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The post I responded to was a rant written by an ignorant person who thinks they understand war because they watch the news, and who started on topic and veered off very quickly to introduce their personal agenda into the discussion. Yours was just a lot of nonsense mixed into a wall of f-bombs.

If you ever want to have a real discussion, pick up a few history books, then a dictionary, and come back to sit at the adult table.

You and other morons paint a distorted picture where the US only gives and gives and gives to Israel without getting anything in return. America has big interests in Israel- it's not just the nonsense you hear about from idiots on the Internet (AIPAC money, needing a democracy in the mideast, zionists ruling "amerika", etc.). At the same time it's crucial to remember that the Arabs are NOT our friends, or even each others'- they can't agree on anything other than their common hatred for Israel.

Is there such a thing as an opt-in government? I don't think China and the US have a lock on enforcing governmental supremacy within said government's borders.

No you can't opt-in. You are born in the USA or China and you are a subject of the USA or China.

You can however opt-out once you are an adult, that is you can legally renounce your US citizenship. Although doing so before you leave the US territory would make you both stateless and a de facto illegal alien, so it probably isn't a good idea to do it unless you are already in the process of emigrating elsewhere. Finally, renouncing US citizenship is usually an irrevocable action, so make damn sure you thought it through properly.

Do you know anyone who has done this? Did they live to tell about it?

Is there such a thing as an opt-in government? I don't think China and the US have a lock on enforcing governmental supremacy within said government's borders.

No you can't opt-in. You are born in the USA or China and you are a subject of the USA or China.

You can however opt-out once you are an adult, that is you can legally renounce your US citizenship. Although doing so before you leave the US territory would make you both stateless and a de facto illegal alien, so it probably isn't a good idea to do it unless you are already in the process of emigrating elsewhere. Finally, renouncing US citizenship is usually an irrevocable action, so make damn sure you thought it through properly.

The protectionist law Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act [wikipedia.org], which became law in 1930, led to the Great Depression

Sorry, that's yet another right wing free trader myth with absolutely no basis in reality. The stock market collapse took place in October, 1929.

I phrased it wrong. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the depression last longer and get worse than it would have without the act being law. Read what the Department of State says. Before President Hoover signed it 1000 economists urged him to veto the act. Then as Info Please says, "U.S. foreign trade suffered a sharp decline, and the depression intensified."

So then people, perhaps you, will say FDR's policies brought the Great Depression to an end. HAHA! FDR came to office on 4 March 1933 yet the Great Depression bottomed in 1932. The "U.S. economy was growing again by 1933, and technically the United States was not in recession from 1933 to 1937." The Great Depression may of seemed to last longer, but that's partially because of the Recession of 1937-38.

Falcon

Haven't you heard of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act? When the US passed it in 1930 other nations passed their own protectionist laws. That made the Great Depression worse than it would have been.

And yes, I do support getting rid of a lot of the free trade stuff (NAFTA, etc.) and imposing more tariffs.

And no, NAFTA is not and never was free trade. If you want to complain about NAFTA complain about how because of the billions of dollars agricultural businesses receive in farm subsidies they are allowed to dump corn in Mexico cheaper than Mexican farmers can grow corn.

Falcon

Given Clinton raised taxes (the largest tax raise in history if the Republicans are to be believed) and he left office with a robust economy and a balanced budget

Given that Clinton raised taxes in 1993 and the boom in the economy was in the later '90s, it's more likely the 1997 tax cuts did more.

and Bush reversed all Clinton's taxes (and many other policies) resulting in enormous tax reductions, and he left office with a busted economy and unemployment rapidly approaching 10% I find it difficult to understand how anybody can still be pushing supply side economics

HAHA! In 1997 when Clinton was still president, not only were taxes cut but the economy boomed. The economy started souring, was in a recession, at the end of his terms in office, not on Bush's watch.

I would put in a law that requires some percentage of any product consumed in the US (say for products with $100 Million gross) must be produced at least at the 25% level (of products consumed by US people) by US workers.

Doing so would result in other nations retaliating and thus shut down trade. That, like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act wich had a hand in making the Great Depression worse than it otherwise would have been, would cause another depression. Maybe one in five US employees depends on exports and you would have many of them lose their jobs. Caterpillar has some stats on US exports. They like GE and other companies export a lot to China. Here's a list of United States Exports by Product Section in US Dollars from 2001 to 2005.

