Seems like Haidt just unwittingly explained his whole psyche.

It would seem more stupidity than courage for Snowden to turn himself in and stand trial in the US. How would he even be able to mount a defense?

I mean this in far more than a simple 'branding' solution, but I think back to the age of Ingersoll and others who called themselves freethinkers. I wonder if simply talking about non-belief is enough. Just as Ingersoll and others stood for racial equality, women's rights, secular government *because* these ideas flowed from their non-belief. I think it would be helpful today to point out that things like equality for LGBT individuals might be important to people in spite of their belief but for non-believers it is an obvious outcome of questioning religiously based bigotry.

Bob, I find it hard to imagine how the tax could possibly be structure to avoid financial hardship, but maybe someone else could describe what that would look like. I understand what you are saying with your example of the multimillionaire, but even a direct means-testing of Medicare is not going to save much money and it comes at the cost of making the system more complex and more expensive to manage as well as political costs of making the program even more open to attack. One of Medicare's true benefits is that it has such a low administrative overhead and people don't have to be in contact as much with bureaucracy - doing some type of income verification and such would damage that. Also, taking a universal program and means testing is a great way to turn a popular universal program into a 'welfare' program with far less support. I just don't see how the meager savings from your plan would be worth weakening either of the benefits I mention. A far easier approach would be to simply make the wealthy pay more before they turn 65. The same is true for Social Security.

How would these 87 year olds pay this tax? Out of their already fixed income? Go out and get a part-time job? Sorry but that makes no sense. More importantly, about 30% of Medicare payments are made in the last year of life, and this percentage seems to be increasing. This means that the length of life has far less impact than you seem to think. I think the issue here is that you attribute the problem to people living longer. Most any 'reform' to Medicare will make little difference to the long term viability of the program since the underlying problem is the skyrocketing healthcare costs in the US. If we had the same per capita costs as other countries we would be looking at long term budget surpluses.

The best thing for anyone who wants to know the truth behind this type of misinformation would be to start following the economist Dean Baker's blog http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/halloween-might-be-over-but-the-deficit-hawks-are-still-trying-to-scare-people

He is also totally wrong that Sweden has strict gun laws that require everyone to have a gun. Actually it is far more difficult to have a gun there than here.

Check out what they think the solution is over at sonoranalliance. http://sonoranalliance.com/2012/12/19/katie-hobbs-where-does-a-1st-grade-teacher-keep-her-gun/

The Ron Paul video says very little here is my point - Why is it libertarian to say the federal government can't restrict my rights in certain areas but state government can? What happens when local governments wish to restrict my liberty more than federal government? Off the top of my head two examples regarding minimum wage - the US and Indonesia in the 1990's. I don't think you understand the point about property or how state and private enterprise work together. For the former, I would look at some writings of economist Gene Callahan. Two instances of libertarians being supportive of authoritarianism - Hayek and Pinochet. Mises and Mussolini. You can also find many examples of libertarians - Patri Friedman, for instance - denouncing democracy. Hans Herman Hoppe is clearly an authoritarian as is Lew Rockwell.

Across the world there are many wonderful movements which use the term libertarian that would be unrecognizable to US libertarians and I think it is worthwhile to point this out as below I am only speaking of what is called libertarianism here. What is called libertarianism in the US does suffer from some serious shortcomings. One is that many of the libertarians (Ron Paul is a perfect example) are really just people who want to impose their own reading of the US Constitution on the country and see things through that lens. Paul doesn't necessarily believe in more liberty for people, he just thinks these laws should be made at the state level. A second major problem is that libertarianism has adopted Austrian Economics as its way of viewing economics. This is unfortunate for them since the Austrian position is not one which deals with data and analysis but is rather a philosophy with many a priori assumptions one must believe. The minimum wage argument is a perfect example. According to Austrians, having a minimum wage or increasing it leads to all sorts of negative consequences. However, these results are just not seen in the real world when the wage is increased or in comparing countries with and without minimum wages. There are many examples like this which winds up making their economic arguments very weak. There are numerous issues which are not satisfactorily dealt with as well - thus the simplicity. What about inherited wealth? That is a big one. Also, they don't seem to understand that property is not a 'thing' but a system of definitions which have developed as a social construct over centuries of history. There is also a serious insensitivity to the very real results of power at the intersection of the state and private enterprise. We see this in the belief that the Civil Rights Act was some type of abomination. Lastly, it is quite clear that people don't want to have the type of government that libertarians envision and this would necessitate developing a state which would make it impossible for the majority of people to have significant say in the making of laws. It has not been uncommon for libertarians to heap praise on leaders of other countries who use state power to do away with 'collectivist' (as they would put it) policies. This along with the adherence to a certain reading of the Constitution (particularly a reading which more closely resembles the Confederate Constitution than what was even historically understood) leads me to a serious concern about what they would actually do if given a chance to govern.

Jeff Simpson - States did vote to secede and the federal government ignored these votes (which they should have). Because the US government would not leave Fort Sumter after South Caroline seceded, South Carolina troops bombarded it. Not sure what distinction you are trying to draw here, but I don't think you have your history right. What I find beyond stupid about HRC 2004 is the idea that Arizona 'possesses' air and water. I know many of the legislators who approved this aren't believers in science, but this is just moronic.

This is a rather tenuous thread, but I found it interesting that Fox News and CNN came out of the gate reporting the ACA had been declared unconstitutional. They are chalking this up to confusion about the ruling, but I wonder if they had been tipped off to expect a different ruling. Pundits have opined that SCOTUS does not leak, but I wonder.... Maybe this change was very last minute.

The summary of what was upheld is totally wrong. if we didn't know it before, this is clear evidence that our press corps are just incapable of covering even the most marginally complex issues.

Latinos aren't going to not go to the polls because they listen to Morales, but Democrats are going to face a hard time if they don't bother to listen to what he is saying. Some Democrats have been outspoken in opposition to SB1070 and the overall climate of hate being drummed up by the nativist GOP in the state. However, a depressing number of Democratic candidates have shown complete cowardice around these issues and this is certainly going to have an effect among voters. The party is also doing inexplicable things like getting behind the truly horrid loser Anne Kirkpatrick instead of looking to new faces like Wenona Benally Baldenegro.

Dr. Eric Novack - doesn't he work at AFP? But he doesn't remember who asked him to be on the board of CPPR? Uh, huh. Right.

Isn't this the baby of that GI Hack Dranias? I think some people tried to explain to him once that air is not contained within state boundaries but he was too dumb to understand.

Yes, I can see that Gannett would want to avoid being sued, I just don't see how Three Sonorans is in any way related to the Crystal Cox case. 1. Cox was defaming people so that she could attempt to collect money from them. There is no evidence that Morales has been doing this. 2. Three Sonorans clearly falls under freedom of the press protections and sets a rather high bar for defamation. 3. Of course public figures don't like people writing negative things about them, and I am sure often threaten to sue for defamation, but everyone knows these are just threats since actually winning would be nearly impossible.