Jerry J. Fortin

Afghan citizens, tried in Afghan courts, imprisoned in Afghan jails. Sounds like Afghan justice to me. Why are we there if not to support a free system over there. Maybe they need help setting it up, thats fine, but its still their system not ours. We can`t really be faulted for applying their own laws, lawyers and courts to them can we

The political players are just a front for the business guys, that is where all this is going.

Sex toys legislation......is that all that important....

We need more mandatory minimum sentences. Crimes need punishments that better reflect the injuries to individuals, crimes committed against institutions are another story. The should be a difference.

I really wonder why we would not have simply tried them in a court of law and then be done with it. I mean really, if we caught them, we should have detained them until their trials in an Afghan court and then wash our hands.

Those terms are meaningless to the average citizen. Debt and credit are terms the average guy lives and dies with. Most people buy things on credit that is where most of the problem stems from. The purchase of disposable goods with credit.

Interest rates will go up, that is a given. Now under those conditions how many folks will be in trouble? If a bunch of folks decide to sell, then what happens to the prices? Once prices fall, what happens to equity? There is a long and slippery slope ahead for far too many people.

You could very well be right.

There will likely be some new definitions out over the course of the next few years. Lets face it a jobless recovery isn't doing much good to the average citizens, let alone a government that relies heavily on taxation for its revenue streams. When nearly nothing was being saved before that is not a great stretch. Most society lives on credit and debt. Savings are a somewhat foreign concept to many folks who merely get by from paycheck to paycheck.

Get over it dude. The PC's are done like dinner.

Torture is wrong. Abuse at the hands of authority is wrong. Covering up information is wrong. In this nation all of these things are literally illegal.

They have not been forthright and people have been harmed. That is just not good, period. Even given the entire concept of state security, the thought of equating that with prisoner abuse is troublesome to say the least.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is fault with the administrative end of things, we call that the government.

I didn't mean that public outrage would alter the events. Our government rarely listens to us. I was merely suggesting that with all the media efforts and government spin that the war that is taking the lives of our soldiers is just not being taken seriously enough by the majority of citizens.

Everything is implied in politics! The devil is in the details. I don't know how to break this news to folks but every summer more of the permafrost thaws out, it isn't so permanent anymore. When it does that it releases more of these evil greenhouse gases, the amount of those gases is a big percentage of increased greenhouse effect. Guess what, it can't be stopped or reversed by any known means. What I am getting at is that things are indeed changing and we are not able to "change" that little fact. The governments of the world would need to take real steps forward, and it isn't going to happen.

The opposition parties will grab ahold of this and not let go.

Doing nothing would be even more stupid than what we are now doing. In my view we should be doing a lot more, but not what the extremists from both sides of the issue want, that is for sure. I don't give a damn what is going on with the climate, unless we can reverse the effects it makes no difference who has done what or what cycle is up or down. The only thing relevant to me is how we can adapt to the situation. Anything that detracts from that adaptation is cause for REAL concern, not the finger pointing or partisan posturing.

This is not going to sit well with the public. The Red Cross is a CREDIBLE source of information.

Yet we are in fact at war. There are body bags being shipped home far too frequently to support that reality. The sad thing about this is that utter lack of conviction on the part of our government to actually WIN and bring our soldiers back in victory. It is sad to see the public not up in arms about the reality of this war.

Mandatory minimums are the way to go. They need to be tweaked to reflect a more harsh reality that will see the punishment fit the crime. Violent offenses need a mandatory minimum of life in prison. Crimes with weapons used need to be declared violent offenses. If we change the manner of sentencing to reflect these values then we negate the issue of judges impacting the system by removing them from the process of decision making and instead put them in charge of proceeding and ensuring fairness in trial.

The citizens of China and India simply want what we already have. They are working to make that happen as we speak. The fact that there is so many of them makes their effort look massive. Yes production causes pollution, everywhere and almost always, but technology is making it easier. The reality is those citizens do not yet have what they want and simply are not there yet. The rest of the world can go suck eggs from their perspective, they are going to get what they want. MY problem with this is the fools who dare to call themselves the leaders of the nations seem to be diving into a cesspool of political stupidity. We (citizens) have no obligation to achieve things for them and we have no responsibility to fund their activities. Yet our governments are fully willing to send our tax dollars for their clean development. I would like to think that we can claim high moral ground here but that is not the case. Our cities stink, our air is bad and our water polluted from our own efforts. Should we not clean up our own act first?

Those are internal problems within China. We have no right to interfere there.

It seems there is no shortage of desires for public inquiries into this and just about everything else under the sun. In this case I should think that the opposition parties should simply decide whether or not the issue has risen to the level of public perception worthy of a confidence motion. I actually believe that tossing the government over an issue is better for citizens than witch hunts.

GDP itself is a deceptive concept. Frank Shostak, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, observes, “The GDP framework gives the impression that it is not the activities of individuals that produce goods and services, but something else outside these activities called the ‘economy.’ However, at no stage does the so-called ‘economy’ have a life of its own, independent of individuals. The so-called economy is a metaphor – it doesn’t exist.”

I have a company plan that pays 60K a year.