Falcon

Last year the USA exported about a million dollars worth of goods to North Korea. Trade with North Korea is heavily retricted by regulations intended enforce the UN sanctions but it is not entirely banned. See North Korea .

Not that long ago, competent security was a criminal offense to export. It still is, unless the code is Open Source (and we all know how Microsoft loves Open Source).

I'm sure as heck no Microsoft fan, but they've been exporting strong cryptographic components for a long time now, and not in an open source format. Please reference the following materials for further guidance on this topic:

Export of cryptography in the United States
International Traffic in Arms Regulations 2009

Sure, you can't export this stuff to Iran, North Korea, etc, but there are very few real obstacles aside from that. This is pure and simple failure on Microsoft's part, on the most basic level imaginable concerning data protection.

Yeah, let's be more like China.

Or those repressive Canadians either. Or Germany. Or the UK. Or France, or.... I think you get it. The vast majority of countries require visitors to the their country to have documentation with them.

The UK doesn't: Visitors in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar are not expected to produce identity documents for police authorities and thus may secure their passports in hotel safes or residences

In practise, people only carry ID if they need to prove they are 18 to purchase alcohol etc -- once they look old enough they stop carrying it.

Well, in that case. Next time I go visiting another nation, I'll not carry my passport for the same reasons. What? There are laws against that? You don't say....

At least there are no double standards going on, just so we're clear on that.

You might want to check that
U.S. citizens should take steps to ensure the safety of their U.S. passports. Visitors in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar are not expected to produce identity documents for police authorities and thus may secure their passports in hotel safes or residences

(Ironic, considering the /. UK==Police State groupthink.)

My support for Israel comes from a couple things. First, I'm Jewish, the majority of my European ancestors were killed by the Eisengruppen. Secondly, I lived there for a time on a secular kibbutz and in my time there I was wounded by Hezbollah.

Now, the peace-process has been imperiled ever since the Palestinians said 95% wasn't enough, so really was this extra endangered by what happened in March? I don't agree with the settlement system but Palestinians are not innocent when it comes to the peace process. Gaza was firing hundreds of missiles into Israel before Operation Cast Lead.

Beyond the heritage thing and my having lived in Israel, I support Israel because it is a industrious democracy in a region where industry and invention are rare. Outside of Israel and Lebanon which nations in the region aren't monarchies when it comes to succession? Libya and Egypt's heir apparent are the sons of the current leader, Syria already went that way, the Arab states are all monarchies except for Iraq. Yemen isn't going that way right now, but its a complicated mess there. Tunisia is a dictatorship, Algeria has semi-free elections.

From the State Department's page on Israel - http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3581.htm

"Israel has approximately the same number of companies listed on NASDAQ as the next three countries (Canada, Japan, and Ireland) combined."

So the US pulls support for Israel, Israel will either fall or they will be forced into another October War scenario, Israel has a smaller military than it did in 1973, with Iran about to go nuclear, Hezbollah and Syria getting IRBMs, Israel will someday use atomic weapons to survive. Israel falls or Israel survives, millions of refugees either way, hundred billion dollars of infrastructure lost and what is gained? Nothing at all.

Would the US let South Korea go without the II Corps defending it? Why did the US support South Korea or Taiwan when they've not run their countries the way we'd like them to? Because the strategic and economic investments are too great to let them fail.

$45 new? Mine cost $100 ($75 for the passport, $25 Execution fee) see for yourself.

...is a Passport Card -- basically a secure national ID issued by the Department of State ($45 new, $35 renew for non-passport holders, $20 for passport holders, lasts 10 years). Over a million Americans, including myself, carry one -- that's more than the population of the Omaha metro area. It's for car, train, bus, and boat travel within North America, but can also be used as a single identification for getting a job (along with, if I recall, the standard ICAO-compliant passport and the green card), and is recognized by the TSA (for domestic air travel), liquor store, and just about anyone else who needs ID. The RFID chip just has a database pointer, which differs from the card number if memory serves, but it comes with a tin foil hat just in case.

What this idea amounts to is transferring or cloning the passport card program into Social Security or Homeland Security.

