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I suffered permanent injury because of one stranding me, forcing me to walk several miles.

Good you deserve for being a fat piece of shit. I can't want until an uber driver abandons you and you get you lard ass injured again.

Families were separated. Vendors were barred from returning to their booths. People stood outside in a rainy 40-degrees for hours only to be turned away. Traffic was backed up for hours due to inadequate parking. People were packed into an event hall like cattle, with little room to move or maneuver, and countless photo ops that people paid for were left unfulfilled.

Some people on Facebook describe the conditions inside the convention center as unsafe. RICC has responded to some of the comments, saying, "There was no mess up. This happens a lot at large events. It is very difficult to predict the turnover flow of patrons. Sometimes, for the safety of all, we need to halt entry to let the crowd thin out." RICC Organizer Steven Perry of Altered Reality Entertainment has been unreachable by media and disgruntled fans.

People are being very supportive of the Fire Marshals who handled the mess. One Facebook user writes, "Fire marshal #9 guarding the Omni North Garage was awesome. Delt with an angry mob through the whole 4 hours." I personally witnessed that marshal do a really great job with a really bad situation. Rhode Island is the site of the worst nightclub fire in US history, and Rhode Islanders understand that the Fire Marshal was acting with restraint and responsibly.

I have not heard about the conditions at the convention center today. They have apparently already sold to capacity but are still selling tickets online.

Ummm... no. The Pope is elected by the college of cardinals, no miracles necessary. (Unless you count the fact that the process is said to be "guided by the Holy Spirit".)

Where miracles come in is when a dead person is proposed for sainthood. There have to be two (used to be three, but they loosened the standards...) documented miracles, which are defined as events occuring in response to call on that person (who is assumed to be in a heaven and thus to have the ear of God) that cannot be explained by naturalist means. Most end up being medical miracles, and we aren't talking normal "faith healing" in which someone's migraine feels better. The miracles that are accepted by the Church (and they have teams of scientists and doctors to do the investigations) are usually pretty wild - stuff like terminal cancers disappearing without a trace, and all the tissue damage from the tumor regenerating, instantaneously or in a matter of hours or days. There have already been some reports (as yet unconfirmed) of such events in relation to Pope John Paul II (see here: http://www.turnto10.com/news/4659988/detail.html?r ss=pro&psp=news)

In the US, the latter would be an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech

Ever since the Republicans came into power, the constitution just ain't what it used to be. So tell me, which side of the legal battle was Taricani on, or wasn't he a member of the public?

Free speech here appears to just cost $85,000 and the incarceration of a 55 year old heart transplant recipient. God bless the USA, she needs it.

For what its worth, I'm proud of this man. I'm happy that our country still has people who have the guts to stand up against a corrupt government doing corrupt things, without resorting to incoherent ranting or threats of violence.

Freedom of religion is not absolute either. Look at the problems that native americans have with payote, and as much as Michael Jackson would like it, if I started a religion that one of the tenants was child rape, that activity/religion would not be proctected.

Forgive the lack of real cite for most of this stuff, no WL/LX access now.

Similarly, "freedom of the press" is not absolute either. Journalists DO NOT, despite their assertion that they have the right, have the right to not divulge a source if a court orders them to. Look at the Taricani case in Rhode Island. (http://www.turnto10.com/plunderdome/3983915/detai l.html).

There have been courts that HAVE increased protection for journalists. (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.s sf?/base/news/1107426969235690.xml).

Freedom is NOT absolute guys! There are limits that affect us every day. deal with it.

I'm no legal expert, but the courts have decided in the past that journalists don't have a right to protect their sources. This story just appeared a few minutes ago:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=61 5&e=1&u=/nm/20050215/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc

IN my area, a local television reporter was held in contempt and fined substantially for refusing to name a source, and the courts ruling was upheld on later appeal. A link to one of the stories on this:

http://www.turnto10.com/news/2925041/detail.html

More and more, the answer is yes. Federal court judge Ernest Torres recently convicted Jim Taricani of the Providence, RI NBC affiliate station of criminal contempt for refusing to name a source. The only reason he didn't send him to jail is that the reporter is a heart transplant recipient who would be endangered by that, so he sentenced him to six months' house arrest instead. Taricani broke no law. Welcome to the new USA.

I don't see this being more practical in small planes than simply having individual passenger parachutes in small planes, and letting them bail.

I personally knew the man who died in the Oct 29 plane crash in Rhode Island. That article is a bit inaccurate, but all the news reports were in regards to the crash. He had built the plane (Adventure Air Amphibious 6-seater) in his garage over the course of almost 15 years and it had only been in the air for about a month when it went down. During that entire time he studied to get his private pilot's certificate and all the relevant certifications to properly fly his plane. He was a very good pilot by all the accounts that I had heard (my father - he's also a pilot, and other friends of his).

Anyways, the plane went down about 2.5 miles off the end of the runway, which is about a minute of flying, and by my guess (I am a student pilot with 47 flight hours logged), maybe 1000' or 1500' of elevation AGL. I don't yet know what went wrong that day, but I get the impression from the eyewitness report that the plane was intact until it hit. The bigger factor for me is that I saw how much detail he put into the plane... he was a stickler for perfection and he knew his stuff (he studied mechanical engineering before going into law). So this leads me to believe that the plane was OK as far as the airframe. With a huge parachute like that and even just 500' elevation to pull it, he just might have survived the crash.

The cockpit of that plane and the big harnesses that he had in there would have taken more time to get out than he had. Whole-plane parachutes give pilots more time to react, rather than having to aim the plane away from (as was the case in Paul's crash) a shopping mall, unbuckle yourself, open the canopy (not an option in certain planes where you'd have to push the door against the air resistance), bail, and pull your chute. This is a big problem because most crashes happen in the very first or the very last minutes of flying (when the plane is flying slow and is more susceptible[sp?] to stalling). It can save lives.

Just my $0.02.

It's not