Slashdot Mirror

As far as I can tell, all Liberals do is talk about climate change, while either doing nothing at all that actually helps, or actually do great harm (like so-called "environmentalist" over the years have done by stopping nuclear energy projects, or by people like Al Gore flying private jets all over the world).

Meanwhile Trump seems to be the only one actually trying to fix the climate.

Really, it's a matter of historical ignorance to claim conservatives do not want to help the environment, as all of the strongest supporters of the environment to date have been conservative (like Theodore Roosevelt, and now Trump).

Furthermore, from traveling the world a great truth I have seen is that countries that have poor economies do a great deal of harm to the local environment, those that are well off do not. So the absolutely first step of a true environmentalist is to ensure a healthy economy and a prosperous people, who have the kind offer time and resources totally help where it counts.

I'd be interested in a citation for:

The Democrats offered to vote for Trump's entire wall ($27b) in return for citizenship for the DACA kids. Republicans didn't even put that to a vote.

GOP Senators have gone so far as to introduce a bill do wall funding plus DACA, but the Democratic leadership currently refuses to even discuss a compromise like that, even after Trump's national address specifically suggesting both sides compromise to make a deal.

For a last time around example as well,

Graham was referring to a White House offer last January that would have codified DACA, plus implemented a variety of other controversial changes to immigration law, in exchange for border wall funding.

This brings to my mind the suspicuous dating site "approved by UN" that was used to attack Assange and the UN declaration that defended Assange:

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/ne...

That was actually in the news three years ago, but because of secrecy, the details of exactly what he warned about was left out. Now we know: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/ne... or https://www.thestate.com/news/...

"The CIA case involves former contractor John Reidy, who asserts he was punished after warning of a “catastrophic failure” in the spy agency’s operations. “It was a recipe for disaster,” Reidy wrote in his appeal, which was redacted by intelligence officials. “We had a catastrophic failure on our hands that would ensnare a great many of our sources.” His lawyer, Kel McClanahan, said Reidy was in charge of identifying foreign sources and systems in the telecommunications and computer fields that would be of interest to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Reidy also was responsible for developing intelligence operations against those targets, his lawyer said. McClanahan said his client is not permitted to discuss the case in more detail even with him because the CIA says the information is classified.

Reidy asserts that he first detected vulnerabilities in a CIA program in 2006, according to the appeal filing obtained by McClatchy. Signs of the problems included “anomalies in our operations and conflicting intelligence reporting that indicated several of our operations had been compromised,” he wrote, adding that he noticed “sources abruptly and without reason ceasing all communications with us.”

If you think that's what anyone cried about then you weren't paying attention to the animal speech

Trump was responding to a comment that explicitly mentioned MS13. That the libshits and you latched on to "animals" out of context is no surprise. Trump has been talking about MS13 for a long time. Maybe if you got out of your libshit media bubble you'd figure out you've been swimming in propaganda soup. Or maybe you like it that way.

But don't take my word for it. You can only hide the context for so long in the Internet age, so instead of just taking it out of context, the libshit media doubled down and then cried even after they acknowledged he was talking about MS13.

went full retard

It isn't the exact same policy, but separating families is not new. Obama initially detained families together. The courts ruled that the children couldn't be contained. So Obama just released "families" together (you know this policy just creates an incentive to traffic children, right?)

Obama also separated families, too, just not as much.

Because the real bad actors can't register a PO Box, shell company, and Photoshop a fake ID? We're talking about intelligence agencies messing around with elections.

Guess then we'll figure out what Intelligence agency is running what ad then. If the front facing trail suddenly goes dark, it tells you just as much as putting an intel org's name on it.

This isn't like present day US campaign funding where dark money is the norm. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

Oh dear, you sad semi-literate Trumpie, you missed all the references (not one of them is Reddit). Here they are so you can improve your reading skills.

