However, instead of being treated to an impromptu concert from a bad techno band, we're being startled awake by the car alarm on an late model Honda parked across the street.

This has lead to an inevitable conclusion. If you have and use an audible car alarm on your car or truck, you fit into one of three categories: Idiot, jackass or both.

Whether you think the car alarm is an effective theft deterrent or simply don't care that they are more annoying than a screaming baby in a quiet restaurant, you're out of touch with reality.

The Problem with Car Alarms

The biggest problem with car alarms is that they do nothing to reduce theft. A 1997 study by the insurance industry looked at the claims of over 73 million cars and found that the net effect of audible car alarms was zero.

The reason is two fold. First, no one connects a car alarm with a theft in progress. We're so used to alarms going off for no reason at tall that almost no one takes action when they hear an alarm. Generally, the only times the police are called are when the car alarm has been going on so long that residents wish it would be stolen, in the form of a police impound, or at least the owner be ticketed.

Second, professional thieves, who steal the bulk of cars, can disable an audible alarm in almost no time at all. Though it might be an obstacle to joyriders, the professionals simply do not care.

But this ineffective security comes at a very high price. Car alarms are the number one noise complaint in most cities, including New York, and can result in fines, impounding and other actions. In San Francisco, police are authorized to cut battery cables on a vehicle with a car alarm, New York has impounded some 7000 vehicles for excessive noise and the list of potential repercussions goes on.

The Human Side

Of course, these problems only account for issues faced by car owners. The pubic at large has even more issues to deal with.

Car alarms, and other loud noises, have been related to high blood pressure, stress, sleeplessness, breakdown in civility and countless other physiological and sociological ills.

Some studies have shown that prolonged loud noises can hinder concentration, learning and even reading ability in children. It can also make them less attentive in class and, in some cases, more prone to be disruptive.

To date, no study has found positive benefits to exposure to loud noises. The mind, body and community all suffers when subjected to ongoing high volumes of noise.

Alternatives

This is not to say that you can't take security precautions to protect your vehicle, just that you shouldn't use ineffective, noisy and annoying audible alarms. There are plenty of more effective and less annoying methods to protect your property.

• Immobilizers: Immobilzers are products which prevent cars from being started without the proper key. They work by planting a microchip into the key and, without said chip in the ignition, the car will fail to start. This is dubbed the most effective anti-theft tool and is standard on all Ford and most GM vehicles.
• Steering Wheel/Brake Locks: Though steering wheel locks, such as "The Club", can be somewhat easily beaten by professional thieves, others are more difficult and brake locks, which prevent a thief from depressing the brake and getting the vehicle out of park are considered very effective.
• Silent Pages: Unlike audible alarms, which are easily disabled, do not attract attention and may not alert the owner effectively, silent pagers alert the owner without sounding an audible alarm, are less likely to be disabled and can actually help the owner respond in an effective way.

Conclusions

In the end, there is no reason to use an audible car alarm, let alone buy one. If you're looking into effective ways to protect your investment, save your money for something that does more than just annoy your neighbors.

It's time for the car alarm to be put to bed, so the rest of us can do the same.

Now that promise is just one of the many broken ones New Orleans is trying to piece together. Much like the levees that could withstand a category three hurricane, the buses that never came, the government loans cut short and the insurance money that, for many, will never come, the promise of sweeping recovery and massive government aid is just a ghost that continues to haunt the city as it tries to move on.

Worse still, many are debating whether or not the city should be rebuilt at all and, if it is, whether any Federal money should be spent on it. In their minds, the city invited trouble by existing below sea level. After all, they say, this type of disaster was inevitable and will just happen again, perhaps worse, if it's rebuilt. They've already taken to calling New Orleans "America's Atlantis" and have written off the city as a footnote in history.

New Orleans, however, is not dead, but it is living off of a steady diet of MREs and broken promises. Promises fed by the government, at all levels, and promises that we now need to collect on, one way or another if we hope to survive.

Abandonment

Many wonder aloud whether or not the city is worth being rebuilt. It's a well known fact that the city is slowly sinking, that nature is quickly trying to turn New Orleans into an island and that much of the city was built upon poorly engineered soil. Though other countries, such as the Netherlands, have little problem dealing with such challenges, people still say that New Orleans is doomed and that no amount of repair work is going to change that.

Furthermore, they say that what happened to the lives in New Orleans is the fault of those who made the choice to live there, not the engineers who told them that the levees were safe or the officials who were tasked with making sure the city was prepared. They want to look for any reason to avoid spending federal money on the city while dodging the guilt and shame that would come with ignoring the cries of thousands of needy people.

If one wants to skip on giving Federal aid because the disaster was "inevitable" and is likely to happen again, that's fine. But one has to apply such a policy fairly and that means not giving any funds to San Francisco when another earthquake hits, any Midwestern city that get struck by a tornado, any village along a river that gets flooded, any coastal city when a hurricane strikes, New York City or Washington D.C. when another terrorist attack hits, or any other city with a disaster that was in any way predictable and likely to be repeated.

If you think that such a policy would be cruel but that, somehow, New Orleans is an exception, you have to ask yourself why. Aren't all of the above disasters just as predictable and at least as likely as what happened to New Orleans? It is a bitter pill to swallow, but it is the cold truth.

