The state could just arrest the federal agents for breaking state law, and throw them in with the drug dealers and stall the fed's efforts to spring them with maximal paperwork.

Let the 'system' sort them out and see how keen they are.

Federal law preempts state law.

Only in regards to things where the federal government has authority to begin with. There are very good reasons (the Enumerated Powers clause, the 9th and 10 amendments, etc.) to question if the federal government actually has all the authority it claims for itself.

That’s true, but it’s been squarely presented and decided in Reich v Gonzales, relying on Wickard v Filburn that Congress does have this power. And through application of stare decisis / precedent it will be difficult to undo that.

For most people language is just a tool, and, given a choice, nobody in their right mind uses a soon-to-be-defunct, second rate tool.

People aren't going to compromise their lives to maintain someone else's cultural zoo.

If "these truths, while statistically correct, may fail our test for what we consider to be philosophically fair" then perhaps it is your philosophy of 'fairness' that is biased and incorrect.

Would you like to point out how it's biased and incorrect? My latter claim is that we should base features on aspects that an individual could be reasonably held responsible for, rather than aspects out of their control such as their race, gender, or where they grew up.

So my philosophy of "fairness" here is that we should hold people responsible only for their own actions, which, while off-the-cuff, seems like it would agree with most justice systems. If we included demographic information in our models, we would effectively be holding individuals responsible for the actions of others, which doesn't seem sound.

Incorrect argument.

You can easily debate whether France should be taking military action against ISIS without claiming that ISIS is right.

This is like saying that because France has laws against gender discrimination, so you could not advocate oppressing women as a show of support for Saudi Arabia, it is now impossible to argue against going to war with the Saudis.

What the law does do is make it harder to instigate more terror attacks within France.

This isn't unnecessary drama on Rod's part. He is standing in the line of fire to shield the rest of his community from a McCarthyesque witchhunt conducted by SJWs, who are the real source of the drama.

Perhaps you should be telling this to those who launched a witchhunt against Rod because he undermined their oppression tool. They certainly didn't try to "call those you are having problems with and talk about it."

When people have already mounted an attack, a polite defense seems a very reasonable response.

For an admittedly artificial example of positive vs negative rights.

If you consider, say, a person living in the middle of a desert.

A right to privacy amounts to just being left alone, and enforcing that would only be required if another party were actively violating that right. <- It's easy to argue for this.

A right to water, on the other hand, might require that some other party be forced to provide water to this person in the desert. <- Here many people might quite reasonably argue; why should others put themselves out to facilitate this persons life choices.