Friday, April 15, 2005

Scalia and Sodomy at NYU

Apparently, fans of sodomy at NYU were upset with Justice Scalia:
Law student Eric Berndt, upset with Justice Scalia's oral argument questions and dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, asked the Justice: "Do you sodomize your wife?"
This technique will only work as long as the few surviving members of an older generation are around to be verbally abused.

Neo-traditionalists, right-wing radio fans, and libertarians will be able to flip questions like that easily and give as good as they've got. Lefties should spend a bit more time practicing argumentation rather than insult because insults will be wasted against most of their modern opposition.

"No, I'm not a sodomite because my faith calls it a sin so I choose not to indulge" would be a good Neo-Trad answer and one that is non-falsifiable by Mods.

Other answers suggest themselves:

"I don't know, you'll have to ask her."

"How dare you! (Wap) My Second is Clarence Thomas. If you are a man, (somehing I have cause to doubt) have your Seconds contact him immediately."

"Since your domestic relations philosophy advocates the elimination of concepts such as 'wife', 'husband', 'mother', and 'father'; you are logically estopped from asking any questions that use those terms."

"Are you using the legal or the popular definition of sodomy in your question?"

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Tax Free Telecoms

So I got my first regular bill for my Verizon EVDO high speed wireless broadband service and I noticed something missing - taxes. Verizon charges $79.99 a month for their high speed data service and I just got a PC card with no voice plan.

So no voice plan meant no telephone taxes and New York had removed sales taxes from monthly ISP service fees way back in the CompuServe era. (That was a funny experience. In the '80s ISP connections were tax free in New York, then they started charging sales taxes as soon as the state noticed ISPs existed, then they decided to remove the taxes because the ISPs pointed out that customers could just sign up out of state.)

Anyway, my bill was $79.99 + a 5 cent fee from Verizon for a total of $80.04. (I have to ask Verizon what the nickel is for.)

I hope it's a while before NYS finds out I'm making VOIP phone calls with my service.