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...The defendant always as the advantage in US criminal law.

That's hilarious! I wish I had mod points this is definitely a +5 Funny!

Say compared to Cleve baxter's work

IBM is working on something like this, a 'neuromorphic' chip: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

More relevant links to asynchronous/clockless computing:
http://www.embedded.com/design...
http://www.technologyreview.co...
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03...

I was particularly amused to find that Carbon credits, like everything else, are manufactured in China:

As the United Nations became involved in efforts to curb climate change in the last 20 years, it relied on a scientific formula: Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent warming gas, released by smokestacks and vehicles, is given a value of 1. Other industrial gases are assigned values relative to that, based on their warming effect and how long they linger. Methane is valued at 21, nitrous oxide at 310. HFC-23, the waste gas produced making the world’s most common coolant — which is known as HCFC-22 — is near the top of the list, at 11,700.

"Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas."

Nice diagnosis doctor assface.

Check the research.

Basically, ADHD isn't being able to sit still for a long time, it's not being able to focus on things that aren't fun.

For most brains, being able to get through say, homework, isn't a problem. You just sit down, figure, it's going to take about 20 minutes to do all the math problems and you go play video games.

For someone with ADHD, the brain is constantly craving rewards. So video games, movies, etc. all basically jam a fork into the pleasure centers of the brain. So ADHD kids can sit still and enjoy the fuck out of it. When the gears shift, and into say work mode, there's nothing jamming against the pleasure center and the mind loses focus.

Replacing many diverse repositories of hard copy (hard to change on a whim) information with a centrally controlled (easily changed on a whim) electronic repository with many endpoints. This would be a revisionists dream come true...

I believe the dangers of this power have been demonstrated before.

They also still use faxes for similar reasons impenetrable and unfathomable.

To someone unfamiliar with the language and culture.

Handwritten messages have long been a necessity in Japan, where the written language is so complex, with two sets of symbols and 2,000 characters borrowed from Chinese, that keyboards remained impractical until the advent of word processors in the 1980s.

A decade ago Yuichiro Sugahara learned the hard way about his country's deep attachment to the fax machine, which the nation popularized in the 1980s. He tried to modernize his family-run company, which delivers traditional bento lunchboxes, by taking orders online. Sales quickly plummeted.

Today, his company, Tamagoya, is thriving with the hiss and beep of thousands of orders pouring in every morning, most by fax, many with minutely detailed handwritten requests like ''go light on the batter in the fried chicken'' or ''add an extra hard-boiled egg.''

''There is still something in Japanese culture that demands the warm, personal feelings that you get with a handwritten fax,'' said Mr. Sugahara, 43.

Faxes continue to appeal to older Japanese, who often feel uncomfortable with keyboards. Demographics have left Japan dominated by older generations who are still more likely to have a fax number than an e-mail address.

In Japan, with the exception of the savviest Internet start-ups or internationally minded manufacturers, the fax remains an essential tool for doing business. Many companies say they still rely on faxes to create a paper trail of orders and shipments not left by ephemeral e-mail. Banks rely on faxes because customers are worried about the safety of their personal information on the Internet.

Even Japan's largest yakuza crime syndicate, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, has used faxes to send notifications of expulsion to members, police say.

In High-Tech Japan, the Fax Machines Roll On

At least in UK orwell book will not be removed from public library anytime soon. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07...

Scanning travel documents for hits in criminal (or other databases) is yet another case of data being re-purposed for uses other than the original intent. It is the same problem I have with things like Visa selling lists of what people pay for using a Visa card, Verizon selling a list of what addresses I travel to and what websites I browse and my pharmacy selling my prescription information.
 
Repurposing of data for unrelated uses is deeply corrosive to the trust that society needs to function. It keeps us all metaphorically looking over our shoulders, wondering in the back of our heads just how this information generated by going about our normal every-day lives might end up harming us. Even if one in a million times it helps catch a pedo, that still doesn't justify the damage it does to a free society.
 
There will always be crime, even in the most authoritarian of countries. But copious amounts of dignity and privacy are necessary for a healthy society - when you constantly have to second guess yourself it makes you less willing to be open and honest with others, makes you less willing to take risks, to be unconventional. Just compare the amount of creative development in the west to that of the USSR in the same time frame, or even North Korea now. Every time a database is repurposed, our society gets a little bit less robust.