1) The Guardian - Trump Tower meeting with Russians treasonous, Bannon says in explosive book

2) NBC - A Panama tower carries Trump’s name and ties to organized crime

3) Global Witness - Narco-A-Lago: Money Laundering At The Trump Ocean Club Panama

4) The Guardian - Trumps Panama tower used for money laundering by condo owners, reports say

5) Sketchy Donald Trump Deal Eyed For Ties To Iran | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

6) The New Yorker - Donald Trump’s Worst Deal:
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard

7) NPR - The New Yorker Uncovers Trump Hotels Ties To Corrupt Oligarch Family

8) Business Insider - Dossier author Christopher Steele: Trumps hotel and land deals with Russians need to be examined

9) New York Times - Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected’

10) The Washington Post - Trump’s company had more contact with Russia during campaign, according to documents turned over to investigators

11) Slate - An Intriguing Link Between the Mueller Investigation, Trump, and Alleged Money Laundering

12) GQ - Inside Donald Trumps Election Night War Room

13) Politico - Trump’s mob-linked ex-associate gives $5,400 to campaign

14) Raw Story - Longtime Trump business partner ‘told family he knows he and POTUS are going to prison’: report

15) The Spectator - Forget Charlottesville - Russia Is Still The True Trumps True Scandal

16) McClatchy - Donald Trump and the mansion that no one wanted. Then came a Russian fertilizer king

17) New York Times - Tracking the Yachts and Jets of the Mega-Rich

18) McClatchy - Trump, Russian billionaire say they’ve never met,

Oh dear, you sad semi-literate Trumpie, you missed all the references (not one of them is Reddit). Here they are so you can improve your reading skills.

1) The Guardian - Trump Tower meeting with Russians treasonous, Bannon says in explosive book

2) NBC - A Panama tower carries Trump’s name and ties to organized crime

3) Global Witness - Narco-A-Lago: Money Laundering At The Trump Ocean Club Panama

4) The Guardian - Trumps Panama tower used for money laundering by condo owners, reports say

5) Sketchy Donald Trump Deal Eyed For Ties To Iran | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

6) The New Yorker - Donald Trump’s Worst Deal:
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard

7) NPR - The New Yorker Uncovers Trump Hotels Ties To Corrupt Oligarch Family

8) Business Insider - Dossier author Christopher Steele: Trumps hotel and land deals with Russians need to be examined

9) New York Times - Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected’

10) The Washington Post - Trump’s company had more contact with Russia during campaign, according to documents turned over to investigators

11) Slate - An Intriguing Link Between the Mueller Investigation, Trump, and Alleged Money Laundering

12) GQ - Inside Donald Trumps Election Night War Room

13) Politico - Trump’s mob-linked ex-associate gives $5,400 to campaign

14) Raw Story - Longtime Trump business partner ‘told family he knows he and POTUS are going to prison’: report

15) The Spectator - Forget Charlottesville - Russia Is Still The True Trumps True Scandal

16) McClatchy - Donald Trump and the mansion that no one wanted. Then came a Russian fertilizer king

17) New York Times - Tracking the Yachts and Jets of the Mega-Rich

18) McClatchy - Trump, Russian billionaire say they’ve never met,

That's easy to say but do you expect these people to vote Clinton instead?
http://www.theamericanconserva...
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

"Amazon, the online merchandise juggernaut, will collect sales taxes from all states with a sales tax starting April 1."
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/2...

previously:

"After years of wrestling with state officials about Internet taxation, Amazon.com finally agreed last fall to begin collecting sales tax from its California customers.

"But some of that tax revenue, perhaps millions of dollars a year, could wind up back in Amazon's pocket.

"Rod Butler, city manager of Patterson. He said Patterson might share up to 75 percent of its sales tax windfall with the company.

"Butler said he was told Amazon has the right to choose where [collected sales tax] money goes â" to either Patterson or San Bernardino. Because of that, both cities want to stay on Amazon's good side."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

Three points:

• Fighting words must be "face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation."
• Online speech isn't face-to-face.
• There's serious doubt about whether the exemption itself is still valid.

Here's a more complete explanation written by an actual first amendment lawyer:

Trope Seven: "Fighting words"

Example: "There are two exceptions from the constitutional right to free speech – defamation and the doctrine of “fighting words” or “incitement,” said John Szmer, an associate professor of political science and a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte." McClatchy.com, May 4, 2015.

No discussion of controversial speech is complete without some idiot suggesting that it may be "fighting words."

In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. If the "fighting words" doctrine survives — that's in serious doubt — it's limited to face-to-face insults likely to provoke a reasonable person to violent retaliation. The Supreme Court has rejected every opportunity to use the doctrine to support restrictions on speech. The "which by their very utterance inflict injury" language the Supreme Court dropped in passing finds no support whatsoever in modern law — the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence.

