The world as we know it today doesn't have a shortage of food, we could feed everybody on the planet. But look at what "money" does. If a farmer makes too much milk, he's gotta trash it. Can't even take his extra milk and donate it for the poor.
Ah, yes, those Federal Milk Inspectors and their evil White Helicopters have had an awful effect on milk donation in the US.
But nonetheless, it's true. Hint: that extra milk isn't pasturized, that's not done at the farm.
If you can't tell the difference between what they had and what you and I have in various drawers and in the garage, you're a moron.
Here's the complete list of what was seized from one house. I've got a lot of those items. Maybe not so much propaganda, but in a house full of people planning a demonstration I'd say that's probably normal. I don't have any throwing knives, but I do have a couple of honking big scary knives, and the only "rife barrell"s I have (can't the department give these guys some remedial English lessons?) are attached to working firearms. No caltrops, but if the pictures I saw were the items in question, they wouldn't stop a horse, much less a bus. Caltrops are legal to possess, in any case.
rife barrell (sic) 2 foam padding 2 jars metal staples from basement 4 boxes lititure propaganda (sic) filter mask climing (sic) equipment 2 boxes "sector packs and propaganda" $670 US currency rent receipt computer hard drive 4 bike locks 2 digital cameras helmet filter mask throwing knives cell phone goggles literature propaganda hatchet bolt cutter machete box propaganda spray paint 3 cell phones I-Book laptop computer city maps propaganda books quote for print job from St. Paul Legal Ledger Dell computer thumb drive 2 boxes literature propaganda 2 walkie talkies cell phone mass storage device checkbook several 5 gal buckets 2 Kryptonite bike locks hacksaw 2 curtain rods multiple bicycle inner tubes 13 cans paint 6 vehicle tires 37 caltrops bolt cutter hardware bolts, nails, screws silver cable pry bar propaganda banner can charcoal lighter denatured alcohol mineral spirits Community Emergency Response Team bag containing vest/helmet, batteries, pry bar, caution tape.
These people were sick fucks. Their "tools of civil disobedience" were buckets of urine, flammable liquids, knives, etc. If you have any sympathy for them you are a sick fuck too.
So can we assume that you yourself are not allowed to possess flammable liquids, knives, or urine?
If you were allowed to light a BBQ that uses charcoal (not one of those yuppie gas grills), you'd know that it's mostly done with a flammable liquid.
They had duct tape, too! Auto tires! Chicken wire! A slingshot! Maps! All seized by the vigilant Fearless Fosdicks. Sheer criminal masterminds, obviously. (Good thing it wasn't my house, because I've got all of those things and firearms, too!)
if you want to keep data...just store it, re-index it to new media every 6-12 months and change to the new $cheap_media every 2 or 3 years.
That works for the first 4 or 5 years. Trouble is, getting that work reliably done on time is very difficult. Even if you are personally doing it. After a while, you get sloppy. A while beyond that, you don't care. If it's not you personally, add the variables of how much the worker actually cares, whether they're getting paid on time, whether there's something else going on in their life that distracts them.
i had a cd of pics from my daughters birth that i ripped clean a few weeks ago, and it was 7 years old. doing something every 2 -3 years should be easy, and still affordable.
But you didn't do it every 2-3 years, even though it was "easy", did you? This time, you got away with 7 years, but will you get away with it next time? Will you even be alive then?
Not to be partisan, but he's a Democrat. Which means I find it difficult to believe he would be able/willing to go up against teachers' unions and install performance based standards.
Shouldn't be a problem, so long as he also goes up against the school boards and principals, and requires that they provide every teacher with students of equivalent background and ability.
That "performance based standards" stuff is very hard to do right. The easy, cheap, stupid (NCLB) way is just to have some standardized tests that are applied to all children and schools without regard to the differences between them. To do it right, you're going to have to correct for all the variables. For example, around here we've got suburban schools where the parents are well educated, make a lot of money and have lived in the same house for 10 years. We've also got some inner city schools where the single parent is working two jobs just to make the rent, who move every year or two (so their kids do too), and whose kids don't speak English at home. Note that the frequent moving churns the students so that even if a teacher (or school) does a great job, the statistics probably will not show much improvement from year to year (since they're always starting from the same place).
if you download via p2p then you are also distributing and you definitely don't have rights to do that.
No, if you upload it via p2p then you are also distributing it.
