USA Politics

No the Constitution is not perfect. And I doubt that it will ever happen but if the day comes that the citizens of this country decide to outlaw guns, then there will be a constitutional amendment that will outlaw the manufacturing, possession, and use of guns. We've reversed one amendment and I'm sure we'd do it again if that's what the majority wants.
 
mckindog said:
Thank you. This is the missing question in this excellent discussion for me.
Why is this part of the US constitution and does the scenario it was created to address still carry weight today?
I'd really appreciate it if you or Bearfan could answer that for me.

That's what I am missing here, and why I have trouble seeing "it is in the constitution" as anything but synonymous with "because the Bible says so."
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I don't have the time or inclination to summarize it, but I refer you to the Supreme Court's 2008 opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller. Scalia's majority opinion contains the as-close-to-definitive-as-you-can-get description of the meaning and history, though the dissents are worth reading as well. Suffice it to say, there has been a healthy debate and disagreement about it for many years.

EDIT: Here is a link, but it's easy to Google: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/07-290/
 
Why do the idiots on T.V. insist that somebody had to teach the assholes who bombed the marathon how to build the bombs they used. Not sure about the dead brother, but the one we caught was attending medical school so he had to have at least a little bit of intelligence. Enough that he could look up bomb making techniques online or read the " The Anarchist Cookbook"
 
Cornfed Hick said:
I don't have the time or inclination to summarize it, but I refer you to the Supreme Court's 2008 opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller. Scalia's majority opinion contains the as-close-to-definitive-as-you-can-get description of the meaning and history, though the dissents are worth reading as well. Suffice it to say, there has been a healthy debate and disagreement about it for many years.

EDIT: Here is a link, but it's easy to Google: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/07-290/
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Good link, I was going to try to reply to this, but this hits the debate right on the mark.
 
On another note, the George W. Bush Presidential Library opens here in Dallas on the SMU Campus on Thursday. Presidents Bush, Bush, Obama, Clinton, and Carter will be on hand. Regardless what someone thinks of a particular President, I would highly recommend going to any Presidential Library they can. They are all incredibly interesting and beyond the public facing part, the contain the documentation of the Presidency which is a treasure trove for current and future scholars. I have been to the Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton libraries. I have been by the George H.W. Bush library at Texas A&M, but have not made it in yet, but I should be able to see it in the future.
 
Cornfed Hick said:
Wasted's post

Not to make light of Wasted's post (well, maybe a little), it reminded me of a guy I knew in college who, every time he would get bored with an argument, he would say, "Well, but what about the children? How does it affect the children?" and then walk off. It was actually a rather clever way to shut people up.
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First off: LOL

Second on: I don't think it is clever at all, because what about the children? I'll tell you what. How about... Who gives a shit about the children? You can replace "children" with "ocelots" for all I care and it makes it just as silly. Children are resilient and highly adaptable so meh. It is my least favorite straw man argument and I only use it when I want to piss people off, which is why when someone else uses it I just want to punch them in the face, because I know they're full of shit.

As for Wasted argument however, it's been said many times before. If instead of funneling millions of billions of dollars to the military industrial complex and the gun industry and instead directed that to fighting hunger we would all live in a hippie paradise. BUUUUUUUUUT, LC, Perun and IronDuke (when he was here) pointed out before, this planet makes plenty of food for everybody and there is plenty to go around. The problem isn't the funding or lack thereof. It's the managing of said funds and how they never make it to their destination, because said hungry children live in countries/territories ran by warlords who intercept the aid and use it for their own purposes. SOOOOOOOOOOOO we're back to the guns! OOOOOOOOH YEEEEEAH B)
 
Cornfed Hick said:
I don't have the time or inclination to summarize it, but I refer you to the Supreme Court's 2008 opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller. Scalia's majority opinion contains the as-close-to-definitive-as-you-can-get description of the meaning and history, though the dissents are worth reading as well. Suffice it to say, there has been a healthy debate and disagreement about it for many years.

EDIT: Here is a link, but it's easy to Google: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/07-290/
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Some heavy reading, but my take is it about ensuring an individual's right to protect himself and/or his community, with the very pertinent suggested undercurrent that the most likely threat is the one posed by the state itself. Giving gun rights to the people ensures the state will behave. In essence, it's an explicit reference to the premise that the individual is paramount.

It leads me to speculate that it's not gun regulation or lack thereof that is the root cause of the high instance of violent crime. It is a founding principle of the country - logical given its birth in rebellion - that in the preservation and pursuit of personal liberty, violence is a necessary option.

It's not a case of freedom guarantees your right to guns, more a case of access to guns guarantees your right to freedom.
 
More fun with Obamacare

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/obamacare-exemption-lawmakers-aides-90610.html?ml=po_r

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.
The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.
A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”
Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.
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On another note

The George W Bush Library gets it opening today. Very cool that it is here in Dallas, the public opening is May 1. Looking forward to seeing it, from the previews they have shown on TV it looks very nicely done.
 
Here's something interesting:

Christians Openly Advocate Killing Atheists on FOX News Facebook Page

About a week ago, a group of people filed a lawsuit in New York to prevent a cross from being erected within the World Trade Center memorial without equal opportunity for other religions who wish to have memorials there as well.
____

More interesting than the event itself are the questions the blogger posed at the end of the article:

  • Christians, is it really acceptable to say, “I’m not like them. Those aren’t real Christians!” After all, the people who made these comments would say the exact same thing about you.
  • Non-Christian people who identify with another religion, do you think your religion should be able to display a memorial to the believers who died alongside the Christians?
  • Non-believers, is it really so important to warrant a national campaign to not allow a single Christian symbol at a monument for the dead?
 