That's almost always irrelevant to the sort of speech at issue when the media invokes the trope.

Source: https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-censorship-tropes-in-the-medias-coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/

There was talk of gathering social media usernames(no passwords) for visitors from visa-waiving programs or those using marriage visas during the last few months of Obama's term. At the time it was implemented it was only optional, and that people weren't being denied entry if they declined to share said information. It still wasn't okay, but it wasn't mandatory.

source:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

if I have to disclose my social media accounts and phone or social media login details, I will spare you from the several thousand bucks

Trump had, literally, nothing to do with it. Here is a June 28th 2016 article about the searches, but our racist media gave Obama a pass until Trump got elected. And then, before the President-elect even entered office, there was an avalanche of articles about the "new" procedures — not directly blaming him, but planting the negative thoughts in the gullible heads (like yours and those of your adoring moderators here today). Only some of the reports mentioned the truth:

searches increased fivefold in the final fiscal year of the Obama presidency

So, no, it had nothing to do with Trump. More likely, the reason is the growth of dollar since last December — vacationing in the US simply became more expensive for foreigners, while going abroad became cheaper for Americans.

Amaizng how you moronic democrat retards totally ignore that Obama wanted exactly the same thing too:
https://thinkprogress.org/how-...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

And that Hillary also called for it this time:
http://www.reuters.com/article...

This James Risch (R)?

"What you need to look at is: Was there an effect that they had on the election? And so far I’ve seen nobody who claims that they can prove that the Russians – or any other state actor for that matter – influenced our elections.”

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

I'm not going to go through your list but I'm sure there a lot more examples like that.

The GOP doesn't have to just win, they have to win beyond legal challenge.

You'd have a slightly less tenuous argument if not for the problems of...

New Hampshire in 1974
Washington in 2004
North Carolina this year

I mean fuck man, you've got a hate-on for the DNC, but it doesn't take much effort to find that the GOP has done the same thing, when circumstances warranted.

Of course, you also have the Trump campaign itself declaring the election rigged, and refusing to abide by the results if they thought it was contestable. Now somebody is, and you hypocritically want to deny them that right.

DNC is not interested in voter fraud until they lose. There is not a single case of proven voter fraud EVER according to Clinton and Obama the week before the vote. Resist voter ID at every possible case because there is no voter fraud. They lose, suddenly voter fraud by the tens of thousands across 3 states.

ID only covers in-person voter fraud, not the other forms of electoral manipulation that could exist, and which Obama and Clinton have both supported addressing, in fact, Obama's Department of Justice has made a statement.

Though maybe you should think about Bush's actions.

Raising your fist and threatening to hit someone is "assault". Spitting at someone and missing is "assault".

Yes! Moreover, simply telling someone, you'll kick his ass is an assault.

But that is not, what Trump is accused of doing. Kissing, even if unwelcome, does not qualify as any of that. The ladies may not have actively wanted him to kiss them, but, as the same recording says, they haven't objected either: "When you are a celebrity, they let you do it." So, no, it was not an assault.

Moreover, this sudden — and synchronized — swiftboating is rather suspicious in itself. If Trump was such a sexual assaulter, as NBC knew for 11 years (they've had the tape for all this time), why did they bring him to run the "Apprentice" show? Why have the ladies involved been quiet until now — Clinton's accusers, for example, have tried to make their case for years even before, he became President.

Sorry, it just does not add up — unless you are a cog in the Hillary's tank, of course, and wish her to win no matter what...

Yeah, "an unwanted kiss" is assault and battery. That is calling it what it is.

If that's what it really were, you wouldn't have had this need to substitute one term for another, and waste cycles convincing the audience, the substitute is valid and the terms — equivlanet. What you are doing is spin — carefully choosing synonyms and almost-but-not-quite equivalent words to make something appear worse or better than it really is, depending on your goals.

What it is is "unwanted kiss". End it right there and talk about that, if you can. But you can not — "unwanted kiss" just does not have the same ring to it, as "sexual assault" (the term Anderson Cooper used during the debate) does, does it? So, with a dishonest sleigh of hand, you substitute one for the other...

There's no 'careful manipulation being done by 'professional word jugglers'.

