PN-G bamatex

Dumbarses, yes, but they have not all done equally dumb and violent things.

This occupation is totally out of line. The Bundy family has gone a step too far. Technically, they've committed an act of insurrection against the United States, which is wholly out of proportion to the government action they're protesting. That said, the argument that the government's reaction to this as opposed to the reactions in Ferguson and Baltimore represents a double standard is total crap. Let's boil this down to the facts. The Bundys and their accomplices have occupied a building on federal property, and uploaded a YouTube video calling for others to join them in their occupation. Most of the others who they've called upon to join them have rejected the request and denounced the action; indeed, the overwhelming majority of them were remarkably peaceful in carrying out the protest that preceded this seizure. The Bundys themselves have damaged no property, and injured no person. They've held not one person against his or her will. They're likely well armed, but as of yet haven't fired a single shot. When you get right down to it, all they've done is take over a small federal building in the middle of nowhere, which is responsible for performing no vital government function and is of little to no importance, while spewing angry rhetoric that targets no specific person and conveys no threat. Granted, in principle, this takeover is a serious violation which should be taken seriously. In practice, however, it's less than a minor inconvenience. In Baltimore, on the other hand, no buildings were seized, they were just looted and burned instead. On the night of April 27, 2015, alone, the Baltimore riots resulted in 144 vehicle fires and 19 structural fires. One innocent bystander was injured by the widespread arson, and numerous police officers suffered broken bones and other injuries while bricks and other objects were hurled at them as they attempted to control the crowds. More than 200 people were arrested for various criminal activities. Unlike Baltimore, where the unrest was contained to a matter of days, the unrest in Ferguson cropped up at various points over the course of a full year. During the worst of the rioting in the last 10 days of November, 2014, at least one person was shot and burned, more than a dozen buildings were burned, and over 150 people were arrested for various criminal acts. As both a matter of principle and a matter of practice, the riots in Baltimore and Ferguson were decidedly more severe, more costly, more dangerous, more injurious and in every way more significant incidents of lawlessness. The punishment must fit the crime. The reaction must be roughly equal and opposite the original action. In Maryland and in Missouri, the state governments reacted with appropriate force to prolonged and severe periods of chaos and destruction. In Oregon, we have yet to reach that stage, and may not; personally, I find it hard to believe that a bunch of ranchers with real world responsibilities will actually occupy that federal building for "years" as they claim or even more than a few days. In any case, Oregon is not analogous to Baltimore and Ferguson at this time. Likewise, the reactions shouldn't be, either. Any comparison which assumes that they should be is factually unfounded.

To answer the original question posed in this thread, Carly Fiorina won the debate with Marco Rubio in a close second, and I think they'll experience moderate rises in the polls as a result. Jeb, Christie and Paul did alright. Trump bombed it - I think Fiorina's one liner about the face comment has to be the only thing that's ever made Donald Trump blush. Carson's performance was meager, as were those of Walker and Cruz. So far, the polls seem to reflect my views. The latest RCP average shows a drop of around two points for both Trump and Carson, a rise of two points for Rubio and a rise of three for Fiorina, with everyone else's numbers staying virtually stagnant. I think we could be seeing the very beginning of Trump's demise. I think Trump realizes that too. When Trump's numbers leveled off around 30% a few weeks ago and Carson really started to gain on him, Trump finally agreed to sign the Republican pledge to support whoever the eventual nominee is. I think he did so as part of some kind of deal with the party leadership, although I have no idea what it would entail. It would fit the pattern of behavior for a man who made his money in real estate - buy low, sell high. Additionally, I think there are a lot of moderate and establishment Republicans that just aren't answering polls right now because we're so far out, which causes the numbers to overrepresent the hardcore elements of the base. As we get closer to the primaries, I think more of those establishment voters will start making their allegiances known and that the numbers of whoever the "true conservative" darling is, whether that remains Trump or becomes someone else, will naturally diminish as a result.