The fact is most people who want to abandon the city, want to do so not because it's impractical to sustain it, 14 billion dollars to shore up the levees and protect the city against erosion is well within the reach of the world's wealthiest nation, but because of Katrina burnout. With the startling images off of our TVs and the memory of that dark September fading, people don't want to foot the bill for major disaster relief. The heartstrings are exhausted and the minds have long since forgotten.

In short, people just don't care anymore and the excuses for why it is ok not to care have already started. Much of the nation wants to move on and is willing to leave New Orleans behind in the process.

It makes you wonder though, exactly what country am I in?

Reasons Not to Leave

Though no city should ever have to justify its existence, New Orleans does have an easier time than most in doing so. In addition to being one of America's most unique cities, especially in terms of culture, being a famed city of both song and literature alike, being an integral part of American culture and being one of the nation's most popular tourist destinations, New Orleans has a lot to offer the country in more practical terms.

The Port of New Orleans, for example, is the world’s largest port system and the only deepwater port in the country with proximity to six “class one” railroads. New Orleans business district, known as the CBD, is one of the country's largest and was ranked by Expansion Management Magazine as being the fourth biggest "hot market" and Inc., a popular business magazine, also ranked the city itself as the eighteenth best market for doing business.

New Orleans is also critical for the production of oil and natural gas; many large oil companies have critical facilities, including refineries and pipelines, in and around the city and use New Orleans as a base for their offshore activities. The state of Louisiana, spear-headed by its New Orleans facility, produces 1.62 million barrels of oil a day and leads the country in natural gas infrastructure.

Finally, New Orleans is one of the few places in the country where manufacturing is still thriving, especially in the shipbuilding industry with large companies such as Northrup Gruman and Bollinger Shipyards employing thousands of workers.

In the end, even if you don't agree with the humanitarian reasons for investing in New Orleans, it's plain to see that it makes good financial sense. When the local economy offers so much to the state and to the country, much of it due to the city's location and history, it's easy to see why investing in it is not just the right thing to do, but also good business.

One would think that our government, if nothing else, would understand money well enough to know a good deal when it sees one.

Apparently though, that is simply not the case.

Trying to Move On

Despite the promises, the humanitarian needs and logical reasons, New Orleans is having to press on largely without federal aid. As FEMA caps aid to the city and bills to rebuild the levees and protect the city sit idle in Congress, New Orleans tries to move on. Its residents, those that have returned, have begun the process of rebuilding with their own funds, what insurance money they are able to get and what federal assistance is available.

Though jobs are plentiful in the city, there is little housing to sustain them. Most of those who are in the city now either sustained little damage to their homes or are workers here solely to do hurricane repair.

While the city is certainly alive and coming back into its own, that heartbeat is being sustained by locals, here and scattered throughout the country, that are keeping it going. We are not America's Atlantis yet but, without help from our countrymen, we very likely will be.

It's time for the government to fulfill the promises that they made, both before and after Katrina, and for all of us to band together and help rebuild one of the country's greatest and unique cities.

We can do it, the resources and plans are there to make it happen, we just have to be willing to work in order to make it happen.

Nonetheless, Intelligent Design (ID) supporters, many of them former creationists, want to make it clear that the Theory of Evolution isn't perfect and that there are alternatives to it. They want to force disclaimers in the classroom, place stickers on textbooks and make it clear to students that Darwin's theory is not beyond reproach.

While I have no problem with encouraging students to question scientific theories. I am disturbed that supporters of ID are only interested in questioning the Theory of Evolution. After all, quantum physics is a theory, relativity is a theory and most of what we now call modern science is theory.

But the reason we don't see communities rallying against the theory of relativity is that the conversion of energy into matter isn't mentioned anywhere in a religious text that I've read. No one's view of God or their faith in respect to the matter is affected by Albert Einstein's theory. So, despite the flaws and problems with that theory, science teachers can continue talking about it as if it were scientific fact, with no stickers or disclaimers required.

Clearly, this attack on the Theory of Evolution has less to do with good science and more to do with protecting God and putting him back, even if only in a small way, into our science classrooms. If ID supporters were interested in creating good scientists, they would attach their warnings and disclaimers to all theories, not just the one that they view as attacking their religious beliefs.

Thus, even if the ID theory has scientific merit, which is questionable considering the dubious scientific process most of their scientists have used, it is clearly being introduced for the wrong reasons. Furthermore, where the Theory of Evolution had to fight for decades to be accepted, with many good scientists collecting evidence to support it, ID wants to be accepted and integrated into the classroom today, with very little evidence to support it and few mainstream scientists putting stock in it.

Worse still, most of the evidence supporters of ID bring to the table is little more than holes in the existing theories. They offer no proof as to why these holes are explained by the existence of an outside intelligence and only say that they must be. But even as they assume that no other logical explanations are available, other scientists have been offering them while others have worked to test their theories.

This "no other explanation" theory seems to claim that Evolution is a done deal and that the theory is never going to be tweaked, improved or modified. However, all scientific theory is prone to that and nothing is set in stone to a true practitioner of science. After all, nearly every great scientific discovery has been either by accident or someone simply questioning the status quo and proving it wrong.

In the end, the Theory of Evolution is a testament to the very concept thereof. It is evolving rapidly and improving itself to defend against threats. It's an homage to how the scientific method is supposed to work and, though it is imperfect, so is all life and all ideas on the planet.