This sounds like a case of the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

Why? Seems like exactly the opposite — DEA does know, Amtrak has the information, and DEA arranged for the information to be available to them at ease...

While neither collection method sounds constitutional to me I am not surprised.

I'm not surprised either, but I don't see, how this is unconstitutional. The Constitution has nothing on the right to travel and, if you ask a government official, you'll quickly realize, they consider traveling to be a privilege instead.

You can not buy an Amtrak ticket anonymously. And you can not give your ticket to anyone else. With air-tickets this fraud was put upon us (years before 9/11) with the argument, that the airline and the law-enforcement need to screen the passenger names against list of criminals — so they need to know all names in advance.

But most Amtrak tickets are purchased within hours before departure, AFAIK, so this argument would not hold.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson

We need the traveling to be explicitly declared a right, that only the Judiciary can suspend after a trial — rather than a mere privilege, that the Executive can withdraw on their whim (such as by adding you to a "no-fly" list) or, indeed, demanding to "see your papers" (and recording them for future use).

I can't see it happening any time soon, though. Bushitler-created TSA has only expanded under the Nobel Peace Prize Administration — and now insists on covering not just air-travel, but all mass transit. Driving a personal car has required a government permission for near a century, and being driven by someone else is increasingly difficult too.

Any other challenges we can think of, folks?

3. Figure out a way to help farmers stay in business.

4. Figure out a way to protect and replenish the aquifers in the midwest.

5. I like the idea of desalinating ocean water for California costal cities. Let's expand that, and replenish California's aquifers.

Unfortunately, politicians don't always talk about important things like protecting our food and water supply. If IT people can come up with a way to do so, that would be great.

Any other challenges we can think of, folks?

3. Figure out a way to help farmers stay in business.

4. Figure out a way to protect and replenish the aquifers in the midwest.

5. I like the idea of desalinating ocean water for California costal cities. Let's expand that, and replenish California's aquifers.

Unfortunately, politicians don't always talk about important things like protecting our food and water supply. If IT people can come up with a way to do so, that would be great.

The illiterate chimes in! The entire letter is here at a whopping three paragraphs, one of which was quoted in its entirety. Dobb's review is much better. The letter, as a collective "me too!", is emotional masturbation and science by petition.

Your post is very meta; I like it.

The illiterate chimes in! The entire letter is here at a whopping three paragraphs, one of which was quoted in its entirety. Dobb's review is much better. The letter, as a collective "me too!", is emotional masturbation and science by petition.

Your post is very meta; I like it.

Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03... (admittedly behind a paywall but they paid less than $100K in fines. They also promised to clean up the other 24 accidents waiting to happen that they own just in N. Carolina. And this is after they "defanged" the state regulatory board.

The per-kilowatt cost of solar has been on a steady decline for years, and so far the trend shows no signs of slowing. Large scale solar deployments in the future will have the benefit of further lowered costs.

See chart.

That is Gen III, not IV and has been pointed out "the Westinghouse AP1000 has a weaker containment, less redundancy in safety systems, and fewer safety features than current reactors" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02... so we're really looking at putting lipstick on a pig in much of this.

While I completely agree and feel a handful of people should get locked up for this, I'm no longer shocked to see laws and punishments not being applied fairly to corporations. It wasn't long ago we saw a company get away with killing three hundred people.

That is sitting in the halls of Congress.

The Secret Police don't need this kind of help.

They take a photograph of every item of mail now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/us/postal-service-confirms-photographing-all-us-mail.html?_r=0

"I guess the Chinese need to learn the hard way how expensive and difficult a proposition this will be. "

.

China has poured 47% more concrete in the last 3 years than the US has poured in the last century. They know how to build.

The Panama Canal was dug around 1910. In 1910, about 38% of Americans were employed in agriculture... now it is under 2%. In other words, humankind is radically better at things like "moving dirt." There is no comparison.

"They know how to build"?!?!?!

I think not..

How much of that concrete is going to be still standing in 50 years?

daffy country-on-a-ship plans

Or China.

Greenies don't actually trump everything, everywhere.

WAMSR is a paper reactor. It has all the problems of any molten salt reactor, plus a few new ones thrown in for good measure.

It requires fuel channels made of unobtainium. We can't actually make unobtainium so we use Hastealloy instead which cracks at some rate faster than anticipated plant life, as found in ORNL's MSRE. Neutron flux embitterment is also an issue for fuel channels and the long term effect of this is not perfectly understood. WAMSR actually runs at slightly higher temperatures than MSRE which will not improve the cracking problems due to even greater temperature gradients. Transatomic speculates about using certain exotic ceramics to solve this, and that could pan out; materials science does actually solve problems from time to time, but this one hasn't been solved yet.