Ah! So if I take a vacation to Pakistan, where travel is not restricted, and then someone claims I'm one of "such people" who you claim "always carry a gun", then I can be shot, without due process? Drones regularly kill people who are driving in cars, not actively engaged in battle (even if they are at war), or providing an imminent threat. If I go outside the country and someone accuses me of murder, that doesn't give the FBI the right to track me down, find me unarmed, and kill me without a trial.

Totally agree, this will help make some sense of how long it takes: http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_4747.html

Taliban and the Drug Trade
Some members of the U.S. drug enforcement community suggest that a new strategy may have been adopted by the Taliban in the wake of their July 27, 2000 announced ban on cultivation. This strategy would reflect a desire by the Taliban to use their “monopoly” position to maximize profits, i.e. restrict supply by restricting cultivation; drive prices up dramatically; and sell from an extensive supply of stockpiled opium. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) personnel, in the past, up to 60% of opium stock has been stored for sale in future years."

Uhm, no. What nut jobs like Mullah Omar say, and what they actually do, might overlap, but may not be entirely equivalent.

the better discussion is why we have not punished our civil leaders for putting us into this system where there is NO protectionism of the American economy and production system.

A better discussion is that protectionism harms the economy. Try it some tyme. Look up the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and what it did. Because the US passed a protectionist law other nations did the same in retaliation. Some economists, though not all, blame protectionism on causing the Great Depression.

Also, what happens to our "neighbours" ... our FUCKING neighbours! Flooding Mexico with our governments subsidized corn has repurcussions.

Ah, something we agree with. I have railed on about how because of NAFTA Mexican farmers are being driven off their farms because NAFTA allows large US agricultural businesses to export food and sell it in Mexico cheaper than Mexicans can grow it because of the massive subsidies these businesses get.

However you talk about "libertarian think-tanks that live in a dream world" but Libertarians, large and small "l", have called those subsidies corporate welfare. The article "Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars" was published in one of those libertarian magazine, "Reason". The libertarian think-tank CATO Institute has the article Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare on it's website as well as the CATO Handbook For Congress on corporate welfare. For more on what CATO has about corporate welfare check out the link.

Of course I don't expect anything more than "libertarians are evil" from many slashdotters.

Falcon

I would agree, except that the Ambassador of a Country is considered under international law to be the personification of that Country. So if you wanted to play semantics, then yes, they were members of the UN on behalf of their country. I agree that it doesn't make logical sense, but show me any set of man made laws that do.

However, I think the problem with this is more aimed at Interpol employees. For example investigators seconded to Interpol by their host countries or directly employees by Interpol. However a number of nations have Legal Attaches at their embassies with a Diplomatic Immunity, so it is kinda silly. Also, if you check out the State Departments page about this, it breaks it down as to who on the staff would even get this protection.

Another alternative is for a federal law that simply requires each of the states to submit ONE tax rate for the whole state, and accept a set of exemptions designated by that federal law, to be part of the inter-state tax program.

That's an interesting idea. What about an opt-in online tax system? We are talking about electronic transactions here, after all. The federal law could be something along the lines of:

1) A common standard for taxable transactions is created to cover types of items purchased, address format, amounts, etc. EDI for sales tax.

2) States will be provided a set of guidelines for establishing a series of servers to accept these transactions that will be uniform. E.g. http://salestax.state.gov/zipcode.

3) The server will provide the appropriate tax rate via the established format to any retailer that requests it, electronically.

4) The server will then also be ready to accept EFT from that same source.

5) Any municipalities that are missing taxes can lobby their state government for inclusion in the system.

6) Any retailer that can prove that the given state was not compliant with the transaction ruleset is exempt from paying taxes for that transaction. (Format should specify how the records are kept, who has audit power, etc.)

It feels like I'm overlooking something here...

Double-replying to your comment here due to the fact that I forgot to provide a link to the Freedom of Information Act site.

This issue came up in the US not that long ago, and you can be quarantined/isolated if you have a disease that poses a significant threat to public health.

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/86251.pdf

While those things are deplorable, the trouble isn't that the US is the worst in the world as it is that we can do better.

Saying that "We" are guilty of these thing isn't true - though some few of us are and no doubt we can do better. We should do better. We should encourage each other to improve and not despair.