If supporters of ID want to help science, they should encourage questioning of all theories, not just the ones that fly against their personal and political agenda, and back up their theory with hard facts, not just conjecture and hole-punching.

Finally, they need to be aware that their theory, if it becomes accepted, will be tested and questioned much like how they have tested and questioned evolution. They need to be ready for that inevitability both personally and scientifically.

However, given the personal nature of this war to date, I doubt that they will be. After all, it's hard to be unbiased when you feel that your faith is being challenged. That rage is understandable, but it has no place in the scientific process or the science classroom.

I’ve just about seen and heard it all, but the only thing that I've learned is that no one seems to understand what really is going on.

Everyone, from what I gather, wants to put the blame on one person or entity, either in an attempt to put it on someone that they don't like, or to shift it from someone that they do. Everyone's looking for that one easy person or entity that can shoulder all of the blame and be the scapegoat for all of the misery. Unfortunately, they're all dead wrong, even as their facts are dead right.

Some want to blame President Bush. After all, he's the one who loaded up FEMA with campaign contributors and friends that had no disaster experience. He's the one who didn't take off from his vacation until three days after the hurricane hit and he's the one who took funds away from the project to strengthen New Orleans' levees in order to fund the Iraq war.

Some want to blame the Louisiana state government. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, did wait nearly a week to ask for Military help, didn't effectively mobilize the Louisiana National Guard until after everything went sour and didn't get troops into the city until several days after the flooding started.

Finally, others still want to blame local politicians. It was Mayor Ray Nagin, after all, who waited until the last possible second to order the mandatory evacuation and offered substandard aid to the poor who needed help evacuating. Also, it was local corruption that siphoned off much of the funds intended to upgrade and repair the levees protecting the city.

But the truth is, despite all of the sound bytes, that this wasn't a failure of one single entity. Everyone, from the President all the way down to the city council, failed to do their job. What happened in New Orleans wasn't a mistake by one person or entity, but a massive failure across local, state and federal lines.

Rather than trying to cast blame or turn this into some kind of political advantage, we need to be addressing the fundamental questions that this raises. Namely, what do we, as citizens of the United States, expect our government to do for us and why is it that our government failed to do it. These are difficult questions that cut straight to the very core of our system of government and the structure of it. They aren't easy and there are no simple answers.

Because one thing that we all seem to agree on, right left, libertarian, authoritarian and centrist alike, is that the government has a role to protect citizens from one another, foreign nations and natural disasters. It's shameful that our response to the tsunami in Indonesia was quicker than the response to a disaster on our own soil. Though masters of saving the world and the veritable police force of the known universe, we falter when an easily predicted disaster happens on our own shores.

No, this disaster wasn't preventable, but it was predictable. The residents of New Orleans were well aware of the possibility and volumes have been written on it in various government disaster planning guides. No one can say that they didn't see it coming and much could have been done years ago to stop some of the worst elements of it.

Even if one argues that there was no means of shoring up the levees or working to actually stop the flood, there's no doubt that there was several days warning that the hurricane was going to hit and that much of the infrastructure needed to recover from such a disaster could have been in place beforehand. After all, we shouldn't have to wait days for food, soldiers and transportation to get to the area. Not when nature gave 72 hours advance notice to start with.

The fact that our government, on every level, could drop the ball so thoroughly shouldn't send us seeking out a scapegoat, but rather, it should shake our faith in the system we pledge allegiance to. When a government can't protect its own people, it is impotent. There is no nice way to say it.

My sincerest hope is that, out of this tragedy, a new conversation will arise about what we expect from our government and how we can best achieve it. I seriously hope that major restructuring, not just the bureaucratic kind, is on the way.

Clearly things need to change and it's painfully obvious that the people responsible for what happened aren't the ones to make the changes. Only we, the citizens can do that.

It's time to demand more from our government and put its focus back where it belongs. We've spent too long protecting the world so now we can't protect our own citizens. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it's one now painted in the misery following Katrina.

In this country, we look at the caged in ring, the bare knuckles (or small grapple gloves some leagues use), painful submission holds and occasional bloodied face with contempt. To us, such a sport is brutal if not outright barbaric. To further complicate matters, early UFC advertisements, many American’s first exposure to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) action, highly touted the danger to fighters, especially the risk of death.

However, in other nations, there’s no such disgust with MMA fights. In South America and Asia, MMA is a sport on par with soccer or baseball. Major events are televised nationally, sponsors line up and competitors make money on par with other national celebrities. To them, joining a martial arts school is like joining a little league team, it’s just a normal part of growing up.

Much like soccer, MMA is a sport where America is isolated from the world. Though we have many great competitors and are constantly creating new ones, they often have to go overseas to compete, either part time or full time, in order to make the most of their career. UFC is the only large-scale MMA event in the United States and it lags behind other leagues both in talent and reputation.

But unlike soccer, most of America’s problems with MMA stem from misinformation and confusion, not lack of interest. Because no matter what your local politician says, underneath the hype and the sound bytes lies a very serious and very safe sport, one that could easily be many times more popular than it is.

The Myths of MMA

Most people who feel strongly against MMA events base their arguments on one of three pieces of misinformation, each of which contribute to the lack of respect the sport gets in the United States

MMA is Dangerous

As with any contact sport, the risk of injury in MMA is high. However, many steps are taken to ensure that MMA matches are safe for everyone involved. Every element of the setup of an MMA event is done with safety in mind and, overall, MMA has a better safety record than boxing or kickboxing.

