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I feel bad for the thieves actually; this almost like the start of a scifi movie. The thieves apparently just wanted to steal the truck, not realizing what the cargo was. When they looked through the cargo, they probably didn't know what it was, so they just popped open the containment unit, apparently took the Cobalt-60 out by hand, and dumped it in a field. Those poor sods might have picked up a lethal dose of radiation; the news was saying direct exposure could lead to death in just one to three days. Stolen Cobalt-60 Found Abandoned In Mexico

so they don't even have to pretend to appoint fair judges

Fair Judges? Those same fair judges that the Chamber of Commerce chooses for us? Or those fair judges that get kicked out once called "activist judges" for making otherwise perfectly normal decisions that some member of the "business" community hates? Tell me again who the highest bidder is? This stuff isn't trying to read tea leaves...

Perhaps some budding Michael Moore might want to contrast the technology available to the President's kids at the $35,288-a-year Sidwell Friends School ("The number one blessing for this [iMovie] project was the delivery of noise-cancelling headphones for each child") to the tech available at rural Appalachia schools (avg. family income $40,000). Sidwell Friends is also living-the-cyberlife as a charter member of the elite Global Online Academy, which boasts that "classmates in Washington, D.C. $35,288, and San Francisco $38,900 work on projects with peers in Madaba-Manja, Jordan $38,272, and Portland, Oregon $25,850. Students in Hawaii $19,950 (President Obama's alma mater) and Chicago $29,985 discuss global health issues with students in New York $40,220, Seattle $28,500 (Bill Gates' alma mater), Boston $46,700, and Jakarta, Indonesia $30,200."

And what would the message of this movie be? "America has expensive but fancy private schools"? I think we already knew that. Yeah, if you're willing to shell out some coin, you can indeed buy a great education for your kid. So what? With more money you can also buy better healthcare, go to better colleges, eat at better restaurants, drive safer cars and live in better houses located in better neighborhoods.

Perhaps some budding Michael Moore might want to contrast the technology available to the President's kids at the $35,288-a-year Sidwell Friends School ("The number one blessing for this [iMovie] project was the delivery of noise-cancelling headphones for each child") to the tech available at rural Appalachia schools (avg. family income $40,000). Sidwell Friends is also living-the-cyberlife as a charter member of the elite Global Online Academy, which boasts that "classmates in Washington, D.C. $35,288, and San Francisco $38,900 work on projects with peers in Madaba-Manja, Jordan $38,272, and Portland, Oregon $25,850. Students in Hawaii $19,950 (President Obama's alma mater) and Chicago $29,985 discuss global health issues with students in New York $40,220, Seattle $28,500 (Bill Gates' alma mater), Boston $46,700, and Jakarta, Indonesia $30,200."

They've been doing that for more than a few years already.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11846089

Maybe he doesn't count as an a-lister? If so there are far fewer a-listers in China per capita.

But you may prefer to die than go to a chinese prison for life.

Google "asset forfeiture", "civil forfeiture", "cash seizure" and the like. Tennessee and Florida have been doing this for a while now. They take large sums of cash in exchange for not initiating bogus prosecutions. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91555835

Part of it seems to be the self fulfilling prophecy of the "Girls are not good at math and science" stereotype thing. Even though they start out doing better than boys, they stop trying because that thought creeps in from what their peers or others in the community say. Another part is having role models in the community that show young girls that they can enter that field if the want to. In communities where there are women that work in science and tech fields there is a much higher ratio of girls that stay in those classes. There was a good story on NPR a while back that covered this topic pretty well. The toys you get your children make a difference also. Boys get legos while girls get dolls. I don't think you can push it at the CS level. It seems to be happening before high school. Their interest in science field is high before then, but they still think of it as only a hobby because they don't think they can go into it as a career. By high school they are exiting the STEM fields in large numbers. It seems you need to stop the stereotype and show better women tech role models. Two things that seem pretty difficult to do quickly. Especially as it's hard to have plenty of role models when there is a lack of the women to be the role models.

Top 5 Myths of Genetically Modified Seeds

If you really want to be fair don't forget the rising electricity prices too. And I have no idea where you can get electricity for .06. It certainly isn't anywhere in the united states. That link tells me that, in 2011 the average was double what is being used for that cost calculation.

