Exemption To The Rule Quotes

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

No one is exempt from the rule that learning occurs through recognition of error.

This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?

A rule without exceptions is an instrument capable of doing mischief to the innocent and bringing grief -- as well as injustice -- to those who should gain exemptions from the rule's functioning.

And please, keep your voices down!” she yells. Obviously, Miri is exempt from the rules.

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?

The anarch differs from the anarchist in that he has a very pronounced sense of the rules. Insofar as and to the extent that he observes them, he feels exempt from thinking. This is consistent with normal behavior: everyone who boards a train rolls over bridges and through tunnels that engineers have devised for him and on which a hundred thousand hands have labored. This does not darken the passenger’s mood; settling in comfortably, he buries himself in his newspaper, has breakfast, or thinks about his business. Likewise, the anarch – except that he always remains aware of that relationship, never losing sight of his main theme, freedom, that which also flies outside, past hill and dale. He can get away at any time, not just from the train, but also from any demand made on him by state, society, or church, and also from existence.

We’ve discovered that any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy. Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. And how would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually arresting? How riveting would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals.

I’ve told her not to come here expecting validation or exemption from the usual rules of human decency.

Now, there are important rules in Fairyland, rules from which I shall one day be exempt, when my papers have been processed at last and I am possessed of the golden ring of diplomatic immunity.

JONAS RECEIVER OF MEMORY Go immediately at the end of school hours each day to the Annex entrance behind the House of the Old and present yourself to the attendant. Go immediately to your dwelling at the conclusion of Training Hours each day. From this moment you are exempted from rules governing rudeness. You may ask any question of any citizen and you will receive answers. Do not discuss your training with any other member of the community, including parents and Elders. From this moment you are prohibited from dream-telling. Except for illness or injury unrelated to your training, do not apply for any medication. You are not permitted to apply for release. You may lie.

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy. Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?

But I'm not running away. I'm running toward... toward adventure, toward discovery, toward diversity. And while I was in Mexico I discovered something intruiging: Once I leave the U.S., I am not bound by the rules of my culture. And when I am a foreigner in another country, I am exempt from the local rules. This extraordinary situation means that there are no rules in my life. I am free to live by the standards and ideals and rules I create for myself.

People who don't think the rules apply to them, Kit was beginning to learn, are surprised and offended when others don't recognize and honor their exemption.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back...But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Obama has repeatedly defied the limits of his constitutional authority, aggregating powers unto himself in ways past presidents have not. During more than six years as president, Obama has nullified laws, created laws, delayed the implementation of laws, and issued exemptions from and waivers to laws, much of which has been accomplished through executive branch rule making.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. (The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money)

I put it to you that no rule consciously invented by mankind since we acquired speech has force equivalent to those inherited from perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred thousand generations of evolution in the wild state. I further suggest that the chief reason why modern society is in turmoil is that for too long we claimed that our special human talents could exempt us from the heritage written in our genes.

We’ve discovered that any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.” “Any species? Including man?” “Yes, obviously. That’s in fact what’s happening here.” “So you see that this—at least this—is not some mysterious wickedness peculiar to the human race. It isn’t some imponderable flaw in man that has made the people of your culture the destroyers of the world.” “No. The same thing would happen with any species, at least with any species strong enough to bring it off. Provided that every increase in food supply is answered by an increase in population.

This isn’t animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy. Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to

The point is that you have here a direct, unmistakable assault on sanity and decency; and even - since some of Dali’s pictures would tend to poison the imagination like a pornographic postcard - on life itself. What Dali has done and what he has imagined is debatable, but in his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist. He is as anti-social as a flea. Clearly, such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it. Now, if you showed this book, with its illustrations, to Lord Elton, to Mr. Alfred Noyes, to The Times leader writers who exult over the “eclipse of the highbrow” - in fact, to any “sensible” art-hating English person - it is easy to imagine what kind of response you would get. They would flatly refuse to see any merit in Dali whatever. Such people are not only unable to admit that what is morally degraded can be æsthetically right, but their real demand of every artist is that he shall pat them on the back and tell them that thought is unnecessary. And they can be especially dangerous at a time like the present, when the Ministry of Information and the British Council put power into their hands. For their impulse is not only to crush every new talent as it appears, but to castrate the past as well. Witness the renewed highbrow-baiting that is now going on in this country and America, with its outcry not only against Joyce, Proust and Lawrence, but even against T. S. Eliot. But if you talk to the kind of person who can see Dali’s merits, the response that you get is not as a rule very much better. If you say that Dali, though a brilliant draughtsman, is a dirty little scoundrel, you are looked upon as a savage. If you say that you don’t like rotting corpses, and that people who do like rotting corpses are mentally diseased, it is assumed that you lack the æsthetic sense. Since “Mannequin rotting in a taxicab” is a good composition. And between these two fallacies there is no middle position, but we seldom hear much about it. On the one side Kulturbolschewismus: on the other (though the phrase itself is out of fashion) “Art for Art’s sake.” Obscenity is a very difficult question to discuss honestly. People are too frightened either of seeming to be shocked or of seeming not to be shocked, to be able to define the relationship between art and morals. It will be seen that what the defenders of Dali are claiming is a kind of benefit of clergy. The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K.

Whether we like it or not,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “asking is the rule of the kingdom.” “Ask, and ye shall receive.” It is a rule that never will be altered in anybody’s case. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the. elder brother of the family, but God has not relaxed the rule for Him. Remember this text: Jehovah says to His own Son, “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the heaven for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” If the Royal and Divine Son of God cannot be exempted from the rule of asking that He may have, you and I cannot

Especially the call for a 28th Amendment. Alex had long been a proponent of changing the Constitution to ensure that every federal statute also applied equally to members of Congress. He’d hated how the legislative branch liked to exempt itself from laws imposed on everyone else, elevating Congress into some sort of ruling class.

the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

If priests—of all clans—were free of disease and immune to death, then there might be some basis for the claim of the religionists. But these "men of God" are victims of the natural course of life, "even as you and I." They enjoy no exemptions. They suffer the same ills; they feel the same sensations; they are subject to the same passions of the body, the same frailties of the mind, are victims of circumstances and misfortune, and they meet inevitable death just as every other person. They commit the same kind of crimes as other mortals, and especially, because of their "calling," many are notoriously involved in the embezzlement of church funds. Nor does their calling protect them from the "passions of the flesh." The scandalous conduct of many "men of the cloth," in the realm of moral turpitude, often ends in murder. That is why there are so many "men of God" in our jails, and why so many have paid the supreme penalty in the death chair. They are not free from a single rule of life; what others must endure, they likewise must experience. They cannot protect themselves from the forces of nature, and the laws of life, any more than you can. What they can do, you can do, too. Their claims of being "anointed" and "vicars of God" on earth are false and hypocritical. If they cannot fulfill their promises while you are alive, how can they accomplish them when you are dead? If they are impotent Here, where they could demonstrate their powers, how ridiculous are their promises to accomplish them in the "Hereafter," the mythical abode which exists only in their dishonest or deluded imagination?