The picture I've attached at the bottom of this post depicts the clock in question. I want everyone in this thread to stop for a moment. Put yourself in the teacher's shoes. You work at a large school during an age in which public schools have become the target for various incidences of mass violence. You teach English, and thus probably don't have a real acumen for electronics. One day, at the end of class, one of your students comes up to your desk and places this on it. What is your first thought? I can tell you what mine would be: "bomb," pure and simple. I would see in front of me a metal suitcase filled with various wires, electrical components and a digital display that's obviously used to keep track of time in some manner. The student's race would never enter my mind. Frankly, nothing about the student would enter my mind at all. Why? Because my mind would be singularly focused on the device in front of me that looks exactly like every portrayal of a compact, portable explosive device I've ever seen on TV or in the movies, and what I would need to do to eliminate what I perceived as a threat. Regardless of all the rhetoric used in this forum, I find it incredibly hard to believe that any one of you would have a different reaction. That's not racism, it's not prejudice, and it's not malice towards anyone. That is man's most basic instinct, self preservation, taking over. I've seen a whole lot of people on social media work really hard to try and distinguish this image from that of an actual suitcase bomb. Their entire argument hinges on a single idea: that there aren't any explosive components visible inside the suitcase... as though the average American, who has little experience with electronic components such as those pictured below and none with explosives, would be able to discern that at a glance. Frankly, I find it very hard to believe that the people who raise this argument, who often don't even know enough about weapons to distinguish between a magazine and a clip, would be able to deduce such a discovery for themselves were they put in the teacher's position. I think it's far more likely that they're simply buying into a popular argument on social media to feed their narcissistic need to feel better than everyone else by highlighting inventing an example of racism committed by an average American that they can point at and ridicule. In any case, the argument they present is crap. The fact that something that looks like a bomb doesn't have "C4" written anywhere on it doesn't mean it doesn't look like a bomb. Now that we've put the teacher's actions in some context, let's discuss the police officer. Put yourself in his shoes. You've been dispatched to a local high school over a possible bomb threat. You've likely experienced fake bomb threats at local high schools before; unfortunately, they've become fairly frequent at many schools. You arrive at the school, go into the office, and find both the student and the suspicious device. You're likely a little better versed in matters relating to explosive devices than the average citizen simply because of experience and training. You examine the device, and are likely able to determine that it's not a bomb, although you instantly recognize the visual similarities and how it can be perceived as one. You're given the story of what happened - that a student came up and put this on the desk of an English teacher and that she perceived it as a threat - by school administrators or perhaps the teacher herself. You speak with the student, asking him questions about the device. All he'll say in response is that it's a clock, nothing more. What are you thinking now? Admittedly, this is a little harder to determine. We weren't there. We don't know the context in which this information was conveyed to the police officer by school officials, or the manner in which the student responded to the officer, only what he said. So much of good police work depends on the officer's ability to read the facial expressions and interpret the tone of the person he's questioning - we weren't there to witness any of those things. What we do know, though, is that the police officer felt it necessary to take the student into custody on charges of a "hoax bomb" - the crime of creating a device that looks like a bomb with the intention of intimidating someone - while his department looked more deeply into the matter, and that nobody else close to the situation felt this was out of line except, shockingly, the student taken into custody and his family. We also know that once the department had received enough information to conclusively determine that there was no intention to harm or intimidate anyone with the device, it released the student. Given the facts as they've been outlined here, I fail to see anything that suggests the arrest was out of line. It truly amazes me how the same side of the aisle that constantly calls for increased salary and benefits for teachers, police officers and other public officials is so quick to excoriate them for making a mistake doing their job, and then use their actions to incite controversy for political gain.

I'll give credit where it's due. Quanell X, for once, got something right. That said, I still have vivid memories of this man hosting a rally in Lumberton at which he called for the entire city to be burned to the ground on live television in the name of ruining the lives of four police officers, citing entirely premature allegations made against them on very shaky grounds that were later utterly refuted by the detailed analysis of an independent, unbiased authority. Perhaps he's learned something in the six short years since then. If he has, only time will tell. Personally, I'm not holding my breath.

