Guard Dog

Exactly! This is at best a state issue to be decided by voters in each state or the legislature of each state. Right or wrong the voters of California said no to gay marriage. The only recourse gays have is to begin a ballot initiative to overturn Prop 8, try to get the folks in Sacramento to do it, or move to Hawaii, Vermont, Iowa or one of the other states that have legalized same sex marriage. You do not want unelected and unaccountable federal judges practicing heavy handed judicial activisim and trampling all over the law as they do it. This time you might agree with the outcome, I promise you there will come a a time when you are horrified by it. I hope Walkers ruling is overturned and he is rebuked for over reaching.

Like Grom said, this really is not a conservative vs liberal issue. I am by the standards of this board, quite conservative and I have no problem at all with same sex marriage. Everyone should be free to live their lives. But twisting the law to compel people to do what they oppose has bad side effects and is usually counterproductive in the end. Groms example of Brown v Board is a good one. The court is not an agent of social engineering, turning it into one is a bad... bad.. terrible thing even if you agree with the outcome. Remember, next time you may not. @Orgun, the pursuit of happiness is not codified into law in any way. That is an individual liberty that while broad is somewhat restricted by law. It would make me happy to smoke pot and rob banks but obviously I can't because there are laws that restrict me from doing so.

Agreed! Seconded! That particular institution has not exactly done right by me.

Wouldn't this also apply to the rights of minorities looking for work and housing in different districts, but get discriminated against because of skin color? And yet those rights are constitutionally guaranteed, even if they don't fall under the strict application of the constitution. Thats a little different because it IS against the law to discriminate solely on the basis or race, gender, etc. It is not against any federal law to bar same sex marriages because there is no federal law recognizing marriage. That is a state perrogative and the supreme law of the state is ultimately the voters, who in this case have been usurped. @Orogun actually the 9th Amendment could be used to make an even stronger case against Walker decision since it is an over zealous application of federal law limiting the ability of the voters of CA to self govern. This is what justice Stanley Reed meant when he referred to "found power". But I could turn it around and make the same argument in favor of Walkers ruling by asserting (as Walker did) that the 9th and 14th Amandments prevent a governeing body from restricting invidiual liberty. There is just two problems with that arguement 1) marriage is not a right, 2) Gays are not barred from getting married, they are just restricted from marrying each other. This is a pretty interesting case, I'm really curious how it will turn out. The best possible outcome would be for the case to be renedered moot by another ballot initiative in CA to repeal prop 8 before is can make it through the appelate process.

The more I think about this, the more I do not like it. For this to be an Equal Protection clause argument the judge must find that a fundamental right is being denied. There is no federal right to marry. In fact aside from tax law the federal government takes no stance on marriage at all therefore it's a 10th amendment issue and the voters of California had every right to expect that their vote on Prop 8 to be the final law of the state and safe from federal meddling. That is how the United States is supposed to work. This judge decided enteirely on his own that there IS a federal right to marry and used that as cover to strike down Prop 8. He called it a moral imperitive no less than three times in his decision. For any judge to apply a moral imperative to a decision is a little scary. Another judge might find it a moral imperative that chldren be required to pray in school, or that abortion be made illegal to protect the life of the child. This is judicial activisim and that is why I think his ruling should and will be overturned. The powers that be will make it a politcal issue and rant that the appellate judges or SCOTUS judges were homophobic but the truth is, it does not matter how a judge feels about an issue, their job is to follow tha law. Has Walker done that, he would have been crucified but he would have been right. Don't get me wromg, I do not support Prop 8 and would have never voted for it, but it could have and should have been remved the same was it was created, at the ballot box. When one man can single handedly thwart the will of seven million people out republic has taken a long step towards it's destruction.

I'd buy a Canadian! How much for Volo? On second thought he'd probably sit around playing NWN all day and never get anything done. But at least somone could finally expliain the appeal of Curling.

