Barihawk

I think it's handy. Like Warrior said, it's cheaper than building a fence or wall and there are only so many officers available in Texas to patrol the border. Especially one so hard to manage like the Rio Grande. The problem is not only people coming across the border, but in some areas the river is too strong. Now those illegals might be spared death in the river if someone catches it and the report comes across quickly enough. Over 2800 miles of border in Texas alone, you can't have agents cover all of that nor can you have a few people monitoring them.

Pfft, why not. Agility: 30 Attack: 40 Strength: 40 Defence: 50 Construction: 70 (carpentry used to be a hobby and I've built homes for Habitat) Cooking: 60 (Good chef) Crafting: 70 (Good with my hands) Farming: 20 Firemaking: 30 Fishing: 30 Fletching: 1 Herblore: 1 Hunter: 1 (Don't hunt) Magic: 0 (doesn't exist :P) Mining: 1 Prayer: 85ish? Ranged: 80 (Good marksman) Runecrafting: 1 (I can draw a rune?) Slayer: 1 Smithing: 40 (have done some smelting and smithing) Summoning: 0 Thieving: 4 (I stole a candy bar when I was six) Woodcutting: 30

It'll never hold up in court. You could even argue that you were taking in light rays from inside the property, which could be viewed as trespassing. WHY DID YOU LOOK AT HIS HOUSE??? TRESPASSING!!! Are you really a law student? I'm not one and I can assure you that your rights END when they infringe on the rights of others. This glass house scenario is no different than standing in a picture window nude for all the world to see. You may be within your house, but by virtue of the view offered you are displaying yourself to the public, thereby ending your privacy. If you are seen snorting coke in your glass house, you have given reasonable doubt for the police. If you are walking around naked in a glass house that is clearly visible, you are indeed exposing yourself to the public. This is political science 101 for Americans. I really hope you know better. It's called "reasonable doubt" and if the officer honestly believes a crime has been committed they may search a premises without a warrant. In this case, there is absolutely no reason not to have reasonable doubt.

Those I can agree with. I particularly stress education. People need to learn how to freaking store firearms.

And what approach would that be? I'm sorry, my comments were assuming you supported a complete ban on firearms.

It's a national trend in Western nations that boys are developing much later and girls sooner for some reason. Hence why you have 13 year old boys who look 4-5 years younger and 13 year old girls who look in their late teens.

As we have discussed in the past, simply because a weapon is effective in self-defense does not mean it would necessarily be worth implementing as a means of citizen self-defense. For example, the introduction of certain handguns, automatic rifles or explosives for citizen use can have extremely detrimental side-effects, and it often far surpasses what is necessary to defend one's self. Which is exactly why we should aim to make these weapons unavailable. The improvisations will, in most cases, be much less reliable than, say, a semi-automatic handgun. In the long run, as less people are getting fatally injured, the homicide rate will be significantly reduced. The secondary (unlicensed) market is dependent on the primary (licensed). Restrict production and distribution in the primary market and you will see a reduction in availability in the secondary market. Over time, if this is well enforced, the secondary market will become a far less viable option for acquiring firearms. The difference, obviously, lies in the production of the good. It is much more difficult and more expensive to manufacture quality firearms than it is to produce quality cocaine/marijuana. And, of course, nobody is proposing a ban akin to the current war on drugs. It's become quite clear that labelling a high-demand good as "illegal" does not help to reduce its demand and subsequent (ab)use.[/hide] To my quotes, at least... 1) That's ideological nonsense. If someone is going to kill someone, they are going to do it. Period. If they have to use a knife, they stab until the person is dead. If using a pipe, they keep hitting. Guns simply made it "convenient" to kill. The likelyhood of someone saying "omg, this is horrible and I need to stop" is slim. Is it more difficult to kill someone via a different method? Yes. But for someone with the impulse and desire to kill, this is not a problem, it's simply a matter of convenience. Will homicide rates go down? Sure, a little. Some gangbanger might be a little less trigger happy and not accidentally shoot someone. But most murders are made with the intent to kill. We can't be like England and treat an 8% reduction in homicide as a true freaking victory. 2) The problem with this is that there are stockpiles of illegal weaponry everywhere. People are not getting Tec-9's and similar weapons from Wal-Mart. They are stealing them, buying them off smugglers and contacting the black market. You will make it more difficult for the average idiot to get a gun, but certainly not impossible. Like I said, time and money are all it takes. 3) Yeah, making a gun is tough. So is making meth and cocaine. Guess where those come from. Oh, right. Other countries. A ban on firearms will simply make gun traffickers even more wealthy than they already are now. The guys who previously brought you submachine guns and assault rifles to the streets may now diversify into small arms! And guess what? It will be just as impossible to stop them from bringing the guns into the country as it is stopping illegal narcotics. Tougher, actually, because guns without ammo are usually impossible to detect if hidden, unlike drugs, and ammunition can be easily made here.

