Spoken like someone who has never done the actual math (let alone paid self-employment taxes, spent time arranging for that next contract, buying your own health insurance and all the rest). People who bill $600 a day are lucky to take half of that home at the end of the day.

You're doing it wrong.

If you feel pinched by the fact that a sick day or a holiday isn't a billable day, then you have made some very poor choices about what you're selling, and how much you're charging for it. Why should anyone take advice from some one who hasn't done a little basic math before signing a contract?

It's also likely you were going to feel better again anyway. But more to the point, how are those placebos at treating, say, a raging inner ear infection, or blood cancer?

Someone who uses terms like "feeling down" and "feeling great again" while attempting to lecture other people about how scientifically worthless their opinions are needs to look in the mirror.

I'm referring to the fact that we find (and refine, through legislation and court review) reasons to infringe on constitutionally protected rights all the time.

Remember though, not counting people who've been found to be crazy (who also can lose their liberty before actually committing a crime), the people who lose their rights to keep firearms because they're felons are being punished after the fact (same thing happens when they lose their right to vote). Likewise when a judge finds cause to issue a legally binding order that says he/she thinks a person's behavior is looking dangerous enough that they're not allowed to go certain places or see certain people. When you lose the right to purchase a firearm because a judge thinks you're acting like a dangerous jerk, that's still the judicial system reacting to your chosen actions.

Constitutionally, we also embrace the notion that the government can't infringe your right to speak, assemble, and move about ... but we lock up criminals, preventing them from doing just those things. Your participation in the social (and constitutional) contract goes away when you act to deny its protections to other people. So, you stop enjoying the defense of your liberty when you decide that someone else needs to give theirs up so you can (for example) rob them or whatnot. This isn't an irreconcilable situation - it makes perfect sense.

Of course they can. That's what the courts are for. Just recently, the Supreme Court ruled on exactly this topic, pointing out that some of the local restrictions on gun ownership (like DC's) were in fact counter-constitutional. There: matter resolved.

First, they aren't a matter of law. Amendments to the constitution are a structural change to the nation's operating charter. The constitution's single most important purpose is to LIMIT the power of the government. Changing the charter in order to allow the government to take away liberties is indeed difficult, and damn well should be. Some people on the left are incensed by what some other people have to say (witness what's happening on college campuses, where speech is being censored like never before). Those groups would LOVE to strike down the First Amendment, so that they could use government power to determine what people can say. You should be very glad that it would be so difficult for them to be able to strip away the constitution's protections.

So, again, point to a person who stole $15 million. Specifically. Or $5 million - whatever you like. Referring to a "thing" that happened, without actually pointing out which person broke an actual law but was not prosecuted - that's deliberately vague on your part. You seem to have something specific in mind, legally, so why not mention it?

What I said isn't wrong just because your tone happens to align with the commonly held positions of a particular group. You just sounded like one of that group. That doesn't make it any less specious when you use the word "racial" incorrectly, or assign that mis-use to other people. I don't know anyone, despite your assertion, that thinks Japan has a lower rate of gun violence because of the race of most of the people who live in that culture. No more than I think their visual characteristics are responsible for that country's unusually high suicide rate, tendency to see a lot of stabbings, or especially peculiar pop-culture strangeness. Those are cultural, not racial differences. Whether you're someone who makes that mistake/misrepresentation all the time, or just occasionally, doesn't change how and why it's nonsense.

Like most liberals, you can't seem to understand that race (physical differences which manifest themselves in fairly obvious, visible ways, and which are handed down through reproduction) and culture are two different things. What's up with that, anyway? Why is that so hard for people to understand?

The culture in gangland Chicago is violent and murderous. But people who share racial characteristics with those most commonly found in that criminal culture live elsewhere, within different cultures in other places around the country, and don't have the same problem.

But that gets the PC and Moral Relativism crowds all upset, because that implies that personal decisions about behavior actually make a difference. And that's no fun for the craven people who would rather blame inanimate objects for what people choose to do (thus letting themselves off the hook of making a moral pronouncement about somebody's personal or cultural behavior).

Of course that's not at all true. Every state in the country makes provisions for keeping crazy and criminal people from buying guns. It doesn't help when one of their family members decides to commit the criminal act of facilitating their acquisition of one anyway. Several states are actively knocking on doors and taking guns away from people who have been convicted of certain crimes, or who have fallen under a protective order or deemed not sane enough to own weapons. You're just (knowingly, I'm sure) wrong on the facts.

