Of course there are tradeoffs, but that fact does not mean that the standards are unattainable. You need empirical evidence for that.

Do you believe every claim that you don't have evidence contradicting?

You're comparing the survey-based 5% figure with your back of the napkin calculation. You have not shown that the percentage is any higher or lower than from consensual sex. Though I haven't yet looked at the studies myself, others have reported that empirical evidence shows no difference.

And according to AJOG, 1996 saw "32,101 cases of rape-related pregnancy" in the U.S. alone. And you don't think that's significant?

Laws and regulations can protect your freedom or take it away. The Bill of Rights, for instance, is very pro-freedom.

Sometimes there is a zero-sum situation. Limiting an ISP's freedom can ensure their customers' freedom.

Slippery slope arguments don't work unless you provide evidence that there is a slope and that it's slippery.

Arguing that pro-freedom regulation will lead to anti-freedom regulation, so it's better to leave it alone is nonsense. You can't tie the hands of a future Congress by leaving it alone. But if you give the people what they want, it'll be tougher to take away later. On the other hand, if we'd always been locked in to services like Compuserve, AOL and GEnie, we might not be fighting for network neutrality right now.

Of course they're not the same thing. Many on the right, for example, focus solely on small government. My point stands.

Thanks for that info. I can think of one documented case of someone "pretending to be somebody else" to get a ballot though. It was one of James O'Keefe's shenanigans, and someone at the polls knew that "Michael Bolton" was recently deceased. If there was widespread voter impersonation going on, some of them would be caught.

I vote by mail. It seems to me that anyone pushing to require ID at the polls but is ok with voting by mail has dropped the pretense that it's about the integrity of the vote.

You brought up 3 examples and shot them down yourself. Maybe your point is that the Sikh temple shooter may not be the white supremacist he's being reported as? Or that white supremacy isn't right wing? Or...?

If you want to compare the fairly clear cases of right wing vs. left wing domestic terrorism, off the top of my head we've got Oklahoma City, Centennial Olympic Park, Knoxville Unitarian and the murder of George Till versus some cases of eco-terrorism property damage.

That's happening already. It's called Stop and Frisk.

Or...they start selling them when the total stock is such that they expect to sell out. They could have probably waited a couple weeks or a month and had enough for anyone that wanted one, but then it wouldn't have sold out.

Ok. As in many things, the answer is "it depends". Was hoping for something more concrete, but I don't have a good answer either. Though I don't have a study to back this up, I do think most U.S. citizens identify primarily with their country rather than their state.

I think you are describing the end of society as we know it, but maybe there's some limited way you're thinking of that could work. To start with, if some people decide to disjoin themselves, how do they give us notice and where do we deport them to? Or are you talking about secession of some piece of land with all the people living there, which creates a lot of other problems?

Ok, but I wasn't really interested in California's constitution or suggesting they shouldn't follow it. I was asking for your opinion on how big a population should govern itself.

Google is incredibly cost-conscious. Every little bit of server hardware, network, power and cooling cost they can wring out of their datacenters, they do. Spending money on food keeps people on campus (and working more) and keeps employees happy (and competition for the best employees is fierce). No, I don't work there, but I've worked with them a few times.

States' rights seems rather arbitrary. If some group you're a part of oppresses you, you're going to hate it no matter the size of the group.

Wyoming has around 568K people. There are over 30 individual cities in the U.S. with more people than that. Is 37M people too many? Should California be run by county rights?

The "need", if it exists at all, is for a source of news and other programming that does not have a corporate slant to it.

I think AngryDeuce was referring to people upset at the WI state Senate for not passing the mining bill.

This seemed to be the lone Republican's reason for not voting for the bill: