Steve_S

I'm not sure how this isn't an infringement upon a constitutional right. Realistically, guns aren't going to be banned and even if you have a mandatory ammunition quantity cut off all folks would have to do is go buy smaller amounts at several different places. Pretty much every sporting goods store, every gun store, every wal mart, etc. sells ammunition. So if you'd want to limit that then you'd have to put folks' who bought ammunition's names into a federal database and ID them every time they did it in order to confirm their identity before adding that purchase, which raises all sorts of new constitutional issues. Quite frankly, gun shop personnel are running a business and selling more product equals making more money, anyway, so that line of reason doesn't really flow as a potential pragmatic application anyway. And if we are going to do it, why stop there? Far more people yearly are killed by drunk drivers than are killed by people who buy 7000 rounds of ammo at a time. Why don't gas station attendants have to run background checks to ensure that the people they're selling gas too don't have a history of drunk driving? Should people have to sign a written statement every time they get their oil changed that they won't text while they're driving? Maybe we should go even farther with it. Should the cashier at McDonald's request medical records to ensure the person they're selling that milk shake doesn't have diabetes?

This is pretty simple to me, there is one body: 1Co 12:12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. I think that with regards to the issue of unity in and of itself, it's going to be incredibly difficult to obtain between "catholics and Christians," due to the SIGNIFICANT doctrinal disagreements between the two. In saying this I'm going to reference Ephesians 4:11-15. Eph 4:11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; Eph 4:12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Eph 4:13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: Eph 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; Eph 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: If you look at 11 it tells us that people have been given gifts/appointed to offices. In 12-15 it tells us why those people were given those gifts/appointed to those offices. I could go line by line and delineate my opinion on what these mean, but I don't think that it's necessary as these are straight forward scriptures. The reason I think to these scriptures when unity between the "catholics and Christians" is mentioned is that the doctrines between the two are so incredibly different that I believe it's Biblically impossible that the leaders from both sides are being spirit led simultaneously, so the evangelists, pastors, and teachers (4:11) from one of the two sides are incredibly wrong, I'd go so far as to say that it's apostate levels of errancy by one or the other. 4:12-15 tells us what the fruits of having the proper people in the proper positions within the body of Christ are. One can only assume that these fruits are incredibly difficult to impossible to achieve under apostate or near apostate teaching due to the incredible amount of discord that is going to be sewn between the two factions due to one being heretical and one being correct. So yes, I think that we should pray that the body of Christ is unified (this is a no brainer to me). However, I don't know that Biblical unity can be achieved between the "catholics and the Christians" due to the irreconcilable doctrinal gulf that exists between them. As a disclaimer here I've tried to keep this post non-venomous, but to be up front I'm militantly opposed to a large portion of extra-Biblical catholic Dogma, though I know this thread is not here to focus on that, I'd feel deceitful if I didn't at least disclose that I was writing from that perspective.

I think that a furtherance of this would be to say that God created everything. Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Time is part of everything, so God created time. God is not bound by His creation so God is not bound by time. In this context it's incredibly difficult for me to take 2 Peter 3:8 literally and it's my opinion that it's likely an elucidation to God's complete Sovereignty over His creation, specifically with regards to the passage of time, in a manner that's easier for humans to digest.

You do realize that all chick-fil-a is doing is exercising its own constitutional right to contribute to non-profit organizations that they agree with, right? That's also protected under the first amendment. It's not an unconstitutional stance to defend marriage as between only a man and woman because homosexual marriage isn't a guaranteed right in the constitution, if it were this conversation would not be taking place because this issue would've been settled long ago.

Most discrimination laws will have some sort of religious exemption (either implied or otherwise) so it's very unlikely that it's illegal, but possible I suppose. Him being a puppet will make it more likely that he will keep his job, as opposed to lose it. Having said that, this is heinous and someone at that church needs to take a stand, even if it's not going to be a the preacher or the deacons (or whomever has their hands on the strings).

I never said they would be responsible, and of course we should try to stop human trafficking, but I believe that the loss of the illicit drug trade would greatly weaken the cartels ability to traffic humans due to their lack of funds and the lack of cohesion that the lack of funds would cause. And again, you are proving my point "you never saw an addict who..." if the war on drugs were working you'd have probably not seen enough addicts to determine their patterns. My point is simply that if it's not working we should stop it.

