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A better "edge" example would be blood/conflict diamonds. Diamonds are legal, generally.

But the US does ban diamonds from certain countries, and requires certification from others:
http://www.policyalmanac.org/world/archive/conflict_diamonds.shtml

As the link points out, there are ways around these restrictions (altering the "country of last export" by moving them around before importing them to the US).

Blood/conflict diamonds are mined by people who are very oppressed. One could argue that many things from China are created by people who are very oppressed (low pay, terrible work conditions, high suicide rates, etc.).

The system that you describe...trial by a jury of your peers, clear rules, people expected to keep their word. It sounds nice, but are you sure that we don't have it already?

Absolutely CERTAIN.
....However, just because I'm sure doesn't mean I'm right.

Allow my to explain my perspective, and lets see if anyone can show me my errors or assumptions.

Your first condition, "trial by a jury of your peers" depends largely on your definition of "peer".
According to Legal definition

"A peer is a person's equal. The U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a "jury of one's peers," which means an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives."

Let's break this down further.
"A peer is a person's equal": I am a college educated male, between the ages of 25-35. I am fairly well versed in current events, active in the local community, and own my own business.
I think that it's safe to say that my equal would be best defined by these same demographics.
If it was possible, I would prefer to be judged by people with an equivalent intelligence level as well, but lets not get picky.

"an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives": I live in the state capital of Louisiana (southern usa). According to Wikipedia "As of the census of 2000" "The per capita income for the city was $18,512. About 18.0% of families and 24.0% of the population were below the poverty line"
Since 2000, these numbers have worsened, the current poverty rate is above 25% according to the 2007 census. link
Also, better than 20% of our local population never finished high school. Census data
Additionally, I have been called for jury duty, as have many of my friends and associates. As a rule, the people who are educated, intelligent, and successful are removed from the jury pool in the first or second round. I understand that this is anecdotal evidence, but it's fairly common to wind up with a jury of the lowest common denominator. Intelligent, educated people are hard to convince, and hard to manipulate, which makes a lawyers job harder. Unfortunately out legal system doesn't weigh issues on thier own merits, but on the ability of the lawyers to argue instead.

So, what do you think the chances are of my having a jury of my equals?

Your second condition, "clear rules" is easier to define.
Clear rules would mean that the average American could read and understand exactly what was expected of them, the punishments involved, and how the legal system operated, in enough detail as to be able to successfully sue or defend themselves in court.

Or to make things even simpler, simply define the rules in such a way that the average American can at least understand what is going on in court, and participate in their own defense.

According to many different research groups, the US has a deplorable literacy rate. I'm not going to write a full analysis here, but there is a fairly good one Here
To summarize, 50% of our population reads at less than a 7th grade level.
So, what in the world makes people think that the average American can read, parse, and cross reference 1000's of obscure words, hundreds of referenced precedents, and actually understand it?

As for your last requirement, "people expected to keep their word" this is subjective, and the parent was referring to people with "integrity" not just honesty.
Unfortu

Well I could think of some algorithm books for which you need a good math background and no computer, "The Art of Computer Programming" comes to mind.

If you find some sufficiently educated prisoners this could be something to pass their time with.

But face it, about 20% of all Americans have a bachelors degree or higher. Academics tend to be underrepresented in prison so there is little reason to believe that you will find many takers for this kind of literature in prison.

The degree percentage per person can be found here:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/phct41.html

The statement that there are less academics in prison is supported here:

http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/education_prisons.pdf

Hmm, interesting. What if there were a state-paid bounty for good grades? According to a report on US educational spending, $6,911 was spent per student in the 1999-2000 school year.

How about if $500 of that were sent directly to the parents if their child made a B average or greater? For rich families, it won't make a difference, but for poor families (who are most uninvolved with their children's schooling) that could be a decent motivator, especially since poor families tend to have more kids as well.

Families aren't suddenly going to spend 10 hours a week helping the children with homework, but $500 would probably be worth taking a few minutes each week and saying "Are you getting behind?" and attending the occasional parent-teacher meeting, which would probably help immensely for a lot of kids.

It's also important to note than education is not primarily funded at the federal level. These figures are a few years old, but they show that only 7% of elementary and secondary education expenditure is federally funded.

If an innocent is sent to prison for life there's still a change s/he can be cleared and set free but they can't be brought back to life once executed.

I mostly agree, but with one exception: if it's blatantly obvious the person is guilty (e.g. the person in question is Saddam Hussein, or there's video and 100 eye-witnesses that saw the guy pull the trigger, or whatever, I think the death penalty, swiftly carried out, is useful for the simple fact that it saves the taxpayers the cost of imprisonment. Either that, or the prisoners should be made to work to earn their keep, anyway...

I'd add another exception, in cases like I believe it was Gary Gilmore's who wanted to be executed. I vaguely recall Johnny Cash had tried to talk him into accepting life in prison.

"Here"? Where, the US? You're not asserting that the US has no working nuclear reactors, are you?

Hmmm, no, of course we have reactors.

This is what I was talking about.

My apologies for the lack of clarity.

Ok, fine. Here's one that's sourced from the EPA: http://www.policyalmanac.org/environment/global_wa rming.shtml

Actually I've found that the data found in Wikipedia on contraversial topics is very accurate. There can be slant, but the data is good. This is because many people read the articles and any bad data would be corrected quickly.

