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.... last time this happened .... J Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover was the "last time?" Skipping over a lot there buddy.

But then, one does have to reach far back into the cold war to find folks on the left treated like this.

MINARET and SHAMROCK? The '60s and '40s respectively. Things have changed pal; it's not about pinkos any more. It's about anyone with the temerity to listen to talk radio, talk about the Constitution, or buy a gun.

When your Navy is stronger than the British Navy, it's hard to argue that your Navy is for "self-defense".

That depends on who you might be trying to defend yourself from. China and Russia are the primary threats to Japan, across 500 miles of ocean, and they're in a naval arms race with each other, and China is testing Japan.

I found a detailed US report to Congress on the huge ramp up of the Chinese navy from 2000-present.

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL3...

Be aware that, NSLs and FISA request are the same thing, go figure, so by releasing the number of NSLs they are at the same time hiding the number of FISA request which could be any number

Actually, no they are not. If you add the FISA requests, it jumps by almost 2000 more. The FISA requests represented there are the warrantless "probable cause" uses where a FISA warrant is not gotten first. FISA is typically handled outside the FBI which is what the 19,000 number is supposed to represent.

http://icontherecord.tumblr.co...

NSL letters are not secret court orders. They are extrajudicial orders for records information kept by businesses. The FISA orders can actually do more then that and actually intercept communications but only for a limited time before a FISA warrant is needed and a FISA warrant is needed before the information is supposed to be legally used in a case. You can find more about the FISA orders issues with it's annual reports to congress. Just select the reports then the year.

http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/...

It should be noted that if no US person is involved or likely to be involved, no warrant is actually needed in the surveillance according to FISA. So the numbers should only reflect where it is possible that a US citizen is somehow part of the target for the FISA order.

I hope she understands what she'll compromise if she releases them, but I doubt it. There's a reason there are very few Original Classification Authorities, and why it's at such a high level of approval to designate something as classified. Here are the instructions for intelligence information. However, to understand how some information in a document will disclose classified information, you have to understand what information contained in it or revealed by it (e.g. by omission) is classified, and who has the authority to determine that. If she has not studied the subject in detail, which is likely, she runs a high risk of compromising information she is unaware is sensitive.

I agree, we should stick to the science. Here you go:

• The peer-reviewed Journal "Nature Climate Change" includes and references thousands of scientific papers on the subject.
• The IPCC's 1,500-page "Physical Science Basis" report cites hundreds of references and is authored by hundreds of experts. It clearly states what we know, don't know, and how we know it. It reviews its past predictions, notes where its models have errored, and takes into account an incredible wealth and scope of scientific observations over 150 years.
• The IPCC also makes all of its data and models available for review. So you can see for yourself.
• The US Government also recently updated its regularly scheduled report written by over 300 experts.
• The USGS has a Climate Model Browser that lets you try out all the different simulated predictions for Global Warming. You'll notice the specifics vary widely, but they all predict dramatic temperature rises.
• The NOAA has a National Climate Data Center where you can watch the temperature trends. Here's a visualization based on the data.
• The United States Defense department has several reports on the risks posed by Global Warming (see here, here, here, and here).
• The Center for Coastal Resources Management (CCRM) has produced some excellent reports on sea level rise due to Climate Change to inform local communities like Norfolk VA, where flooding is already a major issue, what to expect in the near future due to Global Warming.
• You can also watch the sea levels rise at the NOAA's Sea-Level Trends website.
• If you don't trust the government, then I recommend The Berkely Earth Project. It was funded by the liberal's favorite bad guys, the Koch Brothers, but its results were so compelling that the lead Climatologist, Richard A. Muller, wrote a piece for the New York Times announcing he was no longer a skeptic.
• Of course, it's always good to have a contrarian viewpoint in the mix, and for that, I recommend AGW skeptic Judith Curry, who presents valid challenges to the consensus with her strong scientific background. I don't find her convincing, but her challenges make for good food for thought.

If you dispute this science, then I recommend publishing your own peer-reviewed papers, your own models, and your own alternative hypotheses in the scientific journals. I see a lot of skeptics nit-picking the science, but not many actually taking the effort to publish in the scientific forums.