The reactor produces relatively large quantities of tritium (~12y half life) requiring active separation and storage of the gas. It's effectively impossible to capture all the tritium (hydrogen is slippery stuff), however enough could be retained to bring it in line with conventional reactors, they claim. This assumes the capture system works, is maintained and doesn't leak. Good luck with that. Amusingly the Transatomic Power Technical White Paper claims the addition of Lithium-7 can reduce tritium generation, and you can read about it in section 2.6.4, which doesn't actually exist ...... hopefully the ~$2 million funding injection will get that written. Tritium is among the larger spikes being driven through the heart of Entergy's Vermont Yankee right now, in case one wonders how much this might matter.

As with all MSR designs, fuel must be reprocessed on-site concurrent with reactor operation. This is always offered as a nonproliferation benefit of MSRs. Unfortunately handling molten reactor fuel is a difficult mechanical and chemical process that has never actually been fully modeled in an experimental reactor and would probably be a source of the usual drama inherent in chemical processing operations; leaks, fires and whatnot. Personally I believe this to be the biggest risk involved with MSR reactors; any failure mode that leads to uncontained fuel will produce a lethal radiation flux, fires lofting clouds of radionucleotides and other fun stuff. Bear in mind that every single plant and its resident Homer Simpsons will have to operate their own reprocessing facility for the entire life of the plant; it's not a question of if a mistake will happen, but rather; how heinous are the consequences when it happens. Liquids tend to get away from people.

Finally, WAMSR uses zirconium hydride as the primary neutron moderator, which is pretty novel and a source of some unknowns. The zirconium hydride exists as rods inside the reactor core which also contains the molten fuel and the primary loop coolant water. If, for whatever reason, the zirconium hydride came into contact with the super-heated water in (the inevitable) presence of oxygen, huge quantities of explosive molecular hydrogen would be produced. This is what blew up the reactor buildings of Fukushima no. 1 and 3. The moderator, fuel and coolant are all in close proximity inside the reactor core, flowing through what appear to be relatively fine tubes. Again, due to the chronic shortage of uncrackable unobtainium, we make vessels and tubing such as these out of various steel alloys which frequently crack and corrode and leak.

So, WAMSR is not without its problems.

> Stupid people look at radiation and nuclear energy as an evil boogeyman because they're too lazy and/or stupid to learn about and understand it.

Repeating the fallacy does not make it any more true. Normal people look at nuclear energy as dangerous because it has been dangerous and because normal people have little to no control over corner-cutting and other forms of regulatory corruption.

> Tsunamis are fairly common in Japan.

You seem to be arguing against your point. Yes they are common, so common the landscape has physical markers warning not to build in areas known to be vulnerable and yet the Fukushima plant was built without taking that information into account. The only stupidity I am seeing here is the credulity of those who over-simplify the risks to the point of ignoring them.

Somewhere somehow someone slowly turned travel to be a privilege, which the Executive can withdraw at a whim. It ought to be explicitly declared a right, which only the Judiciary can suspend — after a trial.

And it is not just airtravel — under Obama, Bush-created TSA are expanding their "jurisdiction" over all other mass transit, nor can you drive a personal car without the government's permission (driver's license). And having somebody else drive you without a government's permission is troublesome too.

These guys would be just as happy to go with the "everyone is a terrorist until proven otherwise model", where the proven otherwise occurs when you're dead.

Right. It's very similar to the policy Obama's administration uses to identify militants suitable for drone strikes.

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Quite right. Remember Amazon's move to erase copies of Orwell's books from their customers' Kindle readers? I mean, of all the books they could have chosen...

no TV actors have EVER been paid that much b4!

Is this considered /. news because the show portrays "nerds" and nerds in this sites tag line?

Texas, at the state level, discourages regulation in order to attract businesses. No one is asking for more AGENCIES.

"Texas has always prided itself on its free-market posture. It is the only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers’ compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country, Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it prohibits smaller counties from having such codes. Some Texas counties even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there. "

There is no reason American health programs can not do the same.

Actually there is a law against that."The 2003 Medicare law* prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices, setting prices or establishing a uniform list of covered drugs, known as a formulary."

