I'm mostly referencing the big news channels and their desire for having someone to interview on-screen. The best reporting I've seen about this current conflict has come from bloggers.

@radx The talking heads on the news outlets in the US have been spineless about everything for a long time now. I think it's partly due to fear of being cut out by the parties/administrations, and that they're more concerned with putting non-threatening well-dressed people in as the on-air talent rather than someone who is a good journalist.

"She’s an entrepreneur, philanthropist, fashion designer, animator, blogger, writer and illustrator."

But she'll never earn her fathers love.

Some disconnected thoughts:

I didn't mean to say what you weren't saying. Apologies. I do like what you said here, "for her to use her basic human right to not be discriminated against as a woman to leverage those men into a difficult position, sounds like a crappy thing to do." Yes, a crappy thing. I think we'd better get used to it; at least in the United States where people want to adhere to the letter of the law when it comes to asserting their rights.

Am I wrong in assuming you live outside of the States? If so that makes it easy for me to understand your stance on religious rights being unequal with other rights.

I am not insisting that discrimination be protected. Far from it. If you were being discriminated against you would want me in your corner. I detest discrimination. What I find interesting about all of the cases you mentioned, the only reason a gay couple has given for asking the state to enforce the anti-discrimination laws is over the issue of marriage and the issue of marriage alone. The photographer and bakers apparently served the gay community in other capacities from their storefronts without incident. No lawsuits, no nothing. I think we have to ask 'why?" What is it specifically about marriage that would cause a Christian (or a Muslim, or any number of religions for that matter), to say, "I can't participate in that?" I suspect that if the couple in question had been a man and two or three women getting married that the business owners response would have been the same - that is not our understanding of marriage, sorry we can't in good conscience go there." At the risk of repeating myself, their refusal isn't about the people they refused. It is specifically about the act of marriage.

As an aside, I find it ironic to the nth degree that the State of Oregon is trying to legally compel the bakery owners to participate in a ceremony that is illegal in the State of Oregon. Marriage among gays in Oregon is illegal. Sigh. This is why I wish religion, of any sort, would get out of the business of telling people what to do. I would like to see a withdrawal from the legislation of religious tenets that are not in line with the US Constitution. Then gays could marry freely in this country and this argument could be put away.

Many of the problems in this world could be resolved if the religionists didn't feel like they needed to make everyone outside of their religion believe and behave like they do. As I see it, in a free society, a religious belief should not be able compel those outside that belief to do anything.

You may be familiar with openly gay author/blogger Andrew Sullivan who has written about this subject. He says: I would never want to coerce any fundamentalist to provide services for my wedding – or anything else for that matter – if it made them in any way uncomfortable. The idea of suing these businesses to force them to provide services they are clearly uncomfortable providing is anathema to me. I think it should be repellent to the gay rights movement as well.

There is, of course, extensive writing on this issue by all sides and we may never be able to untangle it here but I have enjoyed getting your perspective.



“what is to stop the members of Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at a bakery run by gays and demand they cater an anti-gay event?” answer; Anti-discrimination laws.

I hope you're right. I hope we never have an opportunity to find out. But here is, in part, the text of Oregon's law:

Except as provided in subsection (2) of this section, all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation, without any distinction, discrimination or restriction on account of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status or age if the individual is 18 years of age or older.

"Religion" doesn't not have a special designation of 'unless' in there. I can see those Westboro Baptist a-holes notice that and will have some gay bakers baking a cake for them every day of the week.

All of this discussion is really a digression of my initial post which was to say: If our communities were stronger, if we'd risk more relationally, if we'd put down the electronics and get to know each other, it sure would be a lot easier to get along. We would have less use for the legal system to resolve our differences.

Let me ask you, have you ever seen a law change someone's heart? I haven't.

@shatterdrose Not everything is a gendered issue. Just because someone draws a line and says that this particular problem doesn't reduce to sexism doesn't mean they support spousal abuse and sex trafficking (both of which are obviously gendered). Compare Emily's experience to this one: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/my_embarrassing_picture_went_viral/

Personally I would call the latter true internet abuse. Notice that by her own report most of the perpetrators were women. Equating these two concerns trivializes the issue. If Emily had said maybe women don't want to be STEM bloggers because in their country they are subject to genital mutilation, sexual slavery, or aren't educated then I would agree with her. Instead she ranted about her attractive white westerner problems.

