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If you are being accused of speeding, and you can prove that your car is incapable of going the speed they are saying you were going, how is that irrelevant?

This is very confusing, not least because I seem to be defending SD. I think really I'm not, but who knows.

ETA I don't litigate, so there may be some fancy litigation thingy that makes it so you can't argue innocence of kicking someone (battery) by pointing out you are a quadriplegic and were out of the country at the time of the injury.

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I did agree with Bush's original statement on the Today Show that the war on terror may never end. Heck, he says many things that I agree with.

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I believe that the presidency is probably a lot of hard work.

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and it appears JFK agreed with the statement also. Didn't stop him from trying to make it into an issue. Fuck him. I'd love if a NYT interview does him harm.

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globally, or elsewhere also?

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Sorry. I think this is sort of an "in" joke amongst ex-prosecutor types. It's an argument made repeatedly by pro-se defendants, who simply make that assertion, and stop. If one brought in an expert to so testify ("you honor, I tested this man's Dodge Dart, and the fastest it goes it thirty"), yeah, it could work.

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Or when they can't get their birth control prescription filled because the pharmacist doesn't want to suffer spiritual pain.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/10/12....ap/index.html

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Then we are both Fair People, and put these other partisan hacks to shame.

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Wow. That can make you pregnant?

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Your reasoning is flawed. You are saying there is no difference between your son being killed and a woman terminating her pregnancy at a reasonable juncture (I don't support the late term stuff when the fetus is viable and almost ready to be born... go ahead, make the stupid slippery slope argument which presumes humans cannot only operate in absolutes).

And you have absolutely no regard for the chick holding the fetus. Its like her life doesn't matter. What happens to her is at worst irrelevant and at best secondary in importance. And pardon me, but to hear it from a man is galling. You don't - and never will - understand a thimble's worth ofb what she's going through. Yet you disregard her. Mostly because you need to, since she doesn't neatly fit into your "moral" argument.

The truth is abortion is a lamentable procedure which needs to be legal. You can't turn the clock back to a society where women are slaves to their biology, and such moves certainly should not be made by any body comprised mostly of old rich males. If you insist on seeing this debate in stupid absolutes, as your analogy about your son suggests, I might as well argue to the brick wall. You're like the judge who only learns when the appellate court whacks him time and time again.

We humans, we are capable of compromise, even in highly charged issues like this. The answer is in the middle. If you can't deal with that, well the debate is pointless.

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A friend of my uncle is an engineer who was ticketed for speeding up a grade on I-90 in Idaho in an old car carrying a load of metal. Representing himself, he presented a developed argument that it was physically impossible for his car's engine to propel that load that quickly, and that the cop must have been pointing his radar gun at a car heading downhill on the other side of the road. A bored judge couldn't care less.

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With the right music, sure. Aloha recommends side one of Led Zeppelin IV.

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Yes, terrorists are a nuisance, like prostitution and organized crime.

Now, perhaps if he defined "nuisance" as murder, rape and arson, then - perhaps - he could be forgiven for merely having a tin ear.

But to suggest that terrorism is on par with prostitution? Why, SAM why?

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And what's more, it's not "my friends", but in fact responses culled from actual people I don't even know! (I know that's hard to imagine-- that others may have a different view that isn't easily dismissed by calling it a small and insignificant sample -- and that must really upset some people's world views, so it's easier to dismiss it as "DTB's friends". Not even close.)

Third trimester abortions (involuntary ones, anyway) are a miniscule fraction of one percent of the abortions that happen in this country.

To who/whatever dismissed the documented views expressed in my earlier post: why don't you just go shoot a healthcare provider who performs abortions -- I'm betting it'll make you feel better.

(Sidd, this isn't a response to you -- but to the thing that you were responding to. Didn't feel like scrolling back.)

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I don't care to take a position on the substantive issue, but you act as thought the woman played no part in the process. Poor little woman, she just up and got herself pregnant. Sorry, I can't buy in to that.

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The main argument against outlawing slavery was that the slaveowners had a Constitutionally-guaranteed property right in those slaves - they had purchased them for good money, and they had a right to keep them.

The counter was, yes, you have property rights, but you are ignoring the rights that we (the abolitionists) claim are held by those slaves you own.

So, like today, there was an argument over whether someone deserved to be called a "person". And, like today, there were competing rights - to own property, and to live free - that had to be balanced.

And, like today, there was a "wreck their lives" argument - the economy of the South was almost completely dependant on slave labor at that point, and abolition would wreck havoc with an entire economy.

As it worked out, the property rights of the South were eventually deemed to be less compelling that the rights of the slaves to freedom. No one ever claimed that their property rights didn't exist - just that the other parties' rights trumped them. Similarly, while it's certainly not a wonderful situation for the woman involved, I would say that, following intercourse, and a resulting pregnancy, the best balance of the competing rights might lie in letting the kid live.

Guiliani's 2 Cents
 

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You know, if I said half the shit you jackasses say I did, you'd be drooling like rabid dogs instead of building scarecrows.

That said, I'm going to laugh my ass off when Bush does replace O'Connor with someone who doesn't believe in making shit up outside of the framework of laws. You people will be screaming, begging, crying when the majority is again allowed to exercise their will instead of having this shit imposed on them by liberal judges and the silver-spoon cheering section.

God forbid you get something like a Constitutional Amendment before imposing your morality on us. And how ironic that you accuse us of doing the same to you.

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Race, while rooted in physiological and cultural reality, is at bottom a construct. The developmental differences between stem cells and fetii, on the one hand, and small children, on the other, are undeniable. Deciding where on that spectrum the being becomes human, such that rights start to obtain, is a really hard question. Pretending, however, that there is no salient difference between a few stem cells and a new-born baby is simply ducking that hard question.

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I disagree with the result that you've come to for (among other things) the reasons that Ty raises above, but I do feel compelled to note that this is one of the more cogent articulations of the pro-life position that I've seen.

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Dred Scott. Really? Shirley, you jest.

A woman is not an economy. The right to be free to control your body is not a property right. And its certainly not anywhere near analogous to a property right in a slave. We're not talking commerce here - the woman didn't buy here body. the state is not merely dispossessing an owner of a right to something considered chattel at the time.

There is no trumping solution here, although I applaud your attempt to work an end-around my reasonable offer to compromise.

I view the woman's right as trumping your argument. So we have the unstoppable force up against the immovable object. There is no moral high ground. Compromise? I'm willing to say I'd outlaw third trimester abortions... hell, I might even go to 5 months if you could provide me with some science to support it. Are you willing to compromise?

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True (the business about the cogency of that position). However, the "it's gonna wreck her life" argument is something of a straw man -- as there are far more compelling reasons someone could have for needing to terminate a pregnancy.

Regarding adoption: there are millions of children in the foster care system who are just waiting to be adopted. However, there seem to be a dearth of those (where are all those parents who are supposedly so desperate for a child -- any child) who are willing to adopt children who are not the right race, age, sex, or what-have-you.

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You can say you'll laugh your ass off, but it would doom the GOP to minority party status. Right now they get to play the victim, but the sort of decision you describe would simultaneously alienate swing voters and mobilize the Dem base like you can't imagine.

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Ask Bilmore, he seemed to understand it just fine.

Its a "tin ear" issue. He recognizes you will never completely wipe out terrorism, and wants/needs to reduce the incidents and their severity to the point where (everything else Kerry said in the article).

You may not like the word "nuisance", but consider: the terrorist attacks which have occurred throughout the world _since_ 9/11 are, at most, a nuisance to the American people (excluding those against our soldiers in Iraq).

That is because they haven't hit the U.S. or even American targets, and so mean almost nothing to the average American. Most people just don't care much, _except_ that they are scared that people they know (or other Americans) may be in the cross-hairs. Kerry's statement was nothing more than saying we need to fight and win so that, some day, terrorism will once again be nothing more than background noise for most people. That is as close as we'll ever get to a win.

Your fixation on Kerry's mention of prostitution is both personally revealing and a red herring. Kerry did not COMPARE terrorism to prostitution. Instead, he said we need to fight terrorism and beat it down UNTIL it is no more important that prostitution or illegal gambling. Anyway, the attacks from B/C and the GOP would be identical even if Kerry had mentioned more serious crimes.