I eagerly await one of the skeptics out there to please post an equally substantive list of references to "balance" my citations, so everyone can review and compare them.

Obama is looking to the future of death by oil carrying rail car.

Seriously I work in oil and gas. There pipeline will do NOTHING to hinder or advance the state of green energy. People have product and will sell product and there are plenty of people who want the product given it is sold at an incredible discount to standard oil. One way or the other the oil will get to its customers.

And the result is:
2008: 9500 railcar loads of oil in the USA.
2014: forward estimates indicate 650000 railcar loads of oil in the USA.

No that wasn't a typo. If you're going to transport oil you may as well do it safely. If Obama wants to actually push an environmental agenda then do so economically rather than playing with people's lives and potential oil spills.

You mean like the overall long-term increase in Antarctic ice mass, despite breakups in the Western sheet?

False. Antarctic land ice mass is decreasing, and reliable estimates of Antarctic sea ice volume (or mass) aren't available.

Even if you meant to refer to Antarctic sea ice extent (not mass), you already ignored me when I told you that this is consistent with Manabe et al. 1991 page 811: " sea surface temperature hardly changes and sea ice slightly increases near the Antarctic Continent in response to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide."

But maybe you'll listen to the National Academy of Sciences, if you honestly don't think the National Academy of Sciences is "alarmist". Again, their recent report is educational. They address Antarctic sea ice in question 12.

The gradual, long-term non-warming that has occurred over the last 15-17 years, depending on who you ask?

Jane and Lonny Eacus have repeatedly ignored me whenever I've told you that there's been no statistically significant change in the surface warming rate. But if you honestly doesn't think the NAS is alarmist, you might learn something from their answers to questions 9 and 10. This point is particularly relevant: "More than 90% of the heat added to Earth is absorbed by the oceans and penetrates only slowly into deep water. A faster rate of heat penetration into the deeper ocean will slow the warming seen at the surface and in the atmosphere, but by itself will not change the long-term warming that will occur from a given amount of CO2."

I agree: science is a wonderful thing. You can appear to "prove" almost anything you want if you restrict your study to relatively isolated phenomena, and ignore the bigger picture.

No, that's not science the way it's practiced by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the American Quaternary Association, the American Society of Agronomy, the

They have some autonomy, but no more than barbed wire or a cloud of mustard gas, and we have legal frameworks for those sort of autonomous weapons. The autonomy at issue lately is in target acquisition. Ironically the sort of thing that previous autonomous weapons lacked - the ability to distinguish a target from a non-target - is exactly the thing that raises ethical questions.

Naval mines distinguish targets from non-targets. CAPTOR mines come to mind... only existed for 35 years old...!

Then they would have the ability to discriminate, but I would still hesitate to call them robots, because they don't exhibit agency. They passively trigger, they don't actively kill the way RoboCop does.

I have no idea what use of the word "agency" is that you are attempting here.

Anyway, it appears that many people here have never heard of CAPTOR mines.

The vast majority of oil is shipped by pipeline or boat. The amount shipped by rail and truck is very small. It's only been used recently because of environmental opposition to pipelines. We're talking a few percent of what's shipped by pipeline or boat.

Yet train derailments and truck crashes spill more oil than pipelines. The spills are smaller, a few hundred barrels, so they don't make a lot of news. When pipelines or boats spill, its usually either a major national news event because of the volume, or its a slow leak that goes unnoticed for years and adds up over time. With trains/trucks the spills can often be worse because they are often traveling through heavily populated areas and interstates that pass through wild-life preserves. Pipelines and boats aren't allowed near those areas other than their end-points. So the pipeline spills are often in areas where it's not as damaging. Train/truck spills may be of smaller amounts but could be in very bad locations (i.e. next to your kids daycare)

Further reading:
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mi...

I used to work for SAC, specifically on SACDIN. I was a programmer for the system, but turned into network admin when they told us to complete the air gap and setup an offline network just for the source code, testing and administration of the system. I am not sure how much I am allowed to say, as my security clearance restricts me for like 75 years or something. But since most of what I will tell you can already be found here: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/..., I figure I won't get a knock on the door.

SACCS and SACDIN are nearly the same, often interchanged in terminology. Most of us called it SACCS. We were the BALLS. That kind of stuff went on and on... it never got old.

