I couldn't agree more ...

Crud, you're absolutely right. Converting it to "kilo-pounds" or "kilo-kilograms", I somehow only perceived the "kilo-" part and totally forgot that "kilogram" is not "ton". Mea culpa. (Tries to find a hole to hide in for a while.)

Can you please tell me what it is? Pretty please? ;)

(Asking around on Universe Today, it turns out to be a lighting artifact. I'm surprised that there were uniformly no bright images to fill in the dark areas.)

Reading Patterson's introduction, one would think that the problem is special privileges being granted to religions. Then he goes on complaining about atheists complaining about special privileges being granted to religions, and he's not even trying to be accurate. :/

Well, there is another saying: Hope springs eternal. ;)

Glad you liked it. :)

This brings to mind the hefty number of people on the government payroll who are required to carry guns. :p

(OK, so soldiers aren't leeching from the government, but neither is it so clearcut that illegal immigrants are leeching: it could be argued the rest of the country is leeching off of them by paying them below-average wages, and they are almost certainly not on the government payroll.)

Doing a background check means having at least some gun control, and not shipping any guns is an even stricter control on guns, so obviously such solutions won't satisfy someone who hates any form of gun control. And tying the payment of taxes with gun purchases pretty much has little to do with illegal immigrants, many of whom pay both income tax and sales tax. (Do illegal immigrants often request a refund for the income tax withheld from their paychecks? I somehow doubt that, but then I don't really know how they manage their taxes ...)

Obviously, I don't expect anyone's head to explode if they accept a reasonable level of gun control or are not so vehement about illegal immigrants. :p

This post is not a solicitation for UFO encounter stories. Anyone who does so, especially when they are identifying what they claim to be an unidentified flying object, either has not read the post or is entirely missing the point. Henceforth, any comments with such stories will be summarily deleted.

This is a depressingly vague claim, so you'll have to excuse me for not believing that what you saw was a "starship" or even if you actually saw anything at all. Besides, how can it be an unidentified flying object if you think you've identified it?