Mr. ~Paules,

Perhaps it is time to give way to the next round of would-be teachers to step up and get the education of a lifetime.  Thank you for your service. 

 Please do, Mr. President, please take up this issue.  Please, please, please.  You could not make our efforts to defeat you in 2012 easier.  And while you are excelling at dumb ideas, please replace Joe Biden with John McCain before the Republican's snatch him up.

 Christians will have to--at some point--cease our efforts to leaven your society by participating in your society.  That is clearly your choice, not ours. And it will be, at your insistence, your society, not ours.  The will to forebear may be made meaningless by your success in robbing us of the means to effectively forebear and act.  We will then do what we have had to do before—many times.  We will attempt to retreat, first, to the monasteries.  If you burn those--and you have done that before--we will retreat to the catacombs.  If you pursue us there--and you have done that before--then we will have no choice, perhaps, but to die as martyrs.  This world will then be yours and you can give yourself to you own pleasures, for a while at least.  And what a world you will inherit while you have it: filth, pestilence, blood and torment as that silly Christian story has it.  Unimaginable?  I am insane?  Okay.  Have at it. 

 What we can graciously tolerate as inevitable, or regrettable, exceptions--cannot be made the basis of law, behavior, biology and culture.  This is where many lawyers, enthralled by their own cleverness, have done our nation grave harm by arguing for the bizarre and infrequent to become the basis of legal precedent and cultural norms.  Fostering this positive feedback amplification has produced a cultural squeal that cannot permit a sustained national existence.  I am so trying to warn you of what you and your children's children will inherit.  For God's sake stop the insanity now. Stop pretending as though these aberrant voices deserve to go unchallenged, much less obeyed.  Why do I worry?  The Muslims will fix this problem.  Go ahead, let the Pink Panty Boyz go fight them.  We Christians are so tired of this little triangulation between the Liberal elites, Islam and ourselves.  You two fight it out.   

 I will tell who will be harassed by "gay" officers and sidestepped for promotions.  It won't be the "straight," contracepting, horndog guy (which is what the Hollywood-academia-elites are driving us towards anyway).  No, the guy that will be harassed is the chaste, faithful, devout, heterosexual Protestant or Catholic soldier, sailor or airman.  His career will be toast in the future military.  The straights, chaste ones, and traditionalist pro-family guys were driven from the Catholic seminaries and from academia.  Why think it would be different in a Pink Panty Army?  I recall my mother (she worked at the Pentagon during WWII) explaining how the queer sailors stationed in D.C. used to meet at the Washington Monument during WWII.  The story so poisoned my interest in the military, that I abandoned my ROTC training (at age 18, I could not imagine dealing with a queer military).  But maybe that was just me.  But I think not.  Patriotism (the word and the concept) derives from pater, father. In humans, as an emergent property of our nation in the aggregate, it is the father that is best disposed to defend his personal--and our common--lineage to the death.  

Additionally, we could ask Mr. Milbank if he is a Living-Breathing-Document, Cafeteria Constitutionalist, why not quit pretending as though he is one-bit concerned about Constitutionalism at all.  Why not insist on accelerating the process and throw out the Constitution, whole and entire, right now and replace it with the compass-point of all Leftism: a totalitarian world government where the only "freedom" in a new Bill of Lefts (cynically pluralized because it sounds so multitudinous and choiceful) is that of non-environmentally polluting, non-reproductive orgasms resulting from a stimulus profile any kind not prohibited by Congress (that is, none) and as much as can be peaceably permitted by the Socialista Bauhaus Apartment Police programmed with micro-regulating the Prols’ material and energy inputs and outputs in a cashless society, freed of God-junk and blissfully living the remaining moments of life, like cattle enjoying the scenery on way to slaughter.  Why tarry with deceptive transition tactics any longer?  Bring it on!  Bring it on!  "Mein Fuehrer!  I can walk!" 

