PS, I am not a crank.

I think part of the idea is it has to be a flop, which is more than just being a bad movie or having mediocre box office performance.

Ah, that could be it.

Right, but why would the wars & economy make them turn away from Bush? It's never stopped any Republican before.

That threw me at first, too, but I think the referant of "go on to" is the Bob Newhart show - she went on from that to the Simpsons. It's clunky wording for sure.

Being on HBO helps a ton.

as that base overlaps with a lot of military families and ones that were hurt by the terrible economy of his tenure.

His administration also hugely and quietly dismantled what few material gains the mid-century civil rights movement had made. They didn't bring back legal segregation but they didn't need to.

Man, conservatives just cannot get comedy. Too much practice punching down.

I don't remember him being all that hawkish in 2000, though, although I can't say I paid a ton of attention to the Republican primary so I could totally be wrong. He has definitely (and sadly) moved to the right since the 2008 election.

Over 90% of Representatives get re-elected. Why on earth would they do anything different than what they've been doing?

That's not really accurate. European ethnic minorities rarely made an effort to assimilate - most were quite comfortable in their German/Italian/Norwegian/etc communities, speaking their native languages, eating their native foods, and practicing their religion. Quite a few had no plans to settle in the US permanently…

Pfft, I can watch that at home.

Ah, yeah, can't personally comment on the UK, or how one would balance theoretically evidentiary aspects of clothing without tipping into moral comment on said clothing. But I totally agree with your second paragraph.

This came up upthread - rape shield laws already make sexual history inadmissible. I don't believe rape shield laws generally cover clothing, but in most court rooms these days that's going to be barred as irrelevant. Clothing and sexual history do often come up in the court of public opinion, a much harder problem to…

The left half of your brain looks at the right half of your brain and says "it's dark in here, and we may die". And then, boom! They find you dead on your bathroom floor.

I wish I could remember the source on this but I'm not going to to google it at work (or probably every, since I will have to wade through a gajillion MRA links), but I read a while back that in the case of most false rape reports the reporter doesn't name a specific person, they blame a stranger or a made up person.…

Not that recent, many local laws were adopted in the 70s-80s, and VAWA was first passed in the 90s. I'm not clear on how VAWA affects local prosecutions, but if it has no effect than the specifics of each rape shield law is going to be different depending on which county or state is doing the prosecuting.

Not true. While the details of each statute vary slightly, basically all jurisdictions in the US have rape shield laws, meaning sexual history is *not* admissible evidence in a rape case. VAWA also incorporates a rape shield provision.

FWIW, "right to work" is a different legal concept entirely. You're thinking of "at will" employment.