By definition within the law, Valeria Plame was not an operative.

Scooter Libby didn't out her.

Scotter Libby lied to investigators, for whatever idiotic reason, and was convicted of that crime. His sentence was commuted but the conviction and its costs are still on his record.

No, it's worse than that.

Obama never really said anything of substance. He said many things that led people to believe they heard what they wanted to hear; a classic move by a flim-flam man.

A friend of mine used to be in the stock market and people would ask him, "What's the market going to do tomorrow?"

His stock reply was, "A lot of people are going to be surprised."

The number of people who thought he actually told them something was shocking. Obama was the same. He said a lot of things were bad but never said what he would do instead. He used the ultimate echo-chamber, a biased media, to say things for him that he never said.

Allow the local governments to charge more for faster lanes.

Oh, wait, they already do that in some localities.

I've heard arguments like yours before and it's similar to someone who argues against wearing a seat belt because they might be in an accident involving fire or submersion and they want to be able to escape quickly. There are very limited circumstances where wearing a seat belt may cause more injury or damage than not wearing it. The vast majority of people in the vast majority of accidents are better off wearing their seatbelt. It's the same with carrying a gun for self-defense. There are very limited circumstances when carrying a gun for self-defense is worse than not having one at all when facing danger.

I will give you that if someone sneaks up behind me and shoots me there's little I can do.

Self-defense is about a lot more than being able to use a firearm in a proficient manner; one has to be aware of their surroundings. Someone minding their own business is at a disadvantage when confronted by a predator as they are forced to be in the position of reacting. Fortunately, the first thing a predator does when you ignore his demand is to repeat the demand. You'd be surprised at how much time is available to someone sufficiently trained in gun handling skills.

When I carry my gun it is loaded, cocked and ready to go. It is in condition 1. Being a 1911, it has two safeties - a thumb safety that has to be pressed down and a grip safety that disengages when I properly grip the firearm. Disengagement of these safeties is a reflexive move for me and an integral part of the draw stroke from the holster. It takes me no more time to disengage those safeties than it takes me to draw the firearm from the holster.

In a close-quarter situation I may not be aiming at all. I may be firing from a retention position.

Anything from 6 to 15 feet or so and I can aim well enough using a flash-sight picture and deliver a shot quickly. Anything out to 75 feet and I'm comfortable delivering the shots I need from a standing position. My drills at 75 feet are usually two shots center of mass (8" circle) in under 2 seconds from the holster. My drills from 9 feet are two shots center of mass, or one head-shot, in under 1 1/2 seconds from the holster. These performance standards are fairly easy to accomplish with proper training and practice.

In my force-on-force training and in my real-life situations, the amount of time necessary to draw and aim is the least of my issues. There's usually a lot more going on that has to be properly assessed. With proper training these other issues become part of an overall process that becomes ingrained and easily relied upon.

One other thing I'll give you or anyone opposed to using firearms for self-defense: I've seen a lot of people in force-on-force training that should never carry a gun. Many of them should probably never leave the safety of their basement either.

It's impossible for me to understand your logic.

I've certainly lived off a lot less than that (either of your numbers), quite comfortably. I once worked three jobs to be able to afford 1/2 a bedroom in a two bedroom apartment with three other guys. It created an incentive for me to find a more efficient way to earn what I needed in order to live in the style I wanted to live.

At what point did it become necessary that the government mandate a wage level so that people can live the way they want without incentive to live better?

Really, you think I'm a mean-spirited jerk with no empathy because I want people to have an incentive to get a better life and improve their skills?

What is your hierarchy of needs list that makes it so difficult to "live on" $1,000/month? Do we need to mandate a wage so that people can live alone in their own apartment or house? How large? Should they be able to have cell phone service, internet service? How about a computer? What kind?

Get a roommate or two and pool your resources.

In the richest country that *ever* existed, in an era of post-scarcity (at least here in the US) with productivity through the roof and increasing rapidly, how can we allow the removal of incentives for people to work hard and get ahead and make something of themselves.

Just because some fail doesn't mean we should dumb down the entire system so you don't hurt. Fear of failure is a great incentive.

