You vote for these kinds of people all the time, and they do run banks, and churches, etc.

First of all, please, provide citations.

Second, do you not agree, that, if true, such would be a sad state of affairs?

Do you also agree that he should have been, at his age, allowed to [...]

I do not agree with that and do not understand, why you accuse me of "hypocrisy" because of it.

That he is not an adult may affect his legal status and/or lessen the extent of the prosecution.

That his moral failings deserve strict censure — and can not be discounted as merely a "stupid mistake" — is quite different.

you can never expect to make a statement which is clearly a threat and people are just going to ignore it

Whether you ignore it or not is irrelevant. It should not be illegal.

The First Amendment makes no exceptions for "threats" — our understanding that shouting "fire" in a crowded place is illegal is flatly wrong, the Amendment protects that speech from government's actions like any other.

Well, if such a thing as "Harassment by Computer" should be illegal, this guy's actions seem to qualify for it.

But I don't think, it should be. In fact, too much speech is already considered illegal — and the list is likely to grow as the Illiberals are trying to add "hate-speech" to the prohibited list.

Your flatulence is destroying our climate. To the dinosaurs with you, stinkers!

i dont know whats worse: the blatant bullshit this idiot spews, or the idiot who modded him insightful.

Haters gonna hate.

There are no laws defending blonds or red-heads against discrimination by brunettes either.

Yes, there are. If you discriminate consistently against blonds, then you will be open to legal action.

Please, cite the relevant law I'll be accused of violating and any existing precedents of prosecutions (successful or not). I'll wait.

Has there ever been a documented case of someone discriminating against a Mi based on name? No? Then why do you think you deserve special laws?

The point was, an absence of a law explicitly protecting any particular class of people does not by itself signify discrimination of the group.

I've seen some that explicitly list LGBT (as a non protected class).

Some day you'll learn to provide citations. Until then, I'll be patiently reminding you every time. Citations?

That's not an omission, but a license to discriminate.

Yes, many kinds of discrimination are perfectly legal. A girl can say "You are too old for me" or "I don't date Jews" — and even she does so "consistently", it is her right to do so. Businesses too can discriminate on a number of traits (including hair-color, yes, really) — only the explicitly-listed few things are off-limits for discrimination. The details vary by states.

It's okay for global corporations to finance the election?

Your rhetorical question is the same as "is it Ok for child-molesters to roam the streets" — you need to seriously violate privacy rights of everybody to even learn, which money comes from "global corporation" or who is a known "sex offender".

And the answer to both questions is "Yes". You can ask a politician, who gave him money — and draw conclusions from answers or evasions — but you can not ban it outright. Certainly not according to Slashdot's prevailing opinion.

So universal health care is a bad thing?

It is certainly something USSR had — and it was as bad as the rest of what they had USSR.

Ultimately, it is unfair — a citizen pays taxes into the common pool, but, when he needs treatment, it is up to the pool's administrators to decide, what is and what is not "appropriate" treatment (or, maybe, he deserves only the end-of-life counselling). Sure, insurance companies have a very similar arrangement (except any of them would be torched to the ground for even mentioning EOL), but insurance companies compete with each other and people can switch between them as they see fit.

Didn't Romney try this somewhat in MA?

"Somewhat" is a qualifier, you can drive a truck through, is not it? Your question is irrelevant, though, and the answer is "No" — Romney did not introduce "Universal" healthcare in Massachusetts.

How about when a gay couple adopt children

Is a paraplegic being discriminated against, when he is told, he can not play volleyball or practice karate? If the law requires adoptions to favor married couples, then any unmarried couple is disqualified. It is not anybody's fault that (most) gays would not marry — any more than that the paraplegic can neither jump nor kick.

But "discrimination" it is not — and neither the gays' nor the paraplegics' predicament can be rectified by a politician or any legislation, only by, one hopes, some future medical breakthroughs.

The mistake reveals a stunning lack of morals

A 15 year-old man not only committed a serious crime (arson), he also tried to cheat — and not in a game, but in the most important (at his age) part of life. And that's age, when one is still supposed to venerate honor, integrity and honesty — even if many of us become more pessimistic about these values later in life. Didn't he just read Mark Twain? Heinlein may be despised by the modern teaching class — not the boy's fault — but Jack London ought to figure prominently on reading assignments...

Though he is hardly the only one such in the nation, I would not want him to some day win a public office, run a bank, or marry my daughter.

This year's deficit is about $750 billion.