In denial much? It is right here, laughing in your face with perfectly white teeth crediting a highly paid dentist. Here is, how it works:

• Some dictionaries would define, what Trump boasted of doing in 2005, as assault. Because it involved physical contact, it would also be considered battery in the court of law.
• Therefore, Trump should disgust you, dear viewer, as if he were boasting of beating women.
• Because it involved kissing, it must've been sexual assault too, which is, according to some other dictionaries, a synonym for rape.
• Therefore, dear viewer, you should also reject Trump as rapist. That there was no actual penetration involved is of no consequence — the above sequence logical arguments clearly shows, unwanted kissing to be equivalent of rape — only an illogical redneck would disagreee. We will now go to commercials, while you try to imaging your daughter being kissed by Trump.
• PROFIT!!

You don't need to be anything of Anderson Cooper's caliber to put the above together — a Slashdot junkie with some experience could do it...

Sure.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

"Meanwhile, former McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher tweeted Friday that Blumenthal had “told me in person” that Obama was born in Kenya.". I don't really care, though.

Did Rice and Powell also use their private email server while their eponymous foundation accepted hundreds of millions of donations from foreign governments during their tenure at the State Department?

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballo...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08...

You didn't by any chance get a list of cases that go to the IG and are proceed normally did you?

For example: DoD IG Semiannual Reports

No, I guess not. So the solution to a stove fire is to burn down the kitchen? Rubbish.

Probe launched into Pentagon handling of NSA whistleblower evidence

By the way, you did notice that Drake was able to get the program he opposed defunded by Congress, didn't you? Nah, probably not.

Probe launched into Pentagon handling of NSA whistleblower evidence

Give us one example, you lying, bootlicking piece of shit.

-jcr

I'll take pity on you and give you two sources:

From the article (which you apparently didn't read):

Crane filed a complaint against Shelley and Halbrooks, detailing many more alleged misdeeds than reported in this article. The Office of Special Counsel, the US agency charged with investigating such matters, concluded in March of 2016 that there was a “substantial likelihood” that Crane’s accusations were well-founded. The OSC’s choice of the term “substantial likelihood” was telling. It could have ruled there was merely a “reasonable belief” Crane’s charges were true, in which case no further action would have been required. By finding instead that there was a “substantial likelihood”, the OSC triggered a process that legally required secretary of defense Ashton Carter to organise a fresh investigation of Crane’s allegations. Because no federal agency is allowed to investigate itself, that inquiry is being conducted by the Justice Department.

and ...

Probe launched into Pentagon handling of NSA whistleblower evidence

One other thing: Lazy, ignorant, and foul-mouthed is no way to go through life.

I think most American news operations were shut out; they're getting the story second hand while many European groups were probably working on this for weeks. The one exception I found is McClatchy:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/

Link from 2002: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies fuels dispute over Iraq

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon and the CIA are waging a bitter feud over secret intelligence that is being used to shape U.S. policy toward Iraq, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The dispute has been fueled by the creation within the Pentagon of a special unit that provides senior policymakers with alternate assessments of Iraq intelligence.

Administration hawks who have been leading proponents of invading Iraq oversee the Pentagon unit, which is producing its own analyses of raw intelligence reports obtained from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies, the officials said.

Click the above mcclatchy link to read the entire article. It was written by 2 functioning journalist named Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay; both from Knight Ridder Newspapers. Compare their work to stenographers & parrots such as Judith Miller of NYT. Both journalist wrote about 15 articles concerning the neocon takeover / Iraq invasion back in 2002/3; well worth a look.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Link from 2002: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies fuels dispute over Iraq

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon and the CIA are waging a bitter feud over secret intelligence that is being used to shape U.S. policy toward Iraq, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The dispute has been fueled by the creation within the Pentagon of a special unit that provides senior policymakers with alternate assessments of Iraq intelligence.

Administration hawks who have been leading proponents of invading Iraq oversee the Pentagon unit, which is producing its own analyses of raw intelligence reports obtained from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies, the officials said.

Click the above mcclatchy link to read the entire article. It was written by 2 functioning journalist named Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay; both from Knight Ridder Newspapers. Compare their work to stenographers & parrots such as Judith Miller of NYT. Both journalist wrote about 15 articles concerning the neocon takeover / Iraq invasion back in 2002/3; well worth a look.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Link from 2002: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies fuels dispute over Iraq

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon and the CIA are waging a bitter feud over secret intelligence that is being used to shape U.S. policy toward Iraq, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The dispute has been fueled by the creation within the Pentagon of a special unit that provides senior policymakers with alternate assessments of Iraq intelligence.