Due to my generation's endemic social media "shaming" problem, I've generally elected to stay very quiet about the mounting tensions between police officers and the black community in this country. This predilection for silence mostly stems from an incident following the targeted killing of two NYPD officers in Brooklyn last December in anger over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner (Link 1), shortly after a Manhattan protest staged as part of the #blacklivesmatter movement descended into chants of "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!" by throngs of protesters marching through the streets (Link 2). After the ambush, I posted a short Facebook status calling for the rhetoric of that movement to change to emphasize the importance of all lives instead of the importance of the lives of a particular racial group, on the grounds that emphasizing one particular group's value as opposed to the value of all people only served to further entrench preexisting divides and invite more incidences of racial animus. Put simply, I was excoriated for that status. A litany of comments was posted in response from a fairly sizeable group of Facebook users - interestingly enough, all of them white and male - which leveled everything from harshly worded criticism of the position on a pseudo-factual basis to personal insults aimed solely at humiliation and ostracism. In my usual way, I attempted to counter with the facts; I attached video of the aforementioned protest in New York which preceded the Brooklyn incident, made reference to the riots which took place in Ferguson following the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson over the death of Michael Brown, and as the argument broadened, I delved deeply into the actual statistics regarding race in officer-related shootings and how their rough correlation to the proportion of national crime for which each demographic group is responsible substantially undermines any assertion of real bias on the part of the nation's police against black Americans (Links 3 & 4). To them, none of that mattered. One of them tried to nitpick some of the data and substitute some of his own, but when I rebutted his only real point, he managed to quickly disappear. The rest stuck to abstract generalizations, emotional appeals and the age old informal fallacy of appealing to ridicule. No matter how many times I tried to take a rational, articulate, factual approach, the users carrying on the verbal sparring were simply too impassioned to listen. In an attempt to sum things up for one of them, I gave them a singular warning: that if this kind of rhetoric continued both at #BLM events and on social media, it would become a justification in the minds of many for carrying out severe acts of violence aimed generally at law enforcement, although not exclusively. Now, nine months later, I sit here typing this post under the burden of having been proved right when I had hoped I would be proven wrong. The last year has revealed an explosive growth in the number of law enforcement officer deaths incurred in the line of duty (Link 5). Counting Deputy Goforth this past weekend and the two officers killed in Brooklyn last year, we now have three officers that we know for a fact were targeted and killed without provocation solely for being police officers, with several other cases in which speculation of the same is not unreasonable. Additionally, an officer in Birmingham, Alabama, was beaten to the point of passing out on the side of the road last month, while onlookers took the opportunity to glorify the incident on social media rather than render aid to the injured officer (Link 6); that same officer later admitted to hesitating to discharge his weapon in his own defense for fear of being labeled a "racist cop" as so many others have been of late (Link 7). Ferguson has not been the only riot stemming from this movement; numerous small altercations took place around the country in conjunction with the events in Ferguson, and Ferguson seemed to be put on replay in Baltimore earlier this year (Link 8). #BLM's own website states that the organization embraces a "diversity of tactics" in the name of social change as opposed to the