So in other words you were at wotmania far longer than I. I'm sorry you missed the CMB when it was still an awesome place. For all that CERTAIN PEOPLE think I get all my news from DailyKos (I think I've been there MAYBE a half dozen times in as many years) my main news outlet used to be the wotmania CMB, because I knew that ANY news story would show up there hours, sometimes days, before it appeared anywhere else, and the breadth, depth and civility of discussion would outstrip all or most other sources. I'm actually at something of a loss these days, because there are few other places I know to get timely news accounts that don't favor one perspective over others, when they don't just gloss over the issue in a blurb.

Agreed, but it's common. So are wounded feelings to no purpose. Correlation isn't necessarily causation, but doesn't preclude it either.

That's pretty much it; I don't support flag burning, but I DO support the RIGHT to burn flags. Popular speech doesn't require protection. I'd like to class it as minor abuse, but we went from "I have a right to search your car without cause" to "I'm testing what's obviously a cigarette butt because you asserted your own rights" to "why are you shaking?" (I still honestly don't know unless it was the wind and me being in shorts, but if he'd made one more mistake I'd have gone to jail, rightly or not. )

Thanks; I like to think so at least.

Unfortunately it's often more who you know than even what you do.

I could deal with that, though I'm inclined to disqualify firearms as backups. Hard for me to say either way though; if you see someone's packing you already know he has lethal force at ready command, so how MUCH is less of an issue.

That does make more sense, though it still boils down to regulating possession, just not to the point of an outright ban (and I'm well aware of why the Second Amendment exists, what the armies at Lexington and Concord were doing when the revolution started, and why they were driven to that point. ) Regulation rather than prohibition is appealing on many levels.

I'm not unsympathetic to law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for those who do their duty, frequently as much in defiance of their coworkers as anyone else. Maybe I've just had too many negative experiences, but it seems to me that, at least in many rural areas, good cops are either driven out or broken by a bad system.

TX does at least have open primaries, but at the core I think people should be able to vote in all primaries for the same reason I'm offended by comments on "Real America. " If any party seeks to represent the nation, or claims to, then the whole nation should have a say in its leadership, and we'd probably have less extremist nominees were that the case. The spectacle that, IMHO, doomed McCain by forcing him to shed his moderate image to win a primary with the base then try to shed a RIGHT WING image to win the general election is one very familiar to Democrats. For decades national candidates couldn't get nominated without appeals to most far left elements of the base, which then came back to haunt them during the general campaign. Letting everyone vote in every primary would go along way toward ending the factionalism Washington rightly rejected as harmful to the nation.

It was more the double standard than anything; I've been to Georgetown many times, and since I'm pretty sure their cops almost shot me for having car trouble one night, I'm equally sure they wouldn't have driven me home if they'd caught me drunk in public and urinating by the roadside (let alone do so twice. ) It's hardly surprising to me that Jimmy Fennell was welcome there after he left Giddings and his murdered ex behind him. But the main point is I don't think preferring Edwards to Obama in '08 (little did I know... ) makes my preference for McCain or Huckabee over Romney any less valid. Or vice versa. I think the voters should be able to pick all the candidates for an office rather than just one since they're subject to the eventual winner regardless of primary in which they choose to vote.

Healthcare needs to be split into separate bills, but tort reform needs to be included because that's how massive bills enact things that can't stand on their own merit? Surely if we can justify tort reform as part of one massive healthcare bill, we can justify HEALTHCARES inclusion on the same basis. Personally, I'm a little sick of the political calculus in which BOTH sides are evaluating healthcare legislation solely in terms of how it will impact the midterms. LBJ took his lumps on Medicare and the Civil Rights Act despite having to run a re-election campaign along the way, because they were the right thing to do. But Obama is no LBJ or FDR, as becomes more apparent daily.

The GOP is attempting to reframe a healthcare debate that goes back to the mid-forties as a tax debate, a tort reform debate, an entitlement debate, a socialism debate, ANYTHING but a healthcare debate. Hardly surprising; it's worked so well in the past. But if they want to address torts (which cover a great deal more than healthcare) they should address them as such, and that's really not what anything like a majority voted for in '08. The idea that medical torts are the primary driver in healthcare costs is specious and ignores the fact malpractice insurance rates need to be examined just as badly as healthcare insurance rates do.


Well, I can't cite a study, but I do recall a PBS program (Frontline, I think) a few years ago about a syphilis epidemic the HS kids of a Bible Belt town. SOMEONE wasn't getting all the facts there, and the faculty as well as the parents were shocked to their core when they learned the extent of what had happened. Such is the price of burying ones head in the sand.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/georgia/etc/press.html

Yah.

I can't speak to chat except at the end, when it was home to the most lethal examples of what killed wotmania (somehow, in the midst of that the Love of my life wandered in and the rest is history. )

I don't mind regulating protests up to a point, but not to the point of forcing protests of a Texas policy to take place in Oklahoma. Violent protesters need to be removed, but that doesn't mean you should shut down the protests (particularly given the documented history of FBI agents provocateur with the GOAL of turning peaceful protests violent to justify arresting protesters. )

That may be true, but I also think the right opposition is missing out on the fact, deliberately or not, that much of the overall opposition polled on the healthcare bill is from liberals like me who think the bill doesn't do ENOUGH. If a pollster called me up I'd unequivocally state emphatic opposition, but if you take away those of us who loathe a boondoggle subsidy of private insurance that ignores cost controls and provides no public option I doubt the opposition could crack 40%. Anyone expecting another Republican Revolution out of that will be disappointed; you can't expect people to keep electing Scott Browns just because Dems aren't liberal ENOUGH.

My best recollection is that marijuana has been found to show a causative link in a small segment of the population predisposed to schizophrenia; the real danger is there's no way to know whether you're part of that group until after the fact. I think the libertarian take would be similar to that on nicotine and other issues: Let whoever wants to do it, and if they get sick it's their problem.