JayB

More like pipettor got my hand. I'll respond when I have a bit more time.

The enlightened ones and the successful debaters amongst us will no doubt be consider this due to some behind the scenes sabotage by the imperialist US..... One wonders how many epi-cycles they will devise before they understand the obvious. Your posts might generate more traffic if the opposing point of view you frequently try to bait actually existed on this forum. Price controls lead to inflation? Revolutionary! Yaaawwwwwnnnnnnnn. Could you elaborate on the manner in which, in your view, price controls cause inflation?

Spent the day dicking around on the 3ish consolation routes in the lower photos due to the aforementioned all-day group enduro-seige TR megacluster. If we'd been able to hang around for a couple of hours longer, we could have had access to those routes as well, but we had to cut the day a bit short, so if we'd been a bit more persistent the mega-cluster wouldn't have kept us off of the routes. Now that we've been there, we may sneak out there on a weekday to score unfettered access to the better lines, or try to do a better job of determining when commercial/college/club outings will be present. We still had a good time, and it's hard to imagine a cluster of sufficient magnitude to fully thwart someone who's willing to make do with some of the shorter lines or do some bouldering.

Mega-Quote from the Dreaded NeoCon, Sam Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation.": "In recent days, crowds of thousands have gathered throughout the Muslim world—burning European embassies, issuing threats, and even taking hostages—in protest over 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper last September. The problem is not merely that the cartoons were mildly derogatory. The furor primarily erupted over the fact that the Prophet had been depicted at all. Many Muslims consider any physical rendering of Muhammad to be an act of idolatry. And idolatry is punishable by death. Criticism of Muhammad or his teaching—which was also implicit in the cartoons—is considered blasphemy. As it turns out, blasphemy is also punishable by death. So pious Muslims have two reasons to “not accept less than a severing of the heads of those responsible,” as was recently elucidated by a preacher at the Al Omari mosque in Gaza. The religious hysteria has not been confined to the “extremists” of the Muslim world. Seventeen Arab governments issued a joint statement of protest, calling for the punishment of those responsible. Pakistan’s parliament unanimously condemned the drawings as a “vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign” that has “hurt the faith and feelings of Muslims all over the world.” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while still seeking his nation’s entry into the European Union, nevertheless declared that the cartoons were an attack upon the “spiritual values” of Muslims everywhere. The leader of Lebanon’s governing Hezbollah faction observed that the whole episode could have been avoided if only the novelist Salman Rushdie had been properly slaughtered for writing “The Satanic Verses.” Let us take stock of the moral intuitions now on display in the House of Islam: On Aug. 17, 2005, an Iraqi insurgent helped collect the injured survivors of a car bombing, rushed them to a hospital and then detonated his own bomb, murdering those who were already mortally wounded as well as the doctors and nurses struggling to save their lives. Where were the cries of outrage from the Muslim world? Religious sociopaths kill innocents by the hundreds in the capitols of Europe, blow up the offices of the U.N. and the Red Cross, purposefully annihilate crowds of children gathered to collect candy from U.S. soldiers on the streets of Baghdad, kidnap journalists, behead them, and the videos of their butchery become the most popular form of pornography in the Muslim world, and no one utters a word of protest because these atrocities have been perpetrated “in defense of Islam.” But draw a picture of the Prophet, and pious mobs convulse with pious rage. One could hardly ask for a better example of religious dogmatism and its pseudo-morality eclipsing basic, human goodness. It is time we recognized—and obliged the Muslim world to recognize—that “Muslim extremism” is not extreme among Muslims. Mainstream Islam itself represents an extremist rejection of intellectual honesty, gender equality, secular politics and genuine pluralism. The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow. Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries, and yet exploit these values to the utmost—demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their misogyny, their anti-Semitism, and the genocidal hatred that is regularly preached in their mosques. Political correctness and fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst. In an effort to appease the lunatic furor arising in the Muslim world in response to the publication of the Danish cartoons, many Western leaders have offered apologies for exercising the very freedoms that are constitutive of civil society in the 21st century. The U.S. and British governments have chastised Denmark and the other countries that published the cartoons for privileging freedom of speech over religious sensitivity. It is not often that one sees the most powerful countries on Earth achieve new depths of weakness, moral exhaustion and geopolitical stupidity with a single gesture. This was appeasement at its most abject. The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a dangerous fantasy—and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. It is not at all clear how we should proceed in our dialogue with the Muslim world, but deluding ourselves with euphemisms is not the answer. It now appears to be a truism in foreign policy circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed from the outside. But it is important to recognize why this is so—it is so because the Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism. In confronting the religious literalism and ignorance of the Muslim world, we must appreciate how terrifyingly isolated Muslims have become in intellectual terms. The problem is especially acute in the Arab world. Consider: According to the United Nations’ Arab Human Development Reports, less than 2% of Arabs have access to the Internet. Arabs represent 5% of the world’s population and yet produce only 1% of the world’s books, most of them religious. In fact, Spain translates more books into Spanish each year than the entire Arab world has translated into Arabic since the ninth century. Our press should report on the terrifying state of discourse in the Arab press, exposing the degree to which it is a tissue of lies, conspiracy theories and exhortations to recapture the glories of the seventh century. All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the Earth. Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their coreligionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future. It is time we realized that the endgame for civilization is not political correctness. It is not respect for the abject religious certainties of the mob. It is reason. Sam Harris is the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason” (W.W. Norton). He can be reached through his website at www.samharris.org. Sam Harris responds to comments and criticism Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am extremely critical of all religious faiths. I have argued elsewhere that the ascendancy of Christian conservatism in American politics should terrify and embarrass us. I have argued that the religious dogmatism of the Jewish settlers could well be the cause of World War III. And yet, there are gradations to the evil that is done in name of God, and these gradations must be honestly observed. So let us now acknowledge the obvious: there is a direct link between the doctrine of Islam and Muslim violence. Acknowledging this link remains especially taboo among political liberals. While liberals are leery of religious fundamentalism in general, they consistently imagine that all religions at their core teach the same thing and teach it equally well. This is one of the many delusions borne of political correctness. Rather than continue to squander precious time, energy, and good will by denying the role that Islam now plays in perpetuating Muslim violence, we should urge Muslim communities, East and West, to reform the ideology of their religion. This will not be easy, as the Koran and hadith offer precious little basis for a Muslim Enlightenment, but it is necessary. The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence. Unless the world’s Muslims can find some way of expunging the metaphysics that is fast turning their religion into a cult of death, we will ultimately face the same perversely destructive behavior throughout much of the world. It should be clear that I am not speaking about a race or an ethnicity here; I am speaking about the logical consequences of specific ideas. Anyone who imagines that terrestrial concerns account for Muslim terrorism must answer questions of the following sort: Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal, and far more cynical, than any that Britain, the United States, or Israel have ever imposed upon the Muslim world. Where are the throngs of Tibetans ready to perpetrate suicidal atrocities against Chinese noncombatants? They do not exist. What is the difference that makes the difference? The difference lies in the specific tenets of Islam. This is not to say that Buddhism could not help inspire suicidal violence. It can, and it has (Japan, World War II). But this concedes absolutely nothing to the apologists for Islam. As a Buddhist, one has to work extremely hard to justify such barbarism. One need not work nearly so hard as a Muslim. If you doubt whether the comparison is valid, ask yourself where the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers are. Palestinian Christians also suffer the indignity of the Israeli occupation. This is practically a science experiment: take the same people, speaking the same language, put them in the same horrendous circumstance, but give them slightly different religious beliefs--and then watch what happens. What happens is, they behave differently. While the other major world religions have been fertile sources of intolerance, it is clear that the doctrine of Islam poses unique problems for the emergence of a global civilization. The world, from the point of view of Islam, is divided into the “House of Islam” and the “House of War,” and this latter designation should indicate how Muslims believe their differences with those who do not share their faith will be ultimately resolved. While there are undoubtedly some moderate Muslims who have decided to overlook the irrescindable militancy of their religion, Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage—as Muslims—is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed. The tenets of Islam simply do not admit of anything but a temporary sharing of power with the “enemies of God.” Devout Muslims can have no doubt about the reality of Paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom as a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom and reasonableness of killing people for what amount to theological grievances. In Islam, it is the moderate who is left to split hairs, because the basic thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, subjugate, or kill unbelievers; kill apostates; and conquer the world. It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of devout Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is, after all, little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the September 11th hijackers may one day get their hands on nuclear weaponry. As Martin Rees, Britain’s Royal astronomer, has pointed out, there is no reason to expect that we will be any more successful at stopping nuclear proliferation, in small quantities, than we have been with respect to illegal drugs. If this is true, weapons of mass destruction will eventually be available to anyone who wants them. It seems a truism to say that there is no possible future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. "

