And the convict gets to choose whipping or jail.

Uh... nope, I don't think I saw it at release.
But, yes it does.

Favorite line from "Fallen Angels" btw...

"We'll get them high with illegal droogs".
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/06717...

This is the 21st century; "family" is anybody you know. Blood may be thicker than water, but for modern generations water is thick enough.

It's the "why" that's the question. And anesthesia wears off. A sadist uses a whip or a knife to experience pleasure in cruelty. A doctor uses a knife to help the person he's cutting, as would be the case of the whipper.

You said he was American. Only Americans are fit to judge other Americans, and Americans have rights protected by our Constitution. It is the obligation of the U.S. government to protect his rights, which is why I said turn him over to us for punishment.

I was waiting for this nonsense.
Your right to blow your mind ends in my country.
First, once you ingest these drugs, they seriously degrade your ability to make rational judgments. They are also highly addictive. These are reasons to make trafficking in them illegal.
Once your judgment is gone, someone else's judgment must replace it. If it's mine, your sorry ass goes to jail.

A cigarette is no where nearly as dangerous as marijuana. I've seen people come to work who've smoked a cigarette, and people come to work who've smoked marijuana. The latter put my safety in danger; the former did not. So just stuff that nonsense right now.

I've also worked with an idiot who did LSD when younger. He was frightening to work around. The day he quit, he dropped his pants and wiped his ass on the boss's office doorknob.

I'm perfectly consistent; you're presenting false assertions. Pot is not less damaging than alcohol or cigarettes. Pot is not, has never been, and with God's grace will never be, a part of America's traditional culture, as have alcohol and cigarettes. Pot is also a gateway drug; those stupid enough to smoke marijuana are stupid enough to try more dangerous drugs.

You eating yourself into a coma doesn't affect me nearly as much as you walking into a room I'm in smoking a joint. The former may disgust me a bit; the latter may get me put in jail for attempted murder.

It is my business when it affects my safety and the nature of my society. I don't want to live in a society of scumbags, which is why I fight the crony capitalists and progressives, and drug addicts.

I would think that people who support chemicals which impair or remove their ability to make rational judgments would be very unpopular here, since this place worships "reason" uber alles. To the best of my knowledge, Objectivists don't view individual liberty as license, nor hedonism as rational behavior.

If you can figure out a way to ingest pot without smoking it, then we can talk. If you can reverse the phoney war on tobacco, then we can talk.

Yes, I'm hostile to pot smokers; more so since I had to try to explain to the stinky, pink-eyed, heavy-lidded, wobbly idiots 5 times that the water bottles with the listed price above them were indeed the cheapest price in the store for water, only to have the wander off (squirrel!), and since I had to help another pair of pink-eyed, stinky, heavy-lidded wobbly jackasses pick between two identical burritos, as they gobbled down pickles and other food items for which they had not yet paid.

I lost at least one or two IQ points having to occupy the same space as they without showing my utter contempt.

Who said anything about self-defense? I was speaking of punishment upon conviction of crimes. Then you came back with your lethal solution.
See the 4th, 5th and 9th Amendments, for starters.

Actually, no. I doubt that you can find any evidence that any of the founding fathers believed it was unconstitutional to kill someone in self-defense. And I defy you to find any reference of any kind in the Constitution itself that says you can't blow away a punk who is attacking you. Go ahead and look. I'll wait… Just post your answer here.

The answer is simple: The criminal justice ("just us") system is more criminal than just.

Now I'm all for going after people who subject kiddies to the process of making kiddie porn. And I'm all for going after the people who profit by selling kiddie porn. But that's not who the cops go after. No, it's "too hard" to catch the people who are actually raping children and videotaping the acts for sale, or even those who sell or purchase such videos. Much easier to go after they pervert who's sitting on his couch at home whacking off to it, because, you see, HE'S NOT HURTING ANYONE. Neither is he profiting from hurting someone. And it's sometimes entirely possible he doesn't even know he's doing anything wrong.

How can that be?

Well, just one example. Quite a few years back there was a porn star who got into the "business" when she was (IIRC) 16. Tracy Lords. She made a number of films that were distributed and sold through normal adult porn channels. No one knew she was under 18. Then the word got out. After that, she made one more porn flick. Now that film is legal to own in America, but none of the others are. But in Europe, the age at which people can enter the "world of porn" is 16. So all of Tracy Lords prior films are legal (and I have read, available) there. So if you happen to buy one and come back to the US, guess what? You're a criminal!

The whole issue of porn and under-age sex is pretty screwed up. Not so very long ago, the age of consent in some states was as low as 12 years old. That's right, 12, 13, 14 year olds could get married, have sex, raise kids. I don't know what "magic" imbued the government with the "wisdom" that it's okay for a 23-year-old to have sex with a 16-year-old, but criminal behavior if the same two people have sex a year later when one is 24 and the other 17. But that's the law in Florida, and believe me, Florida doesn't corner the market on stupid laws.

For that matter, it's okay to train 18-year-olds to kill, give them machine-guns and tell them to go slaughter Iraqis or Afghanis, but it's NOT okay for those same 18 year olds to own a handgun or drink alcohol? See any disconnect there? Government issued machine gun? Can't own a private handgun? And then there's the whole charging minors "as adults" for various crimes. Wait a second… the person is of the age where they are a minor, but you just arbitrarily decide that they should be tried as an adult? How about we apply that to sex laws? "The 13-year-old should be treated as an adult when having sex with her 45-year-old boyfriend"!??

Don't look for any sense in government. You won't find it.

That's the problem with having Clinton for a President. I'd tell the rulers of Cambodia to turn the American over to us for punishment, or a thousand Cambodians would die for every lash.

That kinda violates Constitutionally protected rights, but what the hell.

A surgeon uses a knife to cut out a tumor. How is this different from evisceration?

Remember, it's the choice of the convicted.
If I were given a choice of a month of weekends in the stocks or a month in jail, I'll take the stocks.

If I were given a choice between a lashing and a year in jail, I'll take the lashing, even though the idea of it scares the crap out of me.

A year is a long time; God knows what could happen to me in prison in a year. But, one thing is certain, going to prison for a year will screw up my life, such as it is.