The systems are not nearly as outdated as you think. The endpoints are old, but the stuff in the middle is much newer. The code is reviewed every 6 months. There is probably code in there from the 60's, but it has been reviewed hundreds of times. There is new stuff and changes all the time.

There are modern computers that the programmers code with. There are modern computers in the links from SAC to silo. They are hardended and locked down, but let's be honest, the airmen have physical access. That's why you need a clearance just to touch the computers that make the code that runs the network.

That's all I have to say about that.

Yeah, that'll never work.

Fine, you found them out. This is actually just a stalking horse for materials testing for MIT's secret space elemavator protect. All the nerds are going to rapture to outer space to get away from the rest of us dangerously crazy motherfuckers.

Slashdot sure does seem to have a lot of New York Times Editorial writers.

Ukraine used to have ICBMs [...].

Consider this source. They write:

Some reports indicated that Ukraine was seeking to take operational control over the weapons on its territory. Ukrainian officials denied this, noting that they only sought administrative control over troops based on their soil (this is discussed in more detail below). Officials in Russia expressed particular concerns about the bomber-carried weapons based in Ukraine. The minimum range of most of the Soviet ballistic missiles is too long for Ukraine to use them against Russia, but if Ukraine broke the codes on bomber-carried weapons, it might be able to threaten to use or use them in a conflict with Russia.

Which means, Ukraine didn't have operational control over the weapons, which from the perspective of Ukraine makes these weapons no more than radioactive waste in cylindrical shaped containers.

[...] And the US isn't finished budget cutting and disarming yet. [...]

The US has a lot of "defense" budget to cut, until it's spending drops below the level of the second in line. China .

I'd provide a link to the NSA budget, alas that is classified. But rest assured that they are being paid, you can stop sending them your food stamps now.

There is also a lot of evidence that they don't.

Except that NONE of these studies say polygraphs "don't work". Instead they say they are imperfect, and often used incorrectly or even maliciously. Which is a different thing.

"Anyway, there is evidence that they work significantly better than chance on untrained people that believe they work. In other words, most of the time for most people."

There is also a lot of evidence that they don't. Or rather: it may be "significantly more than chance", but not enough more to be really useful.

Quote from the first sentence of that first link:

"Most psychologists agree that there is little evidence that polygraph tests can accurately detect lies."

And from the second:

"For federal agencies, the polygraph is a way to get around discrimination laws. There is virtually no appeal you can make if you are failed by a federal polygrapher. The polygraph is a license to abuse power."

And from the conclusion of the third:

"The instrument cannot itself detect deception... false positive rate (innocent persons found deceptive) ranged from 0 to 75 percent and averaged 19.1 percent;"

An average of over 19% false positive rate (government's own figures), and as high as 75%, means the polygraph is effectively useless as a lie detector for any serious purposes. That's a HUGE false positive rate. It simply isn't a basis for punishing someone when there is an almost 20% chance on average that the results are false. And that's just false positives... there are false negatives too.

I repeat: the government knows this, and uses it more as an instrument of intimidation, in order to try to wring confessions out of people, than anything else. Many ex-government-polygraphers -- and subjects of polygraph exams, for that matter -- have told the same story.

Being a Soviet republic be the first step in joining the Russian Federation?

Huh? What do you mean? How are those two things related?

4. The Russian Federation guaranteed the territorial integrity [wikipedia.org] of the Ukraine.

Please Joe, there's a difference between "assurance" and "guarantee", besides it being an unratified agreement.

5. The Russian Federation has now invaded the Crimea.

Repeat after me: this is not an invasion.

In case you're wondering about stationing the troops only on the bases,
- the *democratically elected* president of Ukraine asked Russia to use military force.

[Putin] added that deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had no political future but asserted he was legally still head of state. "I think that he has no political future. And I told him this," Mr Putin said [...] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10669670/Ukraine-Russia-crisis-live.html)

- Russia was asked by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to aid them:

Sergei Aksenov, the [...] prime minister of the Crimea region, has declared that he is in control of all military, police and other security services in the region. But he appealed to Russia's president for help in keeping peace there.(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10670827/Ukraine-live-Crimea-leader-appeals-to-Putin-to-help-as-Obama-warns-of-costs-to-Moscow.html)

Not true. Just an unsubstantiated "bogeyman" scare claim.

