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I hope you do realize that the police don't get involved until _after_ a crime has been committed? Meaning that they're not going to stop people from breaking in at night and killing your wife and two daughters, but they will arrest the suspects after the fact.

Now, there's no money in Brazil to fund "real" air-traffic control. Is anyone expecting a new expensive GPS based system to "fly" there? I don't think so.

BTW, Air traffic control in Brazil is currently considered unsafe(PDF).

If you find a cannon on an old pirate ship at the bottom of the ocean, do you just call it a hunk of metal since it doesn't work anymore? Or do you call it a cannon?

Did we find Sarin Nerve Agent? Yes
Did we find weapons that were meant for the dispersal of Sarin (WMD)? Yes
Did we find weapons which contained Sarin? Yes
Did we find fully functional WMD? Maybe, but they were old and we weren't going to test them.
Did we find new WMD? No

See the clarification? Hell, some of our soldiers were even exposed to the effects of one. So to say they were useless or not considered WMD is hogwash.

There are plenty of reports outside of Fox News that say Sarin (WMD) was found. Here are a few:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4997808/
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?i d=15918
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation /archive/200606/NAT20060621e.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/06/iraq/mai n627580.shtml
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=40754

A quick google turns up 1.1 million links for the phrase "chinese exploited workers"

Ah, I see the first link is to Canada Tibet Committee. I agree Tibetans are being exploited and persecuted by the Chinese. Because Tibetans aren't Chinese. The sovereign nation of Tibet was invaded and conquered by Mao's army in 1959. Free Tibet!. Now change "Chinese" to "United States" and the number of results increases from 1,160,000 to 1,770,000, an increase of more than 500,000. Does that mean there are more workers exploited in the US?

Go take a gander at Frontline's Is Wal-Mart good for America video

Walmart doesn't just buy from China to sale in the US, Walmart also has stores in China. In the not too distant future China will be Walmart's biggest market. It is partnering or buying Chinese retailers, Wal-Mart plots bid for Chinese retail giant. Chinese employees of Walmart are even unionizing.

Chinese who are employed in one of these factories make more than those who can't get a job at one

That doesn't mean they aren't being exploited. Work & safety conditions play a large part. Ask a coal miner.

You're right it doesn't mean they aren't being exploited, but if they are fighting to get those jobs I'd say they are very willing work and accept the work conditions, thus they aren't being exploited.

Ok, then how about Alaska just keeping the hundreds of billions of Federal tax dollars that are continuously sucked out of it without even close to a reasonable quantity of reinvestment in federal funds? This isn't free money. This is trying to develop the state so it isn't just sucked dry by the lower 48. (There is a reason that there was a push for Alaska to secede from the union in 1972...)

Believe it or not the reason for federal funds is to do large projects that need to be done. Have you ever noticed all of that infrastructure that you rely on everyday? Federal funds at work. So you are using a museum as a comparison? Those sorts of things are kind of important but I fail to see anyone thinking that compares to this type of project. Job training programs? If there is a chance that the people involved will become taxpayers then hell yes, federal funds should be used.

The city in question is packed into the base of a mountain and the ocean. There are no roads that lead there. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane, and if you take a plane you will still have to take a boat to get to town.

I can understand why you would only want the available federal funds spent in your area. Being self centered is a fairly normal idea but that isn't the way it works. Alaska comprises 1/5th of the area of the US! Think about this. If you take the lower 48 and divide it into 4 pieces it would equal the the size of Alaska. And in all of that area there is less then 2,000 miles of road that can be categorized as "Highway". And this state shoulders an exceeding unfair percentage of the federal tax burden.

Federal funds for a bridge in this case is completely in line with the way federal transportation funds are SUPPOSED to be used. Find a different example if you want to showcase wasteful spending.