For more:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-10-2003/prince-charles-scandal
Stephen's 'revenge':
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-16-2005/bloggers

"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin with news that the National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top secret program on Thursday, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs that allow them to track a person or trace their connections to others. One slide lists the companies by name and the date when each provider began participating over the past six years. But an Apple spokesperson said it had "never heard" of PRISM and added, quote, "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order," they said. Other companies had similar responses.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, columnist, attorney, and blogger for The Guardian, where he broke his story in—that was headlined "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal." This comes after he revealed Wednesday in another exclusive story that the "NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers." According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers. Glenn Greenwald is also author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He’s joining us now via Democracy—video stream.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Lay out this latest exclusive that you have just reported in The Guardian.

GLENN GREENWALD: There are top-secret NSA documents that very excitingly describe—excitedly describe, boast about even, how they have created this new program called the PRISM program that actually has been in existence since 2007, that enables them direct access into the servers of all of the major Internet companies which people around the world, hundreds of millions, use to communicate with one another. You mentioned all of those—all those names. And what makes it so extraordinary is that in 2008 the Congress enacted a new law that essentially said that except for conversations involving American citizens talking to one another on U.S. soil, the NSA no longer needs a warrant to grab, eavesdrop on, intercept whatever communications they want. And at the time, when those of us who said that the NSA would be able to obtain whatever they want and abuse that power, the argument was made, "Oh, no, don’t worry. There’s a great check on this. They have to go to the phone companies and go to the Internet companies and ask for whatever it is they want. And that will be a check." And what this program allows is for them, either because the companies have given over access to their servers, as the NSA claims, or apparently the NSA has simply seized it, as the companies now claim—the NSA is able to go in—anyone at a monitor in an NSA facility can go in at any time and either read messages that are stored in Facebook or in real time surveil conversations and chats that take place on Skype and Gmail and all other forms of communication. It’s an incredibly invasive system of surveillance worldwide that has zero checks of any kind.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, there is a chart prepared by the NSA in the top-secret document you obtained that shows the breadth of the data it’s able to obtain—email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, Skype chats, file transfers, social networking details. Talk about what this chart reveals.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think the crucial thing to realize is that hundreds of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions—in fact, billions of people around the world essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another. Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chats and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication. And what the objective of the National Security Agency is, as the stories that we’ve revealed thus far demonstrate and as the stories we’re about to reveal into the future will continue to demonstrate—the objective of the NSA and the U.S. government is nothing less than destroying all remnants of privacy. They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another, things that we say to one another, things we do with one another, places we go, the behavior in which we engage, that they know about it, that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time. And that’s what this program is about. And they’re very explicit about the fact that since most communications are now coming through these Internet companies, it is vital, in their eyes, for them to have full and unfettered access to it. And they do.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, as you reported, the PRISM program—not to be confused with prison, the PRISM program—is run with the assistance of the companies that participate, including Facebook and Apple, but all of those who responded to a Guardian request for comment denied knowledge of any of the program. This is what Google said, quote: "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege [that] we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, first of all, after our story was published, and The Washington Post published more or less simultaneously a similar story, several news outlets, including NBC News, confirmed with government officials that they in fact have exactly the access to the data that we describe. The director of national intelligence confirmed to The New York Times, by name, that the program we identify and the capabilities that we described actually exist. So, you have a situation where somebody seems to be lying. The NSA claims that these companies voluntarily allow them the access; the companies say that they never did.

This is exactly the kind of debate that we ought to have out in the open. What exactly is the government doing in how it spies on us and how it reads our emails and how it intercepts our chats? Let’s have that discussion out in the open. To the extent that these companies and the NSA have a conflict and can’t get their story straight, let them have that conflict resolved in front of us. And then we, as citizens, instead of having this massive surveillance apparatus built completely secretly and in the dark without us knowing anything that’s going on, we can then be informed about what kinds of surveillance the government is engaged in and have a reasoned debate about whether that’s the kind of world in which we want to live.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, on Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, "lawful."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business record section of the PATRIOT Act, therefore it is lawful.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Dianne Feinstein. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, the fact that something is lawful doesn’t mean that it isn’t dangerous or tyrannical or wrong. You can enact laws that endorse tyrannical behavior. And there’s no question, if you look at what the government has done, from the PATRIOT Act, the Protect America Act, the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, that’s exactly what the war on terror has been about.