influences. I took from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls that defending the dignity of others is never a lost cause whether you succeed or not. And I thrill to the exhortation in the poem that inspired the novel, to be “part of the main,” to be “involved in mankind.” It’s who we are. The right to life and liberty, to be governed by consent and ruled by laws, to have equal justice and protection of property, these values are the core of our national identity. And it is fidelity to them—not ethnicity or religion, culture or class—that makes one an American. To accept the abolition or abridgement of those rights in other societies should be no less false to Americans than their abridgment in our own society. Human rights are not our invention. They don’t represent standards from which particular cultures or religions can be exempted. They are universal. They exist above the state and beyond history. They cannot be rescinded by one government any more than they can be granted by another. That’s our creed. The authors put it right at the beginning of the manifesto they wrote to declare our independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

Who cheats? Well, just about anyone, if the stakes are right. You might say to yourself, I don’t cheat, regardless of the stakes. And then you might remember the time you cheated on, say, a board game. Last week. Or the golf ball you nudged out of its bad lie. Or the time you really wanted a bagel in the office break room but couldn’t come up with the dollar you were supposed to drop in the coffee can. And then took the bagel anyway. And told yourself you’d pay double the next time. And didn’t. For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it. Cheating may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor. Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more for less. So it isn’t just the boldface names — inside-trading CEOs and pill-popping ballplayers and perkabusing politicians — who cheat. It is the waitress who pockets her tips instead of pooling them. It is the Wal-Mart payroll manager who goes into the computer and shaves his employees’ hours to make his own performance look better. It is the third grader who, worried about not making it to the fourth grade, copies test answers from the kid sitting next to him. Some cheating leaves barely a shadow of evidence. In other cases, the evidence is massive. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly. It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing the name of each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number. Suddenly, seven million children — children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms — vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.

Polyamorists call for the respect of the cycles of desire, which are far from being linear. For them, the idea of breaking off a relationship simply because it is going through a dry period is as ridiculous as the idea of chopping down a tree in the winter simply because it has lost its leaves, forgetting that after winter comes spring. Of course, they are no more exempt from the pain of romantic breakups than the next person, but they make such decisions after mature reflection and not as a result of pressure from ruling hormonal, passionate impulses.

[T]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. . . . But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests which are dangerous for good or evil.25

Do you have any cheese preferences?” Jack asked. “All cheese is good cheese, Lend said. “True dat.” I nodded solemnly. “You did not just say ‘true dat,’” Arianna said, walking into the kitchen. “Because if you think you have any ability whatsoever to pull that off, we are going to have to have a long, long talk.” “Can I at least use it ironically? Or ‘dude.’ Can I use ‘dude?’ Because I really want to be able to use ‘dude.’” “No. No, you cannot, but thank you for asking. Besides, ironic use always segues into non-ironic use, and unless you suddenly become far cooler or far more actually Californian than you are now, I simply cannot allow it.” “But on Easton Heights—” “You are not going to bring up Cary’s cousin Trevyn’s multiepisode arc where he’s sent there as punishment for his pot-smoking surf-bum ways, are you? Because that arc sucked, and he wasn’t even very hot. Also, what’s the lunatic doing?” She jerked her head toward Jack. He flipped a gorgeous looking omelet onto a plate and placed it with a flourish in front of Lend. “I am providing insurance against frying pan boy deciding to enact all the very painful fantasies he’s no doubt entertained about me for the last few weeks. An omelet this good should rule out any dismemberment vengeance.” “Have you been reading his diary?” I asked. “Because I’ll bet he got really creative with the violence ideas.” “No, I only ever read yours. But let me tell you, one more exclamation mark dotted with a heart while talking about how good a kisser Lend is and I was about ready to do myself in. You’re rather single-minded when it comes to adoring him.” “True dat,” Arianna said, nodding. “How come you can use ‘true dat’ if I can’t?” I asked, rightfully outraged. “Because I’m dead, and none of the rules apply anymore.” Lend ate his omelet, refusing to answer Jack’s questions about just how delicious it was on a scale from cutting off limbs to just breaking his nose. I gave Jack full points for flavor but noted the texture was slightly off, exempting him from name-calling but not from dirty looks. Arianna lounged against the counter, and when I finished first we debated the usage rules of “dude,” “true dat,” and my favorite, “for serious.” “I kind of wish they’d shut up,” Jack said. “Dude, true dat,” Lend answered. Jack nodded solemnly. “For serious.

When it comes to pure economics, there’s increasingly robust agreement that the developing nations lost their chances to “catch up” economically with the First World around the early 1980s, when an explosion of debt, a turn to neoliberal structural adjustment, and “globalization” put them on their current path.8 Within the current structure, the only real examples of large Third World countries becoming as rich as those in the First World since 1945 are South Korea and Taiwan, and it’s very clear that these nations were given special exemptions from the rules of the world order because of their strategic importance in the Cold War.9

This issue was joined in a dispute over protection for the free exercise of religion that first divided the justices and then became the source of conflict between the Court and Congress. In a 1990 decision, the Court had withheld protection from individuals who claimed that their religious beliefs required an exemption from a generally applicable law. In that case, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, the Court ruled that American Indians who used the hallucinogenic drug peyote in religious rituals were not constitutionally entitled to unemployment benefits when they were fired for violating their employer’s rule against drug use.

We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true, that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority. ...Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? ...Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. ...What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another. [Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 20 June 1785. This was written in response to a proposed bill that would establish 'teachers of the Christian religion', violating the 1st Amendment's establishment clause]

The real catalyst for the Religious Right was a court decision, but it was not Roe v. Wade. It was a lower court ruling in the District Court for the District of Columbia in a case called Green v. Connally. On June 30, 1971, the court ruled that any organization that engaged in racial segregation or racial discrimination was not by definition a charitable institution, and therefore it had no claims on tax-exempt status. The Supreme Court’s Coit v. Green decision upheld the district court, and the Internal Revenue Service then began making inquiries about the racial policies of so-called segregation academies as well as the fundamentalist school Bob Jones University, in Greenville, South Carolina, which boasted a long history of racial exclusion.

