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    O'Donnell questions separation of Church and State

    An "Official Position" on religion would be saying: "Christianity is an established religion by the law, and by the law that is prohibited from being spoken by a state official." Or ditto: "Islam is an established religion by the law and therefore you cannot practice it, only Religion X...
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    O'Donnell questions separation of Church and State

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. How does Congress...
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    Three Charts that Will Infuriate Taxpayers

    It is a fundamentally bad thing. There is a fundamental economic difference between public and private employment, and that has to do with the discipline of risk. With more than some irony, it has been the fat fingering of possibly well meaning public policy that has been monkeying with the...
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    Florence mosque defaced with bacon

    This is exactly what the secular West does not fully appreciate about the Muslim world, where even nations that are not 'official' theocracies are de facto theocracies. We are a little fast-and-loose with our cavalier defense of our 1st Amendment. OTOH, we can't surrender it just to defeat...
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    How Tea Partiers get the Constitution Wrong

    The nation is largely nominally Christian, and believes in God, and is angry at it doesn't know what; government, the GOP, the Democrats, the political overclass, Wall Street. That's the populist reality. Are tea party leaders simply pandering? I don't know. The Christian variant is relatively...
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    In defence of BP

    BP's management might have wished that the process was akin to looking up the answer in the back of the book and solving the mathematical equation and writing down the solution directly, but that process is applicable only to trivial and mostly non-competitive problems -- the kind we sometimes...
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    Christian argument on Gay Marriage

    Must societies be in agreement on everything, or should we really expect a final battle to the death between PETA and the good folks at Outback? Is the religious definition of 'marriage' one of those issues that societies must be in agreement on, as long as we agree on the legal rights and...
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    Christian argument on Gay Marriage

    There are non-religious arguments against marriage? 'Marriage' is purely a religious concept. If a religion defines 'marriage' as between a man and a box of Kleenex, then the proper response of the state is, "Marriage? Religion? What's that?" Though, I'd say the state is free to not recognize...
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    BBC Study - Cleaners "worth more to society" than Bankers

    It is one thing to pull very hard on the end of a rope in a political tug of war; Rand certainly did that, she had to. It was her on one side of the rope, and millions of slobbering fools on the other, pulling her back towards an abyss she had already fled. It is another thing to politically...
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    An economy of liars

    You missed the point of the article. It was about crony deal between the federal government and businesses. Take the fat fingering of federal 'SEC exempt/agency rated FNMA/GSEs' out of the mix, and what possibly enables the 'financially engineered' genius of 'securitized mortgage bundles?'...
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    10 Commandments on State Property: Opinion

    I'm not sure what I chicken picked. The crux of your argument is that The Ten Commandments displayed in a courthouse is endorsing religion. My argument is that the proper response of the State to someone who makes that claim should be: "Religion? What's that?" How does Congress establish...
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    10 Commandments on State Property: Opinion

    That's funny. My copy says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion Does that mean 'respecting,' as in to show admiration for, or more generally regarding/concerning. The power to define religion via law is the power to establish religion. Search the US Code, it is...
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    BBC Study - Cleaners "worth more to society" than Bankers

    I think Thomas Sowell's argument in "A Conflict of Visions" nicely sums up this debate -- there are competing definitions of what justice is, and in some way, it is important to understand that 'welfare statists' believe they are fighting for their vision of 'justice.' That is not to say, it...
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    CEO are not that highly paid

    I think its obvious that 'rich' is 'dem whos gots more than us.
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    Tea Partiers- racist morons?

    In among the reasons of 'why they are angry' is the outrage at the profligate spending, which, when it is publicly exposed as it was during the government's response to its self-generated crisis of meddling, results in exactly that kind of political response. Look at Social Security for...
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    Obamanomics working

    So your beef is basically that you aren't innovative enough to come up with a new/better/improved idea to compete in the market? Maybe the problem stems from not understanding what a monopoly on a market is. Skype wouldn't be a monopoly even if it were the only program that does what it...
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    Obamanomics working

    So let me see if I understand this logic 1] There are dozens of choices for Operating Systems, some of which are free, which for some reason unexplained discounts them as alternatives, therefore there is a monopoly on the operating systems market. 2] There are hundreds of choices for...
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    Obamanomics working

    Huh? While it is true that there need to currently be different builds for Macs and Windows programs, that is not rooted in the programming language. C++ is C++. There isn't a different language for Macs, the entire program does not have to be re-written to work on a different platform...
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    Right Wing Media lies about Net Neutrality

    The mistake people make is to fall into the well constructed trap of thinking that they're going to wind up paying more for less. That's simply not the case. Yes ISPs are businesses, but they don't just take all their profits off the top and roll about on piles of money - that capital largely is...
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    Right Wing Media lies about Net Neutrality

    Postal" neutrality would prohibet Federal Express from charging money for high quality express service on the public Interstates. Everything would move at the efficiency of the US Postal Service, except worse: all correspondence would travel in easily opened envelopes that were subject to the...