With respect to _that_ part, i.e., civility, I draw distinctions between those proven to me to be general advocates of liberty and those who've proven to be otherwise. I wish the former to be treated with civility, even in the face of deep disagreements and the latter with scorn.

My comment was in the context of two questions I asked you: Would you allow a car rental company to not do business with you if they chose? and: Do you keep to agreements that you voluntarily enter into? If your answer is that you would force a company to do business with you, or that you would deliberately break a voluntary agreement, then yes, your opinions are not valid and I wish you a long eternity in hell. You are entitled to the *opinion* that other people's rights don't count, but if you act on it, you are a threat to the rest of us and to our rights. Since you claim to have made a career of this, then I can only conclude that you are a career criminal, acting on your predatory "opinions" every day of your life.

If you would not answer thus, then you have no argument against the actions of the car rental company. It is not about "policing the public highways" it is about how you will use *their* property. If you are claiming that the "victims" of this horrible vigilantism were not presented with a rental agreement that granted permission to the car rental company to do this, then please show me some evidence of that. I highly doubt the case would have made it to the State Supreme Court if it was a simple matter of fraud.

For someone who claims to be a staunch defender of rights, you seem to be willing to ignore some rights when they are inconvenient to you. "No contract made by anybody can make that legal"? So I cannot stipulate under what conditions someone else will use *my* property? It's not rights you have been defending, but license. So, go to hell. I hope you truly take deep offence at this. Maybe it will wake you up.

I apologize for my caustic tone, but to Richard, not to you. I hope that this use of *his* property is in accordance with his wishes.

You've gotta be joking me! A rental car company has no right tracking how fast drivers are motoring down the highways in their cars. Talk about infractions on civil liberties!

Well it isn't your car, so you in fact get to shut the fuck up about what conditions of use that the owners put on it.

Why is it that you and those who don't wish to consent to monitoring can't simply decline to rent a vehicle from that company?

How is it that you and those _forcing_ that rental company to bow to _your_ will with respect to _their_ properety is a morally superior position to just simply declining their offer to rent to you, and you going and renting elsewhere?

I apologize for my caustic tone, but I take offence to the inference that my opinion is invalid and I should "go to hell."

You're problem is that you're conflating private and public policy. Consequently, there's no way to take you at all seriously.

These surveillance issues are getting more and more absurd. What cracks me up are the people championing them! Check-out our new slogan "America, home of the free . . . unless you want to park a trailer in your driveway that residents deem and eyesore."

Pretty soon city councils are going to start legislating the type of curtains that residents can hang in their windows because nutjob residents will begin complaining that they're bringing down their property value. Unbelievable.

They're not. Their policing behavior in their own private property. It's doesn't really matter to them one bit whether or not your behavior also occurs on a public highway.

"There's plenty of ways to introduce plenty of doubt to blow holes straight through that case anyway."

Not even the slightest way. Any rational judge – assuming it for some bizarre reason made its way to a public court – would have to ask only one question: "Who owns the car?" Case closed.

Apparently, you don't believe that private entities have a right to voluntarily contract with one another.

Me, I'm for freedom, and I'm willing to take mine straight up. If I don't like the rental comany's policies, I don't have to rent from them.

As someone I recently quoted said, "Take a hikey if you no likey."

Still, it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. States issue speeding tickets based on actual speed in comparison to the posted speed limit in the spot where a person is speeding. Like it or not, but speed limits are set and clearly posted, and exceeding them is an offense of law. Whine about "revenue temptations" all you want, but, well, you were speeding, weren't you? In this case of a private company charging fees for speeding, they don't know where the car was when it was speeding. Suppose it wasn't on a public road. Suppose it was somewhere where speed limits are different (Montana used to not even have a daytime speed limit). There's plenty of ways to introduce plenty of doubt to blow holes straight through that case anyway.

I agree that speeding tickets are largely used as a revenue stream, but it'd go away if people would quit ignoring the damned speed limit (or do something politically about it instead of just complaining when they get busted and not doing anything else). Do you really think the state is just using speeding tickets for revenue? Prove it and do something about it!

Regarding the "speeding fines for private vehicles" thing — that's a massive invasion-of-privacy kind of thing. You're punishing behavior that doesn't much cause any real problems. Sure, if you wreck a rental partly because you were speeding, then oh yeah the penalties should stack higher than the tower of Babel, but just racing to get somewhere in a rental without hurting someone shouldn't be an offense or an excuse to tack on fees.