If government had declined to build racially separate public housing in cities where segregation hadn’t previously taken root, and instead had scattered integrated developments throughout the community, those cities might have developed in a less racially toxic fashion, with fewer desperate ghettos and more diverse suburbs. If the federal government had not urged suburbs to adopt exclusionary zoning laws, white flight would have been minimized because there would have been fewer racially exclusive suburbs to which frightened homeowners could flee. If the government had told developers that they could have FHA guarantees only if the homes they built were open to all, integrated working-class suburbs would likely have matured with both African Americans and whites sharing the benefits. If state courts had not blessed private discrimination by ordering the eviction of African American homeowners in neighborhoods where association rules and restrictive covenants barred their residence, middle-class African Americans would have been able gradually to integrate previously white communities as they developed the financial means to do so. If churches, universities, and hospitals had faced loss of tax-exempt status for their promotion of restrictive covenants, they most likely would have refrained from such activity. If police had arrested, rather than encouraged, leaders of mob violence when African Americans moved into previously white neighborhoods, racial transitions would have been smoother. If state real estate commissions had denied licenses to brokers who claimed an “ethical” obligation to impose segregation, those brokers might have guided the evolution of interracial neighborhoods. If school boards had not placed schools and drawn attendance boundaries to ensure the separation of black and white pupils, families might not have had to relocate to have access to education for their children. If federal and state highway planners had not used urban interstates to demolish African American neighborhoods and force their residents deeper into urban ghettos, black impoverishment would have lessened, and some displaced families might have accumulated the resources to improve their housing and its location. If government had given African Americans the same labor-market rights that other citizens enjoyed, African American working-class families would not have been trapped in lower-income minority communities, from lack of funds to live elsewhere. If the federal government had not exploited the racial boundaries it had created in metropolitan areas, by spending billions on tax breaks for single-family suburban homeowners, while failing to spend adequate funds on transportation networks that could bring African Americans to job opportunities, the inequality on which segregation feeds would have diminished. If federal programs were not, even to this day, reinforcing racial isolation by disproportionately directing low-income African Americans who receive housing assistance into the segregated neighborhoods that government had previously established, we might see many more inclusive communities. Undoing the effects of de jure segregation will be incomparably difficult. To make a start, we will first have to contemplate what we have collectively done and, on behalf of our government, accept responsibility.

All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.

More specifically, this book will try to establish the following points. First, there are not two great liberal social and political systems but three. One is democracy—political liberalism—by which we decide who is entitled to use force; another is capitalism—economic liberalism—by which we decide how to allocate resources. The third is liberal science, by which we decide who is right. Second, the third system has been astoundingly successful, not merely as a producer of technology but also, far more important, as a peacemaker and builder of social bridges. Its great advantages as a social system for raising and settling differences of opinion are inherent, not incidental. However, its disadvantages—it causes pain and suffering, it creates legions of losers and outsiders, it is disorienting and unsettling, it allows and even thrives on prejudice and bias—are also inherent. And today it is once again under attack. Third, the attackers seek to undermine the two social rules which make liberal science possible. (I’ll outline them in the next chapter and elaborate them in the rest of the book.) For the system to function, people must try to follow those rules even if they would prefer not to. Unfortunately, many people are forgetting them, ignoring them, or carving out exemptions. That trend must be fought, because, fourth, the alternatives to liberal science lead straight to authoritarianism. And intellectual authoritarianism, although once the province of the religious and the political right in America, is now flourishing among the secular and the political left. Fifth, behind the new authoritarian push are three idealistic impulses: Fundamentalists want to protect the truth. Egalitarians want to help the oppressed and let in the excluded. Humanitarians want to stop verbal violence and the pain it causes. The three impulses are now working in concert. Sixth, fundamentalism, properly understood, is not about religion. It is about the inability to seriously entertain the possibility that one might be wrong. In individuals such fundamentalism is natural and, within reason, desirable. But when it becomes the foundation for an intellectual system, it is inherently a threat to freedom of thought. Seventh, there is no way to advance knowledge peacefully and productively by adhering to the principles advocated by egalitarians and humanitarians. Their principles are poisonous to liberal science and ultimately to peace and freedom. Eighth, no social principle in the world is more foolish and dangerous than the rapidly rising notion that hurtful words and ideas are a form of violence or torture (e.g., “harassment”) and that their perpetrators should be treated accordingly. That notion leads to the criminalization of criticism and the empowerment of authorities to regulate it. The new sensitivity is the old authoritarianism in disguise, and it is just as noxious.

the order in which Genesis reports on God and Noah is significant. First it tells us Noah found grace with God. Then it tells us Noah was a person of faithfulness and integrity, and someone who walked about with God like Enoch. Then it tells us how God gave Noah instructions for surviving the coming destruction. Messing with any aspect of the order in this story messes up the theology. Noah is indeed a person of faithfulness and unique integrity, but that somehow follows from God’s grace rather than being its cause. There is a link between grace and faithfulness or integrity, but the link is that grace generates faithfulness and integrity, not the other way around. And if faithfulness and integrity had not followed from finding grace, then the story would have miscarried; God would have had to think again. God exempts Noah from the destruction and makes him the head of a new humanity because Noah turns out to be an unexpected exception to that general rule that “all the inclinations of the plans of people’s heart’s was only wrong, all the time”; but that happens only because Noah found grace or grace found Noah.

Here is another weird example of the privileging of religion. On 21 February 2006 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in accordance with the Constitution, that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs. Faithful members of Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet, again in accordance with the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court they they 'believe' they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman.

On 21 February 2006 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in accordance with the Constitution, that a church in New Mexico should be exempt from the law, which everybody else has to obey, against the taking of hallucinogenic drugs.8 Faithful members of the Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal believe that they can understand God only by drinking hoasca tea, which contains the illegal hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine. Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances their understanding. They do not have to produce evidence. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer sufferers undergoing chemotherapy. Yet, again in accordance with the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where such specialist use is legalized). Religion, as ever, is the trump card. Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court that they ‘believe’ they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman.

After that preacher told me to quit thinking, I began thinking harder. I did my research. Turns out, the memo he was trying to pass me—“A good Christian bases her faith on disapproving of gays and abortion”—started being issued only forty years ago. In the 1970s, a few rich, powerful, white, (outwardly) straight men got worried about losing their right to continue racially segregating their private Christian schools and maintaining their tax-exempt status. Those men began to feel their money and power being threatened by the civil rights movement. In order to regain control, they needed to identify an issue that would be emotional and galvanizing enough to unite and politically activate their evangelical followers for the first time. They decided to focus on abortion. Before then—a full six years after the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision—the prevailing evangelical position was that life began with the baby’s first breath, at birth. Most evangelical leaders had been indifferent to the Court’s decision in Roe, and some were cited as supporting the ruling. Not anymore. They wrote a new memo using freshly feigned outrage and rhetoric calling for “a holy war…to lead the nation back to the moral stance that made America great.” They sponsored a meeting of 15,000 pastors—called The Religious Roundtable—to train pastors on how to convince their congregations to vote for antichoice, antigay candidates. This is how they disseminated the memo down to evangelical ministers, who passed it down to pews across America. The memo read, To be aligned with Jesus, to have family values, to be moral, one must be against abortion and gay people and vote for the candidate that is antiabortion and antigay.

Lacking valid reasons to justify himself and sufficient strength to defend himself, easily crushing an individual, but himself crushed by gangs of bandits, alone against everyone and, because of mutual jealousies, unable to join with his equals against an enemy united by a common hope of pillage, the rich man, hard pressed by necessity, eventually conceived the most cleverly designed project which has ever entered the human mind. That was to use to his advantage the very forces of those who were attacking him, to turn his enemies into his defenders, to inspire them with other maxims, and to give them other institutions which were as beneficial to him as natural right was against him. With this in mind, after showing his neighbours the horror of a situation which armed them all against the others, which made their possessions as onerous as their needs, and in which no one found his security either in poverty or in wealth, he easily came up with specious reasons to lead them to his goal. "Let us unite," he said to them, "to protect the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambitious, and to assure to each man the possession of what belongs to him. Let us set up rules of justice and peace to which everyone is obliged to conform, which do not exempt any one, and which in some way make up for the whims of fortune, by subjecting the powerful and the weak equally to mutual obligations. In a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us collect them into one supreme power which governs us according to wise laws and which protects and defends all the members of the association, repels common enemies, and keeps us in an eternal harmony." He required much less than the equivalent of this speech to convince crude and easily seduced men, who, in addition, had too many things to disentangle among themselves to be able to go without arbitrators and too much avarice and ambition to be able to do without masters for any length of time. They all rushed headlong into their chains, believing they were guaranteeing their liberty.