I'd prefer to keep telling people that with hard work they can become something. It might not be easy but they will be all the more satisfied when they succeed.

Your argument strikes me as wanting to tell people the "man" is keeping you down and you'll never succeed so don't work hard and we'll make sure you can live a life of relative luxury.

Forget all that and explain the economics that would allow raising everyone's pay to live the standard you've set without causing a rise in the cost of living at that level.

What didn't happen was some asshat's desire to demonstrate his knowledge of "inside knowledge" outweighed the oath he or she took to keep their mouth(s) shut.

It wasn't the method that was used to gather the intelligence that caused the problem, it was the disclosure of that method.

From the summary - "researchers, backed by millions of dollars from the federal government, are looking for ways to protect key industries from the impact of climate change by racing to develop new breeds of farm animals that can stand up to the hazards of global warming."

I think he meant to say, "researchers, lured by millions of dollars from the federal government, are looking for ways to win federal grants related to climate change and are racing to suck up as much money from the feds as they can under the rubric of fixing the hazards of global warming."

Great points. I've gone through similar processes essentially balancing calories-in vs. calories-out. It's easier today using any number of apps for my phone.

What's most shocking about selecting the proper foods is portion sizes.

I had a meal last night that was lean pork loin (6 oz/168 grams), green peas (1 cup) and about 3 cups of potatoes. It felt like a huge serving to me. That meal had significantly fewer calories (556) than my 1/2 of a fast food meal my wife and I shared the day before while we were driving across Arizona.

I now look at food as expensive or cheap based on calories provided rather than dollars. My wife will ask me if I want a particular item to eat and I might respond, "No thanks, that's too expensive," meaning that I'll spend too many of my day's allotted calories on that particular food.

One can still eat at a fast food restaurant by getting a grilled chicken sandwich (relatively cheap calorie wise) vs. a fried chicken sandwich (very expensive calorie wise). If one is careful then one can eat a larger volume of food and feel fuller while getting fewer calories and better nutrition.

It does require, however, a certain level of personal responsibility and ownership.

I agree, mostly, with your comment about the 10th amendment. It has two parts - the States and the People.

However, your reading of the 2nd seems to imply that the 2nd grants a right rather than restricting a power. The preamble to the Bill of Rights states the intention of the BoR to be a further set of restrictions on the government and not a grant of rights to the people.

I, obviously, find it very difficult to accept that the 2nd amendment is not a fundamental right given the preamble to the Bill of Rights, its inclusion in the Bill of Rights and its appearance near the top of the list.

It's difficult for me to see how I could agree with your conclusion without some significant manipulations of the purpose of the document and language:

- The overall purpose of the Bill of Rights is to place further declaratory and restrictive clauses on the power of the government not on individual rights

- The Bill of Rights enumerates individual rights and, except for the 10th, mentions no other entity except in a restrictive capacity. In the 10th the states are mentioned in order to further restrict the powers of the national government.

- Whatever the purpose of the 2nd amendment its conclusion is direct, "...the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The directness of that statement can not be ignored. The authors could have just as easily said, "...the rights of the states to arm their citizens shall not be infringed." An insistence on using the first part of the sentence to modify the second ignores the plain language of the second. There are many elegant ways to write the sentence to support your position and none of those were selected.

Finally, I believe that all our rights are fundamental. The concept of a fundamental right is a fiction invented by the Supreme Court and one that really started to erode in the 1930s. Nevertheless, it is part of our current jurisprudence.

What is most disturbing to me is that we now have to demonstrate that a right is fundamental in order to have that right incorporated against the states. This is another example of why Roberts and other Supreme Court justices are wrong when they start with a presumption of constitutionality when examining a law rather than a presumption of liberty. That presumption began in the 1930s with the wholesale redefinition of "commerce" in order to expand the reach of the national government.

I, too, believe in state's rights. However, that doesn't mean I can accept that states have the power to infringe on our fundamental rights.

The rights protected by the 2nd amendment are rights retained by the people and, in my opinion, are not subject to regulation by states under their powers.

The 14th amendment seems to have clarified that issue.

The Bill of Rights, by the way, does not grant powers to any governmental entity - state or national. It is a list of rights that are so fundamental that further restrictions on the government(s) had to be enshrined.