nonviolent approach embraced by prior generations of black activists (Link 9), and many #BLM supporters have even ostracized fellow #BLM activists for, of all things, advocating peaceful protests in place of abrasiveness and apologizing for outrageous conduct associated with #BLM such as that outlined in this post (Link 10). #BLM leaders, on that note, have been callous in statements during and regarding such instances; the most damning example of this, in my opinion, came in relation to the death of Deputy Goforth, when a leader in the #BLM movement chose to respond to the ambush by criticizing Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, perhaps hypocritically, for "politicizing" the incident with the statement that "cops' lives matter too," and failing to express any sympathy whatsoever for Deputy Goforth or his family in the process (Link 11). After scouring the internet in search of some redeeming statement by a #BLM leader somewhere in relation to the Harris County incident, I am deeply disappointed to report that the above is the only relevant statement from a #BLM supporter of any kind that I could locate at all. A cursory review of the social media accounts of several personal friends and acquaintances who have actively expounded on the principles of #BLM and highlighted so-called instances of "racial injustice" over the last year revealed the same result. Worst of all, just two weeks before the the murder of Deputy Goforth, during Black Panther protests at the Waller County Jail in just the next county over from the site of Goforth's murder, one of the protest's leaders threatened to retaliate against police in a manner eerily similar to the one in which Goforth was assassinated (Link 12). On its face, this makes it look as though last year's Brooklyn incident has repeated itself. I have read statements on this board and elsewhere from a number of individuals claiming that #BLM has nothing to do with these incidents of violence targeted at police. I will admit that there is no definitive link between the two. Nonetheless, such a link is easily inferred, and I believe it exists. We know for a fact that the Brooklyn shooter acted in retaliation against police regarding the Brown and Garner cases. Is it really so hard to believe that whatever anger he harbored was nurtured by protests such as the one caught on video in New York? Men are not moved to commit heinous acts by rationality, they're moved to do such things by poorly governed passions and a misguided sense of justice - especially those with emotional or mental disorders, as I imagine the killers in the Brooklyn and Harris County cases had. Given the totality of the circumstances in the Goforth case, is it so hard to believe that it is of a similar nature? And considering the two in tandem, is it not reasonable to intuit the potential beginnings of a grim pattern? #BLM as an entity offers no condolences for or discouragement against acts of violence carried out for purposes in line with its own mission, and explicitly rejects pacifism as an approach to social change. Its leaders meet radical, inflammatory rhetoric that indisputably cites people to violence with tolerance, and fail to utter a single word of disapproval when actions are carried out almost in perfect accordance with that rhetoric. #BLM repeatedly withholds condemnation for incidents of mass violence the likes of Ferguson and Baltimore. Is it really implausible that these stances can become implicit encouragement and justification for acts of violence in the minds of fringe elements? When coupled with the outright rejection of pacifist protesters such as the girl in Seattle that apologized for the incident at the Bernie Sanders campaign rally, is it not easy to see how others infer that #BLM, if anything, endorses such rhetoric and its inevitable, injurious ends? In that light, the phrase "diversity of tactics" takes on new meaning. Link 1: [Hidden Content] Link 2: [Hidden Content] Link 3: [Hidden Content] Link 4: [Hidden Content] Link 5: [Hidden Content] Link 6: [Hidden Content] Link 7: [Hidden Content] Link 8: [Hidden Content] Link 9: [Hidden Content] Link 10: [Hidden Content] Link 11: [Hidden Content] Link 12: [Hidden Content]

