Lawyer’s DWI arrest caught on tape.
Teen burglary ring gets busted.
The state unemployment office is hiring more people to help the growing number of unemployed folks.
New Mexicans will find plenty of hot wings for Super Bowl Sunday.
Iraqi elections go off without major violence.
Texan college kids could get to carry guns on campus.
Best football movies ever!
Obama will probably nominate a Republican as his Commerce Secretary.
Scientific Super Bowl snacks.
Amy Winehouse’s house gets robbed. Why doesn’t she whine about it?
Obama vows to cut mortgage costs.
Palin’s focus as governor questioned by Alaska lawmakers.
to the country of Iraq and to the free Iraqi people on their successful Democratic election and congratulations to President Obama for successfully establishing a new Democracy so soon after taking office. I just don't know how that man does it. Democrats must be very proud indeed. Just incredible.
Congratulations also to the State of Texas for introducing proposals to allow hand guns to be carried by responsible adults on school campuses. This is the most sensible piece of legislation I have heard about on this issue in a long time. Let's hope it passes.
State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, is preparing the campus concealed-carry gun measure. He calls it a “safety protection bill” for students and faculty.
“I don’t want to wake up one morning and hear on the news that some madman went on a Texas campus and picked off Texas students like sitting ducks,” Wentworth said. “I’m doing what I can to prevent that from happening in Texas.”
-- [link]
I wonder where he was on the morning of Monday, August 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed the tower at UT, killed 16 people, and wounded 32. I don't think armed students would have helped that situation much. I doubt if armed students would have helped in the killings at Virginia Tech. I'm all for the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, though. What the hell...let's REQUIRE people to carry guns.
It's a quandary that points toward action addressing the cause of violence rather than the symptom of violence.
The proof of the pudding, they say, is in the tasting.
May I offer you a taste of pudding Sir? LOL
I'm not too surprised. Out here, there's a lot of road rage and people really fucking around on the highways. But, back in NM, I don't ever remember anyone ever getting smart with a pick-up truck displaying firepower in a window-mounted rifle-rack.
I guess I's still concerned about the causes of violence rather than the means used to perpetrate violence. Didn't a girl just get decapitated by a guy with a knife in the Virginia Tech Student Union Building? I know, I know...they were both foreign students.
I like guns, I own a couple, and shooting them at inanimate objects is really fun. But what makes so many people in America so violent? Shouldn't we be looking at what causes violence rather than just trying to outgun the opposition?
I'm not sure and I would like to hear anywhere where Barack Obama claims ownership over the severe fubar that is Iraq? I have to assume that hotrod is trying to refer to the lies and deceit that is the so called "war on terror/war in iraq/war for oil"? Let's hear it for lying to the American public about a war created to fund your oil friends! Bravo!
Guns on campuses, while we're at it let's have guns in offices. Let's have guns in bars and guns in government offices. NM couldn't handle guns anywhere in public I'm sorry. Walking down a random sidewalk in Albuquerque is a fistfight waiting to happen most days. This state if filled to it's eyeballs in ignorant machismo. It doesn't need anymore help.
I don't know if we are so much more violent than other parts of the world, we are a big country with lots of people and we may be more honest about reporting the situations that do occur. I'll bet there is plenty of killing and violence in Russia, China, or Cuba as well as many other places, that we just never hear about.. At the heart, violence is an integral part of nature and it occurs at all levels of nature, including we humans and there will always be those few nutcases who want to go out and wreak havoc in a school or place of business and the best thing we can do is to carry a bigger stick and be prepared to use it. I don't know if you have ever been robbed at gunpoint or at knifepoint but I have and I can tell you that I don't ever want to feel that helpless at the hands of some meth-crazed psycho intent on financing his habit at my expense. I want to be in a position to solve his problem for him in a permanent way.
Obviously jdogg, I was being sarcastic regarding Obama claiming a victory for democracy in Iraq and I am sorry that you cannot feel good about a country being freed from dictatorship and given freedom.
Yes jdogg, I do agree. We all should have the right to bear arms. It not only makes very good sense but it is guaranteed by the second amendment. Gun control is illegal and unconstitutional.
