If A leaves a fingerprint on B's car and B retaliates by smashing A's car into an unrecognizable heap, it's B that's going to be in by far the most trouble, regardless of whether A instigated the confrontation and regardless of whether A's initial action is criminal.

You get some leeway for defending yourself against a threat, but that's it, there's no leeway for retaliation and there's no leeway for grossly disproportionate response.

Right. The mother-in-law is so worried that people might think she's a witch so she goes ahead and proves it beyond any shadow of a doubt. Good move.

The thing about "cunt" is that it really is kind of isolated. Consider a suite of male counterparts: "dick", "prick", "cock", and so on. They're reasonably similar in connotation. Now compare "cunt" with "pussy". Both are typically pejorative, but that's where the comparison ends. I don't think you can talk meaningfully about "cunt" without addressing why it's somehow so much more offensive than "pussy".

I've never had a credit card. I travel several times a year. Airlines don't care at all. Rental cars can be an issue, but Alamo/National don't have a problem with it if you can demonstrate that you have a return flight.

Isn't false advertising illegal? I'm pretty sure it's considered an exception to freedom of speech. You can't claim that your product has ingredients that your competitors' products don't havem when your competitors' products do have those ingredients. It's against the law.

Sexual assault is horrible and all, but c'mon, recidivism rates of 3-5%, maybe a bit more? The corresponding general recidivism rate is something like 60%. Sex offenders are apparently some of the least likely criminals to re-offend.

I did a little bit of link-clicking, and learned that this data is coming from Google Ad Planner. I wasn't able to determine in a minute or so exactly how Google is collecting the data, however, I'm pretty sure that it's ability to determine gender is, strictly speaking, rather limited.

We're talking about the internet, here. Where men are men, women are men, and little girls are FBI agents. How many of these "women" aren't? I mean, I'm sure some, even many, are. But we're talking differences of a few percentage points in the first place, with the biggest distinction coming from MySpace, where a few years ago probably over half the "people" were ads for pornography sites.

I'm not convinced that there's any trend showing up in this data at all.

Article:

We have the numbers, we know there's a discharge disparity, but we don't know why.

Felix:

How do you know more lesbians don't join the Air Force which accounts for the higher percentage of DADT discharges?

Did you even READ the article before shooting off?

I'm reminded of a 1995 political cartoon: "Quick! Hand them a Nobel Peace Prize while they're reloading!"

I find it a little ridiculous that women have to be slapped with a making-fun-of-them label if they are open to dating (or seek out) younger men, but men? It's just par for the course - of COURSE they're going to go after younger women!

It's so not true, though, at least not in the "trenches" so to speak, rather than in bizarre media depictions. Women are called cougars. Men are called creepy. Frankly, I think the women got the far better end of that deal.

So, how closely did this revival in sales of Ayn Rand book follow the recession? And how closely did it, instead, follow the release of the video game Bioshock?

I am no expert on bill of attainder case law, but can someone produce a specific case in which cutting off funds for an organization has been considered a bill of attainder?

I'm not an expert on law at all, but I can look it up in Wikipedia:

U.S. v. Lovett was a case historically relevant to taking away pay checks of government workers Congress could accuse of being Communists. This was an asset forfeiture case. It states:

Legislative acts, no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a trial, are 'bills of attainder' prohibited under this clause.

I'm talking about when people, out of ignorance (either from possessing little knowledge of the mechanics of language or from a small vocabulary) use awkward constructions when perfectly serviceable words exist. - Isoroku

The business of language is in being understood. Excessive adherence to obscure technicalities actually makes language less comprehensible to the majority of readers. So, right from the get-go, what you're trying to do is a bad idea.

Plus, you're wrong: "prima donna" means so much more than just lead woman; "primo don", in contrast, is little more than Italian for lead man.

It's kind of a non-statement. We have so little to fear from terrorists that any comparison is almost certainly going to favor the other side.

Republicans doing something about the cost of one of their bills - that's how you know they don't think it will pass. Pity they couldn't show any such restraint when they were in power.