Now, there was a guy when I was young(er) that I remember; he came to our house for candy and was dressed up as a Domino's pizza box. That remains in my mind as one of the cooler costume attempts.

He did a pretty good job with the song and dance, too, as I recall.

Lehman Brothers was old, respected, and a pillar of the financial community. It was not part of the defensive structure that prevents a wholesale collapse similar to the events of 1929. The decision to let it die was hard for the investors and workers, but I applaud the decision there. If every firm on Wall Street felt they had a right to expect government bailouts, the risk-taking would expand drastically and the amount of taxpayer dollars poured into that particular black hole would be obscenely large.

Finally, I am glad that the government now has the ability (as part of the bailout) to toss AIG's senior management and replace with someone new. I only wish they'd made the same deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I really do have a problem with Freddie Mac's CEO collecting bonuses and stock options worth multiple millions when his company tanked due to his risk strategy and leadership.

Our current system advocates punishment over intervention, harshness over leniency and marginalization over integration. The core of this problem began in the late 1970's, when it became a selling point for politicians to appear tough on crime. For many, that meant more prisons, harsher laws, three-strikes legislation and the like. And all of those measures fail to answer the question "What Works?" And for good reason. While we scold and punish, we fail to act on the core problem. What the criminal justice system in America requires is a total change in paradigm.

Consider the following. Housebreaking a puppy requires that you a) provide a place for him to go, b) show him what is the right thing to do and c)punish the bad behavior and reward the good. Our current system has half of c, and none at all of the other two. Is it surprising that it doesn't work? As a more real-world example, consider the case of Juan, a low-income kid with a drug habit, a gang and a juvenile record stretching back across assault, petty theft and a string of narco raps. He turns 18, robs a store for the cash to support his drug habit and gets busted. The court hands down a six-year sentence. While in prison, Juan gets straightened out. He gets his GED, he dries out from the drugs and he is a model prisoner. For that reason, he is released on parole after serving two years, four months.

Now for the kicker: where is Juan to go? Returning to his home, his family, the only place outside the prison walls that he knows, puts him right back in the same environment that he was in when he got into drugs and crime. He has no job, no skills, no experience. His criminal record acts as a bar from many types of employment (i.e. no security work, no liquor sales, etc, etc). He has no support network outside of the one he built when he was a criminal, and he has no real chance to build a new one, since he is now constrained to return to the old ways.

Is it surprising that Juan ends up back in jail? And this same scenario is repeated time after time after time, to the point where CJ students joke about the revolving-door prisons. The US has harsh laws, has incarceration as a punishment down to a fine art, but fails to rehabilitate or reintegrate the criminal. In essence, we perpetuate a criminal class.

No, it is not coincidence that I used a Hispanic name for my criminal. Hispanics are seven times more likely than whites and three times more likely than blacks to have criminal records. It has nothing to do with the national origin, and everything to do with environment, laws and perception. But that's another argument, or book of arguments...

For Jefferson, the appeal of this amendment goes far beyond the simple need to arm and staff militias. His notes include a statement that is especially apt for today: "I see this [amendment] as being truly necessary to impede the growth of crime. Even a madman must think twice ere he confronts an armed and trained citizen."

It is an axiom that criminals will have access to weaponry, and that guns form the primary source of such weapons. Blanket gun bans do nothing to stop the criminals from obtaining the guns; they succeed only in removing the guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens. And the state protection (i.e. the police) is not sufficient to compensate for the loss of the protection afforded by the possession and training in the use of the gun.

That said, I take no issue with banning certain types of weapons on the grounds that such weapons are not, in fact, suitable for personal protection or for hunting/recreation. Assault rifles, submachine guns, fully automatic weapons and miniguns are paramilitary-class weapons at the minimum; the average civilian has no more need of these weapons than he/she has need of hand grenades or rocket launchers. I also have no problem with requiring licensure and background checks for gun ownership. The vast majority of gun accidents occur in households where the people have little or no training in the care, use and safety of the weapons stored therein. Licensure requirements could include training in the care, cleaning, storage, safety and use of the weapon (including a minimum of 5 hours on the range), which would reduce the number of deaths from ignorance, as well as increasing the deterrent effect of the gun ownership.

As a final note, researchers have repeatedly attempted to determine what makes one target more likely than another for attack by career criminals (here, we are looking specifically at personal crimes, not corporate or societal). Criminals interviewed by these researchers have overwhelmingly stated that the knowledge that the potential victim is armed and trained in self/property-defense is the single most effective deterrent to the criminal selecting that victim as a target.

