Free Republic

The sad part of this whole discussion is that the drug laws were put in place by nanny-state liberals who do not believe in freedom. Anyone who supports these drug laws deserves the modern liberals we have today.

Until we find a way to break up the conflict of interest between public employee unions and democrat politicians, we are going to spiral down to third world living standards.

I don’t think Modems are designed to detect an incoming call like you want. All you hear on the phone is short blank spot in the conversation when someone is calling in while you are on the phone. You can sign up for your phone companies answering service and the caller can at least leave a message. Better off to get DSL.

I would drop out John Adams from the top four and put Ronald Reagan in that spot. John Adams was a good man, but accomplished little as President.

>>On the other hand, Harding was a crook, and Carter was an imbecile.<<

I agree with you on Carter, but Harding was not much of a crook when compared to modern standards. I think LBJ was a crook that was an order of magnitude greater(worse)than Harding. Harding was largely a do-nothing President. That would put him in the middle of the pack for me.

No, Many Presidents didn’t really face the possibility of war and lost lives. Like Clinton, he really did nothing of any importance.
A real close look at Lincoln’s performance in getting us into the Civil War is why I consider him a poor President. Historians give him great credit for “Saving the Union”. But there is no real evidence that splitting the US into two countries would have been a bad thing.

FDR is a mixed bag for me. He did a great job of defeating Germany and Japan, but his failure to recognize the long term threat of communism to our future was a huge mistake. He brought avid socialists into the highest positions in the government. He also started us down the long road to socialism via the laws and programs he initiated.

My problem with Lincoln is that he presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US citizens. By any objective standard, that has to put him at the bottom of the list. Of course, few historians understand what “objective” really means.

>>why did the rescuer put the victim down “next to the car” if the reason for her instant action was fear of explosion? Did she attempt to communicate with the victim before moving her? What did the other three people present say, or recommend, or do, or not do?<<

The reason your argument looks so foolish is that none of these things should matter. When someone is trying to rescue another, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what was going on in their mind and just how well informed they are. Otherwise you will end up killing thousands by striking fear in the heart of any would be rescuer. Don’t you see that basic point???

The strange thing is that the Libertarian Party is nearly split between those who think a “name” candidate like Barr is the best choice even though he has a record of being a control-freak Republican, which is just about as far from a libertarian as it gets. So Barr will not even get the votes of half of the libertarians who actually vote libertarian, which is only 10% of them.

Needless to say, I think Barr will get an extremely small percent of the vote in the end. I predict about 1%.

If you read the courts opinion, it appears that the very act of calling a same-sex union by any other name than “marriage” risks damage to the rights of each person to marry.

By that logic it would seem that we should no longer be able to refer to women as women and we should no longer be able to refer to blacks as black. From now on women shall be called men and black men should be called white men.

Stranger than fiction, this anti-logic.

If McCane is so “centrist” why is he making all these claims about being a hard right conservative. Why is he chasing the conservative vote? Why isn’t he appealing to all the “moderates” with his moderate accomplishments? I think he simply has fooled all the “lightweight” republicans who just aren’t paying attention, but they vote anyway.

What this article reminds me about is the fact that the word "Capitalism" was invented by the left to make "Economic Freedom" sound nasty and despicable. Capitalism is a word invented by the enemies of freedom, yet we have all capitulated and use it anyway. Such is the very nature of propagandistic techniques.

>>Those laws protect the violent criminal gangs that produce and distribute illegal drugs. How could it get any worse than that?<<

I am not sure how the laws protect drug gangs, but it is very clear that the drug laws create the niche that drug gangs fill perfectly. The illegal trade that the drug laws create funnels billions of dollars into the hands of the most sinister and ruthless men on the planet.

End the war on drugs and these men would have to crawl back under the rocks they emerged from to damage us all.

I just wanted to put in my 2 cents worth.

It seems that every liberal I have ever met supports building codes to prevent poor ignorant people from building ramshackle homes and trying to live in them. It seems to me that we need a federal building code that will prevent people from siting cities within 20 miles of the coast that are less than 20 feet above sea level.

This code should prevent siting new cities and well as re-building ones that have beeen destroyed by mother nature.

My heart goes out to all the citizens of New Orleans and I support providing assistance to each and every one of them who needs it to relocate to a safe city.

But for the American taxpayer to pay to rebuild the city of New Orleans in the current location would only compound the tragedy Mother nature has wrought.

In light of all the predictions of liberals that global warming is going to raise the sea levels around the glode, we need this new "building code" right away.

If this post seems harsh or mean spirited, please use your head and realize that the meanest thing we could do to another generation is to build cities in locations like New Orleans.

Who do we owe the site of New Orleans? The French. And we know the wisdom of the French.

Best Wishes,

This material is so thin and light weight it inspires ideas. If it could be made opaque to infrared light, we could launch it into space and then open up a huge sheet of it between the earth and the sun. Then we could regulate the temperature of the earth. End of global warming.

If my memory serves, Several of Ernest Hemingway novels mention the fact that it is well known that cigarettes are bad for your health. These novels were written in the 20's and 30's. I don't know the easiest way to search this out. The idea that the tobacco companies kept it a secret is total hogwash. What the tobacco companies did was common practice in all commercial speech. That is you point out the good things about your product and you don't mention any negative aspects of your product. That is just simple marketing savvy. Anyone who claims they were purposely lying just doesn't understand commercial speech.

You have to think of a mixture of gasses as made up of little ping pong balls with lots of space between them. The ping pong balls are all travelling very fast and occasionally banging together. Bigger heavier ping pong balls get banged around and do end up "diffusing" to the limits of the container, seeming to violate the laws of gravity. In the case of the atmosphere, they do reach the stratosphere.

My heart goes out to these men and their families. We can all learn from what they did, but it will take quite a few man hours to piece together all the facts of this case. I would hope the men were aware of their situation, but odd things do happen. The big Aggie bonfire tragedy comes to mind.

Probably a better rule for when judicial activism is afoot is when a long lived policy is reversed overnite with no legislative action.

By that standard, Brown vs. Board was a case of judicial activism and so was Roe vs. Wade. I can't think of any cases where right leaning judges have made such sweeping changes in policy from the bench.

When a new law is tested for the first time and overturned, I don't think that can be as easily called activism.

It really is not a right vs. left issue.

I do agree that the left has employed these activist tactics far more than the right over the last 50 years. That is why they are fighting Bush's nominations to the court. His nominations will help end this 50 year era of judges usurping the power of the legislative branch.