Yeah, it would be a lot easier to deal with radical Tea Party types if they weren't so willing to allow their ideology to be co-opted by rapid pro-authoritarians. They're now little better than the far left extremists like ELF, though only the border Nazis and some militia groups have devolved into the type of domestic terrorists that make up ELF.

The CIA was, at one point, prohibited from spying on solely domestic targets.

That's apparently no longer the case. I am not sure if the prohibition was legal or by executive order, but I don't believe it was repealed in either event. Not that the government cares about such formalities anymore. If they get caught, they just pass a law retroactively forgiving those who were complicit in their crimes.

This is very true, and something most people miss whenever they are faced with an arena dominated by enormous amounts of money. It's not about the money, it's about the desire for power for those throwing truckloads of money into a particular arena.

If there's no power to be had, the money is usually clean and representative of the larger picture by all those involved.

It's too bad that people like you are a tiny minority among the screaming hordes of the scientifically illiterate and those who take everything "scientific" they read at face value.

It does, it just promotes different ideas on what is good for society. You could make the same statement about D and R, and each would say the other was not promoting the good of society where their views conflicted.

It's a defense against corrupted laws. The ability to help nullify corrupt laws will always trump letting the guilty go free. If you are guilty of violating a corrupt law, it is in the overriding benefit to society that you be able to be guilty and not have to help in your own prosecution. There are ample examples in history where it is right to ignore certain laws wholesale.

Wow. Just ... wow.

I can understand the regulation of imported materials, but every plant? That's seriously fucked.

Because when one hands a rent controlled apartment to ones offspring, one is disposing of ones own property, not someone elses. Moron.

Funny, I can't think of a single way to read the above to mean handing over a rent-controlled apartment is disposing of some else' property, given that it says the exact opposite. If you intended it to be sarcastic, you failed completely to make that clear.

Actually, it seems far easier to part a poor person from their money than a rich person. Just look at the personal consumption habits of the US.

Indeed. Different types of oil produce different quantities of each distillate, but those quantities are fixed per barrel. The gasoline will still come out in the same quantity, and aside from developing a process to modify the molecular structure of each distillate in an economically feasible way that's not going to change.

A rent-controlled apartment is not the property of the renter.

And calling someone a moron tends to make people immediately write off your argument. Try being civil and you might be more successful in dialogues.

Indeed, which means a appeal to "fairness" must be defined before it is necessarily relevant.

Most people for this technology are for it being mandatory, so the point is completely salient to the discussion here.

Starting off by implying all gun fans are paranoid is not a good way to be listened to.

There's a means to change the Constitution, and when you ignore it when it's convenient it'll be ignored for other, far more nefarious reasons too.

I'll accept every firearm death per year if it means people abide by the system required to change the Constitution.

Nope. We must wrap them in bubble wrap until they're 18, and then throw them out with absolutely no idea how to fend for themselves.