But something funny has happened to renewables that major power companies and their Republican allies didn't see coming. Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US, according to the renewable energy research group Greentech Media. The price of photovoltaic panels has fallen 62 percent since January 2011.

Why is this story so full of anti-republican spin, when the facts so exactly vindicate the conservative and republican view?

The huge government subsidies proved to be a total flop.
Private industry found the best solar and best wind solutions and put them into production.

The Conservatives were right all along. After the government plans collapse, with 500 million dollar loses, the hands off approach delivers a workable solution.

Several companies are also working full steam (pun intended) ahead on Mini and Micro-Nuclear that can be build for 100 million (less than a small shopping mall).

It appears this whole story is somehow about spewing hate more than shedding any light on the sustainable power developments.

You'd think they would have told us before October 1 that there were going to be some problems with healthcare.gov. They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.

No, they flat out lied. They knew back in March that the site wouldn't work. And that's an NPR link, lest someone accuse me of linking to a right-wing source.

You'd think that mentioning who is in charge of fixing it should be mentioned. That's just a quick google away and his name is Jeffrey Zientz. There's not a lot of information out there, but what is there seems reasonably positive. Here's npr's article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/10/23/240283860/white-house-turns-to-rock-star-manager-for-obamacare-fix

Here's Washington Posts: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/10/24/who-is-jeffrey-zients-and-why-is-he-qualified-to-fix-healthcare-gov/

No, the real reason the whole car buying experience is horrific is that there is no competition, by law. Car dealerships have indefinite, irrevocable monopolies in the regions they cover due to historical events that occurred 90 years ago. The real solution is to erase outdated laws, break the monopolies and open the market to real competition.

Here is a podcast about it:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/15/137859024/rethinking-sids-many-deaths-no-longer-a-mystery

SIDS, pardon the pun, has been studied to death.

There's an unfortunate truth that new parents and the makers of expensive baby monitors like to ignore. If your baby goes into cardiac arrest and you're not in a hospital already, then the baby is going to die no matter when you're alerted.

Anyway, those monitors for newborns are supposed to be monitoring against SIDS, and there's evidence that SIDS isn't real anyway. The incidence of SIDS diagnosis is pretty low, and taking such simple steps as nothing in the crib besides the kid, not smoking, and on their backs reduces it to almost unheard of. So I don't think the monitor failing is really that big of a safety issue.

I'm still going to use one of those heartbeat monitors though. I'd lie awake at night and think about how horrible it would be to go in in the morning to find a dead baby. The false alarms from rolling off the sensor are less nerve-racking.

The price of the raw materials is really just a fraction of the cost that goes into producing most foods.
When corn prices dramatically shot up, there wasn't a corresponding spike in food either.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130921775

It is very true that trying to match a face from a real world camera (security camera or otherwise) is difficult. You end up with way too many possible matches. If you have standardized mug shots with good lighting it still gives you too many matches. The only place it works ok is when you want to compare the person attempting to get through the security door with the id stored in the system. On a one to one match it is 95% accurate. But when you try to match that to the millions of people in the mug shot database you still end up with thousands of people.

The way to make it more accurate for street cameras is to build a model of each persons' face using many images from different angles and lighting sources. This can drive your accuracy up. The horrible thing is there are many facebook users that are helping to create this database of facial models. And you don't even have to have a facebook account to have someone who knows you start tagging you face in all the pictures that people put into the system. So rather than create a new system to do this, they should just tap into facebook's system and use it. Not that I want them to do this mind you. I think it is just more illegal overreach of an out of control government.

There was a good report on this on NPR a few weeks ago if you want to read or hear about it in more detail.

The corporate stores may all be closed, but there are some franchises that live on in Alaska and Texas. Zombie Blockbusters

So I guess we can add one more thing to the list of benefits for bossless offices: A more secure network.

This is a perfect example of how oil has created such a horrible political mess over the years. It has been very dangerous for us to be so dependent on the middle east.

The only direct dependence the US has on the middle east is due to oil being priced globally. The US isn't particularly dependant on the middle east and OPEC for oil supply. The problem is that other parts of the world are. Oil has created big political messes like Iran due to countries like the US being unable to resist being a bunch of evil a-holes and doing things like overthrowing governments in the region on behalf of oil companies without regard to future consequences. What's astonishing is that our leaders have the nerve to act surprised when it turns out that people in other countries don't like us meddling in their internal affairs.