And it being illegal has stopped them from smoking it....... neither does regualion of any business stop them from doing wrong. why have laws then if people are going to just break them. the 14th amendment didnt stop slavery at all. it just went into the forms we have today. illegal immigration and also child sex slaverery. its nothing new just the media doesnt do much reporting on it. yet its larger then we think. do hate crimes make people love each other? No, does penal codes against rape and murder stop them. NO. Right, and those are all crimes against other people. We're talking about personal use here. You imprison a murderer to remove him from society and protect society at large. You imprison a drug user to protect himself from something he could be doing to himself perfectly legally with exorbitant alcohol use. It's an illogical position, you can't successfully legislate personal behavior. If you could the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels wouldn't be pulling in 20+ BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Black markets are always built to fill a vacuum and are almost impossible to stop, because if there's a buyer you can guarantee there will be a market, for anything. The situation we have here is that there are tens of millions of buyers and a thriving black market that has basically made so much money that it can go gun for gun with the Mexican government. It only took the government 13 years to realize that prohibition of alcohol was an utter and complete failure because doing so criminalized half the population and gave an incredible amount of power to organized crime here. We are seeing the exact same thing right now, both in this country and out of it and 40 thousand Mexican citizens have paid for it with their lives over the past 5 years. Northern Mexico is more dangerous to live in than Afghanistan right now, and Afghanistan is a legitimate war zone. The border regions of Mexico have the highest concentrated murder rate on the planet, some of the highest murder rates you will ever see that don't involve actual government sanctioned genocide. Prohibition of alcohol did not work and prohibition of drugs is not working. Look at the Bureau of Justice's own statistics. The "War on Drugs" started in earnest under Nixon in 1971. According to the US Department of Justice in 1970 there were 322,000 adults arrested on drug charges in 1970, the year before the war on drugs started. The next year it went up to 383,000. By 1980 it was up to 471,000. So over that first 9 years the number of arrests increased by about 25 percent. By 1990 the number of adults arrested more than doubled from the 1980 number, up to over one million. By 2000 this number was at nearly 1.4 million. In 2007, the final year they have statistics for it was over 1.6 million. During this same time period, from 1970 to 2007, the population increased by about 30 or so percent, from 203 million to roughly 300 million, this according to the US census bureau (please note that I'm postulating the 300 million number in 2007 due to it being between censuses and would be willing to accept an exactly accurate number if one is provided). So, the population increases by about 30 percent from 1970 to 2007 and the number of people arrested for drug related crime increases by over 400 percent. If the war on drugs were working and it was actually getting people off drugs and keeping them off drugs one would assume that there'd have been a drastic increase in the number of arrests in the first 5 to 10 years as the government ramped up their enforcement policy and then a slow year by year decline in the number of arrests made after that point due to the lack of available drugs for purchase and the many government programs that have been implemented that are designed to help people kick their addiction. That's not what has happened at all. We have seen the number of arrests increase dramatically as enforcement was added and then after nearly 30 years finally hit a level in which the number of arrests made remained fairly stable in direct proportion to the united states population. This is not something "working." If it were working there'd be fewer drugs available, fewer people wanting to do them, fewer people doing them, and fewer people being arrested for doing them. Meanwhile, we've spent over a trillion dollars on this so far and there has been no tangible evidence of it stopping anybody who wants to do drugs from doing drugs. I wish nobody would do drugs in an illicit manner, but it simply cannot be stopped in a society such as this and the outcome of trying to stop it is, in my opinion, far worse than the outcome of the government getting out of the lives' of its populace and allowing them to make their own bad decisions as long as these decisions don't hurt anyone else.

And it being illegal has stopped them from smoking it.......

A lifelong democrat who ran as anti-gay marriage in a national election having a change of heart and finally seeing the light that his party has been shining for decades?!!?!? IMPOSSIBLE!

