I know that there have been some recent jobs postings -- just want to remind people that this tool exists!

Did anything happen with this?

Could we have a link to the art show?  Who won the prize?

Pleasure to meet you, Rick.  I see you're a prospective -- welcome to the great nation of Talossa!

Today is Easter Sunday, and a happy holiday to all who celebrate it!  This Christian holiday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead after three days, and is considered the holiest day in the calendar.  Unfortunately, many of the traditional Easter events in Talossa have been canceled this year due to the ongoing pandemic, although there are still nearby events in America, as with the Bunny Train in East Troy.  Happy Easter!

              —  Sir Alexandreu, Rexhaint d'Ian Regeu

Quote from: Þon Txoteu É. Davinescu, O.SPM on April 03, 2021, 11:32:15 PM
*Sigh* Might I bring to the Regent's attention that there are not, have not, and was never intended to ever be a "First", "Second", "Third" or whatever "Ceremony of Investiture". Investiture was never intended to be a number thing. QEII doesn't sequence Investitures and neither should we. Honors are, if awarded, at the end of Cosa... by the Sovereign's hand. Not, mind you, by the Sovereign's playing God with honours of the Government & State! Land Grants (Earldoms and Baronies, etc) are the exclusive domain of the Sovereign... and I am getting increasingly frustrated with the overstepping of those rights... specifically by you. With all do respect, this is NOT your sandbox... it isn't even King John's. You and the office you hold exist because the one that is supposed to be here doing a VERY narrow-fielded job... isn't. Orders and Honours of the Government or State, unless the Sovereign... or in this case Regent... has a very good reason not to award, should be awarded with appropriate respect as described.

Honourable Ministreu dal Zefençù,

Would you mind please being a little more clear with your objections?  You seem to be saying that you are unhappy that the sovereign is awarding things beyond "Land Grants," but the law authored by Éovart Grischun, the sitting Senator for Vuode, says definitively that "whenever a governmental body wishes to grant a Decoration to a citizen it shall communicate this intent to the Sovereign," and that during this Clark the sovereign is required to hold an Investiture Ceremony at which they "shall formally present award insignia."  I am attempting to follow the law, on behalf of His Majesty.

I do understand that you are upset that I am referring to the first Investitures Ceremony as the First Ceremony of Investure.  I'm not clear on why you object.  I believe there should be some pomp, because pomp is fun and because many of these are awards given for "gallantry, civilian bravery, or meritorious services."  Surely some fun is permitted, even if it's not required by law?

All of that said, I will certainly do my best to honour any requests from the Government or your own person as to form and method in this ceremony.

              —  Sir Alexandreu, Rexhaint d'Ian Regeu

Lexh.F.40 directs that "once per Cosa, and during the final Clark of a Cosa, the Sovereign shall conduct an Investitures Ceremony where the recipients of these awards shall be announced. The Sovereign shall formally present award insignia to those recipients on behalf of the body conferring the award."

It is my pleasure to announce on behalf of His Majesty King John that the Pirmalaiset Maravetx d'Avestür (First Ceremony of Investiture) will be held on the 20th day of April 2021/XLII.  Any national or provincial government office or civil service office may request that the Crown award any decorations that they wish to bestow, and such requests will be granted to the best of my ability as long as they are received at least by the 18th.  Requests may be public, as the national government has done, or in private, if you wish to surprise the recipient. Some unexpected awards are already planned. All awards will be granted with due pomp.

              —  Sir Alexandreu, Rexhaint d'Ian Regeu

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 31, 2021, 09:36:16 PMI repeat again that you guys had two months to wake up and suggest amendments here. Our current system, where a Bill is Clarked with 5 days before voting and its opponents go "miéida sant, we didn't think you were serious! Please stop!" is ludicrous and leads to bad law.

You posted a first draft of this bill on February 10th.  I pointed out huge problems on February 13th, and you said nothing for a very long time.  Then more than a month later, on March 17th -- again, that's only two weeks ago! -- you posted the new draft.  Within the week, you received detailed feedback on these specific problems.  That discussion continued in good faith and in detail right up until March 24th, at which point you Clarked the bill.