Relatively little of the oil used in the US comes from the middle east. About 40% of the oil used in the US is produced domestically and this number has been climbing. Of the 316 million barrels imported by the US in August 2013, only 67 million came from the Persian Gulf region or about 21%. This 21% is about 13% of total US oil demand and about 2/3 of that 13% is from Saudi Arabia. In fact Saudi Arabia is the only middle eastern country to crack the top 5 exporters to the US - the others being Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria.

Is America a democracy? It only has one more party than the Soviet Union did.

Yes America is a democracy.* And no, the US does not have just one more party than the Soviet Union. The US actually has dozens of active political parties. Only a few of them attract enough support nationally to run a serious campaign for the two national level offices (president and vice-president). Within states, counties, and cities, parties besides the Republicans and Democrats are much more likely to obtain office. US Senator Bernie Sanders is a socialist (no, really - "... the only self-proclaimed socialist in Congress ...). The Reform party started by Ross Perot had a candidate that won the election for governor in the 1990s. Another recent amusing example of a third party win from the "I'm not dead department" - (icing on the cake - he is a software engineer):

Philadelphians Elect First Whig Since 19th Century
And just because: BECOME A WHIG RIGHT NOW! And 6 other vintage parties we should bring back

And the candidates are those nominated by the powers that be.

I think you misunderstand. Anyone that meets the requirements can run for pretty much any office they care to in the US. Nominations are mechanisms used by political parties to determine who the party will put forward as a candidate for a major election such as president. If you are a serious candidate with real support, that isn't going to be much of a problem. The much bigger problem is getting the support needed to be a serious candidate. Nominations generally take place at the national conventions of the parties after they have gone through the many primary elections and caucuses in the states. If you've won most of the primaries or caucuses, you will probably be the candidate.

And what does it matter, when the vote-counting process is highly suspect?

Counting the votes is a local function, the federal government doesn't play a part. If there is a problem it is a local problem. Voting procedures are subject to scrutiny by election judges.

* Democratic republic for the pendants.

Frankly, most people replacing a 20 year old HVAC system with a new 16 SEER unit would probably find that a 10 year low interest loan would cost the same or less than the reduction in their monthly electric bill, making it a "free" upgrade.

Three years ago I replaced my 30 year old HVAC system with a new 16 SEER unit. Coming from an even older, so much less efficient, unit than your example and with three years of real-world bills I can say your example is pure horse hockey. At the rates I've seen it would take 20 years of the bill reduction to pay for the replacement. MOST people would derive significantly greater savings by following the sage advice President Carter gave in 1977: "put on a sweater" or following the more recent summer-time examples from Japan http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14024250

Get a brain. The biggest single contributor to fine particulate matter air pollution in the many areas of the U.S. and in Canada during winter is from wood burning stoves. Fine particulate matter is very bad for your health as it is of a size that gets deep in the lungs. Don't believe me? Look up London Fog. It wasn't really fog.

About nr 1: I don't know about this batteries. As there are sometimes flaws in them and for that same flaw they often burn mobile phones, laptops and such things. Batteries are improving with time, but it is going to take several more years until something new appears.

In regarding nr 2: While this is extremely difficult to trace due to shell within a shell holdings (and sometimes shell within a double shell in a tax haven) this is happening. As the oil industry did destroy the public transport in the U.S at the start of the 20th century. That is easy to look up.

Her is an interesting news report on what is taking place in big oil. It is all power and corruption.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/07/16/the-worlds-25-biggest-oil-companies/ (Warning! Has audio advertisement!)

Here is how big oil got Tesla cars banned in Texas by using side routes that they do have and are not afraid to use.

http://elitedaily.com/news/technology/big-oil-state-texas-bans-the-sale-of-teslas-electric-cars/
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2013/09/10/why-tesla-lost-the-fight-to-sell-cars-in-texas/

Where does the subsidy money come from?

Here is a link that talks about it.

They do that too. Here you go:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/18/191279201/3-d-printer-brings-dexterity-to-children-with-no-fingers

I for one do look for trans fat content and avoid it as much as possible; so more aware how prevalent it is
and approve such a move even as they mention it's on it's way out (I haven't seen it).

