[Growltigga]

Crime has been a global problem for a lot longer than the Internet has existed. Computers merely speed up the transactions, and enable a few new ones

This is exactly what I said

But all in all, if I were on trial for my life I'd rather have a lawyer than a man of principle working for me. It's a shame though that those are often mutually exclusive

Ooh, I think you need to get off your anti-lawyer kick.. lawyers are not overpaid compared to other professionals (eg accountants, actuaries and venture capitalists particularily). Given that it takes most of us 6-8 years to even qualify (and we take loans to fund university and law school) and then you can be assured of 70-80 hour weeks for the rest of your life, together with the second highest work levels of stress going, we are then criminally underpaid. The legal profession, certainly in the UK, has the highest number of people wanting to change jobs but cant due to preciseness of training, why would we want to due that if we were so overpaid?

another point, the new trainee in my room is 25, earn about $18K a year and has just started her career, after law school, she says she is $42K in debt...

my next door neighbour is an accountant, he has a mercedes and a BMW.. I drive a 9 year old Renault clio that is frankly held together by rust and stubborn understains

wow, ease up guys. lets not get angry with each other about dancing styles, sports brawls, and income brackets. i cant dance, im unsporting, and i make more money than i deserve. go ahead and get mad at me for it, both of you.

Puke, it sounds like you have enough problems of your own... the point I want to make here Geo is that I showed your post on our sports behaviour to 2 germans, 1 belgian and 3 english colleagues... it really was better than laughing gas.. to accuse us of jingoism and patriotric fervour in our sports is an absolute classic, do the words "pot", "kettle" and "black" mean anything to you.

The rest of the world praised Salt Lake for the cracking winter olympics earlier this year. Brilliantly organised, excellent for world sport.. the rest of the world also pointedfly remarked that US supporters should really learn to be less partisan.. it is just insulting the lengths it is taken to (booing other teams?? yeah, really sporting)

WRONG.

Pax, wake up and smell the roses. YOur statements are frighteningly naive (or idealistic, I am not sure)

Freedom of Speech is constitutionalised in the US, rather than legislated as it is in most european countries.

So you think this means you can say what you like about what you like when you like.

Fine, try it. You try and take your soap box to the middle of your town today and preach on something like kiddy porn. You think you will be free to do so?

WRONG. You will be arrested. Try looking at the US public order offences and see what they really say.

We actually have more "freedom of speech" as you define in in europe. If our rights are breached, it is illegal and we can take the police to the lower courts. In the US, any constittuional breach goes to the Federal Supreme COurt...

Are your principles backed up by enbough cash to do this?