You're right that that wasn't the argument I was making, though I was implying that I didn't agree that it was a constitutionally protected right for the exact reason you stated. I don't get how a tenuous connection through the right of privacy trumps a more explicit right itemized in the Declaration of Independance, that of the Right to Life (ie Life, Liberty, Persuit of Happiness).
Nevertheless I was responding to the parent's point that we take a vote (or our representatives do) and take another one on occasion to make sure it's what the people want and how it didn't specifically apply to the abortion debate and why pro-lifers are so frustrated with Roe v. Wade.
I agree that there are rights that laws can't trump and are protected by the constitution (actually, any right not given to the government is automatically protected, but it doesn't seem to work that way.) I just don't believe that abortion is one of them because it does involve a second person's right to live. So it's wrong to remove the debate from the public discourse. It should be voted on and, on occasion, voted on again to make sure it's what people want.
But if you believed that abortion was equivalent to murdering innocent babies as some pro-lifers argue, then there would be no question that federal legislation is entirely appropriate.
I can appreciate you trying to see it from a pro-lifer's point of view, but in reality most pro-lifers really think it's a state issue to be decided by the states. Of course, I didn't take a poll or anything so maybe I'm completely wrong on that.
Our system of government already proscribes a solution: take a vote. And take another one periodically to make sure it reflects what people want.
It's unfortunate but that's the very option that was elliminated when it comes to abortion. When the SCOTUS ruled on Roe v. Wade, they effectively took the option of voting off the table. 9 people basically said that "we don't care what the people want, we know better and you will no longer be allowed to vote on this issue."
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, it'd return the debate to the people of each state which is where it belongs. I just can't understand how people who believe in democracy and freedom (and "choice") can defend a decision like Roe v. Wade.
Yet, the government uses laws to tell you what you may or may not do with your body, or specifically what you may or may not ingest; we call this the War on Drugs.
It's actually not illegal to ingest drugs, just to possess them. If you can figure out a way to ingest them without possessing them, it'd be legal.
You cannot just pick and choose the parts of it that you feel are moral and ignore the parts of it which are not.
Actually you can. It's called Jury Nullification. If the people refuse to convict when people break laws, it, in effect, nullifies the law.
In the end, regardless of where the reasons come from, the legal code defines the "morality" of the country. There's no way around that. If the society feels the sanctity of doing whatever you want with your body should be moral, then they'll define the laws accordingly. If they feel there are things that supersede that sanctity, they'll adjust the laws and the morality of the society to reflect that.
You may not agree with the morality that society has chosen, but you have the opportunity to convince enough people that the morality and the law should be changed. If you can't convince the majority to your point of view, the morality of the society stands.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome
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I agree with the parent on this one. It's really not a big deal to double-click the url and put in the new one. The real benefit of having a copy of your existing page is that it keeps the history. I might want to go back several pages and follow a different track but I don't want to lose my current track. The IE ctrl-N behavior allows me to do exactly that. If I want a new window for something different, I'll either open a new tab or use ctrl-N and change the url. It's really only the difference between a single and a double click.
Maybe the option already exists, but I'd love for the ctrl-N to have an equivalent for creating a new tab with the history intact. Lots of times I'd prefer that to having a whole new window open.
If I remember right, Fios uses the exact same headend that the cable company uses. The only difference is the transport medium is fiber instead of copper.
In order to have more bandwidth, cable companies need to drop analog channels and stop this garbage of charging extra for digital tv service. Digital TV actually uses a fraction of the bandwidth that analog does. They can also use new technologies like switched digital broadcast to only broadcast stations if they're being viewed in a particular region.
oh, I confirmed the info about the IPTV from Wikipedia:
Verizon's video service is not Video over IP (IPTV). Video On Demand (VOD) content and interactive features, such as Widgets and Programing Guide data, are delivered over IP. However, the vast majority of content, including Pay Per View (PPV), is provided over a standard broadcast video signal which carries both analog and digital content up to 870 MHz. This broadcast content originates from a traditional cable head end that combines analog channels with digital QAM channels and travels over a various SONET networks and eventually arrives at a local serving office.
