How about we stop using taxes for social engineering? There is plenty of evidence to the effect that most driving is not done on the highways, so why should local drivers pay tax on the gasoline they use to drop off and pick up the kids at school, and go shopping, so "Phantom 309" can go barreling up and down I-95 60 hours a week? Rewrite the IRS Form 2290 - Highway Use Tax - so that tax is paid by the mile, and include exemptions for small companies, and small vehicles. Then make the tax deductible as a business expense, so in effect business tax money is diverted from the General Tax fund to the Highway Trust Fund, rather than unnecessarily pilfered from the the teeming millions of local drivers...

The common flaw in future histories is that as the projected changes take place, gradually, humanity does absolutely nothing but stand by. The temperatures rise, and people do nothing. The weather goes haywire, and people do nothing. The ice melts, and people do nothing. The seas rise, and people do nothing. Think of it this way: From the time the first practical electric light bulb was invented (1879) to the installation of the first electric streetlights (1914) were installed was 35 years. If climate change is real, would humankind wait nearly 300 years to respond to its catastrophic effects?

There was an American plan to build a canal across Nicaragua, before the Panama canal plan. But, a stamp put an end to it: Dr. Arthur Delaney, writing in the November 12, 1977, issue of Stamp Collector tells the story. While a Frenchman named Philippe Banua-Varilla was lobbying Congress to go with Panama, they had their eyes on Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan government was willing and insisted that its few volcanos were dormant and earthquakes non-existent. The volcano Momotombo, right on the route of the proposed Nicaraguan canal, was erupting violently even as the US Senate debated! But they were not deterred. But then, wrote Delaney, just as Banua-Varilla was to leave Washington a defeated man, a friend gave him a Nicaraguan stamp of the 1900 issue showing Momotombo in action. Inspired by this, he is said to have made the rounds of Washington stamp dealers and brought enough to send one to each Senator with a note pointing out that this was an official Nicaraguan admission that its volcanoes were indeed very active! The Senate voted, and the Nicaraguan canal proposal was defeated. http://www.stampnotes.com/Note...

"Other so-called education texts being used by the Responsive Ed program teach Western superiority and how feminism forced women to 'turn to the state as a surrogate husband.'" I don't know what this has to do with either creationism or "anti-science". "According to anthropologist Lionel Tiger, the ancient unit of a mother, a child and a father has morphed from monogamy into “bureaugamy,” a mother, a child and a bureaucrat. The state has become a substitute husband. In fact, it doesn’t replace just the husband, it replaces the entire nuclear and extended family, raises the children and cares for the elderly." Quoted in 'The Fatherless Civilization' :: http://tresmontes.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/the-fatherless-civilization/

"A group of brilliant scientists, no matter how intelligent or correct they are, is not going to convince the entire modern world to stop what it's doing, shut down society and restructure it for the long term health of the planet." And even though their chances of doing so improve with Democrats in power, they're still not going to be able to do it. Add a third reason, 3) See Wolf, Boy Who Cried. I'd like to put away my winter coat and galoshes; and be wearing a wind breaker in December, before I prepare for melting polar caps and rising shorelines.

Agreed

It's only cheaper because they spend an average of 11 years in jail before they are executed. If they were executed after one appeal, a few months after sentencing, the numbers would change radically. By the way, people in prison do occasionally kill other people, including Correction Officers.

Have you any idea how many released prisoners kill people every year? Would you like to change that formula to "It is better that a guilty man stay in jail, than more iinocent people are killed"? Don't be so anxious to set people free, chum. The next one could end up in your neighborhood.

... and why are we listening to them? Find some other way to execute people who are supposed to be executed, and stop using the anaesthetic supply as a phony excuse to delay the inevitable. If the law calls a crime a capital crime, then that's what it is. If the death penalty is appropriate, and it often is, then execute the person! Throw them into a volcano; toss them off a cliff; force feed them mercury - just kill 'em, and cut the crap! Do we have to have a debate over capital punishment every time someone gets sentenced to death. If you cold bloodely kill someone, the community decides if you should be put to death. That's that.

"your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason" said Justice Scalia. Yes, and so can your fingerprints (and, in fact they are). Justice Scalia must have had a better objection than that.