>The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up in late 2002 "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks.
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>Criticisms aside, it seems to me the commission was not charged with doing anything but gathering information and interpreting it. I fail to see how that's an indictment of the system of checks-and-balances in our government.

Because it's a lame check. The commision with such a limited mandate is somehow about to set the whole snafu right? Some balance.

>>So you're saying that judges being treated with corporate funded vacations masked as symposia is actually OK, but may be interpreted wrongly? I wish you never have a case against a corporation which hosted your judge.
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>The new guidelines say a judge should not attend a seminar in which a financial sponsor provided substantial funding, and the sponsor has a case before the judge, and the seminar's topics are "directly related" to the litigation. Under the previous guidelines, written in 1998, judges were not to attend seminars in which sponsors providing funding were likely to be involved in litigation before the courts and the topics were "likely to be in some manner related" to pending litigation..
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>That hardly proves what you are saying. IMHO the rules change spells out more clearly what and why, whereas the previous guideline was too open to interpretation.

It just shows the erosion of the system. Previously, they were forbidden to accept any such thing from sponsors likely to be involved. Now, only if there's an open lawsuit. Much more precise - and much more open to creation of preventive/preemptive connections between judges and sponsors. To me, that's not bribery just because the law allows it.

>>Then why are they trying to enact laws to make it legal? Why don't they just wait for the courts?
>
>Because it has already been to the court: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-6696.ZS.html

Didn't mean that one - meant the NSA thingy.

>>Somehow I always envision the country where I live to be held to higher standards. And the point I was trying to make is that upholding these standards would help - and that their lowering is counterproductive.
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>Then my apologies for misinterpreting your previous summary. We will have to agree to disagree at this point, however, because I don't believe it is very fair to judge the country you live in by some nebulous "higher standards". America is not the land of the perfect.

The perfect wouldn't need higher standards - they'd already breathe them. It's the imperfect who should strive, right?