In boxing, the leading cause of death is brain damage. Brain damage is usually caused by repeated trauma to the head. Boxing matches can last up to 12 rounds, or thirty-six minutes of fight time, with near-constant blows to the head. Worse still, the padded boxing gloves do little to protect the fighters’ heads but are instead designed to protect the hands of the fighter throwing the punches. This encourages fighters to punch to the temple and side of the head, accelerating the damage done and actually increasing the risk of damage.

MMA matches, by comparison, are much shorter. The average match lasts only a few minutes and some last only a couple of seconds, almost all of that time spent on the ground. If an MMA match goes longer than fifteen minutes, it’s considered a marathon and an oddity. Furthermore, blows to the side and top of the head are actually very rare since hitting with bare knuckles or thin gloves is more likely to injure a hand or wrist than the person receiving the blows. Finally, referees in MMA matches stop fights quickly if a fighter receives too many unanswered blows, even if they’re still on their feet, contrast that with boxing where a knockdown followed by a ten count is usually required to stop a fight.

Another leading cause of injury in boxing is the ropes around the ring. Fighters can fall through the ropes, crashing to the floor below, or they can get backed up against them and take blows to the face, hyper-extending their neck as they arch backwards. Most MMA leagues, by comparison, use a tall cage that prevents such accidents. That’s why, even though we’re taught by Hollywood and professional wrestling that cage matches are brutal, in reality, they’re much safer than the alternative.

The truth is that the most common injuries from MMA matches are broken hands from incorrect punching and broken arms or legs from submission holds not tapped out of in time. Where 2-3 boxers die each year of head injuries, only one MMA fighter has died in recent memory, anywhere in the world, and he showed signs of head injury before he stepped into the ring. Most agree that if the fight had taken place in the United States or Asia (he was fighting in Ukraine), he wouldn’t have been allowed to compete.

In the end, MMA is safer than boxing ever could be and is on par with other full contact sports. Banning it or not sanctioning it on the grounds of safety is both misinformed and hypocritical. There is no way around it.

MMA Isn’t a Sport

A lot of Americans have the impression that MMA matches are just brawls and that leagues like the UFC are little more than fight clubs. While it’s true that most leagues try as hard as they can to closely simulate a street fight, there’s little denying that the matches look nothing like one.

This isn’t something that people just show up for randomly. MMA competitors are professional athletes and train year-around, non-stop, to compete. Unlike most other sports, there’s no “season” or downtime, events are held year around and all over the globe. For most, training is a full-time job as they condition both their bodies and minds to compete.

Second, even though MMA matches are short, that doesn’t mean they aren’t physically draining. A boxer can tell you exactly how tiring one three-minute round of stand-up fighting can be. Combine that with kicking, grappling and submission wrestling and you have a recipe for the most tiring five minutes of your life.

But most important of all, your average MMA match isn’t just a slug fest, it a contest of strength, skill and endurance and you have to know striking, grappling and submission wrestling to succeed. Sure, anyone can get into a fight, much like anyone can play football, but to do it safely and on a professional level requires a very high level of skill that can only come with a lifetime of commitment to the sport.

In the end, it’s no different than any other sport in terms of the athleticism, the strategy and the dedication that is required to succeed. If athletes in football, baseball and basketball deserve our respect, clearly so do MMA competitors.

MMA is Too Violent

As MMA has begun to gain traction in the United States, some people, including many in government, have said that it’s too violent for American TV. Though that definitely seems hypocritical in a country that airs shoot outs, car chases and other horrific scenes on the evening news, it’s a concern that’s made MMA almost impossible to sanction in many states.

Simply put though, anyone who says MMA is too violent has never watched a full event. Instead, they’ve almost certainly had their information filtered and probably watched nothing but a few short clips, more akin to highlight reels. Based upon that, it’s easy to see how they were led to believe that it’s a veritable bloodsport when, normally, nothing can be further from the truth. Yes, there are some very violent moments, but judging MMA based on those flashes in the pan is akin to judging football or hockey solely on their “hardest hits” reels. It’s unfair and leads to false conclusions.

Any contact sport will have violent moments, be them hard checks, stiff shots or vicious tackles. It doesn’t matter if you play football, hockey, soccer or even baseball, violence happens. However, in all cases, the actual sport winds up looking very different from the highlight reel.

Most MMA contests are fought more like chess matches than brutal bloodbaths. It’s very rare for fighters to simply trade blows and most fights take place on the ground with both competitors seeking a submission ending. Knockouts do happen and blood is sometimes spilled, but both are relatively rare occurrences. Contrast with boxing, where the only way to win is to punch your opponent repeatedly, and one begins to wonder what is more violent, a sport that encourages brain jarring punching or a ground fighting chess match where few punches are thrown and, for the most part, no damage is done.

Given both MMA’s popularity in countries much more squeamish about violence than the United States and the violent content already available both in our movies and on our television, MMA seems very tame, even if one dismisses the boxing comparison.

After all, no one gets shot, blown up, run over by a car, stabbed or beaten with any other kind of weapon. That automatically makes it less violent than your average cartoon.