If you're implying that the 2nd amendment grants a power to the states then I'd like to understand what structure in the Constitution would give you the impression that anything in the Bill of Rights grants any power to a state.

I say good for them given that the term "well-regulated militia" has no meaning as it relates to a right held by the people.

If you actually read the entire Bill of Rights, including the preamble, you would see that it is not a document granting rights to the people but, rather, a document further restricting the power of the national government.

If Stevens wants to properly grant the regulatory right to the national government then he would follow the model of the 18th amendment and grant the power to regulate firearms to the national government.

You want to use the phrase "well-regulated militia" as a way of allowing the national government to regulate firearms. Where in the U.S. Constitution is the power to regulate firearms granted to the government.

The 2nd Amendment is not poorly written when taken in context of the preamble to the Bill of Rights.

The 2nd Amendment is not a grant of a right to the people but is a specific prohibition on the national government.

The Constitution is not designed to be changed with time except through the amendment process. The concept that we will nilly-willy change the definition of words so that we can enforce any law we want and still claim adherence to the constitution is ridiculous. It begs the questions, why even have a written constitution if it is subject to change by merely changing the definition or meaning of words? If we merely want to follow the current fashion regarding fundamental rights why bother writing any rules that limit the power of the national government?

Until the 1930s, when Congress and Roosevelt found a sympathetic ear in the Supreme Court, there was no question that the national government had no authority to infringe on many of our rights. It was only the redefinition of the word "commerce" that allowed the national government to use that as a penumbra to cover all sorts of activities that would have previously been seen as infringements of our rights.

If Stevens wanted to really amend the Constitution to regulate firearms then he would propose something along the lines of the 18th amendment that brought is prohibition. He would grant the national government the power to regulate firearms rather than attempt to further cloud the issue and reinforce the concept that the Bill of Rights grants people rights rather than further restricts the power of the government.

We can go on and on about who should be allowed to have a gun, that the 2nd amendment needs to be fixed and the historical context of what the words mean.

What Stevens and others who support strict gun control are missing is a part of the Bill of Rights that is rarely discussed: the preamble.

"THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will be ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."

The Bill of Rights is not a list of rights granted to the people that requires, or is indeed subject, to endless interpretation. The preamble captures the contemporaneous debate issues - should the US Constitution attempt to list the rights of the people in a document that was designed to list the limited powers of the national government.

The compromise was a list of rights that were considered so fundamental that "...further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added..." Those clauses were restrictions on the powers of the national government.

1st Amendment - "Congress shall make now law..."
2nd Amendment - "...shall not be infringed."
3rd Amendment - "No soldier shall..."
4th Amendment - "...shall not be violated..."

There are many who believe the Bill of Rights is a granting of rights to the people when it is actually a harsher, further restriction on the powers and authority of the federal government.

If one looks at the 18th amendment one sees that the prohibition on alcohol was not simply a prohibition but was a specific grant of power to the national government to regulate alcohol. It wouldn't have been enough to simply outlaw alcohol. The amendment had to grant an additional power to the government.

Stevens' amendment to the 2nd amendment would not prohibit the private ownership of firearms nor would it grant a power to the national government to regulate that ownership. Stevens' proposed amendment would simply reinforce the mistaken belief that the Bill of Rights grants rights to the people rather than restricting the power of government.

Much of the attitude regarding the role of the Bill of Rights can be traced to the 1930s when Congress and Roosevelt found a friendly Supreme Court willing to change the definition of commerce to allow the Commerce Clause to be used to regulate all manner of activities.

People are still willing to say, "The Constitution gives me that right," when, in fact, the Constitution give you no rights. The U.S. Constitution was designed to limit the power of the federal government so they couldn't infringe on the rights you have simply because you exist.

MTV Interview

Obama was opposed to Prop 8 because he felt a ban on gay marriage should not be enshrined in a constitution. He also said that marriage was between a man and a woman and was opposed to gay marriage.

You can see the full remark in the link above. The article is dated November 1, 2008.

Funny, it seems that government interference is closing the markets by making it more and more difficult for new companies to enter markets.

Is it not government interference that keeps new ISPs from entering many markets?