I'm not sure we will want to pay the price for all the things they teach, though.
I dream a world without guns, but if anyone else has one, I want the right to have one , too.
My way to avoid shooting anyone is to not own a gun; my way to avoid getting shot is to avoid places where that is likely to happen, people that are likely to do it, and to stifle the impulse in myself to get too froggy.
I'm not sure the Constitution guarantees any personal
right to gun ownership, but it's a DE FACTO done deal, anyway, so the point is moot.
A world without guns is a nice dream however, before guns were invented, I think maybe people still found ways to kill each other so perhaps it is not the guns after all but simply a part of human nature. You can only avoid situations were guns might be involved to a point but what happens when somebody enters your home with evil intent which occurs every day in every state, even Idaho.
What does "getting too froggy" mean?
Well of course the 2nd amendment to the Constitution guarantees our right to gun ownership as well as our right to carry guns and it does so in very clear and certain terms as do the many statements made by its framers.
before guns were invented, I think maybe people still found ways to kill each other so perhaps it is not the guns after all but simply a part of human nature.
If only we could sufficiently arm an all-wise benevolent robot, then it could implement a ban on human nature.
I sincerely doubt if we agree on much of anything, Hotrod. What the Constitution says is that "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Most seem to skip over the "well-regulated" part and it would seem to me that phrase modifies and defines the rest of the amendment. Gun ownership in the United States is anything but "well-regulated" and that seems to be the heart of the problem. If, for instance, all gun owners were required to participate in a well-regulated militia, I would imagine most would give up their guns rather than have to get up super-early in the morning to go down to the drilling field for mandatory, well-regulated militia duty. What the framers of the Constitution where aiming at was the preservation of the people's "divine" right to rebel against their government when that government became tyrannical (it was also a post-facto self-justification for the illegal War of Independence against Britain).
Using "human nature" as an argument for violence, I think, abdicates the human mandate to overcome our baser natures in order to become better beings. Meeting violence with violence only leaves us awash in blood. Nonviolence has been demonstrably more effective at overcoming social and personal problems than has violence. I think several important religious and social figures (Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi) had a lot of insight into this matter.
The right to bear arms is already "infringed" by U.S. legislation outlawing private ownership of all sorts of weapons. In fact, the other "rights" guaranteed by the Constitution are really just privileges and can easily be taken away (such as the 1st Amendment's "right" to free speech, the 4th Amendment's "right" to illegal search and seizure, or the 6th Amendment's "right" to a jury trial). The Chinese Constitution, for instance, guarantees its citizens the "right" to a mid-afternoon nap but try telling that to a sweat-shop worker. I think the late George Carlin had a lot of insight into this matter.
Unless the Constitution is taken absolutely and literally in all cases, then infringement just becomes a matter of degree. I think the last presidential administration had a lot of insight into this matter.
Would the United States be a better place if no one (including myself) had guns? Absolutely. Should we get rid of guns? Only if we are willing to admit the Constitution is a flawed document that has outlived its usefulness. So, I return to my original point which is that perhaps we should focus on the causes of violence and remedy those causes rather than just throw up our hands with the banal and irrelevant cry that it's "our nature" to be violent while passing out the ammunition.
your misunderstanding is commonplace.
To say, as you suggest, that gun ownership should be well regulated but then go on to say that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed is contradictory and does not make sense.
To truly understand the "Bill of Rights", you must realize that, first and foremost, it is a list of AMENDMENTS to its parent document, the Constitution, and as such, each amendment refers to specific passages and articles in the Constitution itself. Once that is understood, it becomes clear that the militia referred to in the amendment is, in fact, the militia referred to multiple times throughout the text of the Constitution, the MILITARY, the FEDERAL Government's MILITIA and it is saying that the Federal militia MUST BE REGULATED or KEPT IN CHECK by individual armed citizens for the SECURITY OF A FREE STATE. In other words, to protect free states from being overrun by an out of control Federal military, individual citizens must have an un-infringed right to keep and to bear arms. The purpose of this was so that individual states would feel safe and secure in ratifying the Constitution. ALSO and further to that, notice that it says "ARMS", it does not say guns, that is because it is not really about duck hunting and it is not really all that much about self protection against burglars and rapists. It is about citizens protection against its own government and by using the word "arms", parity is more than implied. In other words, if our military has fighter planes and helicopter gunships, we should at least have a missile launcher capable of shooting them down IF WE HAVE TO.