That's an optimistic assessment. At least with public companies, the savings are usually put to the bottom line rather than passed on to customers.
Only in a monopoly situation. If they're just putting it at the bottom line, then a competitor who is satisfied with the current bottom line will reduce their prices and outsell them. It's one of those market forces.
Seriously. If people want to spend money on Cable or Junk Food that's their choice. It's a matter of Liberty. Why should a 20 something worker not have cable so some retired person can? Why can retired people with plenty of investments still suck off my productivity?
Religion shouldn't matter one way or another but values do matter. If a person claiming to be a satanist can in some way have the same values that I feel are important in an elected official, then by all means. The thing is a religion will often reflect values which make Satan worship a tough sale.
You're setting up straw men. The point was, the connection to Al Qaeda, though it was there somewhat, wasn't one of the reasons put out to invade.
Every WMD situation is different in each country and should be dealt with in different ways. Iraq was targeted early on because it was threatening its neighbors, had a very recent history of using WMD, and was giving us every reason to believe that they were developing them again. They were also a state sponsoring terrorism, though not from Al Qaeda (ie Palistinian).
Just because mistakes are made, does not absolve us from the responsibility of not making things worst off. To say, "oops, made a mistake" and pull out just to watch the whole country disintegrate in wars and genocide would be infinitely more irresponsible than the mistakes initially made. That's not to mention that there's nobody out there that feels like the world was better off with Saddam Hussein in power than now. In spite of the mistakes, we did the whole region and the world a huge favor. Somehow I don't think that's "nothing".
As for malaria (hello, Mr. Straw Man), maybe we shouldn't have been in such a hurry to ban DDT in those countries. We might have solved malaria decades ago.
Based on that saying belief that you have WMD is almost as good as having WMD is akin to saying that being totured and killed is almost as good as living in your own private paradise. That is, I'm not sure almost means what you think it means.
ah but you forget. The US invaded with the belief that they really did have WMD. I don't think Saddam Hussein believed that the US would really invade. The belief of WMD was more of a deterrent to his immediate neighbors than to the US who he thought was just sabre rattling like we'd done for 10 years. Take poker, for example. Almost having a full house is almost as good as having a full house, as long as nobody calls your bluff.
If Hussein believed what you just wrote would happen, he would have cooperated with inspectors and disclosed everything about his WMD program to the UN as they had demanded instead of giving them what he did.
Kim Jon Ill just had the good sense to wait until the US was overextended before he started acting up too much.
I grew up in Western Oregon and Western Washington as well. I would agree during bad driving conditions. The event I was referring to was actually on a bright sunny day in August (otherwise known as "summer" in the northwest). Being a long time resident of Oregon, you can't tell me that the cops aren't a little uptight about speeding in their state.
You have to admit, though, that this really seems to be much adieu about nothing. A guy that works for the house edits Wikipedia according to how he sees events. Just because people disagree with his edits doesn't necessarily make it propaganda and it for sure doesn't make it Orwellian.
The biggest trumpet being blown was WMD as I remember. There was some talk about some connections but it was very clear to me what the reasons being put forth were. As I indicated in the post, those were shown to be inaccurate, though we weren't the only ones duped. Perhaps I am a moron but that's how I followed the events and I was tracking it quite closely.
You're probably not counting the 15,000 or so suicides among U.S. troops in the past 2 years alone.
No I'm not counting that because it isn't true. Here are the most recent numbers I could find:
The report said the 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers compares with 87 in 2005 and is the highest number since 102 were reported in 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War, when there were more soldiers on active duty.
Investigations are still pending on two other deaths.
In a half million-person Army, last year's suicide toll translates to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000, the highest since the Army started counting in 1980, officials said. The rate has fluctuated over those years, with the low being 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001.
FYI, the average among that age group is 13 per 100,000.
