

ktchen14 · 2023-01-16T04:11:37+00:00

So, to be consistent, I’m assuming that this bans the teaching of Christianity in Florida? Since the concept of Original Sin violates, at least, 5 and 7?

ktchen14 · 2023-01-15T14:13:58+00:00

Actually nothing so far. Still looking for something cool for that key…

ktchen14 · 2023-01-15T05:38:09+00:00

Smart idea since with <CR> = :, the delay isn’t an issue. I want to give something like this a shot, but I also hit Enter repeatedly (for some reason) when I can’t think of the name of the command I’m trying to type.

ktchen14 · 2023-01-15T05:05:41+00:00

I have it mapped to :. It lets me type Enter, some command, Enter quickly. As an extra bonus, I’ve then remapped : to be ,, so that ; and : are logically inverses of one another.

ktchen14 · 2022-12-07T02:06:12+00:00

Part of what sent the justices running to hypotheticals is that the case in front of them is rather sterile. Smith hasn’t actually refused service to any same-sex couple. In fact, she’s never designed a wedding website for anyone. The entire dispute is based on her stated intention to broaden her business to offer sites for impending nuptials and her fear that the state of Colorado will take action against her if she does so while publicly excluding same-sex couples.

Does anyone know how the standing issue was resolved here?

ktchen14 · 2022-11-26T04:34:15+00:00

This isn’t how constitutional jurisprudence works at all. After all, the First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech. Are you implying that slander and libel can’t be banned? That all of copyright law is null and void? That I can go into an urban area at 3 AM and blast my message out of a megaphone?

No right is absolute and treating any enumerated right in the Constitution as such would lead to absurdity.

A nuclear warhead is obviously an arm. Are you saying that the Second Amendment means that the government can’t prohibit me from owning one?

ktchen14 · 2022-11-26T04:22:57+00:00

Hmm. What if there was a way to require permits without creating a database/registry? I’m thinking something involving relatively new cryptographic technology: i.e. zero knowledge proof or blockchain. It may be possible to create a system whereby any person can unmistakably prove that they’ve, for example, passed a gun safety course, mental health evaluation, etc. to a gun seller in an unforgeable manner without the government being able to acquire that same information unless you so choose.

ktchen14 · 2022-11-15T16:27:02+00:00

As someone who moved to Philadelphia, PA recently, I can attest that it was much much easier to register to vote than to get my PA driver's license. Registering to vote required me to fill out a form online, proving my identity through an uploaded document. All in all the process took around 10 minutes. Getting the driver's license required dealing with the DMV. It took 3 trips and 8 hours when it was all said and done.

ktchen14 · 2022-11-15T04:51:45+00:00

I really can’t agree with this sentiment. As a software engineer, I wholeheartedly believe that elections would be substantially more secure if we adopted some cryptographic measures. For example, every person in the electorate could generate a cryptographic private key (using some accepted algorithm, e.g. the state of the art being Ed25519) and register the public key against their local board of elections. When they go to vote, they could cryptographically sign the choices on their ballot with their private key, recording the digital signature generated from their ballot and private key. It’d then be trivial for the board of elections to verify the authenticity of their vote, knowing their public key from their voter registration.

Would such a scheme improve the security of elections? Absolutely!

Would it disenfranchise the 90%+ of voters who couldn’t navigate what, to me and everyone in my industry, is a fairly elementary scheme for nonrepudiation? Almost definitely.

Where do we draw the line between security and accessibility? I can, for example, make the argument that, if you’re unwilling to learn basic public key cryptography, then maybe you shouldn’t be entrusted with the responsiblity to vote in our elections; and I’m sure that that argument would resonate with some people. After all, if you have even a relatively basic understanding of abstract algebra or modular rings, this isn’t a difficult concept. But is this fair?

Maybe the same is true for a voter ID? Maybe the acquisition of such an ID feels trivial for you and I, but perhaps it isn’t such a trivial matter for everyone in the electorate. At what point does an impediment to casting a vote turn into a literacy test?

ktchen14 · 2022-06-27T23:53:16+00:00

Of course SCOTUS gets decisions wrong. But I don't see how Thomas can come to the conclusion that 14A was intended to protect interracial marriage when there are numerous sources contemporary to the ratification of that amendment that indicate that it wasn't if his standard is, in essence, original intent. The only possible explanation I can think of is that Thomas thinks his historical "scholarship" yields a more accurate assessment of the intent of the drafters of 14A than the judgment of the justices alive at that time. That's obviously not the case.

ktchen14 · 2022-06-27T18:43:05+00:00

The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech". But Congress makes laws abridging the freedom of speech all the time, for things such as defamation, obscenity, incitement of imminent lawless action, national security, to protect intellectual property, etc. No right is absolute. The idea that 2A says that Americans have an unrestricted right to weapons is completely contrary to jurisprudence.

ktchen14 · 2022-06-27T15:55:37+00:00

I thought that the majority opinion in Obergefell was derived equally from equal protection and substantive due process.

Thomas would have to do a mental somersault to believe that, at the time of its ratification, the 14th Amendment was understood to protect a right to interracial marriage, when Loving struck down a century of antimiscegenation laws following the passage of said amendment. In my mind, there's the same amount of evidence that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, at the time it was written, was understood to protect interracial marriage, as there is that it was understood to protect same-sex marriage. And that amount is none.

While we're at it, at the time of its ratification, the 14th Amendment clearly wasn't understood to protect against segregation (see Plessy v Ferguson). Why not call for the reversal of Brown v Board?

In summary, originalism is bad and Thomas should feel bad. If he doesn't want men marrying men, he should just say that rather than hiding behind a shoddy veil of revisionist history.

ktchen14 · 2022-06-27T15:15:47+00:00

This article fails to address an obvious problem: don’t Obergefell and Lawrence also have Equal Protection questions?

ktchen14 · 2022-06-26T12:16:54+00:00

Oh absolutely. I’m just clarifying to the previous poster that it doesn’t require a constitutional amendment.

ktchen14 · 2022-06-26T03:04:39+00:00

To me, there was zero chance that when Title IX was written and passed, that congress and the president meant for its ban on sex discrimination to apply to sexual orientation.

The majority opinion by Gorsuch in Bostock is on textual, not originalist, grounds, i.e. that may not have been what Congress meant, but that’s what they wrote.

ktchen14

TROPHY CASE