There is actually empirical, scientific evidence (pdf) pointing to exactly the opposite being true!

They are draining the budget, because the SS Trust Fund is invested in US debt, and we are paying interest to the SS Trust Fund from the general budget.

Plenty of private retirmenet funds hold US debt. Technically, those funds are "draining the budget" as well, but we don't blame them for the budget drain. This seems to be the one case where it's OK to blame creditors for the existence of debt.

19 years is not enough time to come up with an answer if there is no answer. You just have to look at demographics... too many retirees, not enough workers. There's no non-painful way to address that. My generation is screwed, or the older generation is screwed, because SS is built on promises and assumptions that were bullshit.

We could actually take a big bite out of the problem by adjusting the wage base without adjusting benefits. The demographic problem was well known when the trust fund was put together. One thing that has changed substantially is the percentage of overall income that is earned above the SS taxable wage cap. This isn't an intractable problem by any stretch, especially when we're talking about multi-decade timeframes. The whole point of having the government do this type of thing is that it can smooth out cycles by being big and stable in its ability to make payments and average revenue over time.

Iran - Chemical Weapons

"US expansionism" had nothing to do with the Iran-Iraq war, and nothing to do with Iran's manufacture and use of chemical weapons. I don't recall that the US has added any territory to itself since WWII. It has vacated many military bases around the world since then.

It's not that simple. The energy released by fusion is mostly in the neutrons, which aren't so good at converting to heat and blast. Our nukes are fusion boosted fission weapons as the AC and tp1024 stated. They are dirty, radiological weapons by design. Read: http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/...

They're called surface to air missiles. Most useful for this would be man-portable air defence systems (MANPADs). Apparently, you can buy a Strela-2 (SA-7 Grail) launcher and missile from the black market (PDF link) for US$5000 to $10,000.

If you're going to start pointing fingers at an administration, at least cite your source/provide evidence. What groundwork was laid during the Reagan administration?

It's been mentioned many times, but I guess you didn't see it. Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronnie in 1981. 9/11 simply gave Bush Jr. enough national fear of enemies who may walk among us to broaden it. Despite a stated goal of preserving civil rights and right to privacy, Section 1.4 (a), (b), (g) & (i) are sufficiently vague to cover what has been going on.

Maybe I'm becoming jaded, but I don't think the United States is a good place to hold a security conference. I know, this year the TrustyCon organizers have to accommodate previous arrangements, but next time they should hold the conference in a place less likely to arrest security researchers and harass pioneers whose work is featured in every computer on every desk and in every smartphone.

Nearly $2 Billion conservatively speaking. $77 billion from FY2008 through FY2013.

But those big units are capable of around 2-10 centimeter resolution.

Not to mention multiple wavelength capabilities. (IR, UV, etc).
Of course we could never afford more than a couple at any given time.

Which begs the obvious question: Why do we need GMO to feed the world?

My post was about overpopulation, not GMO.

Which commodities would those be?

In my economics class, the professor showed a graph with the inflation-adjusted price of copper. It was stable for a century.
For electricity, a quick Google search shows the price has _fallen_ in the last 20 years.
http://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Inflation-Adjusted-Electricity.jpg
For food, see figure 4 in
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40545.pdf

> And how do you define "stable"?
I meant "stable" as "not oscillating too wildly and not showing a clear positive correlation with time". If it rises significantly in the long term, it is not stable.

but inflation itself is an instability in the system.

Inflation is not caused by "overpopulation", it is caused by the government printing too much money.

Fourth, there is no clear correlation between population density and income per capita.

How is income relevant?

if "overpopulation" caused poverty, we would expect to see a negative correlation between population density and income per capita.

World income per capita has grown even with the financial crisis:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
Unfortunately, in a quick Google, I did not find a historical graph.

We already invent pointless jobs for people, mostly in the public sector, because there isn't enough real honest work for everyone to do. That's in the first world, where we can afford more cruft. What happens in India and China, though, as mechanization replaces smallhold farming? What are a half-billion extra people, in each of them, going to do?

