Free Republic

oh you must have missed that post. i gave you that and amended. remember, setting fires, building bombs, etc. things that harm others aren't about your personal freedom but of course, you knew what i meant. i gave it to you anyway. i remain opposed to the government meddling in my personal affairs that harm no one. that is because i am a conservative.

you forgot about the harm exception.

"i couldn't agree with you more. we are the party of less government not more. that means the government should stay out of my personal business, especially in my own house!"

"Yea, if you so desire to build a nuclear warhead in your basement it's nobody's business but yours."

ok, i'll add this: as long as i'm not harming anyone else. obviously if i decide to set my own house on fire and i live next door to another house, that wouldn't be allowed either. maybe you want the government in your bedroom but i don't. gotta love the big government conservatives.

"I'm all for Christians being Christians. As long as they don't try to make me be a Christian."

once again, right on brother. i'll fight to protect everyone's right to practice any religion they choose, and i'm not a believer. mutual respect is what's its all about.

"The state has no business telling me how to have sex. None."

i couldn't agree with you more. we are the party of less government not more. that means the government should stay out of my personal business, especially in my own house!

yep, we need more nuclear power plants for sure. but wind energy can be very powerful if you put tons of them up. gore mountain is crappy skiing anyway, they should put a thousand of them up there and many more around those mountains. nimby environmentalists lose all credibility.

"Ask our American POW's what torture is, by the hands of the japanese, N.koreans, vietnamese."

and that is exactly why we should not do it! we are not animals like our enemy. we are supposed to be above them, not mucking around in the abyss with them. and abu ghraib wasn't insurgents, it was low level street criminals who never got a trial. a very different thing than people fighting our guys. call them terorists if you want, all evidence to the contrary.

and keep in mind, those who think this was harmless frat party stuff. about 20 prisoners have died in our custody of what is called, homicide. this is nothing to be proud of. further, what would you say to pictures of american soldiers piled up, naked, with iraqis laughing at them? you would call them animals, rightly so.

"I'm absolutely positively convinced, in the Court of Josh, that this guy is guilty as sin. I've got the instinct radar of the best of them."

how's that instinct workin out for ya?

:)

sheesh, good thing we don't let mob rule decide guilt or innocence. it is possible that the woman was abducted and killed by a stranger while out jogging. give the guy the benefit of the doubt. you know, innocent until proven...i kinda like that policy. as a lawyer, i wouldn't allow him to take the poly unless it was privately administered either. so blame his lawyer for protecting him. its what you would want in his position.

lie detectors are fairly reliable but remember, they aren't admissible so there are problems with them. you don't throw your client to the wolves with those odds. let's let it play out, the truth will come. and then string him up if he did it. but some here seem to think there don't exist psychos out there who just nab women and kill them. despite all the evidence to the contrary.

"a disrespect for persons and their sincerely held beliefs.
Like flag-burning?"

good point. i don't like coulter, i think she's silly and adds nothing to the world except vitriol but then i just wouldn't go listen to her. and if someone wants to burn a flag, just keep it off my lawn and we're cool.

"That's the scary thing. The jurors you end up getting stuck with are the ones who are too stupid to figure out how to get out of doing jury duty."

exactly. now that could be good or bad, depends on how good your case is.

the truth is, its so easy to get our of jury duty. just say your biased. bye bye. its usually true anyway.

no, i'm not proficient with guns. obviously. i was trying to think of a compromise. point taken.

my very first trial was in front of the famous harold rothwax (he did joel steinberg case). during jury selection he brought a CBS news producer to tears berating her for hemming and hawing about whether she had time to serve on a six week trial. she just stood there sobbing. he threatened her with jail if she missed one day.

they don't play around with jury duty no more. even lawyers and judges have to serve now. no perks i tell ya, no perks at all.

"Thank You very much CNN for giving MoveOn MILLIONS worth of free advertising time by showing that clip. Here's hoping the other media outlets DO NOT follow suit (but probably will)."

to be fair, i only saw all the swiftie ads through the news and i saw them a lot! they didn't show them here as paid ads at all but i could recite them to you anyway through the free advertising. they do it for both sides. just sayin is all...

i think wounding is ok if someone is stealing property but killing is going too far. its just stuff. but if you can shoot him in the leg to prevent his escape, i don't really mind that. in the end, the truth is, most people are going to carry that death around with them for life. its not worth it for either party.

now robbery is different, because that's an attack on your person, for your stuff. even in new york, you can shoot someone in the back if they rob you, but not if they hotwire your car and you catch them. in that case, aim for the leg.

this plane doesn't scare anyone? sheesh, i know i'm ignorant of physics but this thing just scares the poop out of me. i like my planes medium, not too big, not too small. and when it crashes the death toll is going to be horrific. not to mention all that luggage wait time you guys brought up. that's reason enough not to get on this thing.

"How are the Afghani's doing as far as producing enough food to feed themselves?

As I understand the situation, much of their ability to be self sufficient has been destroyed over the past 25 years."

not very well. drought has left the place impossible agriculturally. and the russians destroyed the place. its a mess. and as per my post above, they are really broken. the hope they hold comes in the form of the US and other international security and aid that is doing a good deal in the capital and in some other pockets around the country. kabul is really much better, relatively speaking. the rest of the country is rough. but so many people who fled under the taliban have come back and they are working really hard to fix the place. they are really heroes. i loved them for giving up good lives in america and europe to live without electricity and clean water in a shell of a place because they cared so much. i think as long as the aid continues and the building continues, it will work. it will take years, but i think they can do it with our help. they need some damn rain though. i guess we can't send that.

i agree with you entirely. crime is a huge problem and drugs are the number one reason, we have to slow it down somehow. and yep, afghanistan is the biggest exporter of poppy in the world. its a big conundrum, especially for the US there because they want to stop it but if you cut off the only resource they have you have even worse problems. i'm for wicked sentencing for drug dealers. i'm more flexible on users just because that tack doesn't really work as we can see from years of jailing users. they use in jail, when they get out, and they'll kill you for a fix. and there are more born every day. we have to cut the supply.

you know sentences for users in afghanistan are extremely harsh and they are all shooting up anyway out of despair, etc, all the things that make people use drugs, escape. they are a broken people. we have to help create something else and that's what is happening very slowly, i have hope for them. those that were there under the taliban are just broken but a lot of people are returning and making things work. they really care what happens but its an uphill battle. lots of years to turn around.

i understand with all the ire towards the UN and i agree with most of it. its horribly run in so many ways. however, i gotta say, they are intrumental in afghanistan. they are doing really good work there. don't flame me but its true. so are the germans who have spent a ton of cash there rebuilding infrastructure. and the norwegians are doing incredible work arbitrating property disputes way out in the countryside that go back 25 years. they are preventing a lot of violence through this arbitration program. we don't hear about this stuff but its very good and the UN is a big part of that.