Pretty heavy duty shit I know but this is what those guys were talking about and to any serious student of government histories, it may not be all that crazy.
...the Civil War. The issues you raise were settled long ago.
Perhaps we ought to update the written laws. Pass some amendments so that legally, the relative powers of people vs government explicitly matches the balance that we've actually chosen. Of course, when you talk about repealing the Bill of Rights, people get upset and use words like "un-American." But like you said, that decision has already been made.
Or better yet, we could just have another civil war and settle the balance in the other direction. ;-)
and clarified for you were the IDEALS that the founding fathers envisioned.
That those ideals may or may not have fallen short at one time is no reason to abandon them to the scrap pile.
Perhaps, it is reason to support them all the more.
Issues regarding the balance between the government and the governed are never settled robertmcat, you should know that.
Another civil war? No, not quite yet sloppy. Someday.
If, as Hotrod says, the Constitution is a living document, subject to reinterpretation as times and conditions change, perhaps it is a good time to re-evaluate this whole armed citizenry thing. As we wobble toward civilized nationhood, maybe we should take a look at the various means of destruction available from discount priced big-box chain stores, mom-and-pop armories, and mail-order death-dealers. More importantly, maybe we should look at what drives so many people in America to violence.
If, as Hotrod also says, we should follow the "IDEALS" of the founding fathers as he's divined them to be, then praise the Lord, pass me some ammunition, and let's get to killing.
The founding fathers were traitorous criminals in the eyes of British law and put a lot of energy and firepower suppressing internal rebellions. Just about a ton of what they wrote and legislated regarding arms and citizens were justifications for their own illegal revolution. After all, at one time or another, most of them had sworn loyalty to the English Crown. But the Whiskey Rebellion, John Brown's Abolitionist movement, Nat Turner's Rebellion, the Civil War, the International Workers of the World, the Black Panthers, Ruby Ridge, and Waco show what the founding father's ideals actually mean when confronted by the people's "divine right" of rebellion.
is clearly frustrated as evidenced by his last post which is littered with deliberate distortions, deliberate misunderstandings, and outright lies. It does not even warrant a response but I did have an experience the other day which may go a long way towards explaining the basis for robertmcat's frustration. I was trying to plug in our toaster using an extension cord and for some reason, I kept trying to plug the male toaster plug into the male end of the extension cord and it just wouldn't work which made me feel frustrated and unhappy, much as robertmcat seems to. Eventually, I realized my error and I turned the extension cord around, I plugged the male end of the toaster into the female end of the extension cord, then I plugged the male end of the extension cord into the female wall socket et voila! the parts went together with a very satisfying smoothness, the electricity flowed, the toaster toasted, I felt a great sense of relief from my previous frustration, and all was right with the world. I trust I have made myself clear.
...that I've distorted, misunderstood, and lied, but Hotrod doesn't say where and how. Instead, Hotrod proposes another fallacy (this one is called "the false analogy") in the form of a story about extension cords. The old "I won't dignify that with a response" ploy sounds righteously indignant but obviously saying nothing at all. Considering Hotrod's track record in these little debates, I am not surprised that he avoids direct engagement and instead veers off into thinly veiled innuendo, an only slightly more sophisticated form of fallacious "name calling" and "ad hominem" attacks.
There is nothing distorted, misunderstood, or false in the knowledge that, if they'd lost the War of Independence, the British would have legally hanged the Founding Fathers as traitors to the Crown. With that much at stake, it was crucial that those Founding Fathers clearly define the intellectual and philosophical justification for their treasonous rebellion. Adherence to "higher law" is always the rationalization for any such rebellion, but it only works if the rebels win.
That's why he's all over the place, and why he won't engage directly. He's just grabbing opinions from the right, and randomly spraying them in the form of word effluvia.
