Rex Kickass

Karl Rove?

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Jun 14, 2006 -> 09:26 PM) That is certainly true enough, as we saw with mandatory sentences for first time drug offenders during the hey day of the 'war on drugs.' OK, then maybe there is a semantic issue. But I certainly see the 'hate' descriptor as defining the motivation behind the nominal offense. You can't get arrested for hating. You can get arrested because you bash members of a group because you hate them. And you should risk a stiffer penalty if your crime is directed in a premeditated fashion at members of a group you hate. It's not a semantic difference at all. I think that judges and juries should take motivation into account when determining penalties for crime. But I don't think motivation should be in and of itself a crime. Hate crime legislation makes motivation a crime. And that is wrong.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Jun 14, 2006 -> 07:21 PM) I get the sentiment but I don't agree. School kids rabndomly destroying some property is differnt, and not so pregnant with deliberate and directed malice as singleing out the artistic works of a race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., and making a spectacle of their destruction. That's my take on it, at least. Motivation for a crime should affect a punishment, but it should not be a crime unto itself.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Jun 14, 2006 -> 05:40 PM) Hope they find these clowns and tack hate crime on to the vandalism and arson/endangerment charges that are pending. Let's hope they don't. Every crime is a hate crime.

Bill Clinton is innocent too, then. And OJ. And Michael Jackson.

If he wanted to close Guantanamo, he could close Guantanamo. There's no extra level of security there that you wouldn't have at a Supermax facility or even Leavenworth.

QUOTE(minors @ Jun 14, 2006 -> 01:27 PM) But why would a person want to kill there own child? It is murder in the worst sense. And you keep on thinking that way about the lord. The problem is where does it become human life? Is it at the point of viability? Where it can reasonably be expected to survive and continue development independent of the mother? Is it at the end of the 9th week, when the embryo becomes a fetus? Is it at the point of fertilization, when four cells become a blastocyst? The problem with abortion lies with a lack of consensus about when a human becomes a sentient being and when it's not. Once we as a society can determine that time frame responsibly, can we settle the abortion issue.

If he can't win his party's nomination - he shouldn't run as an independent. I don't believe Connecticut's primary is a closed one. If he wants to win, he should bring everyone to the polls that he can to support him. If he can't do that in August, it would be bad for his state for him to try it again in November.

Where did the assemblywomen use the word ban? The word "ban" implies that selling the book would be a violation of law. The only time the word ban was used was in the headline and the lead graph of a Newsmax article. When I worked at my local paper, if I tried to term what they were saying as an attempt at a ban, I'd be told to rewrite the lead responsibly.

Speed is a performing enhancing drug. Steroids are performance enhancing drugs. The difference is one helps you over time, the other helps you immediately. So the one that helps you immediately isn't cheating, but the one that helps you over time is? You either agree that better play through chemistry is cheating or its not. I don't see a grey area here. For the record, I don't think its cheating. Because steroids and amphetamines don't make you see the ball better, you might hit a little harder or run a little faster - but to me there's no difference to that than to getting Lasik to enhance sight that's already fine. (That happens a lot too.)

My favorite Bill Maher moment was on the first episode of Equal Time, with Ann Coulter as a guest and he just laughed at something she said and replied with "You just make s*** up."

Dude, that's total bulls*** and you know it. There are plenty of "conservative boycotts" of products, tv stations, stores, cars, theme parks, etc because of their political agenda. Calling for a boycott may make you a douche, and I think in this case it does - but it doesn't mean you're calling for censorship, which is truly a different animal altogether.

QUOTE(The Critic @ Jun 10, 2006 -> 05:04 PM) Thanks for the heads-up, Rex. I think I'll avoid the disc, then. But the singer not letting loose doesn't bother me so much. If I want to hear bloated over-emoting, I'll listen to U2. Not over-emoting, but emoting. You can hear the emotion in a lot of the lyrics should be an 8, 9 or 10 but its stuck at a 2 or 3.