Perhaps you are thinking of some other bill?  Since you're not describing what you did with this one.  There was no way for anyone to know that you'd just abandoned your first draft after the February exchange -- you never said, "I do see the problem here, so let's fix it."  You just stopped replying and said nothing for a month.  I am not a mind reader.

I also had no way to know that you never looked up the laws you were repealing.  It never would have occurred to me to ask if you'd done that, since such a question would seem very insulting for me to ask.  I certainly would have helped you find them if I had known.  I usually just google "Wisconsin statutes," which is an easy way to get there for me.

I hope that the Ziu sees these manifold problems and more time can be taken to fix this.  You have Clarked numerous bills this term and I'm not sure a single one has lost even one vote from your party, however, so that seems unlikely.

...you didn't look up what you were repealing?  Or ask someone?

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on March 31, 2021, 07:49:30 PM

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on March 31, 2021, 07:44:14 PM

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on March 31, 2021, 07:39:12 PM

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on March 31, 2021, 07:16:16 PM
I hope you will reconsider. This new solution is unethical and inorganic. And if you decide the discussion is going nowhere or you get frustrated, you can always clark it again. It will be ready to go at any time.

With respect, I should mention that is is your opinion that this bill is unethical and inorganic. The CpI ultimately is the arbiter of what is or is not inorganic. As Secretary of State I can also choose not to Clark a bill if I believe it is inorganic on its face. Nowhere in either Statute or Organic law do I see a provision that allows the King (and by extension the Regent) to demand a bill be removed from a Clark.

I review all bills before I place them on the Clark and I found no cause for concern. I'm not saying the bill is a good bill, but it does not seem to be inorganic in my estimation and since it modifies the covenants it has the highest passage requirements of any bill so far this entire Cosa term.

Dame Miestrâ is correct in that this bill is already Clarked. The 6th Clark begins tomorrow and it is too late for me by law to adjust or amend the Clark. All bills must be submitted (or I presume unsubmitted) 24 hours in advance.

You are correct, the thing I did not say would be wrong for me to say. As serving regent, I do not have the power to demand anything be stricken from the Clark or anything of the sort. The straw man is well and truly thrashed.

Yes, it is my opinion that this bill is inorganic. The bill's sponsor herself agrees that its passage would leave it impossible for citizens to know exactly what was against the law, which is a violation of the Covenants of Rights and Freedoms.

If you are declaring that you would refuse the Seneschal's request to withdraw her bill, then of course she is out of time to reconsider. This discussion is mooted.

It's not so much that I would refuse to remove it from the Clark as it would be impractical to do so given the current form of how a Clark is conducted. I don't have the ability to on my own remove a bill. It would require me getting the DB administrator to do so also. I cannot know if that could happen in time.

As an example, I made an error on the current Clark and didn't mark a bill as being an amendment. I had to wait a few days to get it fixed due to the schedule of MPF.

I understand entirely. You are saying that you would refuse this request because it is impractical... even if the sponsor requested it, you couldn't do it. That is why you declared that it was too late for her to agree, since in practical terms it's not possible for you to comply. Your job is difficult and you are doing it well, so I wouldn't presume to second guess you about this. Since you would refuse to grant such a request, this discussion is moot. Thank you for letting us know! :-)

Quote from: Dr. Txec Róibeard dal Nordselvă, Esq., O.SPM, SMM on March 31, 2021, 07:39:12 PM

Quote from: Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on March 31, 2021, 07:16:16 PM
I hope you will reconsider. This new solution is unethical and inorganic. And if you decide the discussion is going nowhere or you get frustrated, you can always clark it again. It will be ready to go at any time.

With respect, I should mention that is is your opinion that this bill is unethical and inorganic. The CpI ultimately is the arbiter of what is or is not inorganic. As Secretary of State I can also choose not to Clark a bill if I believe it is inorganic on its face. Nowhere in either Statute or Organic law do I see a provision that allows the King (and by extension the Regent) to demand a bill be removed from a Clark.

I review all bills before I place them on the Clark and I found no cause for concern. I'm not saying the bill is a good bill, but it does not seem to be inorganic in my estimation and since it modifies the covenants it has the highest passage requirements of any bill so far this entire Cosa term.