She shoved me out of the bed! The realization hit him as hard as the floor. His feline grace failed him. Far from hanging its head in shame, his inner lion rolled in mirth, tufted tail practically wagging. Not funny. Except it was. He had a feeling this more assertive side of Arabella was his fault. Since the moment they’d met, he’d encouraged her to not take any shit, and apparently she’d decided to start with him. Dammit. When he’d told her to not let the world stomp all over her, he should have specified his exemption. I’m her mate. Isn’t there a rule that says she can’t kick me out of bed? Except she’d yet to realize what he had. Was it only a day ago since his life changed? Not even. At this rate, he’d be picking out fucking China patterns by noon. Completely emasculated and by a woman who wanted nothing to do with him. Flipping to his knees, he sat up and rested his chin on the mattress. Arabella faced him, eyes wary, breathing shallow as she waited for his reaction. More like she waited to see if he’d explode. She’d learn. Hayder would never harm her, but he would use his infamous kitty-cat eyes against her. He stared. You know you want me. You know you need me. Come on, baby. Melt. Melt for your lion. She stared right back. Hmm, this wasn’t working as planned. He let the left side of his lip curl into a grin, tugging his cheek and popping his infamous dimple. “I know what you’re doing.” “What?” “Trying to manipulate me into letting you back into bed.” “Is it working?” For a moment her expression shifted, a quick flip of emotions as she struggled to answer. “Yes it’s working. But I wish it wasn’t.” “Why? Why fight it?” “Because I think I need time.” It turned out there was something more powerful than his dimple. Her honesty. He groaned. “I think you were sent to kill me. Fine. If you insist, I’ll respect you even if I’d rather debauch you.” Her eyes widened. “Respect doesn’t mean I’m going to lie, baby. I want you. Bad. But I’ll listen to what you want. For now.” And, yes, he said it ominously. Let her think about it. Think about him. Soon even she wouldn’t be able to deny they were meant for each other. He stood, all six foot plus naked feet of him. And, yes, that did put a certain part of his anatomy in perfect view of a certain shocked gaze. A sucked-in breath, cheeks that darkened, a certain awareness sizzling between them. She couldn’t hope to hide her pleasure or interest in what she saw. “Sweet dreams, baby.” He winked and then turned, resisting an urge to catch her staring at his ass. He knew she was. He could feel the crazy heat as she traced his path out of the room. Go back. Want to snuggle. His lion couldn’t understand why they were back in the living room with its cramped couch that wouldn’t allow him to stretch out. Why couldn’t they snuggle in the nice warm bed and, even better, cuddle with a nice warm mate? Respect, my furry friend. A lion had no use for respect though. His worldview was much simpler. Ours. Bed. Hungry. Not hungry for a steak but, rather, a sweet, creamy pie. Hayder groaned. No need to keep reminding him of what he was missing. He knew. He hated it, but her wants had to take precedence over his. Argh.

Tensions also arose with the local landlord, a Polish noble who demanded that Mennonite settlers on his lands perform the same scutage services provided by Polish settlers. For Mennonites, who had come as free persons and not as serfs, this seemed a novel and extraordinary request. A number of them began to look for better opportunities elsewhere.41 In 1764, delegates from Jeziorka went to Berlin to explore settlement pos- sibilities.42 Such a move would mean leaving Polish jurisdiction and moving to lands ruled by Frederick II. One of the king's officials, Franz Balthasar Schonberg von Brenkenhoff, was charged with bringing new settlers to the Netze (Noted) River region, near Driesen in Brandenburg, some 130 miles west of Toruri.43 When he invited Mennonites to settle there, they accepted. In 1764, twenty-eight Mennonite families received settlement rights, with specified privileges. They were granted religious freedom, exemption from military service and the swearing of oaths, and each received forty morgen of land. Later they also received permission to establish and maintain their own schools. In the spring of 1765, thirty-five families arrived at their new home; the twenty-eight from Jeziorka had been joined by others from Przechowka and Sch6nsee.44 Several treks eventually brought some 166 Mennonites to the area.45

The churches were likely relatively small throughout the second century, though they were found all over the world. Persecution was intermittent, but could arise at any time because Christians refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, a public obligation for everyone in the Roman empire except Jews, who had a special exemption (an exemption that was likely not always honored). By the third century, though, Tertullian, a Christian apologist, could argue that if the emperor were to banish all Christians from his empire he would have no subjects left to rule over. While this is a gross exaggeration, it does make it clear that he understood Christianity to be both widespread and popular. I have read estimates that suggested that 10% of Roman residents were Christian by the end of the third century, but there is no way to know how accurate that number is.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are wrong and when they are right are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Reich would soon back a request from Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s white-haired, unnaturally tanned CEO. Mozilo wanted an exemption from the Section 23A rules that prevented Countrywide’s holding company from tapping the discount window through a savings institution it owned. Sheila and the FDIC were justifiably skeptical, as was Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in whose district Countrywide’s headquarters were located. Lending indirectly to Countrywide would be risky. It might well already be insolvent and unable to pay us back. The day after the discount rate cut, Don Kohn relayed word that Janet was recommending a swift rejection of Mozilo’s request for a 23A exemption. She believed, Don said, that Mozilo “is in denial about the prospects for his company and it needs to be sold.” Countrywide found its reprieve in the form of a confidence-boosting $2 billion equity investment from Bank of America on August 22—not quite the sale that Janet thought was needed, but the first step toward an eventual acquisition by Bank of America. Countrywide formally withdrew its request for a 23A exemption on Thursday August 30 as I was flying to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to speak at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economic symposium. The theme of the conference, chosen long before, was “Housing, Housing Finance, and Monetary Policy.

Hillary protested that despite a past multimillion-dollar book advance for her, and multimillion-dollar speaking fees lined up for Bill, they left the presidency “broke” [7] in 2001. When that trope did not work, Hillary turned to the now well-known theory of medieval exemption: they could not possibly be greedy (in the sense of ignoring the Obama rule that a multimillionaire must know when not to profit and at what point she has already made enough money), because they were lifelong liberals who had worked their tails off for social justice.