On the other hand: Slavery is still a common practice in large parts of the world, particularly Asia (and to some degree in the US too). China harvests organs from political prisoners. In Russia the rule of law is still privately funded and enforced. Rape of political prisoners to discourage dissent is reportedly practiced in Iran. Female genital mutilation, "honor" killings and simply setting your wife on fire are practiced in many places. As I write this one billion of my six billion fellow humans is starving. And let's not even talk about the pit of hell that is Africa. And then there's the deplorable incremental loss of human rights caused by busybodies determined to legislate every possible human action from marriage to business to whether you wear seatbelts in your car to whether you have seventeen forms of insurance; from what you read and watch and say to who you associate with to where you travel. To count our ills as Men is perhaps counterproductive. It's probably better to count our blessings and be happy with our lot, and then reach out and do what we can to improve the lot of others - but without risking so much that we become part of the problem.

If you really think our country is that bad, the exit is here. Be careful, though. It's a one-way door. And don't let it hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

Yes, prisoners raping each other is a despicable act and it occurs far more often than it should. It's not as common as people seem to think though and most of the people who joke about it don't do so because they approve of it. Voluntary "situational" homosexuality during incarceraton is far more common, as it is in polygamous cultures and other cases and doesn't get nearly as much discussion. Like most other fonts of humor like death and toilets and sex people joke about it because making light of the human condition is how humans deal with things that make us uncomfortable. It's how we let go of the inevitable sadness so we can cope. It's a joke. Laugh.

Unless something's changed in the past two years, this probably didn't have a huge effect, given that the next two games following Vancouver are going to be held in London and Moscow respectively. Neither the UK nor Russia have a reputation of being particularly welcoming to travelers.

Although not as bad as the US, border security in the UK is by far the most invasive in the EU, opting to screen people arriving from within other parts of the EU. Back when I used to hold a multiple-entry visa to the UK, it was treated as a point of suspicion every time I crossed the border (despite the fact that I had to provide the consulate with every shred of information about my private life in order to get the visa). This policy is completely and entirely illogical -- odds are that the border agencies knew more about me than they do about their own citizens.

On the other hand, Russia takes the cake for bizarre and restrictive immigration procedures. The US state department's page describes these in detail, as there are far too many peculiarities and specifics to list here.

If this was an issue, I seriously doubt that the UK or Russia would have been selected by the IOC. As it stands, Chicago didn't lose by that many votes, and the IOC's voting rules and distribution of membership are hardly fair. An IRV system is definitely needed to prevent the sort of gamesmanship that likely caused Chicago to lose, and somehow made Tokyo lose votes in the second round.

That all said, Rio will be a fantastic host for the games. This will be the first time ever that the Olympics have been held on the South American continent, which is a pretty cool milestone all in itself. I'm fairly confident that the US will be first in line for 2018.

in the grand scheme of things, the loss of AM towers are the tiniest problems facing the nation right now.

It depends on where you live:

Hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November. The past several years have seen an overall increase in the quantity and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. In 2005, there were 28 named storms of which 15 became hurricanes. This proved to be the most active hurricane season in recorded history, causing billions of dollars in damage and resulting in thousands of fatalities. Hurricane Season - Know Before You Go

It depends on your profession:

WILL AM 580 Agricultural Broadcasting

Trucking Radio

You cannot give up your US citizenship because there is no legal and Constitutional way to do so.

Incorrect, Blastard. It says right in your passport that you can renounce your U.S. citizenship. The process is described on this friendly and helpful State Department webpage.

Good news, you don't have to be subject to those principles of government! http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html

FOIA allows for the charging of fees to process requests.

From http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/87466.pdf
"Will I be charged for making a FOIA request?
The Department of State is entitled to charge a fee to recover the costs of document search, duplication and, in commercial cases, review. Under certain conditions, documents may be furnished without charge or at a reduced charge."

[i]Purposely[/i] destroying any part of a passport, and then trying to use it is almost certainly illegal.
"Passports that are mutilated, altered, or damaged are no longer valid for travel."
http://travel.state.gov/passport/fri/faq/faq_1741.html

However, if your RFID chip simply didn't work, and you didn't know why, then I'm sure they'd just manually enter the info.

Jeez. Where do I even start....
1. Don't reference Other Countries nuclear programs. This is the United States, where the costs of regulation, permitting, licensing, buying land, paying off neighbors, etc outweigh the material cost of a reactor. Don't compare France. Japan, Korea, or all those others, to the US, it's apples and oranges when it comes to nuclear acceptance. The issue was a wind farm in the US, not France. A nuke in America costs 30-40 billion dollars, stem to stern, full cost. That's the cost of a FULL COMPLETE nuke plant(including water treatment, balance of plant, turbines, etc), but I'll forgive your ignorance on that. People who read wikipedia and don't know power generation often make that mistake.