I can report that Travis County did in fact have Blue Bell today. I can also report that I have a bad case of case of brain freeze this evening, which I'm pretty sure is a symptom of listeria poisoning. So, you know. Nobody else should buy any.

Far be it for me to defend Donald Trump in anything, but I was going to say something similar. We need more of a "f*ck you" attitude with the Russians - maybe not as much as Trump has, but a lot more than any of the Democrats have. That's the only thing Putin understands.

Now's the time to be in the rental business. Between the impending mortgage issues you've outlined and the number of people who are underemployed who just plum can't afford to buy either away, rental property's going to be in high demand. If I wasn't headed for law school....

What message? No, seriously. What message? So far, Donald Trump's message has been that Megyn Kelly's a mean reporter dealing with the bad time of the month and we need to make Mexico pay for a wall to keep Mexicans out. Go look at Donald Trump's website. Notice something missing? I do - it's called the "issues" section. You know, that part where candidates articulate their platforms? Yeah, Donald Trump doesn't have one. But, I try to be thorough and diligent when I research candidates, so I watched the debate last week, thinking (perhaps naively) that he might articulate his positions there. And what did I get for my trouble? "The moderators are being mean to me." At least he doesn't try to hide the fact that he's a whiner; he publicly acknowledged that much in a phone interview I listened to today. In another attempt to be thorough, I scoured the internet for policy positions. Didn't find a single one. I even went out of my way to contact the Trump campaign and ask for a list of positions or a platform summary or at least a statement giving me some idea where he stands on the issues. You know what I got in return? Neither do I, because I'm still waiting on it a week later. So I'll ask you again: what message? I'm betting you can't actually give me an answer. Why not? Because there is no message. Why is there no message? Because Donald Trump is an entertainment mogul with an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore who sees this primary as nothing more than a cheap way to put his name in an infinite number of headlines and sweeten his reality TV deals. He's not actually in this because he cares about the country, he's in it because he cares about his checkbook. If any part of him actually wants to be president, it's his ego talking, but I strongly suspect that he doesn't want to be the President of the United States. He just wants the publicity, and he's going to ride that wave of tweets and primetime interviews until he loses steam, grassroots donations stop coming in and he actually has to put up some of his own money to stay in the race. When that moment comes, the return on investment takes a nosedive and it won't be worth it anymore. He'll walk away having played the system and gotten exactly what he wanted out of the deal. The sad part is that he'll leave his supporters out to dry in the process. The most hardcore elements of the conservative base - the ones that have been claiming that Obama supporters are "low information voters" or whatever else for years - will have fallen victim to the exact same trickery that they claim everyone who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 fell for. Why? Because Trump and Obama are the exact same thing at heart: demagogues, and dam good ones at that. Don't believe me? Let's consult Dr. Google. Oh sure, they have very different styles. Obama prefers charm and eloquence, whereas Trump is frank and bombastic. Obama likes to be relaxed, articulate and optimistic, while Trump prefers to be fiery, to speak in generalities and to remain obstinate in the face of opposition. Obama wants to appear levelheaded, while Trump likes his reputation for stubborn brashness. But at the end of the day, those two personas are two sides of the same conman's coin - their only differences exist solely because they're contrived to appeal to the two very different bases on which they feed. And in the absence of substance, both are the trademarks of - you guessed it - a conman.I hope you enjoy losing again in 2016. Because if you keep egging your buddy Trump on, that's exactly what's going to happen to us.

Donald Trump is a flip-flopping opportunist who sees this election as nothing more than an opportunity to put his name in the headlines. In the process, he's become the official mascot for the senility problem that currently exists in the modern body politic and made a mockery of the Republican Party - my party. Fox News was completely fair to him last night - when you've got a history like Trump's, those are the kinds of questions you deserve. He wasn't targeted unfairly, he made himself a target. Welcome to politics, Mr. Trump. Enjoy your brief stay.

​Not just smarter, stronger. North Korea could have Stephen Hawking for a leader and I'd still consider Russia more of a threat. Russia is to North Korea as the Titanic is to a rubber dinghy. It doesn't really matter what the IQ of the guy at the helm is, one is still obviously superior to the other.

​ I have every right to drive in front of your house. If I park on the street out front and sit in the bed of my pick-up with my carry gun strapped to my belt, I haven't broken any laws. Nobody can do anything about it. Doesn't mean I'm not doing it to intimidate you. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be concerned. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't be keeping a watchful eye with your own gun handy. At least, that's what I'd be doing. I wouldn't be ignoring it like the president seems to be. And I certainly wouldn't be alright with that like you seem to be.

[Hidden Content] "'Good morning, American pilots. We are here to greet you on your Fourth of July Independence Day,' the message stated... The long-range bombers were intercepted on July 4 just 39 miles from the California coast." That's not from a movie. That's real life, and it happened three weeks ago. This is intimidation, pure and simple.

Well, it's not like they can leave dog crap on the front porch and call it a prank. That's normal in Nederland.

