Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 1824
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@ Mona
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Answering two posts). I said releases should exclude liability, if a person wants to buy laetrile. Not that courts always uphold those terms. And you cannot just make a "victim" of everyone who makes stupid choices; some of the sellers really believe they are offering valuable services....
Ummm, why does it matter what they believe?
... Free people shoudld have the right to sell and buy laetrile (or fortune telling services, provided these are sold with informed consent.)
Let me know where you found this majick "informed consent". See my last post.
[Arne]: As for this: Wow. So the great emancipation was to make housework easy enough so that women could do both the housework and hold down an outside job (when they were finally allowed to do so; you do know that women didn't have the temperament and constitution to be lawyers? ... the court said so in the late 1800s, but I guess that was before Hoovers' time) without frazzling completely. With "liberation" like that, who needs slavery, eh?
It is a simple fact of history that running a household has in most times and places been extremely labor-intensive. In almost all cultures, it fell to the women (who got pregnant and popped out lotsa babies, many dying doing so) to undertake that labor, while the male member of the household went into the world to earn the bread.
Was that an answer? Do you think I was unaware of this? It was also a "tradition" that women were chattel, "property", and could be raped and/or beaten by their owners/husbands with no consequence. Tell me how the Hoover fixed this (although you might make a more compelling case for the "Bobbit" model Ginzu knife).
It is further a fact that with the vast increase in labor-saving devices and services, non-wealthy women have seen their time for other things grow exponentially. (Disposable diapers alone are an invention I would thank a deity for, if I thought there was one. Smelly diaper pails and keeping the damn things laundered are a real pain.)
Notions that women only belong at home, and not in, say, the legal profession, were informed by these division of labor factors that increasingly became less relevant. Even had there been no prohibition on their doing so, neither of my great-grandmothers could possibly have taken the time to master the law.
Do you truly believe that it was lack of "relevancy" that fostered the changes we've seen?!?!? That's bizarre. "Give us bread, but give us roses too...." Know where that's from?
Cheers,
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"MA ... call home...."
[Read the article: Mike Allen and Hugh Hewitt on the politicization of the military]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mike Allen: I think different presidents have different needs at different times, and I think that Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan did a great job at the time that they were there.
Ari?!?!? Scotty?!?!? The very best that Ari could do is lie, dissemble, and stonewall with a straight face. Which ranks him up there with talents like "Baghdad Bob". Scotty started to squirm too much, and it was painful to watch....
Cheers,
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I think that "Lame Man" is satire....
[Read the article: Mike Allen and Hugh Hewitt on the politicization of the military]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... trying to ridicule the MSM/maladministration. Take sound bite. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Granted, even watching classic old SNL for the 37th time, it does lose its cachet, but for the time being, I think that "Lame Man"'s exhortations do focus the mind and provide a little grin as well.
Cheers,
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@ Mona
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think homeopaths, fortune tellers etc should be included, provided they make sufficient disclosure so that the consumer can said to have given truly informed consent.
Ummm, why?
You might claim that no (obvious) damage is done, in the sense that the marks aren't physically hurt by what they get (unless, ferinstance, the homeopath tells the person not to see a regular doctor; chiropractors OTOH have been known to cause actual damage [albeit a lot of "relief" despite their 'theoretical' hokamamie about "subluxations", etc.).
But the damage is also present simply in the money that is paid.
Agreed, education and ridicule (ala Johnny Carson, James Randi, et al.) might be the gentlest way of dealing with such, but I have yet to be shown that such is the most efficient. Should efficiency be a metric?
I'm not going to demand, FWIW, that horoscopes be taken out of newspapers; I'm not that hardcore. I think that there is a role for gummint when the abuse goes beyond the pale, and that it involves more than "education" and "informed consent" (and apparently, so do you, Mona, in extolling Consumer Fraud departments).
Cheers,
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@ Mona
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And yes, a feminist group from my youth was called "Bread and Roses," so I know what it means.
Good for you. Care to explain to anyone that doesn't recognise it where the phrase came from? A teaser for those that haven't seen it before: It involved demands for rights from organisations that (most) libertarians consider superfluous if not downright Satanic....
Cheers,