Disclaimer and Rules

I was talking with a friend about the state of our media, ranting (when don't I?) about how partisan things often are. A quick glance through my site, though, shows I'm just as guilty as anyone else at the partisan-hackery. So, one day, in a drunken stupor, I emailed John Rogers, the man responsible for The Therapy Sessions, and asked if he'd like to help me level the playing field a bit. He agreed -- leading me to believe I wasn't the only one who had enjoyed a few cocktails that evening.

Now, I don't know Johnny very well (only the occasional read-through of his site), and I'm not quite sure the direction this will take, so consider it an experiment. He does seem like a good boy, though, and I admire him for tolerating my tripe long enough to type a reply.

To differentiate this section of $6 Bill from the rest, we've tried to keep things civil and intelligent, and we've pounded out a few rules. They are as follows...

They are as follows...

• No name calling. This doesn't include other people, so we're free to poke fun at notable liberals/conservatives. Also, if one of us has the urge to throw in something along the lines of "that argument's asinine" or any such, that can be allowed, to some degree -- after all, if you're debating, it's obvious you feel the other person is wrong for some reason. We must always use moderation, of course, and try to make any such comments somewhat clever or entertaining.

• Source information whenever possible. That is, if it doesn't come from the top of our heads -- say, if we have to Google the information -- we simply list the source(s). It gives an argument a little more weight, and discourages plagiarism.

• Keep redundancy to a minimum. If we've made our case, we stop. If one repeats oneself, it makes the debate stale and boring and no progress can be made. If we have new information about something that was said, that can be shared, but hashing out the same argument is annoying.

• Reply first, reply last. We get three chances to make our case -- if we're confident we've sufficiently concluded an argument, we can say so and withdraw, but the other person still has whatever remains of their three chances.

All debates are comment-enabled, so if one of us misses a point, or you disagree with a point made, feel free to chime in. That said, enjoy.