If you download it, somebody else is distributing it. Some p2p networks require you to be willing to upload it to others, and some don't. If you do in fact upload it to others, then you are also distributing it.
Nothing I said implied that. If you purchased a song on vinyl, you are entitled to one copy of that song: the one you bought on vinyl.
What you said was: Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
So what you said was, an MP3 version, a CD version, a cassette version, an 8 track version, a vinyl version, or an Edison cylinder, they're all identical as far as copyright is concerned. "It's the same as far as copyright is concerned." That sure as hell implies that what I bought was (a copy of) the song as performed, not some particular media reproduction of it.
Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
Then, if I've purchased a copy on vinyl, or otherwise legally obtained a copy (perhaps through taping from the radio), I'm legally entitled to replace it with another copy, of whatever format? At no cost (if it doesn't cost anyone else) since I already own it. After all, that's the same copy as far as copyright is concerned. Over my life I've owned a lot of tracks that I no longer have. I don't think I have transferred ownership, so I still own them, even if that vinyl or CD or tape has deteriorated or disappeared or been destroyed. But it's reassuring to know that they're still mine, I can replace them by download without hindrance.
Oh, wait,the CopyCartel says it doesn't work that way.
Even MS would think twice before sueing a 2000 year old grandmother, on social security, who dont have a clue how to work a computer.
Whoa, slow down, if she's from a civilized part of the world, she probably speaks Latin or Chinese, but maybe not English (which didn't appear until she was at least 1000 years old, how many 1000-year-olds do you know who can learn a new language, so it's hard for her to defend herself in court). And I doubt that she's on social security, since her working years were well before the time that social security was invented. In her day, "social security" meant having a lot of male children. As for computers, she was probably pretty good in her day, but when your hands are gnarled with arthritis, it's difficult to slide the beads on the wires.
a court order directing the appropriate law enforcement agencies to seal all records of the arrest and destroy any copies of my fingerprints and/or photograph that they obtained from said arrest. The order also directed any agencies that may have received a copy of said items from the original police agency (i.e: the Feds) to do the same.
And how do you suppose the court ensures that everyone that has had access to that data receives a copy of the order? How does the court know if it has been obeyed? (Of course, the court will be pissed if it finds out, but the agency will claim that it was a clerical error, and no one will be punished.) And how in the world does a state court enforce an order like that against DHS, even making the unlikely assumption that it can ever find out the order has been violated?
As a society, probably because we hate and fear law enforcement, we don't pay cops very well. Why be a cop when you can make more money working at the local grocery store where you don't get shot at?
I don't know about where you live, but where I live cops are paid quite well, far better than grocery store workers (I'm not saying that's not appropriate). They've got a strong union, city fathers who are terrified at the thought of accusations that they don't support the police, lots of overtime, and special privileges over the competition when they moonlight (they get to use squad cars for their private use, and unlike their private competitors, they don't have to charge sales tax for security services).
Nobody is saying it's not a hard job, a tense one, even a dangerous one (though I seem to recall that their on-the-job injury rate is lower than occupations such as logging, meatpacking, etc.). But it can be pretty well paid. That hasn't stopped my local department from being widely viewed as goons (especially compared to the cops of a neighboring city).
I'm not a cop or any kind of law enforcement person, but it constantly amazed me the amount of red tape they have to deal it just to cover their own asses. Because everyone will assume, from the beginning, they are wrong, abusing they authority
That's BS. Cops are hardly ever held responsible for acts that if you or I did them, we'd be in prison. Just recently in my town, cops kicked in the door of an innocent homeowner and shot the place up. It was purely luck that nobody was killed. The department did admit it was an error on their part, gave the homeowner a few bucks to repair damage, and gave the cops medals.
The orders were wrong. So blame the superiors who used dodgy unreliable information and then authorised deadly force upon the basis of that dodgy unreliable information.
So, if somebody tells me to do something wrong, and I do it, I'm innocent?
It's a waste of time to put that on the air, the money is better spent elsewhere... Like paying to get a real in your face ad made
Ok, I'll bite. What kind of ad will $5 buy? Where will it run, in your church newsletter?
It's not a great ad, but it's an interesting concept. The worst that can happen is that it won't have any effect. Which is no worse than not doing anything.
But if you don't like the concept, you could send your money to EFF or ACLU instead.
So supposing money isn't an issue, what do you recommend?