Administration hawks who have been leading proponents of invading Iraq oversee the Pentagon unit, which is producing its own analyses of raw intelligence reports obtained from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies, the officials said.

Click the above mcclatchy link to read the entire article. It was written by 2 functioning journalist named Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay; both from Knight Ridder Newspapers. Compare their work to stenographers & parrots such as Judith Miller of NYT. Both journalist wrote about 15 articles concerning the neocon takeover / Iraq invasion back in 2002/3; well worth a look.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Oh really? Having held such a clearance for years (I left that work about 5 years ago) I can tell you that the situation is in many ways reversed. Your very behavior is held hostage just so you keep your job. Want to try some weed while in Colorado? Want to go see the Great Wall of China (actually, you might get this approved)? Three beers at happy hour and get pulled over for speeding? Buy a house at the height of the housing boom and your spouse lose her job so it is foreclosed upon, or she gets sick and the medical bills pile up...

All of these things can lead to your ticket being clipped.

As somebody who has worked in that world, I say shut the fuck up and go find an honest job and leave.

All of the investigations and polygraphs boil down to determining that. You fill out the forms honestly, and wait for investigators to determine that indeed you did not lie on your application. Sometimes you sit in a silly little room over by BWI with weird cloud scenes on the florescent lights and answer the same questions while some polygraph examiner tries to upset you. Again, nothing that you have earned through hard work or being special, just that you waited out the process and didn't lie.

Yeah, the whole polygraph thing you gloss over is just peachy.

From the aforementioned link:

"Others don’t. The CIA applicant who says she was asked in 2005 about her rape recalled being pressed to reveal everything because the test showed that she was hiding something. At one point, she revealed she was bothered by a claim by another polygrapher that the agency hires alcoholics but not homosexuals. The polygrapher leaned in and asked, “Why? Are you a homosexual?” She said she wasn’t.

McClatchy was able to confirm the CIA’s interest in her reported rape and miscarriage by reviewing her heavily redacted security-clearance records, which were released under open records laws. The records show that she revealed before the polygraph that she’d smoked pot three times to deal with the pain of her miscarriage, records show. She also told them the miscarriage was the result of a rape.

The applicant wonders whether her state of mind at the time made her seem as if she were lying when she had nothing to hide. As the agency itself notes in records McClatchy obtained, the woman had been preliminarily diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder."

Marvelous.

Something I think some of the polygraph interrogators share with snipers: you have to be a special kind of fucked in the head to do the job.

Try here:

Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.

The restrictions flew in the face of research by international aid agencies, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government's own experts, all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

You can quibble, but it quite clearly was "official U.S. government policy" that "insist[s] foreign aid be tied to no contraception."

Build-a-Wall: that is stupid. it didnt work in berlin, it didnt work in china, it doesnt work in Israel

You seem to think, that if the wall fails to prevent all trespass, it may as well not exist at all. This is profoundly wrong.

Contrary to your unsubstantiated statements, the wall did work in Berlin:

It was a desperate – and effective - move by the GDR (German Democratic Republic) to stop East Berliners escaping from the Soviet-controlled East German state into the West of the city

and still works in Israel:

Opponents of the wall grudgingly acknowledge that it's been effective in stopping bombers

A wall around my property is also working very nicely, thank you very much, as is one around the White House and other numerous installations world-wide, both private and public — fence-builders are not out of business, are they?

It didn't do much for China, because walls by themselves aren't enough — an unattended and unpatrolled border will be breached — but it still slows an invasion down and makes the defenders' (if there are any!) job easier.

One has to try real hard to get more wrong than you just did, congratulations...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201...

>In personal testimonies about their work made available to McClatchy, veterans of the unit described pervasive and unfettered intrusion into the private lives of ordinary Palestinians, including use of information about sexual preferences and medical conditions to coerce people into becoming informers.

Do enjoy being put in your place? Or are you going to backpedal and say, "Oh, that's just Israel. They only work with the NSA. The NSA wouldn't stoop to that level."

That would require a comprehensive array of well constructed studies to separate the variables, the causes and the effects.
However for the past few decades, the US government has proven spectacularly bad at enabling, supporting or funding unbiased research.

http://www.mpp.org/assets/pdfs...
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201...