There are some serious contradictions inherent in this whole "sanctuary city" concept. First off, isn't this a watered down form of nullification? Nullification was a somewhat popular theory in the nineteenth century that the states, being the sovereign entities that formed the union, retained the right to nullify federal laws and federal court rulings within their boundaries if the states viewed those laws as unconstitutional. Although the nullification theory actually began in the North, it became central to the slavery issue and a trademark defense for Southern states against anti-slavery laws leading up to the Civil War and against Civil Rights legislation during the 1950s and '60s. Every legal analyst with any sense thinks the theory is asinine, but we still hear it brought up in the occasional debate (normally somewhere on the internet) and liberals love to compare state actions taken against environmental regulations, labor laws and, now, gay marriage rulings in red states to nullification attempts way back in the day. But this, in a sense, is even worse than nullification - as insane as it may be when a conservative occasionally makes a nullification argument, at least they do so based on a belief, however ill-conceived, that the law in question is unconstitutional, whereas there's no constitutional basis whatsoever for a state or local government to declare an immigration law constitutional. Funny how, when the shoe's on the other foot, these kinds of comparisons don't get made and the people who make them most just tend to look the other way. The second issue I take with this is a broader issue I take with the immigration debate generally. Look at that map and tell me where most of the sanctuary cities are. Newsflash: at least 70% of them are in states that are nowhere near the border. Of the four border states, the only one with a significant number of sanctuaries is California. Judging by eye, I count three states - Iowa, Washington and Oregon - that have created way more sanctuaries than the ultra-liberal Golden State. Two of the four border states only have one sanctuary at all, one of those being the nation's second most populous state. What does that tell us? It tells us that most of the people who are all for opening up the border don't actually have to live with the consequences. It's not like that many corn farmers in Iowa have actually come across an illegal immigrant in their lifetime, and the few who have met one probably didn't exactly meet a cartel member. It's not like Oregon experiences anything even remotely approaching the level of violence, human trafficking and drug smuggling that we see on a normal day in Houston due to our porous border security. I'm actually a centrist on immigration issues who's for limited forms of amnesty, but having attended a university in a state nowhere near the border that's filled with out-of-state students from up North who've never stepped foot in a border state, there's nothing that drives me up a wall faster than idiots trying to make a statement as though they know the full implications of policies surrounding the integrity of a border they've never even been within 500 miles of.

Does anyone actually believe that "lax gun control laws" in Milwaukee and Chicago, two of the cities with the most restrictive gun control measures in the country, are actually to blame for the spike in violence? I have a feeling the police chief in Houston wasn't contacted because he would've given a different answer.

Microsoft's laying off people in its smartphone division because Microsoft makes crappy smartphones that don't sell.

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"At the same time the bombers were in the air probing the West Coast of the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin called President Obama to wish him a happy July 4th." [Hidden Content] "A 'source familiar with the situation' told Interfax on Tuesday that the Russian Prosecutor General's office began checking the legality of the recognition of the independence of the Baltics... The report comes one week after the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 — back when Nikita Khrushchev was in power — was declared unconstitutional." [Hidden Content] I have been raising red flags about Vladimir Putin and Russian expansionism for years. I do not understand how people can constantly turn a blind eye to the modern day version of Adolf Hitler poking and prodding at Britain and France while annexing various European states during the mid and late 1930s. If the tone and nature of our relationship with Russia does not change soon, this series of events will yield the same eventual result as that one.

