Because our advanced brain allowed us to creatively exploit and ravage mother nature as opposed to those stupid, underevolved animals who live in harmony with her?
Actually, yes.
If humans have greater moral rights than other animals based on having "advanced" brains, then it follows that humans with more "advanced" brains have greater moral rights than simpletons.
Do you believe that I should get to, for example, kill and eat people less intelligent than me? Or perform painful experiments on them? Or wipe them them because I want to build and sell houses on the land where they're living now?
But I do believe the government has a certain responsibility to help ensure that the country as a whole is prosperous.
The drug trade is big business. Bringing the black market within the "legitimate" economy would foster prosperity.
It's not BS, it's something that has actually happened in the past to countries that imported a lot of narcotics.
So buy domestic. Opium poppies and cannabis could certainly be grown in the U.S.; coca I'm not sure about but I'll bet American inginuety could develop a strain that would grow in the warmer climes of the southern U.S.
No question that drug prohibtion increases our trade deficit.
Actually there is PRECISELY that restriction, articles deemed indecent can be legally restricted, as much porn is.
If we actually followed Amendment I, we'd see that in fact "indecent" materials cannot be legally restricted, as such restriction would be a violation of the supreme law of the land.
Plus you, as so many have it ass backwards. If they're legally restricted parents CAN decided whether their children get them. If the kids are allowed to buy them you've taken that choice away from the parents.
Yeah, sure, just like age restrictions keep liquor away from people under 21.
Making criminals out of kids is a poor way to try to help parents guide their children.
If games would shut the hell up with unconstitutional for 2 seconds they might realise that allowing the adult themed games to be legally protected is in everyone's best interest.
The whole fscking point of invoking the Constitution is to point out that games - all games, as well as all books, all films, all media - are legally protected, by Amendment I as extended to the states by Amendment XIV. And there's nothing in there that says "make no law restricting freedom of the press, except that people under 18 shall not be permitted to purchase things the government deems naughty."
There are many things that young children should not be allowed to do: juggle knives, play violent video games, neglect to brush their teeth, play poker with known felons. Fortunately nature has provided them with parents for supervision (and where that fails, we're invented various systems of fostering and adoption and guardianship).
In what way are Yahoo or MSN easier to use? All a search engine needs...
His point, if you were to RTFA, is that neither Yahoo nor MSN nor Google is just a search engine; each is a website with many available functions. You have to dig around more on Google to find maps, news, and other services that are more readily apparant on Yahoo. (Can't speak to MSN, don't use 'em.)
I used Google for searches, Yahoo for news and driving directions.
He wants obscenity reported? Please report to him that the following message was posted:
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(Last chance to look away...)
Fuck Senator John McCain. Fuck him up the ass hard with a big thick dildo with built-in violet wand until the santorum runs down his legs. Tie him down and fuck him and give him the golden shower he wants and deserves, until he admits his wretchedness, admits what a bootlicker he is, admits that he gets off on being a slave, because he can't handle freedom.
The line gets drawn outside my body. What I choose to do inside it no concern of yours; that includes putting certain chemicals in it to alter the functioning of the nervous system.
Drug laws make a mockery of liberty. Keep your laws off my brain.
Maybe the advocates of these are right and they should be legalized - but it's not a terribly important change.
I find liberty, and an adherence to the Constitution by the government, to be terribly important. I'm saddened that you do not. ("Adherence to the Constitution," you ask? Yes. The federal government has no legitimate power to ban possession or intrastate sale of any drug, only to regulate imports and exports and interstate trading. It has far overreached its legitimate powers. Additionally, by their nature laws against consenual activity lead to violations of rights of privacy and due process.)
And then various drugs are forbidden for fear that a plentiful, easy supply of them would create too many addicts in our society and a dangerous trade deficit.
Prohibition leads to unhealthy usage patterns and makes it difficult for addicts to get help; it leads to more addiction and abuse, not less.
The "trade deficit" arguement is a new line of B.S.; since when does the state get to regulate people's lives in order to make them more efficient economic units? If that's the case, better ban TV.
People who involve themselves with these drugs aren't just criminals because there's a law against what they're doing, they're criminals because they've chosen to break that law
In ancient Rome, people who worshiped the wrong diety weren't criminals just because there was a law against what they were doing, they were criminals because they chose to break that law.
