Remember social studies class in high school, when you learn about how there are three branches of government that balance against each other, and one of those is the legislative branch which is supposed to represent the will of the people (originally the will of the people and the states, but you know what I mean).  If anything should show us just how perverted this system has become, it should be the difference in the support in Congress for the Stop Online Piracy Act vs. the actual support among the various congressional constituencies.

Let's start with the rationale for supporting SOPA.  Why do it?  DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the most prominent supporters of the bill and its highest-ranking Democrat sponsor in the House, thinks that we need the bill in order to "protect Americans from companies that profit by stealing and repackaging other people's work."  Ahh yes.  We need to deprive Americans of an important freedom in order to protect them from a vaguely-stated threat.  Where have I heard that sort of talk before...?

Well, okay.  The congresswoman (and others like her) say that they support (or supported until they realized it was unpopular) this bill because it protects Americans.  Let's start with the (false) assumption that members of congress are generally good and honest people.  Certainly we shouldn't just automatically disbelieve anything they say, right?  Perhaps there is evidence that suggests another, more concrete reason that Wasserman and her compatriots support this bill.

The fact that the United States is withholding $800 million in military aid from Pakistan might apprise many Americans of a surprising truth:  namely that the United States previously was giving $800 million in military aid to Pakistan.  The Guardian reports:

The Pakistan military declared it did not need US military aid as the White House confirmed that it would withhold some $800m (£498m) in assistance to the country's armed forces.

The row will worsen the already poisonous relationship between the two "allies", which since the unilateral US raid to kill Osama bin Laden in May has lurched towards breakdown.  Pakistan recently expelled US military trainers from the country, limited the ability of US diplomats and other officials to get visas, and restricted CIA operations on its territory.

At a time when we teeter on a massive economic collapse, many Americans might wonder why it has taken a foreign policy rationale to lead our government to withhold this kind of foreign aid, rather than an economic one.  These same Americans might wonder -- where will this $800 million that has been withheld go?

I'm interning for a month in Aix-en-Provence, France with a French law firm.  As I have a few minutes of free time, I thought I'd throw out some of the perspective my time working at a French law firm has given me on the costs and benefits of the American and French legal systems.  A lot of what I write below might seem like obvious things to many readers, especially those who have studied history or law at all, but I just want to lay out all of the important facts so that even those readers with a very elementary knowledge of law can follow along.

Note: This is a long article, and I don't expect everyone to read it.  Therefore, these two paragraphs in italics sum up my point:

Common law countries traditionally have less regulation but more litigation, while civil law countries have the inverse setup.  With more litigation and less regulation, we only have the courts deciding disputes when actual wrongs have occurred, contrary to an over-regulated system where companies are punished by the government for things they have not even done yet.  

I think that the United States' traditional model of allowing a huge amount of litigation while having relatively small regulation has served us well, as it has allowed our economy to grow while punishing companies in court if and when they actually do something wrong.  However, now that we are maintaining our massive amount of litigation AND adding on a suffocating amount of regulation, we threaten to suffocate our economy and stifle any growth by businesses attempting to be honest who fear they will be punished at every term by both litigation and regulation.

Now, if you want to know the historical background and rationale for why I wrote the above paragraphs, keep on reading:

An Orlando Sentinel reporter is claiming that members of Vice President Joe Biden's staff confined him in a closet at a Democratic Party fundraiser.  Drudge Report broke the news, followed by a reports from The Daily Mail and New York Daily News.  The latter reports:

Vice President Joe Biden is known for putting his foot in his mouth. Now, his staff is allegedly stuffing reporters in closets.

A Florida newspaper reporter claims Biden’s staffers placed him in a storage closet last week to keep him from chatting up guests during a high-priced fundraiser.

Scott Powers, a veteran political reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, was the lone newsman assigned to cover the $500-a-head bash for Sen. Bill Nelson at the home of developer and Democratic bigwig Alan Ginsburg on Wednesday.

But when he showed up at the posh Winter Park mansion, a "low level" staffer hustled him into a storage closet and stood guard outside the door, Powers told The Drudge Report.

Read more here.