But I would just defer to two senators who are her colleagues, who are named Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. They have—are good Democrats. They have spent two years now running around trying to get people to listen to them as they’ve been saying, "Look, what the Obama administration is doing in interpreting the PATRIOT Act is so radical and so distorted and warped that Americans will be stunned to learn" — that’s their words — "what is being done in the name of these legal theories, these secret legal theories, in terms of the powers the Obama administration has claimed for itself in how it can spy on Americans."

When the PATRIOT Act was enacted—and you can go back and look at the debates, as I’ve done this week—nobody thought, even opponents of the PATRIOT Act, that it would ever be used to enable the government to gather up everybody’s telephone records and communication records without regard to whether they’ve done anything wrong. The idea of the PATRIOT Act was that when the government suspects somebody of being involved in terrorism or serious crimes, the standard of proof is lowered for them to be able to get these documents. But the idea that the PATRIOT Act enables bulk collection, mass collection of the records of hundreds of millions of Americans, so that the government can store that and know what it is that we’re doing at all times, even when there’s no reason to believe that we’ve done anything wrong, that is ludicrous, and Democratic senators are the ones saying that it has nothing to do with that law.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Glenn, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he stood by what he told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when he said that the National Security Agency does "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Let’s go to that exchange.

SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir.

SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not?

JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the questioning of the head of the national intelligence, James Clapper, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: OK. So, we know that to be a lie, not a misleading statement, not something that was sort of parsed in a way that really was a little bit deceitful, but an outright lie. They collect—they collect data and records about the communications activities and other behavioral activities of millions of Americans all the time. That’s what that program is that we exposed on Wednesday. They go to the FISA court every three months, and they get an order compelling telephone companies to turn over the records, that he just denied they collect, with regard to the conversations of every single American who uses these companies to communicate with one another. The same is true for what they’re doing on the Internet with the PRISM program. The same is true for what the NSA does in all sorts of ways.

We are going to do a story, coming up very shortly, about the scope of the NSA’s spying activities domestically, and I think it’s going to shock a lot of people, because the NSA likes to portray itself as interested only in foreign intelligence gathering and only in targeting people who they believe are guilty of terrorism, and yet the opposite is true. It is a massive surveillance state of exactly the kind that the Church Committee warned was being constructed 35 years ago. And we intend to make all those facts available so people can see just how vast it is and how false those kind of statements are.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein. Speaking on MSNBC, she said the leak should be investigated and that the U.S. has a, quote, "culture of leaks."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: There is nothing new in this program. The fact of the matter is that this was a routine three-month approval, under seal, that was leaked.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Should it be—should the leak be investigated?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I think so. I mean, I think we have become a culture of leaks now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Dianne Feinstein, being questioned by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Glenn Greenwald, your final response to this? And sum up your findings. They’re talking about you, Glenn.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington. It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing.

But look, what she’s doing is simply channeling the way that Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power, which is, if you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear so that nobody will bring accountability to them.

It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, we want to thank you for being with us. Is this threat of you being investigated going to deter you in any way, as you continue to do these exclusives, these exposés?

GLENN GREENWALD: No, it’s actually going to embolden me to pursue these stories even more aggressively.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist and blogger for The Guardian newspaper. We’ll link to your exposés on our website, "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal", as well as "NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily"." - Democracy Now!

She had a fairly sort of haughty and dismissive air about her but I'm not surprised. When you voice your opinion and are told by a few million people that not only is it not valid but that you should be raped for having that opinion you tend to get a bit defensive.

It makes perfect sense to me how she was acting, also the fact is she's a blogger she's not used to performing in front of people, Jimmy is. So she needs to maybe have a course or someone nice to pull her aside and tell her that it doesn't matter that Jimmy disagrees with her or the reactions of the audience. What matters is how you make your argument and the people at home will see it and not being negative or mean will help you.

