Woman sues over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

According to this article:

A woman upset that she bought the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for her 14-year-old grandson without knowing it contained hidden, sexually explicit scenes sued the manufacturer Wednesday on behalf of consumers nationwide.

Florence Cohen, 85, of New York, said in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the game's manufacturer, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software Inc., engaged in false, misleading and deceptive practices.

While the suit itself may have merit, this woman is an idiot. Why? Here's why:

Cohen said in the suit that she bought the game in late 2004 for her grandson when it was rated "M" for mature, for players 17 and older. According to the suit, she directed that it be taken away from her grandson, which was done.

The game was rated for ages 17 and older at the time she bought it for her 14 year-old grandson. So the profanity in the game, as well as all the violence -- gunfights, fistfights, running over people with cars, beating up prostitutes -- that's all okay but a litle simulated sex (and poorly simulated, I've seen the video clips) is enough to take the game away from the kid and file a class-action lawsuit over?

The Grand Theft Auto series of games have been alternately praised and reviled. There is no denying that they contain a lot of "adult" material. But there is also no denying that they are, from a technical and gameplay standpoint, outstanding examples of the computer game art. They present large virtual environments which you can explore however you like and the free-form style of play, in the context of an overarching plot, are a significant change from games which basically funnel the player along a relatively narrow path. Even the mighty Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 don't allow you to explore your environment as freely. But, make no mistake, these games are not for kids. Rockstar and Take Two have never said otherwise.

What it boils down to is that the boy shouldn't have been given the game in the first place. This woman's poor judgement leads me to question her fitness to be in any way involved in his care and upbringing.

Oh so typical

Looks like House Democrats have their own "answer" to the issue of Social Security. Introducing "Amerisave."

"AmeriSave will help middle-class families build retirement security by expanding opportunities to save, and ensuring pension fairness, guaranteeing workers receive the benefits that they have been promised after a lifetime of hard work," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Okay, that sounds good, if a bit vague. I'm all for making sure that employees with pensions receive what they're owed. Of course, it would be best if the government wasn't the one to bail out the pension plans when companies can't make the payments. But what about some specifics?

Under the plan, workers would receive a dollar-for-dollar match for the first $1,000 contributed to an IRA, 401(k), or similar plan. The recipient would receive the match after they filed a tax return, with the funds directed into their retirement savings account.

This is what truly tells us this is a plan developed by Democrats. Where does this money come from? Boortz says it so I don't have to:

Where do those matching funds come from? Why, increased taxes, of course! Where else! Increased taxes on high-achieving Americans.

What a plan! You take money away from people who don't generally vote for you and give it to people who do generally vote for you, and you call it Social Security reform! And how much money? Original estimates are around $75 billion for ten years. That, of course, will turn about to be hugely underestimated. In every election cycle the Democrats will come forward and promise that if you'll just vote for them they will take more money from the evil rich and add it to the retirement accounts of lower and middle-income Americans.

Amerisave is a vote-buying plan. Nothing less.

Yet another wealth confiscation and redistribution plan. Socialism 101. Hopefully, in the Republican-controlled House, this plan will suffer the ignominious death it so richly deserves.

Multilateral

It's been a while since I last posted, I know. Now that the craziness of simultaneously selling one house and buying another, as well as moving into said new house, is over I can finally devote some time to this blog. To start of with, something which you probably won't see or hear emphasized in the mainstream news is that six-way talks will start tomorrow to address North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Many people opposed to the Iraq campaign in the War on Terror have wondered why we attacked Iraq rather than North Korea which presumably presents a greater threat due to its more advanced nuclear weapons program, and the fact that its leader appears to be every bit the dictator Saddam was. There are a multitude of reasons, which collectively form this quaint little thing called "reality," but one of the big ones was that the situation in North Korea has a much better chance of being resolved through peaceful negotions and diplomacy than the situation in Iraq.

One of the reasons I voted for George W. Bush was the difference in the way the two candidates planned to handle North Korea. Bush said he would continue to push for multilateral talks involving the other countries in the region (namely China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia) and not give in to North Korea's demands for bilateral talks between it and the US alone. Kerry, on the other hand, said he would engage in such bilateral talks. The big problem is that is what Clinton did, and North Korea essentially played the US for fools. In exchange for aid, including nuclear fuel for its reactors, North Korea promised that it would not engage in any nuclear fuel production of its own. The government of North Korea quite clearly lied about that and now we have the situation as it exists today. Kerry would have made the same mistake Clinton did and likely made the problem even worse.

By pushing for multilateral talks, Bush realizes that the best hope for resolving this situation peacefully is to get the other concerned nations in the area involved in applying pressure to North Korea. China is especially important as it is the primary source for food and fuel aid to North Korea which is, in a very real sense, keeping the country from devolving into anarchy. China, therefore, is in a position to exert an enormous amount of influence on its smaller neighbor but it will only become involved if it has to. China would probably like nothing better than to let the US deal with North Korea alone but the likely result of such action has already been demonstrated as noted above.

