Free Republic

Agreed-this is weird,all the way around.

The Libertarian Party, and their platform, have no place in MA politics, or any significance therein. Carla Howell, Michael Cloud, and all the other pointy-headed theorists will not be taken seriously unless they stop this damned-fool crusade to cut the hamstring of the state government.

Pointy-headed theorists? A good argument can be made that pointy headed theorists are the reason that the likes of us are burdened with income taxes as we speak. And how about those pointy headed theorists that decided that paying people to be poor was a good idea? And the pointy-headed theorists(aka,"The Best and the Brightest") that thought that waging a war with a stack of balance sheets and a slide rule,from ten thousand miles away was a good plan?

Pointy headed theorists are sometimes right,and sometimes wrong-that's just the way life is. However,when pointy headed theorists are given other peoples' money to play with,and totally removed from any possible consequences of their theories going awry,I'd call that a disaster waiting to happen. In this case,it seems like one group of pointy headed theorists is trying to take away another group of pointy headed theorist's access to free money. I don't think that's a bad idea at all.

Joking aside,voting in this country is way too easy. If I had my way,nobody would be able to vote without showing a tax return. Why a tax return? To ensure that the people voting are the ones that are paying for what's being voted on.

Navarro said determining whether a voter is dead is much more complicated than the study indicates and said Rutledge intended to cast doubt on the elections department.

Where to start....

Maybe some sort of ID thing that the emergency people sprayed on-that would be my guess,anyway. Something like,"This vehicle has been checked and there is no one in it",or some other meaning that would tell the paramedics to look or not look.

If that's the case,I'd say it's a pretty good idea.

And here's some classic John Prine,for everyone's enjoyment-

"Grampa was a carpenter

He built houses stores and banks

chan smoked Camel cigarettes

and hammered nails in planks...

Evening,everyone-I wouldn't sell my soul for a gin&tonic right now,but I'd seriously consider renting it out for a brief interval...

I am just here to remind people of those years for those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Like maybe learning from the last experiment? Alcohol prohibition?

But wait;maybe the lesson really was taken to heart by the government folks. After all,during the last ride around the racetrack,asset forfeiture wasn't a regularized part of the game. While I'm willing to bet that quite a bit of the bootleg liquor that was confiscated wound up getting sold to the customers to whom it was originally consigned,albeit at a somewhat higher markup,formal seizure and forfeiture of assets wasn't a legal and institutionalized practice. The situation today is quite a bit different.

In the new and improved version of prohibition,not only are you liable to be arrested for having an illegal substance-when you get arrested,everything you own is liable to be confiscated,and kept,by whatever law enforcement agency arrested you.

Let's see-I already have the IRS telling me(at gunpoint) how much of my income I'm allowed to keep. I have the Treasury Department telling me how much I'm going to pay in excise taxes on the liquor that I buy. I have the local historical district telling me what kind of front porch I can put up. I have the local school district telling me how much I have to pay to support their lifestyles...uhh..."educate the young people of the community",that is. I have a whole bunch of other people telling me what to do,that I'd need a good sized book to catalogue. So why in the heck am I worried about a bunch of other people who tell me what I can and can't indulge in,on my own time and my own property? (And of course,all of these people telling me what to do are operating under the color of law,so I can't just tell them to go away,or hang up on them,like I do to the telephone solicitors.) My gratitude for their concern is boundless-I'd be lost without the guidance of my betters...

So, barring another wave of '60s-like radicalism or a lot more poorly thought-out co-op busts by the feds, Americans' complicated feelings about pot aren't going to be reconciled overnight.

How about we reconcile feelings(and that word feelings is probably the single biggest obstacle to rational debate on just about anything you care to name,by the way) by just agreeing to leave people to themselves?

In everyday language, it's called gang warfare. It's a war among looters fighting over the money you own.

Bump!

Thanks for the ping. May justice be served.

Some laws are in place-and a better term might be,"universally recognized"-to ensure the safety of society's members. Other laws are in place to ensure the safety of the government,which isn't necessarily the same thing.

There are laws that make armed robbery illegal,and if I go rob a liquor store,and I get caught,I'm subject to whatever penalties that the laws against armed robbery call for.

