“Last night, those people being asked to vote were given a 1,200-and-some-odd-page document that they have never seen before. This is 'hurry up and do it,' " Donohue said. “Bob Dole used to say to members of the Senate, ‘Let’s all hurry up and vote on this before anybody has a chance to read it.’ ”
That doesn't make any sense. The longer the regulation, the more convoluted it is and therefore the more loopholes are available. Lawyers have far, far less wiggle room on a quarter-page regulation than a 100 page one.The regulator replied that they could make a regulation that was only a quarter of a page long, but that the businessmen had lawyers doing everything they could think of to get out of the legislation, so they HAD to make it onerous to close all the loopholes assholes would try and exploit.
Rubbish. The only reasons I can think any legislation is that long is to micromanage, create loopholes, force an up/down on an omnibus or add riders that gain specific votes from specific lawmakers required to pass. Lawmakers should be able to have line-item votes on bills that can trim the rubbish while leaving the meat - that would cut down on a hell of a lot of pork as well as trim the size of the bills to something manageable.Lurker wrote:Legislation for an issue as complex as this with so many different but interrelated components is going to be long. There's no avoiding that.
That's not reducing the size of the bill, that's just making it more dense. They could publish it on a single page of microfiche for all I care and I'd still say it's legislation gone mad.If people want to make an issue over how many pages the bill runs they could always stop using the double-spaced three inch column of text and switch to the wall of words preferred by some posters here. They could probably reduce it to 20 pages.
So? It would certainly reduce the attack vectors if you had bills split into single topic entities that could be either voted up or down, or have bills that allowed the parties to vote out line items they didn't like. That way you'd avoid all the "They voted against the troops" nonsense.It's also very revealing that while most of the details contained in the bill were known for months, the Republicans continued to attack the bill with a debunked lie about the cost of cap and trade. Shorter bills or more reading time isn't going to solve that.
No offense, Dd, but I think you take the American legal system much too lightly. Look at this case. A moron goes running over deer with his snowmobile and all charges were dropped because he claimed he was 'hunting' with a snowmobile. Not ON a snowmobile. WITH a snowmobile. And the judge buys it.That doesn't make any sense. The longer the regulation, the more convoluted it is and therefore the more loopholes are available. Lawyers have far, far less wiggle room on a quarter-page regulation than a 100 page one.
The problem is, when you explicitly put narrow cases in the text you implicitly exclude a lot of other narrowly similar but different cases.
And how many people who voted for it actually read it?Lurker wrote:Legislation for an issue as complex as this with so many different but interrelated components is going to be long. There's no avoiding that.
No, I'd say the judge did that when he as much as admitted on the bench that he'll make the bar of prosecution for animal cruelty high.Kulaf wrote:I'll take really bad reporting for $500 Alex:
http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/2009 ... lling-case
Basically two different judges now have told the DA that he cannot file charges of cruelty to animals AND hunting violations. WI law makes hunters immune to animal cruelty charges. So because this DA was a TOTAL idiot and included the hunting charges.....HE opened the door for the defense to get the animal mistreatment charges dropped.
You'd have to set the bar high or every time someone hit a deer with their car some wacko PETA member would be filing animal cruelty charges.Partha wrote:No, I'd say the judge did that when he as much as admitted on the bench that he'll make the bar of prosecution for animal cruelty high.Kulaf wrote:I'll take really bad reporting for $500 Alex:
http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/2009 ... lling-case
Basically two different judges now have told the DA that he cannot file charges of cruelty to animals AND hunting violations. WI law makes hunters immune to animal cruelty charges. So because this DA was a TOTAL idiot and included the hunting charges.....HE opened the door for the defense to get the animal mistreatment charges dropped.