You mean, like we already have? Sure, why not. People who don't realize that just need to check their state laws so they can see that's already the case.

You're deliberately misrepresenting the second amendment. Even if you can't parse the actual words right in front of you, you can go off and ready countless documents by the people who wrote and ratified that amendment, showing that you've got it exactly, precisely backwards. The founders, having spent years living under the militaristic thumb of the British government in the colonies, were very apprehensive about the continued existence of a standing army (especially a federal one). Still, they knew that there had to be an organized military capacity at one or more organizational levels (at least state, county, etc). Their wording in the second amendment, if you were to use slightly more modern, casual parlance, would go like this: "Because we know there will always have to be a permanent military structure in place to defend the country, we don't want that military to have a monopoly on the ownership of arms, as we experienced under British rule. This amendment officially prohibits the government from preventing the people from keeping and bearing their own arms."

The second amendment was written specifically to preserve your personal right, should you choose to exercise it, to keep and bear arms exactly because there was inevitably going to be a well organized militia operating nearby, and the founders - having seen what they'd seen - considered it absolutely vital that the organized military didn't become the only entity in the country that was armed.

Your fantasy, in which it's exactly the opposite, flies in the face of everything the founders had to say on the subject, and is completely contrary to the debate, writings, and ratification votes that surrounded the amendment's place in the constitution. It's just like the first amendment in that capacity. The first amendment doesn't spell out who's allowed to speak, or indicate that you have to be qualified to own a printing press. It's there to prevent government over-reach, just like the second amendment. And the fourth, etc.

No, he was not law abiding. He's not allowed to take possession of a firearm with his previous and pending felony legal issues. He was already breaking the law before he even walked into the place, just as he'd broken the law earlier while carrying controlled drugs. Very likely at least one of his family members also broke the law in facilitating his ownership of a firearm while aware of his legal situation. So come up with a better example. Like, say, the law abiding guy in Norway who killed an island full of students.

Not all of them were wealthy or successful, but wanted to get the colonial monkey off their backs so that, among other things, they could pursue exactly that goal. Regardless, even the already wealthy people who were involved in the forming of the country and its charter came right out and explained it to you, if you're paying attention. Which you're not, obviously.

He didn't say any such thing. Criminals, by their actions, waive their claims on the same liberties that are enjoyed by the rest of us. You seem deliberately unclear on the concept.

If the threat of violence is credible, most laws treat it essentially just like an assault that actually employs the violence. Threatening to hurt somebody until they give you their property is a violent crime - because it's predicated on your willingness and threat to do violence in order to steal something. With or without a weapon has nothing to do with it.

And can you point to an example of someone who's actually robbed $15 million and not faced criminal prosecution? Or are you confusing robbery with legal activity that you wish were not legal? There are people in the world who think you make obscenely too much money, and they're convinced that the only reason they're not personally better off is because other people are better off than they are, which makes you one of the people who is robbing them of their prosperity. Should you go to jail? That person's irrational complaint is just as good as your deliberately vague one, right?

So can seeing a cow by the side of the road. So what? Let me guess: you demand that every business you visit put up a series of Trigger Warnings outside their door, just in case anyone coming in might be offended by the sight of a lobster, or a large steak knife, or an overweight person wearing horizontal stripes (the horror!). What the hell is it with people cultivating this new flavor of paralyzing, exquisitely sensitive fear of everything? Colleges are so in the thrall of this PC nonsense that they're throwing potential guest speakers off campus in order to make sure that not even one special snowflake in the student body might be made uncomfortable by hearing the expression of an idea that's contrary to their delicate world view. This has to stop while there are still at least some vertebrates left on the planet.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

A bomber pilot may let loose with similar guided weapons from miles away, or from 30,000 feet. He may never fly over that spot again, and may have no need to hang around doing bomb damage assessment. The drone operator may spend a month flying over the same area, gathering intelligence on individual people, vehicles, buildings ... many of them know the ground in some insurgent-run village in Iraq better than you know the ground a few blocks from where you live. And it's the drone operators and satellite imaging people who usually do the remote BDA, not traditional pilots. Traditional pilots don't "feel the impact" more, but it does cost a great deal more, and introduce a lot mroe risk, to operate an aircraft with them on board. You seem to prefer that, for some reason. Strange.