*: full title "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act"
src: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04...

true if you're talking about AIDS.

no big Pharma is researching Ebola because hardly anyone has it (compared to erectile disfunction, HIV, high blood pressure, cholesterol and sleep disorders).

How many universities in this country even have BSH4 facilities to study these kinds of things? Are they even allowed to have these pathogens - think physical security - not Chemturion suits (brand name for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...).. but armed response for the perimeter. USAMRIID certainly has guns close by if not onsite, and I'm sure CDC can have tanks parked out front in minutes if necessary... what if the bad guys get the smallpox stored at the CDC?

the WHO only officially allows 2 facilities in the WORLD to store live smallpox.. so if you can't get your hands on the material. you can't study it.

of course you could always find some in a cardboard box at the FDA. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

Given that Ebola is currently confined to Africa

You were saying?

Japan Announces a Military Shift to Thwart China
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/world/asia/japan-moves-to-permit-greater-use-of-its-military.html

Japan's prime minister announced a reinterpretation of the country's pacifist Constitution on Tuesday, freeing its military for the first time in over 60 years to play a more assertive role in the increasingly tense region.

The antiwar Constitution remains enough of a touchstone for many in Japan that the reinterpretation has spurred rare street protests, and even the self-immolation of a lone protester in Tokyo this week.

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it welcomed Japan's action, adding that it would aid the country's armed forces to "do more within the framework of our alliance."

This is all about China.
Even the source article brings up China.

Apple engaged in illegal activity, willfully so, and they rightfully should be slapped for it. But so did Amazon, yet they've been able to get away with it so far because the one's being hurt by them aren't the general public.

The author's guild has outright claimed that they think Amazon is breaching the Sherman Antitrust Act. Most people seem to forget that those laws apply to not just monopolies (when you're the only seller), but also to monopsonies (when you're the only buyer), and that the abusive monopsony Amazon has with regards to the publishers in this market is exactly what pushed the publishers into engaging in their own illegal activities. Which isn't to say that Apple or the publishers were justified in doing what they did because Amazon screwed them first. They weren't. Full stop. But that also doesn't mean that Amazon is justified in doing what it's been doing just because the publishers engaged in illegal activities too.

Negotiating hard is one thing, but they've held around 90% market share with eBooks for awhile now, and as virtually the only buyer in that space, Amazon has a responsibility to not abuse their monopsony, yet they have failed to do so at every turn. Anyone who Googles around for about 5 minutes can turn up a dozen examples of Amazon abusing their dominant position to force the publisher's hands. Delisting books right as major releases are about to come out, refusing to ship copies they have so that shipping times go from days to weeks, forcing the publishers to change packaging with minimal notice or else. These are all part and parcel in dealing with Amazon.

Apple deserves to be punished. Make no mistake about that. But Amazon has yet to get what it deserves, simply because it was smart enough to make sure that it hurt people no one feels sorry for.

The Peaceful Middle East

The newest country on Earth

Civil society in the West

I am not a pessimist, but I will say that we are a far cry from being a "success".

If by 2015, you mean 2011, then yes. UW and UCSD demonstrated hacking a car via its cellular connection and disabling its brakes, among other things. There's no discussion of taking control of the steering, so maybe the car they worked with didn't have drive-by-wire steering.

There's a push among some to cut back the work week. That solves all the worlds problems right? Full employment, more leisure time, more people commuting, less expendable income...oh wait.

>"During an effort to drill a viaduct beneath downtown Seattle"

Viaduct? How is digging/drilling a tunnel a viaduct? "A viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans for crossing a valley or a gorge." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... You cannot drill a viaduct.

They are digging a TUNNEL under Seattle for a car highway as an alternative to an old, damaged viaduct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12...

This is the principle of false equivalency - treating propaganda, vapid opinions, and just plain falsities with the same weight as facts, in the aim of being "fair and balanced." Letting the CIA, NSA, others speak at conferences where they are there to spread their own propaganda and to then treat these presentations as valuable facts is intellectually dishonest at best.

There is a time when various people need to be shunned to give them a wake-up-call, and not allowing these jerks to take time at our conferences.

The CIA fucking spied on the fucking Congress and made up "evidence" to turn over to Eric Holder to prosecute congressional staffers. Because they didn't like the investigation into plainly illegal torture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

These people need to be shunned and locked out, not catered to. Many need to be in jail at the very least.

