The short story ends as Nightfall is starting. The book extends past into the nightmare of the stars.

I remember reading the book once and I was completely absorbed in the story. I finally looked up and noticed it was dusk. For a brief moment, I felt panic rising because the stars were going to come out soon. It took a moment to disentangle myself from the story.

Being able to completely lose yourself in a book can be a good thing most times - other times, it can backfire.

You like to plug that website on about a weekly basis it seems; in fact you almost plug it more often than your own blog. What it overlooks of course is the fact that some people like a stronger federal government. Some people prefer the protections that come with a central government that helps to balance things between the states. If one instead pursues this philosophy of a highly neutered government many people will lose the freedoms and opportunities that they value the most.

Of course, you don't like those people, so they don't matter much to you.

However from my perspective your convention could well end up a catalyst to disintegration of the united states.

I just figured since everything we have discussed so far you have not been knowledgeable on, I would try a different topic at random to see if we might find something that you do know something about. If you don't like this one, then do you know the proper amount of torque to apply to a 3/8 compression fitting when installing a kitchen faucet?

No, we do not know that. You claim that, but you have not once offered up anything resembling facts to support that notion.

So apparently, you feel that if a conspiracy theory is repeated enough times, it becomes fact simply by repetition then? You certainly haven't offered any facts to support the notion that you are harping here. It doesn't matter how many conservative blogs you can come up with who voice their opinions on the matter; they are not facts (beyond the fact that they are the opinions of people who have no connection to what is actually going on) with regards to the conspiracy that you love to repeat so much.

This may be the case (I'm nobody's prophet), but I do hope that a conventionofstates.com/ occurs before a split.

Interesting. You accuse me of shifting the topic (for all I narrowed in on it), accuse me of ignorance, and, for the trifecta. . .attempt to shift the topic to sports.
You, sir, are more Gruber than Jonathan Gruber.

And by "encouraged" he meant that the residents would pressure their governors. Sweet river of lies.

You DO understand that, your cheesy protestations aside, We All Know that the ObamaCare River of Lies dumps into the Gulf of Single Prayer?
This is not a "conspiracy theory". This is the conspiracy facts that have been unfolding since Princess Pelosi squeezed out that loaf in '09.

No, I'm not even trying to hint that. APK is whom, exactly?

That is an interesting choice, indeed. He had two people break into his house. He chased them out of his house and into the alley. Why did he choose to shoot the woman? Even if we ignore the pregnancy aspect, he shot a person in the back while she was running away. I'm not aware of any places where that is legal.

I would think the sane thing to do would have been to call the cops and let them deal with it once the threat ran away. He didn't really solve any problems here, based on the facts we have now.

The million-dollar question here, IMHO, is whether or not law enforcement will care enough to consider pressing charges against the shooter. Last I saw there are murder charges being filed against the accomplice of the deceased.

I do think there are some shades of grey in this case, and we need to see what facts come forward from the investigation. From my current vantage point it doesn't seem like there is anyone in this case who is fully a hero, a victim, or a criminal.

I am, at this point, a bit confused as to how an 80 year old with a broken collarbone could muster the strength to chase down two 20-somethings and raise a pistol for a good shot. Amongst other things that part doesn't seem to add up.

In a similar vein, if you look through my journal listings you can find that I have more than once turned a light on cases involving incidents where negligent gun ownership resulted in death of innocent people (this is not a case of that) and the gun lobby effectively prevented any charges from being leveled.

Desperate enough to try this for the third time...

Considering that most of the e-books sold (at least from the companies that are or might be selling monthly subscriptions for a buffet style approach) contain DRM, you don't really own it even if you make a lump sum payment either.

By bulk are you referring to the number of people in the political system, or something else? While smitty does seem to advocate for a smaller government, that approach doesn't often work out all that well, either.

If instead the argument is that government is trying to help too many people (ie the country is so large that government from a federal level is impossible and should be abandoned), I don't necessarily disagree. I do think it is likely time to split our country up into 2 (or more) independent nations. Frankly I don't expect that our country will survive more than another 10-20 years without that happening anyways.

Is regressive taxation not state action? How about restrictions on health care for certain parts of the population?