There's a lot of outrage out there about the effort to turn this country into a European socialist society, but a lot of it is silent outrage. Progressivism will stomp on freedom of speech, exercise power through government largesse, and do just what they tried to do during the 1930s with Roosevelt. Some of it was reversed since it went too far over the edge (like the AAA and the NIRA), but much of the Progressive platform has been implemented. The more socialist of it remains to be implemented by the Obama administration which is making a big effort to do just that before 2010 and we have another shot at electing a Congress that won't act as a rubber stamp for the statists in the administration. I just hope that the silent outrage...

Yes, Mr. Udall, we want you to stand up for 50 hours and hear this bill in all its hateful and boring length and I mean STAND UP. That is, no chair, no bathroom break, no food break, no sleep. And I hope the Reps who plan to read the bill read REALLY SLOW. If it doesn't take 100 hours to read it, then you're reading too fast. It's just too bad that the rules were changed many years ago to allow 60 votes to pass bills over a filibuster; it should have remained 2/3. It would be a lot harder to pass these horrendous taxes and spend tons of money that Congress doesn't have if it required 2/3 to vote for it. Kick all the people out in 2010 who voted for the health care bill, the bailouts, the stimulus packages, tax&spend.

As noted in some of the posts above, we exhale CO2. If CO2 is considered a "pollutant," then maybe all human beings are "pollutants." The self-destructive potential destroyers of human life are the modern Luddites (people who were against machines in the 1800s). The new Luddites are against their own human race, but maybe the rest of us don't share their self-immolating goal. The anti-industrial-revolution gang would take us back to the time when we used real horsepower to transport us instead of gasoline engines, but they might condemn that, also, as cruelty to horses. We can't let these human destroyers get going with these climate-control, CO2 taxes, forcing us to drive little electric vehicles (I'd rather ride my horse). ...

Thanks to Tom in MI and Ernest in FL for excellent comments here. There's always the temptation of gov'ts who run on fiat currency to inflate so they can reduce their debt, which the US obviously has to do here. This is a scary time, the worst in my lifetime for trying to figure out what will happen. We don't have a good outlook if the gov't continues to run these huge debts. Us poor taxpayers have to protect ourselves some way from being wiped out in a currency failure. I don't know that gold is the answer because of the difficulty of trading it in small amounts; maybe silver coins are a better prospect. It is hard to know how this will play out, but I think we can be pretty sure that the dollar will deteriorate over the short...

I don't know why "marriage" can't be between anybody, more than two people, if the definition of the word "marriage" is changed to eliminate the requirement that it be between a man and a woman. If a "marriage" doesn't fit that definition (like between same-sex people, or three or four people, or your dog or something) then it's not "marriage." People that aren't married can have civil union and can arrange their legal documents so each party is protected for medical decisions, inheritance, etc. I don't understand why they are so bent on destroying marriage. The trouble with this issue is the violence it attracts. It would be nice if people took to heart the idea of not initiating the use of force against others.

I read Catastrophe and think that it is important to read. Of course, all of Tom's books are important, and I especially enjoyed The Vision of the Anointed (read Obama) and Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

Going back to basics, everybody should read The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) and Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt). Also note that Atlas Shrugged is on the way to selling 400,000 copies in this year alone. A great resurgence. The legislation Rand outlines in there could be what we see today. Very pertinent even though it's somewhat dated by lacking the technology that was developed since the 1950's.

The illegal alien problem pales in consideration of the health care thing and the carbon tax thing. Dirty Harry is working for everything Obama wants. Our only hope is to throw out as many Dems as possible in 2010. Harry doesn't have a high approval rating here in northern Nevada, but the votes live in Vegas. Anybody who wants to really help better support whoever runs against Harry next year. It's my personal goal to get him out. I'd like to see Dean Heller run, but he hasn't committed. Sharron Angle is good, also, and needs support if she's the one.

The manipulation pulled by Harry Reid in hiding the spending mentioned in this article is one of the good reasons for sending Harry back to Searchlight in 2010. These "creative" solutions to hiding spending from the electorate is showing Harry's disdain for the intelligence of the voters. There are several good candidates opposing Harry in 2010 and we need to get behind whoever survives the primary and get Harry out. Nevada doesn't need or want Harry any more.

Harry may understand manipulative techniques, but he doesn't understand what's the right thing to do. I don't know why Nevada elected him, but it was by a tiny margin and maybe this time we can retire him for good. I'm working on it as are a lot of people here in Nevada. I may have only talked with people from northern Nevada, but everybody I've asked doesn't want a public government plan. I don't know where the polling people work, but their poll is probably skewed the other way, just as mine was. Harry Reid doesn't speak for this Nevadan.

Thank you for having the journalistic inquisitiveness to put ACORN in the position of counseling you on illegal activities. Best example of undercover journalism in many years. Other journalists don't like getting caught with their pants down and some don't agree with the undercover method of getting a story and that may be why most of the other media outside of Fox didn't spend much time on this story. But, it's not a politically correct story. These "community organizers" are supposed to be above reproach and if there's a story that exposes nefarious activity, those who support "community organizers," whether they are right or wrong, will ignore evidence of wrongdoing. Thanks for being bold enough to do the story.