-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 10:17 AM 1/16/98 -0800, bill.stewart@pobox.com wrote:
At 11:02 AM 1/13/98 -0800, Tim May wrote:
As I have made clear, I don't believe "banning research" which is neither "commerce between the states" nor a direct harm to others (as the "robbery" example Michael Froomkin used earlier as a parallel is), is supported by the Constitution.
There are different degrees of UnConstitutionalness. Some things are so blatantly off the edge that even if Congress passed them, they'd be laughed out of the first court that addressed them, like banning plant-growing or discrete mathematics or arresting everybody with Japanese ancestors. Others are much grayer areas, where court cases addressing them would take a long time and cost a lot of money, which can be prohibitively expensive for the early phases of research.
Hate to bust your bubble, but they did the Japanese thing during WWII...the survivors and next of kin finally got a token payment last year.
Alternatively, [Note: End of serious section] they could use the confiscatory tax model pioneered with the machine gun and marihuana bans - the tax on cloning body parts is an arm and a leg, but if you clone an entire human it'll cost you your firstborn child...
They have machine gun bars!!! I think I'll take up drinking! :) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Business Security 5.5 iQA/AwUBNL/na8JF0kXqpw3MEQIgVwCdGSVh/DcIQEDLuq13PBa++52IpfAAmwT1 vL1W6JlBhRK07B0Xj/xKRPkz =tbH/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Jonathan Wienke PGP Key Fingerprints: 7484 2FB7 7588 ACD1 3A8F 778A 7407 2928 3312 6597 8258 9A9E D9FA 4878 C245 D245 EAA7 0DCC RSA export-o-matic: print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`