QUOTE(Soxy @ Jun 13, 2006 -> 10:53 PM) Awesome book, but The Fall is better (and one of my all-time faves) The Plague is better still. I could never get into The Fall. I also loved Nausea by Sartre. Currently reading a book called Better Off about two MIT graduates who decided to go amish for a year to see about quality of life with and without technology, finished A Good Year, and A Year In the Merde - two books about Englishmen moving to France, a biography of Che Guevera and finishing up "The Soul of A Chef" which is just a fascinating read about cooking.

There's a big difference by asking retailers not to carry a book and asking for the banning of the sale of that book.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060612/sperm_hea.html Masturbation must be stopped.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Jun 14, 2006 -> 12:07 AM) I saw this monday night when i was flipping channels (I don't like hannity, so i really don't watch), but there was a guy from New Jersey (assemblyman Michael Panter) who wantes to have Couter's book banned. Sounded kinda funny coming from a liberal. Guess he can't stand all that free speech and all. I'm sure on eof the rightward blogs or websites will have a link about it, but I don't. Michael Panter is a tool.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Jun 13, 2006 -> 07:46 PM) Oh, I'm not denying that it hasn't happened. I'm sure it has. However, penalizing people like me (who had nothing to do with it) is completely asinine. Like Nuke said, two wrongs don't make a right... especially when you're penalizing people for something that other people 30, 50, or 100 years ago did. What's next? Slave reparations? :headshake That logic may apply if you're applying for a job at the DMV or something. But, to quote one of the Grinder Rules, "good enough, isn't" when you work in a competitive field. Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars flying in/hosting job candidates. Major companies fly in up to 15-20 people for one position, which probably costs them $25,000 or more. If you only meet the "general standards", you won't get past a phone interview. Clarence Thomas wrote a good essay on the "feeling inferior" point. You should check it out. Preferential treatment in hiring in any way is unethical. Clarence Thomas is a beneficiary of affirmative action. It's how he got into the College of the Holy Cross and how he got into Yale. He probably also was nominated to the Supreme Court because of his color, to replace the retiring Thurgood Marshall. This isn't to say that Justice Thomas isn't qualified, but rather that his nomination was at least in part because of the color of his skin. yet I don't hear many federal circuit court judges whining about getting passed over because Clarence Thomas was black. He may criticize Affirmative Action as something that isn't right for America, but if it wasn't for it, nobody would care what he thinks today.

Perhaps he'll just marry Lisa Loeb.

I think I did a few years back.... I hardly remember it.

I never said that Germany could reach the United States land, but they did create problems over the Eastern seaboard. They did infact, killing 5000 people off the US coast in 1942 alone and sinking nearly 400 ships.

Nuke, see Iggy for your tin foil hat.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jun 13, 2006 -> 01:16 PM) Serious question here, and maybe I just don't get it because I am a white male... Why is it wrong for the Klan to demand white preferential treatment, but OK when it is for any other race??? It's a tough question. There is a preponderance of evidence, or so I'm led to believe, that other races face challenges and legacies of institutional racism that still put other non-white races at a disadvantage. Although it may no longer be overt, and although there maybe plenty of places where that isn't the case - there are places where it does happen and they are numerous. It's difficult, because the need to ensure an adequate or equal opportunity shouldn't be outweighed by merit or a desire to create an equal result. In some cases, some special advantages may be necessary to make an equal opportunity available for everyone.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jun 10, 2006 -> 11:29 PM) And I don't care who does it, it's sick, wrong, and screwed up. You're right, I'm just reporting that the poo phenomenon is apparently a growing one. Back when former governor Florio proposed expanding the Sales Tax to cover some non-food grocery items (like toilet paper), he apparently got sent a lot of used toilet paper.

That's what I'm thinking. Usually these monthly polls are aggregate polls over several weeks. In about two weeks, you'll start to hear about Bush's Zarqawi bounce.