Peregrinator

Life lives in my nose in my boogers. How do you expect others to take your scientific knowledge seriously when you assert that your boogers are alive? Mucus is a secretion and is no more alive than sweat or urine.

But, accept keeping blacks from voting, there has never been this sort of "In your face" cheating going on. Really? So it's never happened that polls stay open later than normal in majority-black neighborhoods? It's never happened that Dem operatives pay homeless people to vote? (Not saying that the GOP doesn't buy votes too -- I just don't buy into the idea that one side cheats like crazy while the other side is pure as the driven snow.)

Most court cases have basically said there is nothing in the constituion that DENIES homosexuals the same rights heterosexuals have. They already have the same rights that heterosexuals have ... what they don't have is the right to redefine terms to make them apply to them. And that is what has required government power to intrude upon the freedoms of others.

Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts? Cub age boys (I'm not affiliated with the BSA). Jungle Book stories and the like. Yes, I agree - not a great idea for Scout age boys.

How about because the Constitution of the United States is partly designed to protect people from the tyranny of the majority. Why is it that we're only now discovering that the Constitution gives special protections to homosexuals?

I found my Kindle very helpful at summer camp for reading stories to the boys at bedtime.

There are fewer Boy Scouts, too Indeed, I wonder how much the membership declines in scouting have to do with reduced fertility rates.

Ignorant people Why are they ignorant? Because they disagree with you?

But, why do you feel we have to sustain the current population level? Because it is impossible to support an aging population without it ... I think the only reason the US is able to do so is through immigration. Like others said, it includes alot of education so that hopefully we can encourage birth control and discourge the need for abortions. Encouraging birth control leads to abortion. Not to mention the fact that hormonal birth control can cause abortion.

If there is a risk of underpopulation, if the birth rate is too low to sustain the current population level, then yes, there is a need for couples to have more children. In my own family my brothers have one child between the two of them. So the way I see it is that my wife and I (four children) are just picking up their slack.

When everyone in the world is well fed, healthy and having a productive life That will never happen no matter what the world's population is.

The world IS over populated.. Period.. According to what standard? There are many areas of the world that are severely underpopulated. What do you think the proper population density is? If we were another form of animal it would be open season on us all the time. But we're not, so this is simply a non sequitur. Life is not about how many people you can cram into every square foot of land. It is also about being able to feed the masses, while also being able to keep a good balance of other things needed to keep this planet earth healthy enough to continue to substain life.. It's not overpopulation that is causing famines ... usually these are caused by war. Starving populations are used as pawns by kleptocracies and belligerent governments. We do not need to become China, where then government starts enforcing only one child per family sanctions.. And China is in fact facing very grave problems because of their one-child-per-family policy. In some countries of Western Europe (with far greater population density than the United States or most African countries), having children is incentivized.

The truth is the US is overpopulated already Why do you think that? Population density in the U.S. is low (84 per sq. mile) especially compared to countries in Western Europe (for example, the U.S. has about 1/10 the population density of Belgium, 1/40 that of Malta).

Today puberty starts as early as 9 It's the soy. It's in everything.

As luck would have it, 1880 was the first time U.S. census takers inquired about marital status: http://books.google.com/books?id=BPdgiysIVcgC&pg=PA319&lpg=PA319&dq=average+marriage+age+1880&source=bl&ots=rTCSwMeWa4&sig=aAWjTBoFB2O_CZw74dYk8iD00zI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mNBkUPeHB4fe0gGfn4CQDA&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=average%20marriage%20age%201880&f=false For whites, the average age for 1st marriage was 23.3 for women and 27.0 for men. And the U.S. had a lower average than other Western countries.

I think the characterization of Republicans as "radically right" is off the mark. As far as I can see, with the exception of very few issues (abortion being one) they are pretty much the same as Democrats.

There are five Scouting groups in France, which appear to be the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim Scouting organizations, as well as the original, plain, Scouts of France. There are five groups that make up the Fdration du scoutisme Franais (WOSM/WAGGS member) but there are many more scouting groups in France. There are three main Catholic scouting organizations, the Scouts et Guides de France, the Guides et Scouts d'Europe, and the Scouts Unitaires de France.

If parents could teach their kids all subjects, we wouldn't need schools. Or Scouting. Who said anything about all subjects?

Probably from the same folks who also fight to take sex education out of the school curriculum, so the child is not allowed to learn anything about sex Well sex education has no place in schools -- it should be taught by the parents. If the parents are truly unable to teach it then it should be taught on an individual basis and definitely never to a mixed classroom audience.

If one wants to make the argument that he intentionally said these things in order to better connect with a barely-literate public, I guess I have to admit that possibility. I don't think he was trying to connect with a "barely-literate public" but rather that segment of the public that has a deep distrust of intelligentia and academia. Sure, probably some of those folks are barely literate, but I think the same can be said of people who implicitly trust whatever scientists and academics tell them. It's frankly amazing to me that a Yalie was able to accomplish this.

Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) so they aren't permitted to own nuclear weapons. That said, under the NPT they have a right to enrich uranium for nuclear power. THAT said, it is totally rational for them to desire to have nuclear weapons. Israel has them; why shouldn't Iran? Israel has been claiming that Iran was developing nuclear weapons since 1992. So I view any "intelligence" they have on the subject as deeply suspect.

George W...strikes me as average...I just don't get it. I'm convinced that his down-home, "I'm just an average guy" routine was an act, down to the malapropisms. It can be useful to be underestimated....

In France if you don't like the scouting organization to which you belong, rather than complain about it interminably, you start your own.

First after Clinton got us free of debt Balancing the budget and actually paying off the national debt are two separate issues. That said, Clinton was a fiscal conservative, relatively speaking -- but in no small part due to the opposition party being in control of Congress.

Attacking someone's beliefs, views, etc., isn't personal. Do people take Merlyn's attacks on the BSA personally? One should be able to distinguish between when one is being attacked personally (to use an example of Merlyn's: calling someone a "moron") and when one's views or what one says are being attacked. If Merlyn can't -- or won't -- make this distinction, it's no wonder he feels insulted. The personal attacks against Merlyn just drag the threads to places that they don't need to go. Would you agree that Merlyn should also quit making personal attacks?