In contempory America, in many states people who have any sort of interesting sex life are criminals, not just because there's a law against what they're doing, but because they choose to break that law.
In the U.S. about 150 years ago, people who helped escaping slaves weren't criminals just because there was a law against what they were doing, they were criminals because they chose to break that law.
There is nothing sacred about law. The legislature has no moral authority; when it steps outside of its rightful role as arbitrator of disputes and protector of people's basic rights, it is foolish to continue to follow its dictates; "criminal" becomes a content-free word. Indeed in our overly-regulated contempory society, few people get through a week without commiting a criminal act.
Now, supposing pot were legalized - would American society decay into ruin?
An officer could go to jail for that search. Don't you think that's a fairly significant deterrent?
Not so much as you'd think. Sadly, a lot of cops see themselves as the "thin blue line" keeping society from falling apart, and are willing to do anything to put away the people they label as the bad guys. Some of them would think it quite heroic to go to jail for a few years if if got that guy they just "knew in their gut was guilty" off the street.
In contemporary America, it's not safe to assume that either cops or criminals have the same motivations as, or behave anything like, sane, healthy, well-adjusted people.
This is the only piece evidence that proves, beyond doubt, that Joe killed 20 kids. The evidence was obtained by illegal means (say, illegal search).
First, while a popular gimmick in movies, it is quite rare that someone accused of a serious crime gets off on a "technicality".
Second, if the evidence was obtained by illegal means, that in and of itself makes it doubtful. If cops cannot follow the law when gathering evidence, we cannot put full faith into their testimony. The exclusionary rule is not (or at least not just) about punishing the prosecutors and cops, it's about ensuring that any evidence against the accused is iron-clad accurate.
Linking to a obciously biased source which doesn't link to any data (fabricated or otherwise) to support it's claims.
Only "biased" in the sense that choosing facts over advertising messages is a bias. (You'll notice that the dairy industy puts their claims on TV and in print, where they're only loosely regulated by the FTC, not on milk cartons where they'd be subject to stricter FDA regulations. )
I admit to grabbing the first source at hand and assuming that most people had at least heard of the notion that milk isn't a healthy food. If you want some links to research, see my post here .
I'll stick to searching 'pubmed.org' for "milk, osteoporosis" and seeing the randomized control trials, thank you.
Culling out publications from obviously biases sources such as the "Journal of Dairy Science", can you find a randomized controled trial showing that unfortified dairy products have a protective impact on osteoporosis?
Such a result would be surprising given the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Public Health which followed 77,761 women and found no protective impact of dairy products on fractures.
A PubMed search will find this
meta-analyis from Pediatrics on osteoporosis, or this
article on
the increased risk for prostate cancer from dairy consumption from the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This
study from the same journal notes "Over the years, doubts have arisen concerning the use of milk as
a calcium source in the prevention of osteoporosis, particularly because of
potential offsetting effects of protein and phosphorus." This letter in that same journal points out that living in countries with a high dairy consumption is a risk factor for osteoporosis.
This page from
PCRM give citations to several studies on the health impact of dairy consumption.
See also this analysis in
Public Health Nutrition which states, "Regarding associations relating the consumption of dairy products with chronic diseases, in Western societies consumption of dairy products has traditionally been linked to cardiovascular diseases (arteriosclerosis) and osteoporosis owing to their saturated fatty acids and calcium content, respectively. While the association between saturated fat intake and risk of arteriosclerosis is well established, the association between calcium from dairy products, together with vitamin D, and osteoporosis is less clear."
Milk is a great source of calcium, with helps keep bones strong.
Not so much. Despite milk marketing propaganda, higher milk consuption actually seems to be correlated with higher risk of osteoporosis.
Why? Protien. Consuming animal protein causes the blood to become slightly acidic; to balance the pH, your body pulls calcium from the bones (which function not just to keep you from being a blob, but as mineral storehouses).
There seems to be a move afoot to fortify milk with extra calcium to compensate, but more and more people are coming to realize that cow's milk just should not play a significant role in the human diet.
