The only protection that the young have against sexual predators is themselves. This is true on the street and on the internet. Kids and teenagers who don't know which way is up, who are not aware of the existence of sick and evil individuals who want to basically rape them (if they are lucky), are at risk of being victimized by said individuals. It doesn't matter if they're wandering down the street or wandering into a chat room.
In todays world there are no children. There are only the aware and informed, and the ignorant.
When politicians start in with their histrionics, it is only a ploy to assuage the fear of ignorant and superstitious voters who demand that someone "do something" about problems that can only be solved in the home, by parents who are honest with their children. When parents try to "protect" their children from finding out about the evils of the world, in order to preserve their "innocence," they are only setting their kids up to be the next round of victims.
So the next time you read a story about some kid being enticed online, ask yourself why that kid was so ill prepared and uninformed that he or she was susceptible in the first place. You might be tempted to say that it was because they were young, that this made them inherently vulnerable. Human children in ages past were capable of hunting for food, knowing which types of plants were poisonous and which were safe to gather, and how to avoid or fend off predators. Yet now here today with modern education, not to mention modern nutrition, children and young people are somehow supposed to be completely helpless in the face of danger. I don't buy that and you shouldn't either.
If our children are helpless it is only because we infantilize them and constrain them to roles and states of being that render them helpless. Mushroom management (keep them in the dark, feed them shit, and watch them grow) might work for peons in the workplace, but it is no way to raise children.
Are these nations known for their defense of liberty? Are their citizens free?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The internet is just another area where those who seek power to oppress their fellow man are hard at work erecting barriers to the free flow of information, barriers against truth. They did it with the spoken word. They did it with the printing press. They did it with broadcast media. Now they're sinking their claws into the internet.
Evil never sleeps and stupid never dies.
Welfare, the gift that keeps on killing.
on
NASA Knows How To Party
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Welfare, as we implement it, is morally wrong. It hurts the very people it pretends to help. In truth this is intentional. The people who call for welfare know that it is a poison pill that will lock those who receive it into their wretched existence, thereby guaranteeing a perpetual underclass that the left can use for propaganda purposes.
You can't fix broken people. Some people are losers and always will be no matter what you say or do. These people are a very small minority. Then you have other people who have the potential to be something other than losers, but only when environmental and cultural factors are sufficiently good. There are a fair number of people like this. Welfare, and the culture of dependency that it creates, locks these people into being losers. People who might otherwise live modest but productive and happy lives are stuck in a syndrome of idleness and dependency from which no good can come. As I said before, this is entirely intentional. Creating losers whose existence can then be blamed on the larger society gives the left a powerful propaganda tool that they then use to attack capitalism and the liberal democracy upon which it is founded.
Of all the things that this nation lacks, opportunity is not one of them. Poverty is a temporary condition for those who are willing to work hard and make wise decisions. Wealth is not assured, but economic security in a safe and sane community is all but guaranteed.
That being said, what NASA is doing needs to be looked at. There are times when it is necessary to schmooze various people. NASA pays private companies for a lot of the things that it needs to function. Being able to schmooze some of the heads of those companies can make a difference when it comes to the terms of contracts. If spending a million entertaining some people saves 30 million on contracts, then that is money well spent.
However, if this money is being wasted, then that needs to stop. Wasting tax money hurts the country twice over. First when the money is taken out of the economy, and second when it is not put to good use.
If it was legal, then there is nothing to grant immunity for.
If it was not legal, then the telco companies are the least of our problems. They should of course still be nailed for it. Just because it is a government agency that is directing your company to commit a crime, does not mean that you will be protected from the other agencies in our government, or from the consequences of that crime.
At the end of the day the sad truth of the matter is that our enemies overseas are nowhere near as dangerous to the well being of our nation as our domestic enemies, many of whom are in government. We are at war. Unfortunately we are in a war which is largely undefined, at least by official sources. It is called the "war on terror." This is a lie. That is declaring a war on an activity without ever identifying the persons responsible for that activity. If someone was tracking mud into your house, declaring a war on mud without ever addressing the person tracking it in would result in nothing, except perhaps a lot of mopping. You have to define your enemy before you can successfully wage war against him.
Our enemies are those elements in the Muslim world who wish to see Islam, and particularly islamofascism, conquer the world. This isn't a war against terror, or even terrorists really. This is a war against people and groups and nations, who wish to destroy our civilization, our societies, and replace each with their own. Terrorism is but one of many strategies they employ to accomplish this. This is who we are at war with because this is who is waging war upon us, and upon the west as a whole.
Within our own nation, and our own government, there are those who seek to help our enemies overseas. They do this for a variety of reasons, but primarily because they believe that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. They have no special love for the Islamofascists. In most instances they would be mortal enemies. But both are enemies of liberal democracy, so they're working together to destroy it. Who is this internal enemy that is working with our enemies overseas? This enemy has many names, and many faces. It is not so much a singular enemy as much as an ad hoc swarm of smaller enemies, some of whom are almost as much at odd with one another as they are with us. Principle among these enemies are crypto-marxists. Then you have your socialists, gramscian marxists, and a whole slew of other groups and ideologies that can be collectively known as the political left. Not all self-described leftists are of course a part of this swarm, but the majority are. Others are unconsciously working in concert with them without understanding their intentions. These are generally known as "useful idiots."
