cabiness42

I think the definition is a part of the problem. Everybody has some system of beliefs, but in both atheism as well as in deistic belief systems, there are large degrees of variance to which people hold to them with ardor and faith. There are atheists who don't believe in the existence of God but don't spend any time dwelling on or discussing the issue. Then there are atheists who join atheist groups and make it a point to argue with every single deist they know. The latter group are definitely part of a religion.

A 14 year old can file a legal petition to be emancipated and have his/her case heard by a judge, so individual cases are allowed to be considered rather than making a blanket prohibition that has no flexibility.

Incestuous does not automatically mean non-consenting.

The gang analogy fails. You're talking about a police response to crimes that have already happened, as opposed to a blanket denial of rights based on a criteria. As for consenting adults, being consenting and being adult are the basis for all legal transactions. It's more of a necessity of functioning rather than a value judgment.

Maybe it just seems this way, but the trend seems to be more and more that the perpetrators of these crimes are taking their own lives as opposed to trying to get away with it, and that is very dangerous. If you are planning to kill people yet retain your freedom, there is more or less a limit on how many people you can kill. If you want and/or expect to die along with your victims, there is much less of a restriction on the damage you can inflict.

My point is that the "close family members" prohibition is a lazy way to get at the real problem, which is adult/child influences that may or may not be familial. My personal opinion is that marriage should be eliminated. Allow consenting adults to "consumate" whatever relationships they want through legal paperwork.

There are plenty of non-traditional households where children are interacting with lots of people who aren't parents or siblings. I support consistency. Either states have the rights to make restrictions or they don't.

Can't non-siblings/parents, who might be close friends of the family, also easily groom children for abuse? I'm just saying that once you remove one restriction on marriage, it's very hard legally to justify the rest of them. States either have the right to make restrictions or they don't. Any reason you can find to be against incestual marriage occurs (although possibly less frequently) in other types of marriages.

I'm not aware of any legal challenges either, but given the recent court decisions I don't see how one could fail if it were brought.

They would have had to use the November rankings and not the current ones, which would have changed things up a bit, but I agree with that system. I guess the argument against it is that the rankings can be manipulated in order to create/avoid certain matchups, but that's a pretty weak argument.

You can find lots of hetero- and homo-sexual marriages where there are tons of questions about how much consent is really there. That argument wouldn't hold up in court when trying to defend polygamy or incest.

Just wanted to get you on the record as allowing marriages between siblings and parents/children.

Roundtable discussions are so cliche. Do a hexagontable discussion.

There are still several laws that exclude certain consenting adults. Those should all be done away with, right?

Anybody know anyone in Lawrence that could go talk to the guy and convince him to sign?

They really need to change how they put these groups together. Just make pots of 8 grouped by ranking and draw from each pot to make the groups. Who cares if teams from the same region play each other?

I don't know if anybody will have the drive to pursue it, but of course there really isn't any more constitutional ground to ban polygamy than there is same-sex marriage.

Serious question: Take the 23 players from the Hawks and Kings and put them against the 23 best players from the entire Eastern Conference. How many games do the Hawks/Kings win in a 7 game series?

There are airlines that don't use O'Hare, in case you weren't aware.

Speaking of hot and humid, it sure seemed like the US suffered it far better than Nigeria. Certainly wouldn't expect that.

Draft is about 15 rounds too long.

Not sure why the US scheduled today's game to start at 6pm ET. The biggest sporting event of the day is a potential Triple Crown winner, and you schedule right against it? There's been nothing on worth watching so far this afternoon, should have started the game at 3 or 4pm ET.

Because we should learn from our mistakes instead of repeating them.

At no point this season have the Sox been more than 2 over nor more than 3 under.