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Sorry to get back to you so late, but I thought you might be interested in the further backstory you are referencing.

The "obscure paper" isn't Newsweek, it is the Russian rag "Sputnik". Their writer (a dude from Arizona) made the initial mistake confusing Bloomenthal and Eichenwald. You see, Bloomenthal quoted an Eichenwald article in his email.

Probably some staffer had an alert set for wikileaks news and grabbed the article off of google or yahoo news.

So Newsweek's article is part of the spin. Manufacturing conspiracies instead of crediting incompetence.

Here's a decent breakdown of the various players and events that led to the dually incorrect spin narratives. (It is a fair demonstration of the power of confirmation bias and "team" thinking that one simple misunderstanding of an email lead to two erroneous and conflicting spin machines)

All the best JPB. I named my son after one of your 'Dead songs: Cassidy. I recall reading a Reason article with JPB: The backstory there was how he’d spoken to Douglas Adams (Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) just before DA passed away. DA had begun “working out” and had a massive heart attack. JPB was going to re-invent himself, hence the JPB 2.0 http://reason.com/archives/200...

I would say that Slashdot has a strong *libertarian* bent, not necessarily a conservative one. It's definitely gotten more pronounced in the last few years, going from grumbling about government to out and out hatred of government. Even the on-topic comments about tech have gotten pretty bad, with tribal shit-flinging drowning out the rare piece of actual insightful commentary.

Libertarians are not automatically against UBI. In fact, many have welcomed it.

take everything with a grain of salt. Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science Study Finds: Studies Are Wrong:

Do you by chance know the who/what/when & where of this 'admitted' sexual assault?

Yes.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/10...

Where did Trump admit to sexual assault?

http://reason.com/blog/2016/10...

Elizabeth Nolan Brown gives her (derisive) take on the prosecution of the Backpage CEO, filled with links to further details on the case.

Among the allegations:

Backpage removed an ad suspected of offering prostitution when it was reported and then blocked it from being re-posted.

and

Backpage uses automated filtering to try and prevent people from posting about illegal activity.

Nolan-Brown writes about prosecutors using Backpage's cooperation with law enforcement to prevent illegal activity as proof that Backpage is a criminal organization:

"Backpage acknowledges that pimps routinely pay Backpage for ads trafficking children for sex," Fichtner states. And how does he back up this outrageous claim? By stating that Backpage has cooperated with law-enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in sex trafficking investigations—which does not really sound like an "acknowledgment" of wrongdoing from Backpage at all. Still, Fichtner offers no further evidence to support either the claim that "pimps routinely pay Backpage for ads trafficking children for sex" or that Backpage acknowledges any such thing.

The "crook" is accused of storing a few documents that shouldn't have been stored in email.

If by few, do you mean thousands? Because she shouldn't have been routing her government email through her own server in the first place. But more importantly, Crooked Hillary has also been accused of running a pay-for-play scheme. It's part of a long history of Clinton scandals. They're like the mafia family that never goes to prison.

...whether it adheres to capitalist principles or not...

It didn't. His company had a goverment granted monopoly which enabled him to do this. If it weren't for onerous FDA restrictions, several competitors on the market would have kept the price low, and Shkreli would have lost his shirt by doing this. Why don't you want to kick the FDA's teeth to the curb for preventing low prices in the marketplace?

We are busy importing hundreds of thousands of unscreened people from areas where measles still runs rampant. This little blip will not last.

And don't forget: Three of the four presidential candidates are anti-vaxxers.

https://twitter.com/realdonald...

https://twitter.com/govgaryjoh...

http://www.salon.com/2016/08/0...

Correction here - Gary Johnson is not opposed to vaccinations. He is opposed to mandatory vaccinations at the federal level - which is in line with Libertarian ideals. Good writeup here: http://reason.com/blog/2016/08...

Carry on.

There was never,,,ever a time when more than tiny handful of scientists thought there would be another ice age. You're bullshitting. This bit about how "not long ago scientists were predicting an ice age" is simply a denialist lie. As in not true. As in you made it up because you think it helps your argument but really makes you sound extra stupid.

"Never,,,ever"? Reason Magazine begs to differ - they found 18 SPECTACULARLY INCORRECT predictions from around 1970, including:

1) Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2) Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

3) Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

4) In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to supportthe following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollutionby 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.”

And many more - why not take a look at the article for the complete list.

Now? The right wing have always accused the ACLU of having a liberal bias.

And you think that is "odd"?

The ACLU’s Communist, Atheist Roots
The ACLU’s untold Stalinist heritage

They aren't quite as bad as they started, but they still are trying to drive American society towards its vision, which is very different than that of the Founders.

Then again, I'm not sure there is anything they haven't accused of having a liberal bias.

