Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Roll Tide

Times, June 11, 1997
*   
*   ...any trial jury is sure to be asked to weigh Mr. Pratt's alleged violent
*   excess against the ALLEGED EXCESSES COMMITTED BY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN
*   THE 1960's, PARTICULARLY ALLEGED EXCESSES IN SURVEILLANCE AND SUBVERSION
*   OF ANTI-GOVERNMENT GROUPS like the Panthers.
Alleged?
I hear The New York Times "alleged" the "Pentagon Papers" were real!
----
The law refers to "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area".
The FBI takes that to mean naked. Obviously.
A poorly written bill, interpreted by predatory pinheads.
Guess what?
1/18/95 NYT: In a case that did not involve nudity or genital visibility,
Attorney General Janet Reno filed a brief with the Supreme Court that
said it was not necessary for a child pornography conviction. That is
how she interprets the language of the bill.
Wow.
And I thought Ed Meese was a bad Attorney General. Meese had written
to companies like the owners of 7-11 and told them selling Playboy and
Penthouse could get them Federal obscenity charges. That was his attempt
to get around the First Amendment.
10/3/96 NYT: Because of computers, a bill was passed that changes the
definition of child pornography to include generated images that do
not involve actual children.
Thought crime. Law enforcement child pornography hysteria.
Sturges incident: attacked by the FBI Thought Police Squad. Massive corrupt
use of governmental law enforcement authority to enforce mere political
correctness. Due to its size: by definition not an aberration.
It cost one million dollars of our tax money.
----
On June 19, 1997, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain introduced
his own bill (Senator Kerrey co-sponsor) which parrots the Cl

all the powers. The heart of man is strangely
inclined to fickleness, to change, to promises, to gain. However little any
of them might have been led astray by all these attractions, nay more, by
the fear of prisons, tortures, and death, they were lost. Let us follow up
this thought.
802. The apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Either supposition has
difficulties; for it is not possible to mistake a man raised from the
dead...
While Jesus Christ was with them, He could sustain them. But, after that, if
He did not appear to them, who inspired them to act?
                         SECTION XIII: THE MIRACLES
803. The beginning.--Miracles enable us to judge of doctrine, and doctrine
enables us to judge of miracles.
There are false miracles and true. There must be a distinction, in order to
know them; otherwise they would be useless. Now they are not useless; on the
contrary, they are fundamental. Now the rule which is given to us must be
such that it does not destroy the proof which the true miracles give of the
truth, which is the chief end of the miracles.
Moses has given two rules: that the prediction does not come to pass (Deut.
18.), and that they do not lead to idolatry (Deut. 13.); and Jesus Christ
one.
If doctrine regulates miracles, miracles are useless for doctrine.
If miracles regulate...
Objection to the rule.--The distinction of the times. One rule during the
time of Moses, another at presen

nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice,
but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails
are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to
wager at all."
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will
you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which
interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and
two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your
happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your
reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you
must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let
us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate
these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. "That is very fine. Yes, I must
wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an
equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead
of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you
would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you
would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to
gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But
there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were
an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still
be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being
obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in
which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an
infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity
of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite
number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. I