JayC

That fiction is about the become reality :)  There are a ton of middle income blue and white collar jobs that will be gone in the next 25 years, completely replaced by robots and computers...     I wouldn't want to be 21 and a truck driver, or under 30 and an airplane pilot right now....  Those 2 jobs are about to get insourced to computers/robots.    

SCOTUS has ruled on citizenship involving 1 parent having a child out of the country, to my knowledge there are no 'natural born citizen' cases that have been ruled on by SCOTUS.   Even if you take lower court rulings involving Obama, they don't apply to Cruz because Obama was born inside the US, Cruz was born outside the country.   Here is a note from 100 years ago, involving the election of 1916:     My suggestion that you can not be a natural born citizen unless you are completely free of allegiance to foreign states was the general consensus up until 1999 or so...  When McCain ran the first time and had to play tap dance around that section of the constitution.     You had the same issue come up in the 64 Goldwater campaign because he was born in a territory instead of a state, and 68 with George Romney because he was born to 2 US citizens in Mexico.   And while we're harping on Obama to release his birth certificate, McCain NEVER released his, some think it's because it would have shown he was born off base, and therefore would not have been considered a natural born citizen.   The clear intent of our founding fathers was to prohibit any person with foreign allegiances from ever being elected President, clearly Obama which dual citizenship, and Cruz with the same both are disqualified under their intent.  

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_States   I don't have a digital copy of a report I received from: National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 400 Seventh St., S.W., Washington, DC 20590 but here is the critical information describing their method so called 'simulating'.     So you can see they state that in 60% of fatal accidents BAC levels of all parties aren't reported, so they 'simulate' BACs between .00 and .94 for all people involved in that crash, and if the computer 'simulates' a BAC of .01 or higher for anybody involved, then that accident is added to the alcohol related fatalities.   As you said, if somebody isn't being measured it's a pretty safe bet the cops involved didn't think any alcohol was involved...  but we look at a 2001 PA study by the NHTSA using this method, they list 575 drivers involved in alcohol related crashes... but when you look into the data only 294 had a BAC of .1 or greater...  Another 62 had a BAC of between .01 and .09 but legal...  So best case you'd called that 356 right?  So how did they come up with other 219?  41 drivers had a BAC of .00 (computer model added them in), 67 drivers had an unknown alcohol level (computer model added them in), 20 people were drunk passengers, 12 were passengers with a BAC between .01 and .09, 18 were passengers with unknown BAC (computer model added them in), 2 were drunk pedestrians, 1 was a pedestrian with a BAC between .01 and .09, and 4 were pedestrians that the computer model added in.   The computer model is questionable at best...  It's designed to inflate the numbers beyond what you can prove with hard facts and logic...  As you said the vast majority of these people that didn't get tested or the test results were reported probably had little or no alcohol in their system, because if they did the police would have tested them and made a note in the report?  As you say it's SOP for most departments.  

I think the problem is larger than that...  it creates this evil cycle...  large businesses (and I mean really large businesses) encourage the government to place regulations on their industries to create a barrier to entry and help them protect their market share...     These regulations often have the added benefit of protecting the large business from lawsuit or liability by complying with these regulations.   It's a racket and we're all blind to it...  This happens at all levels of government...  I've seen it at the city and county level just as bad if not worse than at the state and federal level...  it leads to corruption and making it harder for a small business to get a foothold and build wealth in this country.  

And those plants are almost 100% automated.    

He's a citizen but he is not a natural born citizen, as he has been naturalized by law as a US citizen.  If you look back to common law in the 1790's, it's quite clear that natural born citizens must be born to US citizen parents in territory under the control of the US government.   One of Cruz's parents was Cuban and he was born in Canada, and was issued a birth certificate, Canadian passport and Canadian citizenship (maybe also Cuban citizenship as well?), then he immigrated into the US and was issued a US passport...  That is a naturalization process under federal law, and therefore while a citizen he is not a natural born citizen.   I like the guy a lot, I just have an issue with Obama being President in violation of the constitution, and because I'm trying to be true to my values for the exact same reason I think Cruz is not eligible to be President.  That goes for Rubio as well....   Mike Lee from Utah would be VERY high on my list of dream candidates, Rand Paul obviously... Jason Chaffetz and Justin Amash are also at the top of my list.  

Or how about opening up soup kitchens for those on food stamps?  I can't imagine it would cost anymore money and it's got to cut into the waste, fraud and abuse of the current system.   I don't understand why we want to make it so easy for people to be on the government dole.  

That sounds like a big government problem, not an insurance problem :)    

It's only a good thing if you think central planners in Washington, DC know how to run your business better than you do.  We've seen that movie and it didn't end well, the USSR.   I'd suggest you read up on the Luddite movement of the early 1800's.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite   We'd be better off getting government out of the mix than encouraging them to pick and choose winners and losers even more.    

