Christian Libertarian Time Lord

I recently disassembled my nonfunctional Toshiba Satellite L455. I decided that I can probably make use of the DVD writer from it, but I am having a difficult time identifying its interface. I thought it was SATA, but I know that the laptop's hard drive is SATA, and the connectors are vastly different sizes (despite being roughly the same in form). Any ideas?

I recently disassembled an old(ish) laptop (Toshiba Satellite L455) that wasn't working anymore to harvest its parts. One of these parts is a completely functional DVD writer. Is there any practical way that I can adapt this to USB to use as an external drive for my new laptop, an ASUS Vivobook S400, which lacks an optical drive?

Goodbye, all friends conservative, libertarian, and even liberal. Yahoo! Answers is sucking away precious hours of my life with silly debate with people I don't know, many of whom aren't even worth debating with. I shall now terminate my Yahoo! account. Farewell all!

I know liberals seem to make arguments like that all the time, and one liberal just posted this:

"The thing is, when they wealthy get more money, they save it. When people at the lower end of the income scale get more money, they spend it, thus stimulating the economy."

How can they say this? Savings go into banks that invest those savings. Investment generates capital and jobs. It is Economics 101 that saving stimulates the economy.

According to liberal science-deniers, we cannot prove that unborn children are human persons with an inalienable right to life. However, this means they also cannot prove that they are not.

So if pro-choicers are right, then forbidding abortion hurts women's rights.

So if pro-lifers are right, then allowing abortion means the murder of millions of innocent children.

If the negative impact of pro-choice policy if it is wrong is worse than the negative impact of pro-life policy if it is wrong, then shouldn't we go the safer route when in dispute? If it is worse to murder than to deprive someone of liberty, then shouldn't our policy work to prevent the worse possible offense when there is uncertainty?

If the fetus is not a person, why would anything make abortion wrong?

If the fetus is a person, how could anything justify killing it when it is innocent and defenseless?

And liberals, would you agree that the only consistent version of the pro-life position excludes rape exceptions?

More specifically, free markets do not crash unless acted upon by an outside force. The rationale:

* A free market operates as millions (in the US, over 300 million) of agents buy and sell, borrow and lend.

* For a change to occur in a free market, the buying/selling and borrowing/lending patterns of a substantial portion of the market population must change.

* Without influence from a non-market source, the buying/selling and borrowing/lending patterns of hundreds of millions of agents do not change substantially except over long periods of time.

* Therefore free markets are inherently stable.

Taken further:

* A crash is a sudden, major change for the worse in a market.

* For a sudden, major change to occur in a market, a substantial portion of the market participants must suddenly change their buying/selling and borrowing/lending patterns.

* Hundreds of millions of people do not suddenly change their economic patterns unless acted upon by an outside force.

* Therefore, in the absence of outside influences, free markets are stable and do not crash.

Because of all this, for a free market to crash something from the outside must disrupt the economic activity of millions of agents. Since this does not naturally happen, a non-market cause must be found.

In every economic hardship that has happened in America, this outside force can be traced to government, which is one of the very few forces capable of changing the economic activity of millions of people at once.

So why support big government and federal intervention in the economy when it is one of the few entities capable of causing American markets to crash?

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 is known as the Commerce Clause. It says that Congress has the power "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes."

Now, according to the explicit statement of some liberals and the apparent reasoning of others, this means that any economic activity that affects the economy of another state in even the slightest way may be regulated by Congress.

This is objectively false.

All of the evidence among the Founding Fathers and their works shows that the meaning of the Commerce Clause is that Congress may determine the basic rules and terms of buying and selling between different states. This is the only power granted to the government in regulating commerce. So why do liberals pretend that it justifies basically any and all federal intervention in the economy?

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For a detailed explanation of why this is true, see http://randybarnett.com/Original.htm

Up until the time the US completely abandoned the gold standard, economic growth usually benefited all classes--the rich, middle class, and poor--equally. This was the case regardless of tax rates. As the US dollar lost stability, the rich got richer way faster than any other class. As the Federal Reserve got more wild, and more dependent on QE, this problem was exacerbated. Yet liberals keep blaming this inequality on the rich not being taxed enough (despite paying the majority of taxes), or corporations receiving too much government help.

The data says otherwise. Not only has income inequality been caused mainly by bad money, but it hasn't even benefited the rich as much as liberals would imagine. Economic growth was higher during the time before these issues arose than afterwards, and the charts show that if it had continued, all classes would be much better off than they are now.

This chart shows the data: http://b-i.forbesimg.com/louiswoodhill/files/2013/...

So, why do liberals continue to ignore the Fed's bad money policies and instead just keep blaming the rich and pursuing the mega-taxation agenda?

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Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2013/03/...

I asking this here because people tend to answer here more quickly than in other sections.

I have a pair of bright red suspenders, and I would like them to be much darker, more like a burgundy color. I have noticed online that some people use coffee to darken clothes. Would this work for my issue?