First it was cockroaches and now babies? How can any living organism survive nuclear radiation? Depends on what kind of radiations. Modern nuclear arms throw out a fraction of the fallout of the first atomic weapons and Hiroshima is a thriving city now. Most protocols for bombardment feature airborne detonation so that most of the dangerous fallout dissipates and decays in the atmosphere before it falls to earth (as opposed to a ground detonation where fallout is bound to dirt and dust and therefore able to be spread farther). It's likely that in the case of a nuclear war humans would be able to survive, propagate, and procreate. As for cockroaches, they can survive. If you trap them in a little chamber and bombard them with unnatural amounts of gamma rays you can give them cancer like how they stuff rats full of artificial sweetener.

You guys remember your dreams? Mine are usually gone the second I open my eyes.

cars arent 100% safe, we still allow people to drive them. The main point is noone(excluding maybe a true psychopath) has ever gone "dude I totally have a gun its telling me to kill you", any gun crime would have been commited with a knife or heavy rock or whatever if the guns were illegal. A car isn't a weapon. Weapons are designed to harm or kill. Cars are a method of transportation. The only true weapon is the mind. At the end of the day it's the brain that makes the call to pull the trigger, plunge the knife, drop the pipe, hit the gas pedal, push the button, clench the fist, tighten the rope, throw the rock, inject the needle... The urge to kill is not going to care what tool is at hand. If one is not available, it will improvise. The gun does not magically invoke hatred into the user. It's simply the medium that the person uses to execute their impulses. If you want to clamp down on guns, that's fine. Make it tougher to obtain them, require psychiatric exams, whatever. But is it necessary to completely remove them from people who use them for completely harmless reasons? My sister and her husband save thousands of dollars a year by hunting. I win awards for shooting sports, yet I've never even intentionally harmed a living creature (there was that one bird that happened to fly in front of the clay. I cried :(). A gun has saved my family in the face of a burglar. The simple fact of the matter is that you can not ban firearms. You will only remove them from those who legally claim them. Period. Unless you go back and find the Chinese guy who invented gunpowder thousands of years ago and remove him from the timeline, people in this nation are going to have guns if they want them. The same can be said for anything. All it takes to get anything is time and money, a credo in our popular culture. Good or bad. "But if we ban guns, people who might not have committed a crime won't do it because the tool is not as easily accessable!" If you ban guns, they will join the stalls of street peddlers like the sale of cocaine and marijuana. And as many people say, how good a job do we do of keeping those off the streets? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. That's not an excuse. If someone does try to take away our rights in the future, rest assured they will say it's for the better. Patriot Act anyone? That wasn't even really a danger, but still proves a point.

I meant: An slight error that can happen as I type then restructure my sentences.[/hide] As for me being misguided, I'm not saying the US government would take away your civil liberties, I said they could. If the US government wanted to go completely dictatorial and still had control over the military there is no way in hell your little hunting rifles or handguns are doing much against the world's most sophisticated fighter jets & tanks. Hell, Lincoln did take away civil liberties during the civil war. That being said, I would love to know where I've went wrong. Please tell me for future reference. There's no real way after Vietnam that such a thing could ever happen. All of the special liberties Presidents can use in Executive Orders died with the War Powers Act. Lincoln's tyranny can never happen again. Tie this into a military that is structured in a way to where control could never be taken by a single power. There's no way it could happen, ever, unless there was such a talented orator as the Antichrist. As for civil liberties, we have more than most European nations, believe it or not. Our Constitution actually protects free speech while in many European lawbooks it's perfectly legal to jail someone for speaking out against the government. In fact, the United States is often criticized worldwide for giving it's people too many rights.

Something completely different. Prohibition was passed by popular demand and then removed for the same reason. :P The reason the Smith Act is not enforced is not that it CAN NOT be enforced like the Prohibition, but that nobody really cares to do it. It's on the books but nobody has even bothered to enforce it because it's not constitutional.

It's a law that can't be enforced. Essentially a blue law except weaker. Nobody has been prosecuted under that law for more than 50 years.

