Pangloss

I thought you were done with this?

Well you could run it as a poll and members could submit their results in the form of answering the poll question. Just a thought. If you have something specific you're welcome to post it as a suggestion. Check out our suggestions forum when you get a chance: Suggestions Forum

Well that's the problem with using right-wing sources -- you get the right-wing spin without any of that annoying truthiness. They call it "illegal" when in fact the GSA can give .gov domains to anybody its wants. It writes the regulations that decide whether or not something is "legal". They can give a .gov to SFN if they want to. (Hmm!)

At risk of sounding like a color commentator, I thought there were some really interesting points made in the post above, especially in ajb's interesting question and iNow's well-thought-out response. I've never considered this to be a simple issue and I think this is one of those areas where it's going to take some time and a great deal of public discussion to reach a societal consensus. As with the gay marriage issue, a right can be argued to be impinged-upon here, but it's not one that has to be resolved immediately, and it's important to have a societal consensus and give all parties a chance to be heard. Just to expand on padren's point a bit, let me ask a further question: Might there be a logistical argument along the lines of "they know dealer X (who's not a cop), who points them to dealer Y (who's not a cop)"? I have no idea if that's a realistic scenario or not, but it seems logical enough. What do you all think?

Moved to Speculations.

Also please add detail regarding the amount of data involved and the current storage methods used. You should also talk a bit about current security practices and procedures in your organization, which will help give an idea of what the expectations are. Perhaps we can make a few suggestions for you.

How was that useful? You're just passing along someone else's words in an obvious appeal to ridicule. I want to know what you think, Bob, not what Barney Frank thinks. Why don't you make your own argument?

You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But I hear this argument applied to Iraq quite often and I think it's weak, because the same people who make it turn right around and argue the exact opposite when it comes to Darfur, Rwanda, etc. Either it is okay to invade for humanitarian reasons, or is it not -- pick one. I'm not accusing you of hypocrisy, but I do believe most people who make that argument are being so. BTW, just to talk about the politics of this for a moment, you really need to pick which basis you want to condemn President Bush on. When you make unilateral, across-the-board arguments like this you actually require people to support all those different sub-positions in order to oppose Iraq, and that's really the wrong way to go. It's actually quite fortunate for the left that the war became so unpopular amongst the conservative base -- I don't think it was anything the left did that made that happen. It certainly wasn't statements like "no blood for oil" that won over hearts and minds in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, but it was those three states that won the election for Obama.

I think that argument falls short when you ignore the UN resolutions. The correct analysis is that there were resolutions in place but whether or not the world acted on them was something that the world should have decided jointly instead of unilaterally by one nation. It overstates the case to say that there was no justification for the war, just as it overstates the opposite case to say that an invasion was necessary. I think comparing Saddam's behavior with that of a convicted felon is a reasonable analogy. He was an absolute dictator, whatever it was called -- everyone seems to agree on that. His decision to invade Kuwait was unilateral and we all know what happened to those who disagreed with him.

Well I don't think they ever really did, exactly. It was ignored for a long time but eventually became one of the big hot-button topics of the 19th century, and in the end the Mormons abandoned the practice in order to bring mormonism closer to the mainstream of American society. The funky thing about it is that it's actually declared illegal at all. If the underlying premise of marriage is a state-licensed contract, then you would think that the government would simply say no. In fact those polygamists who exist today do so under private arrangement, telling others to mind their own business. Does society care if a man "shacks up" with multiple women? Not really. But what exactly is the difference? It seems to come down to things like shared bank accounts and responsibility for children. But those things are already governed by other laws -- a polygamist without a marriage contract can't exert legal authority over a child without going to court and fighting a lot of other battles based on parenthood, etc. Their private arrangement got them nothing in the eyes of the law, so what difference does it make if they saw themselves as married or not? The point being that having a law against polygamy is actually about attacking polygamy where it exists outside of an official state marriage license. In other words, finding people who THINK of themselves as married and throwing them in jail! That would seem to be a contradiction -- an hypocrisy -- given that we don't seem to care if they simply call it something else. And if the purpose of the law was protecting women, how is it accomplishing that above and beyond the other laws that do so? Aspects of this problem that seem to make sense to most folks, at least in general terms: - Prohibiting sex with a minor child (with the actual age of consent varying either by the individual's maturity level or by cultural preferences, with the agreed-upon age generally falling in at least the mid-to-late teens) - Prohibiting non-consented sex under all circumstances - Prohibiting abuse of a spouse, either physically or psychologically - Prohibiting the use of force or social pressure in creating a cohabitation arrangement - Allowing people to generally cohabitate with people of their choosing, subsequent to the above points (and perhaps others I may not be thinking of at the moment) Beyond that things start to get a little sticky. So perhaps rather than prohibiting polygamy per se, it would make more sense to ensure that the above conditions are properly addressed and then take our nosey selves out of the bedroom. And I think all of this applies more or less directly to gay marriage. Why not? The concerns are the same.

Such a device could open a rift in the space-time continuum!

I don't know if maybe this is too far off the subject, but one of the concerns I have in this area is the impact on education and motivation in the country. It seems like this is already a problem for us due to the explosion of cheap and mesmerizing entertainment options. If millions more start vegging out on Mary Jane, how will we compete with Asia and Europe? Or am I just completely wrong here?