In the end, MMA has the potential to be the next great American sport but, instead, is stifled by misinformation and hypocrisy. Though the industry does have itself to blame for many of these problems, the time has clearly come for America to wake up and appreciate MMA for what it is, an age old contest played out by trained athletes in a safe environment.

Which, from what I’ve gathered, is the very definition of the word sport.

However, now that the dust has settled, the manhunt called off and the truth is known, authorities and the nation at large face the difficult question of what to do with her. Police point to several laws that her feigned kidnapping broke and the city of Duluth, population barely over 20,000, wasted nearly sixty thousand dollars looking for the woman and her imaginary abductors.

However, the issues isn't as complicated as the media would like us to think it is. For, no matter how much we all find this runaway bride, so scared by her impending grand wedding that she feigned her own kidnapping, a sympathetic character, we have to take any and all appropriate action against her. Even though we've all been scared and done dumb things, the truth is those stupid decisions do carry consequences and we've all paid them. To let her off the hook because we sympathize with her not only creates a two-tier justice system, but is a slap to everyone who has paid in full.

The simple truth is that there is a right way and a wrong way to handle these types of things. Yes, calling off a grand wedding a few days before it was due to take place is a very stressful thing and a very unpopular decision, but there is an established protocol for doing it. At the very least, when she placed her now-famous call claiming to be kidnapped, she could have come clean and told the truth. Yes, people would have been angry, but at least they wouldn't have worried nor would they have involved the entire country in a massive search for her. Most importantly of all, no laws would have been broken and these lingering questions would not be hanging around.

This is a free country, even though it doesn't seem that way sometimes. In the United States, you are perfectly free to go anywhere, anytime, and to call off your wedding, no matter how grand, in the moments before. However, as a matter of courtesy, we all ask that you actually deal with the problems such a move creates and, as a matter of law, not do anything that would waste the time and resources of police and authorities.

However, the problem is that Ms. Wilbanks didn't want to deal with the consequences of her decision to call off the wedding, that's why she made up the story, and she doesn't want to deal with the natural consequences of her lies today. She's expressed only mild remorse for what she's done and the damage she's caused. After all, while police all over the country were looking for her, they could have been solving real crimes and her friends and family could have been moving on with their lives, not spending every waking moment looking for her.

She probably didn't expect this to go as far as it did, that much is certain, but she had to know that filing a false police report and making false statements to authorities are both crimes. Furthermore, even if she didn't know what the outcome would be, she had to know that some public funds would be spent finding her. Even though there's a lot wrong with this country, we're not in the habit of letting people be kidnapped without making an effort to look for them.

In the end, Ms. Wilbanks isn't a sympathetic character at all. She's a selfish woman who feigned a kidnapping because she didn't want to deal with the consequences of canceling a wedding. She wasn't responsible enough to look her friends, family and husband-to-be in the eye and tell the truth. Instead, she created a story that sparked a nationwide manhunt and news sensation. It was a poor decision, to put it mildly, but now she's trying to skirt the consequences that come with that as well.

At some point we, as a nation, have to put our foot down and make people take responsibility for their decisions, even when they don't want to. That's exactly what our legal system, both criminal and civil, is there for and it's time we used it accordingly.

If we don't, there's not much point in having it at all.

However, for almost every week, no one does anything about it.

The reason is that we have a justice system in place. It is imperfect, as is any system run by human beings, but it is there for a reason and it has a set of rules that it has to follow. Order must be preserved, the rule of law must be followed and, most importantly, everyone must be equal before the eye of the court.

Of course, we all understand that, in reality, not everyone is equal before the court and the recent Terri Schiavo only further illustrates that fact.

Simply put, Mrs. Shiavo's parents have something that no rape victim or innocent death row inmate will ever have, an act of congress to give them one more shot at getting the verdict they want.

For anyone else in the country, the case would be settled. Mrs. Shiavo's parents have had their day in court, many of them in fact, and have consistently lost as judge after judge has found in favor of Mrs. Shiavo's husband. Under current law, the case had gone as far as it could and was, in effect, over.

But Congress, like many Americans, decided it didn't like the verdict and was vocal about it, which is a fundamental right of every American. However Congress, unlike the rest of America, decided that it was going to do something about it and that it had the authority to intervene directly.

In effect, our legislature bent the laws governing the separation of powers and gave Terri's parents a “do over”. More to the point, they kicked the case over to federal court, even after a federal judge had repeatedly said he didn't have jurisdiction over the matter, effectively twisting the judicial system in a bid to get the verdict they want.

Yes, the Shiavo case deals with some difficult issues and, yes, the outcome of it is uneasy, as is any outcome in such a matter. However, that is what judges are for, to listen to the facts, look at the law, consider the best interest of the party involved and make difficult decisions in very charged cases. Not every verdict is loved or even liked, but that is no excuse for people who know little about the facts of the case to step in and undermine the system.

What makes the Shiavo case so different isn't that there was an unpopular verdict, but rather, that it deals with a politically charged issue and has spent so much time in the news. It's no longer about Shiavo, her family or even the right to die, it's about politicians looking good for the voters, even if it means ignoring nation-wide problems, bending constitutional limitations on their power and overruling judges who know far more about the case than they.

Congress' job, supposedly, is to make laws, not enforce them. However, they've sent a clear message that, if they don't get the verdict they like in a controversial case, they'll just keep using their powers until they either get the verdict they like or they run out of judges to put it in front of.