These are people who attempt to color everything that the president and his administration are doing as an assault on the American people. There is of course room for honest criticism of this administration, but that isn't what these people are about. They're about weakening our nation from within so that we will be less able to fight our external foes. No nation is ever conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within, and that is exactly what their game plan is.
This is just the cold war all over again in many ways. In fact it would be more honest to say that the cold war never really ended. The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, but its allies here in the states never threw in the towel. Those allies are still hard at work on their long march through our institutions, weakening and destroying from within. Now that a new foe has surfaced, they're working overtime.
But none of this answers the question of whether these wiretaps were legal or not. The Bush administration knows all too well that our internal enemies will use the legal system to attack from within. If this administration did not verify the legality of what they were plann
Am I to understand that the "I'm offended!" tactic, which is commonly used by the intellectually dishonest and morally corrupt to prevent the discussion of issues and ideas they do not agree with, has now become a legal principle?
Better not say something that other people don't want to hear. They might claim to be offended. Offending someone is legally actionable don't you know? Inducing cognitive dissonance in the deluded or dishonest is a hate crime...or soon will be under the new politically correct rules of jurisprudence.
Political Correctness: Because living with the truth is just too hard.
I think these school administrators have gotten far too used to dealing with students who do not have the power to question their authority...or their adequacy as human beings.
This is what the MSM has been reduced to, propaganda and spin, which is why they're losing readers and viewers at an ever increasing rate.
With the right kind of ears you can hear a sound. It is a harsh gnashing sound, but one that is becoming more shrill and louder all the time. More and more are able to hear it, and even see it. It is a desperate and fearful sound. It is the sound of the political left in America. They are terrified and in distress. You can measure their desperation by just how far their mask has fallen. There was a time when leftist bias in media was usually subtle, and its allegiance to the political left was hidden. Sometimes you could only barely perceive both. But now these are not only obvious, they are blatant and accompanied by the smell of fear. There was a time when the hatred that the left feels for America and its institutions was also shrouded and protected by cover stories, PR, and the creative redefining of words. Today they are increasingly saying what they really mean and what they really think, which has always been a disaster for them every time they have done it. Why have they changed? Because they are deathly afraid, almost to the point of panic.
What do they fear? They fear the vast right wing conspiracy of course, and the effect it is having on their place in the scheme of things. What is the vast right wing conspiracy? Well you might have heard it described as something else, namely the rest of the country. The leftists have the misfortune (for them) of living in a functional democracy where their ability to fool enough of the people enough of the time is quickly becoming a thing of the past. They will of course re-invent themselves and pretend to be something else yet again. Evil never dies after all, it merely changes form and then reappears. Hopefully it will be a good long while before it does so this time.
A life sentence for murder is issued for the sole purpose of putting someone behind bars and separating them from society forever. There is no rehabilitation. If someone doing a life sentence becomes a better person along the way then that is all fine and good, but it has nothing to do with why they have been sent to prison.
I really do have to disagree with you about theft, robbery, and burglary. Putting the people who do those things in jail prevents these things from being done by those people. The fact that the UK does not do this is a big part of why your crime rate is so high.
My wife is from the UK, and the stories she's told me about burglaries, assaults, robberies, etc over there was almost more than I could believe. I live in Phoenix, AZ which is an area of some 5 million people. I don't even remember the last time I heard of someone being burglarized. It happens of course, my point is that it not such a common phenomena that you hear about it happening to anyone you know. No one I know has ever been burglarized to my knowledge, certainly no one in my family. Meanwhile among my wife's family back in Stoke there have been three different burglaries in the past 6 years. Nearly everyone in her town has a burglar alarm, which here are only used by people in wealthier areas, who actually have something worth enough to attract a burglar.
At the end of the day the main reason why burglaries are so rare here is because the life expectancy of a burglar is pretty short. Breaking into someone's house is a good way to get shot. Burglar alarms are uncommon here, but firearms are not. Even a.22 can ruin someone's day, not to mention a pump action shotgun.
When these sorts of criminals are caught here, we send them up for several years at a time. This keeps them off the street, thereby preventing them from committing more crimes. If they are smart they change their ways and stop being criminals. If they are not smart we have a 3-strikes law in this state the results in a life sentence upon their 3rd felony conviction, making crime a very self-limiting occupation.
I do agree that sending drug USERS to prison is a waste all around. It wastes my money as a taxpayer locking up someone who should not be there. It wastes the state's resources keeping someone locked up when actual criminals could be kept there instead. And it wastes the life of someone who has committed no real crime. While smoking weed is a stupid waste of time and a somewhat self-destructive activity, it is not a crime. It is merely illegal. You damage yourself by doing it, but then that is your right as a free person. It is not the job of the state to protect citizens from themselves. Down that path lies tyrany. The state is invested with the power and authority to prosecute and punish those individuals who violate the rights of other individuals, as defined by law. Drug use violates no one.
