Mickey

That seems to happen to a lot of gays. How many christians were killed for being christians in the last year in the United States? The last two? Three? I agree that persecuting christians is wrong, wrong, wrong. It is just not really much of a problem. Thankfully, I think racial violence and gay bashing are not as bad as they once were but still, much more of a problem than anti-christian violence. We are still waiting for the day when a black man is elected President of the United States. I think the waiting for a Christian President was over when Washington was elected.

Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert have called for the investigation so I guess Tom and I won't be alone.

Can I point out what a complete ^#^#%^@# wad Pat Robertson is or is that "christian bashing"?

21 months. He has lots of money, she likes to spend it. Drugs are a very good business I guess and somehow he never even comes close to getting arrested. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that he has friends on the force or somewhere.

So if you are in America you have to know the christian calender? Interesting, I don't think that is in the citizenship exam. Should they also know how to say the rosary? A novina? The latin mass? The Notre Dame fight song? How christian do you have to be or understand to come here?

Yeah, that is what I said, its okay to bash christians. Are christians unrepresented in any walk of life? Are they systematically discriminated against in this country? Are there laws preventing them from getting married? Are they being tied to fence posts and left to die because they are christians? Are they being dragged by a rope behind a pick-up truck? Sorry, I am not losing sleep over the pernicious problem of "christian bashing". The super majority acting like a powerless minority is sickening. Its like the biggest kid on the block wimpering in the corner because some other kid called him mean. The lottery winner asking for a loan.

50% vision in her left eye. Still sees the stunatz. Thanks for asking.

My church is sponsoring a family of refugees from the Sudan, they never heard of christmas. There is a guy on our soccer team from Gabon, has no idea what christmas is all about let alone the date. We have a temp from India, has no more idea when christ was born than I know when buddha was born. Big world.

I think your premise, that everything is predictable, is in error. It is not and you don't need an all powerful being to inject randomness or unpredictability into the universe. You could go the other way on free will. If literal christians are right, those who believe in God, providing they have no other unforgiven sins, are going to heaven and those who do not believe are going to hell no matter how well they may have lived their lives in other respects. So the choice, the "free will", is believe or suffer eternal pain and agony. That is a metaphorical gun to your head far more persuasive than an actual shotgun. That's free will? I don't think so.

Correction to the title of the thread, it should be "Check your handgun at the door when entering...."

I know, this terrible persecution of christians has got to stop. Whoops, sorry, I meant to say that this terrible persecution complex of christians has got to stop. My bad.

Did you ever think that maybe they do that not to hide the religious significance of the holiday but to avoid confusion for people who have no idea when christmas is?

I think that if you are going to claim to be holier than thou, you ought to be holier than thou. You see, a thief who never claimed to be nothing more than a thief is just a thief. A thief who claims to be holy is a thief and a hypocrite. Not a different standard, just a more egregious crime.

God of the gaps. Anything we can't yet explain must be divine.

Life span of 75, teeth that last 40 (less in England). Intelligently designed? Maybe. If the designer were essentially an underachiever.

Figures. The one thing republicans want to do that I agree with, drilling in ANWR, and they aren't going to do it.

Quick, somebody shut down this thread before its too late.

too late, I already feel aggrandized, you can't take it back.

Doesn't it amaze you that some people take their understanding of evolution from a Nazi Pary handbook circa 1932 and then denounce it because of that understanding?

That does not follow at all. The goal is survival, not master-racehood. There are lots of excellent strategies for survival that would have nothing to do with creating a master race. Many species do quite well with no measurable intellegence at all or the ability to "master" others. Bacteria and viruses come to mind. As for a "master race", that is not a biological concept. There were, at times in the far distant past, more than one proto-human species on the planet at the same time. One did not "master" the other to reach dominion over the earth. One simply out reproduced the other and outcompeted with them for many of the same resources. Eventually the numbers for one group thin out making them vulnerable to extinction. Such species can go extinct based only on their own problems, not all were wiped out by a competitor. Some evolutionary events are accidents of nature, weather, whatever. There have been those who have twisted the science to provide some support for their own atrocious beliefs. Those who have, have abused and misused science. You are following the same path only with a different goal. You repeat their twisted view of science to discredit the science. That only works if you think that people like the Nazi's made fair and accurate use of the science. Your argument seems to be that the science must be wrong because it led to the Nazis. Newsflash: twisted, murderous regimes have been aroung a lot longer than evolution, the Nazis didn't invent the idea of a genocidal military state. One thing all such states have in common, is the twisting of all possible justifications to support their madness. Maybe they forced temple priests to proclaim that Jupiter favored Ceasar's reign. Maybe they claimed that they were themselves divine. Whatever. The Nazi's were no different. They twisted history and science, whatever they could, to legitimize their rule. What you appear do be doing is almost as bad. You take their twisting of science and present it as valid inorder to discredit the science. In essence, you are citing Hitler as an authority for how bad evolution is with this "master race" stuff.

So.......the Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate call for an immediate investigation into the leak and then, after Senator Lott indicates the leaker may have been a Republican Senator, Republicans are now backing off from the demand for an investigation. Hmmm.....what in the world could be going on here? It is a puzzlement. Roberts tells Frist to back off on leak probe

Which proves once again that things really aren't so bad in....Iraq.

Wouldn't it benefit them if it was blamed on the other party? If a Republican leaked the information as was postulated by Trent Lott, what would be the motivation there? Other than thinking it would be blamed on the democrats, I am not sure why a Republican senator would do that but lord knows I don't understand Republicans anyway so who knows. I don't see anyway to stop leaks other than to investigate them, find the sources and punish them accordingly. Its one thing to leak that so-and-so is bopping his intern or getting a kick-back on a contract, quite another to blab on something like this.

You quoted him and responded to his post. You said that the words "self-aggrandizement" came to mind as you read his post, a post that was complimentary to me. So you read a post by someone else and concluded that, I was engaging in self-aggrandizement. Yeah, makes sense. This is kind of a pattern for you isn't it? You post a bunch of gobbledy-gook and when it gets torn apart as such, you claim to have meant something else entirely.

Yeah but a lot of private relationships are keyed to legal marriage so if the state denies you legal marriage, it denies you certain things that would otherwise be available in a private setting. More troubling still would be the interaction between private and state actions and actors. What if you have a contractor who gives benefits to gay couples bidding on a state job or receiving state funds for one reason or another. Do they become an arm of the state subject to its prohibitions by being financially tied to them? Its like prohibiting public funds going to a private entity which discriminates. Well, it is Texas so these things have to be expected. Gay men and lesbian women will vote with their feet and their dollars. Maybe they will boycott Texas, who knows. Didn't they do that with success in Colorado back when it passed a state law prohibiting any city from passing gay friendly legislation back when cities like Boulder were doing just that?