I suspect that Israel, regardless of the US position, is not inclined to sit still for passive suicide.  This does complicate things a bit on the surface, though the presence of Obama makes that complication total no matter what he may say.  The Iraq retreat will be seen in the future as one of the dumbest foreign policy decisions in history.

The question is not whether there are 7 categories of right-wingers.  It is how you set an issue that all 7 will support, along with enough in the middle to actually win something.  As long as we spend our energies trying to be the purest of us all, we will be on the sidelines watching Obama and his ilk make the decisions.

And I do despair at times wondering whether we will ever succeed.

So you took her to a hockey game?  For our upcoming 40th anniversary on the day of Mollie's, I'm taking Rubber Duckie to a football game.  At Wembley.

Now that's romantic.

You talkin' 'bout Vince Vaughn, or Mike Ditka?

So everyone at Ricochet is ready to throw Rubiop overboard because he doesn't scream "NO AMNESTY" loud enough?

We have- and will have- de facto amnesty already- if for no other reason than that it is currently utterly impossible to enforce the law.  If you do not understand that, you can't read. 

We would be far better off if we stopped screaming about how horrible immigration is and worked to actually fix the legislation instead of fragmenting up into multiple shades of nativists at the same time as business works as hard as possible to open the borders completely, e-verify is smothered, and activists lock in chain immigration.

I can't believe how strategically dumb we are so soon after completely screwing up TARP by ignoring the inevitable while we all yelled about "NO BAILOUTS".

Pat Caddell is right, isn't he?

I grew up in NE Minneapolis; my Mom and two siblings still live there.  On snowy days minimizing freeway use, I drive to work through that neighborhood past the Ukrainian association event center.  I had to go look through my HS yearbook for his kids, since they were born between the mid '40's and 1966. (No)

This looks to me like a King Lear tragedy situation.  I have no question that a) he indeed was present for all of those atrocities, and that b) he was no Nazi.  If you have know virulently anti-Communist refugees from Ukraine (e.g., the family of the guy who built our house), they remember Holodomor, Stalin-driven holocaust, in which 3 million people died.  The US did not care because of the socialist sympathies of lefty intelligentsia- Alger Hiss consciously ignored people like 13 year old Karkoc watching the death and destruction around him.

I think we need to put his deportation case on the docket.  We must prioritize.  With limited resources, we work on it as soon as mnurderer Kathy Boudin is fired at Columbia and all potential threats from people like the Tsarnaevs and al Alawki have been addressed.

Boy, are we in trouble, and so is the world.  A substantial portion of Ricochet, representative of the activist base, seriously believes that we can withdraw to our shores and survive no matter what else the world does- call it the Lindbergh-Paul (-Kerry) "foreign policy".

The fact that Obama is a wishy-washy hypocritical incompetent, and that the public desires to be lied to, to the effect that security and freedom, despite 100 years of evidence to the contrary, does not make the world safe.  Sen. Kyl is absolutely right-on.  So is Gen. Petraeus. 

God help us.

You stated my point, Mendel.  There is no substitute for basic science research not directed at a specific financial payoff. 

And from my years involved with venture and RAIN capital providers, except for saints like David Koch, I can tell you that there is absolutely no stomach for long term work.  I would bet that Myriad's BRCA pre-patent research work was accident more than it was vision.  They worked on the diagnostic application because they had the patent, but that gene would have  been teased out by someone.

I actually believe that commercial patent grants and FDA approvals should be conditioned on the entity offering access to every involved protein, compound, or antibody on a reasonable basis for unfettered combinatorial research.

All the nonsense you hear about how research will grind to a halt if patents are more restricted is just that.  The low-hanging fruit has been plucked. 

Future discoveries involve much more complexity and require many players- that is the exact reason that the major pharmas have not filled their pipelines as their old patents have run out- because they still try to play the 1980 business model, this time with a few (very few) biologics.

