I've thought about it, but I'm not sure they'd really fit in. Maybe we could work out a sort of West Berlin corridor with Las Vegas... but probably we'd just have some sort of passport card to travel easily.

Oh, shoot. I'm sure that it came FROM Texas, though!

Sure! It'll be a whole West Coast party. (Think you can talk Oregon into coming along? They're still mad at us over the Gold Rush or the Lakers or something.)

TRADE deficit. Our country (the USA) imports vastly more than it exports. If we were embargoed on any large scale, we'd be utterly screwed.

California, however, has a trade SURPLUS. A large one. Two of the three largest seaports in the US are in California, as is the busiest freight airport. And while the East Coast ports are finding it's not worth the expense to ship back empty cargo containers, in California we just fill them up with locally produced goods and rake in cash.

We just don't like taxes, so our government is broke. That is a problem I will remedy as Benevolent Dictator of the People's Republic of California. (Shhhh, don't tell them yet; I've been saying it'll be a democracy.)

As he was being detained elsewhere at the time, I doubt it. But maybe so. Maybe the cops on the scene called in to wherever he was being detained and asked him "Mind if we bowl a few rounds while we're here?"

Ok, I'm not a lawyer, I just hang out with lawyers sometimes... but...

How about tainting the warrant by arguing that the *real* reason the cops wanted in the guy's house when he wasn't there was to play with his toys? Especially if the probable cause is at all weak or disputable, the attorney *might* be able to get the warrant thrown out, thus invalidating all evidence gathered.

I think PP's point is that the quoted defense attorney is not actually representing the defendant; he's just this guy who is a defense attorney that the reporter knew well enough to ask a few questions.

You *do* know that in TFA, the officers playing Wii Sports were on duty in the middle of conducting a raid?

Same thing. Corporations are groupthink. Many of the rules of mob psychology apply, just as with fraternities or riots. The individual super-ego (conscience) is subsumed under the group consciousness, so that people don't feel individually responsible for their actions. It's why looting happens during riots, why rapes are more likely at fraternity parties, and why corporations manage to do all the heinous things that their individual officers and board members probably couldn't do. It's also the logic behind a firing squad, and probably plays a role in much of union politics (as my Labor Relations professor once explained... "Unions are the corollary to corporations.")

The same people who are totally freaked at the concept of providing health care to everyone have been working really, really hard at dismantling our educational system for a long time. "Free" is something of a misnomer; in many school districts, parents get a letter telling them which classroom supplies to send with their kids at the beginning of the year (boxes of tissue, rolls of paper towels, notebook paper, pencils, crayons... things the schools can't afford anymore). In our district this year, there are high school classes with more than 50 kids in them due to cuts; my son's kindergarten class could have up to 24 children (but, we'll PROBABLY be able to keep all four teachers and stick to less than 20 kids). And if you want to do *anything* extracurricular... sports, Mock Trial, speech & debate, Academic Decathlon... count on expenses. You'll pay for uniforms, transportation, materials, etc. out of pocket, or you'll be selling candy bars and gift wrap door to door to cover the expenses.

Please, NO. I'm still dreaming of the day that California secedes from the US, leaving Redneckistan to their enormous trade deficit and strange lawn art.

Hawaii can come with us if they want. Probably Oregon and Washington also... Yeah, I know at least Oregon loves to hate us, but when it's between California and Texas? Hm. Sorry, New England, you have to make your own country. You're too far away. But we can be allies!

A global government that includes EVERYONE would totally mess up my plans for world domination via Sacramento.

I thought that too, until on my way home from class one day when I was in college, a guy pulled up alongside in a car and started telling me all the gross sexual things he wanted to do to me. I memorized his license plate and called the cops... and found out from a very sympathetic female watch officer that IT WASN'T ILLEGAL. Freedom of speech, and all that. He would have had to actually *touch* me to break the law.

Really?

I was born white. I was born middle-class. I was born in one of the largest cities in one of the world's richest countries. I was born to well-educated parents, who knew how to pass on their knowledge. I was born after certain civil rights movements gained significant advances for the position of women in society. I was born before No Child Left Behind and Proposition 13 gutted our school systems. I was born with better-than-average looks and much-better-than-average intelligence. I was in the right place at the right time to meet my husband. My kids happen to be attractive, smart, and neurotypical.

It is terribly frightening to those of us with good lives to think that, with a few small changes, we could have had bad ones. I can almost guarantee your sister didn't have "the same potential" as you. Undiagnosed mental disorders or learning disabilities? Trauma? Gender discrimination? Who knows. But your example of you and your sister proves my point: *you*, also, could have had a different outcome. The fact that you didn't doesn't qualify you to judge someone who did.

In college, I made a friend. A good friend. She and I are still best friends. For a while, after college, she lived on my couch. She told me, "If it weren't for you, I would be homeless." She's smart, educated, etc. etc. The primary difference between the homeless and "everyone else" is social support networks. Some people are good at creating those, and some people are not. Even those who are not may wind up with good families and/or friendships... or they might not.

Blaming the poor for being poor and the powerless for being powerless assuages our guilt in some way, but it doesn't even come close to the truth. The truth is, our individual wealth or position in society is *not* a reliable indicator of our internal worth as a human being.

You're more interested in revenge than in solutions. That makes you like most humans, it turns out, according to experiments in economic game theory. People are inclined to take actions that are economically irrational if they feel that someone has treated them unfairly and deserves to be punished.

I'm interested in who has power to solve problems. Why is it the responsibility of the disenfranchised student to force the school system to meet his needs? Why isn't it MY responsibility, as the parent of a kid who represents the local hegemony, to participate in the *same* school and ensure that it's a good place for EVERYONE to get an education? I'm pretty weird among my friends for insisting on sending my son to our local public school. Everyone else in my social circle at least picks a charter school, sometimes private, and frequently homeschools (or unschools). But I have this crazy notion that if the school down the street isn't good enough for *my* kid, then I'd better fix that, since I have neighbors who don't have the resources I do, and don't have much choice about sending their kids there. If I want the other five-year-olds in my son's kindergarten class to grow into teenagers who may be annoying, but not actually destructive, I can start now by being involved and seeing that the resources exist, and are distributed in an equitable manner.

I recognize that by an accident of birth, I have greater-than-average power in society. With great power comes great responsibility. When we all come to terms with that, then I'll be a Libertarian, because *that* is what enlightened self-interest really is.

Link is broken. But yeah, restaurants really frequently use carcinogenic or teratogenic pesticides and cleaning agents, because it's faster and cheaper than using safe stuff.