"Melissa" wrote in message
...

[can't help with the 650si pricing; as others have suggested, see what they
go for on eBay]


--
Yours In Liberty, Melissa - Colorado, U.S.A.
http://melissasliberty.blogspot.com/

Zero interest in martial arts (I'm too old and lazy, and my self-defense
preference is a 9mm Beretta anyway), but I salute you for your views and
sentiments in general.



The last best hope for liberty, to give the world its first Bill of
Rights: http://www.UPAlliance.org/billofrights.htm

That's pie in the sky, Melissa. Unfortunately, compiling things like
"Planetary Bill of Rights" will never be anything but the purest example of
wasting one's time. Even if you could get governments the world over to
agree on such a document--and you never will--you're still left with the
mess of judicial interpretation and rewriting.

Consider our own Bill of Rights. I'm gratified to see that you're a RTKBA
supporter, but that's perhaps the best single example of how constitutional
"rights" can be violated and dismissed by the courts, including the highest
court in the land. Our Second Amendment says that "the right of the people
to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"--but it is infringed all over
the place, and in many places (NYC being a prime example) the ordinary
citizen has essentially NO right to keep, let alone bear, arms. (Judges,
politicians, wealthy and influential citizens of course do fully enjoy the
right, as do retired policemen who are automatically given permits to
carry.) Where is the protection of this right promised by the Bill of
Rights? It doesn't exist. At most, the Second Amendment is a minor potential
irritant to people who would, if they could, do away with the right
completely. It protects nothing.

The Tenth Amendment doesn't fare much better either. It says that the
federal government has NO power not SPECIFICALLY granted to it by the
Constitution ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states
respectively, or to the people"). But the government makes and enforces
thousands of laws that flagrantly violate this principle. Where, for
example, does the Constitution give any federal agency the right to deprive
a person of the right to develop his own property because it may contain
some "protected species" bug? This is just one case in which the bloated,
self-serving and often screwball government has spun wildly out of control,
tramples on people's rights, and the Bill of Rights does not stand in its
way.

Ann Coulter is probably correct when she says that 75% of what the U.S.
Congress does is unconstitutional.

Meanwhile the U.S. Supreme Court has "discovered" all sorts of
constitutional rights and privileges that no one who reads and understands
plain English can find there. Take Roe v. Wade for one example. Now I can
see and understand both sides of the abortion argument, and I take no
position on that one way or the other. But for SCotUS to discover a
CONSTITUTIONAL right to abortion? Clearly there is nothing in the Bill of
Rights to support such a notion, nor any "right to privacy" either, beyond
the rights specifically delineated in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

Alas, our Bill of Rights has been steadily undermined by the very people
employed to defend it. Is there any reason to believe a "Planetary Bill of
Rights" would do any better than ours has? Or for that matter even as well?

N.