GeorgiaDon

What bill are you talking about? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Now there's a faith-based comment! On what objective grounds could you possibly assert that it is impossible that humans could affect climate even if they deliberately tried? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

A little, old, Jewish tailor is crossing a street in Brooklyn when he's hit by a car. While the ambulance is on its way, a passerby folds up his coat, puts it under the old man's head. While he's doing this the tailor does the "sign of the cross" and blesses himself. The passerby says "Hey I thought you were Jewish, what's with the sign of the cross? The tailor says "What sign of the cross? I'm just checking: spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch!" _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

That puts the "talk to the hand" comment in a whole different light. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I was thinking in terms of an idealized extreme of "free speech" in which the press would have full access to all information regardless of source, without any constraints at all. Of course we don't have (or really want) that degree of "freedom", because that would necessitate the complete lack of privacy, and that would interfere with our ability to enjoy other freedoms. However, any limitation on the ability of the press to obtain and publish information (however good the reason) can be seen as a limitation of free speech. There will always be a conflict between privacy rights and free speech (or a free press), and the issue here is where to draw the line to balance those two important rights in a reasonable manner. I think it's reasonable to restrict the publication of photos that show a crime victim in a state where she is nude, headless, and in a state of decay, but then again it's beyond me why anyone would want to publish or see such pictures in the first place. Similarly, existing law in Georgia restricts the publication of autopsy photos; this situation doesn't seem to be very different. On the other hand, the proposed law would seem to prevent the press from publishing images that show a bloody nose or black eye, and I think that goes too far. Crime scenes are one thing, but the law could also ban images of war, terrorist attacks, or even earthquake victims being rescued from collapsed buildings. Surely there is a compelling public interest in those images, as wars, terrorist attacks, and earthquakes are all legitimate news stories. Think of the Vietnam War era photo of the little girl who had been burned in a napalm attack; that one image really brought home the horror of that war, and under the proposed law its publication would be illegal. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I agree the first response of almost everyone who has a shred of decency would be to do what you suggest, and put themselves in the position of the parents of this unfortunate girl. However, I think that should be something the editors and reporters at Hustler should be asking themselves; instead they seem to be more concerned about using the victims unfortunate demise to make money. I tend to agree with FreeflyChile that personalizing things in this manner makes for poor law; if we constrained the press to only publish things that we would be happy to see made public regarding our own immediate family, virtually everything would be off limits and "free speech" would mean nothing. Not every act that is disrespectful, mean-spirited, immoral, or unethical need be illegal. I do wish Hustler would do the right thing and publish the story without the photos. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Hustler magazine recently requested crime scene photos for use (i.e. publication) in an upcoming story. The pictures show the nude decapitated body of a 24-year-old woman, Meredeth Emerson, who was killed while hiking in the North Georgia mountains. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation declined to release the photos, a judge issued an injunction barring release of the photos (at the request of Emerson's family), and the state legislature is certain to pass House Bill 1322, "The Meredith Emerson Memorial Privacy Act," which would "prevent the release of photographs of the bodies of crime victims that are "nude, bruised, bloodied or in a broken state with open wounds, a state of dismemberment or decapitation." The bill will allow credentialed journalists, lawyers and law enforcement to view such photographs at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's headquarters, but not make copies of them. Hustler is "considering its legal options". Story (from CNN) here. So, I'm a bit conflicted about this. On the one hand anyone who would actually want to see such pictures are (IMHO) beyond "sick and twisted", and publication of the photos will be emotionally devastating to the victim's family and friends (even if they don't look at the photos themselves, just knowing that many people are seeing [and perhaps enjoying seeing] their