I have a pair of bright red suspenders, and I would like them to be much darker, more like a burgundy color. I have noticed online that some people use coffee to darken clothes. Would this work for my issue?

...to regulate the ownership of any good at all? All of the powers of Congress are listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, and according to the Tenth Amendment all powers not listed here or prohibited to the states are reserved exclusively for the states. Here are the Section 8 powers:

8.1 The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

8.2 To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

8.3 To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

8.4 To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

8.5 To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

8.6 To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

8.7 To establish post offices and post roads;

8.8 To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

8.9 To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

8.10 To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

8.11 To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

8.12 To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

8.13 To provide and maintain a navy;

8.14 To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

8.15 To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

8.16 To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress

8.17 To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

8.18 To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

As far as I can tell, the only place in all of these powers than anyone could even try to use to justify restricting property rights is the phrase "provide for the general welfare," but the Founding Fathers such as Madison and Jefferson said that this was a restriction of taxation powers, not related to other laws.

So, whether guns or drugs or antiques or toxic substances, where does the Constitution grant the federal government power to decide what one can or cannot own?

Finally, do not answer if you are not going to specifically address my question, or if you are going to just say I am wrong, or just call this a rant, or use curse words. I will report you for any of these.

I don't own a gun.

I don't really want a gun.

I'm not sure I'll ever need a gun.

I probably will never bother to buy a gun.

However, I argue for unrestricted gun rights because I believe in liberty. So, my question for you: Must you all act as though everyone who is opposed to gun control is an obsessive gun nut?

...affect criminals who use the black market to acquire fully automatic weapons? Isn't that like banning daggers so that pirates can't get broadswords?

...myself included, but if you would be willing to look at this one, what do you think of it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2eh6f5Go0

As the Founding Fathers and classical liberal thinkers correctly imagined, the purpose of government is simply to protect fundamental rights (life, liberty, and property) from infringement, both domestic and foreign. The government was not meant to meet needs, fix problems, or encourage society to be better. It was just to keep the peace and let people live.

Every problem the government has tried to solve has either gotten worse or experienced undesirable side effects. The War on Poverty has led to a growing dependent class paying little or nothing to the government and receive much from it. The War on Drugs has led to massive organized crime just for drug distribution alone, bringing with it much violence and mayhem. Attempts to regulate production standards have driven up prices, preserved monopolistic and oligopolistic power, and hurt competition. Despite the overwhelming increases in education spending over the past few decades, the American education system seems to be at an all-time low. Hopes to prevent terrorism have stripped Americans of rights with legislation such as the PATRIOT Act and the NDAA.

The government doesn't work when it tries to be a problem-solver instead of simply a rights-protector.

So why not just strip it down to its core function and let benevolent, able human beings who actually have personal interest and passion in fixing societies problems voluntarily nurse our nation?

Legitimate rights, as historically envisioned by classical liberals and the Founding Fathers, are negative. They only refer to liberties which can be exercised *without* the action of another party. Examples:

The right to life requires no action on anyone else's part. You can just live without anyone else doing anything.

The right to property requires no action on anyone else's part. You can possess things without anyone else doing anything.

The right to live your life as you please without interfering with the basic rights of others requires no action on anyone else's part.

However, liberals propose so-called "positive rights," which require action on the part of others. Examples:

The right to education requires extra parties to set up schools and work at them, and also requires that people pay for the schools.

The right to legally recognized marriage requires extra parties to file and enforce the contract and provide benefits.

The right to a living wage requires extra parties to provide employment and earn profit from which to pay the mandated wage.

All of these cannot be rights because they require action on the part of other people. A right is not a right if it cannot exist on its own. Adding other people to the equation makes collectivism, a distinction socialist/communist philosophy.

It seems like liberals want to expand government to solve every problem the country faces (obesity, cancer, prejudice, stupidity, poverty). But why? Why not let free people do that of their own will without an incompetent and corrupt middleman (i.e. government)?

The US government was originally made with the purpose of protecting the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property. This was to be done by enforcing contracts, punishing injury and theft (and all things similar), and protecting Americans from foreign and domestic violence. Why can't we just get back to that point and let real human beings who are actually competent and benevolent take care of the rest?

According to at least a handful of liberals on here, the Supreme Court ultimately decides what is Constitutional and what is not. So, does that mean that is Congress passed a law banning all pratice of religion (obviously and completely violating the First Amendment), and the Supreme Court upheld the law, that the law would be Constitutional? Does the Supreme Court have the ability to make an anti-constitutional law Constitutional?

Or is a law objectively Constitutional or not, and the Supreme Court simply gives an interpretation by which law must be applied or nullified?

"This clause means that the federal government can do whatever the heck it wants, and the states have to deal with it. It also invalidates the 10th Amendment."

This is what it seems like they believe whenever stuff comes up here.