Is leaving your child in a car criminal negligence? Under most jurisdictions, criminal negligence requires more than ordinary carelessness, inattention, or mistake in judgment. A person acts with criminal negligence when: (1) the person acts in a reckless way and creates a high risk of death or great bodily injury; and (2) (the mythical) reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk. I'm not sure that I'd say forgetting the child is an act of recklessness. I don't do criminal law though, so I would defer to someone who does.

Regardless, it would not be an act of "murder". It would be involuntary manslaughter. The whole point is that the parents aren't leaving the children in the car intentionally and simply disregarding the risks. (The best example of 2nd degree murder based on gross recklessness I can remember from law school was the case where a drunk, enraged husband threw his beer stein at his wife who was holding a lit oil lamp; the lamp broke spilling firey oil all over his wife who burned to death. The child in the car is obviously quite different.)

One study of people living near large hog farms in North Carolina, for instance, concluded "persons exposed to odors from intensive hog operations experienced 'more tension, more depression, more anger, more fatigue and more confusion' than a group of unexposed persons."

Have we just explained rural conservative voting patterns?

Car-lovers will say that's because roads don't need operating expenses, but I would argue that because a new highway creates more traffic around its ramps, upgrades to local roads should be considered maintenance foe the highway.

-- dartvader

A friend of mine who works in the Idaho governor's office told me that highway maintenance in Idaho generally costs 10% of the total construction cost for that highway. Presumably, that figure would apply to other states and, also, that surface street maintenance costs would be similar.

Is AIG an admitted carrier in the states in which it operates? If so, then wouldn't AIG's failure put pressure on the various states' insurance guaranty associations? What a mess.

Conservatism's slide into irrelevance continues.

Spouses, perhaps?

Unless the economy picks up and your husband can get a new job, you will not be able to buy a house in Southern California. Look, I'm in the same boat. Live in LA, fiance lost her job when her firm dissolved. Our income is half of what it was in December. So, yeah, if housing prices utterly collapsed in LA, we could afford a house. But if housing prices collapsed, I'm guessing that would either be the cause or the result of an economic cataclysm. Even I still had a job, why would I want to live in LA then? If we have to help out some jagoffs so LA doesn't turn into Rio de Janeiro or Mumbai, I'm for it.

Next time, Democrats, in the name of bipartisanship, should give the Republicans what they want: next gen weapon systems, illegal wars and monuments to Ronald Reagan.

"Updated version of the old Yakov Smirnoff joke: in China, they execute criminals, in soviet America, we pay them billions and elect them to high office."

Reasonable people can argue over the truth of that statement, but it doesn't work as a joke. Two alternatives:

In China, they execute criminals; in America, criminals execute you!

In China, officials pay criminals money; in America, criminal's money pays officials!

No kidding! I'll never forgive Joss Whedon for killing Joyce in the lamest re-telling of the mother-death cliche.

What intimate details? It's 25 random things, not 25 dark shameful secrets of your past. One of my 25 was that a long time ago I used to belong to a conservative fundraising group. Ok, that is dark shameful secret from my past. Touche!

Have you used facebook? Some of my friends live within a couple of miles of my place. Some live thousands of miles away. Some of my friends I talk to regularly. Some, I lost track of and haven't heard from in years and years -- but I still care about them. For people who move around a lot, which is a lot of people, facebook is a great way to connect and reconnect. It is about writing to people you know, or knew. Why you think that isn't "genuine human interaction" I have no idea.

It's like we see shitty, rundown, dying small towns too poor or conservative to strive for aestetic beauty and think, "Why can't all of America look like this!"

Sigh.

I agreed with at least 50% of your post. These are crazy days indeed. I would say, however, that I don't think the salary limit talk is related to TARP, not the stimulus bill. Also, letting the American financial industry collapse might end up costing more than saving it, so I guess I'm more on board with the bailouts. But still, finding common ground wiht you is quite scary ;)

My favorite thing about the conservatives today is that they talk like the alternative to the New Deal was small government, or libertarianism. They're daft. The alternative to the New Deal was radical political ideas like communism or national socialism and violent revolts or revolution. It's maddening how context-free their thinking is.

"$4.1 billion to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective healthcare treatments."

While I agree that this may be a good use of government funds, I am not sure how this will stimulate the economy and help get the U.S. out of the recession.