You've clearly not read the 9th Amendment recently huh?     And lest there be any question that it really means what it says, we have these letters by James Madison the author of the Bill of Rights:     and     and this speech by Madison introducing the Bill of Rights to the first congress:     Also, I'd suggest reading the 10th amendment as well...  You'll also note in both the use of the term 'the people' which means above the government.      

Yeah I'm somewhat shocked as well ;)   You hit the nail on the head, government refuses to cut back, and we won't make them, and that is the deadly cycle....   I'm going to toss out some radical ideas here, so hold on hopefully you're still with me when I'm done ;)   Health Care costs so much money because of the government...  The government is inflating costs above what the market can handle because it's giving free health care to old people and poor people, and the rest of us are having to cover the difference...  And we're paying for it in 2 ways, the first through direct taxes, and the second by the government paying less than what the open market wants for the cost of a procedure, which is why  our healthcare costs are increased even more.  How do we fix this?  No idea, people just aren't willing to give up their entitlements, and they're happy to bankrupt their kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids futures to pay for it.   OSHA at best did nothing to protect workers, and most likely caused more workers to be hurt and killed than would have otherwise...  Look at the charts on worker deaths before and after OSHA came into being...  OSHA is a perfect example of government regulation being used to provide a protection against start up companies by well established companies.   I'd be all for doing away with workmans comp and unemployment insurance...  let me pay somebody a honest wage and they can buy those products if they choose to...  I've only been covered by either of those programs for 7 years during my entire adult life...  otherwise I've been forced to cover myself against those risks.     What people fail to realize is that the government is taking 50% of your pay before you even see your paycheck...  they're doing this with government regulation and hidden costs to employers...  then once you get your paycheck, the vast majority end up paying nearly 50% of that to the government as well...  most people are living off of 25-30% of what they're worth in an open marketplace.   I just incorporated my first overseas company this year, and trust me it was more expensive to setup than here in the states...  The reason, massive savings from legally avoiding regulations...  it has nothing to do with employees costs, those are about the same, and everything to do with taxes and stupid regulations.    

And where do you think the government is getting all that money for "unsustainable subsidizing"?  I'll give you a hint, they're stealing it from successful businesses and individuals who are having to compete on an international stage :)   The government doesn't create wealth they can only redistribute it, so if they're propping up some businesses it's at the expense of others... many of which then relocate offshore because the tax and regulation burden is much lower.    

Most alcohol related fatalities are single car accidents where the driver or the driver and adult passengers are the only victims.  Only about 6.7% (per a 2009 NHTSA PA study) of alcohol related deaths involved a driver over the legal limit killing a person in another vehicle.  I'll agree if you factor in minors death as passengers in the drunks car that number is probably slightly higher.   Like you I suspect MADD will continue to try and push the BAC limit down and down until you can't operate a vehicle for 8 hours after having a single beer, even though there is no proof that those drivers pose any increased risk to the public...  but that is what happens when you allow emotion to override logic...  you end up with a good excuse to set up a checkpoint and go on a fishing expedition :)   These checkpoints are already at the best of times constitutionally questionable, and then to continue to see (through these videos referenced in the OP's post) that police officers are unable to even abide by the low standards of the checkpoint is what concerns many of us against such checkpoints.    

Or we could just reduce the size of government and government regulation to make up the difference?  The reason businesses are moving off shore isn't because of the labor cost...  The labor cost in most products is a tiny fraction of the cost, in most cases it's cheaper to do business overseas and ship the products into the country than it is to do business inside the US.   And US business taxes are a large chunk of that, you look at some countries that have a 11% tax on business income, and the US has a 35% tax...  There is most of that 20% you're looking for right there.    

I'm happy to provide cites to my research if you'd like me too...  I could have made a honest mistake in the math, but if you do read the small print on the NHTSA study you keep referencing you'll note they describe in detail the method they use to calculate the number of alcohol related fatalities, and they do count any alcohol involvement even by passengers under the legal limit, and in cases where BAC isn't determined, they use a formula that assumes 60% of those accidents involved alcohol.   As for my contention that SCOTUS doesn't have the final say on what my God given rights are or are not...  Let me ask you this...  Show me where the Constitution grants SCOTUS the power to rule laws constitutional or unconstitutional?  I'll give you a hint it's not there.   More importantly SCOTUS gets it wrong a lot, there are a lot of ruling that most if not all people can agree were bad rulings that did not limit governments violations of our rights...  You might notice in my post about SCOTUS I included a short list of some of those rulings...  any of them you'd like to support as constitutional now?   We're both free men, we were born with rights granted to us from our humanity and endowed to us by our creator.  Those rights exist above and before any form of government.  Governments can only infringe or violate those rights, they can not legislate them away.  So you think I'm crazy to refuse your contention that 9 men and women get to have the final say on what my creator did or didn't give me?  Or what some document that I never had any say in gave away in my name before I was even born?   I don't know about you, but I still remember our own government pointing out how communism was evil because they had checkpoints and required that people show their papers and answer questions, and weren't allowed to freely travel or leave their country.  Yet 25 years later we're doing the exact same thing in this country for the exact same reason!  Because the USSR used safety as the excuse to do that to their citizens, and we use the exact same excuse here.   And you find me offensive for pointing out the hypocrisy in that?   Here is the real fact a government is a lot more likely to kill you than a drunk driver.    