Please show what voodoo math you have done that shows Alaska pays hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal tax without receiving back similar (or greater funds). I can find absolutely no evidence of this phenomena you describe of Alaska being a tax burdened state. According to this paper Federal Spending Received Per Dollar of Taxes Paid by State, 1981-2004, they have received more than their money back from the Federal government each year since 1985. This ratio has been increasing pretty much steadily each year since then, and in the final year of the paper 2004, they were the 2nd "best" state in this regard, and receive $1.87 for each dollar they spend. Combined with the fact that there is no state income tax, the lowest state & local tax burden of any state in the nation, residents receive around $1000 a year from the oil permanent fund (source), pay the lowest gasoline tax, don't have a general state sales tax, and land has even been given away to outsiders to encourage settlement (source) -- I would say that Alaskan residents are sitting pretty when it comes to taxes either state or federal.

Although if you can post any information that proves otherwise, I am game to see it.

I don't see how anyone can really defend this bridge. The residents don't want it, and even if they did they don't deserve $300 million specifically for it. Like the poster that lives in the city said, they are not even willing to foot 5% of the bill. I am all for Alaska getting its share of federal money, but this was a pork waste project for one of the grandfathers of pork diverting it from a city that needed it (although New Orleans is another city whose residents should rethink their choice of settlement).

If the residents don't like it, we can move each of them that aren't happy with the current land and buy them land elsewhere in Alaska with federal money, and still save a good portion of the $300 million.

There's a lot of sense in heavy investment in nuclear, solar and wind power plus hybrid, diesel and electric vehicles even in a situation where the world isn't going wrong. Same with switching to CFLs and generally improving efficiency of resource usage etc... it's not like there are people who find clean air offensive... or at least I hope not.

I dunno, I was under the impression that environmental policies were a big reason we couldn't build more nuclear reactors. And with rich people like Ted Kennedy opposing wind farms in some locations where they'd potentially do the most good...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/07/terror/m ain621621.shtml

We knew three years ago that this organization was an al Qaeda front group for laundering money in the US, so why does Wired keep calling it a "charity"? Put the name into Google for more information.

I'm not supporting warrantless wiretapping, but I'm not supporting al Qaeda, either.

60 Minutes original broadcast Nov 26, 2006 re-broadcasted June 14, 2007.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/22/60minute s/main2205629.shtml

The Harvard research is on the SAME drug.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html has a nice little write up from May 04 regarding chemical weapons. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/21/iraq/mai n554912.shtml speaks to the trailers I will have to re dig up the sources regarding Warnings about chemical weapons from both the region and Europe. Anything else I can research for your lazy ass?

And your proof of this is?

If the special prosecutor could only change one man with a process crime, how is this treason? In addition, since the prosecutor knew from the earliest part of the investigation who leaked the name and did not even try to indite them, obviously Libby was a saving face prosecution. Why was no one indited with leaking a covert operative's name when the prosecutor know who leaked Plame's name from the earliest part of his investigation? Obviously, Plame was not a covert agent at the time. Source

Well, taking just Judeo-Christianity for an example, I don't think it will be much of a stretch. If they can maintain a flood myth in the face of a overwhelming geological evidence to the contrary, and some more fundamental groups can persist in claiming the age of the Earth at 6000 based on interpretations of the scripture, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, and if they can get over half of the American population to believe humans didn't evolve but were instead created as they are now, AND they can explain that even though Jesus came and died for people's sins that even those who died before he did would be given a retroactive chance at forgiveness, they can surely handle aliens.

No, it won't be the same religion as it is now, but it will adapt and mold itself to take new factors into account. Think about this - compare people's lives and society thousands of years ago with the world today. Now, compare that to anything we could find in an alien civilization. The first scenario is a much larger gap than the second. Maybe it would have been otherwise before the era of scifi. But at this point, we've used our imagination quite heavily in the realm of alien contact. It would be a shock, but it would be one we're expecting.

Your \opinion might change if your mother ends up like this.

They were just doing their job which is the HMO or government told staff to tell the patient her symptoms were caused by X which was not true but was cheaper.

The nazi's were just doing their jobs too and obeying Hitler. So is the mobfia when they burn a business to the ground and beat the owner almost to death because he didn't them their tax. Why do you draw the line?

No, actually, most hospitals cannot legally turn someone down because they cannot pay.

oh?

