I like this distinction. Though I wonder if it can have any meaning in a military context. Couldn't wiping out an entire city be a legitimate military goal?

I suppose I could support Obamacare for one day. It wouldn't make sense in the long term, but it would feel good for a day.

You're right of course, and Christensen doesn't argue otherwise. I think he is only examining the effects on jobs of different types of innovation. He also says we need a balance of all three types. The problem is that the "rules" of finance are discouraging the sorts of long term investments that would really benefit us in terms of job growth. I think he is arguing for more enlightened business leaders as much as he's arguing for changes in the tax code.

This isn't the one that I was thinking of, but it is along the same lines, and advocates a similar sort of stats course. 

There is a pretty good argument that we should drop a lot of subjects from the high school curriculum. It seems I read a professor of some science subject advocating exactly that recently. Why waste time on subjects that are only stepping stones to careers you aren't likely to pursue? I wish I could find a reference to that article. I'll have to go looking.

I wouldn't vote to do most of those things right now. I think it would only make sense to do that sort of change incrementally. You shouldn't take the second step until you've evaluated how things went when taking the first step. I see this as more than just "strategy" as prohibited in the rules. I honestly don't know the answer I'd give to many of them. I hope we can allow state experimentation to inform our votes in other states.

By making the end product illegal, I suspect we make it easier to arrest them while in the process of preparing or distributing it. If the weapon were legal, on what grounds would you arrest a bad guy before he actually used them?

I was really excited when this paper came out and was really sad when they rescinded it. I immediately sent a note to my congressman to let him know about my support for the effort--something I don't do very frequently. 

I am concerned that shortening copyright terms will be construed as a "taking" and will thus require government compensation to those whose previous copyrights are shortened. While changing the rules from this point forward would be better than nothing, I think the rule should retroactively shorten copyright terms as well. That is likely to stir up a lot more controversy, however.

The French president has come to the right conclusion by the wrong reasoning. My three oldest are in 3rd grade, 2nd grade, and kindergarten. I hate their homework. 

Good sleep is essential for the brain to process the information and learning of the day. I believe that play and physical activity are likewise essential for most students to retain what they learned. Kids need a variety of activities for optimal performance.

Homework infringes on our family time in unwelcome ways. 

It seems that I read once that we get more educational bang for our buck with Sesame Street than we get with the Head Start program. Something worth considering (if it is true) before we decide where to cut first. 

You've hit on something broader here that goes way beyond legal debates. When liberals and conservatives talk past each other, I suspect this issue is frequently at the root. Just yesterday I noticed a post on Google+ where a video showed how "Romney lied" in a confrontation with a reporter. 

What was the "lie"? In the video from 2008 (I think) Romney said that lobbyists weren't running his campaign. A reporter called him a liar because person X was a lobbyist. Romney claimed that person X didn't run his campaign. The reporter called him a liar again and asked if the person had been to debate prep sessions. Romney said that person X had been to sessions but was only an unpaid adviser and was not "running" the campaign. The reporter maintained that this was just "semantics". 

The reporter rejected the plain meaning of the words and substituted his own meaning so as to construe Romney as deceitful.

No, I'm told this was a prerecorded interview that was supposed to air on Monday. We can't fault Obama for this one.

A friend of mine is facing a lawsuit. She and her husband chose to jump through the zillions of hoops to be foster parents with a hope of fostering an infant they could eventually adopt. One infant placed in their care had been born premature, in a toilet, with drugs in her system. Tragically, while in the care of my friend, while only six months old, the infant died in an accident in the home. 

Now the biological mother and father, who never had custody of the child, have initiated a lawsuit against the foster mother and the state seeking compensation for their loss. My friend is on her own as the state doesn't cover foster parents in this sort of situation, apparently. She's facing legal bills for a situation that I can easily imagine having happened to any of my own five children. Accidents happen. 

What really frustrates me about the situation is knowing that the lawyer representing the biological parents stands to "earn" 50% of whatever damages are recovered. That doesn't seem just to me, and it seems to incentivize these parents to pursue a lawsuit "for free" in hopes of hitting a jackpot.

The following bits from the Deseret News on this topic were instructive. 

Alan Wolfe, a political science professor at Boston College, said it's wrong to link a state's religious makeup with its generosity. People in less religious states are giving in a different way by being more willing to pay higher taxes so the government can equitably distribute superior benefits, Wolfe said. And the distribution is based purely on need, rather than religious affiliation or other variables, said Wolfe, also head of the college's Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life.

Wolfe said people in less religious states "view the tax money they're paying not as something that's forced upon them, but as a recognition that they belong with everyone else, that they're citizens in the common good. ... I think people here believe that when they pay their taxes, they're being altruistic."

Dan Carlin produced a thought provoking podcast in his Hardcore History series that addressed the issue of the bomb. (Thanks to whomever it was at Ricochet that first recommended his podcast to me!) He talked about how we got to the place where we had to drop the bomb and talks about the history of aerial warfare. He has an intense speaking style that is enjoyable to listen to.

Reading the courts opinion, I was reminded of the "synonym game" where you follow chains to synonyms to turn a word into its opposite. White, snowy, hoary, stale, decayed, rotten, bad, evil, black. 

It seems that the opinion of the court gets lost in the chain of previous court cases so long that it loses sight of the original law it is trying to interpret.