Worse still, the federal judge who gets the case has a clear idea of what verdict Washington D.C. wants and his position is directly appointed by the President with approval from Congress. Like an employee critical of his boss' plan, he has no chance of being impartial because his livelihood is on the line.

But perhaps the greatest injustice of all is that, if Congress is so hell-bent on using its power to manhandle the justice system, there are plenty of cases where justice was clearly denied. Given all of the times the justice system has obviously failed us, a series of Florida judges making unpopular decisions in a very difficult and controversial case seems rather minor.

In the end, this is an abuse of power in the worst possible way. It's a bending of the constitution, a trampling of our judicial system and a thumb to the eye of every citizen denied justice. All for a case with no easy answer and no hope for a happy ending.

No one can find justice when the judicial system is undermined and those who undermine it have forsaken the ideals it was founded upon. However, that's exactly the situation we're heading for if this type of bullying is allowed to continue.

Because, as imperfect as our justice system is, we have to let it work. Piecemeal justice means justice for none but those who are somehow deemed worthy. There's no way for everyone to be equal in such an environment and equality, supposedly, is our most cherished value of all.

If there ever were an example of corporations buying their way into politician's ears, this is it. This is legislation that, on its face, is designed to tighten the screws on the poor and destitute in order to put more money in the pockets of the rich. It's the Robin Hood mentality in reverse and no one is denying it.

The problem isn't that real bankruptcy reform isn't needed, it is. Many people go through bankruptcy when they make well over $100,000 a year (often times over a million) and use it to discharge debts under chapter seven laws when they could, with changes in lifestyle, probably repay most of their debts. That's a scam of the worst kind, it hurts all honest people, and something does need to be done.

Instead, the issue with the recent legislation is that it's obstructionist. If the only purpose of the reform were to prevent the rich from turning to the system to eliminate debt to protect their lifestyle, I would be all ears. However, much of the reform is going to affect the poor, the working class saddled with medical bills and others unduly burdened.

Many bullet points of the legislation, such as the tests required to see if you quality for chapter seven (where debts are erased), threats of fines against lawyers who provide false information and forced credit counseling for all going into bankruptcy, sound like great ideas, but will only serve double the cost of the average bankruptcy, making it harder for the poor to obtain.

Right now, most bankruptcy clients can barely scrape together the $1,000 or so needed to file (attorney fees plus court costs). If that number doubles, it's possible only those who don't need bankruptcy will be able to afford the protection. Furthermore, trustees, lawyers and even judges are worried about the extra burden placed on them by this new legislation. The legal system simply isn't ready for this level of fact-checking and many are worried that the system, barely limping along now, will grind to a halt.

All of this, however, suits credit card companies nicely. They pushed forth this legislation and used their extensive resources to keep it bouncing around Washington's court for eight years, until a Republican-controlled Congress was available to make it happen.

In their minds, the credit card companies are the innocent victims here in dire need of protection. After all, every time someone discharges their debts under chapter seven bankruptcy, they lose thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, when they're crying for help from the government, they leave out the fact that they, over the past quarter century, have largely caused the recent bankruptcy crisis and that they could change the role bankruptcy plays in our society with simple reforms on their end.

The Wolf Who Cried Sheep

Credit cards, originally, were a sign of wealth. How many you had and what kind you had told people how much you had in the bank. Women would joke about checking out a guy’s wallet for credit cards to see how wealthy he was. For a long time, credit cards were difficult to get and only the wealthiest could afford them. This made perfect sense considering that credit cards are, fundamentally, unsecured loans

Somewhere along the way, credit card companies realized that there was money to be made by targeting everyday consumers. To cover the added risk, credit card companies raised interest rates, now over 20% in many cases, and saddled those who pay their bills with additional debts to cover those who didn't.

As wide-spread credit card use became more profitable, competition between companies became cutthroat. They began targeting younger and younger consumers, even showing up at college campuses on the first day of class to catch the new freshmen before someone else did. These days, no sooner do you turn eighteen than credit card offers start pouring in through the mail, phone and everywhere else.

Worse still, these offers are hardly what one would call honest. They come with low initial interest rates that balloon out of control after six months or a year. These “submarine charges” lay and wait below the surface, relying on unsuspecting card holders to either fail to read the fine print or lose track of time in order to torpedo them high debt.

In no other industry, save possibly auto sales and mortgages (both debt-generating fields), are such tactics even tolerated. Currently the cell phone industry is being taken to the rack by the government for hiding charges in its fine print, cable companies got the same treatment years ago. However, credit card companies use deceptive marketing and fine print to surprise consumers and are only met with hushed silence from our lawmakers.

They have, with their own practices, created an environment ripe for bankruptcy. Furthermore, whether they like to admit it or not, they did all of this underneath the current bankruptcy system and they've made a mint doing it. The credit card industry is now a multi-trillion dollar industry and it's done it all with full knowledge that, at just about any time, a debtor can absolve his debts using bankruptcy.

They might not like the current system, but they've worked under it for 25 years and done almost nothing to fix the problem. Much like the anti-smoking campaign paid for by the cigarette companies, under government order, the “responsible credit” campaign by the credit card companies ring hollow and empty. Behind closed doors, they encourage people to maintain high balances, even calling those who pay off their cards monthly “deadbeats”. They want you to max out your credit cards the same way big tobacco secretly wants your son or daughter hooked on cigarettes by the time they're thirteen.

In the end, their whole business model, like that of tobacco companies, relies on people engaging in behavior that is inherently bad for them, the exact kind of behavior that leads people into bankruptcy court.

You First

The need for bankruptcy reform is obvious. When millionaires can make debts disappear simply because they don't want to undergo a lifestyle change, there's a clear problem. But with the majority of bankruptcies involving credit cards, in one way or another, it makes sense to reform the industry that encourages the behavior first or at least at the same time.

To continue the cigarette company analogy, it would be like mandating harsher punishments for children who start smoking without first asking the cigarette companies to change their marketing strategy. Everyone in the bankruptcy equation, creditors and debtors, have a responsibility to behave in an appropriate manner and neither side has been doing their jobs.

As such, if credit card companies want bankruptcy reform so badly, they should agree to reforms of their own as well. Among those reforms should include:

1. Ending deceptive marketing practices – The practice of introductory interest rates should be eliminated. Also, unfair increases in interest rate, usually without any notification, should be done away with. At the very least, the real interest rate and the real terms of the card should be listed alongside the introductory one, not in the fine print.
   
2. Ceasing the Targeting of College Students – Right now, college students are a prime target for credit card companies. Ads in college papers, booths set up on campuses and sponsored events all entice college students (often with “free” gifts), many of whom have never had any real education in dealing with credit, to get credit cards and use them, often times, ruining their credit for the rest of their lives.
   
3. Setting Higher Standards – Right now, almost anyone can get a card. Pretty much anyone over the age of eighteen can find someone, somewhere, willing to give them a credit card. If standards were applied to ensure that people not already overburdened by debt couldn't take on more, fewer bankruptcies would occur. This would make it so that responsible credit card companies wouldn't take losses from bankruptcies irresponsible ones caused.
   
4. Promote Responsible Credit – As advertisers spending millions to shape the image of their product, credit card companies have the ability to shape how people use the product. If they were to promote responsible usage, much like alcohol companies do now, they might be able to change attitudes. Combine that with an information campaign designed to teach laymen about credit and credit cards, they can go a long way to reshaping how most people use credit cards and helping people avoid bankruptcies.
   
5. Work with Debtors in Trouble – The viciousness of the credit card industry is well known and documented. Payments just hours late are slammed with huge charges, people who fall behind due to lost jobs or medical bills are threatened by collection agencies and have their credit ruined to the point that bankruptcy is a relief, not a credit burden. If credit card companies, all of them, not just some, reigned in their tactics a bit and worked with willing debtors, without damaging their credit, many bankruptcies could be avoided.

The beautiful thing about all of these steps is that they can all be taken without government intervention. All that's required is an industry-wide effort toward responsibility.

Unfortunately though, the credit card industry has proved that it's not capable of responsible behavior and, when their behavior gets them in the smallest amount of trouble, they turn to their pals in Congress to tighten the screws on those they have been taking advantage of.

Because all this bankruptcy reform is going to do is make it so that only the rich can afford the attorneys who can find the loopholes in order to eliminate debt. That leaves the poor to borrow or scrape together the money to attempt one at all. No one but the credit card companies win and that is precisely who this law is for.

So, who really is running this country? The answer is surprisingly clear.

In that regard, I consider it a smashing success.

However, what I've found most interesting is watching how people respond to my opinions. Through comments and email, I hear, pretty much every day, what others think about my work and my opinions. I hear the good, the bad and the ugly loud and clear.

Some of the comments praise my thoughts, others criticize them, some defend me, and some threaten to kill me. However, a select few point out issues that I missed or make me realize that there's a need for clarification on a point.

Though, to date, I haven't reversed my opinion on any of the subjects, there have been a few I wish I could revisit in light of the feedback I've gotten. So, rather than create a series of sequel columns, I'm answering some of the charges and questions here.

So, with no further ado, I'll get into the columns in question.

No "Fat Chicks" Allowed (link)

I've heard more back about this column than any other. Though it lags way behind in terms of comments, the bevy of email I've gotten regarding it has blown me away.

However, there's been a constant criticism based on the theory that I'm completely ignoring America's obesity problem and that I am somehow encouraging unhealthy behavior.

I grant, I didn't make this very clear and I didn't come right out and say as such (I didn't think it was needed) but I do believe that obesity is a major problem, especially in the United States.

However, look at the very first sentence of the piece, the average dress size, pretty much all over the industrialized world, including nations without major obesity problems, is fourteen.

That's a bitter pill to swallow, especially for people who have starved themselves and worked out to fit the American standard of beauty, which is in the low single digits, but it is true and it's a figure that stands in nations that are practically devoid of obesity AND eating disorders.

The truth is that, by birth, every woman is different and some women, no matter what, will never be "thin". Medicine is growing to accept the idea of different body types; it's the world that lags behind.

If you need proof, someone very close to me had a battle with anorexia when she was a teenager. She starved herself so much she made herself ill and was almost put into a hospital. It's one of the saddest stories I know, but even at the lowest point in her disease, she never dropped below a size 12.

Now, are you going to tell this girl that she should aspire to be "thin"? That she's not healthier at a size fourteen or sixteen than she would be at an eight or a six?