If you're on a public sewage system, I should hope that dumping toxic ethylene glycol anti-freeze into the sewage system is illegal; even if it's not, it's certainly unethical. If you're on a septic tank, it's still not good to put poison into it.
I'm not sure if anti-freeze in the toilet would make a difference anyway, since if the water froze it still has room to expand; but if you must pour anti-freeze into your sewage system, please at least use a less toxic propylene glycol one. (I'm not sure if alcohol based ones are still available, or what the fire risk might be with such.)
If you must posit, as an hypothesis, that we are a nation of liars, then any further discusssion is moot.
A nation of liars? No, we are a species of liars. Every human being will tell at least one deliberate untruth during his or her life. Some will tell many more. People involved in criminal investigations often have a great motivation to lie - and in that I include cops and prosecutors who "know in their gut" that the accused in guilty and believe they're serving the people by lying.
Necessarily liberty can flourish only amongst men of good will; conversely, it will always wither and die when granted to liars and thieves.
I'm saddened that you don't think liberty is possible just because human beings are imperfect.
Indeed, many lies are created exactly because of a lack of liberty. People are compelled to lie about drug use (including underage drinking and smoking), consensual sexual activities, minor violations of the more stupid and annoying tax and zoning and traffic laws; the tighter the laws get, the more people have to lie just to get by. Liars and thieves will flourish when liberty is denied.
Human courts are only as good as the human witnesses who choose to honor [or dishonor] their oaths to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Hi there! Welcome to Planet Earth.
Here, human beings lie all the damn time.
Courts and prosecutors have a responsibility to deal with that reality. Certainly the uncertainity injected into all proceedings by that fact is yet another reason why the state should not commit homicide of people it thinks are killers.
So the question becomes where the line of self-defense is drawn. I think we can both agree that the average citizen shouldn't have the right to own a bazooka or a nuclear warhead for example.
The only reason to ban a citizen from owning a rocket launcher would be because the hazards of storing such a thing endanger one's neighbors. If you live by yourself out in the country and want to own stuff that goes boom, it's none of my business, though I do see a case for strong safety regulations.
(I can rent a moving van, fill it up with household chemicals, and have something much more lethal than an RPG.)
As for nukes, I don't think anyone, governments or private individuals, can own a nuclear weapon (except maybe some of the smaller tactical nukes) without violating the rights of others by placing them in danger, the potential disaster is simply too great.
But discussion of nukes does not apply to the question of Amendment II. The term "arms" had a very specific meaning, applying to the handguns and longuns that an infantry soldier would carry, the sort of things that a single person can "bear", as the text says. Artilery pieces were refered to as "cannon".
Which suggests to me that guns are probably the easiest way to kill someone.
Which further suggests that if there were fewer guns, people would have to try harder to kill other people.
Problem being, what if it's your infirm grandmother, defending herself against a big guy breaking into her house with a knife? Yes, it would be harder for her to kill the bad guy. Considering that (if she can't run away, and we assume that if he's going after a little old lady he's beyond being talked out of this) it's kill him or be killed or seriously injured herself, that's not a good thing.
And that's not a rare case. Estimates of defensive firearms uses range from 108,000 to 2.5 million, depending on whose numbers you believe. The DOJ puts it about about 1.5 million per year. That's about 500 per 100,000 population - about two orders of magnitude more people will use guns defensively, than will be murdered by any means. Even if you take the 108,000 figure, you get 36 per 100,000, six and a half times the total murder rate and nine times the rate of homicides commited by firearm.
I'm not sure if the stats for "numbers of homicides" means individual deaths, or "incidents" (which may involve multiple deaths).
It means the number of deaths. A mass murder is multiple homicides.
I think you'll find that statistically there are a *lot* more deaths per "incident" when guns are involved.
If you want to commit mass murder, guns are not the way. Bombs or fire, that's the ticket. For a high body count you need to blow up or set fire to a building, not go on a shooting rampage.
On the other hand, if someone does go on a shooting rampage, you'd better hope you're in a state with concealed carry laws and that someone will shoot back. (It was only after the infamous Luby's massacre that Texas, followed by other states, changed the law to allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms on their person.)
No they don't violate any liberties. Seriously, what do you need a gun for?
What do you need a book for?