You mean like almost every nation on Earth? The United States is unique in that we allow unparalleled freedom to our citizens. Even "oh so superior" nations like England, France, and Canada still have SEDITION laws on the books. Some even still allow for bills of attainder. This is a hotly debated issue in America, and eventually it will likely be a new freedom for people to enjoy.

Well, there was also the mass bestiality and gangs of people who stalked newcomers in order to rape them just because they were new.

Kicker: That's what he is and what he claims to be. And what all talking heads should, really. Would make it easier for people to stop getting their opinions from them.

Err, that isn't being wrong in factual information, that's being wrong in prediction :P. If anyone knew the future perfectly, that would be special would it not? And you can hardly blame him for having an influence. That's the fault of the influenced, not the speaker. I do have to say one thing I'm not pleased with Obama about this bill. The Democrats sold this bill and ramrodded it through based on the need for expediency in the face of impending crisis. And the bill sat on the President's desk from Friday to today before it got signed. You'd think if it was so damned vital they would have flown it to him in Colorado, no? Of course this is the document that claims a direct federally-supported highway from LA to Vegas is part of the recovery effort. There is no doubt that the legislation was stuffed full of manure along with the gold. That's really more of Congress' fault than the President's, though.

Guys, lighten up. No matter who the President is, he is going to be heavily scrutinized. You guys have been spoiled in that practically your entire awareness of politics has occurred within one Presidential era. You are so used to bashing on Bush that when people start to knock on Obama, you take it personally. Guess what, it happens. Clinton had people knocking on him worse than Bush did. Does that mean he is doing a good or bad job? That's for YOU to decide. Not the news, not Chris Matthews or Rush Limbaugh, and most certainly not some (sorry) idiot on a web forum who has also spent their entire political awareness career seeing one school of thought. Do your own research, make your own views based on that. That being said, he HAS only been in office for three weeks. The Honeymoon phase is still in swing. Within a year more and more people are going to be saying "wtf Obama?" All the greatest Presidents had craploads of people who hated their policies and maybe even them during their terms. But now we say "oh look, what a great guy!" Lincoln's a great example of this. Hard to love a guy when if you say "I don't like having so many soldiers in the street" you can get your rear end hauled off to jail and shot thanks to a note from Uncle Abe! But give the man a break, on both sides. He's not the greatest thing that ever lived Democrats, nor is he a self-indulgent evil psychopath Republicans. He's human, and President. Wait and watch that space. EDIT: And what's the deal with people knocking on Rush Limbaugh? He's the news equivalent of a shock jock. You may not like what he has to say, but you are in fact listening to his show, therefore he has done his job. I say that metaphorically since many of you might not have even heard his show and get all your opinions from someone else. I hope not, because that would make you sheep :o. But anywhoo, like him or not, if you have listened to his show he has done all of his research and homework. He's doing a good job, because he has looked at the facts and created his opinion. You should take his example and do the same. I've heard some people call him racist, which is silly because the offending statement was a true fact about crime rates? Seriously? But yeah, you still have to give the guy props for being smart and educated as opposed to reading a teleprompter for 1.5 million a year like *coughChrisMatthewscough*

We need viruses or this world would be flooded. Its not a good thing, but It has benefits. I suppose you think the holocaust was good "because it stopped the world being flooded". i cant believe that there is so many people who think the deaths of millions of peopleare something to say "is a benefit". the holocaust was a war about religion, and they slaughtered millions of people, how could that be a good thing? But disease is good in the sense that it stops the world from being more overpopulated than it already is, and without diseases, we'd live much longer, produce more offspring, and end up killing ourselves out of starvation, because we wouldn't be able to produce enough food to feed ourselves. There would also be huge amounts of pollution, and that could affect the water, and make it undrinkable, thus killing lots and lots more people. So in the long run disease is a good thing. your just looking at it through a very narrow point of view. [/hide] Exactly. Remember what Barihawk said back in the homosexuality thread, you need to toss aside your opinion and look at the full picture, even outside the box on situations. Uh, I don't know if I'd want my name to be attached to that particular scribe of thought. I do think people should be willing to put their own opinions and beliefs aside to look outside the box, but that's reaching really really far out of the box. The Holocaust was a bad thing, period. There's a reason several entire divisions of German troops went psycho and turned on the SS when they found out about these camps.

And bottle caps. *drinks bottle of coke *you receive a bottle cap! What's sad is that after playing that game for the past few days, I had a dream last night about surviving nuclear aftermath, and I drove to Wal-Mart and stocked up on the things on my list. :P

Like I said, it's worth something for at least a little while and can be used for early bartering until the money system collapses (which actually should be a good while, to be honest). Then it can be toilet paper.

