Forum Overview :: Motherfucking News :: I see.

[quote name="Lizard_King"]I think we agree in general if not in particulars. Inasmuch as we are ever going to, anyhow. [quote name="The Monopoly Guy"] More like what was done to me with a pineapple. Anyway, in your jihad against trial lawyers, I hope you'll make room for their tax-paid equivalents. I've ranted about forfeiture laws before, but if we're going to go crazy defending every letter of the 2nd Amendment, I'd like some attention paid to the 4th. Long before the War on Terror and the PATRIOT Act and Sister Patriot Act II, the legendary War on Drugs was used as an excuse to enact forfeiture laws that are absolutely mind-boggling. Scream all you want about a woman pouring scalding-hot coffee in her lap and suing McDonald's, then read about the convenience-store owner in Miami who over the course of a few months built a fence around his parking lot, put up stadium-style lights, called the local cops repeatedly to ask them to increase the patrols in his area at night, and still lost his store and land to the government when it was determined small-time dealers were using his parking lot at night to conduct business. [/quote] The entire war on drugs is farcical in nature, as is any government-jihad against a social "problem" as if it were independent of the people perpetrating it but not necessarily doing anything wrong. I say, fine, you want to a wage a war on drugs, then you had better be willing to shoot drug users, dealers, etc. Otherwise, it is neither a war nor is it effective in dealing with the problem (in this case more a cultural than a legal one), and it is creating a massive clusterfuck in the periphery. Likewise with, say, the war on poverty. A real war on poverty would involve shooting poor people; until then, shut the fuck up and recognize it is less a problem to be attacked in a military manner (I think the philosophical parallels between military management of war and socialist management of peace are very similiar in principle, but what works in a war does not in peacetime) than a reality with which to work. [quote]Or your pet peeve (I seem to sense), the small airline industry - check how many small (single plane) operators lost their property (the plane) and livelihood (again, the plane) because they were foolish enough to believe the guys who rented it were not lying when they said they weren't drug smugglers. Those sorts of lawsuits are absolutely the worst, and "trial lawyers" are the ones you're going to want to turn to when you get the indictment, not against you, but against your new house, car, or whatever.[/quote] Absolutely. But these are definitely not the same sort of trial lawyers that are going after Mickey D's on behalf of some fatasses. Just like if I were a defendant in a court case, I would want a defense lawyer; that does not mean I need to embrace the Johnny Cochrane's of the world. In any case, my deal with small airplanes has to do with the situation of the manufacturers rather than the end user. In the last two decades, Cessna, Piper, and many other small airplane makers were kicked from profitability to non-production of piston engine airplanes as a result of wholly absurd lawsuits, in which owners of airplanes manufactured in the 1950's (for example) would sue the maker after a crash as if 1990's seat belt standards had been in place and as if it was not the owner's responsibility to maintain them. And win. That was, until a grassroots campaign for product liability reform. <a href="http://www.ncpa.org/pd/law/pdlaw/pdlaw21.html">This</a> explains it quite succinctly. As for your problem with the NRA, let's just say I am not a huge fan despite being a member. I regard them as the largest and most reasonable <i>gun control</i> group rather than a 2nd amendment advocacy group per se, as they tend to negotiate and work with gun control legislation (such as waiting periods, etc which they had no problem supporting) rather than opposing it on principle. Which is fine since some of that legislation is acceptable, but in many cases I think it leads to unacceptable compromises and inaction. Much like George Bush's conservativism, its aggressive, radical image is largely mythology created by a hostile media.[/quote]