Also from the story:
There was "limited evidence" to back the suspicion that repeated deployments are putting more people at risk for suicide, the report said. With the Army stretched thin by years of fighting the two wars, the Pentagon has had to extend normal tours of duty this year to 15 months from 12 and has sent some troops back to the wars several times.
Officials found no direct link between suicide and deployments or exposure to combat except in how they affect a soldier's marriage or other close relationships, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general, said in a Pentagon press conference.
"Unfortunately, suicide is very often a compulsive act," she said, and the fact that soldiers are armed can make it harder to prevent.
"Very often a young soldier gets a 'Dear John' or 'Dear Jane' e-mail and then takes his weapon and shoots himself," she said.
Iraqi Casualties
I'm sure as hell you're not counting the million-odd dead Iraqis, but then you might be considering them all terrorists. Enemy combatants. Like the American citizens kept safe by their own extrajudicial executions. They were enemy combatants too.
I don't count them all as terrorists or enemy combatants, though some of them are. According to IraqBodyCount.org there have been about 78,000 to 85,000 deaths due to violence in Iraq since 2003. It doesn't indicate how many of those were perpetrated by other Iraqis.
The wealth of the US is being systematically removed, and the natural resources of the world are being systematically repurposed. "War on terror" is really a war on the boogeyman, used to play the suckers into selling their children into perpetual servitude.
Then you shouldn't have much to worry about for much longer.
That's treason and a crime against humanity that makes the Nazi crimes pale in comparison. Really. Pol Pot never had that kind of ambition.
Considering how much you overstated your other "facts", I think I'll take this one with a grain of salt as well.
Bush/Cheney did claim that there was an Al Qaeda / Iraq connection and that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a clear an present danger to the security of the United States. But then when faced with contrary information, e.g., from Joseph Wilson that Iraq was not in fact trying to obtain Uranium from Niger, Bush/Cheney attacked Wilson (by revealing his wife Valerie Plame was a CIA operative), instead of revising their public story.
Al Qaeda did have connections to Iraq, though not strong. The invasion of Iraq was never sold as being because Iraq and Al Qaeda had strong connections, despite what the history revisionists say. At the time of the invasion, Most Dems, Reps, and governments of the world believed Iraq had WMDs. Even Iraqi leadership believed it. Saddam Hussein was perpetrating a fraud on everyone because the belief of him having WMD was almost as good as actually having them. It should also be noted that a grand jury bent on charging the administration concerning the Valerie Plame "revelation" wasn't able to come up with any charges whatsoever except for a single perjury.
Later Bush/Cheney nefariously blamed "intelligence failures" when in fact they knew better than anyone else that there was no credible threat from Iraq. Cheney was encumbered by a conflict of interest because, in classic Washington revolving-door style, he was re-entering politics having just served as CEO of Halliburton who ended up profiting heavily from the Iraq war. This is absolutely relevant!
The CIA itself admitted the intelligence failures. You can't say that they were just covering because they've also been critical of the administration. The intelligence agencies of a lot of other countries also failed as they believed the same thing. As for Cheney's Halliburton connection, It's been shown that Cheney doesn't gain anything from Halliburton and hasn't since he left the company.
Bush, as commander-in-chief, is guilty of Dereliction of Duty by both starting an unnecessary war based on lies, and then grossly incompetently managing that war. The deaths of American service men and women were absolutely avoidable because they war was unnecessary and avoidable. Abusing power, and abusing the trust and dedication of military personnel by getting them killed unnecessarily is absolutely criminal and cannot go unpunished.
There were some obvious mistakes made during the invasion and occupation. Most of those have been corrected. The fact remains that no war of this caliber has had as few American casualties as this one. No war plan is perfect but this one is far from a grossly incompetent mismanagement.
The death of every American serviceperson and Iraqi civilian due to the war in Iraq is an individual charge of manslaughter against Bush.
Uh, yeah. Right.