Its funny (not really) that the Democrats were all about how we didn't involve the international community in Iraq (even though we did) but, when faced with a situation where the Bush administration is adamant that other nations be involved, they would be willing to go it alone.

London

I've been reading the reactions to the terrorist bombings in London with interest. The general consensus is along the lines of:

"We've dealt with much worse than this. We survived the Blitz, we survived the IRA, and this isn't even in the same league."

The British are made of stern stuff, there's no doubt about that. But I am somewhat concerned. I'm going to try to put what I'm thinking into words so please forgive me in advance if this sounds somewhat convoluted.

When the US was attacked on 9/11 it finally broke us out of our complacency and we decided to do something about it once and for all. Of course this wasn't the first terror attack against Americans. Previous attacks such as the USS Cole, the barracks in Beirut, the US embassies in Africa, were all terror attacks but we treated them as isolated incidents and then went back to what we were doing. We mourned the dead, repaired the damage, and then moved on. But 9/11 was an attack on US soil, and was several orders of magnitude greater in terms of loss of life and property. We finally said, "That's it, we're going to clean house," and set about to do so. We took out the Taliban in Afghanistan and then invaded Iraq. We are fighting a war, of which both Afghanistan and Iraq are just campaigns, because we want to end the threat and ability of terrorists to carry out such acts for good.

The attacks in Madrid resulted in the people of Spain, or at least a majority of those who voted in the following election, to choose appeasement over victory. They voted in a socialist government which immediately pulled all Spanish troops out of Iraq. They basically surrendered to the terrorists saying, in effect, "Please don't hurt us anymore. We'll be good."

Now we have the attacks in London. While I don't believe Britain will follow Spain into surrender, I'm somewhat concerned about the reactions I am seeing. Although the attacks were of smaller scale than those on 9/11, they nevertheless represent the deadliest assault by Islamic terrorists on British soil so far. Yet what I'm seeing is an attitude of basically, "It's no big deal. We've had worse. We can cope." It's almost like they're being rather complacent about the whole thing. I read one comment from a survivor of the Blitz which said, "I've been blown up by a better class of bastard than you." My question is whether that means you don't think much needs to be done in response. I'm not saying that Britain should lash out blindly, nor even that they should launch independent campaigns in the war on terror. But I worry that the British won't take this attack as seriously as they should. I can only hope that this worry is unfounded.

And so it begins

Two big political news items today.

First up, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her impending retirement. In her short statement to President Bush she said she would, "retire from my position as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor." It will be interesting to see who President Bush nominates as her successor and whether or not the so-called "nuclear/constitutional option" is exercised when Senate Democrats inevitably threaten to filibuster his or her confirmation. Justice O'Connor is considered a "swing vote" on the court and, if a constitutional constructionist were to be appointed and confirmed, the court's track would probably steer to the conservative side.

In other, somewhat related news, the US Congress is acting to blunt the recent egregious Supreme Court decision regarding eminent domain and property rights (in which Justice O'Connor dissented, by the way). In the aftermath of the Kelo decision, the House passed an amendment to the Treasury/Transportation spending bill.

With growing bipartisan support, the House voted for a piece of legislation that could undo the impact of the Supreme Court decision. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., would cut off federal funding to any governmental entity that uses the expanded eminent domain power to take land for economic development projects. Congress has used this approach before.

Next up: The Senate.

The measure will be offered in the Senate by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

"We will be working together to accomplish our goal ... to reign back in this broad interpretation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution in a way that protects all of us from the awesome power of government to take private property for private uses," Cornyn said.

Democrats are split on the issue:

Though Republicans have pushed the amendment, key Democrats like Reps. John Conyers of Michigan, Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Maxine Waters of California have signed on as co-sponsors. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lined up against the measure.

"When you withhold funds from enforcing a decision of the Supreme Court, you are, in fact, nullifying a decision of the Supreme Court," Pelosi said.

That's exactly the point, those in Congress upset by the Supreme Court decision say. They say they believe very few state and local governments would be willing to risk losing federal funding in order to help a developer finance a private project.

You ask me, the Federal government doesn't have any business giving any such funds to state and local governments in the first place. Nevertheless, anything the Federal government can do to protect property rights is probably a good thing. That is, after all, one of it's Constitutionally-specified primary functions, unlike so much else that it does. I would like to see a new amendment to the Constitution that expands and clarifies the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. Perhaps something along the lines of:

No government at any level shall have the power to take private property for public use without providing just compensation. Public use is defined as <insert appropriate definition here, emphasising the words "public use" as opposed to "public benefit," "public interest," "economic development," etc.>. Under no circumstances shall any government take property from a private individual or entity and then give it or sell it to another private individual or entity.