Debate, yay! Let's take this in order:

@00Scud00 You don't actually disagree with me it seems. Christian fundamentalism is (almost) as dangerous as Islam fundamentalism imo, with the tiny caveat that Jesus' message was mostly pacific passive-aggressive, à la "be nice to everyone here, me and Dad will torture our enemies in the afterlife", whereas Muhammed's was very much "death to the infidel, by our hand and/or God's" (e.g. s2:191-3; s4:89; 5:33; 9:52, etc). As for nation-building, it is more rooted in Islam - if only by virtue of being what their holiest figure did, contrary to the "kingdom-of-heaven-is-not-on-earth" Jesus (of course, Christianity's inherent One Truth totalitarianism is, as history shows, a perfect backup ideology for colonizing and war-weilding as well.
Of course people growing up with Islam will, for the most part, adhere to the good and ignore (sadly, instead of revolting against) the evil, just like with any other religion. That does not change the inherent wrongness and dangerousness of the ideology itself.
"You're condemning an entire belief system and billions of Muslims based on a statistically small group of whackjobs, doesn't sound very scientific to me. the comparatively greater (observable and quantifiable) numbers of threats/acts of violence done in the name of Islam than those in the name of other religious ideologies in this point in history " FTFClarity. If I mention >100'000person-riots demanding the deaths of atheist bloggers, which religious beliefs are most likely to be at the source there? Proportionally, which religious beliefs have, today, the most negative effects on women? Which population of ex-"religion" is most likely to receive death threats and/or be killed for religious reasons? I could go on, but I think the point is made that, proportionally, Islam is the greatest cause of religious-fueled harm today.

@Yogi, apples and oranges dear, not to mention your very narrow definition of Islam's toll (the sunnis bombed by chiites and vice-versa, and all the honour-killing victims, to name only a couple, would not agree with you). The US-wrought massacres in the ME are unforgiveable, no doubt about it, but most of the excuses made to justify it were secular, not religious. Fundamentalist Islam is above all a threat to its immediate neighbours (usually other muslims). Islamist terrorism is only one aspect of the ideology's dangers, and takes its greatest toll in Africa and the ME. Counting only US victims is terribly self-centered.

@SDGundamX Hello old debate-buddy; I will freely admit that I do not want to spend days and days compiling exact numbers of "victims of Islam" vs "victims of other religions", and I think it is rather a dismissive tactic to demand such data. That is why I formulated the question differently in the response above to 00Scud00: take a look at the state of the world, and simply compare. Does this paint all of Islam in a broad brush? You think it does, I do not. I do not find it contradictory to accept the wide variety of "Islams" and Islamic practices/interpretations while arguing that the core fundamentals of Islam, i.e. the founding texts and exemplary figures, can and sadly often do lead to or are invoked to motivate violence and unethical behaviour, and that at this point in history it is the one that does so the most. I do not imply that there is "one" practice of Islam, that is you projecting. There are, however, a set of texts at the core of Islam, and with it a set of beliefs (as you yourself point out).
There is a reason why "moderate" Christians, Muslims, etc. are called "moderate": they only "moderately" adhere to that core. And yes, Muslims disagree with eachother about how to live/interpret that core, and sometimes (like the Christians and Jews etc. before them) kill eachother over their disagreements.

Is there good stuff to be found in those fundamentals? Yes, of course, but they are basics of human empathy and animal morality, and do not require holy validation (this applies for all religious fundamentals of course).

You and many others seem to be unable to dissociate "hating an ideology" from "hating every individual who adheres to it, no matter to what degree". It is noteworthy that the people who accuse others of painting Islam/Muslims "with one broad stroke" are often guilty of implying exactly that when they make that accusation: "you express dislike of Islam and/or the acts of certain Muslims, ergo you can only be expressing dislike for all of them, because one=all!"

As for equating Islam with danger, there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to equate Muslim people with danger, and yes, there is a huge difference, one that people like myself think so obvious as to not have to spell it out until opposing voices accuse us of not making that difference, often because they themselves cannot. When the fundamentals say "believing something other than Islam is worse than murder" and "kill the non-believer", it is a dangerous ideology. Thankfully we know that the majority of individuals will eschew that part of the fundamentals, gaining the "moderate" achievement. This does not diminish the danger inherent in the fundamentals.

