"As long as he does his job."

If that is the prevailing attitude in town they deserve what they get.

It's hard to understand his political calculus if he has presidential ambitions. He'll need the right wing of the party to get through the 2016 primaries.

Exactly right! I've been saying this for years.

White guilt, political correctness, Obama as the first affirmative-action president, all take us to a an electorate that is disengaged from political reality. The press aides and abets this political pathology.

If we go in it should be short, simple and destructive. Destroy the Asade regime, seize any WMDs we find and destroy anything  else of  military value. Then get out. Pronto. No nation building, no school building just do what the military does best, kill people and break things that get in the way of the mission. And I mean that with great honor and bride in our armed sevices.

I decided that if I'm ever asked I'll just lie.

One lefty told me we went into Afghanistan for the oil.  

To quote one of the comments on the LAT page, "Stop making sense!"

I'm coming late to the discussion but I'll add my 2 cents as a former NJ EMT. First, I have no problem with government picking up some or all of the tab on EMT training. But it should be done (if at all) at the state level, not the federal level. New Jersey will do that though not as much as it used to since the legislature pillaged the funds to pay for a budget shortfall some years back (sound familiar?).  Also, NJ will only subsidize training for volunteer EMTs.

Second point. IMHO you are probably going to forget most of what you learned if you do not practice your skills. That means riding with an ambulance corps on a regular basis. If you are going to go through the trouble of getting EMT certified and keeping your certification current (ongoing refresher training) just to put it in mothballs waiting for a terrorist attack or plant explosion, you're probably going to lose interest and trop out of the program.

Bowmore Scotch

Jameson's Irish

Disclosure: I'm not a lawyer. I am a gun owner. My understanding of the laws concerning lethal force for self-defense is this. You are covered by self-defense statutes if you or someone else is in immediate danger. The mantel of self-defense disappears when the danger has passed and reappears if the danger reappears.  You must also have a legal right to be where you are to exercise lethal force in self-defense.  A criminal can’t claim self-defense in firing on an armed homeowner.  I don’t know the laws in Canada but I can’t see how shooting a retreating suspect can possibly be seen as self-defense.

If doctors, dentists and lawyers had been evaluated privately from the very beginning it wouldn't be a problem today. People would know how to check out the bona fides of the professional in question. Going back to that system would be very difficult insofar as changing the public's expectations. Not to mention getting state governments to give up the lucrative fee monopoly they have.

I'll have my steak rare, my potatoes baked and my beer cold.

Your welcome.

It's cute but I think it skews libertarian. Here's a longer one called the Libertarian Purity Test: http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi-bin/purity.cgi

I scored about a 28 on it, a "soft-core libertarian." Being a conservative I can live with that.

How much difference is there really, between ""The Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To ..." and fascist doctrine of  "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state?" 

I'd repeal the 17th amendment instead. Then cast it into the fires of Mordor.