I am saddened by your post. Perhaps the Earth(or big rock in space) is not endangered, but the life that is currently on the planet more increasingly is. Examples: desertification, fish extinction seen by 2048.

Yes, some interesting information, but the underlying purpose of releasing it is TOTALLY dishonest. My understanding is that the CIA is releasing information as a public relations gesture. My understanding is that the agency is releasing only information that no longer matters to it, with any modifications it wants to make.

Almost the CIA's ONLY purpose is to help rich people get richer by providing information and violence paid for by U.S. citizens. The organization did not just suddenly become honest. (Read the linked article.)

Bush and Cheney have consistently claimed they are above the law. This fits the definition of a dictatorship: "A form of government in which the ruler is not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition".

The CIA invented a term for the destructive consequences of its actions: Blowback. Blowback doesn't matter to the agency, however, since it still gets what it wants. Also, for CIA employees, more trouble in the world means more money and promotions.

Remember, the terms NSA and CIA are just names that you are allowed to know, to try to get you to think you know what the U.S. government is doing. There are many agencies with names and purposes you are not allowed to know. If you are a U.S. citizen, you are, however, expected to pay. If you are not a U.S. citizen (and sometimes if you are), you may be expected to pay with your life.

"A US Homeland Security director assured EU officials that the program would operate under strict privacy rules. But he noted that the FBI and CIA will have access to the biometric data, which over time may expand beyond fingerprints."

As past events have shown, the innocent have plenty to fear from this, even if they have nothing to hide.

False positives could really ruin your day.

On the other hand, if it were to happen, once a false positive ordeal is over, I suppose it could be rather lucrative, given the precident that has been set.

And this guy was a U.S. citizen. Imagine the result if you were a citizen of another country and subject to the same sort of mistake.

In the end, the best prices go to MS only shops. Which is perfectly reasonable. The fact that this leads to employees only seeing MS, and therefore not realizing that other choices exist, is an coincidence. OTOH, It can be said that any subsidizes, in the same that MS subsidizes the xBox, is worthwhile to maintain the desktop monopoly.

Then we have the terms of Vista use that restrict the virtualization of the product. If MS were competing, it would develop and OS that was the best base for virtualization. Instead, it merely licesnses the product as non virtual. If MS is not the OS that everyone sees on startup, then people might start to believe that MS is not the best choice.

It kind of reminds of hummers, and the assumption of others on the road, that wow, that person can afford to buy a hummer. People in the know realize that for many hummer drivers, the US taxpayer is paying for large percentage of the Hummer. In fact, some figure suggest that if you bought a new hummer, and took all the tax breaks, and sold it after 5 years, your total cost of ownership would be zero, thanks to the goodness of the conservative government.

MS products are the same way. A good deal if you can get, but not such a good deal if you won't play ball.

There is a major flaw in your argument. It turns out that conservatives give more of *their own money* to the poor than liberals. It has been shown time and again. The difference is that liberals want to give *other people's money* to the poor so they can buy votes and pretend to be compassionate. If they really cared for the poor, they would give their own personal money, not try to pass laws that redistributes money from everyone else.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/11/opinion/ main1489914.shtml
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/20 06/12/10/who_gives/

-David

Tim Griffin, Michael Elston, Paul McNulty, Monica Goodling
Sara Taylor, Bradley Schlozman, Steve Biskupic, Alberto Gonzalez, David Safavian, Lurita Doan, Ken Tomlinson
Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Conrad Burns, Ted Stevens, Kyle Foggo, Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, Curt Weldon, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Tobin
Scooter Libby, Manuel Miranda, Darleen Dryun, Thomas Scully, Chuck Mcgee, Pete Domenici
Porter Goss, Brant Bassett, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Jerry Lewis, Ed Buckham, Steven Griles, Mark Foley, Paul Wolfowitz, Ken Lay, Conrad Black, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Roger Stilwell, Tony Rudy, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, William Heaton, Adam Kidan, Neil Volz,

Have you really now? I wonder who these Canadians are who spend all thier time racing down to the US and badmouthing Canadian health care. I'm Canadian, my whole familly is Canadian, and I've never known anyone who got anything less then the best care. Even my American-citizen ex-girlfriend, who needed medical care once while we were in Canada, got everything she needed very quickly (paying out-of-pocket though, of course). I'll be the first to admit that Canadian health care has it's problems, but at least they don't let their citizens die horrible, bloody deaths in a hospital waiting room.

