Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi would disagree with you. And to be fair, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus just as the constitution allows him to "...when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

A meaningless phrase if I've ever heard one. They've grown government in ways you don't like is what you really mean.

And you are a fool if you think the Republicans will be any different this time around.

When was this golden age of American prosperity exactly?

Everything you just wrote can be said of the Republicans. I don't like the democrats in congress either, but don't act like the "other side" is the only one in the wrong here.

Numbers might not lie, but one set of them doesn't tell the whole story. Job losses by month is a much more telling statistic.

I'll ignore the whole "who started it" kindergarten mess and just reply that it would be nice to see our elected officials to act like adults.

Explain this. Note the date on that article.

That wasn't your point though. You said the legislation itself was responsible for the rate increases, which isn't true. I agree it was bad legislation but get your facts straight.

Sounds like the same old bullshit to me. Compromise to the Republicans is the Democrats doing what they tell them to do.

Maybe not during. The point I was attempting to make is that charitable giving correlates just as well if not better with religion. I wouldn't be surprised to find the disparity in time given is much smaller when you remove non-religious volunteer work. Not that religious charities don't do good work, they just don't differentiate between time and money spent running a soup kitchen and time and money spent evangelizing.

From your link:

How much more likely are they to give to non-religious charities (as in not the church they attend)? Most non-religious people don't go hang out somewhere on Sundays where there is a collection plate going around.

They are? You ever heard the phrase "co-equal branch of government"?

Local law trumps Supreme court decisions? Tell me another one...

You have a very serious misunderstanding of how the government of this country works.

Voters are generally required to register in the USA. In the states I have lived in, you cannot vote if you are not registered.

The reason for the census is to determine the population for the purposes of drawing congressional districts.

Cultural assimilation is a lot more complicated than you make it out to be.

Mandating certain education strategies in legislation is always bound to fail. Is it the goal or the method you are against? You can't learn in a classroom surrounded by a language you don't speak.

Tell that to these places

Well Puerto Rico is a US territory that has Spanish as its primary language, so for that reason alone you really don't have a point. On a side note, it would definitely put an end this discussion if Puerto Rico became a state.

Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work? It's not like the non-citizens can give themselves the right to vote, and it doesn't affect anything other than local government. Now if they were to give them the right to vote in Federal elections that would obviously be unconstitutional. Should such a constitutional amendment come up I would be against it, however if the residents of Portland want to allow legal resident non-citizens to vote in their local elections it should be up to them to decide.

Racism probably wasn't the word they were looking for. You made a statement that assumes anyone that doesn't speak English obviously wasn't from here, which is definitely not always the case.

While it may be true that today almost all people born in the USA will learn English, there are still some older citizens that might have not ever bothered to learn because the largely self sufficient communities they live in don't primarily speak English.

Isn't it reasonable to use the best understood language to communicate in? There happens to be a very large minority in this country that speaks Spanish as a primary language even if you find that distasteful. Even if they did speak English well enough to pass the citizenship exam, that doesn't mean that they aren't more comfortable with their native language. I think voting is an act that lends itself to having a complete understanding of the situation.

Having taken propranolol (for migraines, it didn't work btw) I find it interesting it is also used for performance anxiety. I wonder if it actually reduces the anxiety or simply removes the physical effects. A while back there was an Olympic sport shooter that was stripped of his medals for using propranolol, presumably to assist aiming.