>or are "many" parents already sadistic and cruel?

Yes.

Milgram isn't really applicable to this situation. Milgram documents that normal people are willing to perform torture *when ordered to do so by authority figures*, even when doing so causes obvious emotional distress to themselves. The discussion is about whether normal people are willing to perform torture *in violation of the rules*.

No, they don't. Federal kidnapping laws only apply if you cross state lines in preparation for or during the commission of the crime.

>there's Switzerland, where every household just about has an assault rifle, very low violent crime rate.

From WP:
"To carry firearms in public or outdoors (and for an individual who is a member of the militia carrying a firearm other than his Army-issue personal weapons off-duty), a person must have a Waffentragschein (gun carrying permit), which in most cases is issued only to private citizens working in occupations such as security."

So Switzerland is not at all applicable in a discussion of the viability/utility of liberal carry laws.

From just a day or two ago:
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime/Stupid-Crimes-1007644-100078474.html

A more infamous incident:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_Letourneau#Relationship_with_Vili_Fualaau

Note that in the latter example, the couple have been married for the past five years. Sounds like you're the one with the "bullshit ... cop outs".

>The laws against battery apply as much inside my own home as it does in a public place.

Non sequitur. You'll note that any laws against battery within your home are state laws, not Federal (unless your home happens to be on Federal property, e.g. military housing).

>The loan Is a subsidy.

By definition, a subsidy does not need to be payed back, whereas a loan does. jav1231 used the wrong word; get over it.

In addition to the point others have already addressed that we do in fact know exactly how plants convert CO2 to O2, the process is no panacea. The carbon doesn't just disappear -- it needs to be stored somewhere (google "carbon sequestration"). In the case of plants, it is stored in the plant itself; when the plant dies, it's all released. Thus the net benefit of plants for reducing carbon is actually 0, so naively emulating plants gets us nothing. Even worse, reforestation is no solution -- it merely sequesters the amount of carbon released due to deforestation. In order to sequester the carbon released by the burning of fossil fuels, we'd have to reforest the planet to a level much higher than it was when humans came into existence. I'm no atmospheric chemist, but I would think this would result in increased oxygen levels, which could have disastrous consequences.

The problem is that we have released a whole lot of carbon that *used to be* sequestered (as fossil fuels). Fossil fuels were created at a time when the climate was very different -- much hotter, etc -- and so cannot be reproduced naturally now.

>However, some people with children prefer to live outside of the urban areas where schools are becoming penal facilities.

Sure, there are valid reasons for having a long commute; I never implied otherwise.

I also have a child, and I find it's more important to actually spend time with her than to sit in traffic for hours each day. Not to mention that the money saved on gas, insurance, and vehicle maintenance could make a significant dent in the cost of private school tuition.

>20 minute commute? What metropolitan area to you live in?

I live in a city with 1 million people, and my commute is under 20 minutes. Ten of those minutes are spent driving through the campus at 20 mph.

I used to live in a city with a metro population of 2 million (and huge traffic problems, due to it being on a peninsula with two bridges -- no, not San Francisco, but the traffic patterns were similar), and I had a 15 minute commute.

Living far from work is a choice, one which I choose not to make. You can, too.

>it was just a few years back when we though 128bit keys were unbreakably long. Now 2048bit is standard

No one *ever* thought 128 bit asymmetric keys were relatively secure, and no one would consider 2048 bit symmetric keys to now be standard. You compared symmetric key lengths to assymmetric key lengths. Really.

>400 reps, unpaid. Most of them are retirees, own their own small business, or work flexible hours.

How many single mothers? How many people from poor families? How many, say, don't have enough money to own a home? But don't mind me; continue bragging about your unrepresentative democracy.

"Nazi" not so much:
your parent's complaint's correct.
You forfeit your card!

Since your comment is still rated as insightful, I'll jump on the "you're full of crap" bandwagon; hopefully someone will correct your moderation. I had cable internet in Germany in 2006 and 2007. I had slightly higher speed compared to what I have now in the US for slightly less cost (even after converting currencies), and I had no bandwidth cap.

Yes. Unlike Firefox, it's built-in. If you want to devise your own method, you could use the built-in GreaseMonkey work-alike (I'm not sure whether GM or Opera's UserJS came first) to implement it.