I plan on seeing the movie. During the Chick-Fil-A boycott, I ate more chicken sandwiches than at any point in my life!

It's not that I'm anti-gay. I think gay people are awesome. It's because I'm pro-Constitution. The Constitution says you have the right to free speech. Nowhere does it say you have the right to marry, straight, gay or otherwise.

I always used to hear liberals say "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to death for your right to say it." It's amazing how fast that goes out the window when someone says something they view as "intolerant". I figure, if they're willing to claim to fight to the death for opposing views, the least I can do is enjoy a chicken sandwich with some waffle fries and see a movie I was interested in already.

If that were true, they would have accepted a civil unions law that gave civil unions 100% equality with marriage. I have yet to meet a gay couple that would have accepted a civil union, even if it was legally equal to marriage in every way. Most would claim some bullshit about the "separate but equal" issues in the civil rights era, where a water fountain for blacks was dirty and unmaintained while the "white's only" water fountain was new and shiny. I call it bullshit because if a law says two things are equal, they are equal, period. It's not like inheritance laws for gays can get dirty or leak. These are not physical objects.

When I would explain that "separate but equal" only applies to physical objects, they would say that they wanted to be "married", not unionized. So I ask them was stopping them from putting on white dresses, saying vows, exchanging rings, smearing cake on each other's faces, throwing a party and telling everyone they know that they are married? What difference does it make what the government called it?

If you want to be married, be married. Marriage is about love, trust and commitment. It's not about inheritance rights, taxes and contracts. Why must you demand that government call your relationship a "marriage" when the "rights" part can be achieved with using that exact word? Their only HONEST response was they wanted to FORCE those bigoted Christians to recognize their marriage.

This is not about equal rights. If it were, they could have had it years ago with little resistance. This is about revenge and punishing those they hate; religious people.

Don't mod this down because you don't like it. Be an adult and reply with why you think I'm wrong.

Laws are passed based on public opinion. Courts judge them based on the Constitution. Lady Liberty has a blindfold for a reason. If enough people feel strongly enough about an issue that is deemed unconstitutional, then the Constitution may be amended. For example, California held an election to in which the public opinion banned gay marriage. A court deemed that unconstitutional. Arizona has passed laws on immigration that were supported by public opinion that the court deemed unconstitutional.

The problem is that there is always going to be someone that calls any war or anything military illegitimate. Also, surveillance is important even in times of peace. It is worthless if everyone knows what we are looking at and what we find.

Since secrets are important to a government, regardless of your opinion, and since courts are public and have no current ability to hear cases where the matter is deemed secret by those charged, there is no oversight at all. Your resistance to court oversight that can keep things that need to be secret secret,is supporting the status quo where government has virtually unlimited power because any abuses can simply be called "national security" and court oversight is completely avoided.

The court system is supposed to be above public opinion and pubic opinion is not supposed to have any effect on the court's decisions.

No, this court, like any other, would work within the law. The problem is that without the appropriate clearance, judges are not legally allowed to hear the evidence in the case so judicial oversight is not possible right now. All this would be is a court where the judges have the clearance to hear the cases and the evidence. The evidence in the cases as well as most of the information about the cases could be kept secret so these cases could go to court without damaging national security or the government using that as an excuse to keep the cases from ever being heard.

The justice system is supposed to be blind and not "trust" anyone. I don't think the FISA court was set up to deal with the Constitutionality of the law itself, but to grant or deny warrants.

We need a separate court that is secret like FISA whose purpose is to deal with cases brought up where the evidence brought up in the case should not be made public. They could handle the cases of terrorists, for example or any challenges to instances where the government is doing something that needs to be kept secret, but may or may not meet Constitutional muster.

I think the fact that this has been made public and that the government itself is no longer denying this negates any attempt to call this "state secrets".

However, there will be cases that deal with actual state secrets. For those, we need a court set up to deal with that sort of thing, not just a court to approve warrants, but a court to handle cases brought up by whistle blowers that evaluate the Constitutionality of cases like this.

The problems you speak of are due to corruption, not free markets. Even in the height of the Soviet Union, most people were living in squalor while the few lived in luxury. I know you are not going to say that the former Soviet Union was a free market.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein had the same situation. Most people lived in poverty while those that were high ranking party members were rewarded handsomely.

China is not a free market either. While it does have some capitalist tendencies, it is still a Communist nation. You need government permission to run a business. However, in order to make it, you better be tight with the person approving the application. It's one thing to get your application approved. It's something else entirely to have your competition denied and your abuses of the law and your employees ignored.

Mexico is another example. While the market there is freer than the other places I've mentioned, the success of your business rests on your ability to grease the palms of the right people.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries are in the same situation. It doesn't matter what laws you have in place when those that enforce those laws are on your side. Selective enforcement of the law is a major ingredient in any tyranny.

What sets Europe and America apart is the lack of corruption compared to most other countries. It's not the laws that are in place, but a willingness to enforce them equally. Unfortunately, America seems to be moving away from that. Our DOJ, EPA and IRS departments seem to apply different levels of enforcement based on the political beliefs of those being investigated.

I don't think you are in any position to accuse anyone of creating a false dichotomy. Your whole point is that there are only very rich and very poor in America and yet the vast majority in America are neither. The fact that you are using a computer to spread your crap tells me that you are neither extremely rich nor extremely poor. Your existence proves that you are full of crap.

That's really odd. I can afford a home and I'm not rich. As a matter of fact, everyone in my neighborhood is in the same situation I am in. No one in my entire city is what I'd call "rich" and yet very few of them live in squalor. The few that are "living in squalor" are illegals passing through anyway.

I don't know what country you live in, but in this country, the average salary is over $50,000/yr. That's ample to buy a house in most communities.

To put it another way, you are full of shit.

Talk about false dichotomies!

I'm not living in sqaulor. I'm not rich either. According to your theory, I don't exist.

Project much?

It's the only app available at this time. More to come soon!

My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).

Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.

Oh. Then I don't get it.

As a side note, I've always wanted to take an old mini fridge and turn it into a computer case.

Finally! I don't have to trust that ding-bat I picked up to remember to take her pill!