As one memorable interviewee stated to a researcher: "Lady, I don't care 'bout no dog, I don't care 'bout no alarm. But the guy that lives there [in the house this burglar was considering] has a gun? I ain't going in there."

Harding was master of a government so steeped in corruption that we actually saw serving members of the Cabinet sent to jail and historians still use it as the litmus test for political wrongdoing. While the Teapot Dome scandal is the most easily recognized, more than 500 separate charges involving corruption, bribery, collusion, kickbacks and the like have been documented to date.

Grant was crude, rapacious and not very intelligent, an excellent warfighter but a very poor administrator. His administration was almost as full of corruption as Harding's, but without the malice toward Grant. Grant's mismanagement of the nation during his second term led to the Panic of 1873 (partly defused by the release of gold from federal coffers, but far too late to avert the depression that followed). He also abandoned the southern states to the local militias to combat the violent KKK uprisings, rather than using the military (as Lincoln and Johnson had). In essence, during the last years of Grant's administration, the nation essentially was rudderless and drifting.

Johnson presided over the debacle of Reconstruction and made things so bad in Alabama's case that the state was unable to recover financially for more than fifty years (Alabama still owes more than 3.5 billion to the federal government from that period, although no attempt has been made to collect it since 1917). He was also responsible for crushing reparations on several states, the ousting of rich plantation owners, the enactment of "Jim Crow" laws and the passage of the "Black Codes," which condemned freedmen to second-class status. His comment in this aspect was "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."

Buchanan was totally incompetent in many ways; in fact, the only reason he won the nomination was because the Democrats needed someone that not everyone hated (he got in on the 17th ballot!). His inaugural address included a promise not to run for office a second time, he was President during the largest government financial collapse in US history prior to the Great Depression and in 1857, he sent the Army into the Utah Territory to crush the rumored "rebellion" of Governor Brigham young and his Mormon followers. The war move was so badly planned that the Army never even made it to Utah (they were winter-bound in Wyoming) and Young managed to defuse the situation prior to fighting actually beginning. Buchanan tried to take credit for "pardoning" the "rebels," not a brilliant idea. He was also President as the first seven states seceded and made no preparations for war.

While W has done several stupid things, his administration has been directional (unlike Grant or Buchanan), and his scandals are comparatively quite modest. Furthermore, while the US economy is slumping, it is nowhere near the problems seen in 1851, 1873-4 or 1929. Furthermore, Buchanan's idiocy in the Utah War cost the lives of some 4500 soldiers (mostly to the elements) and accomplished exactly nothing. I may not like Bush, I may not agree with many of his policies, but history says that there are a lot that are worse. Out of the 40 presidents available for ranking (Cleveland gets one ranking although he served two non-consecutive terms, making him both the 22nd and 24th President; Harrison and Garfield are excluded due to time in office), I would probably drop him in the lowest quartile, somewhere around 33rd overall from the top.

I note, however, that all three of the sources I mention either carefully avoid the claims of Messiahship (in the case of Gamaliel) or throw cold water on the claim. What I believe, in this case, is of no moment; the evidence is strong to support a factual man named Jesus of Nazareth.

Best online/computer: RuneScape. While simple and straightforward in many ways (and while skills are capped at lvl 99, sorry), it is constantly undergoing revisions, upgrades and additions. An incredible fanbase helps this one out. WoW, while larger in terms of players and unlimited in terms of certain skills, loses out in my mind by its overreliance on groups/clans; it provides very little opportunity for the loner. Plus, it runs under Java in a browser, no downloads necessary. And from a personal programmer viewpoint, I honestly didn't think it was possible to push Java to that level!

Another, directly related to the ban, is the problem engendered by our existing dependence on foreign oil. Yes, America has less than 3% of the US oil reserves, but we are actively working less than 10% of our existing reserves (Saudi Arabia, home to nearly 22% of the oil, is working nearly 70%). Why? Because, until recently, it was cheaper to purchase the foreign oil than to produce it here, and because easily-mined/produced oil fields in the US were artificially (i.e. legally) restricted.

Stances from McCain and Obama also need to be put in context. McCain is advocating a wholesale withdrawal from foreign oil dependence; his plan is to use the American reserves while we develop and implement our alternative solutions. To that end, he feels that the ban is counter-productive to American interests. We in America have the advantage of being in one of the few countries in the world to have virtually all resources available to us (food, wood, mining, technology, etc). McCain wants us to use that advantage so as to remove American dependence.

Obama, on the other hand, feels that the answer to foreign oil dependence is strictly a technology issue. Rather than using existing American resources, he wants to develop the new technology to replace our need while we continue to pay for the overseas stuff until we no longer need it. I have yet to see any plan from the Obama camp that would proactively reduce our resource consumption, or that would provide alternative methods of resourcing while we got away from the foreign dependencies. Asking people to cut back on their consumption (Jimmy Carter's sweater, anyone?) is at best an immature response.

