I was going to suggest going North Korean on his ass. Death by mortar fire, death by flame thrower or death by hungry dogs? It's just so damned hard to choose.

I once had a Server 2003 install go bananas and completely fuck up an Exchange message store. "Never again!" I cried, and within a few hours was installing from a day old backup.

When you look at the Second Amendment within the context of how the US was formed as an outgrowth of revolution against what was viewed as a tyrannical regime. Many of the underlying concepts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are essentially answers to the reasons for revolt and secession against Great Britain laid out in the Declaration of Independence. The Second Amendment was clearly intended to preserve liberties against future tyrants.

I have absolutely no problem with a sane, sober individual possessing a weapon. I myself am a Canadian, but I remember camping trips with my grandparents out in the backcountry of British Columbia, and he always kept his hunting rifle loaded (that would get him arrested in Canada these days), not because he even really hunted by that point, but because of the risk from bears and other predators with young kids around. I learned to shoot when I was pretty young, and while I have no more adoration for guns than I do for hammers or screwdrivers, I respect their power and believe firmly that whether anyone owns a gun or not, they should know how one works, both for gun safety and in the hopefully unlikely event they actually need to use one.

The fact of the matter is that if someone is out to kill lots of people, guns, while perhaps the most convenient method, are hardly the only one. Some college kid just stabbed five people to death at a house party, apparently with a knife that was in the house where the party was being held. If someone goes nuts and decides it's time to kill lots of people, there's damned little anyone can do about it. Maybe, if we're lucky, we find out about their dastardly plan in advance, but bad luck can take anyone out; whether it be a maniac with a weapon, a car accident, or hell, falling off a ladder.

CTRL-S is your friend.

What happens to the vast minority of people who always think they are in the vast majority?

They join some Libetarian populist movement and demand all government services with the exception of those they partake of to be slashed or eliminated?

And yes, oh ye mighty moderators, this is trolling.

I support more mod points for the irony challenged!

How about "The Founders and over two centuries of jurisprudence." Is that sufficiently pedantic for you?

Apparently some company in Redmond, WA is putting out a mobile clone of OpenOffice.

Of course the Founders intended the constitution to be amended. But the position that the Second Amendment meant something other than the text is revisionism.

It has nothing to do with luck. It has everything to do with one's point of view and how far one is willing to go to achieve that dream.

The American Dream does happen, and it happened to me. Of course, there aren't many people like me, but to say that it is a lie is to deny the reality.

The only way a tyranny can last is when the people let them.

Unless they can find a way to turn the "subjects" into borg-like things (which obeys their master 100% of the time), human beings, being a rebellious lot, can not, and will not be suppressed forever.

Rebellions (plural) will happen.

While the tyrannical regime might be able to crush most of the rebellious attempts, there will always be that final rebellion which will crush the ruling junta.

Thus, the cycle continues ...

I'd say the mere fact that this ex-justice feels the need to add words to the Second Amendment to specifically alter and limit its context says to me he knows full well what the Founders intended. Now one can certainly debate whether the Second Amendment is still useful or desirable or however you want to frame it, but whatever side of the gun debate you sit on, to pretend that the Founders meant anything other than general gun ownership is revisionism of the most extreme kind.

The Chinese are always, and have been, very concern to what is happening in China.

Even me, a Chinese, who ran away from China when I was very young, and ended up in America and stayed in America for a few decades, still in my spare time, check out what is going on in China.

The "nationalistic" phenomenon for the Chinese people ebbs and flows - it happened back in WW2, when the Japanese invaded China, it happened again during the Korean war, and for a while, in between the Korean war until recently, most Chinese prefer to focus their attention towards themselves.

At first it was for survival, as China under the tutelage of Mao, landed itself in a seemingly endless episodes of man-made disasters. Famines that took away the lives of millions happened. Cannibalism happened, cultural revolution happened, intellectuals were driven to madness and/or suicide happened, and so on...

When Deng took over in the late 1970's, economically speaking China became better. The Chinese people turned towards making money.

That lasted for almost 40 years, and the economy of China has started to flatline, people are getting laid off (and young university graduates couldn't find jobs).

To allay the pent-up anger, the CCP, under the Xi-Li pair, opted for the "nationalistic" approach.

And that coincides with the provocations from Japan. With more and more provocations from Japan, the fuel for the fire of nationalism multiplied.

You gotta understand that the Chinese people, until today, can *NOT* forgive what the Japanese did to them, back in the WW2. That is because, unlike the Germans who issued public apologies to their victims (particularly Jews and Gypsies), the Japanese refused to apologize for the carnage they had done in China.

That bad blood in between the Japanese and Chinese is now exposed in the open.

The CCP of course, ain't stupid. They fully utilize the follies from Japan to add fuel to the nationalism fervor.

The fact still stands.

In the United States of America, the commoners are totally cut off from the decision making process.

George Bush did *NOT* get the permission from the American public before he launched the attack. He didn't have to, as the American public has absolutely *NO SAY* in the running of things.

Taking this a step further --- in the current situation relating to NSA --- Obama does *NOT* care what the people feel, because the "feeling" of the people is inconsequential, as what is to be done, WILL BE DONE, whether the people like it, or not.