Well, I was lurking a bit even in '02. I think I found the site either right before or after CoT came out, maybe WH. The theory post though, not the MBs, I might have posted a couple times, then I was largely silent till '07, I think I firs tposted after RJ died, over on the WoTMB, then over on the RPG board (you should join us sometime, fun game) and then finally over at the CMB, initially I didn't even know what it was and kept wondering whit on a wheel of time sight people kept talking politics, but I'm a politico, so it eventually sucked me in.

I've never had someone get on me for being lengthy either, though I've certainly had a few pokes and jokes over it. I've always just written until I felt my point was clear, it always seems weird to me that so many others don't.



Oh, I don't blame you for being ticked off, you should be, I just want to make clear that I think the cop was in the 'minor abuse' area like accepting free coffee, not the full blown bad cop zone. I know many liberals are entirely reasonable, I used to be one, kinda, maybe still am, it's that you seem to attract certain types of crazy, as opposed to types of crazy the right gets. Maybe it's because of the more left of center-US views more common to the net, but right-wing loons tend to be dismissed as trolls and leftie-loonies tend to be more vocal and unchallenged... I don't know. As you might guess, I'm a big believer in protecting our rights and remembering how we paid for them, but I do tend to have a mentality of 'If you're gonna burn the flag, please wrap yourself in it first'. Rights yes, right to approval, no. When someone says, 'Hey! I'm just expressing my free speech' I always want to point out to them 'That's fine, that's why we're not stoning you, we don't have to like you, we can spit when you walk by, we just can't spit on you, I'm just expressing my free speech when I call you spoiled little prick.'

Obviously, there's a big difference between politely refusing a search and acting like a snot to the cops, lotta people forget that, you obviously have not.



I live in rural ohio, I know the local police, I know the police dogs name and age and the name of the new one who's getting ready to replace him. So obviously I'm not really in a position to express un-biased views on them. I've certainly heard a lot bad stories about cops, and obviously many have been true, my regrets if your area is like that.



Well, when I think concealed, barring obvious major professional or personal safety cases, I tend to assume 'one on the hip for show, one on the ankle for backup. I wouldn't object to conceal laws if they specifically said 'a backup weapon can be concealed, like a knife or gun, so long as the person is clearly advertising they are armed, and not informing the police of it prior to a search is a felony'



Yes, I do tend to think there is a legit place to say 'this weapon can only be used for outright rebellion.', I do tend to feel there are legit caps to the level of ordinance someone can own, or at least carry around. Maybe owning a RPG is okay, taking it off your premises is not. Most problems from owning explosives and heavy ordinance can be taken care of without bans. 'Got kids? Show us a properly safe storage format or we're taking them for their safety, or you can hands us the RPG and C4' and 'your howitzer needs to undergo regular maintenance and inspection or represents a hazard, you want to show us some paperwork from a certified weapons tech?' Inconvenience tends to be easier than bans for enforcing things, that way you avoid people doing it as 'a matter of principle'... not that I can say I honestly object to laws on explosives and anti-tank weapons.



Oh yes, I don't blame the cops for being paranoid during traffic stops.



Well, IMHO, parties should simply have their own specific criteria for selecting a nominee, if the New Hitler Party wants to pick their candidate by reading tea leaves that's fine by me. It's just easier to tack on nominees to the normal ballot for parties which believe in democratic selection. I can imagine in Texas there are a lot places where your vote for a candidate is basically only 'GOP 1 or GOP 2' so that's different from an ethical standpoint. In a case where the primary really is just the election, there's more wiggle room, though I still don't really approve. I don't like the 'common masses' voting in primaries for candidates because you can't assume ignorant votes will cancel out, 'smith' might get a lot more uninformed votes that 'Hussein', and a dem who crosses the line to vote for a purple senate nominee probably votes for everyone else on the ballot too, really screwing the Husseins, Whites, and Ignoramitz's. Or you can have malice votes, your in a stronghold area where a candidate's a shoo-in, people cross over and try to nominate a Ron Paul instead of a Scott Brown.



I know a lot of good people who work military or law enforcement who have gotten drunk and taken a whiz somewhere, but I catch your meaning. But, I really think every party should be able to set it's own rules for nomination, I mean if I setup a Demarchist Party, I'm being pretty hypocritical to have a primary, I should just be dumping the names of every member who can serve into a hat and picking. Having a voted primary after that would really just be for show and wasteful, and if someone get's ticked and runs anyway, people from other parties could come in and screw it up.