Finally, I recognize the costs, both environmental and temporal, involved in offshore drilling. However, a rather simple solution may well be at hand. Currently, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains sufficient oil for American consumption for 6.3 years, and several petroleum production companies estimate that they can be at full production (with existing technology) in slightly more than five starting from scratch. My solution: begin selling the excess stockpiled oil at just under the existing price (if oil is $140 a barrel, target $125; this ensures you can sell any quantity required). Use the money thus generated to fund new technology acquisition and development and provide for a fund to reclaim ecosystems that have been damaged by the oil acquisition. The only caveat I toss in here: the developed technology is free to all. No sucking up patents on the governmental teat.

Is there a good reason not to? Um, yeah, if you like Java and run Ubuntu. Firefox's Java JRE module sucks; a major drawback, and Ubuntu, being Linux-based, can run Java all day, but won't allow cross-platform calls, so no JRE-JDK crossbreeds. It's a known flaw and has been since Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Java 6, but Mozilla hasn't fixed it yet. There are some workarounds, but I still have problems on heavy Java portals with Firefox freezing solid and requiring a kill.

And no, Seamonkey and Iceweasel have not fixed the problem either. Mozilla is supposed to be reconfiguring their JVM to handle the JRE 6 and up calls, but even Java 5 didn't play nicely and Sun no longer supports 4 or below. It's a mess, but I do have hope that things will improve.

While the Clinton/Obama ticket is tempting, the fact is that I think more would defect from the party than would be gained. Clinton is strong among Democrats, but her extremely liberal views combined with her husband's Presidential policies do not resonate well with moderates and independents. Most of that crowd would bolt from such a ticket; Obama is already liberal enough to make many in that group uneasy.

Now, if you wanted a true dream ticket (and were willing to take a lot of heat from core party members to get it), I would pair Obama with McCain. And before you all throw things at me, I would point out the following:

1. cross-party tickets have won in the past (Lincoln/Johnson for instance).

2. aspects of our current issues (sharp divide politically and economically across the country, insurgency within the country, race tensions, etc) resonate sharply with post Civil War America. A McCain/Obama administration would allow a reconstructive approach to a wide number of issues.

3. Obama's lack of Washington politics and Congressional skill ensure currently that he would be roughly as effective in his Presidency as Jimmy Carter (perhaps less so, Carter had a sympathetic Congress and was still stymied; Obama may face a hostile legislature). McCain will be able to strong-arm bills through Congress regardless of which party controls the houses. Think Lyndon Johnson moving Kennedy's ideas through Congress; McCain would be equally good.

Putting Hagel on the ticket with Obama would be second-best, but Democrats would probably be unwilling to include him on the ticket because of that (R) after his name. Too bad the party bigwigs don't come here for ideas...

However, such a viable point exists. All scientists, regardless of personal convictions, admit that science does not and cannot explain all the mysteries of the universe. There is still much to know and more to find out. With our current levels of learning, we cannot in any way disprove the concept of God; that Being exists outside of our science and all our knowledge will not even come close to allowing us to emulate the power ascribed thereto. Occam's Razor drives us to admit that when we cannot empirically disprove the existence of something, we must accept that it may be so. We cannot empirically prove that God is not, or does not hear, or does not notice when we behave in traditional or nontraditional worship. Ergo, we must accept that it is possible for a living, real, listening and noticing God to exist. And if we admit this possibility, is not that admission alone faith? What you do in response to that is the extension of faith into action (the technical definition of religion).

Faith is capable of being the reaction of ignorance; I do not deny that. Superstitions are also such a reaction (i.e. why exactly do you toss salt over your shoulder?). But to categorically assign all faith to ignorance is logically fallacious.

But the other side also must be considered. This Marine is an American, a Christian. The laws of America provide for the free expression of religion; the fundamental tenets of Christianity include the command from Christ "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19)." In such a view, it is obvious that the Marine was behaving in a manner consistent with both the laws of America and his own personal beliefs. That he was a Marine at the time does not enter into the equation, unless he was on duty at the time.

Having said that, I do feel that the Marine has a case in the event that he is brought before a court-martial. But I also understand the anger of the Iraqis over the proselytizing and the actions of the US Armed Forces in response to a factor that could very well destabilize a very fragile peace.

