The sad part is that we all waited for a court to rule on whether or not the health care takeover was unconstitutional- as if constitutionality were a matter that only the judiciary has the priviege of deciding.  The even sadder part is that every sane, educated person in the USA already knows the bill is unconstitutional- including Obama, Pelosi, and Reid- but it was signed into law anyway.   

I've spent a lot of time in Northern Wisconsin and other areas of the country with large Native American populations, and I have yet to meet an Indian who objected to that term. As a matter of fact, I can't recall a single instance of an Indian friend referring to himself as anything other than an "Indian." (I'm sure it must have happened at least once, but I don't recall it)

But as for me, I have done business with East Indians for several years now and have many East Indian friends and associates, so I tend to use the term Native American just to keep my own head straight.

Some East Indians refer to Native Americans as "Red Indians," which is the politically incorrect way the British refer to American Indians. This term is offensive here in America. However most of the Native Americans I have known would just roll their eyes and dismiss you as an idiot if you were to use the term in front of them.

We all know people who insist that America is "going to hell in a hand-basket." That may or may not be true, but the overwhelming majority of these people are probably not among those who are actually damaging our culture. Agreed? They make their remarks as observers, not participants. Note that the marriage question was: "Do you believe that marriage is becoming obselete?" not: "Do you believe that traditional marriage is a good option for you?" The former is an observer's question. The latter is a participant's.

So I assume that the 39% of people who believe that marriage is becoming obsolete answered that question as observers. But what they perceive about the state of marriage has nothing whatever to do with the way they themselves will act. And what eventually happens to marriage in this country will be the result of people's actions, not their perceptions.

So, as a statistician, I must declare that that 39% number has no predictive value and, hence, no power to scare me. Show me numbers that say 39% of Americans state that they have no intention of ever entering into a traditional marriage, and I will commence to worrying.

If TSA does not make the identification of terrorists their number one priority instead of continuing to frisk little old ladies for explosives, the jihadis automatically win.

They will win because they don't actually have to succeed in blowing up anything! First: They up the ante by finding new ways to sneak bombs into planes. TSA responds in only one way: it finds new ways to search every passenger for explosives. This makes flying more bothersome and expensive.

The jihadis then find another new way to sneak bombs on planes. TSA responds by deploying more new ways to search every passenger for bombs. This makes flying even more bothersome, time-consuming, and expensive.

Repeat cycle indefinitely. Eventually one of two things will happen:

• The jihadists will succeed in blowing up a plane, touching off another 2001-style financial panic.
• TSA's practices will destroy much of the airline industry and cripple tourism and dozens of other industries: as much economic destruction as a dirty bomb detonated on Wall Street.

Why are we defending ourselves against people who seek to murder our children in their beds using methods that absolutely guarantee our defeat?

Aaron: I agree completely. I never said or implied that all video games were excessively violent or otherwise unfit for children. We've got WII at our house. My grand-daughter learned how to count and add by playing video games.

However the topic of this thread and all my remarks are specific to those video games that are excessively and gratuitously violent and about whether children should be allowed to purchase such games without parental consent.

"The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women." If Sheen had said, "The history of many civilizations could actually be written in terms of the level of its women," I would agree completely.

His premise holds water only in cultures where men have observed codes of chivalry: whether that code was full-blown, medieval-type chivalry or the more subtle variety of recent generations, where men would always open a door for a woman as a ceremonial act of respect for a bearer of life.

In chivalrous cultures, the women affect the behavior of the men in significant, positive, constructive ways.

(Chivalrous cultures can become post-chivalrous cultures. Modern western culture is post-chivalrous, but I don't have enough words left to explore that here.)

However in cultures where women are held as chattel, the character of women is irrelevant because women are not allowed to have impact on men's behavior. Where women are persona non grata- as literally translated from Latin and in the idiomatic sense- men can act out as they please. And unfortunately, there are many such cultures to be found on this planet.