Human wants are insatiable. As simple things like food are mechanized, people will want more services such as (just one tiny example) live music.

China never signed the Outer Space Treaty. Treaties only "work" for people who agree to it.

That isn't true. It would help to actually read the list of signatory nations before you make a statement like that.

Technically it was the Nationalist government of China (aka Taiwan.... acting on behalf of all of China) which originally signed the treaty in 1967, but the People's Republic of China has recognized this particular treaty as international law for which they are also a part. Perhaps a technical nitpick to say they haven't "signed" the treaty, but it still has as much force as any other major international treaty to China as it does to anybody else.

They still can back out with only a 1 year notification period, but that is only a minor problem. China did, however, agree to this particular treaty.

It doesn't really matter.

MYTHS AND MISINFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY- Part 2

Starting in 1969 (due to action by the Johnson Administration in 1968) the transactions to the Trust Fund were included in what is known as the "unified budget." This means that every function of the federal government is included in a single budget. This is sometimes described by saying that the Social Security Trust Funds are "on-budget." This budget treatment of the Social Security Trust Fund continued until 1990 when the Trust Funds were again taken "off-budget." This means only that they are shown as a separate account in the federal budget. But whether the Trust Funds are "on-budget" or "off-budget" is primarily a question of accounting practices--it has no effect on the actual operations of the Trust Fund itself.

RL33028: Social Security: The Trust Fund

The members of the FISA court are public record, they are judges from other courts that rotate through the FISA court. The function of the FISA court is documented. You seem disinterested in the facts of the matter.

THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT - 2012 Membership

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Unfortunately I think most of us are bastards to him.

The treachery of Julian Assange
Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review

What Does Julian Assange Want?
Exclusive: Former WikiLeaks Employee James Ball Describes Working With Julian Assange
Wikileaks are for-hire mercenaries - Cryptome

Re dumped beyond easy reach? They tried that after WW1 and WW2.
"U.S. Disposal of Chemical Weapons in the Ocean: Background and Issues for Congress"
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33432.pdf has a nice list of US efforts after WW2. Pages 8,9,10 gives an idea of what happens when you just 'dump'.

The military intelligence service (Pesikunnan Tiedusteluosasto General Staff Intelligence Division), which is accountable to the Defence Minister, has no separate legal basis. It is responsible for ensuring the territorial integrity of the country and to that end it monitors the national territory, in cooperation with other authorities, by land, sea and air. It also carries out signals intelligence via the Communications Experience Facility (VKL).

And there is good reason for it to do this:
Russia and China may have been responsible for large-scale hacking into the Finnish Foreign Ministry's computer networks, a Finnish television channel reported.
And
Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja has said at a press conference on October 31 that revelations of large-scale data Russian surveillance in foreign ministry systems are embarrassing to Finland and to the ministry of foreign affairs.

The simple fact is, that Finland is spied on by everybody AND they are also spying on other nations. And to be honest, I do not have an issue with my friends spying on me. I esp. do not mind it, if they point out a terrorists act from elsewhere, or they find somebody else spying on us and then tells us about it.

The Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser eschews armor in favor of an electronic aerial defense system designed to keep away/destroy threats before they come close enough to attack the ship. It's actually built on a destroyer hull. You know, the things affectionately called tin cans in the Navy. Whatever armor they have is minimal. In geeky RPG terms, it's your evasive rogue, not your beefy tank.

There's been criticism of how effective these AEGIS ships are, especially after the Iranian airliner shootdown when apparently they couldn't distinguish a large civilian airliner from a small military jet. But in this case the drone was supposed to have been operating nearby so was allowed into airspace the ship would normally try to keep clear of hostiles during war.

Every GPS satellite has automatic nuclear-detonation detectors built in. Just turn the sensitivity up a little bit, and presto! A global forest fire detection system.

... for example China has dragged more people above the poverty line than the rest of the world combined in the last 40yrs, (coincidently 14yrs less than my age). China did that with a centrally planned economy. Of course they also put themselves in that the position of wide spread famine in the first place, ironically using the very same "system" of a centrally planning following a series of 5yr plans.

