The three dissents came from the conservative side of the court: Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. Maybe next time you should read the ruling (or even the Wikipedia summary) before you open your mouth? Of course, that wouldn't have meshed with your talking points, so why bother to learn the facts when you can take a cheap shot?

Take PBS out of the equation, because they don't get retransmission fees. They're carried under the must-carry doctrine, meaning the cable company has to carry the local PBS station, but in exchange the station doesn't get any direct financial consideration.

Regarding the other networks, Congress gave broadcasters two choices: must-carry or retransmission consent. Most broadcasters have opted for retransmission consent, because they see it as a source of revenue that offsets their declining advertising dollars. The economics of the broadcast business have changed and it's debatable that it could survive without this source of revenue. Actually it's debatable that it will survive at all in the long term, in its current form, even with retransmission revenue. Broadcasters will continue to be squeezed financially, retransmission fees won't plug the gap indefinitely, and their ultimate future is probably one of even more reality TV crap (it's cheap to produce) and re-runs. Quality original content will be pay-to-play, with the exception of PBS, which will probably manage to survive on the goodwill of its benefactors (here's hoping), though even that isn't a guaranteed thing.

As far as why Congress set up this ecosystem, you'd have to ask them. They were trying to fix a lot of problems in the marketplace, MSOs were refusing to carry local channels or re-selling them for profit, which was a problem. As is usually the case, Congress managed to create more problems than they solved, and the legislation was actually passed over GHWB's veto.

Take it up with Congress. It's not the job of the Supreme Court to nullify lousy laws unless they fail to pass Constitutional Muster. The Cable Act is Congress exercising its power to regulate interstate commerce, so what exactly do you wish the nine to do about it?

Their argument holds zero water with me. We haven't specifically studied the effect of Ambien on driving, but common sense says it's an extremely foolish idea to consume a depressant prior to operating heavy machinery. THC doesn't neatly fall into the depressant category, but it does have well known depressant effects, and it's beyond absurd to condone driving under the influence.

They have to pretend it's harmless, the same way the most rabid elements of the pro-choice crowd have to tell themselves "It's just a lump of cells."

Very few people are capable of simply leaving the argument at "It's your body, you're responsible for the choices you make." They have to go further and pretend that lighting a plant on fire and inhaling the smoke into your lungs is somehow good for you. As though walking around stoned all the time is somehow a benefit to yourself and society.

The best explanation I ever heard of pot came from a South Park episode: "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but, well son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored, and it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything."

You don't OD on it in the classical sense that it kills you. You can OD on it to the point that you suffer very negative effects, particularly if you eat it. For a novice user the effects would be very overwhelming. Hell, even for a regular user the effects wouldn't be pleasant. Maureen Dowd wrote about this recently.

Consuming too much of any substance sucks. I only have first hand experience with THC, alcohol, and caffeine. Of the three I've found the caffeine overdose to be the worst experience, defining overdose here as "consuming more than I should", not "consuming so much my health is in danger".

Selected effects from Erowid (hardly a pro-prohibition source) which impact one's ability to operate machinery:

* slowness (slow driving, talking)
* interruption of linear memory; difficulty following a train of thought
* time sense altered (for example, cars seem like they are moving too fast); time dilation and compression are common at higher doses
* dizziness, confusion
* clumsiness, loss of coordination at high doses

One would think that we could agree that people should have full control of their faculties when operating heavy machinery. Personally, I wasted three years of my life smoking weed, I know first hand what the effects are, and I don't care to share the roadways with a bunch of stoned drivers. If you need THC so badly you can't stay sober while operating your automobile you've got a problem and need to seek help.

As an aside, I really hate people who have to argue in favor of marijuana by dismissing the known negative effects. You can't just say "Let people be responsible for their own choices", you have to dismiss the negative effects of recreational drug use. Perhaps that's a logical reaction to 75 years of lying from the other side, but it still seems intentionally dishonest to me.

Murder is a legal definition. Killings committed pursuit to the laws of war are not murder. As far as your apparent negative attitude towards the military, I'll leave you with an Orwell quote: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

His next trick will be to call you a racist.

Damn white guys.

I make $32,000/yr and live in a one bedroom apartment. Sorry if the power and privilege has gone to my head.

Tilt at this particular windmill until the cows come home if it makes you happy. You've lost the battle of public opinion, as well as the legal one, and whether you like it or not racial quotas are soon to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

If you live in MA you can't (legally) own a firearm without first obtaining permission from the Commonwealth, permission that can be denied for almost any reason by your local Police Chief. Ditto for trying to carry said firearm in public. Both of these are actions that are allowed by default in the vast majority (approx 40) of the United States. MA is so hostile to the notion of self-defense that it's technically illegal to carry pepper spray there without a license. I'm hard pressed to think of a State that's worse with regards to the 2nd Amendment. New Jersey perhaps, though it's a toss up.

Pretty ironic seeing as how the American Revolution got going in MA over an attempt to disarm the population.

That's an incredibly stupid idea. You might as well make the password a six digit numeric, because that's about how long it will take a computer to go through every .dll on a standard Windows installation looking to see if one is the keyfile.

That's because the Asian-American experience doesn't speak in favor of the sort of social engineering desired by the types that favor affirmative action and other sorts of reverse discrimination. They're literally at a loss to explain why the Asian-American community isn't mired in poverty in spite of the best efforts of the evil white man to keep them down. They also ignore the experiences of the multitude of different white peoples (Italians, Irish, Poles, etc.) that faced discrimination and somehow managed to build productive lives for themselves and their progeny.

The only answer they have is to take from the successful and give to the unsuccessful, which brings to mind the quote about teaching a man to fish....