Sure, Tort Reform should be seperate, but the whole reason one does enormous bills is to make sure things go through that otherwise might not on their own. The GOP may talk the talk but not walk the walk on HC, but the dems do it for Tort, same thing. The GOP's offer to break this into manageable bits, all seperate, is hardly altruistic but it really is the right thing to do. Politically it's the best thing for the dems too, we're offering it because we're scared the whole thing will get rammed through and political suicide or not it would be very hard to get rid off, we'd have to take back sizeable majorities, because dems who voted no on the bill might vote no on a repeal, and we'd have to be able to override Obama, by then, it's in, people are using it, outrage is diminished, some people 'need it', so the whole start from scratch thing isn't a cynical ploy, it's genuine fear that this is a political win-win and lose-lose at the same time. We think we can snap the mega-majority even if the dems regain some favor, and that's all we want out of '10, a majority would be nice, but isn't the main goal, so getting it isn't worth some virtually indestructible new entitlement system.



Both sides have openly stated a willingness to regulate that sort of thing, which as you mention has already been ruled on, so starting from scratch to permit that seems a good idea. Laws and programs can usually stand on their own, certainly anything as huge as this bill needs to demonstrably be able to, you don't roll the dice on a 1/6th of the economy. BEsides just be an obvious and blunt political tactic, the GOP is basically saying 'if you're gonna do this anyway...'



Well, by now one would think there'd be some data showing if sex ed in school even worked, now, I don't care if they show my kids borderline porn in the process of explaining the plumbing, but I do want to know they are spending the time effectively, if they could otherwise be shoring up the weaknesses in 'Johnny Kantreed' and 'little Miss Spell', so I think some demographic data indicate a significant drop in areas that did teach versus didn't would be appropriate before the debate on parental rights is warranted. I'd want those regardless of which side I'm advocating.



I'd like to have seen that, or maybe not, the site already takes up much of my time, I probably spend the better part of an hour on this site daily, maybe more, although a big chunk of that is on the RPG board. Well, except for prolonged bakc and forths like this, which I consider to be mental training like a crossword puzzle, realistically I just flip in every so often when doing other things and cut off quick replies, so I suppose it doesn't really eat into my time. I do remember when there were a lot more threads like the homeschooling one we just had, the last one I remember here going off like that was the Polanksi thread.



Yes, I remember your posting something along those lines a while back, I've always assumed I was missing something over a lot of that business. Much of the commentary people make about 'the old days' or anything that happened in chat goes right over my head.



Fine lines are fun to dance over, keeps a civilization from getting stagnant. It's all about trying to make the system a little bit less game-able, while people try to game it. I have to admit, I'm a little leery about some of the assembly restrictions, but at the same time, the right to protest doesn't really mean 'wherever we want', I'm sure you remember the protests outside the RNC. No protest should be allowed, within the spirit of protest, to impede other people's business, especially when it has nothing to do with what they are protesting, and large ones often get a violent element, so there's nothing too wrong about telling people 'protest all you want in the park over there, part we're not letting this drift next door to the elementary school, you're scaring the kids.' You can take this the other way, but by and large, I don't mind practical restrictions if they don't stomp on people's rights. No guns in school vs no gun in your house is pretty straightforward, protesting in front of city hall impedes business, but it's an ancient tradition and makes sense when you're protesting the gov't. So, fine line, but common sense vs law tends to fix most gray cases.



Agreed, you need replacements - unless it's just awful bad dumb, then kill is fine - but these would be easier if things were broken up more clearly, and my view on this is not situational, honestly I think the left will do better trying for some of their reforms if they do it more piecemeal. Right now I'd guess around 10% of the pop is against this bill just because they are scared by it's immensity, not most or even necessarily any of it's provisions.

Somewhere in there I remember you mentioning marijuana, I must have trimmed that on accident, and I remembered I wanted to mention something on that, turns out it's been positively and strongly linked to schizophrenia now, total sidebar but I read about it yesterday, anyway as you might guess I'm fairly indifferent to it's legality or lack there of, but it raised the interesting libertarian point similar to smoking, 'do we have the right to control it because now we all foot the bill for it's consequences?' which I always find an interesting mental conundrum.