Automatic weapons have been outlawed in almost every circumstance in America for quite a long time. Nobody goes in the backroads and shoots up stop signs with an Uzi. In addition, semiautomatic weapons hardly qualify as weapons of mass destruction.
It's certainly true that the second amendment (like any other) does not define an absolute right, but there should be a high threshold met before a right asserted unequivocally in the Constitution is reduced. But many of the folks puching gun restrictions have no sense of this threshold, and cavalierly ignore the amendment. We should be just as angry at this as we would be at people who threaten freedom of the press or of association.
Do you even know what an "assalut rifle" is? It is a semi-automatic rifle that looks mean and sometimes holds a few extra bullets. How does this make the rifle illegitimate?
Maybe you live in a part of the country where people don't use firearms, like in a northern city, but trust me, there are tens of millions of Americans who own guns for sport or protection. Target practice with a handgun is fine, but it's pretty nice with a rifle, too, "assault" or otherwise.
Re:But is this really for the better?
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Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 1
You're right, sorry.
Re:But is this really for the better?
on
Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 1
Microsoft is traded on both the Dow and on Nasdaq. It is a significant part of both the Nasdaq Composite Index, and in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
That little space station is a perfect example of the problems inherent in multi-national space projects. The Russians are a couple of years late putting up their module, and everything's on hold as a result.
He didn't say zero taxation. He said no internet taxation. America has an absolute shitload of taxes on everything already. Your roads, schools, jails, courts and looney bins aren't going anywhere unless somehow all income and property taxes are somehow repealed.
It's not at all obvious that taxation of internet transactions is inevitable or necessary. Of course taxes need to be collected for a country to provide necessary services. But that doesn't mean every type of transaction will be taxed. Case in point: mail order transactions have gone without being taxed (for the most part) for a long, long time. Despite the compliants of revenue-grubbing governors, it'll stay that way.
It's important to point out that internet companies are already taxed. They pay corporate taxes, property taxes (assuming they have a location), payroll taxes, state income and local income taxes, and a lot of other little taxes. They don't exist in a tax-free zone. So to say "They need to pay taxes to pave the roads and pay the cops" is fatuous.
As an aside, keep in mind the percentage of GNP going to the US government has never been higher in peacetime. And almost every state is rolling in budget surpluses. America is hardly undertaxed.
I'm not at all sure that a state sponsoring terrorism and a state being allied with another (as we were with Iran uder the Shah) are at all equivalent. We were allied with Stalin during part of WWII. Are we legally responsible for his mass-executions during that period?
But maybe you're right about the money. Keep in mind financial assets of foreign citizens are indeed seized (with cause!) though.
It's not that unlikely that Terry Anderson will get at least some of the award. Iran has several billion dollard of assets in America that have been frozen since they seized the American embassy in 1979.
The problem is the State Departnent is currently making diplomatic overtures to the inreasingly-moderate Iranian governent right now, and doesn't want to rock the boat by subtracting such huge sums from their frozen assets. But it's quite obvious that Anderson has had his day in court, has won a judgement, and by all means deserved it.
I guess that part where Christ says to "go forth and preach to all nations" and to spread his Gospel to the four corners (so to speak) of the Earth -that part is just a misprint?
Few people doubt the sincerity of Colson's conversion. Even people who hated Nixon work with him now. Unlike many people, he lives out his beliefs in a ministry to some of the "lowest" people in society. His prison ministry has changed the lives of thousands who most people would have written of as hopeless scum of the earth. I wish you'd offer some examples of his "hate and condemnation." Maybe you're right and he's an evil bastard - who knows? But he is doing more good than most people in America.
Well, cosmology is not accessible to the average suburbanite. Even other physicists with another speciality wouldn't necessarily be able to judge competing cosmological models. In any case, cosmology is not transcendant to most people. But, like it or not (and you obviously don't), religion is transcendant to most people. It matters to them, and is immediate. To a believer, what happened in gas clouds 15 billion years ago is not nearly so important as following the will of God in your everyday life.
Please try not to be so snotty. You're giving atheists a bad rep.
...And the long-time Communist dictator of Yugoslavia, Tito (no, not the Jackson 5 Tito), was an altar boy in his youth.
It's important to remember two things. First, most people in these countries were raised to be religious, so spotting religion in the youth of an evil adult is no great surprise. Second, the religious outlook is not that different from the Marx/Lenin/Stalin/etcetera outlook. (Stalin bragged of creating a secular Vatican in Moscow.) Their ideologies can be seen as a sort of Christian heresy gone mad - a totally secularized monastacism of sorts, with a Nationalistic God (the Party, the State, the Leader) and a great purpose, the "good of the many" as the goal. This does not indict religion, but is a sort of offhand compliment to it. The most successful lies are the actual Truth, with some strange corrupting twist.