I live in the USA so it's not going to happen, but to reduce Corn syrup/sugar would go a long way to show they cared about ones health.
I also live in an area with a high Mexican population; so shop at their authentic Mexican stores, as their products contain sugar not Corn syrup/sugar.
Corn syrup - Corn sugar I'm even confused of the difference only that both are a product of Corn and not healthy (digested lower in ones system than sugar)

The FDA did stop corn syrup being called corn sugar which is a start -
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/05/30/154009682/fda-rules-corn-syrup-cant-change-its-name-to-corn-sugar

There was a /. article awhile back I don't comment on about Mexicans being the fattest population,
I tend to disagree with the findings.

At no point were the Dems who were pushing for this courting or expecting Republican votes, hence the procedural trickery they did in the Senate to pass it, but they did require the blue dogs and other center left Dems.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. How can people be so ignorant of something that happened only a few years ago? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112222617

Here's an interesting quote from Republican Senator Grassley:

"No public option. No play-or-pay. No things that are going to lead to any rationing of health care. No interference with the doctor-patient relationship," says Grassley. "About the only place we haven't made progress along the lines of what Republicans are wanting on the bill is in tort reform."

NPR had an interesting segment about how farm vets push antibiotics.

The livestock industry uses them, IIRC, to aid in the fattening of the cows, pigs, etc; Apparently some farmers have discovered other ways to raise healthy and "fat" livestock WITHOUT the use of AntiBiotics, however it is still an uphill battle convincing many farmers to leave that tried and true, ancient tradition of pumping cows full of AntiBiotics.

It's both. On the topic of "natural talent", there's been a lot of DNA studies on athletic performance. There's actually a lot of genes involved. Some genes give you extra red-blood cells. Other genes cause your body to respond to training (i.e. if you train for 10 weeks, you'll get better gains in athletic performance than someone who trains for 10 weeks but has worse genes). In the case of athleticism, it's not just about interest and putting your time in. I don't know if "math skill" is similar, but it's at least worth pointing out that we don't know certain things about what makes a top performer. We shouldn't jump to conclusions about it all being about "interest" and "putting the time in".

A recent podcast on the interplay between genetic and athletics: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/david_epstein_o.html
An NPR interview with the same author: http://www.npr.org/2013/08/05/209160709/talent-or-skill-honing-in-on-the-elusive-sports-gene

Nope, distracted is distracted
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794

The US is using its national intelligence agencies to obtain intelligence on terrorists trying to kill people.

Yes, and obtaining intelligence on political movements like Occupy Wall Street.

The intelligence agencies themselves don't have police powers.

Oh? What's that you say? TFA is about warrantless surveillance undertaken by the FBI, which is the federal agency with explicit domestic police powers.

The suspect in this case is accused of assisting a terrorist group.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, providing "material support" to a terrorist group can be as simple as expressing support for it. And having a terrorism suspect browse your web site is enough to spark a secret investigation of your organization which scares away many of the donors who keep it in operation.

East Germany's secret police had both an intelligence function and police powers.

The FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, at least, are agencies with police powers and intelligence operations. Heck, even the NYPD is in on the deal.

Their primary purpose was to keep the East German Communist party in power.

Given that NSA snooping hasn't indisputably foiled even a single terrorist plot, and the FBI instigated virtually all of the "terrorist" plots they've busted, I have to wonder what is the primary purpose of these agencies. Surely not to intimidate political dissidents!

You could be arrested and imprisoned for such things as making jokes about the nation's leadership, wanting to form a new political party,

Here in the U.S., they've at least figured out that making jokes about the leadership is essentially harmless and does nothing to erode their power. If people started to rise up to challenge them, we might see that change; the architecture of oppression is in place. As for forming a new political party, it does no harm to talk of it, because it's essentially impossible due to the laws in most areas which protect the two incumbent parties.

being a member of an unapproved church,

Like a mosque?

trying to leave the country without permission (could get you shot on the spot)

It won't get you shot, but you apparently can't leave without permission. The U.S. apparently has more finesse than East Germany did.

and many other possible infractions.

There are plenty of other infractions that'll get you in trouble, like walking while black,

You obviously haven't taken a look at Comcast's balance sheet if you think that $80/month is going to the studios.

