I've seen this phrase on a lot of police cars and always thought it would be more accurate if it said "To Harass and Fine."

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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

Sorry but that just isn't true Seat Belt laws and Motorcycle helmet laws have saves thousands of lives.

Indeed. So have laws requiring you to place you children in the appropriate car seat devices.

Oh god! Someone wants to take away my freedom to kill myself and others when in a car accident! The horror!

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I would say that a minority of cops simply don't have the temperament for the job. They have macho behind their power.

My father was a cop in Los Angeles many years ago. He told stories of the old police building where they would bring suspects in wearing handcuffs, get on the elevator, and if they didn't like the guy they would stop the elevator between floors and beat the cr#p out of them. No one could talk about this openly or you would lose your job.

It is still bad in Los Angeles. Why? Only people that are from the local area and desperate to get into police work with take a job in such a violent area. The game plan for most cops is to put in a few years and transfer to a good area where they would not be at such high risk. It is somewhat typical in LA to see attacks on cops or cops getting killed for routine traffic stops.

Some parts of Los Angeles are a war zone. That is where you see incidents like a robbery suspect being chased into an African American residential neighborhood and cops unloading over 500 rounds at an unarmed Black suspect (actual news story). Then you have Rodney King situations with big guys on large amounts of drugs resist and when he is subdued the cops don't stop. They might cuff him and beat the cr#p out of him for payback. There are also numerous incidents involving gang violence, crime and rivalry. The Hispanic Gangs are probably the strongest in the nation there, with Norte and Sureno (North and South) even having warfare. Police intervention is very risky, as they can out gun the police force. But then cops will see Hispanic kids dressed up to emulate gangs and over react.

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National Debt =

Maybe it's time to bring our military home from all these other countries and have it fight the domestic enemies (the street gangs) here at home.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

My father was a cop in New York. He told me how the cops would obtain a confession before Miranda: they would strip the suspect, make him stand so that his family jewels were dangling down into an open drawer, and threaten to shut the door if no confession was forthcoming.

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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

A motorcycle helmet only helps you in wrecks under 50mph. Faster than that, and your organs rupture against your rib cage when you hit the pavement, and you die helmet or not.

You can't tell people how to live. If somebody is too lazy to strap a belt across their chest for protection, let them be lazy, they aren't hurting anybody but themselves. To say they don't have a right to hurt themselves is to claim the state has a higher claim to their life than they do, and I don't think that's what you're trying to say.

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"Bring me that horizon".

"they aren't hurting anybody but themselves"

That's a total lie. When someone dies in a car crash where they would have been saved by a seat belt, you think that no one if effected or hurt by that? You think their family is just going to brush it off as that family member's stupidity? Their death hurts most of their family (depending on what relationship they have with their family) and many of their friends.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

So the government's job is to protect your feelings now? So the government should be allowed to prevent people from moving away from their childhood friends too yes?

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"Bring me that horizon".

I see no problem in governments making laws for the good of its citizens, whether that be making certain drugs illegal or forcing people to wear seatbelts.

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Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg