champu

...still ...yes? I don't get it, was that supposed to make the analysis more difficult? If anything it makes it easier because the public defender's office certainly can't choose not to represent someone.

The Westboro baptist church likely has no interest in hiring a gay attorney and, assuming their need for an attorney's services was in regards to a so-called "hate speech" case against gays, probably no expectation that a gay attorney would do a good job for them. So even if I said, "yeah sure, if the lawyer was otherwise denying service based on religion (or another protected class), that wouldn't be okay" it's a pretty empty agreement. Or are you suggesting Fred Phelps was gay?

Understood. I lamented the same problem after the hobby lobby case.

The idea of the government creating a list of events and items that qualify as "religious enough to refuse" sounds like a cure much worse than the disease. I think a simpler test is that if you have to use an adjective before the item or event when stating your refusal, and that adjective is a protected class, then it's illegal. A guy walks into a deli and says, "I'd like to cater my son's bar mitzvah with French dip sandwiches." Deli owner says, "Sorry, we don't serve jus."

I never mind reading studies, do you have a source for that statistic besides a photo of a sign zip-tied to a gate somewhere?

"Look at that [person wearing camo]" -> "Where? I don't see anything." and "Are you deaf?" -> "What!?!" jokes will never get old.

Did you know that when you post to a thread it brings it to the top of the thread list? (sticky threads notwithstanding)

I know what binary, decimal, hexadecimal, octal, etc. are and I know what "binary coded decimal" is, but the term "Hexadecimal coded binary" struck me as... odd.

That's because they're all wearing ghillie suits.

kallend lives in Chicago. kallend is very outspoken here about the problem of criminals, mentally ill, and irresponsible people having guns and is pretty quick to condemn actions and/or opinions that directly, indirectly, or potentially contribute to that problem. (some people mistakenly believe he also supports other gun control measures espoused by a certain political party and, although he doesn't, he will sometimes troll these people.) In response to kallend, posters often tout Chicago (kallend's "own back yard") as an example of a town that has a lot of both firearms restrictions and firearms violence as evidence that restrictions don't work. It's not as extreme an example of either as these posters would like, and at this point I think when people do this they are trolling him, because it's one of the few things he'll actually respond to anymore on the subject with more than a single sentence reply. Usually he replies with statistics about cities in the south that are less restrictive in terms of firearm ownership that have some crime statistic that is worse than Chicago. The joke in this thread is the headline. You're supposed to assume it's going to be about firearms regulations not working, but instead it ends up being about people dying due to over-exertion while shoveling snow. What results is people (myself included) making up ridiculous suggestions for regulations to stop these deaths to poke fun at people who seem to think that more laws are the solution to everything. Is it funny yet? I can explain further if it's not funny yet.

The registry is fine but we also need to remove the unnecessary legal barriers to obtaining the cholesterol level and blood pressure of everyone who owns a snow shovel. How else would we know if they're going to have a heart attack?

I would highly recommend a static line for balloon jumps below 200 ft AGL.

In an attempt to salvage this thread (which is "no better" a disaster than the incident it is very loosely about)... The above is language that gets used in a number of contexts and I think people on either side of arguments tend to overlook it. Consider what the adjective "tough" really has come to mean when people say a location has "the toughest gun control laws" or that a candidate is "tough on crime." It's not "built Ford tough" reliability that's being discussed it's "tough shit" pigheadedness and striving to mongo-smash a problem with an ever bigger hammer.

Goddamnit, you nearly made me spit take my coffee.

cue sad trombone (and at least another year of farting around with this.)

What?

The message isn't how to be safe when dealing with a firearm, the message is you cannot be safe when dealing with a firearm. Hell, you might be the next Adam Lanza for all you know. Run! Run away afraid!

It's a good thing too... The "store owner" was too busy telling stories to remind the "customers" to keep their booger hooks off the bang switch.

The ACLU are not "just a bunch of liberals." This perception, however, is as a result of the individual civil liberties that republicans seem to have a hard on for infringing upon vs. those that democrats like to infringe upon, and how that lines up with the ACLU's stated opinions. Both republicans and democrats readily crap on the fourth amendment and the ACLU is happy to combat either when they do so. More occasionally, the first amendment gets put to the test by individuals in both parties, and the ACLU is there to fight that. Dare I say it, but Republicans run afoul of the 14th amendment more frequently than do democrats, and in those cases, the ACLU is happy to step in. And finally, democrats' disdain for the second amendment is written into the national party platform. When a democrat starts a sentence with "I support the second amendment, but..." it's like Dom Irrera's "With all due respect..." bit. And, in response, the ACLU's official policy is that they disagree with the SCOTUS ruling in D.C. v. Heller that said the rights outlined in the second amendment apply to an individual.

It seems as though when the agencies get a report from a credit card company they take the numbers from the "High Balance", "High Limit", "Payment", and "Balance" fields and randomly enter them into their system. My favorite is when "High Limit" is blank and they put the correct limit for that card into "High Balance." Close enough, right? Then they put your original loan amount for your mortgage into "high balance" and "---" into high limit and add that all together with your credit cards to make the overall totals as meaningless as possible. Then they say "your ratio of balance to limit is too high." Well no shit Sherlock, I don't have enough credit cards to cover the balance on my mortgage because why would I? When I look at my credit reports there's not really any information that's wrong enough to warrant me arguing with them, especially since I end up with an excellent FICO score anyway, but it's all just so... sloppy. Aww, not even for host day?

Don't forget to get your host something nice this year, May 10th is host day.

It's enough for this wide-eyed wanderer, That we got this far.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Your "only real winners" statement is not quite true. The reason I made the "house dollars" comment is because these types of subsidies continuously benefit people that ride the exchange rate between inflated "house dollars" and regular dollars. Namely these are real estate agents, mortgage brokers, escrow company employees, and anyone else who makes commission based directly or indirectly off the sale price of the house.