Additionally, one wonders precisely where the staff for this new agency will come from. Global resources for effective policing are already stretched thin and many countries are forced to use their militaries to supplement their civilian policing structures. Thus, the very groups which currently supply the people that are accused of these atrocities will be the groups tapped to provide the oversight. This seems to me to be a case of setting the fox to watch the henhouse, with the caveat here that the hens in question stand an excellent chance of being abused...

Sex crimes are notoriously underreported, and when one throws in the fact that the abusers ARE the enforcers and the protectors, it follows that the victims not only won't report the problem, they have no one to report it to. The creation of a global watchdog agency to police the aid and peacekeeping forces gives a point of contact for the victims, and helps ensure that consequences are swift in coming to the perpetrators of such outrages.

Additionally, we currently have only two gravitic environments for chemical and physical experimentation, normal (i.e. terrestrial) and micro/null (i.e. spacebound). Colonization of either Mars or Luna (preferably both) would permit the addition of two low-gee environments to the list of experimental stations. This could result in hundreds if not thousands of advances in science, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and technology.

The scientists implanted the nucleus of a skin cell into an egg cell (thus creating a diploid egg). This diploid was then stimulated chemically, and "grew" in the nutrient solution of incubation, a technique that has already been known. However, the scientists managed to get the total growth to around a hundred cells, far more than we have ever managed before, and large enough to create the full line from the blastosphere stage. The mechanism created no life; in fact, cannot, since the central nucleus of the cell is being replaced by a mature code, not one that can control the complex procedures of embryosis. The hundred-cell volume is probably the largest this can even grow to; scientists reported eugenic decay in the blastosphere even at the time when the stem cells were being harvested (eugenic decay is a total systemic failure of the DNA sequence to adapt to embryosis).

So should the government fund such research? Yes, indeed. Extrapolation of the technique identified above will satisfy the religious concerns; man is neither being created nor destroyed to continue the work. And the potential benefits of such research go far beyond the ability to repair the human body. Indeed, the knowledge gained simply from the study of it allows better surgical techniques, better treatments, better and more targeted medications, and better knowledge of human risks, behaviors and illness.

That said, I do not advocate wholesale fattening of private enterprise on governmental teats, though; the government should retain and disseminate such research without limitation. If the private enterprises wish patent protection, they must get there without public funding. Public funds should yield public benefits.

While Big Oil is raking in records profits (since when is a $36 billion quarterly profit simply an "up cycle?"), the oil companies are not wholly responsible for the current prices of oil. The current "price" is actually a speculative price, not a "real" one. Oil speculators have driven prices up while looking for the market's break point, but the oil companies are not as yet paying those costs. They will, in about six months, if the market does not resettle, but until then, they are almost certainly relying on stored crude at the refineries or oil that has been purchased under contract from source nations from months back that has yet to be delivered.

Largely, however, I do feel that using a cell phone in the car is dangerous, certainly as dangerous as eating or drinking while driving. Using a cell phone removes one hand from the wheel, and requires the eyes to drift off the road to ensure that you have placed the call correctly or to see who placed the call to you. Use of hands-free devices ameliorates this slightly, downgrading it to the level of holding a conversation with a passenger. For some, the amount of concentration needed to hold such a conversation is minimal and does not impinge greatly on the driving. For others (the majority I would say), the act of talking with friends, coworkers, family or enemies detracts so greatly from the skills required to drive safely as to create a road-borne menace.

To make the statement that illegal immigrants have no documentation that they are in the country is specious; illegals routinely acquire such documentation. There is a major black market for such paperwork, which includes driver's licenses, Social Security cards, "green cards" and the like. The average cost for such is well over $500 per person, but if that's the difference between work and no work, that's what gets paid. A relatively small percentage of illegals (roughly 10-12% according to the American Council for Immigration Reform) are paid in cash "under the counter;" these, and these alone do not pay income tax.

However, no documentation is needed to collect property tax (through the landlord in the case of rentals), sales tax (collected at and by the store), or gross receipts tax (collected at and by service organizations). As these taxes form the bulk of many states taxes, the populations of illegals fundamentally contributres to this tax base.

That said, I find good reason for the electoral college to continue to exist, not least because it puts a specifically defined end to the legal quibbling over elections. This I like. What I do not support, and have never supported, is the "winner-take-all" system currently in place. At this point, getting 50%+1 of the popular vote in any state guarantees you the electoral vote from that state. While states like Wyoming or New Mexico (3 votes and 5, respectively) do not swing much weight even under this system, California and New York do. If the college instead split votes according to the popular vote margins, with the "excess" votes going to the winner, the electoral college would become a far more effective and fair selection.

The Constitution provides for cases in which a single candidate does not obtain sufficient votes to gain a clear majority; the remainder of the rules would remain in force.