IntenseDebate - RonGibson

5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Ahead of My Time? · 0 replies · +1 points

Hilarious. You called it out in advance, but the lure of that stupid line of attack is so irresistible the gunhumper is compelled to take a break from loading and unloading shells from the clips of his AR-15 machinegun to make it anyway.

5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Barefoot Boy With Cheek · 1 reply · +2 points

Pretty sure I could.

But I don't feel like I'm important enough to be entitled to lie to the FBI, and I don't feel like I'm smart enough to be able to get away with it, and I'm not proud enough to be deathly afraid of embarrassment. Further, I don't have anything in my past that crosses the line between "embarrassing" and "outright criminal and still within the statute of limitations." So I'd just go into an interview like that committed to giving truthful answers.

Are you reasonably certain you couldn't?

5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Can Trump's Entities T... · 0 replies · +1 points

Supposing that there is no principled rationale for the distinction, do you think that one of the available options is obviously better than the other? (Those options being: Extend the right against self-incrimination to artificial persons, or deny the others to same?)

In general I'm inclined toward the latter, but I could be overlooking some really important babies in that bathwater. I bet you've considered the question more deeply than I have.

5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Great Moments in Legal... · 0 replies · +2 points

So...what, in your view, IS the relevance of the Kentucky elections that you cite?

Note that the government of the state of Kentucky wasn't a named defendant in the suit brought by Stewart et al. against the federal government.

Are you perhaps advancing the novel legal doctrine that citizens owe a duty of obedience to their state governments and therefore it's insubordinate for them to bring claims in federal court, in essence "going over the heads" of their proper superiors in the state government?

5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Great Moments in Legal... · 2 replies · +1 points

Can you elaborate on that? It's not immediately obvious how the results of various Kentucky state legislature elections bear on the question of whether HHS acted properly in granting the KY waiver.

5 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - Museums behaving badly · 1 reply · +2 points

You're right--the obscure pun is insufficient. I know exactly who Mossadegh was, and "Mossy Duck" flew right over my head.

6 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - The absolute norm of n... · 0 replies · +3 points

To approve of political violence in general, as you do, is wrong. To approve of political violence in general while deploring all specific acts of violence is cowardly as well as wrong.

6 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - It's not free speech · 0 replies · +4 points

Discussions of free speech don't necessarily begin and end with the first amendment. It's an important principle even outside that limited context. To suppose that free speech is important only because it's contained in the first amendment is to get it exactly backwards.

6 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - The Counterfactual · 1 reply · +5 points

It remains to be seen if the republic is in better shape for having this evil clown in charge. In more or less openly obstructing justice, he's testing the norm that presidents aren't above the law. There's at least an outside chance, and maybe better than even odds, he gets away with it. That was a norm we really needed, whether a majority knows it or not.

7 years ago @ The Reality-Based Comm... - An Anecdote About Camp... · 5 replies · +3 points

Are you sure about the broader trend? Since the whole point here is that dueling anecdotes allows everyone to believe what they want without regard to the actual conditions on the ground, it's either missing the point--or commendably dry humor--to flatly assert that one's own preferred set of anecdotes gives an accurate picture of the present state.

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