Non sequiteur. When has Roman rule ended? The Roman Catholic Empire capital is still in Rome. It's emperor has become the pope, its senate the cardinals, bishops are the regional governors... etc. The Roman Empire morphed into a religion. Nope. The little Horn is the beast in Revelation 13 who Paul identifies as the man of lawlessness the son of perdition (2 Thessalonians 2:3) which Jesus referred to in John 17:12. The Roman church is not in discussion here. The Roman Empire eventually ended, and it was weakening over time since 70 AD. Emperor worship died out. What you're postulating sounds like Seventh Day Adventism's eschatology, or even Reformation Theology that the Pope is 'the antichrist'. He isn't. Is the concept of Papism heretical? If it isn't, it's close to it. The idea that the Son of God requires a Vicar is preposterous. Your statement that the Little Horn in the Beast in Rev 13 is correct...up until you tried to add Paul's 2 Thess 2 description of the man of sin/lawlessness into the mix. Two different things. Nero IS historically the little horn of Daniel. He uprooted three to get to the throne. HE persecuted (made war with) the saints of God for forty-two months and overcame them. His name adds up to 666. John 17:12 is referring to Judas Iscariotes (Judas Iscariot if you prefer). Of all of the disciples God gave Jesus, Judas was the only one lost. The others were all saved. It seems then that we are partly in agreement and partly not. Rome did not start to weaken in 70 ad. It actually continued to grow to the point that it needed two emperors.

Simple question. Do you believe that the desolation and the following scripture speak of the same event? 2Th 2:2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 2Th 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Simple questions deserve simple answers: No, I don't see them speaking about the same event. Of what event then?

There's some question to the validity of what is accepted as the book of enoch today. I'm not well versed on it, but at least a few scholars seem to believe it's been lost to history and what currently is being pushed off is a fraud.

Simple question. Do you believe that the desolation and the following scripture speak of the same event? 2Th 2:2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 2Th 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

I have to respectfully dispute your claim about the emperors of rome after nero. The empire and the seat of the emperor had not yet reached it's pinnacle of power and nero CERTAINLY was not at that pinnacle. Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, and Hadrian are widely considered to be three of the greatest roman emperors and all were after nero. Rome wasn't even at it's peak. Rome still GREW after 70 a.d. The other "beasts" couldn't have been later emperors anyway because nero died before the abomination at the temple, so if partial or full preterism is true then they'd have to be the emperors immediately between nero and titus, but titus wasn't the emperor at the time he could've caused the abomination (and there's no record that i know of saying that he did). If a roman stood in the temple and proclaimed himself God it had to be titus, who didn't even become emperor until almost 10 years later. His father, vespasian, was marching an army back to rome to claim the throne out of the power vacuum created by Nero's death and replacement with a very fast succession of inept rulers when Jerusalem finally fell. I'm sorry, if you study actual history it just doesn't line up. The problem I have with a partial or full preterist view is that we KNOW the history and it should line up exactly with the prophecy and it quite simply does not.

2Th 2:1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, 2Th 2:2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 2Th 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. For the preterists, who must this be?

What period are you speaking of here exactly? Asia has billions of people who have never lived under "pre-dominant" Christian influence. The peoples of the western hemisphere didn't live under such either until the past 300ish years. "World wide" is a bold statement. "Christian influence" has never "held sway" world wide, certainly never simultaneously. I'm not really trying to argue a futurist view here (though I hold one), however, the lens of history certainly does not bear out your argument. I understand the points you are making, some of them are logical and reasonable. Far Eastern cultures have never had a Christian majority (or anything REMOTELY close to one). The mideast and a good bit of africa have been islamic for at least the past 1000 years as well. I'm not trying to judge you for being a preterist or anything. You're entitled to your beliefs. I just ask that you don't make blanket statements that really aren't true.

