Check the facts, for instance: http://www.capenet.org/facts.html tells us that less than 90% of students attend public school and that 25% of the schools are private... it also reveals that most of these schools are religious based... there's no monopoly here, but no, you can not get governmental funding of those religious based programs!

FUD: Fear Uncertainty Doubt... the heart & soul of today's GOP & Tea Baggers... and of most of the posters to this web site too... ;-)

Yup, far too much of the tax load is paid in a regressive manner, loaded onto the backs of the bottom end of the pay scale. This is why we need to raise the tax rate on those who make the most! The 2% who have large amounts of money to put towards legal fees to avoid those taxes that the rest of us do pay... letting them today end up with lower tax rates than those of us at the bottom 98% pay on our lower income.

LOL, the primary crime in the government is that of letting the fat cats continue to get away with forcing the rest of us into slavery to those fat cats.

And one key to protecting our liberty is to engage in the ills of the rest of the world. Isolationism is not in our personal best interest. So, while the words above are true, the sentiment of the quote is one of isolationism, not effective engagement. (And it says a whole lot when Texans don't know where their representatives are... the rest of the US population is a whole lot more connected to reality and knows... in fact, we know to avoid him like the plague!)

so propose a viable alternative... oh, that's right, as a libertarian you'd have no government to fund and we'd each run our own little castle with its own little security force and medical facilities (etc).

This ignores entire categories of crime, such as terrorist acts... it throws each of us to the wolves.

The above message brought to you by: trickle down economics & the unfunded unnecessary war machine...

Just more preaching of fear, uncertainty & doubt... time to learn that there are vast differences.

Regulation & having a good reputation are two separate axis... J & Mike rightly so question the messenger, but fail in their own analysis of the message.

Unbelievable how Mike can work "statist theocracy" into every comment these days... those who would think this to be a good quote would take us back to the dark ages. It is curiosity which drives activities like raw scientific research, without which we would still be huddled in a cold cave fearing the night.

Mindless babble you'd expect from a class bully not a world leader.

... a good line for a laugh, not a good quote. What Mike & so many others seem to not know is that our tax burden is lower today than it has been since the 1950s. No, we don't have a problem with high taxes, we have a problem with taxes which are too low to support necessary investments and taxes which place an unfair burden on the low and middle income of our society and too little upon those who are making in excess of $1M/year.

Some things are too complex to completely understand, but much is not, and we should not strive to make our thinking about those things more complex than it needs to be!

Yes Mike, the GOP & the Tea Baggers do continually attempt to over simplify, denying the inherent interconnected web of life that is reality. Thankfully the Democratic party understands those complexities, sadly the electorate does not.

As Mike from Norwalk seems to actually be from Chicago and thus gets to vote twice, I guess that means the rest of us get to vote twice too...

He raised taxes and also put us further in debt... his actions are in direct opposition to his words... and those who followed him who modeled their leadership on him did the same.

It is only government as run by the likes of he & his disciples has the issue of being problematic.

A brilliant man with great insight... god is so great that humans had to invent him/her/it.

And a far larger number would have been newly caused, for a net increase... a bad deal.

Individually owned guns are more often a source of injury to those individuals and their family. Amateurs do not a militia make, that take discipline. These laws and this aspect of the constitution are no longer appropriate in the current world. They met the needs of a frontier land, and stand in the way of the needs of the country today.

mindless babblings of and for the self-centered who are out for themselves and no one else... the very first premise "that we are forced to live together" is pure BS, if you so dislike society, live outside and separate from it, don't collect its tender (money), and do not expect anything in return from it... or put succinctly: go away, you bother us

I see that Silas & jim & J all support this move by Obama with their 5 star rating too... and lets see if we can do basic arithmetic: 2001 + 2 = 2003... hum... who was in control of all 4 branches of government at that time: King George W & his minions (including Fox News). And what would their response be if Obama did not continue this? They would cry their little (if existant at all) hearts out that he's weak on ___ (fill in the blank). A pox on all of your houses!

Isolationist can neither be free nor moral.

what a stunning lack of insight and analysis...