I'm curious, have you even investigated to see if there might be anything to it?

Survey: 7 percent of reporters identify as Republican
Republicans’ media bias claims boosted by scarcity of right-leaning journalists

Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement
Moving Further to the Left

Lawyers are more liberal than general population, study finds; what about judges?

Do you think we need to cover unions? Civil servants?

And if you have the curiosity, you might find a surprise or two, or three.

Some places to find new perspectives:
National Review
Weekly Standard
Commentary
Reason
Instapundit
Dennis Prager / Prager U
Hugh Hewitt

The whole "Possession of child pornography" has become an industry in itself to prosecute people. It's easier to plant evidence of child pornography than it is to drop drugs in a persons vehicle, especially nowadays that they can consider someone with a child like body to be considered child pornography. And then you have people being charged for child pornography for taking selfies of themselves.

And then you have the FBI literally distributing child porn to catch people:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/08...

The madness continues.

In volume (# of people, ideally as a percentage of total population) or in net worth?

All three. It's worth noting here that the study in question dishonesty spins the results as "The American Middle Class is Losing Ground" (the title of the report) without noting that the upper two classes (five in total with the middle one being loosely defined as "middle class") in their study increased in percent of total population by 7% of total population for a 50% growth in the size of the two categories.

Meanwhile the lowest category increased in size by 4% of total population for a 25% growth. I don't see the numbers of the original claim supported here, but it is a considerable improvement despite the claims to the contrary.

So yes, there was some growth in the poorest category, but more people by fraction of population and by raw population become more wealthy rather than less.

Finally, income inequality is not impoverishment of the middle class. It is dishonest to equate the two. Sure, there are some problems with a rise in income inequality such as the wealthiest having somewhat more power in society. But I don't see those problems really discussed.

It's even worse in the "stats" link above which dishonestly claims that wealth inequality is somehow undemocratic, even though it's painfully obvious that not everyone has the interest or ability to maximize their wealth. There will be wealth inequality in a democratic society where people have control over their wealth.

Nor is all wealth equivalent. You can't eat or live in some obscure financial security, for example. And any analysis which roundly ignores the quality of the wealth is doing a major disservice.

My view is that developed world societies have done remarkably well at reducing poverty. But good news like that doesn't fit the narrative of societies needing massive change. So instead we see this obsession with other metrics. The wealth inequality metric is particularly dishonest because we would see a natural increase in wealth inequality from the basic demographic and global trade shifts of the past half a century.

Current increases in wealth inequality don't come from the society becoming less democratic, but rather from labor competition with the many billions of people in the developing world. What do you expect when people who depend on their labor for their wealth are competing with billions of people who are willing to work for much less, while rich people whose wealth is in capital do not? Yet somehow this never was mentioned in this thread or in the links that have been provided.

There's no real fix for this except to wait till developed world societies have near income parity with the developing world.

Gary Johnson... Anti Vax.... AKA anti science crack pot.

He's against Federal government mandated vaccination, which is quite a different beast, and follows his platform which centers on personal freedom. Right now, the CDC makes good recommendations, however as soon as those become mandatory, how long do you think it'll take before a company lobbies a vaccine of dubious benefit into the required category?

From http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/10/gary-johnson-on-science-policy:

Vaccination: I can find no statements from Johnson suggesting that he thinks that vaccination might cause autism. In 2015, Our America Initiative, a non-profit co-founded by Gary Johnson, announced that it supported a Mississippi advocacy group's effort to place "childhood vaccination decisions into the hands of parents and doctors."

Besides, moderators are surprisingly fair - I have gone against the grain plenty of times, and extremely often these reached +4 or +5.

Though I've had seen my Karma drop into "Negative" from coordinated attacks a couple of times, my account was also generally in the "Excellent" area. I too am a fan of /.'s moderation system — as far as the non-sentient systems go, it is the best I've encountered. (And, as Facebook and Twitter fiascos show, sentience-based systems can be worse.)

Unfortunately, Slashdot has given the haters a new tool — by marking a submission (such as this one) as "Spam", you disable the user's access for good — and you only need a few accounts to do that, they don't even have to have Mod-points...

There is no appeal, no judge and no jury... I have written several e-mails to Slashdot editors, but my account remains suspended — I can not offer new submissions, start new threads, or even reply.

. . . perhaps if you have the correct POV. Anyone on the Right, however, seems to be subject to arbitrary and capricious censorship on the Twitter platform, without explanation or even appeal.

And it happens to targets large and small: the obvious large example is Milo Yiannopolous, but also lesser lights like SF author Brian Niemayer.

Add to that, the recently created Trust and Advisory Board which all comes from the same end of the political spectrum. Apparently, Twitter is all about Free Speech. . . only some Speech is More Free than others. . .

https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/2...