The main enabler for Chinese economic grow over the last 40 years was the free market reforms of 34 years ago. Prior to that they had a crippled, stagnant economy. It was only through moving away from Marxist - Leninist - Maoist economics towards a form of state capitalism that they were able to develop into an economic powerhouse.

Prior to the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization 34 years ago, China maintained policies that kept the economy very poor, stagnant, centrally controlled, vastly inefficient, and relatively isolated from the global economy. Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world’s fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging nearly 10% through 2012. -- China’s Economic Rise (.pdf)

--------

The opening line of Karl Mark's book..."From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". A succinct, compassionate, and efficient "prime directive" for any "we the people" if you ask me.

Communism may sound beautiful in theory, but in practice it has been pretty much a bloody train wreck of ruin and oppression wherever it's been tried. The Chinese finally decided to move away from it and their economy prospered. The Soviets stuck with it and the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Chinese communism managed to kill about 60,000,000 of the 100,000,000 million people killed by communism in the last century. The vast majority of the Chinese deaths were prior to their economic reforms.

New Zealand does not share the same relationship with the US (though yes, they are part of the five eyes SIGINT). Since the 80's up until 2008 NZ was considered a friend, but not an ally. Condoleeza Rice used the ally word in 2008 and it was shocking. The US only started allowing NZ warships into their ports in 2012 and NZ still doesn't allow US warships because of their nuclear ban. Definitely not on the same level as Aus/UK relations, though its thawing.

The contractor count with new clearances in the past 10 years is up a lot. "1000" "in surveillance" analysts at NSA would be the inner core of crypto experts, the people who shape global telco standards with mil experts and language people too.
i.e. if the US gov wants to give out a small number they class "in surveillance" as the smallest set of full time top staff.
The tracking is bought on the open market in bulk, fed in vis the states or federal gov or foreign helper nations.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/intel/clear-2012.pdf page 4 has some numbers in both gov and contractor on table 2.
Page 6 gives some pending security clearance investigations FBI and NSA numbers.
Add in public private partnerships, state "staff", former staff who can be re activated in hours, a contractor with the ability to help "clear" all staff under them. - thats hundred of thousands of US workers
Once you ratio that out by overall political active members of the US population the numbers start getting East German like.

There are legitimate reasons to spy, but that does not make all spying legitimate. The NSA may be looking for all the things you suggested and more. But they were already suspected of using their powers for industrial espionage. So the idea that they are still doing that is not far-fetched.

Also, while all those factors you mentioned pose problems, the underwater acoustic channel is still more volatile. Imagine a temperature shift of one degree, i.e. from morning to evening, completely changing your delay factor.

It's worse than that. The water temperature (and pressure) changes with depth, which means the speed of sound does as well. This causes sound initially heading down to arc back up, until it hits the surface and heads back down again and repeats (fig 12). Consequently, any sound which isn't traveling a short enough distance that it can travel straight to the target gets smeared out over time due to multipath.

It leads to some interesting phenomena. A thermocline (layer of water with an abrupt temperature change) can refract the sound enough to prevent it reaching anything underneath. Submarines sometimes use this to hide from sonar, but it will also block any listening devices you have from hearing what a surface station is broadcasting. And a SOFAR channel where the temperature forms an acoustic waveguide, allowing you to transmit sounds around the globe with little loss (though it adds a lot of distortion due to the multipath). Whales use this to "broadcast" their songs for thousands of miles.

The terrorist haven't won since they haven't achieved their goal: mass conversion to Islam and abandoning the Constitutional form of government for Sharia law. Bin Laden made that clear in his Letter to America.

The US didn't panic, but it became more serious about dealing with al Qaida after 9/11. There were nearly 3X the number killed in one day by al Qaida in the US as the 28 year campaign of the PIRA from 69-97. That escalation by the US was warranted.

As to IRA funding.

Irish Republican Army (IRA) - External Aid

In the past, has received aid from a variety of groups and countries and considerable training and arms from Libya and the PLO. Is suspected of receiving funds, arms, and other terrorist-related materiel from sympathizers in the United States. Similarities in operations suggest links to ETA and the FARC. In August 2002, three suspected IRA members were arrested in Colombia on charges of assisting the FARC to improve its explosives capabilities.

Obamacare will have a bigger effect on freedom than the Patriot Act.

