**gasp** But raising kids is too hard! It is the governments job to do everything!

In your face, Ahrnold....

Well good news for US gamers.

Other here we are still waiting our government decision on whenever or not "violent" video games should be banned for everybody in the whole country. :-(

Too bad over here freedom of speech is mostly a "malleable privilege" and not something written in the constitution.

Wait, wait! There is violence in our games?! Why am I not informed of such things! ;-p
As far as banning it goes...dudes the games have ratings, M means you got to be so and so age to legally buy it, if the kids are getting them still anyway, well guess what? They can get smack or booze too and no amount of banning is going to change any of that...sooo stupidity at its finest reigns again. Lets ban video games they say, yeah, or maybe we should worry more about the things that actually cause violence in youth first eh? *Knock, Knock...Pick a real cause.

Calling me out on what, exactly? I never said I disagreed with the court's decision in ensuring video games are protected under the First Amendment, so I don't know why you're talking about that. You want me to make an argument without using "labels"? Try this one on for size: I've been out of residency for three years and I'm still paying off student loans. It was hard enough with the medical insurance racket in the state it was before Obama started making all his changes to the system. I'm not a consultant, I don't have a private practice, I don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I worked my ass off putting other guys' asses back on through my "tenure" as 68W, and I'm damn lucky the Army didn't decide they were going to "renew" my enlistment by way of some obscure "It's wartime and we can, especially since we gave you money for school" clause.

Given your flippant attitude and "reads like it was patched together from several self-proclaimed anarchists' blogs" writing, I'm going to assume your at that late-teen "I'm going to pretend to be a brooding intellectual to impress the girls" stage (here's a tip: It really doesn't work. They go for the jocks every time). Of course, I could be wrong, and you're somewhere closer to my age, in which case you really ought to grow up.

You mean Polish govt? It doesn't matter, because voices in EU are growing louder and louder to prevent selling violent video games in the whole EU
Not only to the children, but at all.

Get familiar with EU legislation process and stop panicking.

Lol. Germany, France and UK can do whatever they want inside of EU. And these three states (mostly Germany) are strong against violent video games.

It's not like Polish govt. really care about video games, you think they would protest? in EP?

Isn't real (wormwood) absinthe still legal in England? I mean, it was when I was a teenager all those years ago, and it came up in class debates along with how Japan trusts their youth enough to put beer vending machines out on the street. Of course the last time I took a hard look at the UK's gov't, Tony Blair was PM, and they were still resisting the Euro in favour of the GBP.

I'm having trouble seeing how what you wrote in response to my post resembles my post. It almost feels like you wrote a response to someone else's writing. A case of miscommunication?

I was calling you out on being a jackass when you were saying "They also favor a monarchy, no separation of church and state, and socialist medicine." I'll admit I was in a foul mood when I responded to you earlier, but that's what I was responding to.

I never said you disagreed with supreme court decision. In fact by the very statement of yours I quoted, it's obvious that you agreed with it quite forcibly. I was pointing out that I also agreed with it, but that agreement had little to do with anything else you wrote in your original comment about monarchy, separation, and socialism. That's what I was trying to communicate and clearly failed to in the rest of my post - i.e. that simply being in favor of trying universal healthcare doesn't also entail one to being in favor of government restricting free speech or not being in favor of free or regulated private markets in other economic sectors.

As for the brooding pseudo-intellectual anarchist teenager part, I'll chalk it up to a misunderstanding of what I was trying to convey which may partly be due to my inability to write at 5:00 in the morning where the only reason why I'm awake is insomnia. Because while I've been accused of many things in my life, some fairly, that accusation has never been among them.

Look I try to avoid personal fights on the internet. They serve no purpose and I admit I broke one of my own cardinal rules by engaging in one with you earlier. Sadly I'm human and was in a bad mood. If you're willing, I would be interested to hear how the new health care law has affected you. I'm actually surprised to hear there have already been major effects since the most radical changes don't kick in until 2014. I have a lot of friends who are MDs or finishing up med school soon and have heard a wide spectrum of opinions on the subject from them. I'd be more than happy to hear yours. In order not to derail the thread further, perhaps we should carry this to PM or another thread. If you do not wish to, that too I understand.

From the standpoint of a lawyer from a country of the so-called Old World, the different opinions of the justices sound hilarious in large parts, regardless of whether they support the law or not. Some go back to the intentions of the founding fathers, citing the puritan family model and Thomas Jefferson and whatnot to say that children do not fall under the 1st amendment. Others compare the law to the one from N.Y. that forbids the sale of pornographic content to minors and judge that violence is different, among other reasons, because there is no long standing tradition of prohibitting the sale to children. That's just stupid.

Anyway, an interesting read and a good laugh at times. Not to say that German or European courts always rule in a convincing way. Often these judges want to have a certain result and argue backwards to get that result and not the logical way from start to end.

And all this says a person from a country where all games are censored.

Err.... just no. 'nuff said.

Edit: OK, I take the bait. First, "all games" are not censored in Germany but a few games every year are for violence. You would be hard-pressed to find a game that is censored because of nudity, unlike in the USofA (Fahrenheit and The Witcher immediately come to mind, as do several others). Secondly, why would you think I'd support the youth protection legislation over here? My country=my opinion is quite invalid. That's if I were to say: "Oh, look, a neighbor from Poland where everybody still thinks [fill in whatever you will]." My opinion to the Supreme Court ruling does not give you the slightest hint as to my opinion about the legislation in Germany. Period.

WTG SC!