daughter/sister/friend in that condition). The confessed killer is behind bars, and his guilt is beyond question as he led police to her body in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table, so it's hard to make an argument that publication of the photos will lead to any new information on the case from the public. On the other hand, denying the "press" (even Hustler) the right to publish such photos is a limitation on free speach. So, do the dead have any right to "privacy"? Is it reasonable to restrict publication of such images (note the magazine can still print the story, including descriptions of the crime scene, just not graphic photos)? Or should Hustler (and by extension anybody) have the right to make a buck, regardless of harm to the victim's family, by publishing such photos (presumably to exploit their "shock value"). Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I wonder if you were involved in one of the faith-based organizations that got federal funding under the last (and maybe this) administration? Any organization that got those grants had to be careful to use the money only to deliver services, not to preach. Crossing that line would mean that federal tax dollars would be used to promote a religion, which is of course unconstitutional. You may disagree that it should be unconstitutional, but I think the separation of church and state is a master stroke of the Founding Fathers that has guaranteed religious freedom in this country, including the freedom to prefer Bronze Age mythology over science. Anyway them's the rules, if you take the federal grants you can't use the money to preach. Don't like the rules? Don't take the money. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Do you believe everything Michael Moore puts in his movies? Or do you believe that he uses leading questions and skillful editing to create misleading (or outright false) impressions? I use Moore as an example, as conservatives almost universally dismiss his work as lies motivated by a liberal bias. Why wouldn't a conservative film-maker be equally capable of such tricks? Without the original tapes, somehow confirmed to be unaltered, there is no way to know what really happened in those Acorn offices. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Done. But the poll is heavily going the other way (84% for the city manager) at this point. Good luck! Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I did the N-400 process a couple of years ago. I recall that traffic offenses for which you are not actually arrested, but just receive a fine, do not have to be reported. I did the paperwork myself, I saw no need to feed the trolls, er I mean immigration lawyers. The reason for that one is if you lie, later on if they find out they can use that to invalidate your citizenship and deport you. I think they would be shocked if someone actually owned up to a crime. However if you are a career criminal who has been lucky so far chances are they will eventually find out and then you can't hide behind your US citizenship. They used that to deport an alleged Nazi concentration camp guard not long ago. True enough, but the conflict between keeping medical records private and public safety is a real issue. Cho was not considered to be so dangerous that he was involuntarily committed, so he fell outside the reporting guidelines. I think he was sent for evaluation, not treatment. Of course hindsight is always 20-20, but it is often not easy to tell the actual dangerous nutters from the merely depressed or odd personalities. If people lost their legal right to make decisions for themselves on the basis of just being evaluated for possible depression, for example, how many more people would forgo getting needed medical treatment? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I wonder how this would work. She was never charged in connection with her brother's death (judged at the time to be accidental) or in connection with the mail bomb incident. Should that mere fact that you have been questioned by the police at some time (along with numerous other people) be sufficient to forever bar you from owning a firearm? Essentially, that is branding someone as a criminal without bothering with an actual trial or conviction. Doesn't our system presume innocence until conviction in a court? Do you advocate throwing that out, and going to a system that presumes guilt until you prove your innocence? I'm very sympathetic to the desire to identify "nutters", but denying constitutional rights on the basis of accidents or being caught up in a police investigation that does not result in charges or convictions seems to be giving up a lot. Around here (Georgia), if you apply for work as a police officer, you are asked if you have ever been arrested, and if you answer yes you are automatically excluded from employment. Note the question isn't "have you ever been convicted of a crime", just arrested. I think that's unconstitutional, and I wish someone with standing would challenge it. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