The code sought to uphold accessible law, not favoring privileges by birth, religion, or superstition, nor based on local customs, exemptions, or feudal Lords. Under the penal code only true crimes, not phony offenses were outlawed. A code of civil procedure, a commercial code, a code of Criminal instructions was published, declaring the rights of citizens presumed innocent until declared guilty. It is one of the few positive documents to have influence on the rule of law to this day.

organizations. The book introduces the unrelated business rules (including a history of and rationale for these rules), analyzes the meaning of the term trade or business and the factors taken into account in determining whether a business is related or unrelated, explores the many modifications and exceptions that enrich this part of exempt organizations law, and summarizes the unrelated debt-financed income rules and the doctrine of commerciality. This book delves much deeper than I could in the The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations (Eight Edition) , digging into topics such as the special rules for social clubs, the advertising rules, the corporate sponsorship rules, and the application of this aspect of

The signs to watch out for are the combination of seeing the person as special and experiencing instant rapport. Narcissistic Superstars create an alternate reality in which they are the greatest, and you will be the greatest too if you just give them what they want. In their world, all you’re supposed to want in return is the pleasure of their company. They work hard to make you see them as special enough to be exempt from the rules that apply to other people.

Concentration of the limbs is characteristic of classic plastics: the tout ensemble is absolutely governed from within, the spirit and the feeling of life governing the whole embrace uniformly every single part, because of the perceptible unity of the object. [...] It is due exclusively to the concentration of the object, which concentration permits no part to bear any relation to any extraneous powers and fortunes and thereby incites the feeling that this formation is exempt from the changing influences of general life. In contrast to this everything odd, extreme and unusual will be drawn to fashion from within [...] The widely projecting limbs in baroque statues seem to be in perpetual danger of being broken off, the inner life of the figure does not exercise complete control over them, but turns them over a prey to the chance influences of external life. Baroque forms in themselves lack repose, they seem ruled by chance and subjected to the momentary impulse, which fashion expresses as a form of social life.

Love is so valuable that God has deemed it worth all the pain and evil that result from our free will. Jesus was not exempt from that pain. In fact, his whole reason for coming was to suffer and bear the consequences of our sin. He endured the cross, not just for nameless humanity, but for me and for you, personally. His life, death, and resurrection provided a bridge to an eternal life where suffering will only be a memory, but its lessons will shape eternity. There are no more tears in Heaven because love will be the only law, ruling in every heart.

The shape of authority on the trading floor depends heavily on how much money a particular group is making. For the past several years, the most desirable jobs by far on Wall Street have been in derivatives groups, and those groups have usually ruled the floor. In general, if you aren’t in derivatives, the closer you are to government bond trading—the hub of the bond trading floor—the better. Surrounding the trading of government bonds, known as govvies, are the middle-tier jobs, including foreign exchange, mortgage trading, and corporate bonds. Less desirable jobs may not even be on the trading floor. Equity sales is bad. Private client sales may be worse. One of the worst jobs, for example, is selling money market instruments in Philadelphia, assuming the firm still has a Philadelphia office, which many do not. The worst jobs of all are in the municipal bond department. “Munis” are bonds, usually tax-exempt, that municipalities, states, or other local governmental entities issue to pay for roads, education, sewers, and so forth. Munis can be found in the backwaters of the trading floor and the wasteland of investment banking. Before I took the training examination at First Boston and was told, “You’d better do well on the exam…or else,” I knew very well what the “or else” meant: “or else you’ll end up in munis.

In the 1970s, a few rich, powerful, white, (outwardly) straight men got worried about losing their right to continue racially segregating their private Christian schools and maintaining their tax-exempt status. Those men began to feel their money and power being threatened by the civil rights movement. In order to regain control, they needed to identify an issue that would be emotional and galvanizing enough to unite and politically activate their evangelical followers for the first time. They decided to focus on abortion. Before then—a full six years after the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision—the prevailing evangelical position was that life began with the baby’s first breath, at birth. Most evangelical leaders had been indifferent to the Court’s decision in Roe, and some were cited as supporting the ruling. Not anymore.

By your reasoning, you want the rules of capitalism to apply solely to the employees of SMP, while you and the stockholders will be exempt.

First, reframe the purpose of taxes to help build social consensus for the kind of higher-tax, higher-returns public sector that has been a proven success in many Scandinavian countries. And remember, the verbal framing expert George Lakoff advises to choose your words wisely: don’t oppose tax relief—talk about tax justice. Likewise, the notion of public spending is often used by those who oppose it to evoke a never-ending outlay. Public investment, on the other hand, focuses on the public goods—such as high-quality schools and effective public transport—that underpin collective well-being.57 Second, end the extraordinary injustice of tax loopholes, offshore havens, profit shifting and special exemptions that allow many of the world’s richest people and largest corporations—from Amazon to Zara—to pay negligible tax in the countries in which they live and do business. At least $18.5 trillion is hidden by wealthy individuals in tax havens worldwide, representing an annual loss of more than $156 billion in tax revenue, a sum that could end extreme income poverty twice over.58 At the same time, transnational corporations shift around $660 billion of their profits each year to near-zero tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda and Luxembourg.59 The Global Alliance for Tax Justice is among those focused on tackling this, campaigning worldwide for greater corporate transparency and accountability, fair international tax rules, and progressive national tax systems.60 Third, shifting both personal and corporate taxation away from taxing income streams and towards taxing accumulated wealth—such as real estate and financial assets—will diminish the role played by a growing GDP in ensuring sufficient tax revenue. Of course progressive tax reforms such as these can quickly encounter pushback from the corporate lobby, along with claims of state incompetence and corruption. This only reinforces the importance of strong civic engagement in promoting and defending political democracies that can hold the state to account.

Larry Elford worked inside Canadian investment dealers for two decades. He saw how high status persons and corporate entities were not subject to the same application of rules or laws as others. Higher status entities were able to “police themselves” or retain their own regulators to “police” their business activities. He learned how status plus this ability to “self regulate”, allowed the growth of corrupt practices, without having to worry that a policeman would come to the office door. Self-regulation also granted the privilege of being able to quietly purchase “exemption” from laws, to further enable corrupt practices without public knowledge or consequences. Not willing to be an accomplice to harming the public, he spoke out as instructed by codes of conduct and ethics. Those calls for ethics were not welcomed and he felt forced to leave the industry. He released a documentary film in 2009, titled “Breach of Trust, the Unique Violence of White Collar Crime”, after becoming aware of the suicide of an investment industry whistleblower. This person was bullied to his death by industry lawyers and those who used the courts as a mechanism to “hush” persons who spoke about abusive practices. He gradually learned more about unwritten “codes of silence”, which usually received priority over written codes of ethics. The truth teller is most often drummed out of the business, rather than being thanked for the honesty and protection of the firm’s reputation. The “Unique Violence” he learned about white collar crime is that there is little

Where do people get the idea that they deserve special treatment, that they are somehow above or exempt from the rules? A few places. First, it is taught—typically by parents.

To get this special exemption from the passive loss rules, you (or your spouse) have to meet both of these requirements: 1. Spend more than half of your total working hours for the year in real estate activities 2. Spend more than 750 hours in real estate activities where you “materially participate” (which means you are regularly, continuously, and substantially involved)

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. Madman in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

Rule of the game of life, no excuse exempted.