If I'm insensitive to the obesity problem it's because I'm very sensitive to the psychological and physical damage a bad body image can do to someone. Yes, obesity comes with medical problems, but so do depression, anorexia, bulimia, social anxiety and all of the other side effects from a negative self image.

Yes, everyone should strive to be healthy, but some women will never be thin and telling everyone that they should aspire to be as such nothing short of a psychological browbeating on a nation-wide scale. These women need to know the truth that they are beautiful and society needs to accept that.

Because, until it does, we're not going to fix ANY of our weight problems…

The Legalization of Marijuana (link)

Very few people have said anything negative about this piece.

However, those who have have never been able to attack my logic. My fundamental argument, which is that keeping marijuana illegal while cigarettes and alcohol remain available is hypocritical, has never been attacked.

Instead, in my opinion, the biggest threat to my argument has come from my fellow supporters. One of the biggest problems the marijuana community faces is a public perception that it's filled stupid, disrespectful and foul-mouthed youths who lack morals, ambition or intellect.

Yet, if you read the comments to the piece, they go to great lengths to further that image. A vast majority offer little of value, many contain obscenities and several promote risky or just plain asinine behavior. Though there are many great and thought-provoking comments to the piece there, they are drowned quickly in a sea of all caps and obscenities.

In the end, I feel as if I've done the marijuana community a great disservice. Though my arguments are valid and I stand by them, I also gave a forum that furthered the negative images others have of pot smokers. Though I initially deleted these comments, I realized that it violated my own TOS to do so and now no comment that doesn't outright violate my TOS isn't removed, even if drives another nail into my argument.

Still though, I always cringe when I get another comment for this piece in my inbox. It's rarely pretty and even now, following my TOS strictly, I have to delete many of them.

Sometimes, what you see is only the tip of the iceberg.

Why Telemarketers Are Evil… (link)

This one hasn't generated a lot of comments nor has it carried much weight in my inbox. However, it did get me the one letter that has stood out in my mind the most.

Many weeks after posting it and just a few days before the do not call list was to take effect. I got a scathing three-page letter from the wife of an owner of a major telemarketing company.

The letter, by in large, failed to address my arguments at all. Instead, the main thrust of her letter was spent accusing me of taking food off her family's table and detailing her celebration for when the "Do Not Call" list was stricken down in court.

Luckily, she was very wrong.

The one comment she did make that stuck was her accusation that I was betraying the notion of free speech. In her mind, my support of this restriction was tantamount to treason against free press.

I do have to admit that, as a Libertarian, this is a bit against my principles. After all, I consider myself a true freedom fighter and I oppose government regulation whenever it can be avoided.

However, a free society depends on personal responsibility. Telemarketers have shown a great deal of irresponsibility not only to their advertisers by wasting precious dollars on people who don't want to hear any messages from them, but also to the populace.

Furthermore, where we can avoid other forms of advertising by not picking up the magazine, driving a different way to work or turning off the TV, telemarketing calls are intrusive, reaching into our homes, and can not be avoided.

Nonetheless, if telemarketers would have honored their own lists, like the one published by the DMA, I never would have supported this initiative. But despite being on the DMA’s list for years, I still received telemarketing calls almost daily and it was painfully clear that self-regulation wasn't going to be enough.

Because when you're dealing with an industry that has no respect for the advertisers it serves or the populace it's trying to reach, government interaction becomes a necessary evil. All I'm doing is choosing the lesser of the two injustices.

There's nothing complicated about that.

And that's why, as I look at the world we're creating, I am terrified to no end.

We are creating a country where sex, especially homosexual sex, is more vulgar and despicable than war. It's a country where a dictator in his own country is more evil than an unprovoked invasion and a government that lies to us is rewarded with re-election, not a subpoena.

We are creating a country where we surrender freedom after freedom with no guarantee of security. It's a country where the word "terrorist" is used like "witch" or "communist" to snap us in line and make us sign away our rights.

We are creating a country where a fundamentalist Christian regime is somehow better than a fundamentalist Muslim one. It's a place where we battle ideology gone awry with more ideology gone awry, pitting faith against faith and heart against heart.

We are creating a country where we write off dissonance as un-patriotic, censoring different opinions, not with force, but pettiness and name-calling. We now question others loyalty rather than their ideals and, when we have no answers to give, we accuse them of helping the terrorist, either with their words or their actions, thus liking them to cold-blooded killers.

We are creating a country where we solve budget crises by upping the amount we can borrow. It's a land where we spend billions on a baseless war but still cut taxes and increase benefits to save face, regardless of what it means for future generations.

We are creating a country that's polarized between two similar ideas. It's a country where most are forced to vote "against" someone else and never get their true views expressed, even by the candidate they elect.

We are creating a country that burns bridges with former allies and angers the rest of the world. It is a country that's a Gulliver of the globe, but quickly earning the wrath of those it treads upon.

But most of all, we are creating a country that has abandoned it's ideals. It's a country that's dooming itself to go the way of the Romans and Greeks, not through rampant hedonism and decay, but through arrogance and anger.

We are creating a country that's so blinded by its hate and its fear, that it's stumbling straight into the traps history has laid for us. Where great nations rise up, America is stooping down. Our citizens are rising to the occasion, but are being lead in the wrong direction and we are creating a nation that will pay for these errors.

Perhaps not in our lifetime, but soon enough to be certain and, to me, that's the scariest thing of all.