No, moronic. You can't extrapolate from one person to a whole group to which they belong, be it race or religion or profession. People are individuals, they make their own choices, good or bad. On the other hand it is reasonable to try to exclude guns from certain high stress situations, where people are going to be receiving very bad news. We don't allow guns in the courthouse, because people who are being sent to jail (or their friends and family) are likely to react negatively and do desperate things. A meeting where someone is being told their last appeal of denial of tenure is another situation where guns are an incredibly bad idea. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I'm not particularly gun-o-phobic, so I don't have a strong disagreement with this comment. I just wonder if allowing concealed carry on campus is the panacea some seem to think. In the incident the OP linked, someone pulled a gun during a faculty meeting and killed/injured several people. Would anything have been different had someone had a concealed weapon? If someone can walk into a Seattle coffee shop and kill four police officers, officers who were well armed and trained to deal with such situations, who can really believe that a bunch of University faculty (or basically any small group of untrained civilians caught off guard) would do significantly better? Here's another scenario for those who favor opening campuses to firearms to consider. When I teach large undergraduate classes (yes rushmc I am a teacher) I will often be standing at the front of a large auditorium with 100 or more students sitting in crowded seats that rise up as you go to the back of the class. From my perspective, I am at the bottom looking up at a wall of students. Let's say I have just returned an exam, and a student who's stressed out (because his girlfriend just dumped him and now he's failing my course and he's going to lose his scholarship and have to drop out and he's nothing but a failure...typical student issues) decides he's mad at the world and stands up and starts shooting. What am I supposed to do? I have nothing but a plywood podium for cover. Even if I am armed, my target is completely surrounded by other students, so any shot I fire in his direction is pretty much certain to hit somebody. Even if I hit him with the first shot (highly unlikely considering I will not even know anything is going on until he's got off a couple of rounds, so if I'm not dead I'll likely be running for cover), unless I'm using a pellet gun the bullet may well pass through him and still injure/kill people behind him. Will I still be a "hero" if I stop the bad guy, but in the process 4-5 innocent students are killed by "friendly fire"? Will their parents say, "we understand"? I believe law enforcement officers train extensively for such scenarios, yet dread them because there are no good solutions. What makes people believe untrained civilians will miraculously do much better? We have several LEOs who post here, how would they recommend this situation be handled? I know that it can (and doubtless will) happen that a determined person can bring a gun onto campus and cause carnage. No doubt in some circumstances a trained armed person could intervene in a useful way (someone might have stopped Cho earlier for example). On the other hand as it is any sighting of a gun on campus is cause to raise an alarm, so trained law enforcement could be alerted if a perpetrator was spotted on his way to the intended target. If it's OK to carry firearms around on campus, no alarm could be raised until the shooting actually starts. One last note, my understanding is that in Georgia the only requirement for a concealed carry permit is a clear criminal history. Absolutely no training in the law (such as when it is legal to draw/use the weapon) is required, and neither is training in how to respond to situations where there are crowds of innocent people around. (If I'm wrong about the requirements, no doubt someone will correct me). It seems naive to me to expect untrained civilians to respond effectively and save the day, when LEOs have to spend a lot of time training for such scenarios. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

So, first you say that these murders make you think about Kallend: Then you ask if I am a teacher. This sounds very much like a thinly-veiled threat. Are you saying you wish something similar would happen to Kallend or myself? If so, have the balls to say it directly. Oh, and sticking a or a

Irony (from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a situation, literary technique, or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity, discordance, or unintended connection with truth, that goes strikingly beyond the most simple and evident meaning of words or actions. In what way is this tragic event "ironic"? Your "" says a hell of a lot more about your attitude than your pro-forma meaningless "no disrespect to the dead". Everything about your post drips of taking perverse pleasure in these meaningless deaths. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

A shoe-in for the Helen Keller award! Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Of course, there's always this too. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Aren't most people who actually work for a living at work at 5:00, or at best just heading home? And if you do hurry home just to turn on the tube to that whiny wacko you've got other issues. Me, when I get home I'd rather talk to my wife and kids, or walk the dogs, or do just about anything rather than turn on the television. So if Mr. Beck wants to spin his conspiracy BS to 3,040,000 unemployed socially impaired losers, more power to him. I don't watch Matthews or Olbermann either BTW. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