Take a trip to Wal-Mart and organize a Nuclear War kit we've had ready for 15 years now (also handy in case of terrorist attack or other cataclysmic events!) Kit includes: -Dry food to provide sustenance for one week -Two flats of bottled water (to be bought when world conditions degrade to the threat of cataclysm -50 12-gauge shotgun shells for hunting/self protection (no more, because I'd expect to be killed in the case of self defense) -300 rounds .22LR ammunition for hunting (squirrel on a stick, yum!) -Four knives (paring, bayonet, Gerber multitool, and pocketknife) -A GPS unit to be powered off my car battery, four maps (Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and the US) -A journal and pencils -Flashlights (I will have three) -Batteries, batteries, batteries -$200-$500US for bartering/exchange as long as it holds value -A backpack with clothing/shoes -Tent/sleeping bag (already in my car since I enjoy camping) -Routes to low population towns/cities with no tactical benefit (aka not getting nuked) My dad and I actually already have routes and meeting places set up for evacuation from Texas on multiple routes (includes a lot of Dairy Queens). Mostly post-9/11 stuff when there was a serious threat of low-yield nuclear detonation in Dallas, but it could still apply. If there was a threat of crap hitting the fan, I'd probably have the car packed and ready aside from the guns, so I could hit the road as soon as said cataclysmic event takes place. I really have to say, climate change will likely not break down organized society. The Day After Tomorrow is a serious fanw**k of a film that caters to more of the extreme left and Al Gore than anything. I think it's pretty much given away when the reporter states "ironically, millions of Americans are entering Mexico illegally" blah blah blah. Such climate change in a matter of days would be impossible (not to mention TEXAS would have been just as safe as Mexico :P). And it would only cause issues in the coastal regions of the nation, which should have plenty of time to evacuate. And let's not forget the human equation. Humans abhor the state of nature (lack of government). We would organize ourselves into communities for protection and begin to rebuild society. Even if Texas becomes a winter wonderland. Just means we have to dress in thicker clothes now, doesn't it? Global nuclear war? We'll probably survive as modern tactics mandate that warheads detonate in the atmosphere, where fallout will gradually fall inert (instead of picking up dirt from a ground blast and lasting for hundreds of years). It would require a serious paradigm shift for most people, but going back to the stone age with modern tools and firearms will have an incredibly rapid technology. You'd have the agricultural and technological revolutions happening simultaneously, with both affecting each other. It would be a better world (like how technology is used to maximize agricultural gain, but the growth of technology is used to fulfill the needs of agriculture and society instead of being pleasure boxes and game spheres). All it takes is a quick trip to Wal-Mart to be ready :).

1) If he did not meet the requirements of Presidency, he never even would have gotten nominated. As long as he is the child of a US citizen, who is a citizen at the time of birth in another nation, then Obama would be a citizen (so we don't have people going on vacation while 8-9 months pregnant in a foreign nation having illegal babies. Also, military kids born off-base?) 2) Guys, look who the OP is. Since when has a topic by this author every created that didn't have some sort of sensationalist news story that always gets knocked down?

Have you ever played a sport or watched professional competition? If you did you'd know that when a team is winning so comfortably the coach will most likely sub out the better players for less experienced players to give them more game time AND to rest key players so that they're less likely to get injured. Actually now that you bring it to light, I have been living under a rock and have no idea whatsoever about sports and athletics. Let's talk about professional sports. Professional sports is a business. Once it becomes a business, sportsmanship is no longer anything of free will, but a policy enforced by penalties and fines, ie the the T.O. autograph football "scandal" excessive celebration penalties and oh no, the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. Professional sports is also a business and any business protects their "investments". You site that coaches takes their star players out of games when they are cruising to a win. And now tell me this, when was the last time there was any real sportsmanlike conduct within professional sports? Athletes are taking enhancement drugs to get an unfair advantage. Players are using techniques that hasten the end of careers. Back on topic..... Anything short of playing and giving 100% is an insult to your opponent. And again, these are high school kids. For one thing, it's unfair to the lower string players on the winning team who had a chance to play and contribute to their amazing victory but instead got to rot on the bench the whole game. In high school sports the kids are not taking drugs or cheating to get by. Sportsmanship is encourage and enforced at all levels. The entire idea of high school athletic competition is to teach sportsmanship first, then have competition. It's a shame (and a sham) that people treat these kids like the game matters more than the education.

Dude Lion, your avatar = the awesome. He ushered in a new scientific age, certainly worth celebrating a bicentennial.