Of course, this all breaks down when you see that monastacism must not be coercive, but must arise through a specific vocation in the heart, and also, that God cannot be replaced so easily - not in a way that will succeed. How often has man been made happy by dethroning God and putting another in His place?
Slashdot Mirror
It's certainly true that the second amendment (like any other) does not define an absolute right, but there should be a high threshold met before a right asserted unequivocally in the Constitution is reduced. But many of the folks puching gun restrictions have no sense of this threshold, and cavalierly ignore the amendment. We should be just as angry at this as we would be at people who threaten freedom of the press or of association.
Do you even know what an "assalut rifle" is? It is a semi-automatic rifle that looks mean and sometimes holds a few extra bullets. How does this make the rifle illegitimate?
Maybe you live in a part of the country where people don't use firearms, like in a northern city, but trust me, there are tens of millions of Americans who own guns for sport or protection. Target practice with a handgun is fine, but it's pretty nice with a rifle, too, "assault" or otherwise.
I can buy a 1 Ghz Athlon.
You're right, sorry.
Microsoft is traded on both the Dow and on Nasdaq. It is a significant part of both the Nasdaq Composite Index, and in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
They smelled money, just like they did with the pile-on tobacco settlement.
That little space station is a perfect example of the problems inherent in multi-national space projects. The Russians are a couple of years late putting up their module, and everything's on hold as a result.
He didn't say zero taxation. He said no internet taxation. America has an absolute shitload of taxes on everything already. Your roads, schools, jails, courts and looney bins aren't going anywhere unless somehow all income and property taxes are somehow repealed.
It's important to point out that internet companies are already taxed. They pay corporate taxes, property taxes (assuming they have a location), payroll taxes, state income and local income taxes, and a lot of other little taxes. They don't exist in a tax-free zone. So to say "They need to pay taxes to pave the roads and pay the cops" is fatuous.
As an aside, keep in mind the percentage of GNP going to the US government has never been higher in peacetime. And almost every state is rolling in budget surpluses. America is hardly undertaxed.
If that's all they had done, it would not even warrant a footnote. But then came the war.
But maybe you're right about the money. Keep in mind financial assets of foreign citizens are indeed seized (with cause!) though.
The problem is the State Departnent is currently making diplomatic overtures to the inreasingly-moderate Iranian governent right now, and doesn't want to rock the boat by subtracting such huge sums from their frozen assets. But it's quite obvious that Anderson has had his day in court, has won a judgement, and by all means deserved it.
I guess that part where Christ says to "go forth and preach to all nations" and to spread his Gospel to the four corners (so to speak) of the Earth -that part is just a misprint?
Few people doubt the sincerity of Colson's conversion. Even people who hated Nixon work with him now. Unlike many people, he lives out his beliefs in a ministry to some of the "lowest" people in society. His prison ministry has changed the lives of thousands who most people would have written of as hopeless scum of the earth. I wish you'd offer some examples of his "hate and condemnation." Maybe you're right and he's an evil bastard - who knows? But he is doing more good than most people in America.
Please try not to be so snotty. You're giving atheists a bad rep.
It's important to remember two things. First, most people in these countries were raised to be religious, so spotting religion in the youth of an evil adult is no great surprise. Second, the religious outlook is not that different from the Marx/Lenin/Stalin/etcetera outlook. (Stalin bragged of creating a secular Vatican in Moscow.) Their ideologies can be seen as a sort of Christian heresy gone mad - a totally secularized monastacism of sorts, with a Nationalistic God (the Party, the State, the Leader) and a great purpose, the "good of the many" as the goal. This does not indict religion, but is a sort of offhand compliment to it. The most successful lies are the actual Truth, with some strange corrupting twist.
Of course, this all breaks down when you see that monastacism must not be coercive, but must arise through a specific vocation in the heart, and also, that God cannot be replaced so easily - not in a way that will succeed. How often has man been made happy by dethroning God and putting another in His place?
Not funny.
Nick Cage as Superman?? Really? You're kidding, right. That would be like casting Courtney Love as the Virgin Mary.
wrapster
How sad that one has to read so far down to see your post, which is the funniest of them all! Ha!
Absolutely. This is the sort of problem the market will solve. When it is profitable it will happen like crazy.
Sigh. I know, but it's still a lot of dough for a crash landing. 180 million is not chump change.
If so, they truly misjudged the likely reaction in Congress.
They need a big sign like the road construction crews have, saying "$180 million of your tax dollars at work."
Thanks! Both to you and the guy below. The Fleischman - "meat man" thing is cracking me up.