Dame Miestrâ is correct in that this bill is already Clarked. The 6th Clark begins tomorrow and it is too late for me by law to adjust or amend the Clark. All bills must be submitted (or I presume unsubmitted) 24 hours in advance.

You are correct, the thing I did not say about my authority would be wrong for me to say. As serving regent, I do not have the power to demand anything be stricken from the Clark or anything of the sort. The straw man is well and truly thrashed.

Yes, it is my opinion that this bill is inorganic. The bill's sponsor herself agrees that its passage would leave it impossible for citizens to know exactly what was against the law, which is a violation of the Covenants of Rights and Freedoms. Citizens may only be convicted of crimes which are known to be crimes, either under current law or foreign law. This bill does not purport to establish crimes in writing or admit foreign law or principles into our law, but instead states that an action may or may not be a crime depending on how the judges feel about the person on trial or their actions.

If you are declaring that you would refuse the Seneschal's request to withdraw her bill, then of course she is out of time to reconsider. This discussion is mooted.

For my part, I think that you will sometimes get frustrated by a discussion, crank out a bill that accomplishes some of your goals, and then view its success as a matter of personal pride. And that's a problem here. You're trying to do something quite ambitious. It seems not at all unreasonable for a dramatic reimagining of our entire criminal justice system to take more than a few months of sporadic effort.

When I led the reform effort that replaced dozens of disorganized bills with a single civil code, it took a considerable amount of effort. I assure you, it was extremely tempting to just start over with the 30 or 40 provisions that seemed most important and eliminate everything else without going through it. But that would have run contrary to one of the things I wanted to accomplish, which was to preserve and codify all existing law, rather than try to hastily decide what I thought was necessary. My path had to follow my principles, not the other way around.

Big, ambitious things are hard. Often they require time. But it's not as though the discussion had stagnated or dragged on for a long time. This new approach to the problem in your bill is, what, three or four weeks old? And people were objecting and trying to continue the discussion up until the moment you decided you would try to get it passed.

I hope you will reconsider. This new solution is unethical and inorganic. And if you decide the discussion is going nowhere or you get frustrated, you can always clark it again. It will be ready to go at any time.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 31, 2021, 05:57:05 PM
I honestly think that - if we are to have a CpI which is excluded from many roles of administrative, executive or legislative significance in our State - we should at least make their judicial role slightly more significant and interesting. Otherwise we're encouraging people to get bored and drift away. A "rebalancing" of the branches of government, if you will. (Given that any overstep may be corrected via statute - I certainly don't want to revise the very old English decision that common law cannot override statute law!)

I concur.  I think they should start with writing and administering a bar exam, for one.  If you want to spur this on, I'd be supportive of a bill which required them to do so or else face expulsion from the cort.  That's a different objective, though, and maybe a tangential aspect to this?

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 31, 2021, 05:57:05 PMI think it necessary to emphasise also that I envisage "Talossan common law" to reflect the mores of our community, which it would be burdensome and otiose to codify. We have precedent as to what happens when a judge makes a decision very at odds with community standards - the "Guy Incognito" case, where it led to a judge resigning. What we don't have predecent for is the kind of "rogue prosecutions" which the Regent and Sir Cresti both fear. Not even KR1 tried to do that (although he tried a Bill of Attainder, which would have been worse).

Correct, the current law codifies what is a crime and what is not.  It does so very imperfectly, since it relies mostly on the laws of a foreign state in matters not directly affecting us, but it's been a useful kludge.  I support eliminating it and replacing it with something that gets the job done, just not this approach.  I have some ideas, which I have already stated, but I'm also open to anything else that might work.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 31, 2021, 05:57:05 PMI must repeat: an indigenous codified law such as Sir Cresti suggests would also be a good suggestion, as would, frankly, deleting the whole mess since no-one really expects the Talossan State to punish murderers and rapists (we couldn't even punish a child molester). All I can say about my solution is that it's been pretty thoroughly discussed, with input from legal experts, and is now ready for a vote. And I must stress that it requires, at the bare minimum, a sentence of incarceration in a credible outside court, which is a pretty significant threshold.

I think we still agree that we need to be able to boot murderers, so to speak.  But your solution here just presents serious problems.  I know Sir Cresti has his own primary concerns, but the idea of a democratic state where citizens have to wonder what might be a crime is deeply problematic!