Yes, she was able to keep her phones. Sometimes the DYKWIA superpower can be used for good, not evil.

https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/2...

Just a reminder, that the US seems on track to surrender its control of the Internet to an "International Body" — despite some lawmakers trying to prevent the Administration from doing it.

Countries like this — and even worse ones, where citizens' access is already tightly controlled or where "hate speech" is illegal — will now have more say over how the Network is run.

(If you were going to reply pointing out, FBI's attempt to unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone is "just as bad" — don't...)

Allow me to point out that this order is not issued from the Executive branch. It is from the Judiciary branch. Nothing to do with little tyrants elsewhere. Brazil is one of the most democratic countries in the world.

Just a reminder, that the US seems on track to surrender its control of the Internet to an "International Body" — despite some lawmakers trying to prevent the Administration from doing it.

Countries like this — and even worse ones, where citizens' access is already tightly controlled or where "hate speech" is illegal — will now have more say over how the Network is run.

(If you were going to reply pointing out, FBI's attempt to unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone is "just as bad" — don't...)

My understanding from John Oliver's show is that one reason there isn't good data on gun violence is that the CDC is not allowed to fund studies pertaining to it. The parties with private money to put towards research are probably few and biased one way or another.

You will get little real understanding from John Oliver since he isn't really interested in developing a genuine evenhanded understanding of the issues, he is pushing an agenda.

Going on about the CDC is misdirection as the Department of Justice has been collecting statistics and studying this for a long time. Why do you think John Oliver doesn't mention that? Example:

Gun Violence Prevention

Besides private parties and TV hosts, you should also be skeptical of academicians, some of whom are willing to lie to push a narrative.

Does Disgraced “Historian” Michael Bellesiles Deserve A Second Chance?

For your consideration:

An interview with John R. Lott, Jr.
Bogus Gun-Control Numbers

Incidentally, the link you provided was a paywall, suggesting to me that you're probably on a college network.

Odd, because when I accessed it before linking I didn't get that paywall, but I did just now.

Anyways, I was mocking the current insanity of modern feminism. Your hard science/engineering comment just reminded me of how ridiculous things have gotten. Here's a non-paywall link. There's enough excerpts there to get the gist of the paper.

Here is another story about Colorado marijuana legalization:

Marijuana charges filed in Colorado courts fell 81 percent between 2012 and 2015, from 10,340 to 1,954. Those dramatic changes saved thousands of people from unjust punishment and channeled law enforcement resources toward activities with a bigger public safety payoff.

I'll take a few knuckleheads that hurt themselves over thousands upon thousands of persecuted people, a distended justice system that thrives on a huge supply of drug cases, a violent underclass of contraband dealers and a militarized police force to deal with it. Idiots hurt themselves with illegal drugs every day; until you're ready to operate a large scale gulag system your laws can't prevent that.

hoarding property from the people who live in the city and need that property ... "Investors" are locking up the housing supply to drive up the property prices.

The ignorance of economics and the effects of big city housing regulations is strong with this one...

Even a totally partisan left-wing economist like Krugman understands that it's regulations like this one which keep housing unaffordable.

Let me lay it out for you... If you make it more expensive to build housing of various types, and if you make housing worth less by adding lots of restrictions on what you can do with it, and if you restrict people's ability to make money with the housing they build, it turns out that over time, people build much less housing, because they don't see the point in going through all that hassle for less reward than they can get elsewhere with their money.

The solution to that is pretty obvious, but it's not to further restrict what people are "allowed" to do in order to make housing more valuable/profitable.

You are right! Falsifiable science. Let's see how those disaster scenarios played out from 30 years ago...

Quoting that article, "But is that the whole story? I dove into the WABAC Machine known as Nexis and dredged up a couple of other news reports recounting Hansen's testimony. A longer June 1986 UPI story reported, "Unless steps are taken to control the problem, temperatures in the United States in the next decade will range from 0.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees higher than they were in 1958, said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies." "

["0.5 degrees to 2 degrees" translates to 1.25 degrees plus or minus 0.75 degrees.]

the article continues:

  So how did the average U.S. temperature change in the 50 years after 1958? According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program report in 2009, "U.S. average temperature has risen more than 2F over the past 50 years." Two degrees Fahrenheit is just over 1.1 degrees Celsius, which is within the spread of increased temperatures predicted by Hansen.

So, as I read what that article says, Hansen predicted 1.25 plus or minus 0.75 degrees temperature rise, and according to the article you just quoted, the data showed 1.1 degrees temperature rise.

I can't see how you conclude "Hmm, looks like the effect of CO2 isn't as bad as we thought." Looks like his prediction was right on the target.