Not the "usual suspects" (McAfee and Symantec), they're resource hogs. I used F-Prot for years and found it to be resource-light and good at detection but not always at removal. I find NOD32 a PITA to install on client machines but haven't used it extensively myself (and probably wouldn't, just because it's so obnoxious to install). I really liked AVG before 8.0, though I had stopped using it because once every few weeks it would break doing an update, and the only way to make it work again was to uninstall and reinstall it (haven't noticed anyone else having that problem, so it's probably unique to my particular configuration).
At the moment, I rather like AVira, and it scored very well in recent AV-test.org tests. (For whatever credence one gives such tests, the rankings ebb and flow from quarter to quarter.) But pay or free, IMHO the main things are that the program that doesn't bog the machine down (especially important if you, like me, tend to run less than state-of-the-art hardware), and that the user interface not be too annoying. Most of the programs are adequate at stopping viruses, so it's not that big a deal which one you use so long as it updates regularly.
Other decent free ones are: Avast is popular. AVira seems good, you get one popup ad per update. Comodo permits business use. BitDefender has a free version. I'm not including ClamAV because it's just a scanner, no realtime protection.
Carter pardoned Nixon before he was ever charged with any crimes.
That would be Ford you're thinking of.
Poppa Bush pardoned 6 people involved with Iran Contra, 1 conviction, 3 guilty pleas, and 2 pending cases.
To quote the US Constitution, the President shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States. It's not at all clear that he can pardon someone who has not been legally found to have committed an offense (that is, pled or been found guilty), someone for whom one can not specify their name and the precise offense they have committed. Yes, it's happened, and nobody cared enough to pursue the matter. Maybe we'll get that clarified after next January.
Or maybe Shrub could get them all individually indicted for every crime they might have committed. Wow, would that fill the news with stories about criminals in government. Then have them plead guilty. Which would monopolize the news again. And then pardon them, yet a third great news day about the crimes committed by or at the behest of government.
Of course, they'd have to trust Bush to carry through with his end of the pardon. Do you suppose they'd trust Bush significantly more than you or I would?
"Right" used to mean a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, with left, of course, being the opposite.
Well, sometimes. The terms actually come from the French Revolution, where in the legislature the liberals sat on the left side, and the nobility on the right side. Traditionally, "right" has referred to upholding tradition, traditional religion and authorities, the old order. "Left" stood for change.
Of course, those aren't very precise definitions, and it is sometimes hard to categorize how any particular person or position may fall into that arbitrary spectrum. Over the years, in different places and times, the meanings have shifted somewhat. Individual liberty has been at times claimed (or attacked) by each side of the spectrum.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness
This may be true. But forgiveness applied to someone who's in denial is called "enabling". It just encourages them to do it some more. The first step to forgiveness is a confession. When the telcoms publicly tell us exactly what they have done that may have violated the law or the privacy of the people whose communications they handle, once they are willing to stand up and accept responsibility for their own actions, then we can discuss forgiveness.
Thugs are thugs. Terrorists are thugs with brains.
And the people* who attacked Iraq are thugs without brains?
I guess you could make a case for it.
____ *As in, "the people who sat safe at home and directed the attack", not as in, "the people who have to fight when they're told to." Although we've seen that some of the latter (Abu Gharib, Hamdania, Haditha) became thugs too.
If that's your lifetime, that's cool. If it's the lifetime of a company that's less than three years old (the Wayback Machine doesn't have any web page for Dropshots prior to Nov. 24, 2005), um.. well.. good luck with the archival retention.
[experimenters claimed people exposed to porn] * devalued the importance of monogamy and lacked confidence in marriage as either a viable or lasting institution * viewed nonmonogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior
Sounds like the antiporn authors had some biases of their own: monogamy is important marriage is either a viable or lasting institution [for some unspecified value of "viable" or "lasting"] nonmonogamous relationships are abnormal [for some unspecified value of "normal"]
Now, maybe those things are true. But they are not intuitively obvious.
The remarks that they're calling out Perry on are both a universal part of all Christian faiths (so all Christians believe them)
That's not true, actually (except for certain values of "Christian"). Many Christian faiths do not believe that "non-Christians will be condemned to Hell". I'd suggest you look up the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) or Unitarian Universalists as examples. And over the last few hundred years, the more mainstream sects have gotten away from that belief, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, yes, those Federal Milk Inspectors and their evil White Helicopters have had an awful effect on milk donation in the US.
But nonetheless, it's true. Hint: that extra milk isn't pasturized, that's not done at the farm.
