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I went back over your post again -- lotta good stuff there -- and I've got a question about the FDA and other assorted agencies: Where in the Constitution does congress get the right to delegate its lawmaking authority to any other body?

Or for that matter, to any hundreds of agencies, each with its own body of law, its own courts, its own rules of law, and questionable expertise about that which it legislates?

For example, the FDA: twenty five years ago you could walk into a seven eleven and get a slushy, some beef jerky, a playb . . . er magazine, and a 25 cent package of rosewood seeds. Does anybody remember those? They were a mild hallucinogen that had the ancillary effect of making every member of the opposite sex on planet earth a virtual goddess (or god, as the case may be.) Perfectly legal. They were also used by  marriage councilors to help failing marriages. Does anybody remember the horrors of rosewood seeds? No? Niether do I.

Somebody -- somebody I suspect, to paraphrase Menken, woke up every night sweating with the fear that somewhere, somebody was having fun -- decided rosewood seeds had to be made illegal. Marriage counsilors still needed a similar drug, however, and some chemist made one: MDMA, which quickly hit the streets with a new name: ecstasy.

I don't know if X is the terror they make it out to be, but it seems to me they made a non-issue into one whale of a problem. Who are they to tell us how to behave?

Just a pet peeve here, but we do not have a democracy (that is, a system where everyone votes for whoever they like and you tally up the votes, and the winner makes the rules) but a representative republic (where the government is given strictly defined roles, and rules to effect them) with strong democratic overtones: that is, we get to pick the people who are supposed to follow those rules.

The problem is that nobody is following the rules anymore -- this war, for example: the congress must declare war. The president has no right to initiate warfare of any kind, and congress has no right to give the president the right to do so, or allow him to do so in any case, or to appropriate military funding for the army to fight what is de jure an unconstitutional war. The constitution allows for a standing navy, but not for a standing army -- the army budget must be voted upon every two years -- because the founding fathers feared a standing army, both as a domestic force for tyranny and as a force for empire in the hands of a Caesar.

If the Constitution were not habitually ignored, I suspect you would find the results would tickle you politically pink.

As for 3rd party votes, it depends on who you think is the third party: Libertarians, Constitutionists, Green, or Republicrats.

I hear where you are coming from though -- to place a vote for somebody who has a three percent chance of getting elected ain't exactly putting your money on a winning horse; however, I've followed that logic since 1980 and what has it got me? Jimmy Carter with an attitude. Seriously -- again, look where the rubber meets the road: at the votes. If you think Kerry will vote any different from Bush, you are wrong.

If you vote for Nader and it costs Kerry the election, you get Bush -- A.K.A. "Kerry light". If I vote Libertarian and it costs Bush the election, I get "Bush light" and no harm done either.

But no longer will the Democans/Republicrats be able to shrug at our concerns and say, "They have no where else to go."

Third parties are more of a threat than you imagine. Not only do they siphon off much needed votes in a polarized nation, but the current two party system (repubs/dems) itself is an artificial construct: take a good look at the laws that are used to keep 3rd parties out (minimum ballots, contribution limits, etc.) They are so numerous and unrealistic -- not to mention unreported -- that you have to wonder how worried the two biggies really are.

I'm convinced the the two biggies are just one party putting on a show for the gullible, and I don't want to support it. I'm voting for what I believe in, not a couple of flashy rich boy's horses.

Speaking of, I've found a guy I'm gonna vote for, Aaron Russo, he ran for governor in Nevada as a Libertarian and got over thirty percent of the vote, and I've yet to find an issue I disagree with him on. Will he win? Who cares --- I don't have to hold my nose!

Or as my old man used to say, "God save us from the meek."

The answer to the abortion question may be simpler than we think. Cindy is on the right track: maturity is key. How could that work out in practice?

Bill is on the right track here, as he said, "Abortion will end when we empower women since abortion is really more for the convenience of men than anything else."