I don't have to justify my rights to you, that's the nature of rights.
However, to assist your understanding: Human beings have a need to defend themselves against the small percentage of them who commit violent acts. Using a firearm is an effective way to effect such a defense.
Of late it's become fashionable in some circles to argue that this defense should be solely collective, that an individual right to self-defense is very limited; that if you are threatened, you only have the right to call a government employee to come help you. (And if that employee arives too late to help - as they usually will if you're being immediately threatened? Well, then that's just too bad.)
Arugments that the right of self-defense is less individual than the right of free speech are nonsensical. I stand firmly in favor of each person's right to defend themselves, and that has to include access to tools for effective self-defense - for the right to keep and bear arms.
Um, maybe you should check out the WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD.
Yes, one should. One would see countries like Switzerland and Israel where people have easy access to guns, and a murder rate much lower than in the U.S.
We Americans stab and bludgeon each other to death more than most other nations commit total muders.
According to stats here (a bit old, admittedly), that's more than the total muder rate in Denmakr, Austria, Switerland, France, England, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Norway, New Zeland, Ierland, the Netherland, Spain, Greece, or Kuwait.
If all guns disappeared from the U.S. tomorrow, and we pretended that guns were never used defensively and that people wouldn't turn to other methods of killing each other, the U.S. would still have about two and half times the murder rate of Japan (0.62/100,000).
Our problem with violence does not rest in our guns.
Notice how that implies that they were, yet, WMD's? Not the ones we were looking for, but WMD's none-the-less.
A WMD must be, by defintion, capable of mass destruction. The chemical agents Iraq produced had a limited "shelf life" - about 5 years. Anything left over from before 1991 was past its sell-by date by 1996.
The Iraq Survey Group concluded: "While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad's desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."
What Iraq had, had the same relation to WMD as the gooey melted mess in the back of my fridge has to a head of lettuce.
We haven't failed in Iraq. Our current offensive is failing but we have not yet failed. But the way things are going, with the majority of Americans complaining about the war instead of supporting it, we aren't far from failure.
BS. The invasion is a failure. We have not achieved any of the (constantly changing) goals cited by the administration. We did not stop or harm Al Qaeda by invading Iraq, in fact we've helped them, giving them great recruiting motivation. We didn't eliminate a threat posed by Saddam Hussein to other nations, because there wasn't one.
As for the idea of creating a stable democracy in Iraq via an invasion, that was doomed from the start. Like trying to scuplt a bust of Pallas with machine-gun fire, it's simply the wrong technique for the job. And redoubling your efforts only makes more of a mess, and makes it unlikely that there's enough left to work with if you did stop and try to do it right.
That the majority of Americans are finally realizing that they've been had is not the reason these goals can't be achived; the reason that the majority of Americans are realizing that they've been had is because these goals can't be achived.
The capacity with which wars may be waged across continents and oceans adds the danger that enemies, keen on our apparent weakness, will be able to swiftly and effectively attack us.
The only nations capable of waging effective war against the U.S. are the nuclear powers. (Neither Al Qaeda, not the insurgents in Iraq, are a "nation", and our conflict with them is not a "war", not a conflict between states or putative states.)
Terrorist groups can hurt us, sure, especially with the possibility of one of them getting a WMD, but no military victory is going to change the motivation of a terroist group.
In September of 2001, everyone knew that we had the world's most powerful military. It didn't help.
And we have an enemy that has no desire but to kill us all. Not to defend or to dominate, but destroy. They are encouraged and their ranks surge with every victory.
Their ranks surge with every innocent killed by Americans. Hell, their ranks surge with every insurgent killed by Americans, since in the eyes of many the insurgents are valiently and rightously defending their home against brutal invaders.
You can't put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it; and when gasoline fails as a fire extinguisher, it is not smart to say, "Oh, we obviously didn't use enough! Pour on more, that's sure to do the trick!"
securing oil interests is NOT the worst thing in the world. I was listening to a recent George Carlin rant....about being scared at what would happen if the electricity suddenly went out.
And how much of the U.S. electrical supply is generated by oil? Just about none.
Oil is vital to transportation, because we've made incredibly fscking stupid decisions about our transportation infrastructure, and some of us need it for heating (though here too biodiesel holds promise, and grants and tax credits for ground source heat pumps would take away most of that need). But oil has nothing to do with keeping the lights on.