You are right! Falsifiable science. Let's see how those disaster scenarios played out from 30 years ago... Hmm, looks like the effect of CO2 isn't as bad as we thought.

Crushing a media organization under the power of one's wallet is NOT standing up for free speech. Even if it's a shitty company that was actually just used as a pawn for other rich people.I'm torn between celebrating this as a great victory and mourning it as a blow to an important pillar of society. Gawker wasn't just shitty for its hypocrisy on a variety of topics but for some seriously evil acts, not the least of which are directly related to the lawsuits at hand. In the end all I can say is I'm glad it's over and the world has a moment's rest before a "crowd funded" Totally-Not-Gawker picks up the pieces and starts spewing vileness again.

Have these civil forfeiture laws been challenged on 4th amendment grounds? Isn't this the textbook definition of unreasonable seizure?

Yes and they were upheld (sigh). At least a few states like New Mexico has banned civil forfeiture by state and local police.

Euros are not much better informed (am one), and Americans are no better than Russians.

Communism — first implemented in and spread with support of Russia — has killed 94 million people in the 20th century. What have the Americans ever done to you to even approach — much less equal — that?

I view both as equal threats to European countries.

I invite you to compare Western Germany, dominated by Americans, with Eastern Germany... Are you still certain, the threats are equal? Or are you too young to even know, what I'm talking about?

Stalin is — thanks in part to the propaganda campaign described in TFA — once again a Russia's hero. A "strong leader"... The moment it "rose from its knees" (Russian propaganda's favorite expression), the country went on to attack neighbors. And not just to right wrongs — real or perceived — but to annex territory and expand borders. With overwhelming support from the citizenry — who forgive their own squalor to their rulers in exchange for military victories. Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine — all European countries — have already become victims.

America's last land-acquisition was Hawaii... Are you still sure, the threats are equal?

Here's some background for you: State Rep. Sally Kern files three bills targeting gays"

rejecting AP History for speeches like "the sermon known as"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God""

OK Reps using their authority in attempting to ban "anti-Biblical plays"

The 10 Commandments monument was directly against the OK Constitution, so now their attempting to change it. Highly ironic seeing the divorce rate of many of their members.

Counter this with our courts saying Forced sodomy isn't illegal if she's unconscious.

Don't want to get raped by a OK cop? Well, Oklahoma Highway Patrol Captain George Brown main suggestion is First and foremost: Do your part, and do what it takes to obey the traffic laws and not get stopped

Don't forget the attempt to mandate Creationism being taught in public schools,

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure someone who really wants to could find far more examples, these are just the more recent ones. These attempted laws are quite diversion, and are going down the path of ISIS.

Well, they *are* vulnerable, because they operate outside the law and can be exploited by criminals You don't think that a prostitute you've paid $300 gets to keep that money? Almost all of that goes to the pimp.

Freelancing women are targets for beatings by pimps because they threaten the pimp's income. And what are they supposed to do, go to the cops and say "This guy is trying to steal my prostitution business?"

Once a prostitute is in the clutches of a pimp, she's not free to leave to business either. Even if she wants to move to a different city, if the pimp keeps her in place by threats to her friends and family.

And not every prostitute is a prostitute by choice. There are runaways who fall into a pimp's control; rural foreigners who are tricked into thinking they're immigrating to the US for a high-paying (by their standards) domestic service job.

Understand I have no issues with prostitution per se, but I have a big problem with slavery, and in any system where prostitutes operate outside the protection of the law it's a given that most of them are de facto slaves.

I'd like supporting evidence for that. That sounds more like a tabloid TV show than the results of research done by criminologists.

We all know how Nicholas Kristof's reporting on the supposed "sexual slavery" fell apart. Other studies of so-called sexual exploitation, forcing women into sex work, and forcing minors into prostitution have similarly fallen apart when they were investigated by social scientists who were trained to get the facts.

When somebody is running an anti-prostitution organization, some of which have budgets of $1 million or more from government and private grants, they have a strong motivation to exaggerate and lie about the problem, and they've often been caught exaggerating and lying.

Similarly, when a commercial sex worker (the public health term) gets arrested for prostitution (the prosecutor's term), they have a choice: they can admit that they are voluntarily engaging in this business because that was the best way they could make money, and become criminals who go to jail; or they can claim that they were forced into it, enslaved and exploited by pimps and johns, and become victims who cooperate with the prosecutors, has all the charges dismissed, becomes a client of a social service agency that gets her housing, work and education, and sometimes gets citizenship as a political refugee rather than being deported as a criminal. So they also have a strong motivation to tell the prosecutors what they want to hear.