In short, men have the answer to this issue: to put it bluntly, its all in our . . . er . . . uhm . . . hands. Ahem. 

Hi John, I'm going to answer you first because your question is more general than Clark's, and while I started to answer with specifics, I decided to go the other way, to wit:

When I first read your question I went out into the net, rounded up my library notes, and started to present my case, then I thought of something RXKE said: that everybody on this right/left divide (or in my case up and down on the Y-axis) keeps presenting their ideas, complete with each other's quotes, as some kind of boring, mindless political rally. I was *very* close to heading that way myself just now, so instead I'll just act as if you and I are sitting on my old frat house floor, getting tanked on a gallon jug of cheap Gallo, and having a friendly bull session.

So, to answer your question, when was the last time you heard Kerry address the matter of a supreme court who -- within the last two weeks -- decided the 5th and 4th amendments were optional? Perhaps more importantly, when have you heard his supporters do likewise? We are talking about fundamental change in our relationship to our government: have Kerry's supporters even asked questions about this? (politicians *will* respond to the demands of those whose votes they desire.)

I had to dig and root to find this stuff out -- *nobody* is talking about it. Not the left, not the right, and surely not those in the middle (who tend to be the most sane among us and can't conceive of other people having a head full of snakes.)   

Not even the partisan radio talk show hosts are talking about this, either left or right. Why isn't the press talking about it? Are they really too lazy to do the same research I did on my own, with limited free time? How much in campaign contributions do the media conglomerates give to each party?

From my perspective, its almost like watching those wrestlers, you know, the ones who yell at each other and work up the crowd? then they have a fake fight, and afterwords go back into the locker room and split the money and share a friendly beer. The TV network that broadcasts the "fight" makes even more money. Watch the candidates and the press through that lens, and then pay attention to what they say -- then compare it to the way they vote.

Kerry, for example, talks a good game about Bush's venal war for oil, but look at how he voted on matter: he voted for the war. Bush did the same thing: he promised smaller government and reduced spending -- I'd quote you a figure on how high he has run up our bill since the election but I can't count that high.

These are two small examples in a trend I've noticed now for about ten years -- whether it goes back futher I dunno -- where the two parties make news by stirring up the public with fancy rhetoric; however, if you look at the actions and votes of both parties you see, with few exceptions,  differences of degree within a pattern of common trends.

For a few current examples, both parties voted for the Patriot Act, both attack the second amendment, both continue to station so many of our troops overseas that the authors of our Constitution would freak. Both parties refuse to attend to our borders, both voted for the war in Iraq (and its continuance),  and both are printing and spending money like there is no tomorrow (and if we keep it up, eventually this country *will* go broke, and if that happens we will drag the world down with us.) There are differences to be sure: differences of degree -- but the trends are the same.

Yet each talks endlessly about how the other party is a bunch of rotten/corrupt, wimpy/warlike, commie/facists, etc., ad nausium -- and none of them is talking about the stuff I brought up before. Why not? Because they are business partners, and they are taking you and me for a ride.

Its like that car salesman I was talking about: he keeps the buyer worked up, and makes him fight for what for what the salesman wants. What better way to make the buyer mad than to take a national tragedy and a concurrent bloodlust for revenge (to which I admit sharing) and useing it to keep our eyes off what is being done to us at home? Take a look at the news: its "warwarwarwar", and what are we talking about? War.

Meanwhile, back at the Supreme Court . . . oh, that's right, we *are* talking about the court -- about something as silly as gay marriage. If you want to marry a goat, have at it -- though I might not invite your spouse to my daughter's wedding -- just keep your hands off my Bill of Rights.

I don't see Kerry doing that, or Bush. If you think about (and in keeping with my theme of a friendly college bull session) these guys are practically frat brothers: same school, same social circles, same campaign contributors . . .

Kerry won't give you what he says he will, he is -- like Bush, and Caesar -- a soldier for his class.  :down: