Nightingale

I'm for legalization. Banning it has been an epic failure, and we might as well get the tax dollars. Perhaps it will impact the drug cartels as well. While the proposition is probably in conflict with federal law, it will make a statement and perhaps allow California to lead the way in making important changes. I am all for giving people more freedoms rather than less, and against laws to protect people from their own stupidity.

High: I haven't had a headache in five days! Low: For most people, that is normal.

So you want me to change jobs so I can pay for your healthcare? no thanks. I like my job. Sure, I could make more working elsewhere, but I've never been one to exchange happiness for money. I'd rather have less but look forward to going to work. That's priceless. And I didn't say the scholarship covered most/all of my law school tuition. It covered some. $11K to be exact, which is a nice bit of tuition, but certainly not close to everything. I still had to shell out about $14K a year myself in tuition alone. That's not counting books, which were around $1K a semester. And as for cost of living, well, Orange County, CA isn't cheap, though I did my best to live frugally. I've also got loans from my BA and MA... you can't just go from high school to law school, you know. They want you to go to college first. So no, it's not BS, my student loan balance really is close to my mortgage, and the loans are on 30 year repayment terms, as the federal government puts loans with a balance of more than $20K on 30 year plans. And attorneys that make "huge bling" as you put it are few and far between. Many of us don't even come close to $100K/year. Many of us make enough to pay the bills and the loans, and that's about it. Really. For example, the median salary for a public sector attorney who graduated from UCLA law is $55,000. That's not terrible, but "huge bling" it isn't. So now that we've covered all that, can we move this back on topic?

I had a merit scholarship. Covered a nice bit of tuition. Didn't cover anything else like living expenses, though, so my student loans are still a very large chunk of change that will be taking a huge portion of my income for the next thirty years. Just refuting Lucky's assumption that I have money for a health care policy. Between the student loans and the mortgage, there's not much left over, partularly considering that I work for the local government, so I'm not exactly making anywhere near what private attorneys do... And part of the reason I stay here is my health benefits.

Ok, now that I've stopped laughing, I'll make you a deal... I'll pay your health care premiums if you make my student loan payments. How's that sound?

Actually, I quoted you directly, and put my interpretation below. Here it is again, with a few more lines for context: And I'm not trying to trap you. If I were, this is not the method I would choose. I am simply trying to understand how you, and Christians in general, can claim that God is good, but his creation is not. This is something that never made any sense to me.

Um... I quoted you. You said pretty clearly that God is good, and man is evil. According to you, man is God's creation. How am I misinterpreting?

Sorry for the misquote. In reading the court documents, treating it as normal with minimal fuss seemed to be exactly what the plaintiff wanted. She appealed quietly to several administrators at her school and the school board before contacting the ACLU, and even offered them a compromise on the tuxedo issue, offering to wear dressy pants and a top rather than a tux because she just isn't comfortable in a dress. The school responded that girls were required to wear dresses and bring male dates and refused to discuss the matter further.

The problem here is that the school was selling two-person tickets, and had a "no same sex dates" policy. The plaintiff asked her school in advance for an exception to the rule so she could buy a ticket for herself and her date, was told no, and in addition was told that if she danced with her girlfriend she would be in additional trouble. So, the school put her in a position where she couldn't just "go and keep quiet about it" like you suggest, and that's one of the primary issues.

Yes, I have healthcare. It's very good healthcare. And unfortunately, it's probably one of those "premium" plans that might get a whole lot more expensive, so my employer may not be offering it much longer.

Wow... are you writing a book? Maybe dropzone.com isn't the best place for your first draft. That said, I skimmed. So, God is good, but what he created is evil. Gotcha.

It was in Orange County, CA. We're pretty conservative here behind the orange curtain. Bible studies going on at lunch and all that. But admittedly, we're not Mississippi.

There was also something that they are planning on adding on about monitoring doctors, that's estimated to cost quite a lot and isn't included in the current estimates, IIRC.

I don't think the plaintiff here was asking anyone to celebrate her lifestyle, merely to tolerate it and not make her be someone she isn't. If anything, it is the district who wants a certain lifestyle celebrated to the exclusion of all others in this case. Think about it... these students see the plaintiff and her girlfriend every day at school. That these students are lesbians is not news. It probably wasn't even on most students radar as something important. However, the district comes in and makes a BIG DEAL out of it, and suddenly, everyone's staring and talking about the lesbians. At my prom (gasp... fourteen years ago!) we had girls dancing with girls, boys dancing with boys, girls dancing with boys, at least three girls in tuxes and one boy in a dress. And nobody gave a damn, except to note that he looked way better than a lot of us. We didn't think anything of it, because these were people we saw every day, and honestly, seeing Julie in a dress or Ken not in a dress would've been weirder, because that would've been different!

Personally, I think we should've had amendments for those too. Just because we've been doing something this way doesn't make it the right way, and the expansions of government power since the new deal have been appalling. Also, the supreme court has reversed themselves before, so what is okay with one court may not be okay with the next if someone can come up with a new way to challenge it. An amendment would make it very clear what is and is not constitutional and an appropriate use of federal government power. Right now there are a bunch of republicans ready to file lawsuits over this. If they'd gone through the amendment process, those suits probably wouldn't be happening. They might be decided in favor of the government. Maybe they won't be, and countless hours of debate and millions of dollars will have been wasted. I'm not saying "don't do it." I'm saying that there is an appropriate process for expanding the power of the federal government, and that we ought to use it.