OK, dualing anecdotes: "Relatives said Rodriguez was vomiting blood and writhing in pain for 45 minutes while she was at a hospital waiting area. Experts have said she could have survived had she been treated" Ignored By 911, Woman Dies In Hospital

Point? Go with the actuarial tables of life expectancy: U.S. at 78, Cuba at 77.08. Pretty damn good for a 3rd world country at pennies on the dollar. CIA factbook (obviously a commie liberal tool, right?)

Looking at the hospitals isn't the key. Early intervention public health is the key.

"Higher-than-expected tax receipts and the steadily growing economy have combined to produce an improved picture for the federal budget deficit, congressional analysts said yesterday." - Federal budget deficit expected to shrink 7/8/2005

"The Treasury Department reported Monday that the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1 totals $42.2 billion, down 57.2% from the same period a year ago." - Federal deficit shrinks due to record tax collections
2/12/2007

"The Treasury Department said that the deficit through May totaled $148.5 billion, down 34.6 percent from the same period a year ago." - Federal Deficit Continues To Drop 6/12/2007

Of course the fact that the budget deficit is shrinking as revenues go up doesn't fit very well with people's argument that the tax cuts should be rescinded, so they put their fingers in their ears and keep claiming otherwise...

The economy is booming. The Federal government is making more money than it's ever made before. When you let people keep their money, they use it to make more money. If not for them, then for someone else.

Just because someone modded YOU up, I thought I'd point out that CO2 isn't the ONLY type of pollution... Lookie here.

> ... that China is right in their efforts to censor the Internet or stifle free speech, but did Yahoo! actually do anything legally wrong?

IBM didn't do anything wrong when they sold their Jew, Gay and Gypsy tracking services to the Nazis. Yes: Really! They even had IBM Customer Service Engineers on site at Concentration Camps running the tabulation equipment. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/27/print/ma in504730.shtml

Yahoo Jerry Wang's argument is that Yahoo should comply with the law of the countries they operate in. In 1939 IBM did the same thing. Today helping a facist regime that's murdered thousands track people who dare speak against them, even anonymously, is reprehensible. Only hope one day Jerry Wang gets to feel the misery he's inflicted on others.

Reverend Lovejoy said "When the Government legalizes something, it's no longer immoral." It was meant to be satire.

Well, it depends on how you define bible-thumpers. In terms of the creationism "debate," you can go as high as 65 percent of Americans. Its pretty close to a 50-50 split, but the majority of people in America are religious to some degree, and so a lot of that leaks into politics.

Russia is not the enemy.

Then who IS?

Democracies want to know.

Seditiously,
Philboyd Studge

"Russia is not the enemy,"

Then , who IS?

Democracies want to know.

"... the [Saudi] royals are personal friends and business associates of the Bush family."

More than just personal friends, physically affectionate friends

Yeah right, "the downtrodden masses of the US really didn't want this government" story.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/24/politics /main555427.shtml

May I suggest you grow up and take responsibility for your actions?

Parent is not a troll. It's an informative post.

There's not much political benefit to environmental stewardship when a considerable majority of your supporters have no interest in empirical truth. Most Bush voters believe exactly what parent said: Jesus will come again and they will be swept into heaven before the environmental consequences of their actions cause them any harm.

You want so badly for the story to be true you completely ignore the known fraudulent source.

And you seem to want so badly for my post to be wrong that you miss its point entirely. Good job, Anonymous Coward.

lend the terrorists aid, confort and political cover to the ones with the AK-47s and the bomb belts

I believe that would be the Republican Party doing the aiding and comforting.