You have previously stated you intend to just try to push this through, and you might well succeed since your name is on it.  But at this point, it also seems like you're rethinking the matter and the implicit dangers.  Can we table this bill for the moment, and return to discussing what needs to be accomplished and what principles are important here?

I think we can agree on some of them:
- Citizens need the protection of due process, so nothing automatic (after all, not every justice system is fair or free).
- Citizens need to know what is a crime and what is not.
- Talossan law should be Talossan whenever possible.
- Writing a comprehensive criminal code is probably way too much work considering how rarely we'd use it.
- We need some way to kick out murderers.

Is all of that fair enough?

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 31, 2021, 03:16:22 PMSo now the argument comes from the Regent that the Covenants of Rights and Freedoms themselves are contradictory, and he thinks he could make a good case that the rights in the Eighth Covenant are abrogated by the Sixth Covenant (by his argument, the 6th Covenant would also ban abortion). And yet, this is a fundamental document of Talossan law which is actually harder to amend than the rest of the OrgLaw. And the Regent didn't care if parts of it contradicted the other parts before now, because... it was just for show, so it didn't matter? A highly unpatriotic position.

The conflict arises when you attempt to declare that the Covenants contain all necessary principles by which we can declare crimes.  No institution in Talossa can is capable of criminalizing or unduly taxing something like euthanasia.  That prohibition can exist perfectly well alongside the Sixth Covenant.

To put it another way, imagine that there's two rules in a workplace:
1. Supervisors may not hurt employees.
2. Employees must be vaccinated in a timely fashion to keep their jobs.

There's no contradiction, obviously, even though it's painful to get a vaccination.  But if a supervisor declared that they insisted that they would be administering the vaccines from now on, then there's an immediate conflict!

The problem, in other words, comes from trying to awkwardly misinterpret existing rules in an unintended way because it seems like an attractive shortcut.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on March 31, 2021, 03:16:22 PMThe thing is I answered all these sophistries ages ago, but the final answer is: we have an Uppermost Cort for a reason. The tradition of common law, of which Talossa is a part, states that courts make law where statute law is silent. We have 4 perfectly qualified UC justices and we put them through an arduous confirmation for a reason, and that reason is to make sure they can be trusted with that power.

To be precise, if a Talossan is busted for tax evasion, and someone makes a complaint under this law suggesting they should also be punished for Talossan law for it, I trust Dame Litz and her colleagues, cxhns. Marcianüs, Perþonest and Edwards to make a good decision. And let's face it, those guys are strenously underemployed. I remember an argument made that a figurehead monarchy would never work in Talossa because who would want a boring do-nothing job. And yet some people seem so terrified of judicial activism that they want to make the CpI exactly that.

Thank you!  You are exactly right!  Is tax evasion a crime?  Well, that depends on what the judges decide!  I appreciate your forthrightness.

This is one of my central issues with the bill. I am glad that it is not under dispute at all any more, and we can continue this discussion discussing that central principle under dispute rather than whether or not it's true about the bill.

So then, this bill would establish that any action for which you are convicted in any court anywhere could be a crime under Talossan law, depending on whether or not the legal system decides it is a crime for you that day. To me, this is one of the fatal flaws of the bill. Citizens should know what is a crime and what is not a crime in their country ahead of time; they shouldn't have to wait until later to find out.

Quote from: Eðo Grischun on March 31, 2021, 11:20:17 AM
No, because euthanasia is protected under Cov.8 therefore is not "repugnant to the values expressed in the Covenant of Rights and Freedoms".

I'd really hoped for the Seneschal's thoughts on her intentions here with her bill, but thank you. I also appreciate and am grateful for your perspective.

The Sixth Covenant does say, however, that "no right herein enumerated ... shall extend to anyone engaged in activities which injure, endanger, risk or compromise the physical health, privacy, or tranquility of other persons."  This seems to pretty clearly state that it supersedes all the other Covenants.  And since euthanasia is literally compromising the physical health of someone else, it would seem like it would be illegal.  But maybe it's just unclear and we don't really know the answer?  I don't even know how you'd begin to decide this one if it wound up in cort.

I wonder whether or not tax evasion would be against the law, should this bill pass?  That also seems unclear to me.