2. You got your numbers wrong: Financing referenced in that wikipedia article is only for construction phase, which is the CHEAPEST part of building a nuke. Permitting isn't there, startup (which is WAY expensive) isn't there, commissioning (which is RIDICULOUS expensive) isn't there, NRC approval and licensing (which is THE most expensive piece) isn't there. If you worked for a utility or in the nuclear industry (like me) you'd know this.

3. If you want to reference a source, use one with some TEETH. Something like http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nuclearpower.html, or http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/82975.pdf. Some dipshit's blog doesn't count, especially when he admits a full bias and doesn't disclose his credentials. BTW: I'm a computer engineer with 5 years of experience in control systems, power generation, and the economics of electric power.

4. Seriously? OFFSHORE wind farm budget numbers up against LAND BASED wind farms? Lets' see, we'll put a wind technology that is designed, constructed, and operated in one of the most harsh environments on the planet, which you have to helicopter maintenance personnel into, against a wind technology that is built on solid ground, with standard materials, and can be maintained with guys in trucks. Gee, that's a real valid comparison. My wind numbers are accurate, I know because I work in the industry.

5. Fine. Assume that they produce 1500 MW 10% of the time instead of 90%. Still a break even with my ACCURATE numbers.

6. Definitely not an engineer. Megawatts are always comparable, they are absolute quantities. A MW produced by a wind farm is the same MW produced by a nuke. Yes, while wind provides a smaller percentage of it's capacity factor when compared to nuclear, that can be (supposedly) be defeated with large numbers of geographically dispersed wind farms.

Nukes cost a lot of money. That is the operational reality. Get over it. Until someone decides that nukes are a good investment for their cost, we will not see a nuke plant. Other countries can do what they like, they are 20 years ahead of us. The NRC rules all, and nobody wants to finance something we can't figure out how to get rid of the waste for. And that's sad, because nuclear power is the future of baseload generation and will help end our dependence on fossil fuels.

~Sticky

This article discusses passport cards, not full fledged passports. Read the security section:

http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppt_card/ppt_card_3926.html

You might not want to call in the State Department. It is headed by this lady known as Hillary Clinton who gave a speech to the CFR yesterday saying we should give up our sovereignty.

After admitting that NGO's like the CFR actually run the government (who elected them?), she says we nee to give up all of our sovereignty.

Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but itâ(TM)s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I wonâ(TM)t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.

But they are not reason to despair about the future. The same forces that compound our problems â" economic interdependence, open borders, and the speedy movement of information, capital, goods, services and people â" are also part of the solution. And with more states facing common challenges, we have the chance, and a profound responsibility, to exercise American leadership to solve problems in concert with others. That is the heart of Americaâ(TM)s mission in the world today.

If you don't believe that she gets her orders from the CFR then you should check out the link about Smart Power to the right. The CFR gloats that they came up with that term over 4 years ago and that Hillary is now using it.

She came up with a 5 point plan, the third being "Development." Guess who she plans on developing (Hint: not the United States).

Our third policy approach, and a personal priority for me as Secretary, is to elevate and integrate development as a core pillar of American power. We advance our security, our prosperity, and our values by improving the material conditions of peopleâ(TM)s lives around the world.

So don't be too sure that we won't start cooperating with governments, NGO's or some type of supra-government and enforce their laws on our companies. That is what her entire speech was about.

If this is true, then why are government officials so reluctant to have their own activities monitored? Why do law enforcement get so edgy about being filmed? Why are cameras not allowed in most court rooms? Why aren't public officials monitored all day long? It just stops crime, after all.

You bring up a very interesting point. What if the flying-camera-drone catches some police abuse on civilians, or some other egregious violation of human or civil rights? Do we, as civilians, have the right to request the footage of that incident at that time? After all OUR money paid for this plan, the pilot's salary, the camera, the fuel and everything else related to putting that object in the air. Does the FOIA cover this too?

For starters, the good professor is an idiot. He has worked on DoD contracts, and either knew or should have known that from the moment he started developing on the DoD's dime, any technology he dealt in not already a standard part of a BSEE/CS/Chem/Physics degree program in the US was going to be suspect under ITAR.

