DISQUS

No, I'm thinking more along the lines of the antithesis of "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down."



What good is sugar if it comes with a spoonful of poison?

MacGruff the Crime Dog

Craig, WADR your comment makes no sense. Plurality opinions are still binding precedent, Moore expressly distinguished Boraas, and the Manassas fact pattern mirrors Moore almost identically; Boraas, which concerned totally unrelated individuals, is simply not on point here.

dolphin,



FYI, my mother is a native-born German, and it shows. For instance, she still insists that Santa Claus / St. Nicholas wears white and not red.

Seems to me that requiring the trooper to risk his life and public property (i.e., the patrol car) qualifies as "wanton disregard

for the safety of persons or property."

Howard Dean is an unstable semi-maniac who goes around reminding people that he is an unstable semi-maniac. He doesn't scare me at all -- the people who put him in charge of the Democratic Party scare me.



Santorum is the anti-Dean: he goes around being calm, soft-spoken and philosophical in an attempt to conceal his real agenda by cloaking it with labels like "compassionate."

Gabriel's reasoning assumes that you haven't already pushed the "up" button at the lobby and instead dove into the elevator hoping/assuming that it was going up. That definitely wasn't the case the first time and I seriously doubt it happened the second time either.



As for Don's observation, I should have pointed out that there are two elevators in the bank, and that the call buttons on each floor clearly indicate what floor each elevator is on and which direction they're going. Sorry for the confusion.

The law applies to any business that sells groceries and employees at least 35 people. Since NYC supermarkets are all unionized and bodegas employ fewer than 35 people, Wal-Mart is the only intended target. Any other firms affected are mere collateral damage in the eyes of the City Council.

Fine, then put one in your living room, but leave public parks alone.

DL, I think you're grasping here. "Château" doesn't convey any useful information the way "champagne" does. So there is nothing in the term to dilute.

"China is the most capitalistic country I have yet been to."




How does the saying go? "Great economy, if you can get it."






It's a mighty bizarre form of "capitalism" where the political elites get to be the capitalists and the other 99.99% of the population gets to be peasants, or dead.

American homeowner associations are voluntary.



I doubt any zoning board in the U.S. would dare tell a Chinese restaurant that its name was "too foreign."

I'm not sure how that would be any better. =/

Modesitt,



First of all, it's "Nuremberg," not "Nuremburg."




More importantly, to analogize knowthyneighbor.org to the Nuremberg Files is disingenuous. The right-to-lifers who created NF were directly and knowingly inciting violence in an attempt to stop what they considered to be an atrocity. One version of the site has graphics of dripping blood and promises links to "Horrible Pictures Smuggled From Baby-Butcher Lab!" Another version had lines drawn through the pictures of doctors who had been murdered by right-to-life zealots.




Knowthyneighbor.org is a mailing list, nothing more. No disturbing graphics, no histrionics, no calls for violence or bloodshed. If that changes, then let's discuss it at that time.




The targets of the Nuremberg Files are people who simply wish to practice their profession (as gruesome as it may be to some) in private. The voters to be listed at KTN.org are people going out of their way to be politically active.




I say again: a petition is not the ballot box, and there can be no such thing as a "right to be publicly anonymous."

Tom, Cuba isn't below sea level. The hurricane wasn't the proximate cause of the catastrophe, the levees were.



Could Cuba, if it had to, build and maintain a reliable levee system to protect Havana?

"Brown should be fired, no question, but there is no reason to turn it into a witch hunt."




I don't think it's a "witch hunt" to demand the firing of someone who either knowingly or negligently suggested that a patently unqualified candidate be put in a position of vital importance.






In the private sector, it's standard operating procedure.

Also, is it not true that a bill that alters a law passed by initiative petition must be sent to voters directly for approval?


I have seen references to this on other blogs. Whatever the actual rule, it is a mere procedural question local to California. It does not affect my thesis that "the will of the people" is a dangerous fiction regardless of who invokes it.

...there is also nothing wrong with aesthetically pleasing construction...


I'm not arguing for austerity architecture -- that's how most government buildings are designed, and they look hideous.




My point is that frivolous destruction of symmetry is NOT aesthetically pleasing.




This twizzler building could have been designed with exactly the same style, materials, etc., but just without the twizzle, and it would have been cheaper to build AND more attractive.

"How easy for some people to insinuate without taking into account that everyone has a mother and father..."




Are you suggesting that parents learning that their son might have been gay would be worse than learning that they are dead?






And it is as of yet unclear whether they fell, jumped or were pushed.

First of all, the risk of birth defects for the offspring of sibling intercourse is substantial, exponentially greater than for cousin intercourse.



Second, I don't think it's a double-standard to distinguish between a broad attraction to a gender (i.e., not sick and not a big deal) and specific attraction to a sibling (i.e., sick and a very big deal).




Third, some states allow cousins to marry upon proof of infertility. I have no problem with such provisions, and if you are arguing that such options should be available to potential sibling couples, then be my guest. I've got bigger fish to fry.

"Scalia uses the word "homosexual" rather than and in preference to "gay and lesbian..."


I'm actually willing to cut him some slack on that. There was an interesting footnote in the opinion that was the topic of this blogpost of mine a few days ago:

In his concurring opinion, our colleague suggests that the term "homosexual sodomy" is used by this court in a pejorative fashion. Use of the word sodomy or "homosexual sodomy" to discuss the sexual conduct Lawrence addressed is not original to this decision. The majority opinion in Lawrence used the term "sodomy" no less than seventeen times and the phrase "homosexual sodomy" twice. Justice O'Connor's concurring opinion described the Texas law (and similar laws) at issue in Lawrence as a law relating to sodomy twenty-four times. We also note that several federal cases and innumerable commentators post-Lawrence have described the holding of that case, or the Texas law at issue in the case, as relating to sodomy or, more precisely, homosexual (or some equivalent such as "same-sex") sodomy.

I have, however, blasted the Washington Times for their constant use of scare quotes when referring to "homosexual 'marriage.'" That's just plain obnoxious.

If we wanted a red-taloned dog-eat-dog form of capitalism, we know how to do that.


Actually, since dogs don't have talons, no I don't know how to do that.




[T]he very point of society and law, which are intended to protect the moneyed interests...



Actually I would argue that the point of society and law is to protect the creation, not the insulation, of "moneyed interests." And if I'm a member of the working poor, that's something I would indeed cherish greatly. The best way to help the poor is by not being one of them.

I think the real problem is the widely held misperception that political views lie on a 1-dimensional left-right spectrum.


Well, of course most libertarians reject the notion of a one-dimensional political spectrum in favor of a parabolic model with increasingly radical liberal and conservative tails that move at equal rates away from the limited-government optimum.




But the beach analogy is a good starting point for those like Falwell and McCain who are not libertarians.

A happy-go-lucky porn star?





Anyway, I've certainly be known to coax a straight friend or two to come to gay bars with me, and it's certainly possible that only one, or neither, of the young men were gay, perhaps they were merely out on the town with their agent, who definitely seems to be gay.






I think Chris' other point is the real takeaway -- if these were two young female models with no "gay stuff" contaminating the story, the MSM would be all over it.

I'm not sure that's entirely dispositive -- the federal government authorizing more stringent standards above and beyond the federal requirements is not the same as expressly authorizing interstate compacts.





One way or the other, I find it depressing that these questions aren't being asked more often.