--
BMO

This continues to show China is a pay for play game, in that you are well connected enough in the communist party and laws and environmental rules just don't apply and it doesn't matter if it kills the little people.

The same could be said about the US too.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

Since when is a license to read an eBook revocable?

Amazon already did this back in 2009, not sure if they changed their policy like they claimed they would:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07...

Report them to the IDF? Are you insane? If you came and killed my child I would not report those trying to kill you to the police or army. I would do everything I could to support those trying to kill you.

That's a very bad analogy. It has led you to the wrong conclusion, as bad analogies often do.

A far better analogy: I live in Bellingham, Washington, and my government, the United States Government, stockpiles rockets in my child's school and starts firing them over the border into residential areas of Vancouver, British Columbia, for no good reason. To try to stop the rocket attacks, Canada launches some airstrikes on Bellingham.

In this situation, I would be completely ashamed of my government, the United States Government, and I would be rooting for the Canadians, because I'm a civilized person.

And then if the airstrikes failed to stop the rocket attacks, and Canadian troops arrived in Bellingham, you bet I'd help them find the jerks launching the rockets.

And if the Canadians dropped leaflets begging civilians to evacuate the school before they bomb the rocket-launching site, I would have even more admiration for the Canadians, because that type of concern for civilians is nearly unprecedented in warfare.

And if American leaders called those evacuation warning leaflets "psychological warfare, and urged people to stay put," my disgust for my own government would multiply.

And if my child was killed because a school administrator obeyed the duplicitous order to stay put, would I suddenly lose my grip on logic and rationality, and lash out at the Canadians? Nope. My anger would be entirely directed at the Americans who instigated this conflict.

Let me change that just a bit.

Scenario 1a) Let's say the Canadian's suspect that there are rockets stored in the basement of your child's school, where due to flooding your child, your family and the families of everyone you know are sheltering because there is no electricity and no water and all of your houses are under water.

There may or may not be weapons stored under the school. You have no idea and you certainly had nothing to do with putting them there if there are.

Now how do you feel about the Canadians shelling your school on this suspicion? I think not.

Scenario 1b) Let's change 1a to be that now there are militants firing rockets from the roof of the school. You still have nowhere to go because this is the only place you can get food and water.

Are the militants to blame for the immediate situation? Let's say yes.

Would you still be cheering on the Canadians shelling the school, even as you curse the militants.

No, I suspect you would be cursing both sides for crushing you in the middle.

From Wiki:

Dick wrote all of his books published before 1970 while on amphetamines. "A Scanner Darkly (1977) was the first complete novel I had written without speed", said Dick in the interview. He also experimented briefly with psychedelics, but wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which Rolling Stone dubs "the classic LSD novel of all time", before he had ever tried them. Despite his heavy amphetamine use, however, Dick later said that doctors had told him that the amphetamines never actually affected him, that his liver had processed them before they reached his brain.

He dedicated Scanner to all his friends and people close to him who suffered/died from drug addiction, even listing his own name among them.

What really pushed him into "craziness" was the episode he had in 1974, when he started having visions and revelations after receiving a dose of sodium pentothal at the dentist's. A good account of that can be read here: New York Times article

Report them to the IDF? Are you insane? If you came and killed my child I would not report those trying to kill you to the police or army. I would do everything I could to support those trying to kill you.

That's a very bad analogy. It has led you to the wrong conclusion, as bad analogies often do.

A far better analogy: I live in Bellingham, Washington, and my government, the United States Government, stockpiles rockets in my child's school and starts firing them over the border into residential areas of Vancouver, British Columbia, for no good reason. To try to stop the rocket attacks, Canada launches some airstrikes on Bellingham.

In this situation, I would be completely ashamed of my government, the United States Government, and I would be rooting for the Canadians, because I'm a civilized person.

And then if the airstrikes failed to stop the rocket attacks, and Canadian troops arrived in Bellingham, you bet I'd help them find the jerks launching the rockets.

And if the Canadians dropped leaflets begging civilians to evacuate the school before they bomb the rocket-launching site, I would have even more admiration for the Canadians, because that type of concern for civilians is nearly unprecedented in warfare.

And if American leaders called those evacuation warning leaflets "psychological warfare, and urged people to stay put," my disgust for my own government would multiply.

And if my child was killed because a school administrator obeyed the duplicitous order to stay put, would I suddenly lose my grip on logic and rationality, and lash out at the Canadians? Nope. My anger would be entirely directed at the Americans who instigated this conflict.