There should also be criminal repercussions for the lesser, but still significant crimes, of distracting the US military away from the war against terrorism (in Afghanistan) to a distraction in Iraq, right when the US was most vulnerable to terrorism (after 9/11). The enormous waste of money is also criminal mismanagement.
I hate to break it to you, but the War on Terror is in more places than Afghanistan. I have 2 cousins that just got back from the African "front" in the War on Terror. If you want to read about successes in the War on Terror, check out what we're doing in Africa.
Don't be dissuaded or intimidated by misinformation on Wikipedia, the rabid invective of idiots on FOX News, or snide comments
Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia to have people who know a lot of information about a subject be the person that updates the page and if someone else knows more, they'll update it? Who knows more about the situation than people whose job it is to work with this stuff every single day?
This article just sounds like FUD. Some random guy that works for the House of Representatives (not necessarily a rep) edits Wikipedia so it reflects how he sees the information. It sure sounds like a grand Orwellian conspiracy to me.
I grew up in Washington and I worked doing Drywall as a teenager in the summers. I often had to pull over when I was hauling a load of sheetrock scrap in a trailer and lots of people were piling up behind me. I don't think I realized it was a law, but I just thought it was the right thing to do.
That may be, but there has to be a line drawn as to what is illegal and what is legal. If it's left gray, then it'd be impossible for everyone to receive equal treatment under the law. People being arrested for a range of things that others aren't depending on the police and prosecutors. Then they'd be found guilty or not depending on the judge and the jury. People need to be able to tell beforehand whether the act they are about to commit is illegal or not.
The husband who has sex with a wife who "does her duty" to preserve a marriage she depends on for emotional or financial support is about as consenting as the 14 year old who has sex with her 18 year old boyfriend because she doesn't want him to break up with her. Unless it rises to the level of actual rape, the former is perfectly legal, the latter in many states is automatically illegal. I would argue in both cases that the "consent" is tainted.
The consent may be "tainted" in the first case but there's a certain amount of consent when the wife entered into the marriage contract. If that weren't the case, a husband could be hauled in on rape charges or it could be used against him in divorce proceedings when he'd had no indication that she was just doing her "wifely duty" and not truly consenting.
You get a similar problem with "too young" to consent when it comes to teenagers: While most 14-year-olds are ill-equipped to make this decision, the sad truth is there are far too many kids who were forced by a rough home life or other circumstances to grow up too fast and who, by age 14, are more capable of giving meaningful consent to marry or have sex with a 25-year-old boyfriend than some relatively naive adults.
That may be true but a line has to be determined for the reasons I gave above. I'd argue that a 14 year old girl coming from a rough home life or other circumstances would be in even less of a condition to give consent. They could be trying to satisfy psychological deficiencies by looking for "love" and "acceptance" from a man because her father abused her or was never there.
In many states there are already laws that could help in a situation where a child too young to consent and doesn't have parental approval. She could go to court, get a court appointed guardian, and then get the court to approve the marriage. It'd be an uphill battle at 14, but it's possible.
If prosecutors leave the 18 year old who dates a 14 year old alone because the minimum they could charge him with is a sex-offense felony, does it not make more sense to change the law so they can give him a "traffic ticket" or probation-sentence offense so there is a record of his conviction? This way, if he simply moves on to the next 14-year-old there will be a paper trail.
I could probably agree with something like that. I'd maybe want it more of a Class C misdemeanor but not require registration in the db. I'm not opposed to changing the parts of the system that aren't just. I'm just arguing against people who think the db has no place whatsoever in the system.
What's nonsensical is your taking it seriously in the first place.
GP did a fine job of arguing by reductio ad absurdum.
Using Latin words is cool, huh?
The first part of the post:
We should also make searchable databases for all those suspected or convicted of thief, buglary, murder, fraud, and any other felony or misdemeanor
was a decent form of reductio ad absurdum. Of course reductio ad absurdum isn't an argument that can't be countered as you seem to imply. I responded and countered it by accepting the outcome as not being absurd.