They held the line for 72 years in the face of far more grim news from the Soviet Block and China, and have yet to concede the obvious with regards to Cuba, so conjuring up the apologetics for Hugo et al shouldn't provide them with very much in the way of a moral or intellectual challenge.

Your inhumanity knows no bounds.

Come one people, look at these sacrifices! "We've adjusted, all right. Instead of going to movies, we stay in and rent them. The rare restaurant meal is breakfast or lunch, less spendy than dinner. We had season tickets to the Boise Opera but, as much as we both love it, opera is not in the leaner, meaner Seattle budget." Surely one of you can find it in your hearts to cut $275K off of the sale price of your home to lighten their burden. We're talking *rented* movies here. NO OPERA for God's%$#*ing sake!

Exactly. I sucks that a historic confluence of low interest rates, the yen-based carry-trade, market psychology, etc have coalesced and resulted in a situation where hardworking folks that are financially prudent find themselves outbid by some folks fresh out of the Carlton Sheets seminar sporting the stated-income,neg-AM, I/O, payment-option 80/20 financing - but that's life. If someone is prepared to pay more money and/or assume more financial risk to secure the same asset - they get the asset. When it comes to owning a home, we are all entitled to jack shit, much less an affordable home in our favorite neighborhood, etc, etc, etc.

Anyone feel any sympathy for this lady? I certainly don't. -Didn't get the memo that a coastal city with a much larger population will be more expensive than a smaller city in the interior that's surrounded by an infinity land suitable for building. -Feels that owning a home that suits their tastes in their favorite neighborhood is a god given right. -Moved to a more expensive city and discovered that the higher cost of living associated with living in the neighborhood of their choosing involves certain tradeoffs. -Etc, etc, etc, "Seattle too pricey for normal people" CHRISTY L. THOMAS GUEST COLUMNIST It's been one year since my boyfriend, Tom, and I spent a lovely, long weekend in Seattle and decided to move here. As new empty-nesters, we were up for an adventure. He applied for an artsy, downtown job and got it; I'm self-employed, so I stayed in Boise long enough to sell the house and start sending out r�sum�s to build Seattle-area business. I joined him here in July. Our goal was to rent for a year, look around and buy the home where, if we're lucky, we'll grow old together. We signed a lease on a cute but rundown place in Ballard, trying not to think about the fact that, at less than half the size of our last house, it cost more than our 15-year mortgage. We told ourselves: "Well, this is a bigger city. We'll adjust the budget a bit and make it work." Every Sunday, we'd pore over the newspaper real estate sections and a Seattle map, pick a new neighborhood and visit open houses. When that got too depressing, we cut back to every other week. Houses we'd never have looked at twice sport half-million-dollar price tags. One seemingly incredible bargain actually had been condemned -- for the same price we sold our Boise property ($320,000). Real estate agents either have tried to shoehorn us into tiny condos, or clucked sympathetically and suggested moving "at least an hour out of town." I've lectured many of them about our situation: "We moved here to be part of the city. We're good citizens and interesting, productive people. We're just not, at this stage of life, willing to spend every penny on a house. We need to save something for retirement." Finally, Tom calmly proclaimed: "No more tears. No more wrecked Sundays. I'm getting up early and throwing away the real estate listings." We've adjusted, all right. Instead of going to movies, we stay in and rent them. The rare restaurant meal is breakfast or lunch, less spendy than dinner. We had season tickets to the Boise Opera but, as much as we both love it, opera is not in the leaner, meaner Seattle budget. The car insurance and health insurance went up. Our heating oil bill topped $1,500 in four months. Groceries cost more and sales tax is higher. I used to be an active volunteer on charitable boards and a member of a city commission. Here, I can't afford to be generous with my time; I have to focus on getting paid work. Few employers, including this newspaper, have bothered to respond to my queries, even for job descriptions that perfectly match my skills and experience. Novelists appear to be held in high regard, but I write speeches, textbooks, how-to manuals and such. I never thought of myself, or my assignments, as boring until now. Yes, it's been an adventure. We were so excited about getting a fresh start at midlife in such a beautiful place. Now I wonder, how could two hard-working people with good hearts and the best intentions end up feeling so ... unwelcome? You tell me. Is Seattle only for rich folks now? How do normal people manage? If we head back to Boise, are we giving up, or just being realistic? We've set an April 1 deadline to decide. Christy L. Thomas lives in Seattle.