@Babymech It is not ignorant to say that Chechens have been bombed, massacred, and isolated, and are poor as all get-out. It is ignorant to suggest that these are the only possible reasons a culture might have violent strains running through it, and that one should by all means not look towards the beliefs that explicitly command killing people who don't believe what you do. Moreover, my history is pretty rusty, but of all the many places and peoples the US has bombed and massacred, I don't remember Chechnya being among them. The Boston bombing may have been political in nature, but suggesting that it can only be so and cannot have religious motivations is simplistic and counter to, well, reality.

Ok, I'll start with a few things that most people would probably agree with, but the police force currently would fight like hell to avoid. How about we decide to actually punish cops who break existing rules and laws. Use testing to weed out unbalanced power hungry or corrupt types from becoming cops. QUIT hiring COMBAT veterans to become PEACE officers. I'm sure there are many things that could be done to fix the problem with the police, its just that it's not being done because the police think the only problem is that we, the lowly people, dont always follow ALL commands,and sometimes we need to be put in our place. >> ^shveddy:
False dichotomy, among other things. There are innumerable intermediate steps between "allowing them to do whatever they want to you" and "shooting the motherfuckers." I'll admit that there is a point where armed resistance is warranted, but if you think that we have arrived anywhere near that point with enough frequency to warrant armed resistance, then you are crazy.
Yes, there are plenty of instances of people's rights being violated - but in 99.99% of those occasions, I think the problem can best be solved through other means.
Do I think that the students who got peppersprayed at UC Davis had their rights violated?
Yes, I do. But this guy seems to suggest that the proper response is for the students to pull guns and start a shoot-out. Let's imagine what that would look like for a second:
One of the students peers through the caustic mist with righteous fury and a wet t-shirt over his mouth. He can feel the comforting weight of his Barretta, held close to his heart in a chest holster, and he knows that this is the moment to act. He stands up tall despite the onslaught of bright orange asphyxiation, reaches for his piece and takes aim. Somewhat startled, the officer is suddenly defenseless with his canister and it is not long before he crumples to the ground in an ever expanding pool of blood. He basks in a brief moment of clarity before chaos reigns. His fellow students are quick to bear arms themselves, but the training, body armor and poise of the officers allows them a significant head start and the students suffer heavy casualties in this initial volley.
Not to be deterred by the deaths of their friends, the occupy movement takes up refuge in the life sciences building which, designed in the late sixties with a brutalist aesthetic, is mostly concrete and as such is a perfect fortress from which to outlast the ensuing siege and inspire innumerable citizens on the outside world to take up arms as well. Guerrilla warfare is the only tactic effective in such asymmetrical circumstances, and after a few weeks of violence the powers that be succumb to international pressure and agree to negotiate with the 99%...
...or we could launch an official investigation, fire the guy as a scapegoat after an admittedly long, expensive and cumbersome process, and let the public outrage that ensued lead to a more cautious approach to future student protests. Bloggers and editorialists collectively write millions of words on the subject, increasing awareness and generally shaming the agency that allowed it to happen.
Not perfect, but a whole hell of a lot more civilized.
Any time you use guns against a government entity in he US, you will eventually be caught and put in jail. Period. The only way to avoid this is to be a small part of a large popular movement that eventually overthrows the US government, and I don't see that ever happening with citizen gun-owners unless it involves guerrilla tactics. Imagine gunfights erupting at your local municipal buildings. Imagine pipe bombs at your local police station. People need to realize that this is what they are advocating when they argue for second amendment rights as a fourth check and balance.
If you disagree with that statement, feel free to fill in a reasonable sequence of events to span the gap between "guy whose fourth amendment rights are violated guns down cop" and "said guy is vindicated, and massive changes are made to our law enforcement policies." I suspect that we are far more likely to see a greater militarization of the police in response.
I humbly propose that we join the civilized world and come up with more creative ways to correct our problems.

False dichotomy, among other things. There are innumerable intermediate steps between "allowing them to do whatever they want to you" and "shooting the motherfuckers." I'll admit that there is a point where armed resistance is warranted, but if you think that we have arrived anywhere near that point with enough frequency to warrant armed resistance, then you are crazy.

Yes, there are plenty of instances of people's rights being violated - but in 99.99% of those occasions, I think the problem can best be solved through other means.

Do I think that the students who got peppersprayed at UC Davis had their rights violated?

