AndyBoyd

I don't know. Why don't you find out? Every time I ask this question you bob and weave like Muhammad Ali. The fact is, you insulted every male skydiver out there with that thoughtless comment. And you did it from the safety of your home, with no one around. That's flat out gutless. Chickenshit. I'll say it again. Go to any DZ you like. Pick one. Find 5 or 10 of the toughest guys out there, and call them metrosexuals and homosexuals, to their faces. Let me know how it goes. If you don't have the balls to do that, then knock it off on this website.

This is exactly why it will be so hard for this lawsuit to succeed, IMHO. How do you prove the harm?

Sorry to be so obtuse. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? I do agree that this case hits freedom of speech hard. And I agree that we shouldn't back down so easily. But like I said, fucking with the North Koreans is a really bad idea. You poke a sleeping bear with a sharp stick, look out. Whatever happens after that is on you. And at you.

You don't have to actually jump. Just go to a DZ, find 5 or 10 guys, and tell them, to their faces, the things you said in your earlier post about today's skydivers being "meterosexuals" and "homosexuals."

Well, I'm a lawyer and it took me a while to figure it out. I had a vague memory from law school that it was possible to go straight to the US SC, but I had to look at the lawsuit and then use the almighty Google to find out exactly how it was possible.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/18/lawsuit-colorado-marijuana_n_6350162.html This article explains the lawsuit pretty well. Here is the key to it: "Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, along with Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, argue that under the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause, Colorado's legalization of recreational marijuana is unconstitutional because marijuana remains illegal under federal law. The clause states that in general, federal law takes precedence over state law. "The illegal products being distributed in Colorado are being trafficked across state lines thereby injuring neighboring states like Oklahoma and Nebraska," Pruitt said in a statement." At first, I was a little unclear as to why this would go directly to the US Supreme Court instead of going to a federal trial court first. I looked at the lawsuit, which states that they filed suit under a federal law that provides: "The Supreme Court shall have original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States." So, Nebraska and Oklahoma are arguing that Colorado's legalization of marijuana is harming them by allowing increased amounts of marijuana sold in Colorado to enter Nebraska and Oklahoma. Under federal law, they bypassed the normal requirement of filing suit in a trial court and went right to the Supreme Court. I have no idea whether the lawsuit will succeed. Hope this at least helps you understand what's going on.

Why don't you head out to the nearest DZ to you and run that proposition by the local skydivers? Let me know how it goes for you.

This, I suspect, is the key. And if I were a corporate attorney for one of these movie theater chains, I'd have given the same advice. As I understand it, the feds have determined that the hacks and threats came from North Korea, or people the North Koreans hired. http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/12/18/us-government-saw-interview-approved-theaters-upping-security/ You don't fuck with the North Koreans. If one of these chains showed the movie and a theater got blown up on Christmas, the lawsuits would never end. The theater company would be utterly ruined. Not to mention the hundreds or thousands of people killed. You just can't gamble with people's lives by showing that movie. The movie never should have been made, and it had to be pulled. I get the freedom of speech arguments, and I hate that this happened. Yes, you have the freedom to poke a sleeping bear with a stick. But the First Amendment won't protect you when the bear wakes up and takes a swipe at you.

This isn't directed specifically at Jakee. I'm just trying to help out with the question you guys are wrestling with: is it OK for a police officer to randomly stop an individual and ask for ID. That's a more complicated question that it seems at first glance. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Delaware v. Prouse, held that police officers may not randomly stop individual motorists to check for ID. However, roadside checkpoints are constitutional, as long as there is some public interest in the roadblock, i.e., sobriety checks, or seatbelt checks, and the roadblock is conducted in some sort of systematic manner. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/440/648 The question of stopping pedestrians on the street is trickier. Some cities, like New York, have instituted "stop and frisk" policies where individuals are stopped for little or no reason, frisked, and questioned. This has been found unconstitutional by a federal court, but that decision is on appeal. http://ccrjustice.org/stopandfrisk. Just wanted to give you gentlemen a little clarity on the subject of your argument. Carry on.

