.... and someone must be punished” (Staff editorial 1). Whether a person is killed for money or drugs or out of hate or prejudice, the fact still remains that he or she has been killed. With hate crime laws, the hate is being looked at, more so than the crime itself. Even though hate is a terrible thing to have in your heart, all Americans have the right to hate whatever or who ever they want (Hudson 1). Besides, if officials start punishing hate or unholy thoughts, they might as well make a new category of crime— thought crime. If this line of thinking were acted upon, then half o .....

.... The privilege of living and pursuing the good life in society is not absolute. It may be negated by behavior that undermines the nature of a moral community. The essential basis on which community is built requires each citizen to honor the rightful claims of others. The utter and deliberate denial of life and opportunity to others forfeits ones own claim to continued membership in the community, whose standards have been so flagrantly violated. The preservation of moral community demands that the shattering of the foundation of its existence must be taken with utmost seriou .....

.... of narcotics, yet many of them, including powerful and dangerous ones such as alcohol and tobacco, are happily tolerated by society. The nutmeg in your kitchen cupboard can have narcotic effects if smoked (and, used in this way, it can also give you cancer), yet few people have cause to think of this when they sprinkle it into their cakes and biscuits. Chocolate contains an addictive chemical called PEA, which stimulates our brains in the same way that Ecstasy does. Overdosing on chocolate can contribute to heart disease, the single biggest killer in this country today, but f .....

.... that, the more guns with which our society equips itself, the greater the likelihood for accidents or violent acts involving fire arms to occur. It is a proven fact that handguns have been the murder weapon of choice. Guns are involved in half of all homicide cases. People believe that society has relied on weapons that create harm and criminals. Therefore, these weapons should be outlawed. However, law abiding citizens have the right to protect themselves against danger. Due to .....

.... is known as "dagga", in China as "ma", in Northern Europe as "hemp" and in the United States as either "pot", "buds", "reefer", "weed" or the more direct, "smoke". goes back over five thousand years. It is one of the oldest agricultural commodities not grown for food. Hemp, first cultivated in China as early as 2800 B.C., soon stretched to central Asia where it spread like milkweed or thistle. soon began to crowd out neighboring grasses and reaching heights of three to twenty feet stretched over large plains. Local people began to use the plant for its strong, durable .....

.... face each day with the fact that they killed someone weighing on their conscience. On the other hand, such as with a voluntary murder, the ideas are somewhat similar. They believe the murderer doesn’t deserve the death penalty. Chances are if a person is insane enough to kill another human being in the first place, they aren’t going to care what happens to them. They realize that their execution, in most cases, is going to be short and painless. This isn’ t a just punishment for someone who has inflicted severe pain upon another life. Our court system, after initiating a life .....

.... decree given by an ecclesiastical court on the basis of some wrong, such as adultery or abandonment, done by the defendant to the plaintiff. In the past, almost every state divorce law required the plaintiff to prove one of a number of recognized grounds for divorce, included adultery and desertion, even when both spouses wanted the divorce. The divorce system also required that the plaintiff be without fault, and therefore a variety of fault-based defenses were recognized. By the mid-20th century most state legislatures had recognized one or more no-fault g .....

.... on automobile accidents. These studies generally concluded that traffic accidents significantly increased among teenagers after the MLDA was lowered.(Toomey 1) It can, however, easily be argued that since these studies came out right after the drinking ages had been lowered, they would naturally show that there was an increase in death among teenagers. Anytime you change something dramatically it takes a while for things to settle into a routine. If all of a sudden, for instance, you allow 18-year-olds to drink alcohol when before they couldn't, it's going to take a whil .....