The second part of the post,
and a list of who their neighbors were at the time, as well as their immediate family. Make it accessible to the public so everyone can see, we'd be so safe then that we wouldn't need the police anymore.
was more along the lines of Appeal to Ridicule, which is not a serious argument of any kind and so I responded to it as nonsense.
I gave the poster the benefit of the doubt and took the first part of the post as reductio ad absurdum and then responded to it. The only other option I had was to consider it all Appeal to Ridicule and label the whole thing as nonsense.
I tend to agree. I moved from Utah to San Diego. At first I was intimidated by all the cars and the speed until I learned the "rules" that everyone followed and then it was a very organized system, just at a high rate of speed.
The only exception I've experienced is Oregon. I moved from San Diego to Portland and it was maddening how slowly everyone drove. Not only are the speed limits lower in Oregon but people do not drive faster than 5 over the speed limit. I learned what happens if you do.
While in a passing lane I crept into the 10 over zone and found a State Patrol guy at the bottom of the hill clocking everyone. I pulled over and quickly got my ticket and he raced back to his hideout. I stayed in the pull off area for a while so my wife could feed the baby. In the 30 minutes we sat there, I saw that same cop pull over 6 more people. The cops are brutal in Oregon and therefore nobody speeds. Once you get used to it, it's kind of nice not to have so many idiots driving like maniacs oblivious to their surroundings with a cell phone glued to their ear, like in Utah.
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You're right that that wasn't the argument I was making, though I was implying that I didn't agree that it was a constitutionally protected right for the exact reason you stated. I don't get how a tenuous connection through the right of privacy trumps a more explicit right itemized in the Declaration of Independance, that of the Right to Life (ie Life, Liberty, Persuit of Happiness).
Nevertheless I was responding to the parent's point that we take a vote (or our representatives do) and take another one on occasion to make sure it's what the people want and how it didn't specifically apply to the abortion debate and why pro-lifers are so frustrated with Roe v. Wade.
I agree that there are rights that laws can't trump and are protected by the constitution (actually, any right not given to the government is automatically protected, but it doesn't seem to work that way.) I just don't believe that abortion is one of them because it does involve a second person's right to live. So it's wrong to remove the debate from the public discourse. It should be voted on and, on occasion, voted on again to make sure it's what people want.
I can appreciate you trying to see it from a pro-lifer's point of view, but in reality most pro-lifers really think it's a state issue to be decided by the states. Of course, I didn't take a poll or anything so maybe I'm completely wrong on that.
It's unfortunate but that's the very option that was elliminated when it comes to abortion. When the SCOTUS ruled on Roe v. Wade, they effectively took the option of voting off the table. 9 people basically said that "we don't care what the people want, we know better and you will no longer be allowed to vote on this issue."
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, it'd return the debate to the people of each state which is where it belongs. I just can't understand how people who believe in democracy and freedom (and "choice") can defend a decision like Roe v. Wade.
It's actually not illegal to ingest drugs, just to possess them. If you can figure out a way to ingest them without possessing them, it'd be legal.
Actually you can. It's called Jury Nullification. If the people refuse to convict when people break laws, it, in effect, nullifies the law.
In the end, regardless of where the reasons come from, the legal code defines the "morality" of the country. There's no way around that. If the society feels the sanctity of doing whatever you want with your body should be moral, then they'll define the laws accordingly. If they feel there are things that supersede that sanctity, they'll adjust the laws and the morality of the society to reflect that.
You may not agree with the morality that society has chosen, but you have the opportunity to convince enough people that the morality and the law should be changed. If you can't convince the majority to your point of view, the morality of the society stands.
I agree with the parent on this one. It's really not a big deal to double-click the url and put in the new one. The real benefit of having a copy of your existing page is that it keeps the history. I might want to go back several pages and follow a different track but I don't want to lose my current track. The IE ctrl-N behavior allows me to do exactly that. If I want a new window for something different, I'll either open a new tab or use ctrl-N and change the url. It's really only the difference between a single and a double click.