This happens every time that atheists do something in the States, pretty well - death threats on comments across the spectrum.

To answer the non-believer segment of the question: I'm not sure. Personally, the 9/11 cross isn't a big deal to me. But I don't want it to be the only religious symbol there. It's unlikely there's a 9/11 Islamic Crescent or a 9/11 Star of David or a 9/11 Buddha, so I think that if you present one large Christian object it should be located among memorials to other faiths, and indeed, no faith at all. Imagine if your father, a Jew, had perished in 9/11, and you go to the museum to uphold his memory, and you have a giant big Christian symbol and nothing comparable for your father's faith. It is more than conceivable that this cross would be thusly construed as an establishment of faith in a government-run facility.

The cross itself I have no problem with, but you have to present it equally with other faiths. If that cannot be done, then it's wrong, and indeed, unconstitutional to present it in the museum. You know the problem with a museum presenting only one point of view, mate - and the problem with a museum endorsing one form of religion in a secular nation. It'll provide some comfort to the people who are Christian who go, and could very well rob the sanctity of the place from those who aren't Christian.

And in the USA, lawsuits are how this happens, because without them, Christians would still be acting like the US is a Christian nation (sorry Christians, but you used to do just that).
 
I think the lawsuits in general about crosses (and really lawsuits in general in the US) are a bit overboard. There should be something to commemorate the faiths of all those that dies (minus the murderers who did the act). The only thing I will say is that a cross on a grave has a non religious symbol as well (at least in my mind) of commemorating death.
 
... and another example of the stupidity of out government

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/national/army-says-no-to-more-tanks-but-congress-insists/nXZ5p/

WASHINGTON —
Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.
Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.
But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”
It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.
Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.
“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, said this past week.
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bearfan said:
The only thing I will say is that a cross on a grave has a non religious symbol as well (at least in my mind) of commemorating death.
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True for most of us, but it's still from the Christian world. The problem is, that most religions don't have the same appreciation for symbols as Christianity does. Muslims have grudgingly accepted the crescent moon as a recognisable symbol, but they would probably prefer something like "Allahu Akbar" or a Qur'anic verse in the memorial - which would of course be rather strange for other observers. I don't see why it can't be a humble, universal thing, like a burning flame. That would be understood by everyone, and be more poignant than anything else, really.
 
I would agree, they cannot put a Muslim symbol there just based on the people who did this. It would be like putting a Japanese flag at the Pearl Harbor Memorial. Something like a flame would be ideal
 
I'd be fine with an eternal flame. But if they cannot put Muslim symbols there (let's remember that some of the victims of 9/11 were Muslim, too, not that such is really well known), then they shouldn't be allowed Christian symbols.

Know what they should do? Allow a Christian charity or church to buy the cross for $1 and display it on their own property or at their own memorial. That way it's nbd, because it's not government endorsement of religion.

bearfan said:
The only thing I will say is that a cross on a grave has a non religious symbol as well (at least in my mind) of commemorating death.
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I won't even lie, man, reading this made me really, really angry for a little bit. This is a perfect example of Christian privilege. The only reason you consider this to be a non-religious symbol of death is because you see it everywhere. It's a very Christian symbol of death - it references the resurrection for the faithful promised by the J-Train, as well as his restoration to life. In fact, other than "a lot of people who happen to be Christian use it", there's no reason to consider it generic.
 
Perun said:
Here's something interesting:

More interesting than the event itself are the questions the blogger posed at the end of the article:

  • Christians, is it really acceptable to say, “I’m not like them. Those aren’t real Christians!” After all, the people who made these comments would say the exact same thing about you.
  • Non-Christian people who identify with another religion, do you think your religion should be able to display a memorial to the believers who died alongside the Christians?
  • Non-believers, is it really so important to warrant a national campaign to not allow a single Christian symbol at a monument for the dead?
Click to expand...

Just like the Muslims that blew up the tower and the current Boston Bombing suspects, the Christians making these stupid comments are a minority (albeit a LOUD one) and do not in anyway represent most Christians, they certainly do not represent me. They can shove it. I for one wouldn't want a cross to be placed unless there are other religious symbols. Hell they can just slap the "Coexist" bumper sticker on there for all I care. As for non-believers, I think it would be fair to place a stack of Richard Dawkins bestsellers ;)... I got your back.
 
LooseCannon said:
I won't even lie, man, reading this made me really, really angry for a little bit. This is a perfect example of Christian privilege. The only reason you consider this to be a non-religious symbol of death is because you see it everywhere. It's a very Christian symbol of death - it references the resurrection for the faithful promised by the J-Train, as well as his restoration to life. In fact, other than "a lot of people who happen to be Christian use it", there's no reason to consider it generic.
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I am not sure why that would make you angry. Symbols, holidays, etc change meaning over time. Many non Christians celebrate Christmas/Easter . Memorial Day started as a salute to vets and Labor Day started as a holiday for workers, but for the majority of Americans it symbolizes the start and finish of summer. The swastica used to have a totally different meaning, but if I wear a shirt with a Swastica on it, people think Nazi. Obviously that is an extreme example. But I do think when a majority of Americans see a cross in a cemetery or on a memorial, they thing dead people .. not the resurrection of Christ.

I do agree though that based on what the Supreme Court has ruled that just a cross would be a problem and even though innocent Muslims died on 9/11, putting Muslim symbols on the memorial would still be a problem as it was Islamic terrorist that created the need for a memorial. So, put up a flame, images of the twin towers, etc .
 
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