John Adams

The highest court in NYS is the Court of Appeals. Just a strange naming of the courts in NYS. In most states the state Supreme Court is the highest; in NYS, the Supreme Court is a middle court and the Court of Appeals is the highest.

Do you use "activist" to describe judges on the right too?

A NY court today ruled that NYs ban on gay marriage violated the NY State Constitution. Appeals on the Way

I love Thurman, but... Thurman was bad at picking up the blitz, but got better at it over the years. He was never one of the "best" at it. You want to see a guy pick up a blitz- watch McGahee. He relishes flattening blitzers, especially cornerbacks.

The shackling of our warriors is an embarrassment. When you unleash the dogs of war, they go to war, not to a play date. We need men that will go to war, kill people, and break things. The lines for morality in war are a lot different from the lines we draw to get through life.

Seeing how much of my money gets stolen from me, all in one place on the W2s, makes me ill. I also hate this time of year.

I'm not thrilled to jump in on your side, but this is the truth Republicans are loathe to admit. The Republican Party is about big government just like the Dems... the two parties have a lot in common. I look forward to seeing Bush's huge slash of the gov't on Monday. If it is really a big cut (holding my breath), I wonder how the Republican Congress will deal with it (not well).

Exactly. Someone on here (VABills?) has a sig line about the dark men in the night who guard our freedom. I don't think about our armed forces in exactly that light, but the point is a good one. I sleep well at night because a lot of people are willing to kill any MFer who tries to mess with me (not to mention they are willing to die protecting me). I don't forget it. Our armed services are underappreciated and underpaid.

That people are getting freaked out by this is absurd. Killing a bad guy- especially in the context that he discussed it (men who beat and main women)- is his job. And I'm thankful that people like him are out there willing to kill the bad guys. I'm not doing it.

Listened to it. That's such an awesome amount of food- I cannot fathom it. I couldn't eat 160 wings in a day.

That's funny about schools not allowing the military to recruit because of discrimination policies, but allowing the big firms to recruit. Ever look at the average makeup of the partnership as a big WASPy firm? They make a Klan rally look multicultural.

These are also the threads that remind me that I should exercise my second amendment rights, which I currently do not exercise (not for a particularly good reason... just don't have anything I would regularly punch holes in at a distance).

I stand corrected. I bear witness to the fruits of bipartisanship.

You must be kidding. Who am I kidding? 4.5% city wage tax in Philadelphia. $7,500 a year in school taxes in the suburbs on a 1900 sq ft house. And I wonder where my money goes. Sonsabitches. These are the threads that make me want to move to an armed ranch in Colorado.

Point taken. I saddle him with it b/c he proposed it.

This is some jerkoff school district being petty about the no child left behind act. What a bunch of selfish pricks. It has nothing to do with the actual spelling bee and making kids feel bad. It's all about taking a potshot at Bush's stupid program at the expense of students.

My comment was in response to you, when you singled out the Left. Consider my post a reminder that the Right, especially nowadays in view of their control of all the branches of the government, is more in charge of Constitution-trampling than the Left.

Somewhere, reading this study, Ashcroft just gave Bush a hi-five.

If you read the survey results, 1 in 2 students believe the government should be able to censor newspapers, and 3 in 4 students think singers/rapper should be able to say whatever they want with no gov't censorship. Watch for Peter Jennings to rap the news soon. What just that nugget above says to me is that public school (the majority of the schools surveyed were public) don't work. The teachers stink and the students they produce are dumb. If you think I've drawn the wrong conclusions, read that story again, or see how US students stack up in math and science. I'm glad I have the means to ignore public schooling. I just wish that the private schools could totally abandon the public model.

I'll tell you how I deal with my Clintonian feelings on this... which I also have. On the one hand, private companies should do what they want; on the other, I hate cigarette smoke, especially in places where I eat. My Clintonian rationalization, and it's a doozy, is this. I fully support the rights of private companies to ban/allow smoking as they see fit, but I've got other more pressing issues that I fight for (write for, vote for, monetarily support, etc.)... so if you want to fight the smoking ban, you have my silent approval. Who's got a cigar and a blue dress?

When government starts with the assumption that "The citizenry is bad," bad things happen.

Yeah, believe me, I know the WW is a left wing vehicle and all that, but it's got some great plotlines this year so far. The focus is on the primary races (the president is finishing his second term), and the Dem. and Rep. nominations are wide open. The Rep. who will no dount win the nomination is Alan Alda, who plays a 100% honest and forthright politician, who says what he believes, and panders to no special interest. We're clearly supposed to like him, and we do. On the left are three candidates, two suckups made for TV pander to all interests' types, and one, played by Jimmy Smits, who is trying to be a man of principle, but struggling with the desire to win and compromise that principle. His campaign manager is a former White House staffer who is the devil on his shoulder, but struggling with his own cynicism. Anyway, the interplay between the pandering and principle is good stuff. Last night, ahead of the Iowa caucuses, all the candidates went to Iowa and had to give a speech to the Corn Growers association in which they said they supported ethanol subsidies. Every candidate thought ethanol subsidies were a waste of money. The two total sell-outs made the speech easily. Smits struggled, but in the end gave in and backed subsidies. Alda's character , despite heavy lobbying from his campaign managers (the wife from Home Improvement and Milton, "please return my stapler" from Office Space), stuck to his principles and criticized ethanol subsidies. At the end, Alda and Smits have a conversation where Smits confesses that he doesn't support the subsidies, and Alda looks off in disappointment. Good stuff in an age of gutless middle of the road politics.

Really? You base that conclusion on... Is it the liberal's duty to, as a group, call out all the wackos? On the right, the mainstream politicians (Bush) go the wacky (Bob Jones U) schools, instead of vice versa. Where was the right wing outrage? I'm outraged at the lack of right wing outrage when this happened. Outrageous. Well, my children will choose their own courses. If they want to take a class from a wackadoo, that will be up to them. Hopefully they will make better decisions than that.

LOL Can you see past labels like liberal and conservative? Really, ask yourself, what percentage of liberals agrees with this, that you would attribute it to the entire movement? It's like bashing Republicans for the behavior of David Duke.

And I think from Zooropa on, they've only gotten better.