The truth is that most drug laws have very little do to with drugs, and everything to do with the kinds of people that society imagines uses certain drugs. Marijuana is illegal not because of any harm it does to an individual or to society, but because of the public's perception of the kinds of people who use it. The term "pothead" does not invoke images of a successful person. Instead it brings to mind images of a dysfunctional person, the kind of person that most people wish would go away. Drug laws are an attempt to outlaw certain types of people that the rest of society disapproves of. This does not work of course, but there you have it. This is why the laws against these drugs are on the books and enforced. Any mention of legalizing these drugs is interpreted by the public as creating more of these unsavory characters. Soccer moms don't want more potheads and so the drug that is associated with them stays illegal. In the meantime people are arrested and incarcerated because of who they are, namely potheads. Their identity has been tied to a particular substance. The prohibition of it is a prohibition of them. If they're stupid enough to go around looking like potheads then sooner or later they're going to get done up for it.
The reason why murder is so low on the repeat offender list is because murderers are locked up and/or executed, thereby reducing and/or eliminating their ability to re-offend. They can of course still kill other prisoners, which is why Jeffrey Dahmer is no longer with us, but they can't murder ordinary citizens.
Mind you, not all murderers are charged with murder. Some are plead their case down to manslaughter. An actual murder conviction will land someone life in prison, the death penalty, or many decades in prison at the very least. A manslaughter conviction on the other hand results in much less jail time.
It would be interesting to find out how many repeat offenders there are for manslaughter. Or how many who are convicted of this later go on to be convicted of murder.
Keep in mind that the closure rate for murder cases is only around 50%, which kind of makes a joke out of old sayings like "He got away with murder."
As for this case, I think it is this woman who has gotten the last laugh. They gave her life in prison and she took back 35 years for herself. Even if she dies in prison, they can't take away the years she shared with her husband or the children and grandchildren they had together.
I remember hearing about a similar case a few years back. An old man dies and his family begins trying to sort out his affairs. Along the way they discover that he'd escaped from prison some 50 years before. He too had been sentenced to life for murder, and apparently he was guilty. In his case the police were literally not looking for him because of a clerical error. The department of corrections thought that his case was open, and the police thought he was back in prison. Once mis-filed the case was forgotten.
I for one do not like the idea of a criminal justice system that always gets its man. The system, being the work of human beings, will always be flawed. Innocent people will be sent to prison. Guilty people will go free. If someone is guilty of a crime, odds are they're going to do something else at some point in the future that will land them in the system again. OJ Simpson is a perfect example of this. He got away with murder, but was too stupid to quit while he was ahead, so now he is back in jail. Meanwhile someone who is innocent, who does not have a criminal personality, is unlikely to commit any crimes in the future.
I don't know the details of this case or what the evidence was against her. But if her subsequent behavior is any indication, I would guess she is innocent. If so, the fact that the system was less than omnipotent and that she was able to evade it for all these years is a GOOD thing.
Dan Rather's claims are based on a report he received from 1972 detailing the flaws and dangers of carbon fiber airframes. The report used proportional fonts, kerning, and a typeface that was not available until much later.
When questioned about these inconsistencies, Rather declared "I believe this story is true! I believe it in my heart! I stand by my pres.. errr, I mean Boeing, but I feel this story is true!"
If Apple wanted to beat vista they'd stop using their hardware as a dongle for the OS. OS-X on normal PCs sold at Wal-Mart. That is trying to beat vista.
If they do that then I'll take notice. Until then as far as I'm concerned they're pulling their punches.
I just found out recently that if you have ever been arrested, you are ineligible to travel to the US without a visa. The US has an agreement with 22 other nations, such as the UK, Ireland, Germany, Australia, etc, where by citizens of these nations can visit the US as tourists without a visa, provided that they only stay for 90 days or less.
Well, if you're a citizen of one of these nations, and you've ever been arrested, then you're excluded from this program. It doesn't matter if you were never changed with a crime. It doesn't matter if you were acquitted. It doesn't matter if your record has been expunged. Merely being arrested, for any reason, disqualifies you.
If this guy is smart, he'll ask the judge to purge this wrongful arrest from his record. I don't know if the judge can do that, but odds are he or she can, and should.
If the actual substance of the list you just gave consisted of good ideas then I'd have no problem with the left.
I'd love to provide health care to everyone. The difference is that I don't believe the ends justify the means, especially when those means have a track record of failure when applied elsewhere. I don't believe in doing something bad for the sake of achieving something good and hoping that somehow everything will turn out alright in the end. My wife is from the UK and she's glad that she's no longer subject to the "care" she received there. There are some problems for which there are no easy answers, and health care is one of them. This is not going to change. The government cannot solve this problem. The free market cannot solve this problem. Unless something happens to alter the economics involved there will be no solution. Right now health care is expensive. Unless it somehow becomes cheaper then there will continue to be people who cannot afford it. The government already provides health care to the most needy in the form of medicaid. The ones who are screwed are those who don't have insurance, but who are not quite poor enough to qualify for medicaid. There is no solution to this.
Sensible foreign policy is of course something that almost everyone will agree with. The problem is that "sensible" is a subjective term that is highly dependent upon the philosophical views of the person wielding it. To me sensible amounts to speaking softly and carrying a very big stick. Make that a shotgun. And a blow torch. And a pair of pliers.
Finding alternatives to oil is of course a good idea. The problem is that what the left generally means by that is "stop drilling for oil." The best alternative is of course nuclear power, but we all know how superstitious the left is about that. Alternatives to oil are not necessarily going to mean alternatives that the meany greenies prefer. The oil will run out one day, alternatives are inevitable. In the end they will be found or created no later than when the economic incentive to find them develops. It probably won't happen any earlier either. As long as oil is cheaper, alternatives will take a back seat. That being said I myself would LOVE to see an alternative to oil. The less money we pour into the pockets of medieval barbarian religious fanatics, the better off the world as a whole will be.
Capital punishment is a football, just like gay marriage. It is something that extremists on the left and right fight over because it is a subject that is resistant to moderation. Abortion is an even better example of this. There is no in-between position that would be acceptable to both sides, and so they continue to fight about it. I think this is a good thing because it takes up their time and energy and expends it on issues that are of only marginal relevance to most people. Capital punishment to me is something that I have a hard time caring about. It is sad when an innocent person is wrongly executed, but it isn't sad at all when a guilty person gets the chair. The problem isn't capital punishment itself, but the human - and therefore flawed - system which controls its use. At the end of the day I believe that capital punishment helps keep the criminal justice system working as it should. The members of a jury are far more likely to do their duty to the fullest if a person's life is at stake. I also believe that it is a credible deterrent. Not against the psycho ax murderer types, but against ethically challenged individuals whose decision to murder is calculated and deliberate. But, if capital punishment were to go away I don't think I'd care very much. As for gay marriage, my wife is bisexual, need I say more? As for abortion, it is a bad idea but not an issue that the government should be involved in regulating.
Making taxation more fair is yet another statement that everyone would agree with, provided their subjective interpretation of the word "fair" was the one employed. The sad truth is that far to
You're arguing from the flawed premise that privacy is about hiding one's sins. It is not. Privacy is about liberty, about the right of each individual to personal sovereignty. That which is private is beyond the legitimate purview of the state, or of society. Privacy is not about the things that people do wrong in secret. It is simply the sum of all that is not public.
You claim you have nothing to hide, but you do. If you were forced to walk down main street without a stitch of clothes on, defecate into a bucket in plain sight, and then present the contents to passers-by for inspection, I guarantee that your respect for privacy would be improved tremendously. It would be even further improved if the details of your paycheck, credit card statements, and bank balance were to be presented to the world via a large electronic billboard on your front lawn. If this idea truly does not bother you, then I invite you to publish those financial details here. Put your money where your mouth is.
The long and short of it is that there are aspects of each person's life that they and they alone have the rightful authority to regulate. The only way to ensure that this right is not abridged or undermined is to keep those aspects secret.
The vast majority of Liberals in America aren't trying to push anything anymore because they are not FOR anything. They've been reduced to a subculture defined not by what its members believe in, but by what they gripe about. Where it once was about ideals and noble intentions, profoundly flawed though they might be, now it's about grudges and grievances.
They no longer attempt to promote their own ideas, but they haven't quite reached the point of examining and revising the flawed assumptions those bad ideas are based upon. Their stuck in a limbo where they're not quite sure what they are for, but they have no doubt what they are against. This is why they you'll see them denigrating and casting aspersions at their traditional political foes, but without any attempt at promoting their own ideas or explaining why they are better. They've lost their capacity to build, all they can do now is seek to destroy.
Those among them who are intellectually honest and who value truth will eventually find their way out of the darkness and into the light. Unfortunately not everyone possesses these particular virtues, and for them I do feel sorry.
An even more important question is "Can you prove that the crimes you're seeking to prevent are actually WORSE than the crimes that will be committed BY YOU with these new powers?"
The most dangerous of all criminals are those who carry badges and whose chief weapons are the power and authority of the state.
I find it entirely predictable that a leftist would abuse the letter of the law in violation of the spirit of the law in order to attack someone who does not subscribe to his religion.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you mean 15 gigaflops?
The original Cray I from 1976 did 200 MFlops (on paper).
The only protection that the young have against sexual predators is themselves. This is true on the street and on the internet. Kids and teenagers who don't know which way is up, who are not aware of the existence of sick and evil individuals who want to basically rape them (if they are lucky), are at risk of being victimized by said individuals. It doesn't matter if they're wandering down the street or wandering into a chat room.
In todays world there are no children. There are only the aware and informed, and the ignorant.