Yes, I do. But this guy seems to suggest that the proper response is for the students to pull guns and start a shoot-out. Let's imagine what that would look like for a second:

One of the students peers through the caustic mist with righteous fury and a wet t-shirt over his mouth. He can feel the comforting weight of his Barretta, held close to his heart in a chest holster, and he knows that this is the moment to act. He stands up tall despite the onslaught of bright orange asphyxiation, reaches for his piece and takes aim. Somewhat startled, the officer is suddenly defenseless with his canister and it is not long before he crumples to the ground in an ever expanding pool of blood. He basks in a brief moment of clarity before chaos reigns. His fellow students are quick to bear arms themselves, but the training, body armor and poise of the officers allows them a significant head start and the students suffer heavy casualties in this initial volley.

Not to be deterred by the deaths of their friends, the occupy movement takes up refuge in the life sciences building which, designed in the late sixties with a brutalist aesthetic, is mostly concrete and as such is a perfect fortress from which to outlast the ensuing siege and inspire innumerable citizens on the outside world to take up arms as well. Guerrilla warfare is the only tactic effective in such asymmetrical circumstances, and after a few weeks of violence the powers that be succumb to international pressure and agree to negotiate with the 99%...

...or we could launch an official investigation, fire the guy as a scapegoat after an admittedly long, expensive and cumbersome process, and let the public outrage that ensued lead to a more cautious approach to future student protests. Bloggers and editorialists collectively write millions of words on the subject, increasing awareness and generally shaming the agency that allowed it to happen.

Not perfect, but a whole hell of a lot more civilized.

Any time you use guns against a government entity in he US, you will eventually be caught and put in jail. Period. The only way to avoid this is to be a small part of a large popular movement that eventually overthrows the US government, and I don't see that ever happening with citizen gun-owners unless it involves guerrilla tactics. Imagine gunfights erupting at your local municipal buildings. Imagine pipe bombs at your local police station. People need to realize that this is what they are advocating when they argue for second amendment rights as a fourth check and balance.

If you disagree with that statement, feel free to fill in a reasonable sequence of events to span the gap between "guy whose fourth amendment rights are violated guns down cop" and "said guy is vindicated, and massive changes are made to our law enforcement policies." I suspect that we are far more likely to see a greater militarization of the police in response.

I humbly propose that we join the civilized world and come up with more creative ways to correct our problems.

Not as pertinent as his usual stuff (his target here is one stupid blogger), but *comedy nonetheless.

And yes, the Islamic take-over of the world will be through boys bands. I am a believer!

In reply to this comment by Lendl:
That was amazing. From one of my favorite TED talks of all time.

http://videosift.com/video/NYTimes-Columnist-David-Pogue-on-t
he-State-of-Software

Thanks

*quality

Thank you so much for the quality.

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
*promote *happy :

Thanks for the promote mush melon!!

@hpqp

I agree with you (I think). If I'm reading your post correctly you're saying that people shouldn't be able to say something reprehensible and then hide behind the "it's just a joke" shield to avoid criticism about what they said. CK Louis was right I think--most comedians have a hard time dealing with criticism. It's easier to attack the people who don't think the joke is funny by insisting they don't have a sense of humor than it is to admit your joke bombed.

I have no idea if things went down the way the blogger says they did, but when I heard what Tosh allegedly said, my first thought was that he crossed the line. I think rape is a valid topic to joke about but he was no longer joking about rape as an abstract concept, he was basically intimidating a member of the audience in order to shut her up so he could get on with his show. No, I don't think he was serious (if he really said it) but he certainly deserved to be criticized for the alleged intimidation.

The problem (as is amply demonstrated in this thread) is that the public debate got distracted by irrelevant 1st amendment rights hysteria, discussions of which topics were "appropriate" for comedy, what is or isn't offensive, etc. when really, like you said, the issue is whether or not Tosh used the implied threat of rape to silence a critic.

I hate to say it, but in all fairness, when Garofalo attacks Breitbart's credibility, while I agree with her, she doesn't exactly have a lot of credibility either. She's a personality just like Breitbart.

I tend to agree with her, and I definitely think shes infinitely more honest than Breitbart, but still, she is just a comedienne and objectively there is no reason I should take either Garofalo OR Breitbart seriously.

I just wish these bloggers and actors/actresses and other personalities would stop sitting on the sidelines and actually participate in gov't and put their money where their mouth is.