In addition, the import and export of any commercial item is subject to review under the Export Administration Regulations of the DoC. And, as Dr. Roth is being reminded the hard way, "export" can occur the moment a foreign national or domestic agent of a foreign nation groks your IP.

You may not agree with the law as it stands, but the Federal Government is on very strong Constitutional ground with respect to whatever border controls it chooses to enact. So, your options are: 1) follow the laws, 2) not follow the laws, and/or 3) bug your representatives to change the law. You can select (2), and many do, but it's kind of like not paying your income taxes for a few years: it sucks big time when you get caught.

Saying who can and can't enter is, well, part of being an nation. I would place it akin to an individual being able to decide who can and can't enter their home. Part of being a sovereign nation is you need to be able to decide who is allowed to come in.

I agree with you. However, the US Department of States has posted the following regarding dual nationality.

However, dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries. Either country has the right to enforce its laws, particularly if the person later travels there. Most U.S. citizens, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use its passport to enter and leave that country. Use of the foreign passport does not endanger U.S. citizenship.Most countries permit a person to renounce or otherwise lose citizenship. http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1753.html

http://www.pmddtc.state.gov/regulations_laws/itar_consolidated.html

Yes, the crypto is considered a weapon and has always been considered as such.
Any application that encrypts data can be used for secure communications and in
that form, it becomes a weapon.

ITAR. Google it.

You know it's not exactly stress free working at one of the top hundred terrorist targets.

Is that in the top hundred by actual attacks committed, or just estimated by some politician to be worthy of using to scare people. Do you know how many terrorist attacks there have been on US soil between 1961 and 2003 ?

7

And several of those were cases of one man with a mission, which we normally call "criminals" not terrorists. So explain the top 100 terrorist targets please. You have way more attacks in schools than you do terrorist incidents.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/5902.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks

Well, I'm glad someone out there with lawyers is taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). To see how the EFF has taken advantage of it, their main FOIA with the subpage on this entire DOJ Investigative Data Warehouse topic and all the documents they've collected (some are linked in main story).

If you are a US citizen, you yourself are able to make a FOIA request.

YMMV. Widely. Depends on where you are.

This includes many things besides downloading, including spitting on the ground.

You seem to have forgotten the chief definition of "immigrant":

Do you mean I should have used emigrant instead?

The word "immigrant" normally connotes no legality of movement. It is only you (and a small group of people) who pretend that "immigrant" means "legal migrant" rather than "in-migrant" like it actually means to the largest portion of the English-speaking world.

Ahh.. here is what your doing wrong. Your attempting to use an archaic definition that applies to the general geographical migration but doesn't suppose the legalities or restrictions to non citizens imposed by political entities. In other words, your failing to recognize the legal definitions and usages of the terms. We have went from "I hunt therefore I am" to systems where access is restricted to permission only through laws and procedures and when someone uses the term immigrant-emigrant and illegal alien, they are making legal references pertaining to the political jurisdiction in which they are discussing. If the political entity doesn't approve of you moving through or settling in the area under their control, you are an alien (outsider-noncitizen) who doesn't have the legal authority to be where they are, you are an "illegal alien".

Now immigrants, or those who immigrate, who do seek political and legal authority to migrate and/or settle even if it is temporary, are just that, immigrants. They are aliens permitted to immigrate or emigrate, and therefor are referred to as such. There is no legal-migrant as you want to infer to our usage, there are just legally approved "immigrants" and outsiders (aliens) with or without legal authority (illegal aliens). As the term immigration is used in most countries, it applies to people who legally- hence with the approval of the controlling political entity- enter and reside within the country's borders for whatever reasons defined by law.

But hay, you don't have to take my word for it, just look at how the common and legal interpretations majority of English speakers in the US use the terms. The legal definition of "alien" is any person not a citizen or national of the United States. Now if you read that last page, you will note that there can be legal aliens who are not immigrants and that immigrant is a term applied to specific aliens who meet specific legal definitions. The terms illegal (not in compliance with the law) and alien (non-citizen or non-national) are combined to denote someone who isn't legally entitled to be within the United States' borders and almost every country has laws to some extent that provide for the same.

