Fox news = false news

The FCC manages to legally restrict the freedom of speech for broadcasters all the time. You can;t use swear words or show nudity on broadcast television, for example, even though those are held by the Supreme Court to be valid forms of free expression and protected by the First Amendment.Surely if you can prevent nudity from being shown on broadcast TV, you can force news organizations to tell the truth.Except of course that Faux News did get sued over their lies. They claimed they are "entertainment" and so have the right to lie as a form of protected speech...and the courts agreed.My concern is why people (Coyote, for example) continue to support Fox even directly in the face of solid, incontrovertible evidence of blatant lies. Fox knows that what they report isn't true when they say things like "Obama's trip to India will cost $200 million per day!," and they choose to say it anyway. I can see defending the opinion guys for having shitty opinions - you're allowed to have a shitty opinion and express it however you want. But when they report a fact on which to base that opinion ("Obama's gonna institute Sharia law!" "Death Panels!" "$200 million a day!" Putting a "D" next to virtually every Republican who has a sex scandal ever...), they should be held accountable for that fact. The amount spent on Obama's trip is the same whether you're liberal or conservative or something else. You can be of the opinion that the cost is too much or appropriate or whatever, but opinions don;t change the actual amount. Why defend the lies, the known falsehoods, reporting facts that are well known to be completely untrue?

...rat, judges don't pass laws.What defines a "liberal" to you? How do "the people" who made broadcasts and got ATVs banned qualify as "liberals?"

If it's "common knowledge," what is the "common knowledge" based on? Right now, rat, we only have your word. Why should we believe you if you refuse to give us any information other than your own label? I see [i]far[/]i more blatant dishonesty on Fox News than I do in any other major media outlet. I don't hate them because they're conservative, I hate them because they're liars who try to support conservativism with lies. If you can show me a major media outlet who does the same with a liberal bent, I'll hate them just as much. But I'd bet you can't.

The state (meaning the rest of us) has an interest in protecting minor children. They are not your possessions to do with as you want. For exactly the same reason that the state can tell you that you can't hit your kid, the state can tell you that you can't do certain dangerous activities with your child.ATVs and jet skis can be very dangerous, and a minor child is not capable of having sufficient responsibility to ensure they will not harm themselves or others when piloting a vehicle like those.You know. For the same reason they can't drive a car.

Apparently our friend rat is not only confused about the role of judges in the legislative process, he's also confused about the freedom of speech and the ability of the state to legally restrict some of his behavior, particularly when it comes to endangering children...

It would be funny, if it didn't affect the rest of us so negatively.

Laws are made by the legislature, not the judiciary. Judges can rul, after a law has already been made, whether that law is Constitutional, contradicts other laws, etc, and decide how to interpret that law. The do not make laws. Judges do not ban anything; they rule on whether a ban from the legislature is legal, or whether a given law effectively banned something, but they themselves do not actually decide what is and is not banned. They don't make the law. Jar has business to say whatever he chooses, just as you are free to ignore him. That's what "freedom of speech" means, rat. It means that people can tell you what they think you should or shouldn't do, any time, for any or no reason. The expression of a personal opinion cannot be restricted, it's a basic right. If I want to say "JimBob is a bad parent, he should totally have his kids taken away, because he did x" then that's my right. I can't actually take away his kids, but I can express my personal opinion all I want, and if he doesn't think it's any of my business, he can suck it.Unless there's a law against it, nobody can stop you from letting a 12-year-old ride an ATV. But anybody, for any reason, can tell you they think you shouldn;t do it if they want.What do you think "freedom of speech" means, rat?As for the thread topic - your furious backpedal a minute ago, retreating from "those damned liberals" to "well, just people who hate ATVs led by a Republican" is exactly why we demanded evidence from you. "Common knowledge" isn't worth shit - it's usually wrong. And aside from that, none of us presumably live where you do - "common knowledge" to you certainly isn't so for the rest of us. When one party is in possession of a certain amount of facts, and a second party possesses no facts, it's perfectly reasonable for the second party to ask for the facts that justify the first party's opinions before simply adopting those opinions themselves. In fact, I'd think doing anything less would be stupid.After all, if I said "those damned conservatives, they pushed a law that mandated eating babies!" and then claimed it was "common knowledge," would you believe me? Wouldn't you demand that I prove my claim before you went ahead and believed that some unnamed conservatives pushed an unnamed law that forced an undisclosed population to eat some number of babies sometime in the unmentioned past?

Exactly. But you can't actually make him shut up, he has every bit as much right to tell you you're wrong as you do to him.

Analogy fail. Not all white powders are dangerous. All firearms are designed with the intent to be lethal. Don't give me any bullshit about "it's designed to put holes in paper," we both know you can do that sort of target practice with a fucking air rifle that can't put a hole in a human skull. Firearms are designed for the exclusive purpose of killing; some are designed for killing animals other than humans, but every single one can be used to commit murder. That's a pretty fucking big difference for the white powder analogy.

Which firearm is not designed to be able to produce lethal force? It's so relevant it's the entire point. Banning all white powder when only a subset of white powder can be used as a weapon is not comparable to banning all guns because, while only a subset of guns are used as weapons, all of them can be used as lethal weapons.Gun owners like to retort that "my guns aren't used to kill, they're used to shoot paper targets," but that's a bullshit argument because everyone with more than 3 neurons understands that if you really just want to put holes in paper you don't need an actual human-lethal firearm, all you need is a pellet gun or the like. Guns are designed to be lethal. Handguns are designed specifically to be used on people (while owners of some rifles at least can argue that their firearms are intended to be lethal to other animals). [/qs]What, by forcing sufficient flour down someone's throat that they choke? Stop being an idiot, CS. You know the facts as well as I do. Any idiot with a loaded gun can point it at a person, squeeze a trigger, and commit murder. Every firearm is in fact designed to do just that - kill. The ones that are designed for hunting can be used to hunt human beings as easily as deer.White powders are, by and large, not lethal, even by accident. If a kid gets into the flour, or the sugar, or the baking soda, the worst that happens is a nasty mess to clean up. If a kid gets into the gun safe and finds any loaded firearm of any type limited only by the child's ability to lift and carry the weapon, the worst that happens is somebody gets fucking shot, an occurrence that happens frequently enough that you cannot even pretend to be ignorant of it.