It kind of looked to me as if he might be leaning closer to hear something she was saying. He also ducks his head a couple of times after the so-called "bow", as if nodding in agreement. I suppose that's verboten too. Anyway, I'm looking forward to another seven years of right-wing tea-bagger types going apoplectic every time the President treats another human being with a modicum of respect. I mean, that whole swaggering "the world better jump to our command" thing the previous administration put so much stock in really worked out well, didn't it? Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Firstly, the mood of the Iranian people may well differ from the politically motivated pronouncements of the leaders (just like here in the US). Secondly, do you have the slightest idea why we are the "Great Satan"? Hint: google "Operation Ajax". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

One more thing, I'm still uneasy with the idea of corporations (and labor unions) as legal persons. I recall a case a few years ago where a construction company broke a gas line, with the result that gas seeped into the crawl space under a nearby diner, which exploded killing several people. The construction company had not bothered to check about gas lines before digging. Of course there were lawsuits, but before the trial the construction company went out of business, and immediately reopened under a new name, but in the same offices and with the same management. Legally, the original company no longer existed, so neither it nor any of the employees could be held responsible for the incident. (I'm sorry, I can't find a link, google brings up over a million hits). So as long as corporations can use Lazarus-like tricks to evade criminal or civil responsibility, they aren't "persons" like you and I are, whatever the law may say. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I agree that it was not appropriate for the President to criticize the decision in that forum. However if a law is badly written, isn't it sometimes possible to write a new law that achieves the same goal and yet passes constitutional muster? Isn't that what the anti-abortion types have been trying to do for years (along with packing the court of course)? I have no idea if that is possible in this case, and have mixed feelings about how desirable that would be anyway. On one hand, corporations are (or should be) the "engine of the economy", and so they will have a perspective on things that voters should be aware of and consider. Similarly organized labor will have ideas that should be considered (many great ideas have come from labor unions, for example the weekend, which is critical for most dropzones to be able to survive). What I am concerned about is the idea that it will be even more difficult for diverse ideas to be heard if one side has the financial equivalent of 5-mile-high speakers to just drown out every other point of view. Also if private news/media corporations have a "right" to political speech, are they still obligated to carry news coverage of opposing perspectives? I'm thinking of Rupert Murdoch here. Of course the internet could alleviate some of this (unless, for example, Google decides to censor sites that advocate positions Google Inc doesn't like), but television/radio/print media still are probably the main source of "news" for most people. I'm also concerned that big money could be used for "swift-boating", bringing out a massive attack campaign at the last minute, not leaving any time for the attacked to respond. One thing about American political speech, there is no legal requirement to be truthful; you could falsely accuse your opponent of being a NAMBLA charter member and if they lost the election because of that there is no legal remedy. It seems to me to be reasonable to encourage as many voices as possible to be heard, but it's also in the public interest to find a way to balance speech with the opportunity to listen, consider, rebut and debate. Just having everybody yelling through ever-larger loudspeakers isn't very conductive to making reasoned choices. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Although the clip had some interesting points (to go with the cheesy graphics), I think it also used a straw-man definition of "democracy" that probably hasn't applied to the real world since the city-states of Athenian Greece, and arguably not even then (since only adult men could vote). As a result it ends up dismissing the idea of representational democracy, where elected "leaders" (i.e. politicians) formulate the laws that govern the republic. Where do the laws of the republic come from, and what mechanism would be acceptable to modify or interpret them, if democracy is nothing but a path to "bread and circuses"? Also, the explanation given for the fall of the Roman Empire (blaming it on "democracy") was so simplistic as to be cartoonish. At least it did explicitly acknowledge that some government regulation (that is, laws) actually make us more free, for example by allowing us to work instead of spending all our time guarding our property against thieves. So really, our current (and past) political squabbles are just about where to draw the line in terms of how much regulation is enough to optimize our freedom, and how much is too much. The video doesn't offer much of an opinion on that. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Speaking of your signature line, I heard another Winston Churchill quote today: "You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities". The man had a way with words. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)