Other laws ensure the safety of the government. As I pointed out above,the safety and continuance of government isn't necessarily the same thing as the safety of the members of society. An example would be taxes-although the case for taxes can be argued from several different perspectives,and some taxes might be justifiable. Speaking in broad terms,I classify the laws for the protection of the members of society as those laws which prohibit the initiating of the use of force against an individual(except in the case of a reasonable individual defending himself against an obvious threat),or initiating fraud. In other words,if I rob you or defraud you,I've broken the law,and am-if caught-subject to punishment.

As for the rest of the laws on the books,some of them contribute to the general welfare,I suppose,but just about all of them help support government. School taxes would be a good example-yes,they pay for the roofs to keep the rain off of the kids' heads while the little guys are off learning their ABC's,and yes,they pay for the teachers who teach those kids their three R's. But those same school taxes also pay for an enormous logistical tail of administrators,admin assistants,contract personnel,and heaven only knows who else.(And I class public schools as a branch of the government-this may or may not be to your taste.)

As far as choosing to let people obey and disobey laws,I'm afraid that I have very little say in the matter. However,I'll argue that laws have a much better chance of being followed when they're backed by popular custom and consensus-just about everyone I know agrees that robbery,fraud,and theft are crimes,and should be dealt with as such. Laws against an individual's behavior-especially when that behavior harms no one but the individual,and doesn't involve the use of force or fraud against other parties-are much more difficult to make a case for,and I don't believe the current laws are remotely justifiable.

If everyone refuses to follow the laws that they don't like, then we have anarchy!

Good point,and I'll argue that it's one of the best,if not possibly the sngle best,arguments for making laws slowly,and carefully. Laws passed in haste-in the heat of the moment after a tragic incident of some sort-have a disturbing tendency to be poorly written,and to wind up producing more than their fair share of unintended consequences. Laws passed towards the end of a legislative session share the same characteristic. Laws are serious things,because they are intended to change the behavior of at least some people,by the threat,or the actual application of force-up to,and including deadly force.

So a question that should be asked when a law is being debated is this:

"Would I willingly point a gun at my neighbor and force him to follow this law that I support? And would I pull the trigger if he refused?"

222 moose

Is that a new wildcat I haven't heard about yet? And where can I get one?!?!?!?

Given a choice between the college kids who live next door to me(and hold their garage rock band practice next door to me,as a bonus),and having a shooting range on the adjacent property-

Can anyone guess which one I'd pick?

I'm no authority on aviation,but that sounds plausible to me,especially if the plane was at low speed on a landing approach.

And while Communism might be dying out,Statism is unfortunately alive and well. All of us would do well to remember that,with rare exceptions,laws aren't made by statesmen with the interest of the general public in mind. Laws are usually made by paunchy hacks with their eyes on the next election and their bank accounts. Making matters worse,in this day and age,many of the rulings and edicts that have the force of law,and to all intents and purposes are laws,aren't even made by elected officials who can at least theoretically be unelected. This new breed of law is made by appointed officials,accountable to no one but the powers that appointed them.

Political corruption in human affairs is the rule,not the exception,and the more laws there are,and the more subjects(oops...freudian slip?) those laws address,the more corruption there will be. I like to think that the men who drafted the Constitution recognized this,and purposely designed the federal government to have no say whatsoever in the greatest part of the affairs that make up the lives of human beings. That is as I believe it should be.

Bump!

The fact that you have the gall to be so damned, self-righteous about breaking the Law is what's really frightening!

Every one of the men who signed the Declaration of Indepencence was committing treason. Treason was against the law at the time,and it's against the law now.

OK,I'm not going to put the gang-bangers from the west side on the same plane as the men who organized and led the War of Independence. But Laws are made by human beings,and-like the human beings that made them-there are good laws and bad laws. Defying a bad law isn't a mortal sin-it's a necessity if we're to remain a self governing culture. I'd also argue that bad laws tend to beget more bad laws(the,"It didn't work,so let's do some more of it",syndrome),which is another very good reason to oppose bad laws at the earliest opportunity. If bad laws aren't done away with at an early stage,they'll live long enough to breed.