Positive for the toll-booth operators in CA, of course. More fines!

Yes, I do get the picture. YOU want to ban things YOU find offensive, because YOU know better than anyone else, comrade.

Driving cars with poor gas mileage, or more to the topic, with glass that's not the most efficient for air conditioning, is a societal problem?

Yikes, that's a scary precedent.

What else do you think is a serious societal problem?

Where do you stop meddling in my choices as to the products I buy? I can't buy it because you don't "approve"? Can I buy a pickup truck, or do I need to "prove" I am a farmer?

Or will you make me take transit?

The market will stop making things that people don't buy. The only cars I recall seeing with glass like that were the old lincolns with the orange windows that the old people drove.

As far as your nanny state retort: There are people who believe that people ought to be left to their own choices in life, good or bad. And there are people who believe that their choices must be made for them, because they know better than the person they're deciding for. You have made an argument for the latter.

Problems start when people who are under your control rightfully abrogate their responsibilities to you too - you see, when you can't decide, you shouldn't hold them responsible. So they sit on their butts, whine about benefits, and make babies in the meantime. Because they whine about not being responsible, they're making everyone else feel bad, so you repress them - speak your mind, fewer, or no benefits. Your money runs low anyways with that much drag on the system, so all you can make are Trabant cars with cardboard hoods. Until the money runs out. Now what?

I don't understand why he would, and he didn't, or else we'd have heard about it on CNN. It's probably facetious on your part, or you're ignorant about non-gangsta's with guns.

Law-abiding gun owners (and unless proven otherwise, he's still law-abiding) don't wave those things around, you know.

So you're saying you should control people just because you can? Because that's how it reads. And Rwanda happened because of inaction - as in saying you care, but doing nothing.

If he has a permit, he's free to carry. If he feels he need a body guard, he can have one if he can afford one. I am sure there are plenty of investors that feel stiffed by his use of their money.

But should be up to the customer.

If you want something that gets 10 mpg, go ahead and buy it. Just don't come looking to me for a handout when you can no longer afford the gas. Yep, history spoke against me last year, yep, were 70,000 dollar Hummer drivers got their handouts.

Same with a 50 mpg car. Who cares how it gets there, as long as it meets all emission regulations and safety standards. When people who know nothing about automobile technology mandate what needs to be used, they'll be no better off than the software industry - beholden to marketing, lobbying and politics, and ... never mind

What I find most ironic is how few people in the USA and the UK are really familiar with the works of Orwell. "1984" is an outstanding Sci-Fi book, although it's written as a narrative of the misery of oppressive politics, supported by (what was then) technology that could only be described as a fantasy.

For lighter reading, and lest you be accused of creating an oppressive atmosphere, one of the Douglas Adams like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy should also be on the menu.

It stops terrorism about as well as the Canadian Gun Registry, London CCTV, and the Patriot Acts combined = 0, at least officially according to the General Accounting Office or their countries equivalent. Of course the real number they say, is secret, and zero isn't a real number...

Not as a green card holder - do that and they deny you the renewal. An "isolated incident" of course.

The core of the problem is that for some reason "digital" means "different."

Rights are rights, and should apply equally whether the medium is digital or analog. Think about it.

So you could copy an analog tape? But copying a DVD is a crime?

You can call someone out on their misdeeds on a town meeting, and (if wrong) be subject to due process? If you post the same on your blog or an internet forum, no due process.

The notion that free speech, fair use, freedom of expression are segregated between digital and analog is odious, and is used by the enemies of all freedoms to further their goals. Digitizing some sort of bill of rights cowtows as much to the evildoers, nanny states, and control freaks of the world as the honoring of sharia in western legal systems does to islamic extremists. It's sad to see.

So in Canada all blank media is subject to a fine for the piracy one might commit with that media, irrelevant of actual use.

This akin to you having to pay a partial speeding ticket every time you start your car; you're guilty, period.

Of course, courts ruled that since this is a fine, and has been paid, additional prosecution is difficult, which really upset Canada's RIAA, which pushed so hard for the blank media fine in the first place.

Retarded.