That would be a small attache case full of $100 dollar bills. Good luck stopping that. ...
Not really. These people can live in caves. Or as the guest of Pakistan. Good luck drying up a bunch of very small cash flows.

I think you have a very... media-cultivated view of how terrorists work. Just because they can survive off the land doesn't mean that they can be effective terrorists while doing so. According to the CIA, al Qaeda had operating expenses in the range of $30 million per year before 9/11. That's not a "small attache case full of $100 dollar bills" enterprise -- that's a major, international criminal enterprise / political movement. We have confiscated hundreds of millions of dollars from them and their major financial backers.

Keep in mind also that militant Islamic groups aren't just a bunch of skulking, "easy pickings" criminals, though that's what the West has mostly encountered at home. They're actively involved in several large, open, armed conflicts like in Syria and Somalia, just to name two recently in the news. They're fighting a war, and supply chain logistics is a major issue for them.

And the results? Well, while we may have fostered the growth of many, smaller groups by cutting the head off the hydra, each of those groups is small with a fraction of the global reach al Qaeda had before.

I recommend reading the CRS 2013 report on terrorist tactics -- in particular their financial links to other criminal organizations as well as fundraising methods listen in the appendix.

Yes, they were late

Yep.

and were a joke at that

Eye of the beholder, irrelevant to the question.

And since Obama seems to have very particular ideas of what the budget should be like, it's his job to articulate them clearly

Sure.

and come up with a budget that satisfies both him and the House.

Impossible. The Republican-led has made the decision to obstruct and chastise the president for every decision made. If he would propose a budget that had been secretly worked on by the Heritage foundation, Republican leaders would still blame it for putting the US on the road to socialism. See only commentaries made by House leadership on his decisions to visit Germany and what to do with Libya. In both situations, Republican leaders displayed remarkable cases of amnesia about what they had asked him to do previously. Nifty because in the case of visits to Germany, he was chastised when he went, and then chastised when he didn't go. In the case of Libya, he was first chastised for not acting, then chastised for acting. It was hilarious to see McCain twist when told that he was criticizing the President for doing what McCain himself had asked the President to do just earlier.

Furthermore, when Obama was a senator, he himself considered getting a balanced and sensible budget the responsibility of the president. We should hold him to that now that he is president.

Absolutely. Question: what's a sensible budget? Trick question: the country is far too divided to come up with an answer that will please everybody. I'll settle for "a balanced budget."

Finally, I'm just wondering: do you judge every president by whether he has presented a timely budget? Feel free to check out this list here if you have trouble answering that question: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43163.pdf

It's a worrying facet of law in the US, that it doesn't in general recognise territorial limits to its jurisdiction** (and that when the matter has been challenged in court, extraterritorial application of law has found to be perfectly legal). Whether a law is limited is down to a case-by-case examination. So - do anything, anywhere in the world, that's illegal in US criminal law, and the US will, in principle, charge you with it if it gets its hands on you - and will, and has on many occasions, do whatever it can "legally" get away with to get hold of "criminals" in order to bring them to trial (where "legally" is conveniently defined by the US, rather than some tin-pot, third-world country of no consequence, such as, say, China or Russia). Doesn't matter if what you did was perfectly legal in the country in question; US law doesn't care. Which comes down far too often of late to a US "might is right" approach - the US will do whatever it feels it can get away with. But then, no-one needed me to tell them that.

**Read, for example, the following Congressional research document: "Extraterritorial Application of American Criminal Law".

Why don't you spend time reading this document: The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review: An Overview

The FISA court is accountable ultimately to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and the Supreme court for its decisions, and Congress can remove the judges for misconduct. Anyone receiving an order from the court can appeal it to the court or the review court. An appeal would go from the Court of Review to the Supreme Court. There is little mystery there, you are just uninformed, and apparently making things up as you go.

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review: An Overview

In addition, the Court of Review has jurisdiction over petitions for review of a decision under section 501(f)(2) of FISA, 50 U.S.C. 1861(f)(2), to affirm, modify, or set aside a production order or nondisclosure order filed by the government or any person receiving such an order.35 Upon the request of the government, any order setting aside a nondisclosure order shall be stayed pending such review.36

The Court of Review shall provide for the record a written statement of the reasons for its decision and, on petition by the government or any person receiving such order for writ of certiorari, the record shall be transmitted under seal to the Supreme Court of the United States, which shall have jurisdiction to review such decision.

