Speakeasy forum: Just going through video of the president's address

......that nothing you were going to hear from him would add anything to the budget or the deficit. It was really a pretty centrist speech IMO.

I was watching it on NBC. A reaction shot of two Republican female Congresswomen or Senators shaking their heads in disapproval over the statement that women should get equal pay for equal work was priceless.

The Republicans were also awfully quiet when the president introduced the parents of the 15-year-old girl who was shot to death only a week after performing at the inauguration. The "________ deserves a vote" finish was perfect. Shaming them over trying to avoid even letting gun legislation make it onto the Floor for a vote, good for him.

I'd heard that one Republican senator, apparently unaware of Bobby Jindal's "Let's stop being the 'stupid' party" speech, invited Ted Nugent to attend the SOTU address. Hopefully he was turned back by security on the basis of his recent threats against the president.

But so did the fact that these two minors were able to get the guns they used to commit this murder. Most of the illegal guns in Chicago are brought in from Indiana, where gun laws are much more lenient than they are in Illinois. Obama's proposals do address the methods by which those guns get into the wrong hands.

and how do we pay for it.

Actually I lean to the idea, espcially for repeat offenders. Double the minimum every time you get caught for the same category of offense too.

But we have to be willing to pay for it even after cutting back some of the extras they have now, jail is not suppose to be a country club.

some of the overcrowding and early release of robbers and muggers are because of mandatory drug sentences.

The drug sentence being mandatory, the assault not, they release the mugger.

the rule in our house was always, ' the punishment must be at least triple what the crime was ' , in order to make sure we remembered when we pondered committing a crime again (crimes could be anything from lying to tormenting a sister to stealing, etc). My children were raised the same way....none have been locked up except one...for a weekend DUI and spent the night in the 'drunk tank' to sleep it off. Too bad our judicial system is nothing more than a revolving door with goodies like cable tv, weight rooms, going to college, and other 'luxuries' that those living on the streets without a job don't have, including three meals a day and a warm bed.

pile if nothing else for several hours a day.

Nothing that would actually threaten their health, but hard steady regular physical work.

.....that the sentence for ten murders is usually the same as the sentence for one. A lifer has no reason to not kill fellow inmates either.

Another factor is that many prisoners are career criminals who have spent big chunks of their lives behind bars. For many of them prison is the real world and the outside is what they have trouble adjusting to. Long sentences don't dissuade them. Charlie Manson made statements to that effect more than once.

if you make the penaliy for armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon bad enough, the criminal may figure he's better off to just kill them first.

If he's going to get 40 years and he's already 30, he probably figures that even if he got caught for killing and robbing he'd probably get life at the worse, and what's the difference to him.

It was decades ago, but I remember when someone my parents knew when overseas somewhere as missionaries. They were warned by locals if they woke up and someone was in the house to pretend to be asleep. The penality for robbery was bad enough that if the crook thought you could identify him, he'd kill you out of hand. I don't remember what the penality was, maybe it was the old one of losing a hand for theif, I don't know.

Men do not despise a thief if he steals
To satisfy himself when he is hungry;

31 - But when he is found, he must repay sevenfold;
He must give all the substance of his house.
=================================

However, in agrarian society, gleaning was an acceptable way to
gain food for free, but required working to some extent for it.

He'd just have to serve in slavery labor for awhile till it was worth the 6-7 loaves, but he'd get to eat while doing it. Think of it as reparative training, or reparations received.

if you were in charge? Do what's currently being done? It's working just fine?

criminals in general and not just gun offenses. Not to worry as the questions were meant rhetorically. I'm just suggesting that what we are now doing needs to be changed. I've made a suggestion or two and would be interested in other thoughts. If we want to leave things as they are and just think of crime as a chronic and incurable disease, then we just manage it and shut up about it. In people, we can sometimes get longer term relief by transplanting something. Too bad Australia is already taken. Maybe we can save up enough waste and scrap worldwide to make another big island. Who knows.

Basically you want to punish them by depriving them of their Second Amendment rights lest they use those rights in an improper way. Furthermore you want to thereby also punish those who never would do anything improper. As I've said before, apply everything you want to infringe against the Second Amendment to the First Amendment and then see how you like it, if you believe that's the way the First Amendment should also be treated. Maybe we can make some exceptions to some other Amendments you don't like too?