Somehow (and I am not sure the full story of how it happened ever became public) the three networks—CBS, ABC and NBC—wound up donating their weekly half-hour public affairs interview programs to the two candidates. "Meet the Press", "Face the Nation", and "Issues and Answers" were all stretched to an hour and rescheduled to provide, in effect, three one-hour debates between Humphrey and McGovern during the last full week before the California primary. Tom Asher filed a protest on my behalf with the Federal Communications Commission, citing section 315 of the Federal Communication Act, which says that if any broadcasting station permits itself to be used by any legally qualified candidate for an office, it must permit equal opportunities to all other candidates. The networks claimed that the three programs were regular interview shows, and exempt from the rule. The Federal Communications Commission upheld the networks, and Asher went to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Within hours after the FCC ruling, the court issued an order reversing the commission and ordering ABC and CBS each to provide me with one half-hour of prime air time. NBC had conceded earlier and scheduled me on one half-hour of its morning program, "Today.

The Colonial Office maintained that land speculators such as the New Zealand Company were a threat to Māori, hence the need for the Crown pre-emption clause of article two. However, rather than protecting Māori, Crown policy based on pre-emption became an effective means of divesting Māori of their lands. Indeed, during Crown colony rule and under the Liberal government, millions of acres were acquired for Pākehā settlement. The privilege of protection was not just about protecting Māori land rights, it was also about amalgamating Māori into settler colonial society. It was envisaged that English law would eventually supplant Māori custom. At first the Crown sought to do this gradually through ‘official’ privileges such as the Protectorate of Aborigines (to ensure Māori interests were taken into account in land transactions) and the Native Exemption Ordinance (to utilise the authority of chiefs in disseminating British law). Pre-emption, the Protectorate of Aborigines and the Native Exemption Ordinance were in essence tools of amalgamation.

Wittgenstein insightfully noted that doubt presupposes the mastery of a language, its procedures and rules. Doubt cannot be so radical that it calls into question the very meanings of the words used to express it; to doubt a sentence, you need first to understand what is meant by the sentence. Thus, 'if you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either.' So also, a reasonable suspicion about some assertion requires specific-not just imaginable-grounds. One could always imagine that what is described in some indicative sentence, p, is actually the contrary, not-p; yet doubting p would be idle unless a concrete reason against p could be offered, Therefore, the very activity of doubting requires a context of accepted beliefs; one can doubt only if he first has learned to handle a language and to use some judgements to call other judgements into question. Learning precedes doubt, and learning precludes doubting everything; to get on with learning, the student must not doubt certain things. 'For how can a child immediately doubt what it is taught? That could mean only that he was incapable pf learning certain language games.' These observations have important epistemological consequences. 'The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief. Also 'doubt itself rests only on what is beyond doubt. Thus, 'a doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt.; In short, Wittgenstein has shown universal doubt to be impossible. Doubt requires the testing of assertions, but testing comes to and end and thus assumes something which is not tested; therefore, 'the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. Wittgenstein's conclusion on this point is surely one with which we should agree: 'If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubt itself presupposes certainty.

Considering the long-shot nature of its petition against Fahrenheit 9/11, it is worthwhile to consider whether Citizens United was mainly interested in hectoring the marketing strategy for that film, or whether it had ulterior motives in mind. One possibility is that Citizens United had recognized an opportunity to test whether the FEC would grant a “media exception” from the electioneering rules to companies producing documentary films. The BCRA allowed such exemptions for material that appeared “in a news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of a broadcast, cable, or satellite television or radio station.” Though it was banned from traditional “electioneering” due to its corporate structure, Citizens United might have believed in 2004 that the FEC would distinguish between documentary films and campaign advertising, allowing corporate producers of the former to air ads with candidate images. Such a decision would have allowed it to create and market similar movies advocating conservative ideas.

Citizens United got its day in court on March 24, 2009. Its counsel, Theodore Olson, got straight to the point in arguing that byzantine federal campaign finance rules were infringing on the First Amendment rights of citizens and groups alike. Freedom of speech, he said, was “being smothered by one of the most complicated, expensive, and incomprehensible regulatory regimes ever invented by the administrative state.” Olson argued that it was unfair to exempt media corporations (whose primary focus was disseminating information) from penalty while punishing a group like Citizens United, which had done nothing more than create a film that was “the very definition of robust, uninhibited debate about a subject of intense political interest that the First Amendment is there to guarantee.

By the time Citizens United’s case reached the federal court system, however, there were signs that the Supreme Court might be willing to soften its position on direct corporate expenditures. In its 2007 opinion in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (551 U.S. 449), the Court carved out some significant exemptions that allowed corporate funding for express advocacy. In that case, Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (WRTL) had run afoul of the FEC for airing ads that were critical of Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold’s voting record on abortion, even though the group did not explicitly tell voters to withhold support from him. The group’s defense was that because its ads were ostensibly informative on a policy dimension, they should not be considered “electioneering” and should be protected speech. The Court agreed, holding that in order to be banned under the BCRA electioneering rules, an ad’s only purpose must be to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a named candidate. In formulating their opinion in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues in the majority positioned themselves as defenders of speech rights, writing that “the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.

My expression and view about Freedom of the Press in Quotation --- The mafia’s presence in the media limits the freedom of the press, whether in uniform or a stunning civil costume. Intelligence agencies media, trade media, political parties’ media, blackmailer media, mafia media, and other media, but there is no neutral and free media; forget freedom of the press in this context. Don’t be a coward; never beg for your freedom or forget your rights; resist tyranny at all corners. The abuse, insult, humiliation, and discrimination against whatever subject is not freedom of expression and writing; it is a violation and denial of global harmony and peace. Press and speech that deliberately trigger hatred and violation fall not under the freedom of the press and speech since restrictions for morale and peace apply to everyone without exemption. Press freedom is one significant pillar of true democracy, but such democracy stays deaf, dumb, and blind, which restricts or represses the media. The neutral and honest print and electronic media are free advisers, mirrors, information, and opinions of the nation for ruling and non-ruling political parties. Thus, such media deserve subsidies without distinctions to stay stable as the fourth pillar of democracy.

Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Media — — — * Words matter and mirror if your head is a dictionary of insight and your feelings are alive. * Sure, fake news catches and succeeds attention, but for a while; however, it embraces disregard and unreliability forever. * Media rule the incompetent minds and pointless believers. * A real journalist only states, neither collaborates nor participates. * The majority of journalists and anchors have the information only but not the sense of knowledge. * When the media encourages and highlights the wrong ones, anti-democratic figures, criminals in uniform, and dictators in a supreme authority and brilliant context, sure, such a state never survives the breakdown of prosperity and civil rights, as well as human rights. Thus, the media is accountable and responsible for this as one of the democratic pillars. *Media cannot be a football ground or a tool for anyone. It penetrates the elementary pillar of a state, it forms and represents the language of entire humanity within its perception of love, peace, respect, justice, harmony, and human rights, far from enmity and distinctions. Accordingly, it demonstrates its credibility and neutrality. * When the non-Western wrongly criticizes and abuses its culture, religion, and values, the Western media highlights that often, appreciating in all dimensions. However, if the same one even points out only such subjects, as a question about Western distinctive attitude and role, the West flies and falls at its lowest level, contradicting its principles of neutrality and freedom of press and speech, which pictures, not only double standards but also double dishonesty with itself and readers. Despite that, Western media bother not to realize and feel ignominy and moral and professional stigma. * Social Media has become the global dustbin of idiocy and acuity. It stinks now. Anyone is there to separate and recycle that. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean to constitute insulting, abusing, and harming deliberately in a distinctive and discriminative feature and context, whereas supporting such notions and attempts is a universal crime. * Social media is a place where you share your favourite poetry, quotes, songs, news, social activities, and reports. You can like something, you can comment, and you can use humour in a civilised way. It is social media, but it is not a place to love or be loved. Any lover does not exist here, and no one is serious in this regard. Just enjoy yourself and do not try to fool anyone. If you do that, it means you are making yourself a fool; it is a waste of time, and it is your defeat too. * I use social media only to devote and denote my thoughts voluntarily for the motivation of knowledge, not to earn money as greedy-minded. * One should not take seriously the Social-Media fools and idiots. * Today, on social media, how many are on duty? * Journalists voluntarily fight for human rights and freedom of speech, whereas they stay silent for their rights and journalistic freedom on the will and restrictions of the boss of the media. Indeed, it verifies that The nearer the church, the farther from god. * The abuse, insult, humiliation, and discrimination against whatever subject is not freedom of expression and writing; it is a violation and denial of global harmony and peace. * Press freedom is one significant pillar of true democracy pillars, but such democracy stays deaf, dumb, and blind, which restricts or represses the media. * Press and speech that deliberately trigger hatred and violation fall not under the freedom of press and speech since restrictions for morale and peace apply to everyone without exemption. * Real press freedom is just a dream, which nowhere in the world becomes a reality; however, journalists stay dreaming that.

The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly. It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing the name of each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number. Suddenly, seven million children—children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms—vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.

If error is a key part of innovation, then one of America’s greatest advantages has come from its relatively benign attitude to business failure. Bankruptcy laws in most American states have allowed innovators to ‘fail fast and fail often’ as the Silicon Valley slogan has it. In some states, the ‘homestead exemption’ essentially allows an entrepreneur to keep his or her home if their business fails under Chapter 7 bankruptcy rules. Those

In September 1982, the Federal Bankruptcy Court of New York ruled that a Repo was a separate sell and buy transaction, meaning it was not a collateralized loan. The court recognized that allowing prompt liquidation was necessary to continue the orderly functioning of the market. Then, two years later in 1984, Congress passed an extension of the federal bankruptcy laws so that Repo transactions in Treasurys, federal agencies, bank CDs, and BAs were exempt from the automatic stays in bankruptcy by law.

Congress routinely exempted itself from the laws it imposed on the citizens, much as the ruling parties in Russia and China do. Consequently, the five hundred thirty-five members of Congress could freely and legally trade stocks on inside information whereas the other three hundred million Americans could not. Frank disagreed with the law, but it was still the law.

Mr. VITTER. Will the Senator yield for a question?   Mr. CRUZ. I am happy to yield for a question without yielding the floor.   Mr. VITTER. I thank the Senator. Does he acknowledge that he understands, as I do, that as this monstrosity goes into effect October 1 and as it has all of these really devastating impacts on individuals and small businesses, under a special illegal rule from the Obama administration, Congress and Washington get an exemption; they get a special pass; they get a special deal no other American gets under the law?   Mr. CRUZ. I thank the Senator for his question, and he is absolutely right. There are many scandalous aspects of ObamaCare: how it was passed--on a brutal partisan vote rammed through with late-night deals that have earned rather infamous nicknames, such as the ``Cornhusker kickback,'' which has sadly become part of modern political lore; and the ``Louisiana purchase,'' with all due respect to my friend from the great State of Louisiana, who was not involved in that. And one of the most sorry aspects of ObamaCare is the aspect Senator Vitter refers to, which is that President Obama has chosen, at the behest of majority leader Harry Reid, at the behest of Democratic Members of the Senate, to exempt Members of Congress and their staff from the plain language of the statute.   When

I want to take a minute, in response to this question, to commend the Senator from Louisiana. Senator Vitter introduced an amendment to reverse this exemption, and it was a bold amendment. It was an amendment that said we as Members of Congress should be subject to the same rules as the American people. We shouldn't be treated by special or different rules for us. Indeed, the amendment of Senator Vitter said Members of Congress should be subject to ObamaCare, our staff should be subject to ObamaCare, and members of the administration--the political appointees of the Obama administration, who, by the way, are not in the exchanges--should be too. So if the President and Cabinet appointees and his political officials want to go into communities and tell everyone how wonderful ObamaCare is, then let them do so from personal experience. Let them do so not being exempted but subject to the same exchanges and subject to the same rules the American people are.   The

When ObamaCare was being passed, Senator Chuck Grassley--a towering giant in this body; a strong, principled conservative--introduced a commonsense provision to ObamaCare that said: If you are going to force ObamaCare on the American people, if you are going to create these health insurance exchanges and you are going to force millions of people into these exchanges, then Congress should not operate by better rules than the American people. So he introduced a simple amendment designed to treat Members of Congress just like the American people so that we didn't have this two-class system.   It has been reported--I was not serving in this body at the time--that amendment was voted on and accepted because Democratic Senators believed the bill would go to conference and in the conference committee they could strip it out and it would magically disappear. But then, because of the procedural games it took to pass it, they didn't have the opportunity to do that, and suddenly, horror of all horrors, this bill saying Congress should be bound by the same rules as the American people became the law of the land.   So what happened? Majority leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senators had a closed-door meeting with the President here in the Capitol where they said, according to public news reports: Let us out of ObamaCare. We don't want to be in these exchanges.   One would assume they are reading the same news reports the rest of us are reading--that ObamaCare is a train wreck, that it is not working--and the last thing Members of Congress wanted to do was to have their health care jeopardized. And the President directed his administration to exempt Members of Congress and their staff, ignoring the language of the statute, disregarding the language of the statute and saying: You guys are friends of the administration. We are taking care of you.   I

One of the reasons people are so unhappy with Washington is they get a sense that there are special rules that apply. Wall Street gets special exemptions, the big banks get special exemptions. Dodd-Frank sets up rules that hammer small banks, hammer community banks, hammer the little guy. But what happens to the big guys? They keep getting bigger. Why? Because they get rules made in Washington that favor the big guy over the little guy. And you wonder why there is such dissatisfaction in this country. But if you have political friends in this administration, you too can get an exemption.   Labor

What are we left with then? We are left with a system where ObamaCare is a rule for, as Leona Helmsley so famously described them, the little people. For everybody who doesn't have power and juice and connections in Washington, for everyone--look for the men and women at home, maybe you have an army of lobbyists working for you. Maybe you have Senators' cell phones on your speed dial. Maybe you can walk the corridors of power. In that case you too get an exemption. But if you are just a hard-working American, if you are just trying to provide for your family, if you are just trying to do an honest day's work, make your community better, raise your kids, set a good example, then the message this President has sent--and sadly the message the Senate has sent--is you don't count. We are going to treat everybody else better than you.   That

Yet economics purports to be strangely exempt from this fact of life. From Adam Smith's day to our own, the chief concern of the discipline has been to render economic events unsurprising...The discernment of orderly rules governing the apparent chaos of life was a remarkable achievement and continues to amaze.