Trip: Auburn Ice Canyon, Auburn MA - Various Date: 2/18/2007 Trip Report: Will add a bit more text of my own tomorrow, but this will suffice for now. Short story. 40 miles from Boston, commercial trip has enduro-mega-siege-TR action in full-effect on all of the best lines on in place by the time of our arrival just after 8:00AM, but there's more than enough ice to go around and we have a good time, meet nice folks, and enjoy one of the lowest drive-time, approach-time, and elevation-gain-required to reach ice outings ever. Supplemental text cross-posted from neice.com for the benefit of anyone living on the East Coast with intentions of bringing a large group into the area. "And to anyone wishing to bring large groups for the purpose of making money (private guiding), recreation (school groups, outing clubs, etc.) into the canyon, remember that this is not New Hampshire or Maine. The access to this area is more fragile than you think, especially after the emergency response to the accident a few years ago. Local crews are not equipped to handle rescues in that environment, and they would just rather not have us in there. Please keep the groups SMALL, properly equipped (um, EVERYONE needs to be wearing a helmet at ALL times), and WELL-MANAGED to avoid getting injured. If you don't agree with my opinion here, I don't care. I don't want someone else screwing this up for the rest of us who use better judgement when going into this local jewel of a resource. Amen. Meeg" The Best Lines at the End of the Canyon. The view of towards the rear of the Canyon: Some of the consolation climbs away from the best routes: Gear Notes: Long slings helpful for anchors. Outing schedule at Rhode Island Rock Gym or local college outing clubs may be useful for crowd forecasting purposes. Approach Notes: Approach beta on neice.com

I honestly don't recall responding to one of your posts, but all of the evidence suggests that international terrorists usually come from a privileged, well-educated elite with substantial connections to the West. This bears pondering in light of the argument that Islamic terrorism is a response to poverty, etc.

I think that your refusal to engage in a serious discussion is is a consequence of that fact that the scope of both your interests and your learning is confined to contemporary American politics, and that you are aware of the fact that discussions of realities extend beyond your temporal partisan myopia quickly leave you out of your depth.

I don't get your Hamlet reference, heer Jay, but I think my crude synopsis of what you stated is really not as far off as you are trying to suggest. Anyway, I agree with the above quote: I have never argued that we are going to stop terrorism by adopting this or that foreign policy. Our current actions in Iraq are certainly adding fuel to the fire, though, and I think the baldfaced cynicism of those who say "the ends justifies the means" and "f*ck the rest of the world if they won't go along with us" is truly undermining any shred decency we may have held as a nation and, in a real way, our own democracy suffers along with our International image. And what is this critique of my argument style in light of your constant refrain about latte sipping metrosexuals? I wasn't critiquing your style, just pointing out that it didn't contain an argument, even though you presented it as such. This "synopsis" is little more than a means of evading arguments that you can't formulate an effective response to, or that address topics that you aren't familiar with. "Muslim Brotherhood? Huh? Shut-up drainhole! Shut-up!" It's a shame that you didn't get the Shakespeare quote, since it's so apt.