I think the problem for the district here will be that they will be hard pressed to argue that they didn't cancel the prom as a political statement against Ms. McMillen. While a student does not have a constitutional right to a prom, they do have a right to not be discriminated against due to their age, race, disability, national origin, or gender. Although the school canceled the event for all students, the issue is going to be that all the students know why, and it's left the plaintiff in a very vulnerable situation at school. Regardless, the district, with their "fine, we're taking our toys and leaving!" attitude is has me wondering why an 18 year old is coming across as more mature than an entire school board.

Because at this point, it appears unconstitutional. To put it simply (er...as simply as American government gets, which is still rather complex), our government is supposed to function as a federal government of limited, specific powers. If we want to give the federal government a power that it does not specifically have spelled out in the constitution, we have a process to amend the constitution and allow the government that power. In the amendment process, a certain number of states have to agree on, or "ratify" the new amendment. When a federal law goes beyond the scope of what the government is allowed to do, and it is challenged in court, court must decide whether or not the law is within the power of the federal government. What's happened with the health care bill is that the government is trying to stretch one of its powers, the power to regulate commerce between the states, to regulating end user health care services, the vast majority of which do not have an interstate component. For example, I am a California resident, visit my doctor and hospital in California, and my California employer purchases insurance for me from a company based in California. The only thing that may be considered "interstate" in the majority of my health care is that any drugs prescribed to me may have been produced out of state, but the FDA already regulates those. I am afraid that by avoiding the amendment process and simply passing a bill hoping it won't be challenged, the government may end up with the Supreme Court finding the bill, or key components thereof, unconstitutional, and then countless dollars and hours have been wasted that otherwise would not have been if the matter had been approached using the amendment process. So, while I am not opposed to finding a way to provide health care for people who are not fortunate enough to afford it or have an employer who provides it, I am opposed to the current methods, as I see it as an unconstitutional expansion of federal power. If the people of the US truly desire health care reform at the federal level, then we need to amend our constitution and do it the right way. -N-

Last I checked, marijuana use was still illegal under federal law.

Yeah... She has every right to file suit when she is being discriminated against. However, the class filing suit against the school for canceling prom? That's just stupid. What ought to be done is that students get together, rent a hall, ask for donations to cover the cost, find a volunteer DJ, and throw their own damn prom, school board be damned. At least, that's what I'd have done when I was a student.

Sigh... you do what schools in California have been doing for years. You don't sell couples tickets, you sell each student a ticket, and if the student wants to bring someone from another school, the other person needs to be a student at another high school in the district and buy a ticket through their school office. That way, nobody is "sanctioning" anybody's dates. And as long as the student is wearing appropriate formal attire, who gives a damn if it's a dress or a tux? Women have been wearing pants regularly for at least forty years now.

It's a legitimate concern... Without protections, it would be okay to deny people admission to or refuse to hire them at Virginia colleges on the basis of sexual orientation alone. While something like that may not actively be happening, putting it down on paper to be sure it doesn't happen is probably a good idea. Otherwise, there's nothing to stop a human resources or admission department from instituting a "no homosexuals allowed" policy if they wanted to, and sometimes all it takes is one person with a lot of power to make something like that happen.

Hehe... yeah... probably. Mainly because it could draw into question whether it was truly self defense, simply because it involves some higher thinking rather than "OMG, this guy's gonna kill me." I'm not giving legal advice here (ask an attorney in your state about the exact self-defense laws there), just saying that if I was on the jury in that one, I might have a tough time with it. It makes the issue less clear.

I'm not decrying laws...heck, I'm a lawyer. That's the last thing I'm going to do. I'm criticizing people's expectation that the law is going to control people truly intent on causing harm. In those situations, the law does not control the behavior of the individual. It simply provides a legal means to deal with the individual AFTER the damage has been done.

I've been driving a car for fifteen years. I've never been in any kind of remotely severe car accident. Sure, someone bumped into me at a red light once. That was it. Is it paranoia that I put my seat belt on EVERY SINGLE TIME I get in a car? Even though not once in my whole life has it been needed? The thing is, I'm not going to tell someone else to put their seat belt on. (Unless, of course, they're in my car, because it's the law here and I don't want a ticket). If they want to take the risk, it should be their choice and isn't my business. I'm never going to tell someone to carry a firearm if they're not comfortable with it. However, I don't want anyone telling a law abiding, competent adult that they cannot carry one. Part of the "protect yourself" attitude that you see from gun owners and martial artists comes from personal knowledge that the world is not safe. Like most people, we lived happily in our little bubbles until Something Happened. And if we'd just known then what we know now, that Something could've been avoided. The message isn't "you have to be paranoid". The message is "learn from what I've been through, because if it can happen to me, it really can happen to anyone...even you."

I don't know about the laws in Washington, but under most circumstances, here in California, people under a protective order are not permitted to own or possess firearms. However, I'm not sure how much good that really does in some situations. Goes back to the whole "expecting criminals to obey the law" thing. Do I expect my insane stalker to obey the terms of a protective order? um...no. What it does accomplish is that if the guy is caught with the gun prior to actually shooting anyone, he goes to jail.