The motorcyclist was Anthony Graber, and the incident happened in March. Charges against him were DROPPED on Sep 27th.

If Obama wanted an easy out he could have had it - the courts were about to throw DADT out the window, and his administration begged them not to. If he just stood back and did nothing the policy would be gone today.

The cynical side of me thinks that DADT is kept around so that the D's can keep campaigning on it, just like how abortion was kept around so that the R's could keep campaigning on that. If politicians actually cared about these kinds of issues you'd see them do something about - there have been plenty of times in the last decade where one party controlled the white house and both houses of congress, and that applies to either party.

These are sideline issues to politicians - useful for drumming up supporters on election day, but nothing they really care about.

You have to admit, vocabulary like "that's gay" is far more common among straight men than "you nigger" is among non-black men. Kids grow up calling things gay, they don't grow up calling each other niggers. It's a different part of our culture and treating it the same as racial issues doesn't make sense.

I don't support hazing and all that, gay or straight. I'm talking about speech issues and specifically what people might say on their down time amongst themselves.

Over time our military is becoming more and more rigid with respect to restrictions on soldiers' behavior. That's undeniable. Whether this is just another minor step on the ladder or a major one with plenty of unforeseen consequences remains to be seen.

This reminds me of one thing: Why are posts tagged? Can we include posts based on tags? Exclude posts based on tags? I never actually realized why we have them, but posts keep getting tagged. *shrug*

If we can exclude posts on tags, I'm pretty sure filtering out everything "wikileaks" would work here.

Braid (the leading title this year) is supposedly good. It has won awards for its gameplay. The first time I came across Braid was at last year's Penny Arcade Expo in Boston and the person talking about it had good things to say.

No, its not Executive Order 13526 Section 1.1(4)(c) Classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information.

So, essentially, we're screwed even if one of the two parties actually has a good idea because they care more about politics than doing what they believe needs to be done.

And, that's why I'm clueless as to why people so passionately support either party. It's not like they actually believe enough in what they say to do anything about it... even when they have all the votes they need.

They're both power hungry hypocrites...

It's not a tax it's a penalty, it has only been called a tax since the question of constitutionality for a penalty was raised.

The law in question does not benefit insurance companies more than anyone else, in fact for any length of time longer than about 3 months (less in most cases) does it become cost effective for an individual to purchase health insurance not offered through an employer or similar program. In other words under this law the most cost effective way to handle health insurance is to only purchase it when you're costing the insurance companies more than you pay them. I believe the reason Kucinich changed his mind and voted for this is that it was explained to him that it would result in the destruction of the health insurance companies.

Once this law is repealed in full, we can finally start talking about health care reform for the first time. And no, this law was not better than what we had before it.

Well, the democrats expressly didn't want to call it a tax, though, because they didn't want to be seen as increasing taxes. So, due to the semantics and mechanisms that trigger the payment, it is essentially a fine. That's the entire basis that enabled the judge to rule as he did. If they'd called it a tax, forced everyone to pay it, but give you a credit if you had insurance, it would have passed the test. But, political posturing stopped that from happening.

And, we ended up with a system that benefits the insurances companies, period. No one else benefits from the bill. Sure, they'll talk about pre-existing conditions being covered. But, they don't tell you what you're going to have to pay the insurance companies for one of those policies. And, we both know that it's not going to be the same as someone without a pre-existing condition.

Nothing the government has done in health care in the past 30 years has truly benefitted anyone but insurance companies. So much so that, the default position now is that insurance=healthcare. Until we get big insurance out of the picture, we'll never have affordable healthcare. Unfortunately, the democrats as well as the republicans won't dream of doing that. It would cost them too much in campaign dollars.

You forgot the part about the government taxing you for INactivity, I make money they tax me, pretty simple. I could not make any money and they would not be able to tax me. Obamacare seeks to "tax" for inactivity. And of course remember this was never a tax according to the soon to be one termer during debate, until it was passed then oh yeah right it is a tax, but I digress.

The point made earlier which you refused to respond to legitimately is if the government can tax inactivity they can do anything they like. There is really no longer any freedom here only subjects beholden to the white house throne's decision of how it is best to run a life. You didn't go get a checkup yearly? You owe us 10,000 dollars, you didn't buy a electric car? You owe us 10,000 dollars, ad infinitum.

And btw, all those white house decision makers are immune to these laws themselves of course.

Really I'll be one of the first 'tax' victims of this. It's much easier t pay the $750 or whatever amount it is 'fine' for not having insurance than the $615/month 'fine' to have insurance... In fact the later is downright insane (i was just quoted it today to btw).

Btw having been uninsured and needing to simply visit the doctor, I can tell you you absolutely cannot get out of paying it... They will literally hunt you down and try to try to extract money from your corpse if they need to. In fact I'm still paying on it 4 years later...Oh and unlike the couple hundred (form bills in the same period ~$230 with insurance) for a normal visit if you aren't insured it becomes over $1400... To see a doctor. You'll note that meant I paid 7 times that rate for an insured person.

The later case was when I ran my own 1 person business and wasn't making enough to pay the then $412/month for private health insurance... Especially when a roof, electricity, and a phone were required for me to ever make money and so had to come out of the first part of whatever I made. Their was never $412/month left over for insurance.

The first case is me now, 1 year into unemployment after I left my own business and went back to work.... And then was discarded as being 'to expensive' while making 1/5th what anyone who fired me makes... Which of course means no insurance... again. Lucky I haven't needed any in the last year. But I got news for them, I don't make enough $612/month while on unemployment. Heck I get about $612 per 2 weeks... In that money I have to pay rent, maintain a phone, electricity, food on the table, and being in IT a working PC is kinda required to keep the skills sharp... For whenever the powers that be decide to start hiring IT in my area again.

Why is this a federal tax, and not a state tax, then? Does the federal government dispatch ambulances to crash scenes? Im not really clear what the necessity for federal involvement on this is.

What you say is true, in the same way that it is true that you can avoid being raped by having sex with your would-be rapist.

The point is that for every tax that currently exists, you can avoid the tax by refraining from the taxed activity. Generally, the amount you are taxed is related in some way to the amount you engage in that activity, as well. Even the closest analogue, requiring people to have auto insurance, works that that way: you could elect not to drive yourself. Many feel that even that goes too far.

The only activity you could refrain from, if you wanted to avoid the health care tax, would be breathing.

That's not how it works. The argument is that an action is immoral if universalizing it would have disastrous effects. Yes I understand that the categorical imperative does not invalidate homosexuality, but that question you asked was "how does being unable to reproduce make homosexuality wrong". Indeed, if it did result in an inability to reproduce it would be immoral according to the categorical imperative.

What's depressing is that you guys seem to have ended up with the worst of all possible health systems. the expense, the inefficiency and the overall terribleness of a private system combined with the expense, the inefficiency and the overall terribleness of a public system.

Avoiding the advantages of either and getting the disadvantages of both.