A few desparate neocons have tried to make something out of hazardous trash left over from pre-1991 weapons programs.
But now that we're there I am against just pulling out. Because a failure in Iraq would be (will be) devistating to the US.
We've already failed in Iraq. The question is whether or not we go on failing, magnifying our losses, or cut them short.
In the game of Go, there is a situation known as a "ladder", or "shi cho", where in trying to protect one stone, a player lays down stone after stone trying to outflank the opponent, only to lose them all when he runs out of room. A wise player knows to let the doomed stone go.
US beaten by little old Iraq. Think of it.
Great Britian beaten by it's little old colonies, and then again by the new United States. Rome beaten by a bunch of barbarians. U.S. beaten by little old Vietnam. U.S.S.R. beaten by little of Afghanistan. There's nothing unique in a world power being beaten by a "weaker" but more motivated force.
Empires fall. The sooner the American Empire falls, the sooner the U.S. can get back to being a great nation, rather than a lousy empire.
It isn't like the soldiers are there just for the fun of it. They're part of ensuring a stable Iraqi government that will be a democracy good for its citizens rather than a tyranny.
Many of them may think that they're part of ensuring a stable Iraqi government. They are victims of a serious fscking con job.
Plenty of mothers support their children risking their lives for the good of others.
The tragedy is that in this case, their children are risking their lives for nothing. Every day that U.S. troops stay there is a day that things get worse.
Slashdot Mirror
If humans have greater moral rights than other animals based on having "advanced" brains, then it follows that humans with more "advanced" brains have greater moral rights than simpletons.
Do you believe that I should get to, for example, kill and eat people less intelligent than me? Or perform painful experiments on them? Or wipe them them because I want to build and sell houses on the land where they're living now?
The drug trade is big business. Bringing the black market within the "legitimate" economy would foster prosperity.
So buy domestic. Opium poppies and cannabis could certainly be grown in the U.S.; coca I'm not sure about but I'll bet American inginuety could develop a strain that would grow in the warmer climes of the southern U.S.
No question that drug prohibtion increases our trade deficit.
If we actually followed Amendment I, we'd see that in fact "indecent" materials cannot be legally restricted, as such restriction would be a violation of the supreme law of the land.
Yeah, sure, just like age restrictions keep liquor away from people under 21.
Making criminals out of kids is a poor way to try to help parents guide their children.
The whole fscking point of invoking the Constitution is to point out that games - all games, as well as all books, all films, all media - are legally protected, by Amendment I as extended to the states by Amendment XIV. And there's nothing in there that says "make no law restricting freedom of the press, except that people under 18 shall not be permitted to purchase things the government deems naughty."
There are many things that young children should not be allowed to do: juggle knives, play violent video games, neglect to brush their teeth, play poker with known felons. Fortunately nature has provided them with parents for supervision (and where that fails, we're invented various systems of fostering and adoption and guardianship).
His point, if you were to RTFA, is that neither Yahoo nor MSN nor Google is just a search engine; each is a website with many available functions. You have to dig around more on Google to find maps, news, and other services that are more readily apparant on Yahoo. (Can't speak to MSN, don't use 'em.)
I used Google for searches, Yahoo for news and driving directions.
He wants obscenity reported? Please report to him that the following message was posted:
(The easily offended should skip the rest of this post.)
(Last chance to look away...)
Fuck Senator John McCain. Fuck him up the ass hard with a big thick dildo with built-in violet wand until the santorum runs down his legs. Tie him down and fuck him and give him the golden shower he wants and deserves, until he admits his wretchedness, admits what a bootlicker he is, admits that he gets off on being a slave, because he can't handle freedom.
The line gets drawn outside my body. What I choose to do inside it no concern of yours; that includes putting certain chemicals in it to alter the functioning of the nervous system.
Drug laws make a mockery of liberty. Keep your laws off my brain.
I find liberty, and an adherence to the Constitution by the government, to be terribly important. I'm saddened that you do not. ("Adherence to the Constitution," you ask? Yes. The federal government has no legitimate power to ban possession or intrastate sale of any drug, only to regulate imports and exports and interstate trading. It has far overreached its legitimate powers. Additionally, by their nature laws against consenual activity lead to violations of rights of privacy and due process.)
Prohibition leads to unhealthy usage patterns and makes it difficult for addicts to get help; it leads to more addiction and abuse, not less.
The "trade deficit" arguement is a new line of B.S.; since when does the state get to regulate people's lives in order to make them more efficient economic units? If that's the case, better ban TV.
In ancient Rome, people who worshiped the wrong diety weren't criminals just because there was a law against what they were doing, they were criminals because they chose to break that law.
In contempory America, in many states people who have any sort of interesting sex life are criminals, not just because there's a law against what they're doing, but because they choose to break that law.
In the U.S. about 150 years ago, people who helped escaping slaves weren't criminals just because there was a law against what they were doing, they were criminals because they chose to break that law.
There is nothing sacred about law. The legislature has no moral authority; when it steps outside of its rightful role as arbitrator of disputes and protector of people's basic rights, it is foolish to continue to follow its dictates; "criminal" becomes a content-free word. Indeed in our overly-regulated contempory society, few people get through a week without commiting a criminal act.
American society survived quite well prior to passage of the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act in 1932.
Not so much as you'd think. Sadly, a lot of cops see themselves as the "thin blue line" keeping society from falling apart, and are willing to do anything to put away the people they label as the bad guys. Some of them would think it quite heroic to go to jail for a few years if if got that guy they just "knew in their gut was guilty" off the street.
In contemporary America, it's not safe to assume that either cops or criminals have the same motivations as, or behave anything like, sane, healthy, well-adjusted people.
First, while a popular gimmick in movies, it is quite rare that someone accused of a serious crime gets off on a "technicality".
Second, if the evidence was obtained by illegal means, that in and of itself makes it doubtful. If cops cannot follow the law when gathering evidence, we cannot put full faith into their testimony. The exclusionary rule is not (or at least not just) about punishing the prosecutors and cops, it's about ensuring that any evidence against the accused is iron-clad accurate.
Only "biased" in the sense that choosing facts over advertising messages is a bias. (You'll notice that the dairy industy puts their claims on TV and in print, where they're only loosely regulated by the FTC, not on milk cartons where they'd be subject to stricter FDA regulations. )
I admit to grabbing the first source at hand and assuming that most people had at least heard of the notion that milk isn't a healthy food. If you want some links to research, see my post here .
Culling out publications from obviously biases sources such as the "Journal of Dairy Science", can you find a randomized controled trial showing that unfortified dairy products have a protective impact on osteoporosis?
Such a result would be surprising given the findings of a study published in the American Journal of Public Health which followed 77,761 women and found no protective impact of dairy products on fractures.
A PubMed search will find this meta-analyis from Pediatrics on osteoporosis, or this article on the increased risk for prostate cancer from dairy consumption from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study from the same journal notes "Over the years, doubts have arisen concerning the use of milk as a calcium source in the prevention of osteoporosis, particularly because of potential offsetting effects of protein and phosphorus." This letter in that same journal points out that living in countries with a high dairy consumption is a risk factor for osteoporosis.
This page from PCRM give citations to several studies on the health impact of dairy consumption.
See also this analysis in Public Health Nutrition which states, "Regarding associations relating the consumption of dairy products with chronic diseases, in Western societies consumption of dairy products has traditionally been linked to cardiovascular diseases (arteriosclerosis) and osteoporosis owing to their saturated fatty acids and calcium content, respectively. While the association between saturated fat intake and risk of arteriosclerosis is well established, the association between calcium from dairy products, together with vitamin D, and osteoporosis is less clear."
Not so much. Despite milk marketing propaganda, higher milk consuption actually seems to be correlated with higher risk of osteoporosis.
Why? Protien. Consuming animal protein causes the blood to become slightly acidic; to balance the pH, your body pulls calcium from the bones (which function not just to keep you from being a blob, but as mineral storehouses).
There seems to be a move afoot to fortify milk with extra calcium to compensate, but more and more people are coming to realize that cow's milk just should not play a significant role in the human diet.
