smoke & mirrors
 

If you would please, PLEASE acknowledge that in light of what Ty was saying -- he was not talking about a "this is how it is" but in a "this is how it ought to be, logically, because the person no longer exists" -- your statement is incredibly stupid and misguided.

Or maybe you were making a funny?

smoke & mirrors
 

Don't sell yourself short. I'm sure you can drink like a fish as well.

smoke & mirrors
 

They took away the step-up in basis to compensate for no estate tax. Otherwise there's a double benefit--not only do you get the asset tax free, but you don't have to pay tax on accrued gains. This makes some sense, so that people don't artificially hold onto assets. One othe rpossibility is death is a realization event, and the estate has to pay all taxes. But everything after cap gains taxes goes to heirs, with no additional estate tax.

Anyway, I'm surprised our urbane sebby is in cahoots with the red-state farmers who think that repeal of the death tax is the most important thing since sliced bread, 'cuz when daddy leaves the two mules and the big red barn, they don' want no guvment taking one of 'em mules.

smoke & mirrors
 

club, please settle a bet: was the above a typo?

smoke & mirrors
 

Sweet pea, seriously, I understand the new tax system. Of all people.

I was drawing the distinction between realization and recognition, which you seem to be using interchangably. It's not that important, but you might want to explore the differences when you get a minute if you are going to talk about tax policy.

smoke & mirrors
 

Ty made a statement - we have no rights when we die. My post refutes this. What's the issue?

smoke & mirrors
 

Yes, meant glean, as in to collect.

smoke & mirrors
 

Motherfucker, I lost the bet. I was thinking maybe you hadn't had your coffee yet.

It's the people who inherit under the will whose rights are protected, for the most part. And, I still think that Ty was speaking more in a "under natural law" type thingy. Wills are you know like a social construct type thing stuff.

I will go back to respecting the ignore function. It is not your fault -- I was tempted into clicking. My mistake.

smoke & mirrors
 

Whoops, I guess I won the battle (it was a typo) but lost the war (you are a moron; see above).

smoke & mirrors
 

FWIW, we still have HIPAA privacy rights when we die. Though no one really understands them.

smoke & mirrors
 

Wait, I thought there wasn't a private right of action? So, the privacy of information about us remains, but it doesn't really belong to us.

smoke & mirrors
 

Funny, you can't see the connection, but I'm a moron. Go figure.

smoke & mirrors
 

There isn't a private right of action when we're alive either, but we still have HIPAA privacy rights. They are simply enforced by Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services and/or the Department of Justice.

smoke & mirrors
 

What good is a right if I can't do anything with it? It's just a big gubmint plot to keep all the info for themselves so that they can implant mind control chips in all of us.

There should be a free market in that information. Businesses can make a lot of money off our medical records . . . Why shouldn't the entity that compiled the information (hospital, doctor, clinic) be able to sell it??????

Seriously, I think that to an extent the "right" is not that much. And a dead person can't enforce the right.

smoke & mirrors
 

Well, that's comforting. Thank goodness for the Justice League of Ameri...uh, you mean it's not Aquaman and Wonder Woman? Well, shoot.

smoke & mirrors
 

You might want to explore the differences between a question mark and a period (or exclamation point). When you get a minute.

Interchangeable or not, the distinction is fairly irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Does someone pay taxes upon a person's death? While I'm sure that realization at death and again upon subsequent transfer can matter to the ultimate gain recognized, is it really an important issue to anyone other than tax junkies?

smoke & mirrors
 

The fact that there is no private right of action obscures somewhat the fact that there are additional theoretical beneficiaries to keeping medical information private post-mortem. Like the kids of somebody who just died of some genetic disease, should they ever want to obtain insurance coverage. Or the kids of someone who just died from a scandalous disease, like syphilis (all the more scandellous in this day and age because it can be wiped out with a Cipro regime).

smoke & mirrors
 

I think there are lots of rights post-death, just not an ability to enjoy or enforce them. But, when I buy that burial plot, I believe it is my right to lie there forever (well, until the maggots, etc. are done) and to have the damn stone sit there and someone pull weeds every now and then. Some rights die with me, but others don't.