I heard a stat that cable companies pay $6 per month for ESPN/ESPN2. That's just two channels. Most channels are not that expensive, but if you have 100 channels....it is not hard to see how you're going to get a lot of that money going to content providers.

Other note I would make is that it is not exactly new to have "dry" cable internet. There are millions out there with cable internet and no TV -- and the cable companies do it willingly; I don't think they would do it if it really caused significant price pressure on the TV side of the house.

Heritage? Really? They haven't done anything except shill for the right since 2000.

I won't say anything about dailycaller.com. Just look at their front page for an overview of how impartial they are.

Here is a more impartial view.

Actually, there have been some studies indicating placebos work regardless of whether the person knows it's a placebo.

Why does the US have such an antiquated banking system?

Because it works and the votes to change it didn't make the majority which was needed to change the system. The Invisible Plumbing Of Our Economy is a really good listen and answers your question pretty thoroughly. In the IK there was a mandate from the government to speed things up. Given all that's happened with the Great Recession it's apparent that the US government doesn't have the power to mandate anything to the banks.

Traditional libraries are not the future. The dead tree archives will here after be a curiosity.

That's partially true. Libraries as they exist today as nothing more than regional warehouses for books (and more recently DVDs and CDs and Internet access) are not the future. The future will rely more heavily on the inter-library loan system in order to allow libraries to be smaller and more local as RedBox is to Blockbuster. Books take up a lot of room, they don't all need to be stored in our communities where real estate is expensive when they can sit in warehouses wherever real estate is cheap as Amazon does with its inventory.

Libraries need not be just for books, either. They can be seed banks, they can loan hand tools, baking pans, fishing poles, telescopes, knitting needles, microscopes, oscilloscopes, musical instruments, and even puppies. Why not also reserve a couple of parking spaces for carsharing?

So there are plenty of ways libraries can continue to be relevant and cost-effective if we'll just open our minds to new uses for them.

And their real fantasy is that Europe would relax protection of key industries, and go "cheap imported" like the US. Then they'd have enough euros coming in to want that to be the global reserve.

It appears most Americans don't even know what they're dealing with, I think their media have been teaching them the world only has one set of rules and everyone around the world is playing by it.

It's not a fantasy when China can buy their companies directly. When you have enough cash to buy their local companies you can bypass a lot of protectionism bullshit.

Thanks to the financial crisis, major Americans/European companies in various industry have been selling major brands to foreigners, we're talking about major brands with 100+ years of history. Such as McVities (since 1830s) is already sold to the Chinese (a large chunk of it).

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/29/187029237/smithfield-foods-to-be-sold-to-chinese-firm-for-4-72-billion
  May 29, 2013 9:27 AM

Smithfield Foods, makers of ham products under a variety of brand names, is being purchased by Chinese food maker Shuanghui International, for $4.72 billion in cash.

The makers of Smithfield Ham, an icon on America's culinary scene for decades, are selling the publicly traded company to China's Shuanghui International Holdings Limited for about $4.72 billion in cash. The deal also includes an exchange of debt.

The purchase values Smithfield Foods at $7.1 billion — a figure that would make the purchase "the largest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company," according to Bloomberg News.

Never underestimate the power of a trillions in cash.

76% of people on food stamps are disabled, elderly, or children.

I wish it were easy to tell if a person was really disabled. An NPR article says that the number of people on disability has been increasing fast recently.

For example, "In Hale County, Alabama, nearly 1 in 4 working-age adults is on disability."

And a graph shows that in 2011, in West Virginia, 9% of the population age 18-64 was on worker's disability.

And "One mother told me her teenage son wanted to work, but she didn't want him to get a job because if he did, the family would lose its disability check."

I don't know how to solve fraudulent disability claims. If someone says they are in pain, how can anyone, including a doctor, say, "No, you're not in pain. You're just faking it."?

He thinks larger penalties would help deter shady organizations from harvesting data the user isn't even aware of.

The NSA is still going to harvest your data, laws clearly don't stop them. This will only be use as another point to increase the penalties for kids caught file-sharing, and they are already pretty extreme. $675,000 for 30 songs, might as well be a drug dealer.

