penniless

Fines don't work agains huge multinational companies. Just part of the cost of doing business. A few JAIL TERMS for the company officers is called for.

You seriously believe that the media is biased AGAINST the US military? The system of embedded reporters is one of the most shockingly effective press controls ever created, and barely a peep of outcry, either from press or public. That alone should be our first warning that freedom of the press is not in either the interest of the government or the reporters themselves most of whom are content to sacrifice their professionalism for personal safety. The individual reporters? I doubt it. Their parent companies? You bet your sweet ass they are...and doing anything they can to paint the troops, the job they are doing over there and the administration in a bad light. The mainstream media IS overwhelmingly liberal...as your tagline says: be a student of reality. Last time I checked the mainstream media were all owned by dedicated capitalists.

Iraq wasn't sovereign - they willingly signed that surrender treaty in 1991. Losing sucks. I believe the latest reports from those on the ground show that Iraq had complied with the terms of the 1991 surrender - at least with respect to the pretense given by GWB & Co for the 2003 invasion. Notwithstanding that, the post-invasion occupation has been hopelessly mismanaged at the strategic level.

You quote Lott as if he's God. Even Lott now acknowledges using incomplete data for that analysis. One published critique puts it thus: 40. In the wake of a recent school shooting in Germany that killed fourteen, Lott summarized his finding from the Lott and Landes study: “multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 per-cent in states that passed [right-to-carry] laws.” John Lott, “Gun Control Misfires in Europe,” Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2002, p. A16. Although the results may at first seem persuasive, there is a major prob-lem with the Lott and Landes data. Lott and Landes (2001). The FBI Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) reveals more than 800 such multiple-victim deaths a year, while Lott and Landes use a Lexis search that generates only about 20. FBI (2000). While it may be that not all 800 should be included (for ex-ample, Lott and Landes would eliminate some of the murders in the FBI data because they are not com-mitted in public places), the true number of cases is vastly greater than the number that Lott and Landes employ. Indeed, Lott and Landes have now found that when they use the SHR data, their results “were rarely statistically significant.” Consequently, if their story doesn’t emerge when they use the best data, why should we believe their results using much less accurate data? Another reputable researcher calls Lott "Unethical" cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/guns/Lott/misc/0711b.html See also tigger.uic.edu/~mikem/Cnty_UCR.PDF for an explanation of Lotts misuse of statistics.

Interesting, but it won't sell many CDs.

Good, do you want a cookie? Maybe a glass of milk? . No need to be offensive. The comparison with Chicago is VERY relevant, since you argue that a drop in crime correlates with concealed carry and cite TX as an example. But Chicago had a BIGGER drop and no concealed carry. NYC has also had a big drop in violent crime and no CCW. Therefore your "correlation" is quite likely due to other factors altogether, like in Chicago and NYC.

Does the ease with which potential mass murderers can obtain guns make your children any safer? There seem to be lots more mass shootings in the US than in other parts of the western world.

Let's see. Harry's great grandfather/grandmother were national symbols of resistance to the Nazis in WWII, and their residence was targeted and bombed by the Nazis. His great uncle was in the RAF and was KIA fighting the Nazis. Another great uncle was an active duty admiral in the Royal Navy during WWII. His grandfather was an active duty RN officer during WWII. His grandmother was in the women's auxiliary of the RAF at the end of WWII. Yes, I can clearly see that Harry would be a closet Nazi.

Really? Do you have a reliable source for that? Conservation of angular momentum would imply that a shift of rotation axis can only be caused by an external influence.

Once upon a time I had a '69 pop top VW camper. Drove it coast to coast, including over 12,000ft in the Rockies with 7 on board. Man, was it ever slow at altitude.

There's an overall trend in the US with violent crime decreasing, but no where has it been as dramatic and as quick as it was in TX where the violent crime rate went from climbing steadily to a stark drop in a year. There is a direct corrilation there.

Christians aren't bound by the 10 commandments, that's the point of being a Christian and not a Jew. The new convenant (Jesus) came fullfilling prophecy and creating anew convent. Paul writes about obeying or not obeying the old law in Romans 7:15-17. It sounds like your understanding of Christian theology is very very limited. Maybe you should do some research to get a better grasp of some major theology points within a religion you're trying to debate. There's a reason why I don't debate anything beyond Christianity and the varients and cults within, since that's what I've studied in debth. I know very little beyond basic concepts in other major religions so I don't debate them. You miss the point completely. How can anything be deemed "medical" unless either someone did a bunch of experiments, or God handed down a ruling on that substance. Now, to the best of my "very very" limited theological knowledge, no pharmaceuticals are endorsed in the Bible (New or Old Testament).

Derek told me the exact same thing. Legs first can pull the entire harness too low on the body.

Since the U.N. represents most countries in the world and the U.N. believed Iraq had WMDs, which countries are you referring to that were not UN members? Unclear what an organization "believes". People believe. The last UN Inspectors' report before the invasion does not support your statement. If the Security Council believed Powell (whose "evidence" turns out to have been false), why didn't it vote the way Bush wanted?

That depends on how you read certain passages of the Bible. Some people argue that if its not done for a medical reason, that its wrong due your body being a temple of God. How does one know what is "medical" without doing the experiment? I don't recall tablets of stone with medical remedies engraved on them being handed to Moses.

If you look at the violent crime rates for Texas since 1996, after the CHL law had come into effect, you'd see just that. Its dropped by over 50%. I. Chicago's violent crime rate fell 39% in 2004. Murders fell 25% in 2004. I think you'll find it hard to prove correlation or causation with gun ownership there.

What is scary is that we are clearly influencing the climate, but don't really understand what the hell we're doing.

England

Need more information. What are the symptoms? Starter won't turn the engine? Engine turns OK but doesn't fire? Engine fires but won't keep running?

Confessing mistakes in speeches is a start. Do you think he'll ever admit to having made a mistake in his actions?

Even the Liberals form other countries consider the US President to be the Biggest guy on the block. . Leadership is determined by qualities other than size.

A guy in Chicago named Duff just yesterday plead guilty to 31 counts of fraud that made his company $100M. Then there's Enron. Can Americans be trusted with that much money? Maybe we should have a poll.

Pitts Special

You mean like Sudan? Actually, I was thinking in pretty generic terms. I'm more interested in the general philosophy. If I had to pick a real world example, I'd use Auschwitz. Those "kids" didn't really rise up or anything, but I still think the cops needed to show up to stop the abuse. In Illinois the kids would be tansferred to the care of the state DCFS, which in repeated scandals has shown itself to be a bad and abusive surrogate parent.

I bet most of the moderation is in SC. So those in SC would have a better idea of bias than someone who never posts, or just reads the Saftey and Training. And I bet most of the people who get warned or banned are the ones who post a lot in SC - so they're the ones who are more likely to feel like the moderators are biased (and the ones more likely to be voting in this poll). . How can someone who is banned vote in this poll? That was Ron's point (one of them).