Sorry I missed this one.  I have been away for a week.

I would hazard the following:  God is not a socialist but a lot of Christians are.

"But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

" For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat."

" Honour widows that are widows indeed.  But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God.  Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day...  Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old..."

Doesn't sound too socialist does it? 

However, all this does not preclude our responsibility to care for the truly destitute.  Paul was admonished to "remember the poor".  To which he replied "that which were were wont to do".

So God is not a libertarian either.

Mine is Adam Smith wearing headphones.  Other than the obvious Adam Smith thing, the headphones looked funny.  So, I use it.

What got me was the title -- "Legal Industry...".  Sad that there is such a thing.

Now, on to lawyer jokes.  Who has some good ones?

:-)

I have been there (Estonia) in April and the weather has been wonderful.  Can be terrible too though.

Just like Toronto -- mid 80s in April one day -- freezing the next. 

Jesus asked a similar question that Fred asked.  It was something that He asked of Peter: "He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?  And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.  And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.  And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

The entire church is built upon this foundational statement.

Jesus also said:  "by this shall all men know that you are my disciples that you have love for one another." 

These fools will soon be amazoned into oblivion.  Huge catalogs are so, well, Sears & Roebuck circa 1955.  And you know what happened to them.  First Roebuck disappear and Sears is about to.

When I was a cub scout and then a boy scout growing up in Canada why was this issue the furthest thing from my mind and any other boy for that matter?  The things that we thought about and talked about had nothing to do with gender other than duty to God first and to our fellow man second and honor and truth.  Stuff like that.  Then we went and had a rip roaring good time doing what boys do.  This was bad, how?

Very much aligned with what I was thinking when reading this and applying: "But he that fixes his view on the perfect law, that of liberty, and abides in it, being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, he shall be blessed in his doing."

Molly, you had me 'til the very end: "Is their a third way?"  Their? ;-)

Anyway....

You are right.  Mark is wrong.  This was a softball thrown in a nice easy arch right across the plate.

Just cuz getting into an EMT course is somewhat difficult does not mean that it needs more government intervention.  Being an EMT already has more than enough government intervention today and makes the cost of "certification" (really a guild) much higher than the market would demand if it were not for the regulation surrounding it.

"We Created Justin Bieber."

What do you mean "we", Kemo Sabe?

:-)

What an idiotic request.  Gorbachev did it, eh?  He just dropped further in my estimation of him.

This is provocative.  However, it comes directly from the words of the Lord Jesus: "He that loves his life shall lose it, and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal."  Does it not take an extremist to accept this statement?

"I also think because he wanted government out of peoples’ lives, he would not understand the intrusion of government banning such a thing."

This statement of Patti's is blatantly stupid.  Of course Ronnie would have understood the intrusion.  He lived in it for heaven's sake.  He lived through an era in his youth when sodomy often resulted in prison time.  He may not have agreed with it but so say that he did not understand it would be to suggest that he did not understand the culture in which he lived.  This tendency to extract people from their era and drop them into the current era to somehow speculate on their assessment of the current cultural milieu is hilarious.

One of my favorite remembrances of the motherland.  Pork, the other white meat.  Ummm, umm good!  :-)

What perplexes me most is Christians who believe that it is their divinely ordained right to rule in this world and not seeing that paradigm fulfilled fills them with surprise and the indignation.  The problem with that thinking is that the Bible is replete with a message that is the antithesis of that delusional thinking.  "In this world you will have tribulation" Jesus said.  Paul to Timothy said this axiomatic statement "All those who live godly (piously) in this world will suffer persecution". Further, our position here is that of ambassadors for another kingdom.  As far as I understand ambassadorship, the ambassador has no political standing in the country to which they are assigned as ambassador.  They merely represent the interests of their country of origin in the foreign land.  Seems to me we should be acting more like foreigners than citizens.  Our role here is to seek individuals who desire to change their citizenship from this world to a kingdom that is not of this world.  Changing the institution is nowhere found in the playbook.  Ultimately, this institution will experience the full judgment of God.

Perhaps this is why Homeland Security has bought all those bullets.  BTW, doesn't Homeland Security have an Orwellian ring to it?