You get to 1700 because only 6-7% of the alcohol related fatalities involve a drunk killing an innocent third party.  But even if it were 100,000 a year I'm not willing to trade away my God given freedoms so you can feel safe.  Those freedoms belong to me, not you...  I haven't given my consent to take those freedoms away...   And we've seen time and time again - recently a couple of months ago, where citizens who don't break the law, but refuse to comply with unlawful demands are harassed, illegally searched, and nothing is done about it.  So yeah my rights are being violated.   Now the truth is I don't drink, so drinking and driving is a easy thing for me to avoid.  I also don't drive around late at night when most of these checkpoints are being held, I also don't travel along non-interstates a lot...  So the fact is the chance that I'll get stopped at one of these checkpoints is pretty low to almost zero.  But that doesn't change the fact that I'm outraged at unconstitutional actions the government is doing in my name.   I'm a lot more worried about my government growing out of control, than I am about drunk drivers, druggies, terrorists, or other any other boogieman the government can come up with to try and 'reason' away my rights given to me by my creator.  And unfortunately in my case, the numbers support my concern.    

Lets set aside the issues involving the government being able to force you to submit to a medical procedure just to try and get evidence against you...   And lets focus on not having a right to drive a car...  What is the logic that you're going to use as to why we don't have a right to freely travel?   More importantly, can you show me in the TN constitution where the people granted the state the right to regulate travel or any of the modes therein?    

I like Ted Cruz a lot, too bad he isn't qualified to become President, I'd seriously consider voting for him...  but just because he's a nice guy doesn't mean I can toss out the Constitution to see him elected.  He isn't a 'natural born citizen' anymore than Obama is, and principals are principals.

Also not suggesting that you knowingly break the law, but it's worth noting that we are aware of only 2 cases where somebody was even charged with violating 39-17-1359 and both cases involved attempts to carry a firearm into the secure area of an airport.  1359 is a bad law and we should do everything in our power to have to changed, but we spend way too much time worrying about it.    

I use a small 'go bag' that I sit in the front passenger seat and toss the should strap over the headrest to prevent it from flying forward in a quick stop.  The bag is setup so that I can reach over and draw the firearm quickly, but is not visible from outside the vehicle.  For those times I need to leave a firearm in my vehicle unattended, I have a small gun safe under one of the seats that locks and will hold a pistol and 2 loaded magazines.  This safe is attached to the vehicle by one of the seat bolts, so it would take somebody a few minutes at least to remove from the car, even if they could locate it in the first place. 

How do I not have a right to drive a car?  Because a car wasn't invented when the constitution was written?  So if I go driving around in a horse and buggy I can't be accosted by the police, but because I operate a vehicle with an engine I'm not longer free to travel...  What about a bike?  Can I ride a bike without risk of being asked to show my papers?   This makes as much sense as the idiot who argues that the 2nd Amendment only protects black powder rifles because that was all that was invented at the time the constitution was written.   People have a right to freely travel, it's a natural right, granted to us by our creator, and existed before the the Constitution was written, period.   And Dave you keep focusing on the unreasonable part of the 4th Amendment, yet you keep glossing over the part where a warrant is required for ALL searches, which must be supported by probable cause, an oath to the truthfulness of the warrant, and to describe the people or items to be seized.    

I think in the NHTSA studies about 1/3 of the cases involve people blowing under the legal limit, many of which aren't the drivers...  Also the NHTSA does pure inflation on accidents where there is NO documentation that any person involved had any level of alcohol in their system.   The situation you describe where an innocent person gets hit and killed by a drunk driver is horrible, and I agree we as a society should throw the book at them, those people should be facing serious time in jail.   But, we have to be realistic, there are only about 1700 fatalities like you describe each year in this country...  When placed in context while sad, and the criminals who kill those 1700 innocent people should be in prison for a very long time, it does not justify the violation of 330 million people's rights.   Also, lets look at dui checkpoint stats for a minute, surprise surprise, DUI arrests don't even account for 10% of the charges from so called DUI checkpoints.  How can anybody with a straight face claim that these checkpoints aren't a fishing expedition?   If you see a driver acting like they're drunk, I have no issue with you pulling them over...  I just have a problem with police officers setting up a checkpoint, forcing me to stop and show my papers just to move freely around this country.  And the excuse that because 1700 people die each year is completely bogus.   Frankly, 1700 deaths a year is too low of a price for me to trade my freedom for some false 'security'.   It's a sad fact in a free society good people die from other people doing bad things....    