Video linky here

Actually, I'd say that the wallet PC is actually the cell phone. And while they may not be used in the US like this, Asia is certainly using cell phones as virtual wallets. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/22/tech/mai n631231.shtml

I just said that he local and state governments were incompetant, yet you keep repeating this: If you ignore the hindsight of knowing the local governments were useless by decisions they made instead of capacity to respond, the exact same thing would happen today without regard to who is in power.

I'd put it in *marquee* and *blink*, and you still wouldn't get it. Katrina hit louisiana on august 29th. The president of the united states declared a state of emergency on the 26th (that's 3 days before), (see the official press release here on the whitehouse press site http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20 050827-1.html . Quoting that article The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . Note the "coordinate all disaster relief efforts" bit. Louisiana declared a state of emergency on the 26th as well. http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&t mp=detail&catID=1&articleID=776&navID=3.

Again: If the local situation is screwed, FEMA is there to step in and take control and call the shots. Not http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/03/national /main1009209.shtml worry about wether his sleeves are rolled up or not, "feel trapped", stating that he's a "fashion god".

No, I wouldn't do any better than brown. Then again, I don't accept positions for which i'm incredibly under qualified for.

No, I couldn't put anyone else as head of FEMA - do i look like the president of the united states? If i was, however, I'd pick someone who knew something about crisis management, someone who had lead an organisation approaching the 2600 that FEMA is.

And as for having to reasses the situation - what planet are you on? There was wall to wall coverage on every news station on how everything was flooded, how a significant proportion of the populace hadn't left, how law and order had broken down into chaos. The united states has satellites in orbit than can view every square meter of the earth, and yet FEMA was supposedly unable to know what was going on. The only reason the national guard wasn't sent in division size is that they were pretty much all over in iraq.

The fact that every other state managed to have it's act together doesn't excuse the fact that FEMA was unable to get a handle on the chaos, even with the resources of the federal government, along with a very large contingent of volunteers and supplies coming from every other state.

I would say it is safe to say that the number of soldiers handing out candy and flowers vastly outnumbers the numbers that are stacking up naked Iraqi's in pyramids.

The point of the shift in strategy was basically to put Americans more in the line of fire and restrain the force they can use so that fewer civilians die. They are focusing on civilian protection instead of force protection.

We KNOW that more soldiers will die as we expose them in an effort to defend the civilian population. I am sympathetic that the army is a tad irritated at being called baby killers while everyone ignores the fact that they are paying in American blood to reduce civilian casualties inflicted by both collateral damage and intentional terrorist/sectarian attacks.

That said, give the army some credit. They are being told to pay in their own blood to achieve some political objective.

God forbid anything other then tragedy be reported from Iraq.

It would also make it illegal for the government to make up BS about WMDs in some poor country who's oil we want.

I assume that you are talking about Iraq here. Well it should be illegal to make up BS about WMD in any country, I wouldn't call Iraq a poor country in the sense that your implying here. If your saying that they arn't rich ignore the rest of my statment as I probably just miss understood you. If your saying that Iraq is a completely innocent country then you are wrong.

There was no reason for a war in Iraq and I'll never argue that there should have been. In the final hours they said that they would let inspectors in to see if there were WMD.

Saddam had killed hunderes because of the Dujail assasination attempt. He had also tortured and murdered many people since. Farm land was destroyed and was made non workable until 10 years later when Saddam finally let it happen.

But Saddam made a last-minute bid to avert war, admitting that Iraq had once possessed weapons of mass destruction to defend itself from Iran and Israel - but insisting that it no longer has them.
this is from an artical on CBS http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/17/iraq/mai n544280.shtml it gives you an idea of what was going on. Iraq requently said that they had weapons of mass destruction. They used it as fear, but the UN was inspecting it and there was no reason to invade Iraq.

My point is, that Iraq isn't the poor boy who got punched by the bully for peeing in the punch bowl. Iraq is the country who pissed in the punch bowl year ago and the bully used it as an excuse to go to punch him when he felt like it.

Iraq was easy to target. They had perviously had weapons of mass destructions and had commited crimes against humanity(mostly years before). My question is why they did what they did at the time they did it. There were other times that would have made more sense to start a war, like when Iraq was refusing to submit to inspections, or when the Dujail event. The altimatum was given that Saddam step down from his position, but this wasn't good enough either. Saddam had made concessions to Bush that he requested, Bush kept upping the anty until Saddam couldn't keep up.

Bush wanted to go to war, I remember the night they declared war wondering why they were, when Saddam had agreed to step down and let UN inspectors come in.

Arg. I didn't include the hyperlink, and ruined the Cheney-Scalia hunting trip reference. Let me try again:

"Several Supreme Court Justices, who will ultimately oversee the Cheney Impeachment process, were invited on a hunting trip..."

Arg. Never post to Slashdot while eating breakfast with your 3-year old child.

Why is this a troll? My AP US history text listed pretty much the same things (minus the military cancellations and "religious right" discussions).

Wikipedia lists most of the same stuff, too. (Scroll down, it's a long article.)

And to further the GP's point: "Bush=Bad" with no reasoning whatsoever is modded up, while "Carter=Bad" with many reasons is modded down. Never mind ye that Carter finally managed to mach Bush's lowest approval rating by the end of his presidency. link and link

I'm not being dense, intentionally or otherwise. I'm simply pointing out that you're making up nonsense. I can take your inapplicable example apart for you in seconds, and I will:

Your donut example uses a second clause where the details can only be applied to the donut; glazing a flower is nonsensical. So it obviously applies to just the one part of the first clause.

The 13th, in sharp contrast, uses a second clause where the punishment could just as easily be either of the slavery or servitude portions; and, BTW, the same as my example, where the jam or jelly could be applied to the bread.

In other words, my restating precisely and definitely matches the 13th; yours definitely does not. One would not use your example as a means to do comparative analysis on the 13th, because one would be led down the wrong cognitive path. But using mine is fine, because I carefully crafted it to use the same construction and the same levels of applicability -- it reads just as the 13th does with regard to applicability and lack of ambiguity.

To be even more specific, "jam nor jelly" is linguistically comparable to "slavery nor involuntary servitude" in that it is two items from the same general domain, of the same general concept, certainly within the same class, such that they are likely to be addressed as one in the same clause. "flowers nor doughnuts" are disjoint, not even members of the same general classes, much less having any more sophisticated similarities. So when the second clause refers to the first, your inappropriate example has disjoint class membership to direct the understanding at hand, specifically as glazing applies to doughnuts only; but neither "slavery nor involuntary servitude" or my "jam nor jelly" do this, and hence there is no demonstrable separation for the second clause to be parsed as to applying to one, and not the other.

given the ambiguity... with identical construction...

The only ambiguity you've demonstrated is in your example, which does not correspond to the 13th. No ambiguity has been demonstrated at this point. That's a fact. Further, your example is a great deal further from "identical construction" than mine is. You're attempting to twist the situation to meet your needs, and that's not going to fly.

call me when the US can sell prisoners to private individuals. then we're talking property.

Private prisons receive prisoners for money all of the time. You're not paying attention.

as for your supposed half-million dollar fines. note, first, that these are not against individuals, but against companies,

Look. I know you're smarter than this, even with that really superficial and incorrectly assembled doughnut example staring me in the face. When you fine a company, you are fining an individual. That's the whole point of a company; it is a legal entity. If you take half a million dollars as a fine for saying a word, I don't care if you apply the fine to a blinking convent, the fine is unreasonable. It is way, way, way out of line. The FCC has imposed up to a million dollars in fines for single incidents, and if you don't think that's excessive, you're too cognitively impaired to even bother talking to. Don't even start with any nonsense about corporations. There are people at those corporations, stockholders and employees and we're talking about words, nipples, and the like. You assume they can pay a million bucks just because they're incorporated? Then you're stupid. The FCC is imposing ridiculous fines, and that is end of the story.

note further that the second link you've posted calls out the fact that the bill is abandoned.

Still, million dollars fines are being levied. The point is, that is the situation right now, the status quo. Censorship (violation of the 1st) being used to drive a violation of the 8th. Government at its worst.

As a former alumni of Va. Tech and former resident of Roanoke, VA, I would like to thank the Va. Tech talking heads, other liberal colleges around the state, campus police, Larry Hincker and all the other anti-gun crowd pundits who had a hand in striking down (illegally IMO) sound legislation (House Bill 1572); legislation proposed by the honorable Del. Todd Gilbert that would have allowed students and teachers, who hold a state-issued concealed carry permit, to carry a concealed gun on campus(es).

By there very unconstitutional actions they were complicit and abeted Cho Seung-Hui in the killings of 33 students yesterday at Va. Tech. There is no guarantee, but if the students/teachers of Va. tech would have been allowed to lawfully carry a concealed weapon on campus (without the fear of ejection from the college) this tragedy may have been averted. My sympathies to the families who have been affected by this insane action by a seriously disturbed murderer.

HB 1572
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?061+su m+HB1572

Virginia Tech's ban on guns may draw legal fire
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/xp-21770

A bill being considered in the House of Delegates challenges the authority of public universities to restrict weapons on campus.
http://www.roanoke.com/politics/wb/49915

Gun bill gets shot down by panel
http://www.roanoke.com/politics/wb/50658

College spokesman celebrated 2006 defeat because it would help make campus safe
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=55226

Va. Tech: Gunman Student From S. Korea
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/17/ap/natio nal/main2693365.shtml

The Australian government banned Grand Theft Auto also. They actually had it pulled from the shelves.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/29/tech/mai n712700.shtml

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/13/national /main2683325.shtml/

OK. Let's not get this twisted...

Imus made some pretty raw comments that offended a lot of people. But there are too many other clowns on the radio / TV that say the same if not worse. Imus was dumped because the big boys pulled their big money out of the pot.

If this was a two-bit show getting advertising dollars from Joe Bob's Auto Shop and Ice Cream Parlor, we would not have heard about it. In the end, this was all about green.

This mySpace "prank" just isn't funny. In case anyone fails to remember recent events where cyber-bullying and similar "pranks" went unchecked and a kid committed suicide (See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/21/earlysho w/living/caught/main681867.shtml). I guess that was funny now wasn't it.

If that is the sort of effect this sort of idiocy has on kids, then consider the professional effect it has on adults, and I speak from experience. I was "not rehired" a while back after rumours were spread on the internet. A real barrel of laughs.

And don't play the "but that was an isolated case" falsehood. This type of malicious act is here now, and widespread. Saying this principal should "be an adult" or "take the higher moral ground" isn't going to cut it. Do you think if he'd done nothing that these kids would have stopped? Have you ever been or seen an anti-social or pissed off teen? If you have then you will know that it would not have stopped until they had their "satisfaction."

Oh, and for "it was fun to move the teacher's car" people, did they intend to pay for the car if it was damaged/destroyed, or should the owner of the car be expected to laugh and shell out money for repairs/replacement? Would you have liked it to have happened to your car, especially if it got wrecked in the process of the prank?

You're absolutely wrong. If you don't believe me, here's a link to one of the aforementioned polls:
CBS poll

Before you say anything about the validity of polls, I think they're a lot more valid than some comments from random people like you on Slashdot who are trying to defend a position with no evidence whatsoever.

Anyway, the poll referenced shows 55% believing that "God created humans in present form", meaning they're Creationists. More importantly, 37% favor teaching Creationism instead of Evolution in schools, and 65% favor teaching both.

So your assertion that most Christians in the USA ("WHEREVER" is a totally different ball of wax; other places don't have nearly as many fundamentalists as the USA) "DONT WANT" creationism taught in school is obviously false. The percentage of Christians in the USA is certainly significantly less than 100%, with all the atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others. Let's say it's around 75% for argument's sake; if 65% out of 75% believes both Creationism and Evolution should be taught, that's obviously a majority. And the 37% of the stricter Creationism-only group is still about half. Again, look at the significance here: HALF of US Christians want Creationism (only) taught in schools.

So no, my opinions are not based on any personal anecdotes, but instead large nationwide surveys.