Make no mistake my friend, a lot of the time riders aren't about saving time (though sometimes they are). But as far as just political uses go, they are usually used one of three ways: 1. When for whatever reason both parties largely agree on something that is hugely unpopular, but neither want to sponsor an independent bill and anger their constituents, in other words a 'sneak through.' 2. To kill a bill that the other party is trying to pass by attaching very controversial legislation to it, which has absolutely nothing to do with it. This would be something along the lines of (and this is very broad and general) democrats trying to pass a huge tax increase, republicans may try to attach a bill that bans gay marriage across the country, in every state, to it, knowing democrats would never vote for it. 3. You're attempting to force the opposing party to pass a law that you want passed, but they don't. Usually, this is done with smaller issues so as to make it difficult to kill a big important bill. A recent example of this is the amendment put on the defense budget that deals with posse comitatus and indefinite detention of american citizens, which there is another thread about. It is INCREDIBLY difficult for most politicians to vote against defense funding because they can immediately be accused of not "supporting the troops." So if you can get a rider onto a defense appropriation bill then it has to be openly egregious and easy for everyone to understand in order to kill it by not voting for the "mother bill." Basically, in summary, I agree with Onelight in that there should be SOMETHING preventing this from happening. On the other side of the same coin though, that would make it difficult to amend bills within the framework of their spirit, which is almost a necessity with regards to parliamentary procedure. This is one of those inch to mile things. If you allow any amendments where are the lines drawn as to what has to do with the actual bill and what doesn't. I think the best and most realistic option would be to not allow non-budgetary issues to be attached to budgets. In other words, baring any actual statutory amendment from being attached to a budget, and vice versa.

Joh 15:18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. Joh 15:19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. In a nutshell.

oxymoron: Like the Indians of old did, like the Irish did, like the Japanese people did, like the Black people did,like the Jewish people did..............Not all members of a race or a nation are evil, to include ours.Fear is behind this move, Jesus is Bigger......... ICL....Dennis This was a business decision. Lowe's has obviously determined it in their best business interest to stop giving advertising dollars to a program that glorifies a heathen religion's counterfeit deity. This isn't a show about arabs or persians, nor is it about Afghanistan or Indonesia. This isn't about a race or a nation. It's about a religion that directly challenges the legitimacy of Jesus. Lowe's probably has a very large number of Christian customers simply because they mainly operate in the united states, so it's best not to alienate them. It's that simple.

I was wondering that too? It is probably one of those things someone slipped into the bill, and you know that members of Congress don't seem to care enough to actually read the bills before voting on them. That would be too much trouble. What I want to know is who put this into the bill? I haven't found it yet but I'm thinking it's one of those ammednments that just says something like "delete section xxxx paragraph yyyy from the military code of whatever" if so they may have just been told that ir removes the homosexual part.... I just can't see anyone in public office knowingly voting for sex with animals. Still it shows the dangers of having to pass these huge bills that they don't have the time to go through. They shouldn't use their vote to pass anything without knowing exactly what is in it in my opinion. If it's too big for them to review completely before passing then they should simply vote no. If ignorance is not an excuse of the law then it CERTAINLY should not be an excuse of the ones who actually MAKE law. That would be patently absurd.

Acronyms conspiring to undermine the United States, very scary! Personally I wish I could have more faith in your pessimism as, sadly, I see no chance of Socialism triumphing in the USA in the near future. No, the people BEHIND the acronyms conspiring to undermine the United States. I suggest you read NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education by Samuel Blumenfeld. As for your seeing no chance of socialism triumphing in the USA in the near future, I suggest you see an optometrist. What do you think Obamacare is? S O C I A L I S M. People clamoring for the government to provide jobs? S O C I A L I S M. Government entities banning this food or that? S O C I A L I S M. Government taking over the automoblie industry? S O C I A L I S M. UH helllooooooo. We've had socialism since the 30s. "Social security" (ha, even the name social is in there) is socialism. Medicare, medicaid, welfare, food stamps, even college pell grants, all socialism. Socialism and communism are both means for redistribution of wealth, meaning you take money, property, food, what have you, away from one group of people and pass it over to another who has less. The systems differ politically, though not that much, and the base premise is certainly the same for both. Right now there are already 98 million people in this country who have their healthcare completely or partially paid for by the government (as of 2009, probably over 100 million with baby boomer retirements). Well over 2 trillion dolllars this year on entitlements. The entire operating budget of the federal government, right now, if the government eliminated everything but entitlements and social discretionary spending (fancy word for social program) would still not be covered with tax receipts, not to mention the other 1.2 to 1.3+ trillion dollars that are spent on defense, education, etc. The age of socialism in this country has been here and entrenched for quite a while, but it's simply manifested in programs the people are completely used to. I'd like to know what the Federal Reserve is gonna say about the missing 9 trillion. They were called on the carpet about it today. http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fapps%2Fnews%3Fpid%3Dwashingtonstory%26sid%3DaGq2B3XeGKok&h=b942c The fed will recoup a significant amount of that money from banks, and already has from the larger ones, bank of america, etc. Basically in my view the fed used to be the main problem and still is a problem. At this point though, personally, I believe the fed to be more likely to protect the currency than the government, mainly due to the fact that a lot of the people who run it or are influential have personal stakes in currency stability. Basically in a nutshell the only thing economically that I fear more than bad federal reserve policy is a congressional takeover of it, where you would have politicians printing potentially tens of trillions of dollars to get themselves reelected. (This statement is from a purely pragmatic point of view, i.e. this is the situation we are in and we don't really have any other options at this point. Ideally there would be a precious metal standard and consistently static currency, but the likelihood of that occurring in any of our lifetimes in my view is incredibly low, so I pretty much don't even include it in what if scenarios anymore).

