Which laws do we use to decide what's illegal and has to be censored off the Internet? Let's say your Internet traffic gets routed through Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc even though you don't live there. Do we use their (Islamic fundamentalist) laws to decide what you can access over the Internet?

I abhor child pornography and child abuse. It's filthy and it's disgusting. But so is prior restraint of legitimate Internet traffic on the mere suspicion that it's related to child porn. Or copyright infringement. Or drug trafficking (especially if you live in a country or part of a country that has chosen to legalize certain drugs, such as marijuana).

While it is easy to twist what I have written into a defense of child porn, rest assured that is emphatically not the case. I wish those who traffic in or enable child porn a swift and decisive prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. I just don't think the rest of us should have to deal with a police state as a result of the few (.01% or so) who deal in child porn.

The truly sad thing is how many cases are out there like this, that have not actually gotten any publicity (even self-generated). I would make an educated guess that with the dozens of cases I've heard about, there are probably hundreds, maybe thousands or even tens of thousands, that I haven't.

Apparently it's not a crime to just be stupid. There would never be enough non-stupid people left over to run the jails if it were.

I agree in principle with what you're saying, and I'd like to see someone try. Unfortunately, I also suspect the probability of winning the lawsuit is rather low.

We, as a society, should take to heart the quote from Tom Smith in the movie Seabiscuit: "You know, you don't throw a whole life away just 'cause he's banged up a little."

Yes, I did leave that out, but not on purpose. According to the Times story, Mortier left because he was presented with a budget of only $34 million, versus the $60 million he said he needed (not quite 57 cents on the dollar). If I were him in that position, I'd leave too.

That was actually not an assumption; that was merely an illustration of how important private donations are financially as opposed to ticket sales. I would never realistically assume NYCO would raise ticket prices to those levels; it'd be virtual suicide.

Noted. I know south of I-10 it was 50 mph at one time, but never paid much attention north of I-10.

While I do realize this, Reliant also had (at least) my mom's current mobile phone number (which hasn't changed in about 10 years) and according to her, they never called it to ask where their payment was.

Took me three tries, but I finally made it to the end of a month with $252 taking the restaurant server job. Is that really the key to winning this game?

I had to write my own post about Evan Emory (the guy facing a 20 year felony charge for the prank YouTube video). While it is tasteless, I don't think criminal sanctions are justified. It's a shame criminal charges are even being considered.