Until Further Titling – Week 2; Covenantal Love
There is a huge folder of links sitting on my desktop, many of which I would like to comment on in individual posts. Unfortunately, I am too busy, so I will let you sift through them and see what you think is relevant…
- Newt Gingrich is not a good person. He did take a pledge of fidelity about his marriage yesterday, though he had done so twice before (and who does that?! Isn’t that what marriage is in the first place?!).
- I got a speeding ticket a few days ago, and consequently ran across a column maintaining that traffic citations have skyrocketed in both cost and occasion, and that using tickets as a revenue-generating source will surely not estimate justice or what it right in society.
- On reddit, a wise contributor notes that the SOPA bill and its power to take down entire domains on just the word of a narc would be comparable to if someone reported that a criminal hid counterfeit goods in a bank safe deposit box, SOPA would allow the legitimate IP owner to shut down the entire bank and all other branches without any notice, search warrant, or due process. Will due process have due process or will we just get rid of the standard?
- A recent column on Ron Paul highlights yet more things you probably never knew about him, such as the fact that as president, he would take only $39,000 (the median household income) as a salary as opposed to the standard $400,000. RP2012!
- An outsider look at American rape cages:
- The problem with anti-gun laws is that they ensure that only the criminals have guns, while the average Joe is left to be slaughtered. I don’t know if there is any way around this simple truth for anti-gun do-gooders… Those same do-gooders, by the way, that put tens of thousands of guns on the street and have added to the death toll and carnage in Mexico WITH THE INTENT to make a case for tighter gun laws. Then, they work to cover up something foul.
- Many a time, atheists and theists battle it out on the internet, and very often nothing comes of it. The main reason, in my opinion, is that the standard of proof that atheists require is far above and beyond that which is reasonable. You accept many, many things on faith every day – many of which that you will never be able to prove or truly know to be truth, for lack of time and means to do so. Yet religious faith is ridiculed as being childish and unprovable in any sense. It has always bothered me, and Dave Armstrong does a decent job explaining what should be obvious by now.
- We are spending $400 per gallon of gasoline to stay in Afghanistan. Economic stimulus, anyone?
- College is at the point where it may no longer be economically worth it. Even so, there is a stigma to not having gone, and I would imagine people will still insist on doing so until the costs far outweigh the benefits. Yes, the standard argument is “no, college is worth more than what you get in the classroom, because of living alone, being around alcohol, etc.” Sure. But how many virtues are lost for every one person’s that are strengthened by living on their own and being free to have sex and drink as they please? I would imagine the ratio is not a good one…
- Even from within the DEA and other legal institutions, people are starting to see that the drug war is worth far less than the money and lives we are spending on it:
- Even in 2010, federal workers were earning double what their private counterparts were. It is not clear, but I have an inkling that the unions were part of the reason for this…
- Public dissatisfaction with the government is at a record high of 81%. I have an idea, people! Let’s go to Wall Street and protest against rich people there!!!! And who are the 19% who think our government is just doing a dandy job? How dumb do you have to be, honestly? Fear of the government has also peaked.
- I would be the first to tell you that the tenets of Catholicism should not be enacted as law, but some in government seem to believe that the government should trump Catholicism and personal morality, especially on terms of Abortion. At what point do you stop being Catholic even when you call yourself one?
- Friedman whoops up on the contention that monopolies are bound to occur on the free market:
- The “facts” given by the fact-checking website PolitiFact are heavily biased. Are you really surprised?
- The banks will still get their money after the Frank-Dodd bill passage, this time by re-arranging your transactions as to make sure you are charged more overdraft money than you originally would have been…