My first rig had a deployment system like this. It was a Racer that I purchased used at Hinckley in 1990. I may have been the third owner of that rig. It was pretty old and beat up when I bought it. I no longer have it. The pilot chute folded into a square, and was inserted into a square pouch on the right hip. The pouch had a slit in the middle. I never saw another rig that had that deployment system. I now jump a standard BOC. ETA: the photo in pchapman's post was the deployment system my Racer had.

You are just noticing this now?

Being an attorney doesn't force him to defend gay rights. Now if he were a government official (AG, Justice Dept) and he was correctly fulfilling his oath the defend the Constitution, then yes, he should be doing that. But since I'm fairly sure he's in private practice, he does it because he believes in said guaranteed rights. Your statement subtly suggests he might be arguing a stance he doesn't personally believe. I've been quietly lurking this thread, it's very amusing. Arguing about religion over the internet may be the most pointless and silly exercise ever invented by mankind. I'm just posting to point this out. Attorneys do not make arguments because they believe deep down in their heart that they are taking some sort of courageous moral stand. They make arguments because they are being paid. So, yes, attorneys can and do take stances they don't personally believe in. That's the job. Sorry for the thread drift. Carry on.

So chill out.

A couple of facts to lend some sanity to the fear-mongering. There are 318, 929,000 people in the USA as of Oct. 2014. 1 person in the USA has died from Ebola. 2 people currently have Ebola. I agree that we need to take Ebola seriously and develop proper protocols to handle this disease. But there are many more diseases that are much more serious. Approximately 580,000 people died from cancer in the USA in 2013. I repeat, 1 death from Ebola so far. This is not the end times, not matter how much some folks would like it to be.

Irony train inbound full steam ahead. I thinks it's safe to say TI's would love to know what happened with these last two incidents. Knowing said information could, in fact, keep people out of trouble...or future incidents. I stand by my comments. People who are involved in tandem incidents and blab about those incidents on open forums such as this one are looking for legal trouble. If you are uncertain about proper tandem procedures, talk to a tandem I/E or the manufacturer of the rig you are using.

We'll do that as soon as the conservatives acknowledge what a complete and utter failure the G.W. Bush presidency was.

Anyone who has been involved in a tandem incident in any way would be well advised not to make any comments about that incident on a public forum without speaking to a qualified attorney first. I am not interested in getting into a "let's bash lawyers" discussion. I'm just trying to keep people out of trouble.

Skydive Illinois, Morris, IL, 1995-2003.

There were chemical weapons found in Iraq, yes, but they were not part of any active weapons of mass destruction program, according to this article. "After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, [President George W.] Bush insisted that [Iraqi leader Saddam] Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims." The discovery of pre-Gulf War chemical weapons — most of them "filthy, rusty or corroded" — did not fit the narrative." So while there were indeed such weapons in Iraq, the Bush regime hid this information because these rusted, abandoned weapons didn't fit the narrative of an active WMD program threatening the United States. Not exactly a victory for the Iraq war cheerleaders. No need for anyone to apologize. Link to the article: http://news.yahoo.com/chemical-weapons-found-in-iraq-nyt-report-135347507.html

It's pretty clear that voter ID laws are intended to suppress the vote of the poor, minorities, and the elderly, who tend to vote Democratic. Judge Posner did point that out. I don't think the logical extension of that is that he meant to say these laws were motivated by racism, rather, he said they were meant to help Republicans win elections, and in the process, many blacks and others were disenfranchised. That's not a "nutty" claim, it's clearly supported by the data he cites. I don't know whether the Republicans who promulgated these laws, or those who support these laws, are racist. But it is undeniable that these laws disenfranchise minorities in large numbers. I'm not comfortable with that. Posner's reasoning seems sound to me. It's clear that lots of people, namely Republicans, are comfortable with disenfranchising large numbers of minority voters. So I guess you're right about one thing -- there's no common ground here. Until the courts put a stop to it, Republicans will continue to systematically disenfranchise large numbers of voters in an attempt to win more elections.

