Just because that's the price the FBI paid doesn't mean your girlfriend would have to pay the same price. The government has been known, from time to time, to overpay for things.

I was being a bit flippant, but I think this is just a quibble. Well regulated meant that they were trained, prepared, supplied and ready to fight. "Shoot straight" wouldn't have been the dictionary definition, but that's what it boils down to.

"[A citizenry that is ready and capable of using their own guns] being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This is the only logical reading of the second amendment.

"[Citizens that are controlled, supervised, and follow all the rules imposed by the government] being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the [army] to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is self-contradictory and nonsensical.

Yes, in the mid- to late- 1700s, "well regulated" meant they could shoot straight. The necessity of such a militia was NOT meant to protect our liberties from foreign attack (the government has a military and the idea of needing a constitutional amendment forbidding the government from taking it's OWN guns away is laughable). Rather the goal was to preserve the right to revolt.

In 1776, regulation most definitely did NOT mean "controlled by the government." You did not need a license to practice medicine, much less sell lemonade or pretty much any business activity. You didn't need to get a permit to burn your trash or permission ride a horse. Governments were not about setting prices, insuring safety, or controlling who could perform what job. In fact, the first modem government regulations didn't come until the "robber barons" started colluding on prices for railroad hauls. They had the audacity to charge a higher price based on demand for a route rather than just charging by the mile. The ICC was formed to bust this oligopoly. The first commissioner just so happened to have been a lawyer for the railroads (who else would know enough about their business), and his first act was to set uniform pricing (at the higher rate). The oligopoly finally had a way to enforce their pricing without the possibility of defectors or cheaters. And thus the modern era of regulation began.

And they DON'T serve ads on school accounts.

Thank you for so astutely reading that thread; I thought maybe I was losing my mind :) I keep disagreeing with him, and he keeps saying we're on the same page :)

Yeah that's neither right nor left, it's the universal language of greedy bloodsuckers.

The fact that Democrats support something doesn't negate the possibility of something being right wing. The Democrats are not ideologically pure, or ideologically homogenous, and very few of them can be considered "left".

To me, pretending that copyright is only about property rights, and ignoring the fact that copyright was also supposed to be about free speech and about making material available for free to the public after a limited time, is definitely "right wing".

Exactly. Would have been nice for judges to start doing this 11 years ago, but glad they've come around.

This isn't changing the rules. This is following the rules.

See my article in the ABA's Judges Journal about how judges had been bending the rules for the RIAA. "Large Recording Companies v. The Defenseless: Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigation". The Judges' Journal, Judicial Division of American Bar Association. Summer 2008 edition, Part 1 of The Judges Journals' 2-part series, "Access to Justice".

I beg to differ.

Malibu Media can't choose the venue, or the judge.

If Judge Hellerstein's decision is followed by other judges, it will be the death knell of the present wave of Malibu Media litigation.