even the UN and damn near every country "thought" they had WMDs at the time it happened.

Uh, no. Everyone with a lick of sense knew that the evidence that Iraq had WMD was tissue-paper thin, and the UN and damn near every country recognized the invasion of Iraq as a crime.

"Have you stopped beating your wife yet? I insist that you answer yes or no!"

When the questioner gets to set not only the question but the range of acceptable answers -- just as you have tried to do here -- the right to remain silent is vital.

For the government to convict you of lying about not committing the murder, they would also have to convict you of the murder, and if they can convict you of murder, then you're already screwed anyway, regardless of whether they also convict you of lying about being innocent.

The penalty for murder is greater than the penalty for perjury, yes; but that's not true for all crimes. "Making false statements" was part of Martha Stewart's conviction. And cops will lead you into false statements, that's their job. If you can watch this video and not understand the importance of the Fifth Amendment, you're hopeless.

Nothing like getting to where you are flying and by reflex reaching for that Swiss Army Knife I always carry, because something needs a little tweak.

As idiotic as the rule is, you can still put your SAK in your checked baggage, and so reload it at your destination. (Even though the airlines are working hard to make checking bags expensive and difficult.)

Any group surveiling the cops shouldn't be selling those cops stuff. "Hey, the XYZ PD just ordered another $500k of merch from us, I think we can 'lose' that embarrassing video."

Taser International is a bunch of evil fuckwads who've made their bankrolls selling lethal electrical torture devices to police. Their irresponsible marketing has lead to an increase in the use of excessive force by cops. My trust in them is zero.

But very few people can make open relationships work in practice - jealousy seems to be genetic as well.

Very few people can make closed monogamous relationships work in practice either. Almost no one spends their whole live with just one person. It's a much bigger gap from real monogamy -- only ever having a romantic/sexual relation with one person -- to serial monogamy, than from serial monogamy to polyamory.

I think if we could transition from the pre-birth-control "get married before you have sex" to a birth-control-works "get married before you have kids" there would be great benefit.

It would be better if we transitioned to "have a committed agreement about child raising before you have kids". We need to please stop with the idea that marriage has to do with child rearing.

I think people stray from their partners for immediate, temporary gratification because of hormones and the excitement. If this option was on the table, folks would learn quickly the value of having one person

That's your experience.

Thousands of polyamorous people have a quite different experience.

I don't see the difference between this and finger printing.

The state has no right to force me to subject my body to any medical procedure, however trivial, and no right to any part of my living flesh. None. At all. Not a microgram.

If they have actual probable cause to believe I may be involved in the commission of a specific crime for which they have DNA evidence, they can (with a warrant) search my home for hair and skin flakes. Or if they have enough evidence for an arrest they can lock me up in a clean room for the night and take my sheddings. So it's not even the case that this gives them critical evidence they can't get any other way -- it's all about the convenience of the police and the assertion of state authority over the bodies of citizens.

I'm not a Christian, but I always liked Jesus's line "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." My living flesh -- that matter whose dance is *I* -- is not Caesar's. It is the most divine thing I know, and I will not surrender it to the state willingly. Should the matter ever arise, they will have to take it from me by violence. I reserve the right to defend myself against such an assault, though I also reserve the right to decide that resistance is tactically unwise.

No... we call that a semi-automatic rifle.

An "assault weapon" is nothing but a semi-automatic rifle that cosmetically resembles an assault rifle. (q.v.) too much for the comfort of some legislator or bureaucrat. It's a meaningless term introduced by gun control advocates to muddy the waters.

An "assault rifle" is a rifle capable of select-fire operation (i.e., can be set to semi- or fully-automatic mode) and that fires an intermediate power cartridge. An example is the M-16. Such rifles are not generally available to the average civilian, you need special licenses.

If this company is making "assault rifles", they will have few civilian customers.

Tis a horrifying world where a Ruger 10/22 is an assault rifle!

"This Ruger 10/22 rifle with a pistol grip and a folding stock was classified as an assault weapon under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban." --- the wik

My job as a doctor is not to lecture that patient or make fun of them, but to try to help them as much as I can with the tools I have at my disposal.

One of the tools a doctor has at their disposal is the lecture -- often dubbed "patient education". It has far fewer side effects than drugs or surgery.

OTOH, to give a good lecture, one must understand the subject. Most doctors know fsck-all about nutrition, or healthy lifestyles in general. An astounding 44 percent of male physicians are overweight. Maybe this bias is frustration at their own failures.

There was no due process because it was a psych eval not a criminal hearing.

An involuntary psychiatric evaluation, like any other form of arrest (the deprivation of a person of their liberty)still has to follow a legal process -- i.e., due process of law. As I stated, it seems that this was followed. If they have evidence that it wasn't, by all means they should pursue a lawsuit, but having read the FB posts in question I put their odds at slim to none.

How you get "sensationalism" out of what I said is beyond me.

He apparently was denied this due process and that is what is is suing for.

He was apparently treated exactly as the appropriate law says people making threats and displaying signs of possibly violent mental illness should be treated. There was probable cause to believe that he had violated the law; arresting him was thus in accord with due process.

The fundamental tenet of the gun rights advocates is that, armed citizenry will take down tyrannical governments.

No, the fundamental tenet of gun rights advocates is that self-defense, which includes the right to own the tools of self-defense, is a basic human right. That fact remains true whether tyrants can survive armed populations or not.

Now it is true as a matter of history that one point the "Founding Fathers" considered was that a nation that relied on a militia (armed and trained body of citizens) for its defense, rather than a standing army, had a built-in defense again its government going tyrannical.

These 3D printed cheap plastic guns are going to flood Africa and other such places with very cheap guns.

Guns are already cheap and easy to make. That's the whole design philosophy of the AK-47 -- you can already get them for around $50 in some parts of Africa.

Now anyone and everyone can get access to training and education, to better themselves in their spare time.

Just like anyone could previously by reading a gorram book at the public library.

Calling a set of taped lectures a "massive open on-line course" is just another silly bit of overhyping "X, but on the Interwebz!" Yes, it is nice that the net makes more content available more efficiently, but this is an evolutionary step, not any sort of revolution.

There are not an insignificant number of cases where a normally responsible person becomes an irresponsible person,

When we're talking about irresponsible enough to commit homicide, yes, that is an insignificant number. (In terms of frequency; of course in personal terms any murder is highly significant to those, to friends and family of both the victim and, in a different sense, the murderer.)

Murder is something people work their way up to. 90% of murder suspects in Milwaukee in 2001 had a criminal record; the same proportion was found in NYC in 2003 through 2005. Keep in mind this is just guys (mostly, some women too) who got caught at previous crimes, more would have committed crimes and not been caught, and more would have displayed irresponsible but non-criminal behavior (the sort of stuff a good mental health system would catch).

The good citizen who suddenly snaps and kills is a favorite fictional trope, but bears little relationship to criminological reality.

Making a zip gun from plastic tubing is, however.

Citation needed.