If you're on a public sewage system, I should hope that dumping toxic ethylene glycol anti-freeze into the sewage system is illegal; even if it's not, it's certainly unethical. If you're on a septic tank, it's still not good to put poison into it.
I'm not sure if anti-freeze in the toilet would make a difference anyway, since if the water froze it still has room to expand; but if you must pour anti-freeze into your sewage system, please at least use a less toxic propylene glycol one. (I'm not sure if alcohol based ones are still available, or what the fire risk might be with such.)
Toilet bowls and drain traps are open at the top. Freezing water therefore has room to expand.
Supply pipes are closed. If the water in them expands, nowhere for it to go, bam! burst pipe.
A nation of liars? No, we are a species of liars. Every human being will tell at least one deliberate untruth during his or her life. Some will tell many more. People involved in criminal investigations often have a great motivation to lie - and in that I include cops and prosecutors who "know in their gut" that the accused in guilty and believe they're serving the people by lying.
I'm saddened that you don't think liberty is possible just because human beings are imperfect.
Indeed, many lies are created exactly because of a lack of liberty. People are compelled to lie about drug use (including underage drinking and smoking), consensual sexual activities, minor violations of the more stupid and annoying tax and zoning and traffic laws; the tighter the laws get, the more people have to lie just to get by. Liars and thieves will flourish when liberty is denied.
Hi there! Welcome to Planet Earth.
Here, human beings lie all the damn time.
Courts and prosecutors have a responsibility to deal with that reality. Certainly the uncertainity injected into all proceedings by that fact is yet another reason why the state should not commit homicide of people it thinks are killers.
The only reason to ban a citizen from owning a rocket launcher would be because the hazards of storing such a thing endanger one's neighbors. If you live by yourself out in the country and want to own stuff that goes boom, it's none of my business, though I do see a case for strong safety regulations.
(I can rent a moving van, fill it up with household chemicals, and have something much more lethal than an RPG.)
As for nukes, I don't think anyone, governments or private individuals, can own a nuclear weapon (except maybe some of the smaller tactical nukes) without violating the rights of others by placing them in danger, the potential disaster is simply too great.
But discussion of nukes does not apply to the question of Amendment II. The term "arms" had a very specific meaning, applying to the handguns and longuns that an infantry soldier would carry, the sort of things that a single person can "bear", as the text says. Artilery pieces were refered to as "cannon".
Problem being, what if it's your infirm grandmother, defending herself against a big guy breaking into her house with a knife? Yes, it would be harder for her to kill the bad guy. Considering that (if she can't run away, and we assume that if he's going after a little old lady he's beyond being talked out of this) it's kill him or be killed or seriously injured herself, that's not a good thing.
And that's not a rare case. Estimates of defensive firearms uses range from 108,000 to 2.5 million, depending on whose numbers you believe. The DOJ puts it about about 1.5 million per year. That's about 500 per 100,000 population - about two orders of magnitude more people will use guns defensively, than will be murdered by any means. Even if you take the 108,000 figure, you get 36 per 100,000, six and a half times the total murder rate and nine times the rate of homicides commited by firearm.
It means the number of deaths. A mass murder is multiple homicides.
If you want to commit mass murder, guns are not the way. Bombs or fire, that's the ticket. For a high body count you need to blow up or set fire to a building, not go on a shooting rampage.
On the other hand, if someone does go on a shooting rampage, you'd better hope you're in a state with concealed carry laws and that someone will shoot back. (It was only after the infamous Luby's massacre that Texas, followed by other states, changed the law to allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms on their person.)
What do you need a book for?
I don't have to justify my rights to you, that's the nature of rights.
However, to assist your understanding: Human beings have a need to defend themselves against the small percentage of them who commit violent acts. Using a firearm is an effective way to effect such a defense.
Of late it's become fashionable in some circles to argue that this defense should be solely collective, that an individual right to self-defense is very limited; that if you are threatened, you only have the right to call a government employee to come help you. (And if that employee arives too late to help - as they usually will if you're being immediately threatened? Well, then that's just too bad.)
Arugments that the right of self-defense is less individual than the right of free speech are nonsensical. I stand firmly in favor of each person's right to defend themselves, and that has to include access to tools for effective self-defense - for the right to keep and bear arms.
