I'd say building a blue water navy to spite his Anglo cousins was kind of the drunken spat a the bar. Following the Hapsburgs into that other unfortunate mess was like letting your older brother talk you into going to that redneck bar while you were wearing your Sunday meeting clothes.

Amen brother. Thank God Harry Truman and I cooked up NATO!

Sure, that's the simplest answer, but requires a large number of folks taking personal responsibilities for their decisions, which isn't a very hot selling point to a lot of people.

Those counseling options are likely to be expensive to put into place in a world of tight state and local budgets. You do see, in some states, things like DWI courts for those kinds of issues.

Love your articles. Having read it, what does this election mean, policy-wise?

This remind anybody else of the Vickers Wellington?

The funny thing is that I saw on another website, folks saying that this was staged, in internet world there certainly is a ton of cynicism!

Travis, you will be happy to know that you've been promoted to internet troll! This was on my FB this morning!

You have a great point. I guess if asked this by a policy maker, I would respond that 1) many of these folks don't have a single thing of value to place a lien on and 2) often payment plans are set up currently by prosecutor's offices in order for a license to be issued to someone, so that policy currently exists.

Not really. You might be amazed at how many folks zipping up and down the road don't have one.

Some state do do the garnish income route on certain cases, or agreements on payment plans for back support, in exchange for the license back. Often a prosecutor's office has staff member to work on these kinds of agreements.

There's a lack of options on the part of the state to "make" somebody do something. Jail, fines, etc. Some legislators have defaulted in pulling DLs.

It's a difficult question. Voters say "people should pay child support if they are ordered to by the courts" and some dead-beats don't. Then, what do you do? Throw them in jail? They can't work to catch up on child support in jail. So, the next thing beneath that is usually yanking a DL. The state doesn't have that…

Awesome post. Really. I feel exactly the same about where I live.

You know, I get the poverty/DL thing, but there's not a good clean solution to folks who are skirting the poverty line, and keep driving around without insurance and have accidents for which they can't pay for the damages they have caused. This is just one of those issues where there isn't a "clean" solution.

It's a great story, and the posts by the STS engineer were very interesting too. I'd like to hope that NASA could have made this happen, but it would be have been a really close run thing.

Bam! There it is!

Exactly.

Ford, please pay attention...

This is coolest story ever!