As an outsider, I suspect one problem with the system is that incentives are not symmetrical.  If a prosecutor loses, it reflects badly on them personally.  Not so for the defense attorney; they have a ready made excuse.  Their client was guilty!  They did them a favor by winning on half the charges!  (Or in a civil case by losing for less than the original claim amount.) The defense attorney has a lot less pressure on himself if he just assumes his client is probably guilty.   Once someone is charged it's unlikely that anyone is as concerned with proving the defendant's innocence as the prosecutor is with proving guilt.  

Was Santorum glorifying janitors?  No, he was respecting them, which is the right way to regard someone who is doing a job that needs doing.  To think otherwise is obnoxiously elitist, the way Romney was (I think falsely) portrayed. I've known janitors without entrepreneurial ambition who were finer citizens and finer people than many hustlers in suits I have encountered.

Conrad Black is my hero.  My hero.  Mark Steyn, who I believe is a friend of Mr. Black, described what happened to him and it is chilling and despicable.   Venal and corrupt, indeed.

I used to support the death penalty but between the fact that I'm sure many  innocent people are convicted, and the fact that I am uneasy with state-mandated murder, I am not so sure any more.

That was a fun read!

What an assortment of people we have on Ricochet.  I would not even recognize a Prada purse if I stepped on it.

Beautiful.  And sad.  Few men would be capable of that kind of leadership and we should not despise Barack Obama for not rising to that level.  But if he could have.....

A  "Heck, yeah" from central New York.  To generalize, anyone under sixty with ambition left long ago.  The remaining few functional people have maintained some reminders of former glory, museum-fashion.

Has anyone read the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand? (I kid.) I threw my copy out when I reread it ten years ago because it was too realistically depressing.  But I recall a section of the book where the heroine went to an economically stagnant area, once a manufacturing center. People had lost their pride, independence, and initiative, existing on handouts and occasional halfhearted work, vaguely resentful of anyone with more than they had.  Even ten years ago that part did not strike a chord with me.  But I hadn't lived in central New York yet. 

You can get even a cranky old biddy like me cackling all to herself, Dave.

Though I have never understood the mischief thing, it just isn't how I'm wired, my Dad had a bit of it too.  Like, when my parents were first married , my mother was puzzled when she would come across prune pits hidden in odd places.  Turned out my Dad was just checking how thorough her housekeeping was.

Today I'll be extra grateful for my Dad, and also for my husband and the father of my children, who graciously overlooks the occasional dust bunny.

I would really, really like to know who decided this needed taxpayer funded research.  Named and shamed.

And the Democrats' biggest donors I am sure, sometimes simultaneously.  Much of those donations to both parties are just "protection" in order not to be the most attractive victim of the next legislative initiative.  But I believe there is plenty of crony capitalism including from Republicans, I'm just not sure  Medicare Part D was as overwhelming an example as Xennady thinks.  The problem with that legislation and other Bush programs was the expansion of government, period, whether corrupt in concept or not.
Romney was not the best small government candidate but he was way better than his opponent.

As a person not on Medicare, I resent paying more for my health care to artificially subsidize Medicare.  That is corrupt.

If drug importation did save any money at all, it would be at the expense of other countries and of R&D investment. Maybe acceptable, maybe not. 

Not necessarily corrupt decisions.....  When a big customer negotiates a good deal with a supplier, in general, the supplier makes it up by charging more to the customers who have less clout.  In this case the cost-shifting would just increase costs to everybody not on Medicare.  Similarly, drug companies can sell cheaper in other countries because they make their money in the US, but that would end if we were re-importing those drugs.

Darn.  What if you don't think gays can "marry" no matter what the law says, yet  you don't think they are any more likely to go to Hell than anybody else?  Are you an unlibertarian unconservative?

You mean, it's possible to be both libertarian AND social conservative? I had been beginning to see those as enemy camps.

Seems like disproportionate outrage on your part.  But I'd be interested in your uncomplicated explanation.....

After a quick peek at that Swiss bill of rights I hope they are doing a lot of ignoring it, as it has some crazy stuff.  Men and women have a constitutional right to equal pay for work of equal value?  Yikes, who decides value?  Everyone has a constitutional right to marry and have a family? Yikes, even ugly and disagreeable people?

Between that and Mendel's comments I am being disabused of some ideas about Switzerland, but nobody has (yet) disputed the character stereotype. 

Maggie, the movie was Bread and Chocolate.

? I don't think she was suggesting faith enforced by the government, at all. 

Edit: I see she said that better/faster.