Is that what passes for an argument in your circles, Matt? Whenever someone presents an argument which is not congruent some of the articles of faith that frame your thinking on these matters, you seem to revert to this particular mode. I've presented quite a number of instances in which Islamist violence and/or outrage has been evident in response to events which are difficult, if not impossible to tether in any way whatsoever to American foreign policy. It would indeed be naive to think that our actions have no influence on their motivations or behavior, but it would be equally absurd to insist that the Islamists have no aims, agenda, or ambition of their own apart from a tit-for-tat response to what they consider provocations by the West, or that there aren't forces outside of the US, and outside the scope of the current geopolical situation that play a significant role in catalyzing Islamist militancy and violence. As far as the tone of your post is concerned, all I can do with that is channel Hamlet and observe that "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Very grim situation if you consistently lose those debates to the voices coming at you from the recesses of the drain. I can envision several posters here growing increasing agitated upon being confronted with the rebuttals put forth by the drain-hole, and conjuring up elaborate conspiracies to counter the drain-holes assertions. "Shut up drainhole! Shut-up! Rove -I know you're down there somewhere, and by God, I'm about to grab 50-foot roto-snake and finish you off once and for all...."

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to continue with this, but one of many variables at play in the Middle East that won't be materially affected by any particular change in American policy involves the economic factors that make the entire area susceptible to political repression. When the vast majority of the income generated within a particular area is easy for the state to seize and exert control over, the said area is much more susceptible to centralized control and repression than an area in which the government relies on the industry of its citizens to generate the revenues necessary for the state to function. Where the state does not rely upon taxation, you rarely get representation, because the folks in charge are no longer dependent upon the citizenry to provide them with the resources that they need to govern. The fact that nation states that rely upon a single natural resource tend to be both less stable and more prone to repression is so thoroughly established as to admit no serious dispute. The fact that most of the regimes in the middle east are congenial to the US proves nothing, as Iran has clearly demonstrated that a political alliance with the United States is not a necessary pre-condition for establishing a repressive state. If the Islamists seize control of any given Middle Eastern state, they will certainly be more openly hostile to the US than the rulers that they replace, but does anyone actually believe that they'd be less repressive?

Who is the one doing the simplifying here, Matt? I don't recall arguing that Americas actions had no effect on the motivations and general state of agitation in the Muslim world. What I did argue is that the factors that have brought us to this juncture have deep roots in history and are quite a bit more complicated than a simple input-output style reaction to American policy. I also identified a number of contemporary realities which are difficult to reconcile with the notion that changes in American policy will materially change things here. I could have just as easily looked back 50 years and pointed out that the reasons that the members of the Muslim Brotherhood were intent on assassinating Nasser had absolutely nothing to do with US policy towards either Egypt or the Middle East, nor was the group formed in response to anything to do with the United States. Find me a reference to the US in that organizations founding credo "“Allah is our objective; the Quran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Struggle is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations." I could go on. I am also personally not convinced that our default position with respect to either our foreign policy or in the manner in which we live our lives should be to ask "will X offend Muslim sensibilities" before engaging in any particular action or policy, seeing as something as trivial as a mildly satirical cartoon published in an obscure newspaper in a country several thousand miles away is sufficient to set off demonstrations and rioting throughout the Muslim world. Given that it would be A) quite impossible to redress the list of grievances that animate Muslim violence throughout the world, and B) that the causes extend well beyond a simple reaction to American policies, it would be sensible to promote something other than either A or B or some combination thereof as a panacea that will eliminate this problem.

Substitute "need" for "decided" too. I didn't use the term need, but that semantic distinction seems important to you so feel free to roll with it. Per this iteration of the theory, this is why the guy visited mosques immediately after 9/11? Why he implored the public not to mistreat Muslims in the wake of the attack? Can you find a single statement in which he slanders the entire Islamic faith? Why he called Islam a "religion of peace?" How does this fit into your Michael Moore inspired conspiranoia about the malevolent connections between GWB and the House of Saud. Is there a special asterisk and a footnote in your earlier statement that I missed that would explain this discrepancy "All Arab Muslims except those hailing from countries with names that start with S and have U as the third letter..."