Judge Posner didn't make the claim that voter ID laws are grounded in racism and bigotry. That was my take from the article. You've already expressed your disdain for the author of the article, so feel free to disregard that. If you look at page 18 of Posner's opinion, he explains that these laws are passed in conservative states with the goal of suppressing voters who tend to lean democratic. He also states that more liberal states try to make it easier for the poor and minorities to vote. (That's a long way from encouraging voter fraud.) Politics as usual. The problem is, there is an asymmetrical effect, because there is very little voter fraud, and voter ID laws suppress large numbers of voters. The net effect, Posner explains, is that voters who tend to vote democratic are impeded from voting. On page 28, he explains that in the absence of actual voter fraud, the only plausible explanation for voter ID laws is that they are intended to suppress the vote of people likely to vote against those people imposing the laws. So, like I said, Posner didn't make the claim that these laws were motivated by racism. That was my take on the article. My apologies for misleading you. You still haven't provided any evidence that democrats are supporting voter fraud.

The idea that Judge Posner is somehow in "lockstep" with liberal Democrats is laughable. Why don't you read, or at least skim, Judge Posner's opinion? If you don't like the author of the article, fine. Read the actual opinion. I'll give you the link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1312285/posner.pdf It states that there was ZERO evidence of voter fraud in Wisconsin. NONE. In addition, it states that requiring voter ID does nothing to deter numerous types of voter fraud such as ballot stuffing and vote buying. So, requiring voter ID does nothing to solve a problem that does not exist. What does it do, then? Posner explains that it imposes a significant enough burden on low-income, minority, and elderly citizens that it would disenfranchise nearly 10% of the population. As to your suggestion that democrats are trying to encourage or mask voter fraud, please cite your evidence for such a ridiculous assertion. As the opinion clearly states, there is no voter fraud in Wisconsin. The attorneys for the State of Wisconsin could not point to one instance of voter fraud in the recent past, and one of the State's expert witnesses testified that there were ZERO cases of in-person voter fraud since 2004. Your assertion that democrats are trying to commit voter fraud is completely unfounded and, frankly, nuts. You may want to read Posner's opinion before you post again. There may well be reasonable grounds to disagree with it. You just haven't given any so far.

This is quite a long thread. I've read most of it, and if this has been cited before and I missed it, my apologies. This is a link to an article summarizing 7th Circuit Judge Posner's take on voter ID laws. Posner is a staunch conservative, appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan. http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-why-voter-id-laws-are-evil-20141013-column.html#page=1 Here's a highlight of the article: "There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud," he writes, "and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens." More specifically, he observes, photo ID laws are "highly correlated with a state's having a Republican governor and Republican control of the legislature and appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks." In Wisconsin, according to evidence presented at trial, the voter ID law would disenfranchise 300,000 residents, or 9% of registered voters. So Wisconsin is willing to take the right to vote away from 300,000 people, nearly 10% of its population, to combat a non-existent problem, when the real motive is to limit the ability of minorities, especially blacks, to vote. That is evil in my book, and in the view of Judge Posner, a Reagan conservative.

Would you have shot this guy in that situation? I get what you are saying. Just asking a question.

The issue of gay marriage will obviously be decided by the US Supreme Court very soon. What makes this federal Appellate Court opinion so significant is a couple of things: the Seventh Circuit is a very respected federal appellate court; the Seventh Circuit is normally thought to be a very conservative court, yet the came down squarely on the side of gay marriage; the opinion came down very quickly -- within days of the oral arguments, which means that the court had no internal debate as to the outcome of this case; this opinion not only shot down the arguments against gay marriage, it openly mocked those arguments; and Judge Posner is a very influential and respected judge. I suppose the Supreme Court could go the other way. But the judicial decisions in favor of gay marriage are piling up one after the other. If the Supreme Court did go the other way, the risk is that history might see it as the worst decision since Dred Scott. I understand that this is a very emotional issue for many people on both sides. But the writing is on the wall. Gay marriage will be a nation-wide reality sooner rather than later.