Suppose I assume for purposes of argument that it's explotation for a woman to make $300 a night as a sex worker. Is it also exploitation for a woman to make $300 a week as a minimum-wage fast-food worker or hotel worker making beds and scrubbing floors? I would say they're both explotiation, and a woman has a right to decide which exploitation she prefers. If you really want to stop commercial sex work, do what Mao did and provide the sex workers with better jobs and living conditions. That would take public money.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06...
Why Did Nicholas Kristof Believe Somaly Mam's Lies?
The roots and consequences of a deception.
Jesse Walker
Jun. 3, 2014

Last week, Somaly Mam resigned from the foundation she co-founded seven years ago. Mam, dubbed "the James Frey of anti–sex trafficking activism" by my colleage Elizabeth Nolan Brown, achieved her fame by telling the world that she had been forced to work in a Cambodian brothel as a child and that her group rescued girls who had suffered a similar fate. For several years, journalists have been questioning many of Mam's claims. Those investigations culminated last month in a devastating Newsweek piece that showed Mam had lied repeatedly both about her own life and about the experiences of the people she says she rescued. One of the latter

I wouldn't take anything a prosecutor said on this point at face value without substantiating evidence:

The War on Sex Trafficking Is the New War on Drugs

The tactics employed to "get tough" on drugs ended up entangling millions in the criminal justice system, sanctioning increasingly intrusive and violent policing practices, worsening tensions between law enforcement and marginalized communities, and degrading the constitutional rights of all Americans. Yet even as the drug war's failures and costs become more apparent, the Land of the Free is enthusiastically repeating the same mistakes when it comes to sex trafficking. This new "epidemic" inspires the same panicked rhetoric and punitive policies the war on drugs didâ"often for activity that's every bit as victimless.

Forcing others into sex or any sort of labor is abhorrent, and it deserves to be treated like the serious violation it is. But the activity now targeted under anti-trafficking efforts includes everything from offering or soliciting paid sex, to living with a sex worker, to running a classified advertising website.

What's more, these new laws aren't organic responses by legislators in the face of an uptick in human trafficking activity or inadequate current statutes. They are in large part the result of a decades-long anti-prostitution crusade from Christian "abolitionists" and anti-sex feminists, pushed along by officials who know a good political opportunity when they see it and by media that never met a moral panic they didn't like.

Yes. Unfortunately, most of the recent bills passed to fight actual slavery (including sex slavery) have been used to fight sex work instead.
With legalized prostitution, it is much easier to help actual trafficking victims escape. This is the real harm of conflating trafficking/slavery with sex work.

As this article titles: The War on Sex Trafficking Is the New War on Drugs. And the results will be just as disastrous, for "perpetrators" and "victims" alike.
http://reason.com/archives/201...

Even if such loans are "predatory" and "harmful" to consumers, this will just increase the strength of the variables that Google sees as being predatory and harmful in the first place. It's unfortunate that, due to either ignorance or cynicism, Google is the one harming consumers the most. http://reason.com/blog/2016/05...

The Reason article is just one long Nivana fallacy/perfect solution fallacy.

Also, it keeps comparing governments banning stuff to Google (a private company) doing so. There is a big difference between a government and a private company in cases like this. Since they are presenting a libertarian argument, they should know the old libertarian counter argument about private companies - if you don't like what Google is doing, use Bing or some other search engine.

Even if such loans are "predatory" and "harmful" to consumers, this will just increase the strength of the variables that Google sees as being predatory and harmful in the first place. It's unfortunate that, due to either ignorance or cynicism, Google is the one harming consumers the most. http://reason.com/blog/2016/05...

Of the four depressions in the list you provided, one was not in the US at all (the Greek depression), and the others aren't obviously supportive of the "one worse than the last" claim.

Worse — for your argument — even if it were true, having a depression "every few decades" is still much better, than having a famine or a mass-murder, which Communism and Socialism (a.k.a. Communism-lite) bring about with alarming persistence. One is unravelling in Venezuela right now — which is far worse off today, than it was before it elected a Socialist to help divide the spoils of oil-wealth "fairly".

Despite being insanely wasteful, it [FDR's first 8 years in office -mi] was hugely successful at solving economic problems

Was it successful? Or did it simply perpetuate the depression — making it much "greater" than it had to be?

UN Human Development Index is a measure of success

Lies, damn lies, and benchmarks... A measure of success according to who? Bureaucrats sent to the UN by their governments? Of course, they are going to consider Statist countries more "successful". For just one example, this index of yours awards extra points simply for "years of schooling" the country provides...

What would yours be?

I would consider GDP per capita and the attractiveness to (would-be) immigrants.

I was wondering how the increase in lawyers graduating from schools was going to play out. As college costs crept up and profit motive took over the schools were cranking out law graduates because it's dirt cheap to make a lawyer compared to a doctor. Pretty soon we were going to have far more trained lawyers than we needed. Think of it: millions of young, well trained law school grads with $80k+ in debt and no job prospects whatsoever. They were bound to go after corporate America in a massive frenzy of class action lawsuits.

And yet, with all the lawyers in the country that are under-utilized, we see nothing comparable to the "open source" movement.

Engineers get together and create massive public value in works such as Mozilla, Apache, and LibreOffice. Lesser projects abound, free for use by anyone.

With all the abuse we take from the government and the expense of taking something to court, you would think that some of these lawyers with spare time on their hands would take an interesting case and litigate it for cost. Not the $450/hr they charge, but just the court fees.

The could build a portfolio of experience and reputation, something that would attract paying customers and perhaps donations from benefactors.

I read about one (count them - one!) lawyer who set up a house with grow lamps, trying to catch the cops using thermal cameras with no probable cause.

One lawyer did one smart setup in ten years or so.

If the cops knew that there might be lawyer stings, but didn't know where they were or what they might be, there'd be a *lot* less abuse.

It will be interesting to see what the rest of the GOP do now. After a year of trashing Trump, calling him all sorts of things, they are either going to have to eat several courses of humble pie or rip the party apart by continuing to oppose their official candidate.

This happens every election cycle, but I think this is the nastiest I can remember in my lifetime. However, the rank & file have already begun to consolidate behind him, realizing that he's still better than Hillary in their opinion. I saw Bobby Jindahl on the news last night saying that he will now be supporting Trump since he's the nominee. Trump also toned down the rhetoric last night in his victory speech, which will probably help everyone on the R side settle down.

The polls suggest that Trump will find it hard to beat Hillary, because despite some popularity he also has a higher disapproval rating than anyone in the history of politics. Then again you can never rule anyone out in a two horse race. For me a Trump win would be a nightmare scenario, but I'm also kind of curious to see how the rest of the world would react.

Most recent polls show Trump closing on Clinton or tied with her. Regardless, I won't be voting for either of them, since it's not a binary choice. Interesting to note, the Libertarian Party got a nice bump in traffic last night after Cruz announced he's dropping out.

You have it backwards.

If the government has lots and lots of power - either through regulation or spending - what happens next? What do you do if you are running a company and you have competition and there is a big, powerful government with guns and stuff just sitting right there? What do the wealthy and powerful do when the government has lots of money and power? Just sit there and take it?

No, they didn't get to be the rich and powerful by being stupid. They proceed to use their wealth and power to bend the government toward doing their work for them. Whether through sweetheart no-bid contracts (e.g. Halliburton) , or arcane tax rules (Insurance Industry), or oddly specific regulations (casket sales, hair braiding, taxi cabs, etc., etc.), they are going to do what they can to get a bigger piece of the pie.

When faced with this, most people clamor for the government to have more power - to clamp down on these abuses by industry. But ask yourself - why are there so many more lobbyists in Washington than there used to be? Government hasn't lost any power. They've grown exponentially. And so have the high-priced lobbyists.

Why? Because that's where the money is. FedX and UPS use government regulators to fight each other because they can. The mortuary industry uses government to prevent competition.

We see this all the time in the tech industry. Ever hear of net neutrality? How many big companies have their lobbyists working overtime on various sides of that argument? How many of them are trying to use government to gain an advantage? How many are trying to stop someone else from using government to put them at a disadvantage?

The more power the government has over an area, the more likely it is to be corrupted - because the incentives are greater.

I don't think anyone fails to recognize the problems with Taxi regulations in places like New York, where a taxi medallion is worth a fortune. The gap in services caused by an artificial monopoly leaves an opening for companies like Uber, Lyft and tons of gypsies cab operators. So is the solution to have more regulations? Or would it be better to have smaller government just set simple rules for operating a livery service and enforce those fairly - other than that, stay out of it. Instead of tightly controlling the number of cabs, let the private sector work that part out.

Smaller government doesn't mean no government. It means smaller. Smaller, less powerful and less money to spend means less attractive to those who would use the power of government for their own plunder.

Personally, I think the book Starship Troopers is more libertarian than right-wing. I have argued that point here on Slashdot.

Reason also counts Heinlein as a libertarian. "I'm so libertarian I have no use for the libertarian movement," said Heinlein.

P.S. It's a sobering thought to realize that Starship Troopers couldn't possibly win a Hugo today. I'm certain that people would literally bus in additional voters if that was what it took to make sure it didn't win, because the modern SJW thinking is that Heinlein was a right-wing fascist misogynist racist. Never mind that he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, never mind that he wrote strong women (possibly modeled after his wife, who was a strong woman in real life), and never mind that his works do feature minority characters. (In the short story "Water is for Washing", written not very long after World War II, the protagonist rescues two children and himself from a watery disaster, with help from a hobo. One of the children is a Japanese-American, and the protagonist says something like "He's a Jap!" The other child, a white girl, says "No, that's Tommy." Heck, the novel Starship Troopers has a Filipino protagonist and the future armed forces are completely racially integrated.)