Was it 52%? I did not look it up and remembered 70%. Just looked it up Hurlie, you were right, it was 52%. I stand corrected. @Calax, that is apples and oranges. Political Action Comittees, Union Advocacy groups and non-profits already enjoyed free speech protection. There is no reason corporations should not if theyose entities did. More freedom is never the wrong choice. Less almost always is. I apologize for my spelling an grammar everyone, my computer is shot and I've been typing all this on my blackbeery

You could use the change of scenery, although is is a really big change. Just wait until winter.

I have not read all of the ruling yet (138 verbose pages of it) but it seems to me that the broad language Walker used ( I did read a detailed summary) coupled with the fact that he relied soley on the weight of trial testimony rather than legal precedent an appeal all the way to the SC is certain. He is a federal judge using the supremcy clause, full faith and credit clause and equal protections clause to over ride a state law decided on by a huge majority of voters. With the political climate in the country what it is... that gets a little sticky. Another sticky issue here is that the rulling essentially calls out the 70%+ of voters who approved this. On top of that, this ruling confers the title "fundamental right" to the institution of marriage. That is planting words in the law that did not exist. Also in the ruling established that homosexuality is a biological condition not a lifestyle choice. That is granting legal status to a scientific theory that has not been proven one way or the other. The SC s trending more towards strong federalisim under Roberts (a trend really begun under Renquist before him) and I think Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts will be unwilling to have a federal court overturn a state law no matter what they think of Gay marriage one way or the other. Ginsburg, Kagan (not seated yet), Sottimayor, and Breyer believe that the government is supreme and can do no wrong so they will vote in favor of upholding the ruling. It comes down to Kennedy to decide how this will go. I believe this ruling will be upheld. My $.02 is that this is a bad ruling and a bad precedent that by accident arrives at the right outcome, for now at least. I don't know if being gay is a choice or a codition and it really does not matter either way. The root of this issue to me is freedom. If marrying a gay lover makes someone hapy and it certainly does not hurt anyone else, there is no reason they should not be allowed to live their lives their way and be happy. Like I always say, if you oppose gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. What other people do is none of your business!

I've decided to stop dating for a while. Mainly because every woman I meet starts talking marriage within two weeks. Sometimes even before we slept together. I really... really do not want to get married again. The truth is, divorce kills something inside of you. This last girl was the worst though. I drink a little bit. Ok, maybe more than a little. But I only do it at home (generally) and I'm always stright when I go to work. And as far as I remebered I never did it in front of her but she started making little comments about the empty bottles in the recycle bins. Or how that case of beer in the fridge was not the same brand as the last time she was there (meaning I drank all of it). Well, no duh. I don't bring home beer to look at it. And it wan't just that, she bitched that the camaro I'm restoring was taking too much of my time, that I should give up trying to sell my book (ok I'll admit I've been griping about that a lot), etc. The final straw was when she suggested I get rid of one of my dogs. He's older and having some issues that is almost like canine demetia and he's lost his house breaking. But physically he's still quite healthy. The vet has been trying different medicines to help him but so far not much luck. He's a chow, hound, & shepherd mix and I found him alone in a wooded lot when he was a baby. I've had him for 10 years, and he's stuck by me through some of the worst days of my life. Anyway he had an accident and I was cleaning it up when she made the comment about getting rid of him. And I asked her in a very threataning way "Get rid of who?" She did no even know his name. She'd been in my house a dozen times, spent the night several. I told here she needed to leave, right there and then. Thats it, no more dating for me for a while.

Oh my God, look who's back!

After enduring a workplace like this and through sheer force of effort overcoming it all to release a great product (like Alpha Protocol for example) I think I would be a little pissed if someone told me it sucked. I'm closing in on 40 now and I've had two careers already, politics and engineering. Each has had good apects and bad (usually more of the latter). There is one thing I have learned. If you are miserable in your work, do something else. You will spend roughly 40% of your life working. Spending that much of your time unhappy will kill you just as surely as a bullet in the head. One other observation on this article, the easier someone is to replace, the worse they will be treated. Unfortunately there are thousands of lousy schools (Devry, ITT, etc) churning out software writers and graphic artists by the legion. So a highly talented well educated designer is easily replaceable with one not as talented or educated but the business types how make the decisions would never appreciate the difference between the two. If the talent in game design were to begin looking elsewhere for work over time the 'thinning of ther herd" would lead to better pay and treatment.