India has some success in short-circuiting the power of local "emlaks." These are the local buyers of produce, who have always had the power to determine the prices they would pay farmers for their grain. (No, this is not free-market capitalism because the farmers had no access to markets other than the local one controlled by their "emlak.")

This has changed in many areas of India areas because of two technologies: the internet and the cell phone. Using pre-paid cell phones, farmers who don't like the prices being offered by the local "emlak" can call people in neighboring villages and find out what other "emlaks" are paying. The farmers have learned how to use the internet to check regional and national prices, and consult the Chicago Board of Trade to ensure that the regional prices are competitive.

Needless to say the "emlaks" are not completely happy with the new state of affairs, but they are still making money. Where this phenomenon has occurred, the grain market is now truly free, and so everyone is free to make a buck.

Aaron:

We're not talking about the general population of American adults. This thread concerns selling excessively violent video games to kids.

But, by your logic: no effort can or should be made to limit the marketing and retailing of pornographic films to children because there are good and decent films available and because, as you said: "freedom should include products which are not admirable,"

I couldn't care less what kind of violent garbage is consumed by adults in video games. and neither should government.

"Podesta said the American people want the president to move forward with his agenda."

Only if Obama, Pelosi, Shumer, Boxer, Frank and the few dozen hard-left clones that were left standing after the election can be considered "the American people."

The majority of the American people (as determined by ballot and by poll) would prefer that the president sit down, shut up, and stop with the socialism.

It's sad that we've come to a point in our history where we must decide on the "constitutionality" of things that would have been unspeakable abominations to the Founding Fathers. We're discussing whether or not games, the point of which is to kill innocent people in horribly violent ways, should be peddled to children.

Words describing the marketing of such a game to children would not have passed the lips of the Founding Fathers, even in private. And we expect that they should have accounted for such things, in writing, in the Constitution and thus into the fiber of the new nation they were building?

I don't think it had anything to do with Bristol Palin. It was just this particular man's time to grab a shotgun and blast his television. The urge to do that is slowly building up in all of us. We will all eventually act on that urge if we live long enough and can still pull a trigger!

I believe we fought and won a war with these people 200 years ago that gave us Americans the option of viewing European royalty with awe, homage, and admiration or, alternatively, seeing them as superannuated, chinless parasites. To each his own.

"We have no permanent deficit anymore, the natural condition is a surplus, okay — so the question is, what do we do with it? We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right. But I think — here's the problem. If you don't spend it right, here's what's going to happen." - Impeached President Bill Clinton

The raw arrogance of these people is staggering, isn't it? In their heart of hearts, they actually do believe it's their money. Any attempt to apply logic to their mindset will fail, because their mindset is simply an unexamined assumption filled with greed: a Twinkie from hell.

Robot war is inevitable (assuming we don't bomb ourselves back to the stone-age or the Lord decides He's had enough).

• Modern Western society has zero appetitie for war casualties, expect perhaps among the enemy. The public can be counted upon to support reasonable funding for development of automated weaponry.
• The required technology either exists today or will soon be available. There are no significant obstacles to the development of any of the technology proposed so far in this thread.

There will be an interesting parallel with the Roman Empire. In Rome's last years, she was defended almost exclusively by foreign mercenaries. The USA and the western world will be defended almost entirely by machines. Let's hope we don't follow the Roman example and abandon our military traditions. We would run out of our expensive mechanized weapons in a long, multi-fronted war, and we'd better have something solid in place to back them up.

Today, when I hire people I have to make sure they can write comprehensible English sentences, because that is no longer a given with college graduates. What does that say about the young people who will have coasted through high school with mostly "I's?"

"Virtually illiterate" comes to mind. There are young people working today who do not know that "you" is not spelled "u." Seriously. Thank the Lord for texting, though. If it weren't for texting, these kids would be completely illiterate.

Quoting Jonah Goldberg's NR column of January 6:

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli air-security expert, had it right in 2002 when he said: "The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people."