I don't think you two are really disagreeing very much, despite all the words.  Mendel surely sees the "heart" as being informed by facts, physiology, and moral logic, and James knows that after all of the good inputs he cites, the heart still makes the decision.

And I think we all see this as more situation fact-specific than the hard opposing line that Pseud suggests by the post title.

Not a good analogy, KP.  Information is not really the horse.  it is out there, always has been, and more of it goes out there all the time.

The key is that you stop the government from using certain things for improper purposes.  It's a little bit more like the judge instructing the jury to disregard some evidence that has had an objection sustained.

We don't ban guns to stop crime, we don't ban information and databases because a sleazy and crooked government illegally ports the national security information over to its election committee.  We throw the evil rascals in jail or throw them out of office and confiscate the databases.

The IRS leaks all ought to be met with criminal prosecution and legislated changes and limits on its mission (including yanking ObamaCare right out immediately), not elimination of the IRS.

You need a revenue agency, but reign it in.  You need national security scans- but do what Bush did in controlling the NSA as Michael Hayden describes.

Mendel, I think the unanimity reflects the fact that we already grant way too many patents and this one was very much a bridge too far.  Remember when the genome project first started, and Craig Venter tried to patent every gene or sequence he found?  I think that you can make a strong case that the purpose of Art. 1, Sect. 8, Clause 8 is well served by keeping all of the natural elements public domain.  There is not a chance in the world that the quest to find the particular genes, though "fiendishly difficult" would subside because of this, despite the fervid declamations of Myriad's Counsel.  Medical research is more characterized by ego than greed.

But you can replicate computer software function using code workarounds provided that there isn't a proprietary database with look-up table involved (and the database is usually very difficult to replicate, usually treated as a trade secret)- that ends up being the effective equivalent of a method claim. 

I agree with this essential message, but the "state of constant uncertainty" is about moral rectitude- "holiness"- not the freely bestowed and accepted gift of salvation by grace.  God does not withdraw His Grace from us because we made the wrong decision, in good faith, about something that does not directly conflict with Scripture is correct.

The more we advance technologically, the harder it is, just as the larger and more prosperous we become, the harder it is to avoid some types of "collective" action in a world where we can see what is going on in other countries.

The definition of "limited government" used by "libertarians" (of the Ron Paul stripe) is an utter non-starter.  Barn door, horse gone, stop complaining and secure what is important- and that requires constant vigilance.  Instead we have a wing that continuously pretends that SS is unconstitutional and needs to be killed, immigration reform is only all "amnesty", etc.

This requires constant vigilance; chasing chimera is a distraction.

I am going to disagree.  The tools and methods to create a police state have been with us since the first voter registration, followed by the first property tax roll, then the telephone book, followed in turn by the first income tax filing, then the Social Security number... and on and on. 

Stating that no lists or databases can be collected for any purpose, what Schreiner and other hyper"libertarians" desire, is the equivalent of banning all guns to end violent crime.  Mimicking Obama's bankrupt logic is not impressive.

You simply cannot keep secrets in today's world- that is why it is of redoubled importance whom you elect to office.  The issue is what a government does with the information.  Bush refused to misuse the data, Obama is straining at the few restraints that exist.

But trying to prevent government from accessing the same level of information that any private party can accumulate on-line or otherwise is not a useful exercise, and mischaracterizing top level data as being uniquely sensitive in a world where file servers can be placed anywhere in the world is not a useful exercise.

Data doesn't create tyrants, voters do.

Come to Target Field in Minneapolis- it rivals all of those.  It is in the middle of downtown, and its street level footprint is smaller than its dimensions- the upper decks extend out over the surrounding streets.  A fun Summer evening.

Since Rand Paul doesn't understand the 4th Amendment, it is good that that choice is clear. I'm sure he does fine when the subject is glaucoma.

Since Rubio is correct about the threats we face- pretending that the GWOT is over because we wish it was is the stuff of Obama and juveniles.