If we’re energetic beings inseparable from the Universal life force, we don’t need any outside system to make decisions for us or tell us how our energy can be raised or lowered. We’re all unique, so no one can really make blanket rules about what’s right for us. However, this is what many organized spiritual systems and religions seem to do. Once a structure is established, everyone is expected to follow the same tenets. Those who choose not to are judged negatively, and that’s how and why organized religions create divisiveness and strife instead of the unity that they’re trying to establish with those very rules. Following a religious path doesn’t necessarily exempt us from living a life of fear or even victimizing others. Following a personal spiritual path, however, means to follow the promptings of our own inner being and taps into the infinite self we all are at our core. It’s

Face MASK" By Aron Micko H.B I took hours waiting like a waiter; Took a vaccine but no in booster. I have a vaccine card, beholder; We are full in the shop of a barber. I wait so long en always adjuster; My phone missing some adapter. Sad face because I ain't achiever; Liking, I try and stand again after. Saw the rules said in the banner; I'd someone disobeyed, a baker. Forgetting bcoz I saw sunflower; Exempted works like manpower. My one wish is to have a superpower; Far distance looks like an admirer. Smiling and staying in the tower; It takes a year to give you a flower. 3/9/2022

Thessalonica was allowed self-rule and was exempt from most of the restrictions placed by Rome on other cities.

But . . . but . . . my Muslim friends tell me Islam is peaceful! Your Muslim friends may indeed be peaceful and reject these teachings. Or they may not know about them, because their teachers did not emphasize them. Or, they may be lying. It’s unfortunate, but true: Islam is the only major religion with a developed doctrine of deception. Many believe this doctrine, called taqiyya, is exclusively Shi’ite, but actually it is founded upon Koranic passages. Chief among these is this one: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them” (3:28). Ibn Kathir explains that in this verse, “Allah prohibited His believing servants from becoming supporters of the disbelievers, or to take them as comrades with whom they develop friendships, rather than the believers.” However, exempted from this rule were            those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, “We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.” Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, “The Tuqyah [taqiyyah] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.

Despite the refusal of the Obama Justice Department to prosecute anyone at the IRS, it is clear that what happened was an epic clampdown on any conservative voices speaking or advocating against the president’s disastrous policies and in favor of patriotism and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. Over the course of twenty-seven months leading up to the 2012 election, not a single Tea Party–type organization received tax-exempt status. Many were unable to operate; others disbanded because donors refused to fund them without the IRS seal of approval; some organizations and their donors were audited without justification; and many incurred legal fees and costs fighting the unlawful conduct by Lerner and other IRS employees. The IRS suppressed the entire Tea Party movement just in time to help Obama win reelection. And everyone in the administration involved in this outrageous conduct got away with it without being punished or prosecuted. Was it simply a case of retribution against the perceived “enemies” of the administration? No, this was much bigger than political payback. It was a systematic and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement—one of the most organic and powerful political movements in recent memory—during an election season. [See Appendix for select IRS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.] This was about campaign politics. It was a scandal for the ages. President Obama obviously wanted this done even if he gave no direct orders for it. In 2015, he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that “you don’t want all this money pouring through non-profits.” But there is no law preventing money from “pouring through non-profits” that they use to achieve their legal purposes and the objectives of their members. Who didn’t want this money pouring through nonprofits? Barack Obama. In the subsequent FOIA litigation filed by Judicial Watch, the IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about what Lois Lerner and other senior officials had done. The IRS, including its top political appointees like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, have much to answer for over their contempt of court and of Congress. And the Department of Justice lawyers and officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable as well. If the Tea Party and other conservative groups had been fully active in the critical months leading up to the 2012 election, would Mitt Romney have been elected president? We will, of course, never know for certain. But we do know that President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service targeted right-leaning organizations applying for tax-exempt status and prevented them from entering the fray during that period. That is how you steal an election in plain sight. Accountability is not something we will get from the Obama administration. But Judicial Watch will continue its independent investigation and certainly any new presidential administration should take a fresh look at this IRS scandal.

Regulators lent a helping hand. On a spring afternoon in late April 2004, five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission gathered in a basement hearing room to meet a contingent of representatives from Wall Street’s big investment banks to talk about risk. The banks had asked for an exemption for their brokerage units from a regulation that limited the amount of debt they could hold on their balance sheets. The rule required banks to hold a large reserve of cash as a cushion against big losses on those holdings. By loosening up these so-called capital reserve requirements, the banks could become more aggressive and deploy the extra cash in other, more lucrative areas—such as mortgage-backed securities and derivatives.

The five major sources of income which are exempt for NRIs are: Proceeds from Life Insurance Policy - provided the policy complies with the exemption criteria/conditions Dividend from a domestic company or mutual fund scheme - provided the company or mutual fund scheme has paid the Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT), if applicable Interest on an NRE account – provided the NRE account is maintained as per the FEMA rules Interest on FCNR or RFC accounts – provided the account owner is a non-resident or RBNOR under the Income Tax Act Long Term Capital Gain on equity and equity based mutual fund – provided the Security Transaction Tax (STT) has been paid

Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly. It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing the name of each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number. Suddenly, seven million children—children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year’s 1040 forms—vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States.

The art of the High Renaissance is absolutely secular in its outlook; even in the representations of religious subjects, it attains its ideal style not by contrasting natural with supernatural reality, but by creating a distance between the objects of natural reality itself - a distance which in the world of visual experience creates differences of value similar to those that exist between the elite and the masses in human society. Its harmony is the utopian ideal of a world from which all conflicts is excluded, and, moreover, not as a result of the rule of a democratic but of an autocratic principle. Its creations represent an enhanced, ennobled reality exempt from transitoriness and banality. Its most important stylistic principle is the restriction of the representation to the bare essentials.

The University’s charter of privileges, dating from 1200, was its greatest pride. Exempted from civil control, the University was equally haughty in regard to ecclesiastical authority, and always in conflict with Bishop and Pope. “You Paris masters at your desks seem to think the world should be ruled by your reasonings,” stormed the papal legate Benedict Caetani, soon to be Pope Boniface VIII. “It is to us,” he reminded them, “that the world is entrusted, not to you.” Unconvinced, the University considered itself as authoritative in theology as the Pope, although conceding to Christ’s Vicar equal status with itself as “the two lights of the world.

Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses?

The greatest danger of the concept of social justice, according to Hayek, is that it undermines and ultimately destroys the concept of a rule of law, in order to supersede merely “formal” justice, as a process governed by rules, with “real” or “social” justice as a set of results to be produced by expanding the power of government to make discretionary determinations in domains once exempt from its power.