Yes, one should. One would see countries like Switzerland and Israel where people have easy access to guns, and a murder rate much lower than in the U.S.
We Americans stab and bludgeon each other to death more than most other nations commit total muders.
In the U.S. firearms are used in only 71% of murders. With a base homicide of 5.6 per 100,000 people, that give 1.6 non-gun murders per 100,000.
According to stats here (a bit old, admittedly), that's more than the total muder rate in Denmakr, Austria, Switerland, France, England, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Norway, New Zeland, Ierland, the Netherland, Spain, Greece, or Kuwait.
If all guns disappeared from the U.S. tomorrow, and we pretended that guns were never used defensively and that people wouldn't turn to other methods of killing each other, the U.S. would still have about two and half times the murder rate of Japan (0.62/100,000).
Our problem with violence does not rest in our guns.
A WMD must be, by defintion, capable of mass destruction. The chemical agents Iraq produced had a limited "shelf life" - about 5 years. Anything left over from before 1991 was past its sell-by date by 1996.
The Iraq Survey Group concluded: "While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad's desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."
What Iraq had, had the same relation to WMD as the gooey melted mess in the back of my fridge has to a head of lettuce.
BS. The invasion is a failure. We have not achieved any of the (constantly changing) goals cited by the administration. We did not stop or harm Al Qaeda by invading Iraq, in fact we've helped them, giving them great recruiting motivation. We didn't eliminate a threat posed by Saddam Hussein to other nations, because there wasn't one.
As for the idea of creating a stable democracy in Iraq via an invasion, that was doomed from the start. Like trying to scuplt a bust of Pallas with machine-gun fire, it's simply the wrong technique for the job. And redoubling your efforts only makes more of a mess, and makes it unlikely that there's enough left to work with if you did stop and try to do it right.
That the majority of Americans are finally realizing that they've been had is not the reason these goals can't be achived; the reason that the majority of Americans are realizing that they've been had is because these goals can't be achived.
The only nations capable of waging effective war against the U.S. are the nuclear powers. (Neither Al Qaeda, not the insurgents in Iraq, are a "nation", and our conflict with them is not a "war", not a conflict between states or putative states.)
Terrorist groups can hurt us, sure, especially with the possibility of one of them getting a WMD, but no military victory is going to change the motivation of a terroist group.
In September of 2001, everyone knew that we had the world's most powerful military. It didn't help.
Their ranks surge with every innocent killed by Americans. Hell, their ranks surge with every insurgent killed by Americans, since in the eyes of many the insurgents are valiently and rightously defending their home against brutal invaders.
You can't put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it; and when gasoline fails as a fire extinguisher, it is not smart to say, "Oh, we obviously didn't use enough! Pour on more, that's sure to do the trick!"
And how much of the U.S. electrical supply is generated by oil? Just about none.
Oil is vital to transportation, because we've made incredibly fscking stupid decisions about our transportation infrastructure, and some of us need it for heating (though here too biodiesel holds promise, and grants and tax credits for ground source heat pumps would take away most of that need). But oil has nothing to do with keeping the lights on.
Um, no. There weren't.
A few desparate neocons have tried to make something out of hazardous trash left over from pre-1991 weapons programs.
We've already failed in Iraq. The question is whether or not we go on failing, magnifying our losses, or cut them short.
In the game of Go, there is a situation known as a "ladder", or "shi cho", where in trying to protect one stone, a player lays down stone after stone trying to outflank the opponent, only to lose them all when he runs out of room. A wise player knows to let the doomed stone go.
Great Britian beaten by it's little old colonies, and then again by the new United States. Rome beaten by a bunch of barbarians. U.S. beaten by little old Vietnam. U.S.S.R. beaten by little of Afghanistan. There's nothing unique in a world power being beaten by a "weaker" but more motivated force.
Empires fall. The sooner the American Empire falls, the sooner the U.S. can get back to being a great nation, rather than a lousy empire.
Many of them may think that they're part of ensuring a stable Iraqi government. They are victims of a serious fscking con job.
The tragedy is that in this case, their children are risking their lives for nothing. Every day that U.S. troops stay there is a day that things get worse.
Not so much. Consider:
2^2=4
2 = +2 and 2 = -2? No.