I understand the push to take the Confederate flag down at the South Carolina and Alabama state capitols. But the Dukes? Really? I get that to a lot of people in this country, the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of racism - it's hard for black Americans not to interpret it that way when some of the most famous pictures of the most vehement racists of the twentieth century, like George Wallace, feature massive Confederate flags flying all over the place. The internet is covered with images of the flag at KKK rallies, past and present. But I also get that to millions of Southerners, many of whom are black as well, the flag is a symbol of Southern regional pride. To them, it's meant to identify a particular region, not a racial superiority complex. Charlie Daniels wrote one of the most interesting pieces I've read about this particular issue, in which he talked about growing up in the South during the 1930s, when most people in the United States looked down on the region and its inhabitants. To him, the flag symbolized the pride Southerners held in stark defiance of the condescending views adopted by Americans in other regions of the country. In the same way that the South has embraced the "redneck" persona despite the term's once pejorative connotation, the flag, to many Southerners, was a way to maintain some sort of pride while being looked down upon by everyone else - this is literally the exact same reason college football is so big in the South (seriously, look that up). This is true among even some of the most liberal Southerners; one of my best friends while in Alabama, who was so far left he bordered on communist, owned a Confederate flag and proudly espoused his Southern identity. I think the key element the media has missed in this debate is the context in which the flag and other Confederate symbols are used. Is the flag a symbol of racism at a KKK rally? Undoubtedly, but the American flag arguably is as well in those instances - after all, they're exercising their genuinely American right to free speech while calling for a purely white America, not just a white South. Is it a symbol of racism at bubba's fish camp up by the lake when he has it flying while he's kicked back on the front porch with a six pack? No, it's a symbol of a redneck telling the world that he's a redneck, that he enjoys being a redneck and that he likes to do redneck things and have good redneck times in a redneck part of the country. Is it a symbol of racism in a museum, in a textbook or at a reenactment of a Civil War battle? No, it's a symbol of one of the defining periods of American history, in which our character, unity and integrity as a nation were defined for generations to come. Is it a symbol of racism on top of the General Lee? No, it's a symbol of the rebelliousness that's embodied by the main characters, Bo and Luke Duke, while they're speeding down the highway at a hundred miles an hour, causing problems for the local sheriff, foiling the plans of the local corrupt political boss, straightenin' the curves and flattenin' the hills. Seriously, was the show racist? Absolutely not. Did any one of the characters on the show espouse anything even remotely racist for one second of air time? No. They never even came close. Is it a symbol of racism at the statehouse in South Carolina, where Strom Thurmond served as Governor and made numerous stump speeches advocating hardline segregationist policies? Yes, and it has no place being flown on the grounds of a capitol that should be open to all, that once voted to suppress the rights of millions of black South Carolinians, and that only ever started flying the flag as a protest against civil rights during the 1960s. Is it a symbol of racism at the statehouse down in Alabama, where George Wallace famously made several openly racist speeches, where Jefferson Davis himself oversaw the affairs of the Confederacy while the capitol of the short-lived nation was located in Montgomery during the early days of the Civil War, and which hundreds of black protesters were repeatedly barred from approaching during the marches from Selma? To argue that it isn't, and that it shouldn't come down as a result, would be asinine. Is its brother, the first national flag of the Confederacy, a symbol of racism at the capitol in Austin, where it flies alongside the flags of the five other nations of which Texas has been a part during its history? No, it's a symbol of the reverence with which Texans view their history - good and bad parts alike - just like it is when it flies next to those same five flags outside the Texas Historical Commission, and just like the seal of the Confederacy is when placed next to the seals of the United States, Mexico, France and Spain as those five seals encircle the seal of the Republic of Texas on the floor of the rotunda inside the capitol building. Context, folks. Context. I think most Americans - black, white and whatever other color - understand that. I think the media analysts and fringe elements, who are just about the only ones pushing this issue, don't. Maybe that's why they're all so surprised when they see the results of opinion polls like the one below: [Hidden Content] Leave the Duke boys alone. They were never meanin' no harm, and they didn't do anybody any either.

Kind of surprised this thread is this tame. Maybe it's just because I'm a college student, but campus carry has been a huge issue in some of the circles I run in.