Maybe the option already exists, but I'd love for the ctrl-N to have an equivalent for creating a new tab with the history intact. Lots of times I'd prefer that to having a whole new window open.
Wikipedia
Only in a monopoly situation. If they're just putting it at the bottom line, then a competitor who is satisfied with the current bottom line will reduce their prices and outsell them. It's one of those market forces.
Because they vote in larger numbers.
They've had the IGNAT-ER for some time now for reconnaissance: http://www.army-technology.com/projects/ignat-er/
Religion shouldn't matter one way or another but values do matter. If a person claiming to be a satanist can in some way have the same values that I feel are important in an elected official, then by all means. The thing is a religion will often reflect values which make Satan worship a tough sale.
I didn't read any other articles, but this one seemed sourced and made sensible arguments. Try these if you didn't like that one:
DOE - 2037
Michael Lynch - 20 to 30 years
Peter Odell of Erasmus University in the Netherlands - year 2035
More than likely we have at least 20 more years and probably a lot more.
Not the greatest time frame, but it does give us some time to push to other alternatives including nuclear energy.
You're setting up straw men. The point was, the connection to Al Qaeda, though it was there somewhat, wasn't one of the reasons put out to invade.
Every WMD situation is different in each country and should be dealt with in different ways. Iraq was targeted early on because it was threatening its neighbors, had a very recent history of using WMD, and was giving us every reason to believe that they were developing them again. They were also a state sponsoring terrorism, though not from Al Qaeda (ie Palistinian).
Just because mistakes are made, does not absolve us from the responsibility of not making things worst off. To say, "oops, made a mistake" and pull out just to watch the whole country disintegrate in wars and genocide would be infinitely more irresponsible than the mistakes initially made. That's not to mention that there's nobody out there that feels like the world was better off with Saddam Hussein in power than now. In spite of the mistakes, we did the whole region and the world a huge favor. Somehow I don't think that's "nothing".
As for malaria (hello, Mr. Straw Man), maybe we shouldn't have been in such a hurry to ban DDT in those countries. We might have solved malaria decades ago.
If Hussein believed what you just wrote would happen, he would have cooperated with inspectors and disclosed everything about his WMD program to the UN as they had demanded instead of giving them what he did.
Kim Jon Ill just had the good sense to wait until the US was overextended before he started acting up too much.
I grew up in Western Oregon and Western Washington as well. I would agree during bad driving conditions. The event I was referring to was actually on a bright sunny day in August (otherwise known as "summer" in the northwest). Being a long time resident of Oregon, you can't tell me that the cops aren't a little uptight about speeding in their state.
Touche;-).
You have to admit, though, that this really seems to be much adieu about nothing. A guy that works for the house edits Wikipedia according to how he sees events. Just because people disagree with his edits doesn't necessarily make it propaganda and it for sure doesn't make it Orwellian.
The biggest trumpet being blown was WMD as I remember. There was some talk about some connections but it was very clear to me what the reasons being put forth were. As I indicated in the post, those were shown to be inaccurate, though we weren't the only ones duped. Perhaps I am a moron but that's how I followed the events and I was tracking it quite closely.
Military Suicides No I'm not counting that because it isn't true. Here are the most recent numbers I could find: FYI, the average among that age group is 13 per 100,000.
Also from the story: Iraqi Casualties I don't count them all as terrorists or enemy combatants, though some of them are. According to IraqBodyCount.org there have been about 78,000 to 85,000 deaths due to violence in Iraq since 2003. It doesn't indicate how many of those were perpetrated by other Iraqis. Then you shouldn't have much to worry about for much longer. Considering how much you overstated your other "facts", I think I'll take this one with a grain of salt as well.