Acronyms conspiring to undermine the United States, very scary! Personally I wish I could have more faith in your pessimism as, sadly, I see no chance of Socialism triumphing in the USA in the near future. No, the people BEHIND the acronyms conspiring to undermine the United States. I suggest you read NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education by Samuel Blumenfeld. As for your seeing no chance of socialism triumphing in the USA in the near future, I suggest you see an optometrist. What do you think Obamacare is? S O C I A L I S M. People clamoring for the government to provide jobs? S O C I A L I S M. Government entities banning this food or that? S O C I A L I S M. Government taking over the automoblie industry? S O C I A L I S M. UH helllooooooo. We've had socialism since the 30s. "Social security" (ha, even the name social is in there) is socialism. Medicare, medicaid, welfare, food stamps, even college pell grants, all socialism. Socialism and communism are both means for redistribution of wealth, meaning you take money, property, food, what have you, away from one group of people and pass it over to another who has less. The systems differ politically, though not that much, and the base premise is certainly the same for both. Right now there are already 98 million people in this country who have their healthcare completely or partially paid for by the government (as of 2009, probably over 100 million with baby boomer retirements). Well over 2 trillion dolllars this year on entitlements. The entire operating budget of the federal government, right now, if the government eliminated everything but entitlements and social discretionary spending (fancy word for social program) would still not be covered with tax receipts, not to mention the other 1.2 to 1.3+ trillion dollars that are spent on defense, education, etc. The age of socialism in this country has been here and entrenched for quite a while, but it's simply manifested in programs the people are completely used to.

I'm with onelight here. As much of a feel good story as this is and as much as I don't want to sound like a party killer here, there's no way I would stand in prayer with Muslims to their counterfeit deity (or any other counterfeit deity for that matter), not in the name of peace or anything else.

Right now what you are seeing there is Mubarak trying to hold onto power as long as he can by making a series of concessions with the hopes that eventually one will take. I don't think it will, but i understand the strategy. I think the reason that Obama's administration is trying to force him out so quickly is what MG alluded to earlier, realistically if Mubarak remains in power until elections in September, I believe there is a much higher chance of those elections producing an outcome that could put people from the muslim brotherhood in power, in which case it would be incredibly difficult for the United States to say much of anything, due to the promotion of open democracy in that region. If you remove Mubarak now and get someone else in there who is pro-American right now, in charge of a transitional government, then he would be running as what may be a popular incumbent who helped to end the crisis and move Mubarak out. What it boils down to is that Mubarak is going to go one way or the other, be it now or 8 months from now, I think the administration is simply trying to garner what they see as the most favorable circumstance for a pro-US leader being elected democratically there at that point.

The rise in food prices actually started in 2005 when corn crops began being diverted to producing ethanol instead of being used as food. Droughts around the world (and the loss of last year's Russian wheat crop), and increased demand from rapidly developing countries (such as China and India) have caused the crisis to grow exponentially. While flooding the world with dollars is a part of the problem, it's only a small part. Last year the United States produced round about 400 million tons of grain (corn, wheat, etc.) and 100 million tons went to ethanol production. 100 million tons of grain has the potential to sustain 300 million people for an entire year. Add to this the fact that the United States government gives farmers money NOT to use farmland and you have a massive artificial export contraction of the most basic and important staples.