Something tells me you have a nice house in the burbs or a nice apartment in the city, yet you are telling the roughly one million who are homeless, the one in sixteen who live in trailer homes, and the 46 million who can't afford health care they are well off, what nerve!!!!! Have you ever had to worry about where your next meal is coming from or dying from an infection? I thought not...

As one who has experienced homelessness and eating out of dumpster you are officially invited to bite me.

http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/homele ss.shtml

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1993/01/kn ox.html

The inevitable consequence of teachers' union funding depending on there being no school violence is that teachers will spend more time covering their asses by monitoring for bullying, and less time and effort on actually teaching. Is this what you really want?

I guess it depends on whether they want to reduce the occurrance of bullying or not. Also, I don't think you can really make the case that bullying helps the education process or that more learning takes place where bullying is present than where it's absent.

So you're saying that teachers should go against the doctrines of the society in which they teach in order to help reduce the occurrance of bullying?

I guess it depends on whether they want to reduce the occurrance of bullying or not.

And it's a logical fallacy to claim that teachers' unions are all about the money and then say that they'd reject your innovations that would lead to making huge sums of cash.

Some sort of mass media solution would actually be cheaper. The individual teacher would get a lot more, but the overall expense would be less. Less spending on fewer teachers is contrary to the union's interests.

However, which is more important to society as a whole, NBA/NHL/MLB players or teachers?

Total annual US spending on primary and secondary public education: $373 billion
Total annual US spending on sports: $213 billion

The education number doesn't include any private education at all, and doesn't include post-secondary education and other expenses.

... availability of four-wheel drive. The increasing market share of these vehicles, combined with their lower average fuel economy, has contributed to a lowering in overall average fuel economy since the mid-1980s.

Iraq was not invading any other countries.
Kuwait, what is happening now still stems from that. Sadam was not fullfilling his obligations that put a cease fire of the last time.
The U.N. had not explicitly authorized invasion.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949. Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (P.L. 102-1) has authorized the President ''to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677''. In December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it ''supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (P.L. 102-1),'' that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and ''constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region,'' and that Congress, ''supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688''. -- From http://www.policyalmanac.org/world/archive/hgop_ir aq_resolution.shtml

It is not correct to simply compare spending by the Feds in Education and Defense. You need to look at funding by all sources, state, local, and federal. http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/doe _education_spending.shtml

In 1999-2000, k-12 spending by the US was $373 billion. Billions more are spent on post-secondary education. Since local and state governments do not spend on national military, you can see that the DoE spending of $400 billion (2004) is probably less than the $400+ billion (2000) we as a nation spend on education.

Even this analysis is incomplete. My point is that if you have a fleeting grasp of the statistics, you can paint a misleading picture, as if the U.S. is a war-hungry country.

Slashdot posted a link to a pathetically incomplete news article, so it's not surprising to see all these incomplete responses. They don't even compare the price of wind to the price of conventional power at that school except to say it's more, and they don't mention that the price is subsidized.

We spend more on defense per capita than the next top three nations combined- do you realize that includes North Korea, widely considered to be a "military state"?

The next three nations? Try the next ten: spending comparison link (sorry, a pdf)

Sean

I wasn't actually considering individual women profitting from having an abortion when I made the original statement. I was more thinking of stem cell research being used as one more "good" reason for on demand abortions. I do find the reference to the aborted fetus as "Trash" to be extremely troubling as I am sure was intended. The main point of my post was that fetal and/or non-specific stem cells are available from sources other than the destruction of a human embryo. A point that seems to be glossed over during much of the debate over whether or not the research should be occuring at all. I am very much pro stem cell research. I am just glad to see that there are several sources available that do not stem from a potential loss of life...

The ban can be reviewed in detail here. As you can see, the ban was initiated in 1994, with no superheroes in sight.

I also wish there were a law in the U.S. that for every dollar spent on the military, a dollar had to be spent on education.

I also wish there were a law in the U.S. that for every dollar spent on the military, a dollar had to be spent on education.

You seem to be saying that the liberal welfare programs will bankrupt us all. According to a quick Google search, in 1994 there were 14.2 million welfare recipients, including 5.0 million families and 9.6 million children, and they spent, 2.8% of the federal budget. In 1999, there were 7.2 million, including 2.6 million families and 5.1 million children. This doesn't seem like a particularly worrying trend.

Meanwhile, the government spends something like twice as much on corporate welfare.

If you're talking about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, who the hell can say with any certainty. There's this and this. But let's tackle a macro-scale assumption first: in the event that the economic equation is truly as you say it is, why would they allow the entire global economic order to collapse instead of simply reducing benefits and/or cutting costs? Americans are not particularly slaves to a welfare state. Why wouldn't politicians, being nothing if not self-interested, vote to save their own jobs and curtail benefits and maybe lose a few votes, instead of losing everything in a total economic collapse?

One of the least controversial provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (P. L. 94-163) established corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger cars. As oil prices rose, there was little expectation that manufacturers would have any difficulty complying with the standards. However, oil prices softened and the demand for small cars diminished. In response to petitions from manufacturers facing stiff civil penalties for noncompliance, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) relaxed the standard for model years 1986-1989.