Your response might've been meaningful, if the 100% tax on "the rich" would have covered your figure. And not even then — the very fact that the numbers are comparable means, even flat-out confiscating all income from those earning $1mln is not enough. Oh, and you can only do that sort of things once (per generation) — may be enough for a one-time undertaking, but not for ongoing payments for all the wonder-programs Socialists dream about.

I think your emboldened quote is a little out of date.

Yes, had you clicked on the link provided, you would've seen the date on the article: 4/03/2012 @ 2:39PM: same President, same totalitarian "progressives", same debate as we have now.

Just what is it that drives people like you to these attempts to state the meaningless bits, that make not a iota of difference to the point being made, is beyond me...

Nope, there are hundreds, if not thousands of laws that single them out

Any claim of there being "thousands" of anything not accompanied by even one example is invalid. Fail.

There are piles of laws on housing and other things that state you can't discriminate [...] but very few of them extend anti-discrimination laws to LBGT

Oh, well, if we start counting omissions, we can get really far. There are no laws defending blonds or red-heads against discrimination by brunettes either. Can a politician proposing to ban discrimination based on hair-color to our thick books be confident of your vote?

How about folks, whose name begins with "Mi*"? There is not a law anywhere in the world (!) explicitly protecting us — how do you sleep at night knowing of this ongoing travesty?

Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.

This idiocy has been proposed enough times someone has already done the calculations:

If the IRS grabbed 100 percent of income over $1 million, the take would be just $616 billion. That’s only a third of this year’s deficit. Our national debt would continue to explode.

support for campaign finance transparency

Which can otherwise be described as ban on anonymous speech — at least, political speech.

opposition to concentrating media into a few corporations

We don't have a media monopoly, that's all that matters. Most likely, his being a Socialist, the solution will involve creating an official governmental media corporation (such as by vastly expanding NPR/PBS). USSR had such a monopoly on media, and now Russia has too. It is not pretty — and much worse, than what we have today.

support for universal health care

Well, GP said "soviet experiment" and you asked for examples — here is another one.

support for LGBT equality

They are perfectly equal already — there are no laws singling them out in any way.

opposition to the bank bail-outs when they were fast-tracked through in 2008

Yeah, right. Would he properly privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mark? Without dealing with that giant elephant in the room, all "banking reforms" are meaningless.

None of that seems all that crazy or dangerous to me

Then you have no idea, what "soviet experiment" is. Likely, Mr. Sanders does not know it either. Both of you should be kept away from governing a country.

If a person makes a house and sells it, then it is no longer theirs to sell

Sure, but what if he rents it out? A song is rarely sold — what you buy is a right to play it with certain limitations. Since you are compelled by neither the law nor even physical necessity to enter into the transaction in the first place, I fail to see, what right you have to even complain of any and all strings attached. If you don't, how the "infamous" Metallica sells their music, take your money to YouTube. Problem solved.

Code licensing should also not be perpetual

There you go. Glad we cleared that out. Neither of us is an artist, but at least one is a programmer — kind of brings the topic closer to home. So, in your opinion, software-licensing — include what's licensed under GPL — should not be perpetual. I think, we are done here.

I'm not advocating for the elimination of copyright - just shortening it to a reasonable period.

All of the arguments you've put forth so far in support of shortening the copyright, would apply equally to eliminating it altogether. Therefor either the arguments are BS, or you ought to embrace the greater cause and stop being shy about it.

It's sort of an odd arrangement that we provide them a government mandated monopoly over their songs essentially forever.

Why? What's "odd" about it? If you build — or purchase — a house, you and your ancestors can live in it forever. Why must a song be ever confiscated from its owner?

How about a program you write — and release under, say, GPL? Should that licensing be perpetual, or do you consider that to be "abusive" as well — and would like all software to automatically become public domain after a (short) while?

Due to abusive legislation, that has been stolen from us

So, we can use the term "stolen", when referring to intangible things, after all? Good to know...

Most artists make music because they like it. YouTube is full of artists sharing their works for free.

You are right! Under the current system an artist is free to release their works "into the wild" whenever they please. They have a choice between trying to profit and trying to gain renown. You want to take that away (steal) from them, mandating some arbitrary (and short) time limit. I fail to see, how this can possibly be considered "fair".

They wouldn't suffer with shorter copyright

But others would suffer from the confiscation you are proposing. So, if you dislike them so much — just pretend they don't exist and enjoy the works of those you like.