Under the contemporary view of marriage - that is, the view of marriage as a legal institution as much as a religious or social institution - this ruling couldn't have been more spot on. While I agree with the reservations Justice Roberts has expressed in the past about the application of 14th Amendment protections to prevent perceived discrimination outside the text of a particular law as opposed to discrimination within the text of the law, the fact remains that marriage is an institution legally integral to the function of American society, and that the same-sex marriage bans deny access to that institution, and all the rights and benefits thereof, to a minority. This was the right and necessary thing to do. That being said, this never would have been a problem to begin with had the states stayed out of the marriage business. Western churches were proclaiming marriages long before governments ever had anything to do with them; indeed, the first laws passed regarding marriage in Medieval England were instituted by the Catholic Church in England in 1215, and, on that note, the earliest forms of marriage licenses in England weren't issued by any element of the English government, instead being issued by the English bishops themselves. Marriage was, at that time, a religious institution, not a legal institution. It had always been a religious institution prior to that, and it would remain a religious institution and a religious institution alone in the minds of the English and of the different peoples born out of the English commonwealth for centuries to come. It wasn't until much later that states became involved in the marriage business. Some states started issuing them far earlier than others; Massachusetts, for example, began issuing marriage licenses while it was still a colony in the 1600s. Other states took far longer; Texas, for example, was one of the last states to adopt the practice, not issuing marriage licenses until the mid-1960s (my grandparents' marriage licenses weren't marriage licenses, they were marriage certificates issued by their respective Methodist churches in the 1950s). The rationale behind the transition to marriage licenses varied among the states - states in the North largely adopted the practice to complement and enforce tax laws, while states in the South often did so to enforce bans on interracial and incestuous marriages. It should be noted here that marriage licenses, which are the legal incarnations of the institution of marriage, weren't adopted to expand or enable marriage, but to enforce preexisting laws that related to marriage. Also note that this occurred in a time when the "separation of church and state" was just beginning to be incorporated, and when many Americans, including the legislators carving out American marital laws, still viewed the wall between church and state as porous and unidirectional. Given this gray area between church and state which existed in the minds of most Americans when marriage licenses became a state practice, it probably didn't mean much to most people at the time - after all, how could a people who had attended public schools where prayer was said every morning object to state involvement in a religious practice? And so, the new laws were never really objected to, and were in fact embraced by the racists, social engineers and tax hawks of the era. No court cases came forth, no religious freedom arguments were made against them, and marriage licenses issued by the states became a normal part of American life. Now fast forward a few generations. The states have slowly incorporated several other elements of what's now understood to be marriage into the legal institution created by the license, itself. Visitation rights, power of attorney, tax benefits and other such things have created a robust legal union grafted onto the original religious institution. The word "marriage" has slowly transitioned from a word of deep religious and spiritual meaning into a legal concept and social practice. In the minds of many, marriage is no longer an institution proclaimed by God, it's an institution bestowed by the government that just happens to take place in a church under the officiating of a pastor because of religious beginnings. Our conception of marriage today is not what it originally was or, frankly, what it should be, it's the conception of an institution that has been gradually separated from the church and usurped by the state. This offends basic American political philosophy. If we're to be true to the "separation of church and state" - if we're to have a government which does not interfere in the internal workings of the various religions without just cause - then the states, in principle, should return marriage to the institutions which created it. Now, most of the people reading this post probably think that a move like that would be a death sentence for gay marriage. After all, if the churches were given sole domain over marriage, institutions that have defined marriage as between a man and a woman (or in some cases, a man and several women) for thousands of years aren't going to up and start marrying two men and two women, right? And that would effectively render the legal benefits of marriage off limits to same-sex couples, right? The answer to both of those questions is "no," and for two reasons. The first has to do with the legal rights of marriage as they stand today. There would be no legal issue with a sequestration of the legal and religious institutions if done properly. We've all heard about the "civil union" idea - it could easily be repurposed to serve as legal a union for any two people, not just two people of the same sex. And the word marriage can simply be relegated to churches by law as the symbolic, religious union, for the churches to bestow on whatever two (or more) people they please, regardless of sex or sexual orientation. This brings me to the second reason: there are churches out there that will marry two people of the same sex. In fact, there have been for a while, and I would argue that had states never started issuing marriage licenses at all and churches been left to control marriage from the beginning, gay marriage actually would have happened years ago. I'm sure there are people out there who think that's preposterous. Those people have likely never heard of the Episcopal Diocese in Alabama, which has openly supported same-sex marriage for the better part of a decade. In fact, the pastor at one of the largest Episcopal churches in Alabama, located in Birmingham, is a lesbian with a partner, and that partner has been extended benefits by that Episcopal church for the better part of that decade as well. If a church in Alabama, the heart of the Bible Belt, has been that dedicated to same-sex marriage for that long, it stands to reason that other churches in equally conservative states would have been as well, and that being the case, it further stands to reason that those churches would have begun performing same-sex marriages long before this Supreme Court ruling came down were it not for state laws preventing same-sex couples from obtaining state-issued marriage licenses, and thus that same-sex marriage would have been brought to those states years earlier. This might also make a good point in a discussion about why the government should have extremely limited involvement in the day-to-day lives of Americans generally, but that's a conversation for another time.

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​A threat is a threat is a threat. Was the Russian ambassador saying that Denmark's allegiance to NATO would put their vessels in the crosshairs right now? No. The fact remains, however, that he was still telling them their navy would be in the crosshairs. Not only was that clearly intended to intimidate the Danes into acquiescence, it was intended to send a message that NATO is an enemy of the Russian state, which underscores the point of both my statement and Mr. Romney's in 2012.