An irrelevant distinction constitutionally and/or by statute, as I've successfully argued. Uh...yes, there are many restrictions on this, with damages as penalties, as I've successfully argued. Jesus dude, now you're resorting to cutting and pasting text from two entirely different statements. Neat. You're right. I give up. Mutter the epithet of your choosing at the water cooler and under the constitution the government has every right to throw you in jail. If it's not permitted under workplace law, it must not be permitted under the constitution either - and society is that much the better for it.

I'm well aware of the precedents, but thanks. Your point about the street conflates more than one issue by interjecting the term "shout," which some might argue constitutes harassment, disturbing the peace, etc. Change the context a bit, and make the example a mild mannered man with a beard, sporting a some John Lennonesque glasses and a tweed jacket, using a normal speaking voice to express just how much he despises group X, and liberally salting his speech with as many epithets as he can conjure up in his crisp Mid-Atlantic diction. Should the guy be exempt from disdain, criticism, having counter-epithets shouted back at him, etc? No. Should he expect that anyone who physically assaults him will be prosecuted by the state? Yes. Should he himself expect to by prosecuted by the State? No. What's more interesting to me than the "Is" question at play here is the ought question. If we did in fact live in a state where merely saying particular words - no matter how offensive or hurtful others may find them - could lead to prosecution by the state, would you all be comfortable with this state of affairs? I wonder.

Yes, and many Persian muslims, and I've worked with many over the years, are very similar culturally to Americans and get along quite well us. So? Just waiting for Chuck to parse the Iranian situation - Did the Clinton Administration re-establish diplomatic ties with Iran because they were not in the thrall of these prejudices? Did Carter send the choppers into Iran on the basis of "negative stereotypes? - through the explanatory prism he's established to explain the Gulf war. How come we didn't send in troops to attack the Kuwaitis and the Saudis in '91? These states are both Arab, and Muslim - and have plenty of oil (the third key variable in Chuck's conspiro-troika). Make common cause with Saddam since he only had one of the variables-o-unfair-stereotyping working against him? There are in infinite number of conundrums to ponder under this explanatory scheme, and I do hope that Chuck will deign to resolve them in this forum.

Thanks for restating the both the obvious, and what I said. How does any of this advance the argument that speech is not protected under the First Amendment? If the government was prosecuting people for conduct that was inconsistent with the rights established under the constitution or subsequent case-law deriving therefrom for violating the tenets of a corporate speech code, then you'd have a point. As things stand, you don't.

So it was "negative stereotypes" that precipitated this whole thing? Which is the key variable here, Arab or Muslim? Iran is populated by Persians and Persians are not Arabs but many of them are Muslims so...?

Actually, all of those forms of speech are protected by the first amendment. Your right to employment is not protected under the constitution, so you can be fired for what you say, but not imprisoned or subjected to any other punishment on the government's behalf for the same. The party that was the object of your comments may sue you for violating the rules that govern conduct in the workplace, but the prosecution would be limited to your behavior in that capacity, not for violating a set of laws that govern your conduct as a citizen outside of that setting. Laws that govern the workplace, laws that protect the rights of citizens outside of the workplace. Big difference.

By the same measure, one could conclude that you never been to a university before, because you'd be laughed off of campus if you suggested that corporate speech codes, rather than the Constitution - either do or should govern the exchange of ideas amongst students attending the said university. The same goes for what people can say in public. Artists and entertainers are the only class of citizen that's entitled to these rights per case law? I would venture that you could Google yourself straight into oblivion looking for court cases that have come to any such conclusion, and the reason why you are not anxious to search for such examples is that there are none that haven't been overturned on appeal. The only place where your rules apply is in the workplace, so why you even interjected them into the discussion is quite beyond me. Unless this is an attempt to make an argument along the lines of "Well, corporate HR regulations *certainly* prohibit that sort of thing, so perhaps the rest of us should follow their lead on this one..."