So as far as I can tell, there isn't much to go on, which is probably how legislators like it.

Indeed, the indictment avoids framing the mere teaching of polygraph countermeasures as a crime. But I think it's clear that Williams was targeted for prosecution in order to silence speech that the U.S. government doesn't like. The only "crimes" in the indictment are those that the government cooked up, funded, and stage-managed. This despite the fact that the government has the names of nearly 5,000 of his customers.

A comment by the head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection polygraph unit last year before an audience of law enforcement polygraph examiners underscores the political nature of this prosecution. Explaining the criminal investigation, dubbed "Operation Lie Busters," Special Agent John R. Schwartz told members of the American Association of Police Polygraphists that those who “protest the loudest and the longest” against polygraph testing “are the ones that I believe we need to focus our attention on.”

Indeed, the indictment avoids framing the mere teaching of polygraph countermeasures as a crime. But I think it's clear that Williams was targeted for prosecution in order to silence speech that the U.S. government doesn't like. The only "crimes" in the indictment are those that the government cooked up, funded, and stage-managed. This despite the fact that the government has the names of nearly 5,000 of his customers.

A comment by the head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection polygraph unit last year before an audience of law enforcement polygraph examiners underscores the political nature of this prosecution. Explaining the criminal investigation, dubbed "Operation Lie Busters," Special Agent John R. Schwartz told members of the American Association of Police Polygraphists that those who “protest the loudest and the longest” against polygraph testing “are the ones that I believe we need to focus our attention on.”

Most conservatives believe the government created monopolies are a bad thing

And so what are the Republicans going to do about it?

I've heard Ted Cruz and the rest of the tea partiers rail endlessly about the excesses of government. What have they cut? Oh, they voted hundreds of times on a bill to repeal Obamacare? And? Remarkably, I've heard a lot of sound and fury, but when it comes to low-hanging fruit that could be plucked at a moment's notice, there's not a whole lot of action. Setting aside the war on drugs (not that Republicans would ever give up telling people how to live their lives any more than Democrats will) what about all the millions of little dinky offices that nobody has a clue what they do until the government shuts down and then it turns out some bureaucrat decides whether you can have pumpkin spice beer or not. Why does that bureaucrat still have a job? I guess Ted Cruz et al have more important things to do than "cut government".

I'm voting straight ticket Libertarian this year and probably every year until they fuck it up. I've seen what the Republicans and the Democrats do and listened to their promise^W lies long enough. Maybe it will turn out that the Libertarians are bald-faced liars too, but I'll give them that chance to prove it. As it stands, Libertarians are the worst of all the political parties, except for all the rest.

Hmm, Kaiser. Where have I heard that name before? Oh, I remember: in the Nixon tapes when he's discussing HMO's, which in turn created the largest rise in healthcare costs in the entire history of the United States! Well now that there is sure an unbiased source, yesiree Bob!

An Anonymous Coward does an ad hominem attack without bothering to see if his nay saying has any credibility. How useful.

You could have done a simple Google search

The politicization of the IRS should be the biggest scandal ever. How many other institutions are being used to pursue a political agenda instead of their true function?

We'll, under President Bush the DOJ first started to heavily pursue a political agenda http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/01/13/59600/internal-probe-slams-bush-justice.html including making sure new-hires possessed approved political opinions. And that's far scarier than the IRS becoming politicized.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201...

http://www.motherjones.com/env...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetw...

"it launched last year as its attempt to muscle in on that other flavour-of-the-month market: the so-called Internet of Things."

I had to specifically point out to the Wired.com journalist writing about my "Right To Serve" issue that he was putting the phrase "Internet of Things" into my mouth in his first draft article. The "Internet of Things" from what I can tell is the establishment dipping its toes into the wonderous waters of IPv6, but finding a way to do it without allowing the residential user to _profit in any way_ from their "internet of things". Because all profit shall be reserved for the establishment. Or so goes the party line.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/google-neutrality/
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google-we-can-ban-servers-on-fiber-without-violating-net-neutrality/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/google-fiber-continues-awful-isp-tradition-banning-servers
http://crossies.com/pissed.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/01/198327/googles-call-for-open-internet.html

If anyone is interested in the common carrier argument, I urge them to read the following as it relates to being able to treat your residential ISP as a 'common carrier' (so that for instance one could host their own server running an open source or commercial solution that provides an alternate to facebook messaging).

http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google-we-can-ban-servers-on-fiber-without-violating-net-neutrality/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/google-fiber-continues-awful-isp-tradition-banning-servers
http://crossies.com/pissed.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/01/198327/googles-call-for-open-internet.html

The insecurity is on the side of the NSA.
They wouldn't go through such hoops if we didn't have the most powerful freedom tool ever, namely the Internet.