Guy does not think he is a communist (hint: "democratic socialist" is not the same thing)

Whatever the fook "democratic socialist" means, Bernie Sanders is not that. He is a "Democratic Socialist" — an important distinction not easily obvious in verbal communications — a member of an American party, which adores Karl Marx and other Communists of the past and is arguing in support of collective ownership of the means of production. Page 10 from Exhibit A:

Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace

That is Communism by definition. And the guy, who wrote the above is David Green — a member of DSA National Committee — is standing right next to Senator Sanders during his speech at a DSA convention...

If you choose to engage in a dialogue, be sure to state unambiguously upfront, whether:

1. You agree, that DSA are Communists (wholly or in a substantial part).
2. You accept, that Bernie Sanders is a member of that party.
3. Communism is the most murderous school of thought known to humanity so far.

Responses without clear answers to the above three questions will be returned unopened.

One, it is pointless because it won't happen.

If you told me 20 years ago, that a self-identified "Democratic Socialist" (and a bona-fide Communist underneath) will soon have a fair shot at becoming President of the US, I would've dismissed it with the same derision... But today's youth does not care any more — the Socialism/Communism's 100 years of failure (and mass-murder) are not taught in schools.

Two, it is a pointless claim because there are no democrats currently in Washington who are willing to propose anything that even slightly resembles an initiative to "give control of healthcare to the government".

Currently is the caveat-emptor, is not it? Look on this very board — numerous people speak in favor of "single payer", and they all vote...

Even the most socialized of all medical systems still give the physicians at least as much autonomy as our system does.

TFA is not about "authority" — it is about incompetence. When doctors become government-employees — as they are in Cuba so beloved by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore, and other worker paradises — the healthcare will suck just as it does there.

And we are on our way — by many indications, Obamacare was designed to fail, and is failing as "CO-OPs" go bankrupt, and major commercial insurers threaten to withdraw. It did not "bend the curve" of the costs either — the grows of healthcare costs is accelerating.

It will continue to suck. Which will allow the next "progressive" President to claim "the market approach has failed" — and turn to a government-owned (euphemistically called "single payer") system. Obama himself would've done it — with enthusiastic support from morons like certain anonymous cowards replying to you — but "the nation was not ready" so he simply laid down the ground work for the future:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."

In other words, you are just parroting standard slashdot conservative FUD.

You seem like the kind, who'd be trying t

One, it is pointless because it won't happen.

If you told me 20 years ago, that a self-identified "Democratic Socialist" (and a bona-fide Communist underneath) will soon have a fair shot at becoming President of the US, I would've dismissed it with the same derision... But today's youth does not care any more — the Socialism/Communism's 100 years of failure (and mass-murder) are not taught in schools.

Two, it is a pointless claim because there are no democrats currently in Washington who are willing to propose anything that even slightly resembles an initiative to "give control of healthcare to the government".

Currently is the caveat-emptor, is not it? Look on this very board — numerous people speak in favor of "single payer", and they all vote...

Even the most socialized of all medical systems still give the physicians at least as much autonomy as our system does.

TFA is not about "authority" — it is about incompetence. When doctors become government-employees — as they are in Cuba so beloved by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore, and other worker paradises — the healthcare will suck just as it does there.

And we are on our way — by many indications, Obamacare was designed to fail, and is failing as "CO-OPs" go bankrupt, and major commercial insurers threaten to withdraw. It did not "bend the curve" of the costs either — the grows of healthcare costs is accelerating.

It will continue to suck. Which will allow the next "progressive" President to claim "the market approach has failed" — and turn to a government-owned (euphemistically called "single payer") system. Obama himself would've done it — with enthusiastic support from morons like certain anonymous cowards replying to you — but "the nation was not ready" so he simply laid down the ground work for the future:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."

In other words, you are just parroting standard slashdot conservative FUD.

You seem like the kind, who'd be trying t

I would argue that reduction of discretion is precisely what is required, discretion to prosecute in the first place. Any crime which we are not prepared to attempt to detect, investigate, and prosecute vigorously should be no crime at all.

Without discretion, you get things like the Mike's Hard Lemonade case, people being branded as sex offenders just for peeing in the woods, numerous VERY YOUNG children punished for pointing their finger like a gun (or drawing a gun, or writing a story that involves murder, etc., etc.,), and numerous other forms of zero-tolerance bullshit.