First, how does a passenger in a vehicle having a BAC of 0.01 an alcohol related accident?  Because those are being counted in the NHTSA numbers.  How does having a driver having a BAC of 0.01 who is not at fault in the accident a alcohol related accident?  Again counted in the NHTSA studies.     Alcohol is a serious risk in our society, I don't think anybody is going to argue that it's not, but it's a risk that we've agreed as a society to accept...  We've agreed to accept some level of alcohol in the bloodstream of drivers because the risk is determined to be an acceptable level.  To then count accidents and fatalities in a questionable way seems dishonest at best....  And I'm not some boozehound...  I've never driven with any alcohol (other than mouthwash I guess) in my system...  I don't drink, so I have little to worry about from DUI checkpoints, other than my natural rights being taken away in the name of 'safety' based off of questionable statistics.     The simple fact is that in a free society good people die, it's sad, it's regrettable but it's going to happen...  the solution is to punish the offender when they harm somebody else... and move on.   The fact is from a statistical view, government is a much greater threat to our safety over a 100 year period than drunk drivers will ever be.    

There you go using the NHTSA numbers again...  They are inflated...  alcohol related doesn't mean what you think it means...   To be "related" somebody involved has to have some detectable amount of alcohol in their system...  It could be a passenger with half a glass of wine in their system to be counted...  and if they don't do BAC tests on all involved the NHTSA assumes that 60% of crashes involve alcohol.   The number from the NHTSA are junk...  they picked a sampling method that makes the number look as bad as possible and hope people aren't smart enough to read the details of their sampling method.   The NHTSA has an agenda here and they're cooking the books to make the situation look worse than it really is so they keep getting funding for these studies.   Alcohol is a pox on the country, we all know that...  we just accept it as a cost of living in a free society...  we don't need the government cooking the numbers to make a real problem look a lot worse than it really is.  And when I catch my government cook the books, it causes me to trust them even less.  

I'm not assuming, I'm use real number to say ~20% of fatalities involve one of the drivers being drunk, and that number is a little generous because in some % of cases the drunk drive isn't the one that caused the accident.  Those same NHTSA reports show that once you back out drunk drivers and passengers of the drunk drivers, the number of innocent third parties that are being killed is ~6.7% in the study I read (I believe it was based off of PA in 2009). 5% of children fatalities would seem to be correct, most alcohol related fatalities occur when most children are at home in bed.  You would expect the number to be lower for them.   Lets not even get into an argument about 'allowable' BAC's...  Lets just both agree to say the science of a BAC below .1% as it relates to driving accidents is questionable at best.   While you department does do mandatory blood draws on all fatalities, what happens if the person doesn't die for hours, days or weeks?  And many other departments don't have such a policy...  Either way, if no test is performed, NHTSA assumes that 60% of the accidents did involve alcohol, and pad their stats with those numbers.   I would guess the reason you do license checks is because you're looking for suspended licenses, which you otherwise would have no RAS/PC to perform the stop.  The same for the K-9 units, it's easy to fake (and yes I use that term intentionally) a false positive with them, and they're used to increase the number of 'PC' searches to help find other offenses.  And the M'boro stop video that you references basically prove my allegation where you have an officer on tape admitting the K9 search was 'questionable' at best.     Here is a question for you, where are the stats on exigent circumstance searches that result in no arrest vs in arrest...  Or how about K9 hits vs hits with an arrest...  My guess is there is a reason those numbers aren't kept and it's because the false positive rates would be so high as to bring into question the validity of PC on all searches.   DUI checkpoints have very little to do with finding dangerous impaired drivers and a lot more to do with shooting fish in a barrel, it's a lot easier to stand around for 4 hours stopping every 4th car on a busy road and fish for violations than it is to do real police work.   I would contend that sitting outside establishments late at high or right after happy hour would net more drunk drivers per man hour...  General traffic enforcement already meets or exceeds the number of drunk driver stopped per man hour as these DUI checkpoints.  So not only do warrantless checkpoints violate our natural rights, but they are more expensive too.  Now that sounds like a government plan :)  More expensive, fewer results, but looks good in the paper!