Check out this 2-year old Sumatran baby who smokes 40 cigarettes a day. So crazy.

Scot, It's an interesting idea. Washington has become a very toxic place with the presence of special interests and lobbyists, and too many members of Congress (from both houses) lose touch with their constituencies over time. So I like the idea in that respect. But Congress is also supposed to be a...

Scot,

I definitely support representational reform. I do not support, however, direct democracy. I like the republican system.

Zarathustra, Jindal is not asking for Big Government to solve his problem for him. He is asking for the federal goverment to get out of his way so he can take the necessary steps HIMSELF to save his state. I'm afraid you don't have any evidence of this. Jindal, by contrast, has treated the spill as ...

ali, I noticed that too. Something about Jindal's hypocrisy makes him particularly unattractive to me.

I don't think the President or the administration have owned this crisis enough. They ceded too much authority to BP to fix the problem themselves. The administration's response should have been more clearly stated, more vigorous, and more incisive. As I said in another thread, I also blame the Pres...

Whew, I know this is a bit late given the popularity of this discussion, but when I point out that I don't care if the moral right of the government to end discrimination is subjective or not, I'm not being complacent or lazy or quietist about the way things are. I'm expressing my approval of the wa...

Here's a thought, Tjol: how about you stop accusing all sorts of mysterious "leftists" of generalizing and stop generalizing yourself? It's really getting on my nerves.

Scot, But it doesn't remain "robustly illegal". I guess it just depends on what we mean by "robustly." I think the brazen illegality of putting up a "Whites only" in front of any business is pretty robust. Plus when any business that a court determines to be engaging in...

I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: federal intervention was necessary. I think most Americans would say it does, that racial equality is important enough to who and what we are as a nation that the long arm of government should reach into the private realm and ba...

Tjol, You would win the Strawman of the Month award if one existed. (Perhaps it should.) If I were to write a "satirical" post as a conservative where I self-identified as a fascist and a racist, everyone would be all over me, and rightfully so. And yeah, Prebe beat me to the punch: white ...

Zarathustra, I'm not sure. Why not? I don't mean to sound inane, but the Constitutionality here is a major issue. Surely you have an argument of some kind. "Moral" is subjective. Oh well. Subjective or not, the government in practice just has that right (to intervene to stop racial discrim...

Zarathustra and Ser Scot, I hope it's not too naive of me to have such faith in our culture, but I honestly think we're there. Where is "there"? I just don't understand what you two are arguing. We all seem to agree on the history of the Civil Rights Act. Great. So the CRA is on the books ...

Scot, Okay, that does make sense. In the case of the Civil Rights Act, the reason why we didn't allow the democracy of the marketplace to organically phase out racial discrimination on its own is clear. It wasn't going to happen. Jim Crow was a radically unjust and radically unconstitutional situati...

Scot, As I understand it, the Constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act is firmly established, by Heart of Atlanta and a bunch of other cases from that period. (I'm not suggesting you or anyone else has said otherwise, but it bears repeating.) Title II of the Civil Rights Act (the one I presume Rand...

Wait a second. Segregation wasn't about individuals using their Constitutional property rights. It was a cultural and legal system set up to exclude a racial class of people from white institutions. Justifying that exclusion did, indeed, have a Constitutional basis: Plessy v. Ferguson 's (1896) &quo...

Zarathustra, LM, being against discrimination and racism isn't the same as being for the federal government enforcing this laudible position with guys w/guns. Come now. Not everything in the Civil Rights Act was enforced at gunpoint. Some of it was, and I think some of it ought to have been enforced...

Scot, Why are you asking me about racism? I'm not saying Rand Paul is a racist. Rand Paul is saying he's uncomfortable with the federal government ending racism in private institutions. Fine. I think that's an abhorrent view that puts him in the same civic category as John C. Calhoun, but fine. That...

Scot, Please recognize that is an incredibly uncomfortable position for someone running for elected office to be in. I don't see why. Why should it be "incredibly uncomfortable" to just say he's in favor of the Civil Rights Act? That's an elementary and almost universal proposition in poli...

Zarathustra, Are you being coy in suggesting that Rand Paul actually supported getting rid of the legislation, and then changed his mind? I said he was being coy about the legislation. He didn't come out clearly in favor of it nor clearly against it. Initially. My link was him coming out strongly ag...