What does that have to do with your neighborhood example? You were making bad analogy. Don't extrapolate my refutation of your analogy to mean that I am in favor of the invasion of Iraq. Your psych textbook is also completely off the subject of this thread. It sounds like it might be an interesting subject for a different thread -- the psychological impact of not finding WMDs.

If you'd spend the previous couple of decades gassing your neighbors, molesting their children and stealing their furniture then yes, that might be a reasonable thing for your neighborhood to do. But it's not a small thing and only to be taken under careful consideration of the facts and legal, unemotional deliberation. (I don't think we should have invaded Iraq.)

Kenneth C. Davis is kind of the James Burke of American history, tackling subjects from perspectives that differ from the traditional ones and looking for insights that are normally overlooked by the history books. His series "Don't Know Much About History" has been widely well-received. This book should be seen as lighter fare, but it's entertaining and informative at the same time. Particularly unique and interesting insights are provided on the lives of such figures as Benedict Arnold, Queen Isabella of Spain, and George Washington. Worth a look! America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Harper Collins (2008) Amazon.com Link (But just FYI, the paperback is due out in March and will save you seven bucks.)

Oh I can see him defunding the war on drugs, sure. But the legalization-as-revenue-stream argument is pretty dubious, IMO. It isn't necessary and I really doubt the impact is as big as proponents would have us believe (look who we're asking to do the math). And by the way, this sort of thing? Is exactly what scares the right about Obama. If you want to see Republicans back in control in real short order, go push that button a few times and watch what happens. They already call him the Soros Sock Puppet, Sorobama, and every other thing you can imagine. That button is big, it's red, and it says "PALIN/OSTEEN 2012" on it. I recommend not pushing it.

I haven't seen it yet, but I will when it comes out on DVD. I've seen all of Oliver Stone's conspiracy the-.. I mean movies. I don't think you should be taking factual impressions from that source, Reaper (e.g. "explores"). He's not exactly known for historical accuracy, and that isn't the point of his efforts anyway.

Well setting aside the obvious effort to ridicule the opposition, I think he's asking a reasonable question, which is whether tradition, predisposition and precedent is the only valid legal argument that should be allowed on this issue. Put another way, is it legally reasonable for individuals to go before a judge and ask for a marriage that doesn't fall under the narrow conditions of "man and woman", and if not, why not? Or are we all agreed at this point that the law doesn't specify man-and-woman, and that the reason it's not allowed is pretty much a matter of judicial interpretation in the favor of conservatives?

Faithfully believing in something does not make it so, but hey, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. There's still no direct evidence that he lied, only circumstantial suggestions that could easily mean that the administration committed errors or (as now seems more likely) gross wishful thinking. Occam's Razor is not your friend here, it's your enemy. Still, I have come around to a point of tolerance for the accusation of deception. The circumstantial evidence is compelling enough to forebear the argument, at any rate. People will keep looking at it, just as they keep looking at Watergate and many other historic events (hey, I could have said the Kennedy Assassination), and perhaps over time some real evidence will appear. You never know.

No. It's not high enough a priority to add to the list of things he can afford to PO conservatives over. In fact it's not a priority at all, so it's not going to even come up, IMO.

I empathize with this particular instance of you logically reasoning your opponents into ignorant obscurity (wink), but I would suggest that, at least in this case, it's not a very useful determination. But hey, maybe I'm wrong.

Then why can't gays get married right now? Sure, you just need to step back from the problem a bit and widen the field of view. They may not have eliminated a single category of hate, but they've drastically reduced the overall power and influence of hate. We no longer live in a world in which hate is accepted as a dominant motivating force. But we did live in that world up until very recently (in human historic terms).

Then why can't gays get married right now? This particular aspect of this discussion is somewhat pointless, because human/societal laws aren't physics or math -- ultimately such laws are subject to human interpretation. If the humans in charge of doing the interpreting decide that X means Y, then that's what it means, and he best you can do is replace the humans in charge of doing the interpreting. You can re-write the law to be less ambiguous, but ultimately if you have poor people in place then they'll probably find some way to distort it. Instead of haggling over the meaning of some subtle point of law, what we need to do is decide that we're going to handle the larger issue in a certain way, and then get everyone on board with that approach. That's why it's foolish to browbeat people into submission on this issue -- you actually challenge the losers to look for legal hairs to split.

Doesn't matter. MLK wasn't wrong just because he was shot.

JohnB, that was interesting, but I think that just as you have to take dire declarations about human contribution to hurricane intensity with a grain of salt, I think you also have to take logical reasoning against human contribution to hurricane intensive with a grain of salt. There are just too many variables. For instance, this wasn't an El Nino year, and yet it was still a very strong and active season, meeting or exceeding most of the pre-season predictions. What if it had been an El Nino year? What if there had been a few more Cat 5s? Would that actually prove anything either way? Science has to be the guide for both sides of the GW question. I agree with you, though, that the number of months in which a hurricane occurs is a near-worthless statistic. Similarly, damage statistics in human lives and monetary cost also seems worthless for measuring the influence of GW. Just fodder for the 6 o'clock news.