May The (police) Force Be With Him

Hmmm I wonder if anyone has checked Hayden Christiansens alibi? That guy has been out of work for so long it might have been him. C'mon guys I expected a ton of one liners and sarcastic comments about this story. Get with the program here!

Link & more pics: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/...aring-raid.html Wow, things must be pretty tough for ol Anakin, what with the fall of the empire and all. You know what stikes me as really funny, he suffed the cash in a New York Yankees bag. In baseball, the joke nickname of the Yankees is the "Evil Empire". I also found it funny how nobody took him seriously at first. I guess they don't know the power of the Dark Side!

Now reading The Overton Window by Glen Beck and Martin Eden by Jack London

I got home from a bad day at work and found another rejection letter for my manuscript in the mail. Oh well. I think tonight I'm going to take a bottle of bourbon, a bowl of ice, a single glass, and my XM radio on channel 13 and sit on my porch and get good an truly drunk. I've got a case of Sam Adams and a bottle of Knob Creek, that should get the job done. By they way, please allow me to apologize now for anything I might post later tonight... I'm sorry.

Hello everyone, it's been a while since I dropped by. I just got home from a date, it was nice but no big deal. I finished the book I've been working on but so far have had no luck even getting a publisher to bite on more than a sample. I'm looking into self-publishing but I don't know if I want to invest that kind of money into a real long shot like this. I'll keep trying though. I never did that for the money anyway. Now I'm going to pour a highball of Knob Creek on the rocks and go sit on my porch. Maybe the coyotes will start up tonight, i have not heard them in a long time.

Dear Monte, I'm trying to design a packet microwave transport system for a customer in Florida but that state has rather unreasonable wind loading requirements for monople towers and even the addition of a forty kilogram package and antenna is causing leasing and regulatory compliance issues on their towers. I've worked out a plan to replace the RF coax lines with a brightcell system (fiberoptic connections from the mux in the base station to an integrated RF transciever mounted with the antenna on the tower). This will require reinforcing the mounting arms of the brackets but eliminates the need to reinforce the monople structure since it also eliminates the weight of the waveguide. The only problem is the customer does not want to spend the money on britecell infrastructure and it opting to go with reinforcing the whole tower. My question is, how do I deal with the cost overruns associated with the reinforcement since this project has a hard budget? I have to cut some $20k in our costs to come in under budget, but still make a Dec 31 deadline. Help me please! I keep drinking but this problem will not go away.

We like soccer, as an international competition at least. The World Cup matches have had good ratings considering the time of day they are on. What we really don't go for is professional league soccer like the MLS or any of it's predecessors. When team USA is playing though, it does get attention. If we get into the final round or even (gasp) the championsip match it will get ratings that will make any Super Bowl proud. BTW, only around 65% of Major League Baseball players are from the USA. We get a lot of players from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic, Venezuela, etc.

Very sad indeed. We have all lost a friend we did not even really know we had. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. Ironically it would have irritated him to no end to have read me saying that! We'll miss you Sand.

I'm going to try to make one. I restored an sold an old 1960's Pepsi machine last year, I think I can do this. I'll start looking over Craigslist and Ebay for an old machine.

If I might make a suggestion, you should give Knob Creek or Woodford Reserve a taste. They are a bit pricier than the two you mentioned but... you do get what you pay for. Knob Creek is dark and rich and has a faint taste of molassas, Woodford is light and has a sweet aftertaste, kinda fruity. Knob creek runs about 28 bucks a liter, Woodford is about $40. But they are good enough you'd give up scotch for them. It's funny, I find as I get older I'd rather have less of the good stuff than lots of the rotgut like Jim Beam.

I got an amazon order today. Six books, three new CDs, Battlestar Galatica Season 4, and a new computer game. Plus I bought a case of Rolling Rock today. I'd say my evening is booked solid!

Sounds like you are feeling better. Thats is great,.