Use it properly and they shall vanish.

You are right. But the problem is that the ISPs will not allow you to use the internet properly (e.g. hosting your own data on your own server at home, thus giving it the strongest possible U.S. 4th ammendment 'papers' protection.

http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google-we-can-ban-servers-on-fiber-without-violating-net-neutrality/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/google-fiber-continues-awful-isp-tradition-banning-servers
http://crossies.com/pissed.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/01/198327/googles-call-for-open-internet.html

Pearl Harbor was a good example of what happens when you don't do a good job of spying on other countries.

I always thought of it as an example of what happens when we interfere in Asia.
Apparently, that's why we're here.

My older brother is a VP-Eng at Google (maps). I can assure you that the whole thing is utterly corrupt. The day after active duty U.S. Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder posted publicly here that he thought my GoogleFiber "Right To Serve" Manifesto[1] was "very good" and that he agreed with everything I wrote about the core net neutrality argument, my brother finally said he agreed with some part of my arguments. To this day he has never clarified which part, though still asserts that I should have gone about my complaint in "the better way", namely submitting myself subserviantly to the Google technocratic leaderships opinion. The fact of the matter is, IMHO, that being able to host server/s on your residential internet connection, and being able to expect the user/customer base of all "internet service" to have the same basic right, is a key aspect of reclaiming our informational privacy and security on the internet. No, it's not bulletproof, but it's the foundation with which to have a fighting chance. I personally wish the EFF would get some guts and go further in their call. The fact of the matter is that I am right about my Net Neutrality argument, though certainly resolved to believe that after the forthcoming verizon ruling, that is not legally likely going to be relevant. But I think to reclaim our ability to use the internet, rather than being used by it, we need to demand that hosting servers that control our own data, is something everyone ought to be able to do from home. And in order for the residential server software market to thrive, there can't be arbitrary bullshit raqueteering loopholes like Google's new "no-commercial-servers-allowed" activity. I mean, why the fuck is it ok for residential users to commercially profit on transactions with a 3rd party like ebay, but not if they independently run their own LAMP stack and accept payment by check via USPS? I mean seriously, what the fuck?!?

[1] http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf
http://www.provobuzz.com/google-fiber-now-allows-home-servers/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/google-neutrality/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/google-fiber-continues-awful-isp-tradition-banning-servers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/01/198327/googles-call-for-open-internet.html

Most criminals test positive for THC at the time of their arrest. Cannabis is also the drug most often linked to crime.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/23/192101/marijuana-is-drug-most-often-linked.html#.Uie38z_hcuw

And Obama is letting it happen! That will be his legacy.

Check your facts: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/26/200427/firing-missiles-at-enemies-usually.html Congress generally likes to hide when it comes down to "declaring" or "authorizing" military actions. That way if something goes wrong (like American men and women getting killed or something) they can deny responsibility.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/30/198097/for-congress-its-classified-is.html
~ weapons to the "freedom fighters" in Syria.
Welcome to the "It’s classified" world :)

You believe that right-wing trope about Jamestown failed due to communism/socialism? As usual I wouldn't expect a reasoned analysis of a complex issue from you, Michael. It's so much easier to lean on your prejudices.

(These links aren't intended to convince Michael. They're for the edification of those who don't know what he's on about)
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-first-thanksgiving-reclaiming-jamestown-from-the-dustbin-of-history
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/01/91478/some-conservatives-rewrite-history.html

As for Zimmerman's "racism", well, the following bit was published a year ago — certainly time enough for everyone to have caught-up by now:

After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday [July 12, 2012 -mi] show.

The battery is in the front, this fire was in the back.
What are the odds they are related?

Also boeing paid for those fixes, so cheap airline or not they would be done.

See this image, and stop posting nonsense: http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2013/01/17/00/23/XsZ5c.La.91.jpg

The batteries are not likely at fault here, because the fire is at the top of the plane, not down in the lower rear compartment.
This area is above the in-flight meal preparation area.