Pat,
Your purpose in being on private or public property must be consistent with the express or implied invitation of the properties owners. It makes perfect sense to me that a mall would not want skateboarders turning there property into a skateboarding park. When a juvenile skateboarder breaks their arm the parents may allege attractive nuisance. Clearly posted signs and active enforcement of the owners right to exclude that activity can serve as a strong element of the property owners defense against such a claim for damages. In the case of Walmart; or Mall wart as I unlovingly call them; any activity on the premise that detracts from the shopping experience of other shoppers is directly contrary to their ownership rights. I don't shop Walmart because I believe they use their market power in predatory and anticompetitive ways. That does not mean I would want to loose that choice because various pressure groups want to be able to harass them out of business by picketing and obstructing perfectly legal commercial activity.
My least favorite misunderstanding of property rights is the difference between public ownership and public access. I'm a firefighter / rescuer by avocation. Many times I've had to turn down demands for access to fire stations by members of the public who demand access to the toilets or the apparatus bays on the grounds that "it is a public building." It has not happened often but we have sometimes needed police assistance to have belligerent citizens removed.
You have no more right to use the toilet in a firehouse than you do to borrow one of the tankers quartered there to fill your swimming pool or water your lawn. The real kicker in the case of many volunteer fire stations in the US is that they are not publicly owned at all. They are often owned fee simple by a private corporation that is organized under state charter to provide a public service. So when someone tries to push past me at the door to my firehouse, after being denied access to the toilets that are located in locker rooms that are not open to anyone other than fire and rescue personnel, they are committing a number of crimes including assault on a public safety worker to deter the performance of their duty. You see one of our duties is to secure the station and it's contents from any unauthorized access.
The same pr> David wrote:
For that reason when I traveled internationally I would have the US embassy in the destination country notarize a true attest copy of my Passport so that I could leave the original in the hotel safe. The reason I had it done at the destination embassy is that they new the local procedures and would do it in the form that the locals would recognize. That being said some places will except nothing but the original. I once had to find a different hotel when the hotel I had reservations with insisted that they needed to hold my passport as surety for my payment. I was not willing to have the passport out of my control in that particular country.
-- Tom Horne
"people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both" Benjamin Franklin