Mine are (in no particular order, but the ones I spend more time on are probable listed earlier) Roleplaying games (D&D 3.5 Link and Shadowrun Link mainly.) Wargaming (mostly Battletech Link right now. I have a fairly decent collection of Warhammer 40K <a href="http://us.game
I'm sure some of the people reading this right now have come from one of the comments I've left on a variety of other blogs concerning gay marriage. Like any number of so-called "conservative" bloggers, I'm for it. Spare me the religious justifications for being against it - not everyone holds the same religious beliefs (and if the only reason you're against it is religious, why doesn't the First Amendment then currently require the government to allo
"Remember back in the day playing capture the Klingon with those Star Trek tracer guns that shot those little round 'Jet Discs'? Of course you do. ThinkGeek recently stumbled upon the 21st century take of that classic launcher. Inspired by the bullet time scenes from the Matrix, the Shot Blade was developed to create slow flying projectiles that were also accurate and consistent from launch to launch. They succeeded! " I just have to worry abo
Because there is a question of law - and the law requires (at least it should require) fairly precise definitions. Note that several christian priests will perform a religious marriage between same-sex couples. But that's not what the fuss is (currently) about. The fuss is, gays want the legal rights and benefits that accrue to married couples. And to do that, they have to redefine the legal definition of marriage. At this point, several factors kick in. The biggest one is that there is a large
I guess my problem with this (and I have a problem with this both ways, mind) is that is yet another step towards a government of men, not laws. The entire exercise has been one of pushing the limits of acceptable tactics; one where certain elements on each side of the conflict have decided it is more important to break the system than to work within it. We saw this in teh government shutdowns of clinton's era, and we see it now in the nomination face-off. Politics in the federal government are
I didn't limit it to homosexual unions - just consenting adults. Move the "government handouts" to unions with children. Next issue?
The entire arguement is now about what to call it - . One of the things driving the debate is that certain religious people do not want what they consider to be a sacred state of affairs to be tainted by association with what they consider sin. The Mass Supreme Court has decided that (in Mass) the same terminology must be used for both heterosexual unions and homosexual unions. I say, don't redefine marriage, redefine civil union. And get the government out of the business of marriage (a religio
Um, filibustering isn't in the consitution (though it is certainly not unconstitutional - the senate has the right to make their own rules of debate); its an internal senate debate rule. My problem with its use in this case is that it is being use to circumvent a constitutional power of the president; namely, to appoint federal judges ("subject to advice and consent" which for the past 200+ years has been interpreted as requiring a majority of the senate to approve of the judges. In the case of
I suggest deleting secular marriages - replace with secular civil unions open to consenting adults, with the same extremely-hard-to-break-by-nonparticipant legal advantages as current marriages, and move as many of the financial benefits as prudent to the civil unions that are raising children. Certain financial benefits would still accrue to childless unions (inheritance, mainly), but I'm OK with that - death taxes strike me as bizarre; the government
My DW is on the mailing list for the People for the American Way (for humor value - she's thinks that they are off their meds; what I think of them would require me to flag this post adult). She recently received an e-mail complaining about President GW Bush's recess apointment of Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Pryor had been nominated for this post some time ago, and his nomination has been s
Myself, I'm "56% (Dixie). Barely into the Dixie category."
"Nothing's worn under _my_ kilt. Everything there is in perfect working order. :)" - David Wangen in a thread on baen's bar about Highland Paratroopers
(via Jim Miller Link ) From the article in the Helena Independent Record "In a ruling released Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Lovell wrote that Jo Alice Mospan, former district director of the Helena SBA office, ruined the career of Mary Conway-Jepsen, and continued to retaliate after Conway-Jepsen resigned in 1997. The harassment, according to Conway-J
Welcome to my blog. It's all my DW's ( Link ) fault, she's been bugging me to get one of my own so I stop ranting in email. So I'll rant here. I reserve the right to do just about anything I want here and in the comments. This is my soapbox, generously provided by Brad, so if you don't like it, get your own.
"we're providing them the tools to be successful adults and the two most important tools would be self-discipline and personal responsibility." This would be how my parents raised both my borther and myself - we had the most personal freedom of any of our friends. However, we had the most responsibilities of any of our friends. We had the most chores and duties (we cooked dinner at least once a week from when I was 10 or 11 on, we did *all* the laundry and most of the dishes (not terrib
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