So, the question remains: Why, Slave, Why? BoSox in 6.

S_A_M

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As I recall, Kerry states that life begins at conception.

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That's an arbitrary line you've drawn, one that suits your argument. There are also distinct differences, physiologically based, between me and my prepubescent sons, and yet you likely wouldn't let me shoot my pheasant-scaring progeny. (But, unlike Seb. you would understand the analogy.)

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I suspect there are few newborns/infants in that category. Most are going overseas to foreign countries to adopt newborns/infants because of the shortage here.

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Where does this line of thinking lead you? It obviously has nothing to do with the rights of the fetus, which couldn't care less how it came into being. Abortion rights for victims of rape, and those whose birth control failed, but not others? Does a father who tells the mother that he had a vasectomy have to pay more in birth control?

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Depends. How sick does grandma have to be before I kill her?

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Sperm and ova are alive, too. But does anyone dispute that there is life at conception?

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Then what kind of right is it?

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They were infants at one point. Do you see a lot of people adopting kids from Africa?

From Asia, from Eastern Europe, from South America, yes. Not Africa, however. How curious.

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This is cheap, but I find you repellant, so here goes.

You do understand that, because I can afford plane tickets, and most of my "friends" (and for that matter the country) can afford plane tickets to get whatever abortions we may need elsewhere, that no matter what the Court does, you will never have the desired impact on our "selfish" lives that you seem to desire. Sure, I know... you're just arguing about lagalities. No you're not. You actually want to see people like me - the rotten moral relativists - suffer, or as you call it, "be responsible for our actions." You can't turn back the clock. Bugs you, huh? I may rot in hell, but you're going to have to deal with my kind for the rest of your angry life.

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I didn't draw a line. I said that drawing a line is hard. You have a developmental continuum between conception and birth, and no obvious place (Justice Blackmun's tenure at the Mayo Clinic notwithstanding) to draw a line. And yet the difference between the fertilized egg and a newborn is profound. (More profound, I would say, than that between you and your prepubescent sons, and perhaps more profound than the differences between them and the pheasants they're shooting. Though that's debatable.)

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Curiously, life ends at death, yet there are times within either end of that time period when it is acceptable to use external means to end that life.

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Actually, he wants a return to the day when they were nothing more than a nuisance, i.e. the "head-in-the-sand" shiny, happy days of 9/10.

The Sox, like Kerry, are doomed. Yanks in 6.

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Stop calling me Shirley.

Didn't say it was. Merely pointing out that there are competing rights. And, the argument will never resonate with someone who doesn't believe that that unborn human/fetus/lump might be deserving of consideration in the confering of entitlement to rights. You've made an arbitrary distinction, like Ty - and so have I, at another point on the continuum. I think, like I bet you do, that there is no way for us to know the "right" answer to that. Difference is, I'd prefer to err on the side of not killing.

Let's only kill pheasant-flushers who get less than a "B" average. Good compromise?

Yep, that's the bottom line of the whole fight.

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Per this, a new Treasury Department ruling says that U.S. citizens cannot consume Cuban cigars anywhere in the world, something which Eugene Volokh apparently says they can do. WTF? How can this country punish you for going to, say, Brazil and smoking a Cuban if it's legal there?

Which, sebby, suggests that your faith in being able to fly away from local abortion laws may be misplaced.

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I sincerely doubt it. If 20 states move towards outlawing abortion, this issue goes away. Pro-choice Californians (assuming they are the controlling majority) get to tell the pro-lifers to move to Indiana or Utah. I'm not even sure the 20 pro-Life states are Republican, once the whole abortion issue gets obviated by allowing state control.

The beauty is, the serial abortion-obtainers and the occasional Catholic and whoever else can all move to your state and drive up property values even higher. Or they can visit for a few days whenever they get pregnant. The only way this becomes a huge problem for everybody is if somewhere North of 40 states (just to throw a random, but high number out) move to ban it so that people have to constantly travel to the same remote backwater to get it.

Otherwise, I think it mostly moots the whole issue for both parties, if the country could just a rational status quo on solid ground.

Hello

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True. The "nuisance" with the shrapnel bombs overseas are in complete agreement with you.