As a result Wikipedia is great for finding simple facts like who were George Washington's Parents or the origin of Rickrolling, but useless if the subject is controversial. Squatters on controversial pages will remove anything you post on "their" turf within hours, and sometimes minutes, of your changes or additions. They simply won't tolerate facts that contradict their POV.

In the US cops can use deadly force any time they feel like it, knowing they can almost always get away with it.

Sure it can.

A debaptizing ceremony is quick and simple. You just have someone stand over you with a blow dryer. blow it on you for fifteen or twenty seconds, and declare you are now officially debaptized.

It's best if you have an atheist do it.

Thanks. You just proved my point.

On the flip side, if all you read is news sources that think socialized medicine is a wonderful panacea you're going to be just as ignorant.

People pick news sources whose bias matches theirs. Unless you get out of your comfort zone on a regular basis your knowledge will be limited and your opinions stilted. If you read lefty news (i.e. most news) you need to check out the conservative viewpoint at least once a week. If you read conservative news, you need to read the lefty media at least once a week.

People who get all their news from The New York Times and NPR as every bit as ignorant as those who get all their news from Fox and The Wall Street Journal.

And vice versa.

Sounds like a way all the priests can keep their kiddy porn in one place.

What about the future employer who never mentions it in an interview, but finds it later?

It doesn't matter that you don't get called very often. You still have to change your private life. You've got to know that you can miss the end of a movie or them middle of a concert or even just a good dream at the whim of your employer.

You should get paid for that.

So Bush = chimp is perfectly acceptable, but if it's done on anyone has dark skin it's automatically racism?

Nonsense, but predictable nonsense.

Can we please mod any "fixed that for you" posts down to oblivion? How about a special -100 for them, along with loss of all the posters karma forever.

I'd just make him spend one day in jail for each piece of spam he sent out.

The tax idea doesn't make sense. It's not likely to happen.

You're half right. It makes no sense at all - but that's never stopped Big Brother. BB is only interested in money and power. "Sense" has nothing to do with his actions.

The idea that discouraging people from drinking diet soda is going to stop them from binging on a box of chips ahoy or fig newtons is stupid.

Absolutely. But that has no bearing on the inevitably of the tax.

Flat taxes put more burden on the lower classes.

The government doesn't care about that. As long as they get more money and power they're happy.

Obama said he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone making less than $250k/year. The first thing he did in office was raise the tobacco tax to fund SCHIP. The biggest increase was on roll-your-own tobacco - he raised it 2400%. I don't think too many wealthy or middle class people are rolling their own cigs.

Kids are supposed to get dirty, get cuts and scrapes and bruises, find themselves in difficult situations, get filthy and yes, even get lost. They're even supposed to lose at games, and join competitions where everyone doesn't get a trophy. Learning how to handle small pains and failures results in a happy, healthy adult who is much better equipped to handle the bigger pains and failures that come from Real Life.

Parents are hard-wired to protect their kids from any harm, no matter how minor. Parents who don't learn to fight that urge raise helpless self-centered adults. Obviously, we need to protect our kids from real dangers and big hurts when we can, and it can be difficult to find the correct middle point. This isn't a correct middle point - this is for paranoid helicopter parents. It is a fine tool for those who want to raise dependent wussies or seriously deranged trouble makers.

Kids who are given the freedom to get hurt and get in trouble usually don't in any big way. Those who are watched every minute have much more incentive to get into much more trouble when they finally figure out how to get away from their overbearing parents.

Although my kids are grown now (and since they were allowed to get hurt and get in trouble they very seldom did) I really like the attitude of this site: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

Of course it's the responsibility of the pedestrian to be aware, but everyone of us has, at some time in our life, been distracted, lost in thought, involved in a conversation, watching that hot chick across the street, etc. and stepped into the street when we shouldn't have, heard the danger approaching and saved ourselves. It happens, we're human.

OTOH, I'm not all that keen on congress making laws, and they're bound to screw this one up and demand something that's either ineffective or extremely annoying.

The control freaks have won, again.

The control freaks have been in charge for years. Pages on straightforward subjects are fairly accurate, but if it is at all controversial, WikiNazis are camped out on it. It doesn't matter if your facts are stated clearly, documented, and presented in an unbiased manner. If they don't like them your changes are gone in an hour or two.

I've tried adding facts to their Passive Smoking page, to no avail. The very name of the page is loaded with bias. The correct term is Environmental Tobacco Smoke. The common term is Second Hand Smoke, and the page used to be called that. But they've deliberately used the most loaded term possible for the page, and it's packed with inaccurate and biased statements. I've added facts, complete with references, and they've never lasted more than two hours. Even tiny edits to make a statement more neutral were quickly removed.

If there's any controversy about a subject you can be sure Wikipedia will only highlight the POV of the resident WikiNazis. This has made the site useless for all but the most basic subjects for years. Now they're just making it even more impossible for facts they don't like to be displayed.