If your business is supplying cakes, then you should supply cakes, just do it as well as you manage. No matter who wants a cake. No harm at all in that. There's no reasonable place for a business to refuse service based on opinion. Behavior in your place of business, sure -- but that's about it.

There are quite a few businesses that support themselves, just doing what they do because they like doing it. These people are already financially independent, they just like to work.

I ran a martial arts school with lots of students at a very low rate monthly because I loved teaching. Did it for years. I supported it with my software business. Now, although I'm done teaching, I still keep a free studio open where my black belts can go to practice with mats, heavy bags, speed bags, pads, makiwara, mirrors, recording equipment (for self-evaluation) and so on. It's not huge, but it is heated and cooled and provides everything needed to work on one's progress and maintain conditioning.

Should I decide to hang a "no Christians" sign on my studio, it would make absolutely no difference to my willingness and ability to keep it open. Nor would it for my school. It'd just mean no Christians. And no one who didn't "get it", most likely, as it's just as idiotic as "no gays" or "no blacks" or "no women" or "no felons."

It's quite practical in a case like mine, in terms of doing it and sustaining it. I hope someone in one of these states does it. Not because I support discrimination of this type; but because it puts a point on the real issue here: you shouldn't discriminate based on what others do or don't do as long as it doesn't involve you. And other people's relationship choices do not impact others except in their imagination, and that puts us back to the right and proper and complete lack of a "right not to be offended", which, if it existed, would be a basic and profound anti-liberty concept. Not only would it put a point on it, it would attract the news media quite well, which again would be an entirely good thing, outside of hacks like Drudge and agitprop vendors like Fox News.

Foreign governments?

Surely you must have noticed all the bad press the NSA has gotten lately with the Snowden leaks.

Even the most patriotic American might be disturbed upon learning that a trusted government agency has been illegally spying on American citizens for years.

Frankly I'm surprised that you seem to be standing up for the NSA. That takes some guts.

So. What you're saying is that Christians should be forced to wear armbands. Have I got that right?

What do you want on them? "Superstitious"? "Gullible"? "Critical Thinking Impaired"?

Just wondering...

But one doesn't need contraception. sex education, or abortion in order to have sex. After all, no other animals on our planet have contraception, sex education, or abortion and they have plenty of sex.

Yes indeed. But (some) people are able to evaluate the consequences of having sex, such that they would like to modify their behavior so that they can enjoy the act, without the consequences. By attempting to remove the means to do this, religion seeks to leverage people's actions through their concern for consequences (pregnancy and so on, if you are having trouble following.)

Inasmuch as religion has no relevance to my life, I have no interest in what they would like me to do, and I utterly reject anything that they would force me to do. Now, if you want to restrict your access to contraception, sex education and abortion along the lines of some set of religious dictates, that's perfectly ok. Just keep your superstitious claptrap away from my personal choices and you'll be fine. Otherwise, we have a problem.

your "choice" to like the same sex isn't.

You have to read as far as the ninth amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Other rights that are exclusively a matter of informed, personal and consensual choice, are obviously covered. Any law -- or private action -- that denies such rights is unconstitutional or simply wrongheaded.

Yes, I know there are many such laws and attitudes. WRT the laws, we had laws implementing slavery and denial of woman's right to vote (among many others), and we managed to figure out those were asshole positions to take. So there's considerable highly visible precedent for us correcting our course when ideas like yours manage to turn into law and acting out.

Hopefully, eventually we'll have legislators -- probably by accident -- that will be pro liberty instead of these lace-panty, pearl-clutching corporate shills we have now. As far as the attitudes go, we can't fix stupid. Yet. But genetics is coming right along, there's hope there, too.

We're nor having an election here, we're discussing who is electable. Letting your own partisan views enter in makes it harder for you to see.

Except give them the senate and their largest house majority since 1930.

You are reading too much Salon and DailyKos. Who won more congressional seats in 2012?

Well that's definitely true.

No, emotional is the way you state them. And your posts are full of emotion.

When it prevents you from thinking clearly. And you aren't thinking clearly, you are defending a politician.

Since you don't want to look up the relevant policies, here is the retention policy, here is the state department communications policy. In case the documents seem unclear to you, Scott Gration was fired by Clinton in part because of not following email procedures.

But none of that matters. Who cares if it was illegal? Nixon's "18 lost minutes" were not illegal, but that doesn't make it right. Even if somehow she thought it was ok to run her own email server, deleting half the emails and sending the rest over on paper was something she knew was bad.

That's a joke.....the Bay-Delta water plan is not sound, and no one is happy with it. Everyone agrees it needs to change.....the problem is how to change it.

We've been carefully growing for two full seasons, with some plants getting multiple cycles. No losses at all, other than one hailstorm, which we now prophylactically deal with by having the project under a bit of roof where it can still get the sun it needs, but hail can't hit it straight on. Not a perfect solution, but it's something. And it has worked.

I am convinced that the details matter.

Well, not really. The issue is that there are lots and lots of AC devices out there, so what you're doing is converting to a form that is in most common use. If you have surplus power that is free (solar as under discussion), there's no problem, resource-wise, in doing it just that way. Which makes it not very moronic at all. Kind of convenient, actually.

Considerations for a free, non-polluting resource have to be approached with an open mind. The range of consequences is different. They can be quite favorable.

It is MUCH easier to power them off than to build a solar+battery+inverter+separate cirquit[sic] to power them.

Oh, no doubt. But that wasn't what the GP was saying. Also, even though it's easier, it uses up a costly resource when it's on. The solar powered widgets do not. So you save some; the solar system saves all. Food for thought. Gotta figure the ROI. It's not that hard, either. Plus there's the dependability issue. Power fails, your devices keep running... that's nothing to sneer at.

*change* that undermines human plans represents a big challenge.

Not when the change is so slow that you have generations to decide to move away from it, or alter your investments, it isn't. Every generation typically goes into new homes. Somewhere. Eventually, a generation (not this one or any one soon) will go... "y'know honey, instead of moving here in Miami, let's check out Vermont." Or where ever.

And you know what's kind of irritating? I never hear anyone going on about sea level rise mention this little fact: Change is the hottest possible breeding ground for opportunity. Change means employment, undertakings, recovery, rehabilitation, relocation, new methods, new ideas, new crops, new businesses. And so on.