Not arguing your (solid) original point, but since we're caring about the details, I'll point out that Buckley v. Valeo (1976) ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech.

Citizens United may not have stated it, but I'd say that money as speech is well established, precedent-wise. Though, sure, money spent with no intent to influence elections is probably not going to clear that bar.

Also, if anything, I'd say the popular simplification of Citizens United is that it ruled that businesses are people (meaning have personhood, rather than made up of people in the Romney sense).

I'll leave it to others to argue how correct that simplification is.

This reminds me of working in public service. There would be various questions that employees would have to answer many, many times in any given day, despite there being lots of signs around in an attempt to inform people.

Personally, my belief is that signs are for ignoring, and thus I rarely got irritated with answering the same question over and over.

But plenty of people who were happy to answer it the first time were quite exasperated by the 1,000th time.

Now, I believe that blue ferries exist, but I imagine those who don't might get irritated if half the population assumed (and oftentimes publicly stated) they were amoral because they didn't believe in a certain type of ship painted blue.

The "supervised by parents" rule is about the same in Wisconsin, except that there's evidently no pre-defined age minimum.

The drinking age is still 21, but only because the federal government threatened to take away highway funding if Wisconsin refused to raise the minimum.

Then again, over 40% of Wisconsinites claim German ancestry.

(disclosure: I live in Wisconsin and have German ancestry. And don't particularly like beer, aside from a strawberry-rhubarb seasonal one. But I also don't drink to get drunk.)

I could've sworn you were quoting directly from this Pearls Before Swine comic.

It's nice that there's a programming language debate where the future has been entirely settled. Thanks infoworld!

This is probably not the best argument when we're talking about Wikipedia.

On the bright side, at least people don't assume you're a terrorist.

Let's think about a Muslim slaughterhouse to see how this is a false dichotomy.

A Muslim slaughterhouse can refuse to slaughter pigs. However, they can't just refuse to slaughter pigs that belong to Mormons.

A black or Jewish printer can have a "no racist posters" policy, and deny racist posters. The KKK members could still have non-racist things printed. (ignoring the fact that KKK membership isn't likely to ever be a protected class).

Similarly, a person can have a, "No gay cakes" policy, and still have to sell a generic, "congratulations" cake that they normally make.

And a pharmacist can choose to not dispense certain drugs, and then be fired by their pharmacy because of refusing to do their job.

tl;dr - There's a difference in refusing to do certain things and refusing to serve certain groups of people.

Religion, on the other hand, is undeniably a choice.

Unless forced into it by some religious group, of course.

Ah, yes, I remember those days.

I was posting on multiple BBSes and occasionally using FIDOnet.

People who don't earn as much can take advantage of various credits and services, and oftentimes don't out of a sense of pride or fairness.

I view your argument as splitting hairs in a way that's entirely irrelevant; anyone can take advantage of government rules, and not everyone does.

The battle scenes made sense. How could that possibly be a Michael Bay film?

You're right; if we can point to 5 instances where a cm of styrofoam would've (or did) make the difference between a light injury and a very severe one, we should encourage people to wear helmets.

I'm glad you're on board with my campaign to make helmets mandatory while in moving motor vehicles.

Oh, and everyone under 18 and over 50 will have to wear one at all times. Those between can take them off before going to bed.

It's the only sane response.

I know that Brave New World is a dystopian novel, but it's a world where people know what they're really good at, can take happy drugs that don't have side effects, get to keep their youthful abilities and looks for most of their life, and if they really object to the structure of society, they can move to anywhere on the planet that better suits them.

Mind you, I don't know if I'd do all that well in such a society, but I don't know that I'd do all that well in Japanese society, either.

Anyway, since the book focuses on a couple of people who don't like a highly-structured society, and a person who decides that, rather than move to wherever he'd prefer, it's best to whip himself a lot, I can see that it's still a depressing read.

For me, though, 1984 was so much harder to take, as I kept mentally attempting to find ways out for the character and failing.

So you're saying that the Red Cross should have a lean, hand-to-mouth budget, then give lots of money to financial institutions in the hopes that said financial institutions will always be there when needed, immediately after a disaster. Then spend money hand-over-fist because of getting lots of money, then return to a lean, hand-to-mouth budget.

And, somehow, this is better than being financially prepared for a disaster, spending only on what they know will be helpful in a given instance, regardless of how much the instance makes the news, and saving any windfall for the next disaster.