Dude! Joe's Jottings, Mostly Junk

Look.  I hate the show Survivor.  I hate the concept.  I hate the concept of "reality" contests in general.

I think Richard Hatch (the winner, not the Galactica star) is an idiot.  Whether he feels "guilty" or not, whether he likes it or not, he IS guilty of tax evasion.  Just because a normal job has taxes withdrawn doesn't mean you aren't liable for taxes on non-normal jobs.  Just because you're gay and think you've been a victim of discrimination all your life doesn't mean you aren't required to follow the law on tax and income matters.

But "Right to remain silent" (preserving my 5th amendment rights") is not "requirement to remain silent".  While there are terms for which one is not allowed to talk to the media for a fee, because that is a form of employment while under imprisonment, a general "you can't talk to the media at all" decree is a blatant violation of the first amendment.

It is also unconstitutional for the cops in this latest round to withhold, from the arrestee as well as the media, the actual charges for arrest.  You don't just arrest someone 'cause you don't like something and trump up the charges later.  It's called due process.

Don't like it?  Quit being a cop.  'cause violating that document is the most unamerican thing anybody in authority can do.

"It's a gift that they're irreversibly convinced that he's arrogant 'cause now he can be. If your guy's seen that way, you might as well knock some bodies down with it."  - Sam Seaborne (himself quoting Toby Ziegler) in The West Wing, "Game On" (season 4)

Frank Schaeffer: How the Right and the Left Destroyed the Public Option:

Now in the USA we have the worst of all possible worlds: a leftist/libertarian addiction to personal private space, in which no one is allowed to tell anyone else what they should do, combined with this weird anti-Christian "Christian" right wing notion that everything -- even trains, the post office, our infrastructure and medicine, and now even a big chunk of the military (via "contractors") -- must be run for a for-profit motive.

The left, the right, the secular community and the religious community have denied the best of their own heritage when it comes to America. The problem of not getting a public option for health-care reform relates to a philosophical shift in our culture wherein everything has to be justified on the basis of profit and/or privacy. Result: there is no concept of public space at all. Result: idiots shout "socialism" about common sense solutions to our problems that -- very ironically -- the Medici princes of Florence and the Puritans would have all agreed needed to be matters of common public space.

Until Americans -- left and right, atheist and believing -- begin to take another look at where this road of absolutist privacy combined with absolutist profit leads we'll be stuck with the health care that's a mess, trains that don't work and for-profit lunacy: deified individualism.

[...]

We need to get back to the idea of civic space, and public works, not just in health-care but in all sectors of our economy. It's not a question of being anti-capitalist; rather, it's a question of rediscovering a more narrowly defined capitalism that thrives because of a thriving public space.

In the 18th century, it was called Enlightened Self-Interest.

BTW, one of the major factors for the ECW was the fact that much of the commons land was being sold by the crown to wealthy noblemen for development, putting farmer's livestock (and livelihood) in danger.

Under many a religious war is a social disconnect, especially between rich and poor, lurking as the root cause.  Religion made it easy to rally a group to fight, but the reason for fighting was a perceived injustice irrelevant to religions.