StreetScooby

Let's hope 'Bama doesn't get cocky. I'm sure that was Florida's undoing. We are all engines of karma

I watched him for the first time in that game. He made it look so easy We are all engines of karma

We should demand that Hollywood stop glorifying gun violence. Seems like the easiest thing to do. We are all engines of karma

Likewise. Saban will have his guys ready to go. I doubt they'll underestimate ND. We are all engines of karma

OMG, had no idea Florida lost that game. Wow. We are all engines of karma

Without a doubt, IMO, that had something to do with their performance against A&M. I believe they had another tough game _before_ LSU to boot. Very difficult schedules in the SEC. We are all engines of karma

I didn't get the whole story here... did the Alabama team get access to his cell phone, or people from Alabama in general? We are all engines of karma

Yes, that was disappointing. Mettenberger simply doesn't have what it takes. Les needs to do better at coming up with good quarterbacks. His track record there is not impressive. We are all engines of karma

You're expecting far too much from the Journal News. That paper isn't fit for cat litter. We are all engines of karma

I think the Constitution is a legally binding document that our democratically elected officials take an oath to uphold, thus making us a Republic. That arrangement has made our country what it is today. We are all engines of karma

You're not the first person who's mentioned that possibility. It's not clear to me that it is. We are all engines of karma

Uhm, we'll have to agree to disagree on that... I understand the principle, Wendy, but this isn't a reasonable application, IMO. I think our country now has many people who will actually take this piece seriously. We are all engines of karma

Here's a youtube circulating where Hollywood celebrities demand a plan on guns. Let's demand that Hollywood stop glorifying gun violence. Demand a plan We are all engines of karma

Well said, and I could not agree with you more. When/if Obama appoints another SCOTUS member, our country may never be the same. I'll expect an ever increasing proliferation of "rights" that are paid for with other peoples' money, and an unlimited reach in Federal government power. Our education system has failed miserably in civics. People do not appreciate the difference between State government and limited Federal government. With 50 States doing things somewhat differently, at least you'll get a chance to see what works and what doesn't. Not so with a single draconian Federal entity. It's become apparent to me that liberals feel there will always be this "higher power" behind the scenes, i.e. federal govt, that can be consistently relied upon to make things right and take care of you. They honestly don't feel that this country can break, nor will the quality of our life decline. I'm beginning to think they are nuts. This article is pretty insightful into liberal thinking. I found it to be eye opening. Obama's Tax Hikes Won't Be Nearly Big Enough Some examples: Overwhelmingly? I continue to be stunned that the media is not reporting the Fed's massive "purchases". Right now, they're purchasing 60% of all federal auctions. They're not borrowing 40 cents on the dollar, they're printing 60 cents on the dollar! This has been going on for over two years now. Simply not sustainable. I fully expect to see $1T/year interest service in my lifetime. We'll be toast. We are all engines of karma

Let’s Give Up on the Constitution I'm a shocked, but then again not, since the NYTimes is the bastion of liberalism in this country. Do we still have our guns? This is getting dangerous. The individual pursuit of liberty and happiness in a civilized society isn't all that open to interpretation, IMO. Here's the article in its entirety: ===================================== AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions. Consider, for example, the assertion by the Senate minority leader last week that the House could not take up a plan by Senate Democrats to extend tax cuts on households making $250,000 or less because the Constitution requires that revenue measures originate in the lower chamber. Why should anyone care? Why should a lame-duck House, 27 members of which were defeated for re-election, have a stranglehold on our economy? Why does a grotesquely malapportioned Senate get to decide the nation’s fate? Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago. As someone who has taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, I am ashamed it took me so long to see how bizarre all this is. Imagine that after careful study a government official — say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress — reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination? Constitutional disobedience may seem radical, but it is as old as the Republic. In fact, the Constitution itself was born of constitutional disobedience. When George Washington and the other framers went to Philadelphia in 1787, they were instructed to suggest amendments to the Articles of Confederation, which would have had to be ratified by the legislatures of all 13 states. Instead, in violation of their mandate, they abandoned the Articles, wrote a new Constitution and provided that it would take effect after ratification by only nine states, and by conventions in those states rather than the state legislatures. No sooner was the Constitution in place than our leaders began ignoring it. John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, which violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Thomas Jefferson thought every constitution should expire after a single generation. He believed the most consequential act of his presidency — the purchase of the Louisiana Territory — exceeded his constitutional powers. Before the Civil War, abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison conceded that the Constitution protected slavery, but denounced it as a pact with the devil that should be ignored. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation — 150 years ago tomorrow — he justified it as a military necessity under his power as commander in chief. Eventually, though, he embraced the freeing of slaves as a central war aim, though nearly everyone conceded that the federal government lacked the constitutional power to disrupt slavery where it already existed. Moreover, when the law finally caught up with the facts on the ground through passage of the 13th Amendment, ratification was achieved in a manner at odds with constitutional requirements. (The Southern states were denied representation in Congress on the theory that they had left the Union, yet their reconstructed legislatures later provided the crucial votes to ratify the amendment.) In his Constitution Day speech in 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt professed devotion to the document, but as a statement of aspirations rather than obligations. This reading no doubt contributed to his willingness to extend federal power beyond anything the framers imagined, and to threaten the Supreme Court when it stood in the way of his New Deal legislation. In 1954, when the court decided Brown v. Board of Education, Justice Robert H. Jackson said he was voting for it as a moral and political necessity although he thought it had no basis in the Constitution. The list goes on and on. The fact that dissenting justices regularly, publicly and vociferously assert that their colleagues have ignored the Constitution — in landmark cases from Miranda v. Arizona to Roe v. Wade to Romer v. Evans to Bush v. Gore — should give us pause. The two main rival interpretive methods, “originalism” (divining the framers’ intent) and “living constitutionalism” (reinterpreting the text in light of modern demands), cannot be reconciled. Some decisions have been grounded in one school of thought, and some in the other. Whichever your philosophy, many of the results — by definition — must be wrong. IN the face of this long history of disobedience, it is hard to take seriously the claim by the Constitution’s defenders that we would be reduced to a Hobbesian state of nature if we asserted our freedom from this ancient text. Our sometimes flagrant disregard of the Constitution has not produced chaos or totalitarianism; on the contrary, it has helped us to grow and prosper. This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against governmental deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation. Nor should we have a debate about, for instance, how long the president’s term should last or whether Congress should consist of two houses. Some matters are better left settled, even if not in exactly the way we favor. Nor, finally, should we have an all-powerful president free to do whatever he wants. Even without constitutional fealty, the president would still be checked by Congress and by the states. There is even something to be said for an elite body like the Supreme Court with the power to impose its views of political morality on the country. What would change is not the existence of these institutions, but the basis on which they claim legitimacy. The president would have to justify military action against Iran solely on the merits, without shutting down the debate with a claim of unchallengeable constitutional power as commander in chief. Congress might well retain the power of the purse, but this power would have to be defended on contemporary policy grounds, not abstruse constitutional doctrine. The Supreme Court could stop pretending that its decisions protecting same-sex intimacy or limiting affirmative action were rooted in constitutional text. The deep-seated fear that such disobedience would unravel our social fabric is mere superstition. As we have seen, the country has successfully survived numerous examples of constitutional infidelity. And as we see now, the failure of the Congress and the White House to agree has already destabilized the country. Countries like Britain and New Zealand have systems of parliamentary supremacy and no written constitution, but are held together by longstanding traditions, accepted modes of procedure and engaged citizens. We, too, could draw on these resources. What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment, but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences. No one can predict in detail what our system of government would look like if we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation, and I harbor no illusions that any of this will happen soon. But even if we can’t kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit. If we acknowledged what should be obvious — that much constitutional language is broad enough to encompass an almost infinitely wide range of positions — we might have a very different attitude about the obligation to obey. It would become apparent that people who disagree with us about the Constitution are not violating a sacred text or our core commitments. Instead, we are all invoking a common vocabulary to express aspirations that, at the broadest level, everyone can embrace. Of course, that does not mean that people agree at the ground level. If we are not to abandon constitutionalism entirely, then we might at least understand it as a place for discussion, a demand that we make a good-faith effort to understand the views of others, rather than as a tool to force others to give up their moral and political judgments. If even this change is impossible, perhaps the dream of a country ruled by “We the people” is impossibly utopian. If so, we have to give up on the claim that we are a self-governing people who can settle our disagreements through mature and tolerant debate. But before abandoning our heritage of self-government, we ought to try extricating ourselves from constitutional bondage so that we can give real freedom a chance. Louis Michael Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, is the author of the forthcoming book “On Constitutional Disobedience.” We are all engines of karma

That explains why the cop clearly knew who he was dealing with as soon as he left his car. We are all engines of karma

Yes, it is. And, they're failing miserably in that regard. We are all engines of karma

OMG...plus, can't believe people are so close to the road. Why are the bikes shimmying so much? We are all engines of karma

ROFLMAO.... We are all engines of karma

Correct. In Westchester county, you must egress unless you're block in _AND_ you're life is in danger. Their concept of the Castle Doctrine, isn't. Plus, (I live in Westchester), my area has steady break-ins because most two-parent families work, and we live next to a major thorough fare that makes it easy to get in/out fast. Could not believe the Journal News published that information. It's a crappy paper looking for some readership. We are all engines of karma

I don't think I want to be a forklift driver... We are all engines of karma

Russia lost something like 25 million people during the war. It is difficult to fathom that magnitude of loss. OTH, what their troops did to German civilians made a deep and lasting impression on our military leadership. Dwight, et. al., viewed them as mongrel hordes because of their behavior. It was one of the reasons we had a cold war, along with their stated intent of destroying capitalist culture. George Kennan's 1940s "long telegram" describes Soviet attitudes, and is worth the read: George Kennan, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" We are all engines of karma

People have no idea. Bernanke is printing money like its free, and he has been doing that for years now. When the Fed finally loses control of US interest rates, and they will, expect a rapid multi-year decline in living standards that few in this country will be prepared to deal with. And, it may last for decades, if not generations. Free medical care... ha! What they'll be getting won't be considered medical care by current standards. In our life time, I expect the US govt to be paying $1T/year in interest alone, and that's in current dollars. It is going to be unlike anyone currently alive can imagine, and it won't stop in our lifetime, or our children's lifetime. We are all engines of karma

Thank you for the feedback. Just learned something. We are all engines of karma

Are you aware that it's not possible to buy automatic weapons from a FFL in the US? We are all engines of karma