You can drive your car however you damn well please, as long as it is in a fashion that does not threaten the safety of others.

That wasn't that hard, was it?

Sadly, you seem to have missed the entire point.

If you are merely satisfied with having enough calories per day and enough clean water to continue surviving, that's fine. Some of us, however, feel that more than mere physical necessities are necessary for our happiness. Free discourse, without threat of retribution or harm, the freedom to travel as we see fit without the Government saying who may or may not go where based on how politically 'risky' they may be (as the TSA watch-list brings back memories of McCarthy era communist-blacklists), and the ability to be allowed to live our lives in peace so long as we harm no one.

The Government may not punish us for what we may do. It may only punish for what we have done. You cannot lock a man up on suspicion of likelihood of his committing murder, only once he has in fact attempted or committed said murder.

The attitude of the common people, the faex populi, is that security can be purchased. We have been lulled into believing that the world can be made 'safe.' Life in inherently unsafe. Being 'free' means that you give up security.

We are coming all too quickly to a nation where papers are required to move about, where every single aspect of our lives is monitored by the Government for 'suspect' information exchange, and where we, Human Beings, are being treated as commodities and resources to be traded, purchased, and sold, instead of being treated as Human Beings, with inherent dignity and with respect afforded to us.

One need look no further than any modern corporation and its "Human Resources" department to see this mindset. I am not a resource. I am a human being. We have been desensitised to the callous manner in which we commonly treat each other. We have lost, as a nation, the concept of personal responsibility for our actions. There is always someone to blame.

The death of Democracy (which we are, in fact, not -- we are a representative republic) is that of scapegoating.

The People want their bread and circuses. They want someone to blame when things seem bad, be it the Anarchists, the Communists, the Pinko-Commie-Sympathisers in Hollywood, the Hippies, the Socialists, the Terrorists. These targets are paraded in front of the people to drum up the necessary excuse for the acquisition of greater and greater power by the Government. The Government does not need to read my e-mail, or tell me what weapons I may and may not own. If people truly wanted to be safe from gun-totting madmen, the easiest way to do so would to arm everyone so that as soon as a man opened fire on a crowd, everyone in that crowd would be able to respond in kind.

If people truly cared about the lives and living conditions of prostitutes/sex-workers, they would legalise prostitution so that pimps cannot beat their girls without fear of the girls going to the police, so that prostitutes would not be raped in back alleys because their trade would take place in safety and not in secret.

The right to swing one's fist ends where the other man's nose begins. Likewise, the right to dictate correct behaviour ends where your body ends. Murder is not a curtailment of one's freedom (as something being illegal does not stop anyone from doing it), but is a protection of the freedom of others to remain unmolested in their person.

You, and the people like you, are what have driven this country to the dire straits it is in. Government is not a good, sir. It is a necessary evil. It must necessarily, therefore, be kept as small, impotent, and powerless as it can be.

We need no great standing army to defend our nation. If every man and woman who has reached the age of majority was required, as in at least one country I can think of, to keep in their home a fully automatic military weapon, then any invading force would be met with resistance the likes of which our standing army with its tanks and planes and bombs could not match.

The only true way to security is through freedom -- the freedom of the people to be able to defend themselves.

Fill your mind, if you will, with distraction. Feast on your bread and circuses. Some of us have a hunger for something more than a life of glorified slavery, or being a number in a government records office instead of a human being. We desire freedom, sir. We hunger for liberty and thirst of the right to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit.

I am an American Citizen. Not a taxpayer. Not a consumer. A citizen.

My government no longer has my consent to government. I only obey laws out of fear of punishment, not because I believe that such behaviors is correct and moral.

I feel that those who represent us in this country have long ago forgotten the best interests of those they serve, the People, or more correctly, have just decided that it's more profitable serving Corporations and sacrificing essential freedoms for temporary security and monetary reward.

The only way this kind of stupidity and evil will end is with revolution. From time to time the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants, or however the exact original goes.

The Government's only purpose is to serve the people, to do for them what they as individuals cannot do for themselves: Infrastructure, Sanitation, Hospitals, and Emergency Services springing immediately to mind.

The Government of the United States has increasingly grown bloated, incompetent, and has increasingly sold out the rights of its Citizens to corporate interests.

We were once the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Now we are the land of timid sheep, beholden to our corporate masters, constantly sacrificing our necessary freedoms to protect Children who would better be protected by their parents actually doing their job and parenting, and to protect us from Foreign threats caused by our own meddling in the affairs of other nations.

It's time to realize that the problem is not whether the politician in the White House is Black or White, Male or Female, Democrat or Republican or Independent.

The problem is that there is a politician in the White House, instead of a Citizen-Servant who is First Among Equals, not elevated to the status of Royalty.

We must abolish the Federal Government as it currently stands and return to the ideals of the Founding Fathers on which they attempted to create a nation: The Inalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

No one should have the right to restrict my freedom to do as I wish so long as I do not materially harm another human being.

Down with the Tyrants.

Excuse me for asking the question nobody seems to be asking: How do we actually know she's being blackmailed?

1) Person says something about you don't like
2)Claim they're blackmailing you
3)Judge orders person's identity revealed
4)Lawsuit
5)Profit! (And jail time for the accused Blackmailer)

Just because something's new doesn't mean it's necessarily better than the old?

...And the Bureaucracy died in a landslide of paperwork...

You must be pretty damn young, then. I remember the machiens for copying NES, SNES, and Genesis carts being very, very common in the late '80s and early '90s. Pretty much every video store that rented games had 'em.

I may be an old coot at 24, but if you don't know what a Turbo Button is, I think you need to get the fuck off of /.

SHAZAM!

There already are four laws of thermodynamics.

Just because there are four of something does not necessitate that one of them is the fourth.

There are four laws of Thermodynamics. One of them is the 0th.

I'll get this all sorted out in a few hundred years.

Love,
The Brennan-monster

What makes you think he was talking to you, you alien?

Scrith would only block 40% of the Neutrinos.

StarCraft is a blatant rip-off of WarHammer 40K, just as WarCraft is a blatant ripoff of WarHammer Fantasy Battle. This has been known for some time. Why do you think Blizzard pays royalties to Games Workshop?