Dr. T., succinctly and astutely put.  People have largely failed to appreciate the profundity of your terse comment.  We have been trained by desperate TV journalists, in need of filler before airtime, that "man on the street" and unrepresentative "human interest" stories have merit precisely because they can been magnified out of proportion.  It is the Faustian bargain that that the Media trolls make: “I can make history by twisting the imagery; fiction come reality!  And I, capital I, caused it.”  Microscopic, incidental stories about an individual case of heroism, competency, or simple niceness by a sodomite are supposed to vouch for the acceptability of a horrible perversion. I am still appalled by the comment recently by Tommy De Seno (and his expertise is...?) that anyone against homosexualization of culture is "stupid."  Not too dissimilar from the tone of tomjedrz above.  The microscopic cases fail to address the deleterious emergent properties that result from aggregated behavior at higher levels of organization.  As a scientist, I am sure you appreciate what I am saying about emergence.  Repealing DADT is utter folly.   

Oh oh, I just had one of my brilliant ideas: a Ricochet Gun MeetUp Event (Wait, what is wrong with that title...?) What do you say everybody, I'm thinking I would love to have Casey give us a daylong tutorial. How about you all? It would be a blast (really, I am not trying to do that...it is testimony to the fact that humans, males in particular, love going ballistic...see, shoot, I did it again...)

Casey, yes, I see this and agree that Aaron and Blakes7th should consider what you are advising them here. We are fortunate where I live to have some nice gun shops & ranges. At my favorite, one can try just about any style gun if you buy the ammo. (It's like going to a candy store guys--and gals.) So, for the pure sake of shooting, I pick a S&W revolver. Beautiful simplicity is a Bang! Other times, I practice with a larger semi-automatic for the reasons you cited related to recoil and its firepower utility when it can be carried concealed. And to get along with my everywhere concealable friend, I make sure to shoot my Kel-Tec. I do not know, perhaps I am becoming insensate (insensible, insentient or insensitive), the kick of a little gun just does not bug me much now after that very first day I tried one.

Ah, yes...goat eyes, I was trying to figure out what to do for lunch today.

There is nothing more detestable than someone who votes simply according to what they are going to get. They project onto the whole world without exclusion the expectation of their own miserable, ravenous, selfish characters--from which they invincibly resist disabuse. And the whole point of Obamacare or ObamaRevolution is to stuff as many folks in that cart as possible.

A little of both perhaps, but your latter hunch really resonates with what I saw around me. The young (of all educational levels) and the uneducated a very easily distracted from voting by, oh, a favorite TV program, missing the polling time by yacking on the cell phone, the "need" to eat a candy bar instead of voting, etc.

Aaron, I am printing out Casey Taylor's recommendations for myself and will be doing future shopping with it in mind. I am with you on budget consciousness. A starting strategy that some folks opt for is a "small" handgun for concealed carry in the pocket (e.g., a Walther PPK or a Kel-Tec .380) and a very inexpensive, short-barreled shotgun solely for home defense (check big box stores for sales). You know, a 9 mm, hollow-point round can do some damage. Depending on the kind of work and dress required of you, such a small gun may be all that is practical to preserve concealability. I say having a small gun on you nearly all of the time is much better than a giant cannon that you tire of arming up with--or are restricted from doing so. A third stage for you then might be a large caliber, always-go-bang revolver for the vehicle or winter clothing (assuming concealed carry permit). I commonly wear a sports jacket, so a holstered, large semi-automatic pistol becomes feasible.

Blakes7th (b.t.w., is that as in William Blake?), this is late notice, but there is a big, BIG gun show in Tulsa starting later this morning, November 13th through the 14th. We are not to advertize here on Ricochet, but I think I can tell you that if you search on "guns" and "Tulsa," this will pop up. Happy hunting.

In early November 2000, I was returning to San Francisco from New Orleans and a Society for Neuroscience Conference during which we awakened to the Gore challenge of the Presidential election results. I was weary, especially after being subjected all week long to inane conversations about how Gore must win. On the return flight, a neurologist and I were chatting when we stopped in DFW and picked up an off shore oil rigger who sat in the seat between us. We all started talking about America and guns. The oil rigger assured the other fellow that, though he once had a semi-automatic rifle, he wised up and realized how silly it was: you can't hunt with it. I gently, but I suppose sarcastically enough, pointed out that the Second Amendment...it’s not about hunting ducks. I recall the neurologist spitting out his martini and a silence falling around us. Finally, peace, quiet and the comforting roar of jet engines.

Folks, are your computer screens also being inundated and filled to the rim with banner ads for toilets? I have never seen so many exotic and colorful chamber pots and seats. I am starting to think this was a cheap, money-makin' scheme by Claire to make her bank account flush with cash. I am not finding this as commodius as you may think, Claire.