"Hate speech laws do not punish free speech they restrict the ability of authoritarians to incite a riot."

Does the law specify they have to wait for a riot to determine if speech falls under this category? I doubt it. Which means some government functionary, as George Carlin so aptly described them: a person with a double digit IQ and a triple digit income, gets to decide which speech is free and which isn't.

The real danger here though is that whatever the 'good intentions' were in its crafting, a law like this allows the government to silence someone speaking out against it.

If you play it out logically, an evil government that has the people by the throat would need the people to be incited to rise up against it. It would be that type of government that would be the beneficiary of this type of law.

"judicial activism" simply means the judiciary acted in a way I don't like. Its a cloak to provide your negative reaction to the outcome with intellectual phrasing some cover from the shame of only supporting the law when it agrees with you.

At first I couldn't understand why right-wingers would care about this, then I remembered they don't want to be forced to allow Ron Paul into debates either. Ha!

Whenever I'm baffled by the first line of a letter, I know it's a bebop-o letter :)

Wherever you are, may your meds be soothing and plentiful!

It took the focus of the business off of its customers.

Before Wall St. company A makes a widget, all good. Then company B comes along and maybe makes a better widget, or a cheaper widget, or makes getting the widget into the customer's hands a more pleasant experience. So what is company A going to do? Compete! That is the essence of the free market.

But now we have 'Wall St.' and in the same scenario as above, what is company A going to do in the face of company B's assault on it's business? Compete more effectively? No. That is too hard. Company A is going to take the path of least resistance and fire 5000 employees to make the company look better on paper so as to keep it's stock price up. Who loses? The customers because 'competition' no longer responds to the pressure of their wallets, and naturally the 5000 employees.

"As we devolve into a third world country this makes sense."

Yep, as people who don't think we need to worry about the population keep telling us, birthrates drop as education and economic prosperity rises... So I guess we're getting dumber and poorer in the U.S.? *checks newspapers* Yep!

From a Bush admin, senior republican, defense contractor perspective, the was has been a great success.

The funniest thing is that since the GOP hasn't abandoned Bush, none of the candidates, (ceptin' Ron Paul) can run against Bush

So what you get on the GOP side is a bunch of candidates who have to support all the policies of a failure Bush, whom the vast majority of the US thinks is a failure, while desperately pretending to be Regan.

I think that given the what is at stake, every politician will say anything they think will help them get elected.

Also given the way the MSM reports discrepancies between truth and lies, it is also SAFE to lie your ass off.

I would say that maybe it's because Obama is trying to appeal to everyone instead of just democrats. The thing is, as Obama demonstrated, you can look at what happened during the Regan years and evaluate honestly what happened without making a judgment call as to whether it was good or bad.

I think he's trying to build an 'elecatability' thing.

The sad this is this ass-munch, when for once the country actually needs some leadership, flies off to the Middle East in pathetic and futile attempt to establish a legacy, when he might actually have accomplished some legacy building had he done something about the economy.

The sadder thing is had he stayed in the US and tried to do something about the economy, surely he would have made it worse.

Notice how in a race between a black man and white woman, the issue that the media is frothing over (and in turn frothing up their viewers/listeners/readers which in turn froths up the candidates who must respond) is race and not gender? Where is all the media hype over whether Hillary has the 'balls' to be president? Or if she is 'woman enough'?

Though I'm sure that if Hillary becomes the Democratic candidate and faces off against the white male Republican candidate these will become mainstream media issues and harped over constantly, I find it curious that for the most part, gender issues have taken a backseat to race issues during the current race between Obama and Hillary.

You'd think that for every pundit who brings up race, someone else would bring up gender. I mean they are both real issues in a race between the first black and woman who have serious chances to become president.

My wife, who doesn't follow any of this, didn't even know there was a vote in SC tonight, who will just vote for whoever is the eventual nominee, did say, when she caught a clip of Bill Clinton campaigning against Obama, "Oh, what a shame, I like him so much, I wish he wouldn't do that."

So there ya go.

One of the most senior and experienced senators endorses the first serious black candidate for president.

It was also revealed that Hillary had been seeking his endorsement for months?

Sen. Edwards had initially decided to withhold his endorsement until after the primaries, but changed his mind, partly because of the actions of ex-president Bill Clinton.

Ya, that's political news.