But rights of any sort are just a social construct. The 12th century peasant would have no concept of "owning" property, merely of having rights and obligations as a result of his station, including rights and obligations in land that his children would later take on. So those rights I think I've got after death are really a present right I have while still alive.

Too bad death isn't just a social construct.

Every Vote Should Count, Dammit
 

• COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The Ohio Supreme Court's chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state's presidential election results.
  
  The 40 voters who brought the case will likely be able to refile the challenge.
  
  Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.
  
  The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush's campaign of "high-tech vote stealing."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041216/D87109CO0.html

Lott Calls for Rummy to Resign
 

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

Come visit D.C. sometime. You don't even need the incorporation doctrine here.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

"military members" = militia

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

Has it been challenged in DC?

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

By its express terms, the second amendment grants the right to bear arms to the people as a whole, not just those who may be active members of a militia.

On rights after death, I was trying to make points about mortality and psychology and semantics, not about the law. We sometimes talk about a conceit that you have a right to determine how your property is allocated after you die. But you're dead. You don't have any rights. You don't exist any more. That's it. Notwithstanding, it makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons to respect the wishes of the dead, not least because it avoids a lot of fighting among members of the living whose competing entitlements would need to be entangled. When we talk about a particular dead person's wealth, the dead person is no longer interested -- we are talking about the children's rights to enjoy that wealth instead of each other or the rest of us.

Now, the fact that we don't like to acknowledge that we're going to die and that other people will be living in our houses, driving our cars, and squandering our loot leads us to pretend otherwise. That's the psychological point.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

True, read strictly. Do you read the reference to well-ordered militia as adding no meaning? Is the right to bear arms absolute?

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

By its express terms, the Second Amendment grants a right the countours of which are defined by militia service. Just as the First Amendment doesn't give you the right to say anything, anytime -- think fire and theaters -- the Second Amendment doesn't give you the right to bear any weapon whenever you want. Unlike the First Amendment, the Second Amendment specifies the principle to be applied in deciding the contours of that right -- the furtherance of a "well regulated Militia."

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

If we're going to get Socratic, I have more questions for club:

(1) Do we construe the Second Amendment in accord with the framers' understanding? If so, why doesn't that mean that the right to bear "arms" only applies to flintlock rifles and the like?

(2) Do average citizens have the right to bear flamethrowers, grenades, and other infantry weapons? If not, why not?

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

Read strictly, then, perhaps licensed gun ownership in the United States could constitute a contractual obligation to serve in the United States Armed Forces during a time of War. Licensed gun owners could then be inducted into service when the national interest requires it.

Hey, Hank, problem solved!

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

Don't get too far ahead. We haven't gotten to ask him yet what the term "militia" meant at a point in time when the permanent army numbered 80 men, with no plan of exceeding 700 outside of wartime.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

No, I tend to agree with Ty that it should be viewed with reference to what would be in furtherance of the militia. But that really isn't much of a limit, is it? Point is, it is a right granted to the people, and I thought Ty's initial post suggested only militia members had the right.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

Most of the framers probably would have had less objection to this concept than to anything else posted pro- or anti-gun in the last few dozen posts.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

No, I think intent is hog wash. I just look at the words on the page.

Seems to me that those would be necessary for a well-regulated militia, so I guess the answer is yes.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

I'm not sure I understand this. If the right to bear arms is a right that should be regulated based on furthering the militia, why would anyone not eligible for call-up need a right to bear an arm?

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

I suspect that those numbers and the current numbers are fairly close as a percentage of the population.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

I believe yes, recently, after some holding in another circuit. all the crim. defendants challenged it as a sentencing issue or something.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

My point is that you need not be an active militia member in order to exercise the right. You only need be available.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

You seem to think the contours of the "right" are self-evident, while I think -- according to the actual language of the amendment -- that it has something to do with militia service.

So There are Just 9 Amendments in the Bill of Rights?
 

OK, the word is "arm." Does that refer to an upper-body limb? A flintlock rifle? Whatever Webster wants it to?