Sometimes I think mine does too ;-)
Al Qaeda did have connections to Iraq, though not strong. The invasion of Iraq was never sold as being because Iraq and Al Qaeda had strong connections, despite what the history revisionists say. At the time of the invasion, Most Dems, Reps, and governments of the world believed Iraq had WMDs. Even Iraqi leadership believed it. Saddam Hussein was perpetrating a fraud on everyone because the belief of him having WMD was almost as good as actually having them. It should also be noted that a grand jury bent on charging the administration concerning the Valerie Plame "revelation" wasn't able to come up with any charges whatsoever except for a single perjury.
The CIA itself admitted the intelligence failures. You can't say that they were just covering because they've also been critical of the administration. The intelligence agencies of a lot of other countries also failed as they believed the same thing. As for Cheney's Halliburton connection, It's been shown that Cheney doesn't gain anything from Halliburton and hasn't since he left the company.
There were some obvious mistakes made during the invasion and occupation. Most of those have been corrected. The fact remains that no war of this caliber has had as few American casualties as this one. No war plan is perfect but this one is far from a grossly incompetent mismanagement.
Uh, yeah. Right.
I hate to break it to you, but the War on Terror is in more places than Afghanistan. I have 2 cousins that just got back from the African "front" in the War on Terror. If you want to read about successes in the War on Terror, check out what we're doing in Africa.
Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia to have people who know a lot of information about a subject be the person that updates the page and if someone else knows more, they'll update it? Who knows more about the situation than people whose job it is to work with this stuff every single day?
This article just sounds like FUD. Some random guy that works for the House of Representatives (not necessarily a rep) edits Wikipedia so it reflects how he sees the information. It sure sounds like a grand Orwellian conspiracy to me.
I grew up in Washington and I worked doing Drywall as a teenager in the summers. I often had to pull over when I was hauling a load of sheetrock scrap in a trailer and lots of people were piling up behind me. I don't think I realized it was a law, but I just thought it was the right thing to do.
In many states there are already laws that could help in a situation where a child too young to consent and doesn't have parental approval. She could go to court, get a court appointed guardian, and then get the court to approve the marriage. It'd be an uphill battle at 14, but it's possible. I could probably agree with something like that. I'd maybe want it more of a Class C misdemeanor but not require registration in the db. I'm not opposed to changing the parts of the system that aren't just. I'm just arguing against people who think the db has no place whatsoever in the system.
The first part of the post:
We should also make searchable databases for all those suspected or convicted of thief, buglary, murder, fraud, and any other felony or misdemeanor
was a decent form of reductio ad absurdum. Of course reductio ad absurdum isn't an argument that can't be countered as you seem to imply. I responded and countered it by accepting the outcome as not being absurd.
The second part of the post,
and a list of who their neighbors were at the time, as well as their immediate family. Make it accessible to the public so everyone can see, we'd be so safe then that we wouldn't need the police anymore.
was more along the lines of Appeal to Ridicule, which is not a serious argument of any kind and so I responded to it as nonsense.
I gave the poster the benefit of the doubt and took the first part of the post as reductio ad absurdum and then responded to it. The only other option I had was to consider it all Appeal to Ridicule and label the whole thing as nonsense.
I tend to agree. I moved from Utah to San Diego. At first I was intimidated by all the cars and the speed until I learned the "rules" that everyone followed and then it was a very organized system, just at a high rate of speed.
The only exception I've experienced is Oregon. I moved from San Diego to Portland and it was maddening how slowly everyone drove. Not only are the speed limits lower in Oregon but people do not drive faster than 5 over the speed limit. I learned what happens if you do.
While in a passing lane I crept into the 10 over zone and found a State Patrol guy at the bottom of the hill clocking everyone. I pulled over and quickly got my ticket and he raced back to his hideout. I stayed in the pull off area for a while so my wife could feed the baby. In the 30 minutes we sat there, I saw that same cop pull over 6 more people. The cops are brutal in Oregon and therefore nobody speeds. Once you get used to it, it's kind of nice not to have so many idiots driving like maniacs oblivious to their surroundings with a cell phone glued to their ear, like in Utah.