If you can't tell the difference between what they had and what you and I have in various drawers and in the garage, you're a moron.
Here's the complete list of what was seized from one house. I've got a lot of those items. Maybe not so much propaganda, but in a house full of people planning a demonstration I'd say that's probably normal. I don't have any throwing knives, but I do have a couple of honking big scary knives, and the only "rife barrell"s I have (can't the department give these guys some remedial English lessons?) are attached to working firearms. No caltrops, but if the pictures I saw were the items in question, they wouldn't stop a horse, much less a bus. Caltrops are legal to possess, in any case.
rife barrell (sic)
2 foam padding
2 jars metal staples from basement
4 boxes lititure propaganda (sic)
filter mask
climing (sic) equipment
2 boxes "sector packs and propaganda"
$670 US currency
rent receipt
computer hard drive
4 bike locks
2 digital cameras
helmet
filter mask
throwing knives
cell phone
goggles
literature propaganda
hatchet
bolt cutter
machete
box propaganda
spray paint
3 cell phones
I-Book laptop computer
city maps
propaganda books
quote for print job from St. Paul Legal Ledger
Dell computer
thumb drive
2 boxes literature propaganda
2 walkie talkies
cell phone
mass storage device
checkbook
several 5 gal buckets
2 Kryptonite bike locks
hacksaw
2 curtain rods
multiple bicycle inner tubes
13 cans paint
6 vehicle tires
37 caltrops
bolt cutter
hardware bolts, nails, screws
silver cable
pry bar
propaganda banner
can charcoal lighter
denatured alcohol
mineral spirits
Community Emergency Response Team bag containing vest/helmet, batteries, pry bar, caution tape.
These people were sick fucks. Their "tools of civil disobedience" were buckets of urine, flammable liquids, knives, etc. If you have any sympathy for them you are a sick fuck too.
So can we assume that you yourself are not allowed to possess flammable liquids, knives, or urine?
If you were allowed to light a BBQ that uses charcoal (not one of those yuppie gas grills), you'd know that it's mostly done with a flammable liquid.
They had duct tape, too! Auto tires! Chicken wire! A slingshot! Maps! All seized by the vigilant Fearless Fosdicks. Sheer criminal masterminds, obviously. (Good thing it wasn't my house, because I've got all of those things and firearms, too!)
if you want to keep data...just store it, re-index it to new media every 6-12 months and change to the new $cheap_media every 2 or 3 years.
That works for the first 4 or 5 years. Trouble is, getting that work reliably done on time is very difficult. Even if you are personally doing it. After a while, you get sloppy. A while beyond that, you don't care. If it's not you personally, add the variables of how much the worker actually cares, whether they're getting paid on time, whether there's something else going on in their life that distracts them.
i had a cd of pics from my daughters birth that i ripped clean a few weeks ago, and it was 7 years old. doing something every 2 -3 years should be easy, and still affordable.
But you didn't do it every 2-3 years, even though it was "easy", did you? This time, you got away with 7 years, but will you get away with it next time? Will you even be alive then?
Not to be partisan, but he's a Democrat. Which means I find it difficult to believe he would be able/willing to go up against teachers' unions and install performance based standards.
Shouldn't be a problem, so long as he also goes up against the school boards and principals, and requires that they provide every teacher with students of equivalent background and ability.
That "performance based standards" stuff is very hard to do right. The easy, cheap, stupid (NCLB) way is just to have some standardized tests that are applied to all children and schools without regard to the differences between them. To do it right, you're going to have to correct for all the variables. For example, around here we've got suburban schools where the parents are well educated, make a lot of money and have lived in the same house for 10 years. We've also got some inner city schools where the single parent is working two jobs just to make the rent, who move every year or two (so their kids do too), and whose kids don't speak English at home. Note that the frequent moving churns the students so that even if a teacher (or school) does a great job, the statistics probably will not show much improvement from year to year (since they're always starting from the same place).
if you download via p2p then you are also distributing and you definitely don't have rights to do that.
No, if you upload it via p2p then you are also distributing it.
If you download it, somebody else is distributing it. Some p2p networks require you to be willing to upload it to others, and some don't. If you do in fact upload it to others, then you are also distributing it.
Nothing I said implied that. If you purchased a song on vinyl, you are entitled to one copy of that song: the one you bought on vinyl.