Well, it makes a little sense. Less dense could mean a 43 pound coin.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/29/131665627/here-s-what-a-43-pound-coin-looks-like .http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/11/29/131665627/here-s-what-a-43-pound-coin-looks-like

On a more serious note, since gold is dense (and soft) it is harder to debase. Any base metals mixed in will result in a lighter coin. If you are good you can tell without even just by weighing it in your hand.

Not so obvious at all. Other estimates show very different lifetimes for coins and bills, and conclude that paper bills are actually a much better deal. Check out the great NPR Planet Money story on this very topic.

That story contradicts your claims. What it states is that (based on Canada's experience) you need about 1.6 coins per bill which was in circulation because they tend to end up sitting around in people's change jars, where people tend to keep paper notes in their wallets and spend them. So they figure the increase in demand coupled with the increased cost of minting the coins roughly offsets the gains you get from dropping the notes.

Has anyone ever wondered why we buy cars the way we do? If you wanted to buy a banana, you wouldn't go to a banana store. You would go to a grocery store and pick from a multitude of different fruits. Yet with (new) cars, there is no grocery store equivalent. Why is that? Well the reason is that in all 50 states dealerships have established a legal monopoly which basically prohibits this.

Planet Money did a podcast on this very issue.

Not so obvious at all. Other estimates show very different lifetimes for coins and bills, and conclude that paper bills are actually a much better deal. Check out the great NPR Planet Money story on this very topic.

It's funny to see all the time and thought(?) you're spending on a small side effect (the administration, I agree, is making it clearer what the shutdown means), and not complaining about the radical republicans who started this mess by attempting to blackmail the president into killing his own law, the ACA.

Oh, monuments closed to a couple of hundred vets, that's very sad. But the republicans' shutdown is affecting Meals on Wheels, which serves tens of thousands of elderly, including veterans. Here's one small piece of that - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=228551347

Oh, and WIC assistance is also shut down. Good thing Fox is calling this a government "slimdown" - those women, infants, and children could probably stand to lose a few pounds.

Why are you paying attention to the sideshow instead of the real problem?

It's possible your assertion is correct. However, the story in the link below describes a Republican study that came to the conclusion you claim, and pointed out how the study was flawed - it didn't even describe the timeframe examined, whether the applications in the study were the same ones reviewed by the people implicated in the "scandal", and only used one liberal keyword, "progressive", instead of say, "peace", as in "Americans for Peace".

Here's the study; http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/07/30/207080580/report-irs-scrutiny-worse-for-conservatives

Do you have a citation for any study that is not an obvious partisan hatchet job? Remember, these are the same people who inserted a poison pill for the ACA into unrelated budget bills, then called the resulting mess the "Obama Shutdown".

Well, Hal, if this is what it takes to let you sleep at night despite your and your school's part in Swartz's persecution

You'd think MIT's psychology department would have pointed out the obvious flaw in this logic, but I'm guessing management had something to do with that. But I'm sure it's an isolated case. You can't have an entire school convert to fascism overnight without its students noticing something was going horribly wrong. I mean, if something is very, very obviously wrong and you see everybody else doing it, you wouldn't just go along with it.

Just to be clear, (3) is wrong. See in this video that she is obviously completely surrounded by police, not one plain-clothes officer with a gun but more than a half-dozen of them, in uniforms (weird uniforms with shorts), plus marked police cars with lights and sirens going.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/03/228942517/watch-the-capitol-hill-car-chase?ft=1&f=1001

So it wasn't some kind of innocent mom who got killed over an understandable error.

We did a big change to redistricting in California. It's not decided by the legislature, but a committee of 4 republicans, 4 democrats, and 4 independents. The result however was not without political grumbling. Ie, California is of course going to be a Democrat leaning state, and so the results created something that would also favor democrats overall. So while some republicans are angry (and others accept this as an expected result) at the same time we've had some hiccups on democrat side: two popular democrats drawn into the same district who then had to battle it out.

If the legislature had draw the lines it still would have been leaning to Democrats, but you'd have seen many more safe districts most likely. Including granting some safe districts for Republicans in exchange for them voting to approve the lines.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/05/29/186939613/political-battles-still-dog-redistricting-in-california

NPR says nearly 4m BTC were seized. That is a fuckload of money. (It wouldn't be if you cashed it all in in one go -- like stock -- but still).