I hear this complaint now and then, but the fact of the matter is that New York used to be a shit hole in decline before it got gentrified. I avoid Times Square because of the foot traffic, but when I do pass through, I don't feel like I'm in any danger. In any case, that entire area was going to be razed and replaced with cold, soul-less office buildings if not for some folks who wanted to keep the area looking just about the same.

And you can keep the ATSC tuner, as well. I just want what amounts to a gigantic computer monitor.

Yeah, the mouse is considered kind of a popular cheat to make FPS games easier for some people.

Because we're all human beings, and therefore equally qualified to criticize any culture or government that would take away someone's rights.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." - Optimus Prime

http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/windows.asp

Per Snopes, although it is true that Romney made that remark, it was clearly told as a joke meant to lighten the mood. It was not a serious comment.

Sorry: I'm not going to join an argument about that. I will only reiterate what I said: our rights exist independent of the technologies used to implement those rights. If we have the right to freely communicate with other human beings, then we also have the right to put up web pages: the technology exists to facilitate our right. Too many people in these debates focus on technologies rather than principles.

Yes: and in a very real sense, you've got the facts exactly right and the conclusions exactly wrong.

You have the right to keep and bear arms. That right exists independent of technological developments. If you had instead, say, the right to keep and bear a flintlock pistol, then the instant cap-and-ball revolvers were developed you'd be unable to use them. Flintlocks, cap-and-ball, semiautomatics, the whole nine yards, are technologies that implement one of your natural rights: but your right is to keep and bear arms, not to keep and bear only the technologies of a given time.

In a similar vein, you have no right to a secret ballot. Your right is to have a say in participatory democracy via the voting process. The secret ballot, like the absentee ballot and the public ballot, are all technologies that exist to implement your right. You really don't want a Constitutional guarantee of a secret ballot, because then you'd be unable to use absentee ballots, nor would you be able to use new technologies yet to be developed that are superior to the secret ballot. Requiring, "All Americans have a Constitutional right to a secret ballot," is really not that far from, "All Americans have a Constitutional right to a flintlock pistol." It confuses a technology meant to facilitate the exercise of a right with the right itself.

Read up on the secret ballot, please. Just because nominations are made secretly and in writing is insufficient for them to be considered secret ballots. I'd suggest starting with the Wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot ), myself: it has an excellent overview.

You already can prove who you voted for: use an absentee ballot. If your boss is offering you $1000 to vote for his candidate, give your blank absentee ballot to your boss, let him fill it out how he wants and let him mail it in.

The entire State of Oregon has moved to absentee ballots. It's not possible to file a truly secret ballot in Oregon any more. The residents of Oregon like it just fine, and they haven't reported any significant hike in vote fraud.

It's quite possible -- likely, even! -- that yes, we have discovered better ways. That doesn't mean those better ways are Constitutionally required, though.

If you go to the Jefferson Memorial in DC, carved on one wall is a speech from Jefferson in which he declares that he knows the Constitution to be an imperfect document, and that he entrusts future generations with the task of correcting it by the process of amendment. If you believe the secret ballot is a fundamental right, then you need to acknowledge the absence of that as a flaw in the Constitution, and seek to correct that flaw by the process of amendment.

No -- the Supreme Court gets the last say.

You're right that the Supreme Court has the right to declare that the secret ballot is now a Constitutional requirement. There are many ways they could do this, the most obvious being to incorporate it under the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of substantive due process. (SDP guarantees "those things inherent in the very concept of ordered liberty". If SCOTUS decides the secret ballot is inherent in the concept of ordered liberty, bang, there you go.)

However, given the absence of SCOTUS precedent stating that the secret ballot is a fundamental right, the judge is absolutely correct to say there is no fundamental right.

What the French considered to be a "secret ballot" would not be considered one by today's standards. See Wikipedia's page on the secret ballot for a good overview of what a secret ballot requires, and why.

The secret ballot wasn't in use anywhere in the United States until 1888. The secret ballot cannot be something the Framers envisioned as one of our natural rights, because the secret ballot wasn't even invented until the 1850s. (Seriously.)

If this nation conducted its presidential elections by a variety of non-secret ballot systems from 1792 to 1892, it's hard for me to take you seriously when you say that the secret ballot is a fundamental right.

There is no Constitutional right to a secret ballot.

In the State of Oregon, all voting is done by absentee ballot. There's no privacy screen around you as you cast your vote. Your employer can stop by and say, "I'll pay you $1000 for your unused ballot, so I can fill it out how I want and submit it." If you're in an abusive family, your domineering alcoholic bipolar parent might force you to fill out the absentee ballot in front of them so they can control how you vote. There is no way the absentee ballot is considered a secret ballot, and yet we have no trouble when an entire state converts to voting by absentee ballot.

The State of West Virginia guarantees, in its state constitution, every resident's right to cast a public ballot. There's no mention of the secret ballot.

The secret ballot wasn't in use anywhere in the United States until it was first adopted by the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1888. The State of Massachusetts followed soon after. The first President to be elected by secret ballot was Grover Cleveland, in 1892.

We didn't use secret ballots to elect Washington, Jefferson, Jackson or Lincoln.

So, yeah. Anyone who claims we have a constitutional right to a secret ballot has an uphill road to hoe. History clearly shows that at no point in our nation's history has any court held the secret ballot to be a right.

In Mitt's case, there are 2 popular theories as to what he's hiding: 1) he was paying the Mormon church less tithing than he was supposed to be paying; 2) he was one of the tax cheats that applied for amnesty when the Swiss cooperated with the IRS. Hell, it could even be both.

For all his faults, George W. Bush even released 13 years of tax returns. He probably had lots of complex business arrangements, but nothing that you wouldn't expect of a typical high net worth individual. If you aren't doing something that would betray the trust of the American people, who are considering making you the most powerful person in the world, you won't be hiding anything.