When politicians start in with their histrionics, it is only a ploy to assuage the fear of ignorant and superstitious voters who demand that someone "do something" about problems that can only be solved in the home, by parents who are honest with their children. When parents try to "protect" their children from finding out about the evils of the world, in order to preserve their "innocence," they are only setting their kids up to be the next round of victims.
So the next time you read a story about some kid being enticed online, ask yourself why that kid was so ill prepared and uninformed that he or she was susceptible in the first place. You might be tempted to say that it was because they were young, that this made them inherently vulnerable. Human children in ages past were capable of hunting for food, knowing which types of plants were poisonous and which were safe to gather, and how to avoid or fend off predators. Yet now here today with modern education, not to mention modern nutrition, children and young people are somehow supposed to be completely helpless in the face of danger. I don't buy that and you shouldn't either.
If our children are helpless it is only because we infantilize them and constrain them to roles and states of being that render them helpless. Mushroom management (keep them in the dark, feed them shit, and watch them grow) might work for peons in the workplace, but it is no way to raise children.
China
Iran
Russia
Are these nations known for their defense of liberty? Are their citizens free?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The internet is just another area where those who seek power to oppress their fellow man are hard at work erecting barriers to the free flow of information, barriers against truth. They did it with the spoken word. They did it with the printing press. They did it with broadcast media. Now they're sinking their claws into the internet.
Evil never sleeps and stupid never dies.
Welfare, as we implement it, is morally wrong. It hurts the very people it pretends to help. In truth this is intentional. The people who call for welfare know that it is a poison pill that will lock those who receive it into their wretched existence, thereby guaranteeing a perpetual underclass that the left can use for propaganda purposes.
You can't fix broken people. Some people are losers and always will be no matter what you say or do. These people are a very small minority. Then you have other people who have the potential to be something other than losers, but only when environmental and cultural factors are sufficiently good. There are a fair number of people like this. Welfare, and the culture of dependency that it creates, locks these people into being losers. People who might otherwise live modest but productive and happy lives are stuck in a syndrome of idleness and dependency from which no good can come. As I said before, this is entirely intentional. Creating losers whose existence can then be blamed on the larger society gives the left a powerful propaganda tool that they then use to attack capitalism and the liberal democracy upon which it is founded.
Of all the things that this nation lacks, opportunity is not one of them. Poverty is a temporary condition for those who are willing to work hard and make wise decisions. Wealth is not assured, but economic security in a safe and sane community is all but guaranteed.
That being said, what NASA is doing needs to be looked at. There are times when it is necessary to schmooze various people. NASA pays private companies for a lot of the things that it needs to function. Being able to schmooze some of the heads of those companies can make a difference when it comes to the terms of contracts. If spending a million entertaining some people saves 30 million on contracts, then that is money well spent.
However, if this money is being wasted, then that needs to stop. Wasting tax money hurts the country twice over. First when the money is taken out of the economy, and second when it is not put to good use.
Either the wiretapping was legal, or it was not.
That is what must be determined conclusively.
If it was legal, then there is nothing to grant immunity for.
If it was not legal, then the telco companies are the least of our problems. They should of course still be nailed for it. Just because it is a government agency that is directing your company to commit a crime, does not mean that you will be protected from the other agencies in our government, or from the consequences of that crime.
At the end of the day the sad truth of the matter is that our enemies overseas are nowhere near as dangerous to the well being of our nation as our domestic enemies, many of whom are in government. We are at war. Unfortunately we are in a war which is largely undefined, at least by official sources. It is called the "war on terror." This is a lie. That is declaring a war on an activity without ever identifying the persons responsible for that activity. If someone was tracking mud into your house, declaring a war on mud without ever addressing the person tracking it in would result in nothing, except perhaps a lot of mopping. You have to define your enemy before you can successfully wage war against him.
Our enemies are those elements in the Muslim world who wish to see Islam, and particularly islamofascism, conquer the world. This isn't a war against terror, or even terrorists really. This is a war against people and groups and nations, who wish to destroy our civilization, our societies, and replace each with their own. Terrorism is but one of many strategies they employ to accomplish this. This is who we are at war with because this is who is waging war upon us, and upon the west as a whole.
Within our own nation, and our own government, there are those who seek to help our enemies overseas. They do this for a variety of reasons, but primarily because they believe that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. They have no special love for the Islamofascists. In most instances they would be mortal enemies. But both are enemies of liberal democracy, so they're working together to destroy it. Who is this internal enemy that is working with our enemies overseas? This enemy has many names, and many faces. It is not so much a singular enemy as much as an ad hoc swarm of smaller enemies, some of whom are almost as much at odd with one another as they are with us. Principle among these enemies are crypto-marxists. Then you have your socialists, gramscian marxists, and a whole slew of other groups and ideologies that can be collectively known as the political left. Not all self-described leftists are of course a part of this swarm, but the majority are. Others are unconsciously working in concert with them without understanding their intentions. These are generally known as "useful idiots."
These are people who attempt to color everything that the president and his administration are doing as an assault on the American people. There is of course room for honest criticism of this administration, but that isn't what these people are about. They're about weakening our nation from within so that we will be less able to fight our external foes. No nation is ever conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within, and that is exactly what their game plan is.
This is just the cold war all over again in many ways. In fact it would be more honest to say that the cold war never really ended. The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, but its allies here in the states never threw in the towel. Those allies are still hard at work on their long march through our institutions, weakening and destroying from within. Now that a new foe has surfaced, they're working overtime.
But none of this answers the question of whether these wiretaps were legal or not. The Bush administration knows all too well that our internal enemies will use the legal system to attack from within. If this administration did not verify the legality of what they were plann
"Legally Offensive"
Am I to understand that the "I'm offended!" tactic, which is commonly used by the intellectually dishonest and morally corrupt to prevent the discussion of issues and ideas they do not agree with, has now become a legal principle?
Better not say something that other people don't want to hear. They might claim to be offended. Offending someone is legally actionable don't you know? Inducing cognitive dissonance in the deluded or dishonest is a hate crime...or soon will be under the new politically correct rules of jurisprudence.
Political Correctness: Because living with the truth is just too hard.
I think these school administrators have gotten far too used to dealing with students who do not have the power to question their authority...or their adequacy as human beings.
Propaganda lies, even when it tells the truth.
This is what the MSM has been reduced to, propaganda and spin, which is why they're losing readers and viewers at an ever increasing rate.
With the right kind of ears you can hear a sound. It is a harsh gnashing sound, but one that is becoming more shrill and louder all the time. More and more are able to hear it, and even see it. It is a desperate and fearful sound. It is the sound of the political left in America. They are terrified and in distress. You can measure their desperation by just how far their mask has fallen. There was a time when leftist bias in media was usually subtle, and its allegiance to the political left was hidden. Sometimes you could only barely perceive both. But now these are not only obvious, they are blatant and accompanied by the smell of fear. There was a time when the hatred that the left feels for America and its institutions was also shrouded and protected by cover stories, PR, and the creative redefining of words. Today they are increasingly saying what they really mean and what they really think, which has always been a disaster for them every time they have done it. Why have they changed? Because they are deathly afraid, almost to the point of panic.
What do they fear? They fear the vast right wing conspiracy of course, and the effect it is having on their place in the scheme of things. What is the vast right wing conspiracy? Well you might have heard it described as something else, namely the rest of the country. The leftists have the misfortune (for them) of living in a functional democracy where their ability to fool enough of the people enough of the time is quickly becoming a thing of the past. They will of course re-invent themselves and pretend to be something else yet again. Evil never dies after all, it merely changes form and then reappears. Hopefully it will be a good long while before it does so this time.
Rehabilitation has nothing to do with it.
A life sentence for murder is issued for the sole purpose of putting someone behind bars and separating them from society forever. There is no rehabilitation. If someone doing a life sentence becomes a better person along the way then that is all fine and good, but it has nothing to do with why they have been sent to prison.
I really do have to disagree with you about theft, robbery, and burglary. Putting the people who do those things in jail prevents these things from being done by those people. The fact that the UK does not do this is a big part of why your crime rate is so high.
.22 can ruin someone's day, not to mention a pump action shotgun.
My wife is from the UK, and the stories she's told me about burglaries, assaults, robberies, etc over there was almost more than I could believe. I live in Phoenix, AZ which is an area of some 5 million people. I don't even remember the last time I heard of someone being burglarized. It happens of course, my point is that it not such a common phenomena that you hear about it happening to anyone you know. No one I know has ever been burglarized to my knowledge, certainly no one in my family. Meanwhile among my wife's family back in Stoke there have been three different burglaries in the past 6 years. Nearly everyone in her town has a burglar alarm, which here are only used by people in wealthier areas, who actually have something worth enough to attract a burglar.
At the end of the day the main reason why burglaries are so rare here is because the life expectancy of a burglar is pretty short. Breaking into someone's house is a good way to get shot. Burglar alarms are uncommon here, but firearms are not. Even a
When these sorts of criminals are caught here, we send them up for several years at a time. This keeps them off the street, thereby preventing them from committing more crimes. If they are smart they change their ways and stop being criminals. If they are not smart we have a 3-strikes law in this state the results in a life sentence upon their 3rd felony conviction, making crime a very self-limiting occupation.
I do agree that sending drug USERS to prison is a waste all around. It wastes my money as a taxpayer locking up someone who should not be there. It wastes the state's resources keeping someone locked up when actual criminals could be kept there instead. And it wastes the life of someone who has committed no real crime. While smoking weed is a stupid waste of time and a somewhat self-destructive activity, it is not a crime. It is merely illegal. You damage yourself by doing it, but then that is your right as a free person. It is not the job of the state to protect citizens from themselves. Down that path lies tyrany. The state is invested with the power and authority to prosecute and punish those individuals who violate the rights of other individuals, as defined by law. Drug use violates no one.
The truth is that most drug laws have very little do to with drugs, and everything to do with the kinds of people that society imagines uses certain drugs. Marijuana is illegal not because of any harm it does to an individual or to society, but because of the public's perception of the kinds of people who use it. The term "pothead" does not invoke images of a successful person. Instead it brings to mind images of a dysfunctional person, the kind of person that most people wish would go away. Drug laws are an attempt to outlaw certain types of people that the rest of society disapproves of. This does not work of course, but there you have it. This is why the laws against these drugs are on the books and enforced. Any mention of legalizing these drugs is interpreted by the public as creating more of these unsavory characters. Soccer moms don't want more potheads and so the drug that is associated with them stays illegal. In the meantime people are arrested and incarcerated because of who they are, namely potheads. Their identity has been tied to a particular substance. The prohibition of it is a prohibition of them. If they're stupid enough to go around looking like potheads then sooner or later they're going to get done up for it.
The reason why murder is so low on the repeat offender list is because murderers are locked up and/or executed, thereby reducing and/or eliminating their ability to re-offend. They can of course still kill other prisoners, which is why Jeffrey Dahmer is no longer with us, but they can't murder ordinary citizens.
Mind you, not all murderers are charged with murder. Some are plead their case down to manslaughter. An actual murder conviction will land someone life in prison, the death penalty, or many decades in prison at the very least. A manslaughter conviction on the other hand results in much less jail time.
It would be interesting to find out how many repeat offenders there are for manslaughter. Or how many who are convicted of this later go on to be convicted of murder.
Keep in mind that the closure rate for murder cases is only around 50%, which kind of makes a joke out of old sayings like "He got away with murder."
As for this case, I think it is this woman who has gotten the last laugh. They gave her life in prison and she took back 35 years for herself. Even if she dies in prison, they can't take away the years she shared with her husband or the children and grandchildren they had together.
I remember hearing about a similar case a few years back. An old man dies and his family begins trying to sort out his affairs. Along the way they discover that he'd escaped from prison some 50 years before. He too had been sentenced to life for murder, and apparently he was guilty. In his case the police were literally not looking for him because of a clerical error. The department of corrections thought that his case was open, and the police thought he was back in prison. Once mis-filed the case was forgotten.
I for one do not like the idea of a criminal justice system that always gets its man. The system, being the work of human beings, will always be flawed. Innocent people will be sent to prison. Guilty people will go free. If someone is guilty of a crime, odds are they're going to do something else at some point in the future that will land them in the system again. OJ Simpson is a perfect example of this. He got away with murder, but was too stupid to quit while he was ahead, so now he is back in jail. Meanwhile someone who is innocent, who does not have a criminal personality, is unlikely to commit any crimes in the future.
I don't know the details of this case or what the evidence was against her. But if her subsequent behavior is any indication, I would guess she is innocent. If so, the fact that the system was less than omnipotent and that she was able to evade it for all these years is a GOOD thing.
Dan Rather's claims are based on a report he received from 1972 detailing the flaws and dangers of carbon fiber airframes. The report used proportional fonts, kerning, and a typeface that was not available until much later.
When questioned about these inconsistencies, Rather declared "I believe this story is true! I believe it in my heart! I stand by my pres.. errr, I mean Boeing, but I feel this story is true!"
Boeing was not available for comment.
If Apple wanted to beat vista they'd stop using their hardware as a dongle for the OS. OS-X on normal PCs sold at Wal-Mart. That is trying to beat vista.
If they do that then I'll take notice. Until then as far as I'm concerned they're pulling their punches.
I just found out recently that if you have ever been arrested, you are ineligible to travel to the US without a visa. The US has an agreement with 22 other nations, such as the UK, Ireland, Germany, Australia, etc, where by citizens of these nations can visit the US as tourists without a visa, provided that they only stay for 90 days or less.
Well, if you're a citizen of one of these nations, and you've ever been arrested, then you're excluded from this program. It doesn't matter if you were never changed with a crime. It doesn't matter if you were acquitted. It doesn't matter if your record has been expunged. Merely being arrested, for any reason, disqualifies you.
If this guy is smart, he'll ask the judge to purge this wrongful arrest from his record. I don't know if the judge can do that, but odds are he or she can, and should.
The "anti-war" groups complained because they were accurately identified as enemy agents and/or sympathizers with the enemy.
What else is new?
Hans Reiser has apparently accomplished 1st degree murder.
You forgot the part where its all Chimpy-McHitler-Burton's fault.
I think you're confusing the reality of non-leftists with the caricature you just used to describe them.
You're making a very serious mistake. Never believe your own press.
If the actual substance of the list you just gave consisted of good ideas then I'd have no problem with the left.