What you said was:
Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
So what you said was, an MP3 version, a CD version, a cassette version, an 8 track version, a vinyl version, or an Edison cylinder, they're all identical as far as copyright is concerned. "It's the same as far as copyright is concerned." That sure as hell implies that what I bought was (a copy of) the song as performed, not some particular media reproduction of it.
Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
Then, if I've purchased a copy on vinyl, or otherwise legally obtained a copy (perhaps through taping from the radio), I'm legally entitled to replace it with another copy, of whatever format? At no cost (if it doesn't cost anyone else) since I already own it. After all, that's the same copy as far as copyright is concerned. Over my life I've owned a lot of tracks that I no longer have. I don't think I have transferred ownership, so I still own them, even if that vinyl or CD or tape has deteriorated or disappeared or been destroyed. But it's reassuring to know that they're still mine, I can replace them by download without hindrance.
Oh, wait,the CopyCartel says it doesn't work that way.
Even MS would think twice before sueing a 2000 year old grandmother, on social security, who dont have a clue how to work a computer.
Whoa, slow down, if she's from a civilized part of the world, she probably speaks Latin or Chinese, but maybe not English (which didn't appear until she was at least 1000 years old, how many 1000-year-olds do you know who can learn a new language, so it's hard for her to defend herself in court). And I doubt that she's on social security, since her working years were well before the time that social security was invented. In her day, "social security" meant having a lot of male children. As for computers, she was probably pretty good in her day, but when your hands are gnarled with arthritis, it's difficult to slide the beads on the wires.
a court order directing the appropriate law enforcement agencies to seal all records of the arrest and destroy any copies of my fingerprints and/or photograph that they obtained from said arrest. The order also directed any agencies that may have received a copy of said items from the original police agency (i.e: the Feds) to do the same.
And how do you suppose the court ensures that everyone that has had access to that data receives a copy of the order? How does the court know if it has been obeyed? (Of course, the court will be pissed if it finds out, but the agency will claim that it was a clerical error, and no one will be punished.) And how in the world does a state court enforce an order like that against DHS, even making the unlikely assumption that it can ever find out the order has been violated?
The answer, of course, is "it doesn't".
As a society, probably because we hate and fear law enforcement, we don't pay cops very well. Why be a cop when you can make more money working at the local grocery store where you don't get shot at?
I don't know about where you live, but where I live cops are paid quite well, far better than grocery store workers (I'm not saying that's not appropriate). They've got a strong union, city fathers who are terrified at the thought of accusations that they don't support the police, lots of overtime, and special privileges over the competition when they moonlight (they get to use squad cars for their private use, and unlike their private competitors, they don't have to charge sales tax for security services).
Nobody is saying it's not a hard job, a tense one, even a dangerous one (though I seem to recall that their on-the-job injury rate is lower than occupations such as logging, meatpacking, etc.). But it can be pretty well paid. That hasn't stopped my local department from being widely viewed as goons (especially compared to the cops of a neighboring city).
I'm not a cop or any kind of law enforcement person, but it constantly amazed me the amount of red tape they have to deal it just to cover their own asses. Because everyone will assume, from the beginning, they are wrong, abusing they authority
That's BS. Cops are hardly ever held responsible for acts that if you or I did them, we'd be in prison. Just recently in my town, cops kicked in the door of an innocent homeowner and shot the place up. It was purely luck that nobody was killed. The department did admit it was an error on their part, gave the homeowner a few bucks to repair damage, and gave the cops medals.
The orders were wrong. So blame the superiors who used dodgy unreliable information and then authorised deadly force upon the basis of that dodgy unreliable information.
So, if somebody tells me to do something wrong, and I do it, I'm innocent?
It's a waste of time to put that on the air, the money is better spent elsewhere... Like paying to get a real in your face ad made
Ok, I'll bite. What kind of ad will $5 buy? Where will it run, in your church newsletter?
It's not a great ad, but it's an interesting concept. The worst that can happen is that it won't have any effect. Which is no worse than not doing anything.
But if you don't like the concept, you could send your money to EFF or ACLU instead.
numerous judges have thrown his cases out, one referred to his case as 'farsical'
Wow, this nut writes his cases in Persian?
So supposing money isn't an issue, what do you recommend?
Not the "usual suspects" (McAfee and Symantec), they're resource hogs. I used F-Prot for years and found it to be resource-light and good at detection but not always at removal. I find NOD32 a PITA to install on client machines but haven't used it extensively myself (and probably wouldn't, just because it's so obnoxious to install). I really liked AVG before 8.0, though I had stopped using it because once every few weeks it would break doing an update, and the only way to make it work again was to uninstall and reinstall it (haven't noticed anyone else having that problem, so it's probably unique to my particular configuration).