I get that discretion is sometimes a band-aide fix for serious problems (such as vague laws and malicious prosecution), but there's no legislator who can write perfect, high-quality laws, even if that skill was valued by voters. The law is not a computer program; we are not gears in the machine.

In addition, it would be wise to consider the failure of centralized control across a number of human endeavors... see Communism and work-to-rule as examples.

how else are they trying to manipulate? And that's how criminals go free

That's a very good argument. What remains to show is that in this case the warrant-issuing judge was indeed "left in the dark". The write-up does not even allege that. Nor does TFA.

Heck, TFA implicitly admits, this was not the case — when it laments the judge's possible ignorance of Tor-technology:

It's worth noting that judges sometimes don't understand the technology behind the warrants they are asked to approve by police.

Police have done their work most professionally and there is no cause for outrage whatsoever.

Worse! The unfounded outrage dripping off this page's "insightful" comments cheapens and devalues the justified outrage in other cases.

Unless you are prepared to state, that something even stronger than the 4th Amendment protects our homes, I can't see, how you can fault Seattle cops in this case.

You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

This is what the Republican Party had to say about the 2012 election. Read it. Educate yourself.

http://goproject.gop.com/rnc_growth_opportunity_book_2013.pdf

And you demonstrate your ignorance every time you post, yet like the idiot you are, you just keep at it.

I love trolling the trolls on Slashdot.

it's not as if other republicans haven't noticed something odd...
"Republicans have to stop buying into things that demonize the president. I mean, why aren't Republican leaders shouting out about all this birther nonsense and all these other things? They should speak out. This is the kind of intolerance that I've been talking about where these idiot presentations continue to be made and you don't see the senior leadership of the party say, 'No, that's wrong.' In fact, sometimes by not speaking out, they're encouraging it. And the base keeps buying the stuff. "And it's killing the base of the party. I mean, 26 percent favorability rating for the party right now. It ought to be telling them something. So, instead of attacking me or whoever speaks like I do, look in the mirror and realize, 'How are we going to win the next election?" -Colin Powell, 2013 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po...
"The GOP “still looks down on minorities,” Powell said. He slammed Sarah Palin‘s “shuck and jive” comments from last year about President Obama and criticized Republican’s use of the word “lazy” to describe the president. “Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?” he asked." -Colin Powell, 2015 http://www.mediaite.com/tv/col...
"Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists," Col. Lawrence Wilkerson said Friday on MSNBC's "The Ed Show." "And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander in chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable." https://www.washingtonpost.com...
"The Republican Party and the conservatives have shown very little interest in black Americans and have actually done things to leave the impression among blacks that they are antagonistic to their interests. Even as someone who's labeled a conservative --I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration--I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome." -Clarence Thomas 1987 http://reason.com/archives/198...
"The party must follow Governor Bush's lead and reach out to minority communities and particularly the African-American community -- and not just during an election-year campaign," General Powell said pointedly. "It must be a sustained effort. It must be every day. It must be for real." He did not spare the party for its record on affirmative action. There was "cynicism in the black community," he said, because "some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousands black kids get an education." But, he added, "hardly a whimper is heard from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests." -Colin Powell 2000

Yes it was [a "straw man"] because none of those events happened.

Talking about hypothetical events has nothing to do with a "strawman" argument which is defined thus:

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.

Talking about a hypothetical can be a valid and useful rhetorical vehicle and not necessarily a "straw man". Talk about "grasp of English"... Or Logic, for that matter.

You absolute despicable liar. You cut off this bit of the quote

I cut off the part I deemed irrelevant. My linking to the original post is enough to refute accusations of "lying".

My god you have no idea what communism is.

Born and raised in the USSR, I have a much better idea of what Communism is, than 90% of Americans.

"socialist" is only an insult if you're an incredibly silly person

Khmm... One would've thought, Hans Christian Andersen dispensed with that line of reasoning a century and half ago... No, darling, simply calling anyone who believes something names is not enough. Socialism (a.k.a. Communism-lite) is the most murderous school of thought known to humanity so far — even Hitler's peculiar brand of Fascism is but a distant second. So, yeah, to people who pay attention to semantics, "Socialism" is a dirty word.

You know, words mean things. "racist" and "homophobe" are actually words that have meanings.

Finally, we agree on something! Yes, the words have meanings and the very point of the starter of this thread was that SJWs have made these particular terms meaningless by applying them to everyone who disagrees with them.

http://reason.com/blog/2007/09...

Seems new evidence is pointing to the fact that we may have the CFC/Ozone connection wrong. So settled science is being unsettled with new data. (Yes I am aware that it is a 9 year old article.)

The Koch Brothers must really like raisins and free range kids then. Reason veers off on some of the most interesting tangents.