Excellent essay, Mr. Hanson.  I am 41.  As a child, youth and young adult I mowed yards for work, split wood at our family farm for firewood, worked my grandfather's beef cattle, planted pine trees by dibbling the trees, burned woods to clear undergrowth, picked up pecans, worked in vegetable gardens, etc. etc.  And I had it easy compared to my uncle.  Such an experience inculcated a strong work ethic, a direct connection between hard work and food or warmth and the knowledge that I'd rather use my head than my back to earn a living.  Hard work teaches virtue.

Good grief - 48 posts and I don't think anyone mentioned the albums Nebraska, Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River and Tunnel of Love, each of which is great in addition to Born To Run and Greetings From Asbury Park.  The limited "politics" in them is realtively mild and not strident.  It's the stridency of his recent work that turns me off.

Here is Brilliant Disguise with lyrics from Tunnel of Love.

Does government have any legitimate place in any ostensibly private relationship?

Michael:  How far would you keepre-redefining marriage and how broad would that definition be?  What relationships would be excluded from your definition?  And why?

Nope, that's not going to happen.  It will be recognized as legal and enforceable as a right of contract.  Here's how:  A "married" same-sex couple will move from the state where they were married to a state where it is not recognized.  They will sue in that state on Full Faith and Credit clause grounds and the SCOTUS will affirm that a "marriage" contract in one state is enforceable in another as well as the rights that flow from it.

Unless - a new DOJ vigorously defends the DOMA and it gets to the SCOTUS first and Roberts exercises the same deference to DOMA as he did to Obamacare.

I've seen them all and read all the Fleming novels (not the short stories) and I think the movies that most capture the feel of Fleming's imagination are Goldfinger and the recent Casino Royale.

It's too bad they don't remake the movies and stick to the stories very closely.  

It's been a while since I read it, but isn't there some electro-therapy in Brave New World that caused the World State citizens to be averse to nature?  A flower and a baby and electricity?  Or is that some other dystopian novel?  Or my own feverish imagination?

Three easy ones for me:

"To Live" about the brutality of the cultural revolution;

"Les Miserables" about the brutality of WWII in Europe;

and "Long Gone" about the brutality of minor league baseball in 1950s Florida.

Dave, I know I'm being pessimistic but November will just trade one set of statists for another. I see nothing in American history for the past 100 years that makes me think otherwise.

That is my point. Should we not begin to think about separating from this monstrosity that has been wrought? Why be married to those who hate and abhor the very things you believe and upon which you frame your life?

No. Those upon whom such egregious burdens had been cast.

And it marked the high water mark of the confederacy. Tis a pity...

And what was their response?

By definition, it is per capita. 100% of citizens must have health insurance (unless otherwise exempted). The percent who don't are taxed. That is in proportion of the set of persons subject to the law.

Some of us in this conversation fail to recognize that the court has a duty to uphold the constitutionality of an act when and where it can. Roberts did so by recognizing it as a tax.The same principle holds when an appellate court reviews a judgment of a lower court - the appellate court should affirm the lower court's judgment when it is "right for any reason" even if the lawyers below didn't address or recognize the "right" reason. This is why when I have the opportunity to write an order for summary judgment on a motion I've won, I write it as plain vanilla as possible with few if any findings of fact so upon review, the higher court can affirm it even if the appellate panel doesn't find my argument persuasive but it sees another reason to affirm.

Roberto- a limitation is not a prohibition.