How do you distinguish a "terror tunnel" from the many tunnels used to smuggle food, clothing, potable water, and basic construction materials?

Well, this isn't a perfect system, but:

When you find a tunnel that goes inside the Israel border, and inside the tunnel there are fake Israeli army uniforms, handcuffs, and knockout gas... that tunnel is probably not a "food, clothing, potable water, and basic construction materials" smuggling tunnel. That tunnel is there to kidnap Israelis, and the purpose of the kidnapping is terror.

Whereas if the tunnel contains just fake Israeli army uniforms and weapons, then that tunnel is there to attack Israel, which might or might not be "terror". I'ma err on the side of "is terror" for that one.

Here's a link for you, to Rush Limbaugh's site. Oh wait my bad, I mean a link to the New York Times. That's a notorious right-wing propaganda site, right?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/world/middleeast/tunnels-lead-right-to-heart-of-israeli-fear.html?_r=0

Of course, the whole purpose of Israel's blockade of Gaza is to try to keep Hamas from getting weapons. The blockade of building materials is to try to keep Hamas from building more terror tunnels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip

It all comes back round to Hamas. Yes, it sucks to be a poor person living in Gaza, and the blockade makes it worse, but the blockade is because of the attacks from Hamas. It sucks to have massive civilian casualties, but those are because Hamas puts rocket launchers among civilians.

Sometimes I wonder why Israel doesn't just bomb everything in Gaza flat and kill everyone. World opinion would be against them, but world opinion already is against them.

Actually, they did not target the school, they do admit they hit it, and they say that their single round which hit it did not result in casualties. They also provided footage. At times they have also provided radar tracks showing Hamas rockets landing in Gaza. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

"So there is, as far as I can tell, no constitutional protection against requiring drug screening for welfare eligibility."

Consider this regarding the protection against unreasonable searches.

That article tells me two things:

• Blanket drug screening may be considered unconstitutional (it has not reached the US Supreme Court)
• It's not cost effective in saving money, or reducing the purchase of illegal drugs.

I still think the best solution is to just legalize the drugs in the first place. Then I don't care if they use welfare money to buy them, just like they might with cigarettes or alcohol. Then we don't have to worry about passing these laws to begin with.

"If it were up to me, welfare recipients would be required to do X hours of community service per week..."

Punishing welfare recipients with community services in addition to their workday (some hold two or more jobs), before showing probable cause is in violation of the Constitution, as well, and costs more than the return.

If someone reports an income to the IRS and is on welfare, then I would say they should not be doing community service. If they are on long term or short term disability, they should not be required to do anything either. If they are physically capable of working, and are just hanging out collecting a welfare check then they might as well make their neighborhood look nicer. Instead of welfare we can just call it a JOB. If they have kids to take care of, we can hire some licensed child care providers to help them with the kids while they do their work. In this case it has nothing to do with saving money, but in building peoples self respect and appreciation for their community. I would rather spend extra money and have these people do something with their lives, even if its pick up trash on the side of the road, than to sit at home playing WoW all day. And yes, I knew a family on welfare that had two parents capable of working that just played WoW all day. I'm not saying that they are the typical welfare recipient, but I do know that these people did not respect themselves.

"So there is, as far as I can tell, no constitutional protection against requiring drug screening for welfare eligibility."

Consider this regarding the protection against unreasonable searches.

"If it were up to me, welfare recipients would be required to do X hours of community service per week..."

Punishing welfare recipients with community services in addition to their workday (some hold two or more jobs), before showing probable cause is in violation of the Constitution, as well, and costs more than the return.

You are not buying stuff at the same price as 6 years ago, maybe you should actually pay attention to the receipts.

beef, pork, avocado, fruits, veggies, almonds, pinenuts, walnuts, mozarella, cheddar, other cheeses, seafood, grains, soy, soy, palm oil, milk, gasoline, beer and more beer, limes, canadian bacon, barley, restaurants, restaurants, restaurants,electrical energy, car rentals, hotel rooms, cab fairs,

air travel and air travel gets more expensive in many other ways, various extra fees, less room, more seats on planes

aluminium,

We can't do that without European cooperation, and so far almost all of the EU countries have proven themselves to be completely spineless on this issue.

I would elaborate, but this put it way more eloquently than I could ever hope to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...