I'd love to provide health care to everyone. The difference is that I don't believe the ends justify the means, especially when those means have a track record of failure when applied elsewhere. I don't believe in doing something bad for the sake of achieving something good and hoping that somehow everything will turn out alright in the end. My wife is from the UK and she's glad that she's no longer subject to the "care" she received there. There are some problems for which there are no easy answers, and health care is one of them. This is not going to change. The government cannot solve this problem. The free market cannot solve this problem. Unless something happens to alter the economics involved there will be no solution. Right now health care is expensive. Unless it somehow becomes cheaper then there will continue to be people who cannot afford it. The government already provides health care to the most needy in the form of medicaid. The ones who are screwed are those who don't have insurance, but who are not quite poor enough to qualify for medicaid. There is no solution to this.
Sensible foreign policy is of course something that almost everyone will agree with. The problem is that "sensible" is a subjective term that is highly dependent upon the philosophical views of the person wielding it. To me sensible amounts to speaking softly and carrying a very big stick. Make that a shotgun. And a blow torch. And a pair of pliers.
Finding alternatives to oil is of course a good idea. The problem is that what the left generally means by that is "stop drilling for oil." The best alternative is of course nuclear power, but we all know how superstitious the left is about that. Alternatives to oil are not necessarily going to mean alternatives that the meany greenies prefer. The oil will run out one day, alternatives are inevitable. In the end they will be found or created no later than when the economic incentive to find them develops. It probably won't happen any earlier either. As long as oil is cheaper, alternatives will take a back seat. That being said I myself would LOVE to see an alternative to oil. The less money we pour into the pockets of medieval barbarian religious fanatics, the better off the world as a whole will be.
Capital punishment is a football, just like gay marriage. It is something that extremists on the left and right fight over because it is a subject that is resistant to moderation. Abortion is an even better example of this. There is no in-between position that would be acceptable to both sides, and so they continue to fight about it. I think this is a good thing because it takes up their time and energy and expends it on issues that are of only marginal relevance to most people. Capital punishment to me is something that I have a hard time caring about. It is sad when an innocent person is wrongly executed, but it isn't sad at all when a guilty person gets the chair. The problem isn't capital punishment itself, but the human - and therefore flawed - system which controls its use. At the end of the day I believe that capital punishment helps keep the criminal justice system working as it should. The members of a jury are far more likely to do their duty to the fullest if a person's life is at stake. I also believe that it is a credible deterrent. Not against the psycho ax murderer types, but against ethically challenged individuals whose decision to murder is calculated and deliberate. But, if capital punishment were to go away I don't think I'd care very much. As for gay marriage, my wife is bisexual, need I say more? As for abortion, it is a bad idea but not an issue that the government should be involved in regulating.
Making taxation more fair is yet another statement that everyone would agree with, provided their subjective interpretation of the word "fair" was the one employed. The sad truth is that far to
You're arguing from the flawed premise that privacy is about hiding one's sins. It is not. Privacy is about liberty, about the right of each individual to personal sovereignty. That which is private is beyond the legitimate purview of the state, or of society. Privacy is not about the things that people do wrong in secret. It is simply the sum of all that is not public.
You claim you have nothing to hide, but you do. If you were forced to walk down main street without a stitch of clothes on, defecate into a bucket in plain sight, and then present the contents to passers-by for inspection, I guarantee that your respect for privacy would be improved tremendously. It would be even further improved if the details of your paycheck, credit card statements, and bank balance were to be presented to the world via a large electronic billboard on your front lawn. If this idea truly does not bother you, then I invite you to publish those financial details here. Put your money where your mouth is.
The long and short of it is that there are aspects of each person's life that they and they alone have the rightful authority to regulate. The only way to ensure that this right is not abridged or undermined is to keep those aspects secret.
Privacy is the first protector of liberty.
The vast majority of Liberals in America aren't trying to push anything anymore because they are not FOR anything. They've been reduced to a subculture defined not by what its members believe in, but by what they gripe about. Where it once was about ideals and noble intentions, profoundly flawed though they might be, now it's about grudges and grievances.
They no longer attempt to promote their own ideas, but they haven't quite reached the point of examining and revising the flawed assumptions those bad ideas are based upon. Their stuck in a limbo where they're not quite sure what they are for, but they have no doubt what they are against. This is why they you'll see them denigrating and casting aspersions at their traditional political foes, but without any attempt at promoting their own ideas or explaining why they are better. They've lost their capacity to build, all they can do now is seek to destroy.
Those among them who are intellectually honest and who value truth will eventually find their way out of the darkness and into the light. Unfortunately not everyone possesses these particular virtues, and for them I do feel sorry.
Most of the world's problems stem from the fact that so many idiots refuse to see the light of reason and just agree with everything I say.
If everyone would just wake up and smell the Lee, we'd all be so much better off.
Going outside with tight pants on....we're big pant people!!!
An even more important question is "Can you prove that the crimes you're seeking to prevent are actually WORSE than the crimes that will be committed BY YOU with these new powers?"
The most dangerous of all criminals are those who carry badges and whose chief weapons are the power and authority of the state.
You mean like the straw man argument you just presented?
I find it entirely predictable that a leftist would abuse the letter of the law in violation of the spirit of the law in order to attack someone who does not subscribe to his religion.
Evil Never Sleeps