Power grab

Slashdot is known for users who place a high regard for personal liberty. With that being said, I'm not normally a government conspiracy theory fan but this one is an example of how the Federal Government can increase their powers in small increments until one day, when it is seemly too late, we wonder how it happened that the Federal Government can override the will of a State. I would have been perfectly happy with the change to section 1076 if they had left it with wording that limits the authority to when the government of a State requests assistance. If they don't because they've been too disrupted, that is one thing, but the wording lets the President use Federal troops when the President deems the State to be unwilling to enforce a law. If a State elected official decides not to enforce some law, we already have a mechanism to force action. There is a recall, their is a lawsuit, there is an election. During the fight for Civil Rights, Federal troops were used to integrate schools. While from a social justice point of view this was the right thing to do, did that create a dangerous Constitutional precedent? Big Brother has to force one of its wayward children to straighten up and fly right.

Re: We the Sheeple

Kelly asks why it is so difficult to get people to think. I think (was that hard?) that people don't want to be bothered with things that they feel like are out of their control. People are busy working, raising kids, contributing to their schools and communities, and generally living life. People have little energy left for the larger concerns that demand our attention and cry out for our action. It seems the machine of global capitalism is worsening this problem, involving people more and more in the minutia of their own lives so that they care less and less about what is going on in their society or the world as a whole. This is not to say that people's lives are unimportant. They are very important. But the kind of society and world we live in are important as well.

We the Sheeple

Why is it so hard to get people to think? I know it can be hard to believe, but there is a class of people out there who once they form their party loyalty are content to vote the straight party ticket. Do they not care if they are electing idiots or power-mad egomaniacs as long as they are 'our kind of people'? Is the straight party ticket tantamount to absolving oneself of political responsibility? A way of saying, "I don't care what the issues are as long as 'we' (whoever that might be) are in power. Is there a lure to this type of black-and-white thinking that I don't understand? Us or Them, with me or against me? Can someone explain it to me?