The FISA court has modified hundreds of warrants, and the government has withdrawn many times the number of warrant requests that were turned down. There should be little surprise that most warrants are granted since that is a routine legal mechanism with well known and not especially onerous requirements, and the Department of Justice lawyers are expected to be skilled professionals with oversight.

It isn't that I'm dishonest, you are simply uninformed and ill mannered. If you become better informed you will probably be less troubled. Your post is nonsense.

Yes, other entities can appeal.

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review: An Overview

In addition, the Court of Review has jurisdiction over petitions for review of a decision under section 501(f)(2) of FISA, 50 U.S.C. 1861(f)(2), to affirm, modify, or set aside a production order or nondisclosure order filed by the government or any person receiving such an order.35 Upon the request of the government, any order setting aside a nondisclosure order shall be stayed pending such review.36

The Court of Review shall provide for the record a written statement of the reasons for its decision and, on petition by the government or any person receiving such order for writ of certiorari, the record shall be transmitted under seal to the Supreme Court of the United States, which shall have jurisdiction to review such decision.

That takes care of the appeal to the Supreme Court as well.

So if I was FEMA and I was tasked with coordinating all of these helicopter flights I might also say no to any drones I wasn't positive wouldn't be accidentally running into a helicopter full of evacuees.

I have a relative who works with the FAA regarding drones. They cannot be flown in US airspace without someone either on the ground or in a chase plane to keep it in line-of-sight at all times. You may find this interesting: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42718.pdf

I don't think there was much danger of one hitting a helicopter if those are the restrictions on their operation.

To add to what DerekLyons has posted, the cep (circular error probable, used to be written as C.E.P.) for an RV on the Trident II D5 with a W88 is given as 300-400ft. If memory serves that's considered effective against hardened targets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II gives 143 consecutive successful test flights
https://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/d-5.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W88.html

If by "end of life as we know it" you mean "another round of them being provocative to get attention and remain in the news" or "more talks of sanctions and deals" then.... yes, life as we know it is going to totally end...and by end, I mean not change one bit.

And by not changing one bit you assume that it is not possible for a North Korean instigated military confrontation, like the ship they torpedoed several years ago, or another missile launch over Japan going awry, could spiral out of control leading to an exchange of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, North Korean nuclear strikes against both Japan and American forces in Japan, the intervention of China to prevent the collapse of North Korea? And if we're lucky, the Chinese intervention doesn't involve nuclear weapons, including a nuclear attack against the US as advocated by high ranking Chinese military officials in recent years? If the nukes start flying between the US and China, would the Chinese government possibly decide to take out the last remnants of the former government of China, the Republic of China, which has only had control of the Chinese province of Taiwan since it effectively lost the Chinese civil war? After all, with Chinas recent moves toward a market economy the mainland could fit in under the Republic of China's government if the Communist government were decapitated. I'm pretty sure that a series of nuclear weapons going off in South Korea, North Korea, Japan, the US, China, and Taiwan could at least alter life as we know if, or "end it" depending on the definition of that. Hey look! Nuclear Winter! Hmm, climate change just got another thing to incorporate into the model. The Russians, what will they be doing at this time? In the late 1960s the Soviet Union approached the US to see if it would acquiesce to a Soviet attack on China to destroy its nuclear program. The US said, "no." If the nukes are flying, would the Chinese send a few Russia's way? Would Russia decide there is no time like now to finish things with China? If China attacks Russia, would Russia only attack China, or would it send a few towards Europe and the US? The Russians have already threatened nuclear attacks against the NATO missile shield against Iran. China and India are already engaged in a military confrontation. Does something happen there? Pakistan and India are bitter enemies, and both are nuclear armed. Pakistan is an ally of China, and playing a double game, both for and against the US in Afghanistan. An enormous web of possibilities. But I suppose a wave of the hand will always do here: this is not the conflict you're looking for, forget all about it, nothing will happen or change. Life as you know it will continue, there is no threat. Not even of plague.