At the moment, I rather like AVira, and it scored very well in recent AV-test.org tests. (For whatever credence one gives such tests, the rankings ebb and flow from quarter to quarter.) But pay or free, IMHO the main things are that the program that doesn't bog the machine down (especially important if you, like me, tend to run less than state-of-the-art hardware), and that the user interface not be too annoying. Most of the programs are adequate at stopping viruses, so it's not that big a deal which one you use so long as it updates regularly.
disable exec for avnotify.exe to disable the avira popups
Instructions for all versions of Windows (including W2K) at:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20463169-Avira-AntiVir-Personal-Free-Antivirus
Posting AC because I've moderated,
number11
Well, yes but.. (you've seen the complaints).
Other decent free ones are:
Avast is popular.
AVira seems good, you get one popup ad per update.
Comodo permits business use.
BitDefender has a free version.
I'm not including ClamAV because it's just a scanner, no realtime protection.
Posting AC because I've moderated,
number11
Carter pardoned Nixon before he was ever charged with any crimes.
That would be Ford you're thinking of.
Poppa Bush pardoned 6 people involved with Iran Contra, 1 conviction, 3 guilty pleas, and 2 pending cases.
To quote the US Constitution, the President shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States. It's not at all clear that he can pardon someone who has not been legally found to have committed an offense (that is, pled or been found guilty), someone for whom one can not specify their name and the precise offense they have committed. Yes, it's happened, and nobody cared enough to pursue the matter. Maybe we'll get that clarified after next January.
Or maybe Shrub could get them all individually indicted for every crime they might have committed. Wow, would that fill the news with stories about criminals in government. Then have them plead guilty. Which would monopolize the news again. And then pardon them, yet a third great news day about the crimes committed by or at the behest of government.
Of course, they'd have to trust Bush to carry through with his end of the pardon. Do you suppose they'd trust Bush significantly more than you or I would?
"Right" used to mean a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, with left, of course, being the opposite.
Well, sometimes. The terms actually come from the French Revolution, where in the legislature the liberals sat on the left side, and the nobility on the right side. Traditionally, "right" has referred to upholding tradition, traditional religion and authorities, the old order. "Left" stood for change.
Of course, those aren't very precise definitions, and it is sometimes hard to categorize how any particular person or position may fall into that arbitrary spectrum. Over the years, in different places and times, the meanings have shifted somewhat. Individual liberty has been at times claimed (or attacked) by each side of the spectrum.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness
This may be true. But forgiveness applied to someone who's in denial is called "enabling". It just encourages them to do it some more. The first step to forgiveness is a confession. When the telcoms publicly tell us exactly what they have done that may have violated the law or the privacy of the people whose communications they handle, once they are willing to stand up and accept responsibility for their own actions, then we can discuss forgiveness.
Thugs are thugs. Terrorists are thugs with brains.
And the people* who attacked Iraq are thugs without brains?
I guess you could make a case for it.
____
*As in, "the people who sat safe at home and directed the attack", not as in, "the people who have to fight when they're told to." Although we've seen that some of the latter (Abu Gharib, Hamdania, Haditha) became thugs too.
We did the $100 for lifetime membership
If that's your lifetime, that's cool. If it's the lifetime of a company that's less than three years old (the Wayback Machine doesn't have any web page for Dropshots prior to Nov. 24, 2005), um.. well.. good luck with the archival retention.
[experimenters claimed people exposed to porn]
* devalued the importance of monogamy and lacked confidence in marriage as either a viable or lasting institution
* viewed nonmonogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior
Sounds like the antiporn authors had some biases of their own:
monogamy is important
marriage is either a viable or lasting institution [for some unspecified value of "viable" or "lasting"]
nonmonogamous relationships are abnormal [for some unspecified value of "normal"]
Now, maybe those things are true. But they are not intuitively obvious.
The remarks that they're calling out Perry on are both a universal part of all Christian faiths (so all Christians believe them)
That's not true, actually (except for certain values of "Christian"). Many Christian faiths do not believe that "non-Christians will be condemned to Hell". I'd suggest you look up the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) or Unitarian Universalists as examples. And over the last few hundred years, the more mainstream sects have gotten away from that belief, too.
Maybe you ought to get out more.