Fuck N. Korea. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78777.htm

The general question is simple. Should one allow a regime as unethical as Nazi Germany to possess nukes? If not, then we must evaluate N. Korea. http://www.amnestyusa.org/all-countries/north-korea/more-information-on-north-korea/page.do?id=1011313 http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78777.htm

He doesn't have the leisure time to think about all of the nuances of foreign relations and doesn't have the general experience to know all of it either

If only there was a department of some sort that specialized in diplomatic protocol and niceties.......

From the largest perspective, for better or worse, a military is a necessary function for a country to survive. Show me a single country with a history longer than 1 year that survived without any form of military service at all...it just doesn't happen.

The Costa Rican standing army was abolished in 1948. See elespiritudel48 (translation) and US department of state articles.

See also List of countries without armed forces.

"Standing armies [are] inconsistent with [a people's] freedom and subversive of their quiet." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Lord North's Proposition, 1775. Papers 1:231

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service." -- Albert Einstein

Humans in large groups are violent, greedy, and persnickety about others taking the things they own...meaning other groups of violent, greedy, and persnickety humans.

One solution could be to not join such large groups unless temporarily such large groups are required to do something good, e.g. work together to build a barn or dam. I've lived in a commune where nobody was violent or greedy, and while many people are violent and greedy, that doesn't mean that armies (which are almost exclusively used to start violence, and further greed) are wanted or needed by everyone.

I suppose there are "good" wars and "bad" wars as the AC's post seems to claim, but it doesn't mean that the guys doing the fighting, killing, and dying are at fault or are evil in some way.

There are many people who think that causing pain to creatures that can feel pain is unethical, and successfully refrain from it. We think that killing is almost always wrong (self defense has almost nothing to do with modern wars), and that volunteering to be trained to become a paid killer is even worse - in modern warfare about 90% of the people killed are innocent civilians.

We (humans, that is) dehumanize the enemy; everyone does.

See Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect for examples of how not everyone is unethical and not everyone dehumanizes others.

The old quote "My country. May she ever be right, but right or wrong, my country!" (Stephen Decatur) doesn't just apply to the US...every citizen of every nation should take up that attitude...and try to fix the things that are wrong.

"Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty years ago was the last refuge of the scoundrel -- and I believe that he was right. I remember when I was a boy and I heard repeated time and time again the phrase, 'My country, right or wrong, my country!' How absolutely absurd is such an idea. How absolutely absurd to teach this idea to the youth of the country." -- Mark Twain True Citizenship at the Children's Theater, 1907

Citizenship != Permanent Residency

And are you suggesting that the "diversity visa lottery" expects something from the people who win visas? </heavy sarcasm>

How about we instead give those highly trained individuals who have completed advanced degrees here the ability to stick around and work so that they have the opportunity to contribute to the USA?

PS - if you were trolling, good job. You got me.

PPS - if you really believe this, . . . you may not have personal experience with this issue. Or you're a jerk.

Protectionism deepened and worsened the Great Depression.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/17606.htm
"...beggar-thy-neighbor" policies of the 1930s. ... For example, U.S. imports from Europe declined from a 1929 high of $1,334 million to just $390 million in 1932, while U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and 1934."

People who go that track have only a 1:10,000 chance of success- it's a sucker bet.

From what I could find out, it largely depends on one's employer.

I'd much rather they be on the normal I* class visa which guarantees a green card in 5 years

Can you clarify - what is an I* visa? The only thing I can find about that on travel.state.gov is this, and it doesn't look relevant. Do you perhaps mean E* (employment-based visas)?

Problems that come up are that there are quotas against the I* class, and that even getting an I* class can take 3-6 months in the best of circumstances. I'd personally like to see a merger of police databases between countries to the point where we could reduce that to 30 minutes or less on a web form for the I* class visa, and 24 months of keeping your nose clean once you're in country for the green card.

I can agree that your visa & immigration system needs an overhaul - it's certainly insane and overly complicated compared to most other countries that I've bothered to check. I'm in Canada right now on a temp work permit, and getting that is much much easier than H1-B, and doesn't screw you as much, too (e.g. you are entitled to government-provided medical care). Immigration here is much easier, too - permanent residence is effectively automatic so long as you have guaranteed long-term employment in designated skill shortage areas (even though it takes quite a while to process the application), and then it's 3 years of living in a country to apply for a citizenship. New Zealand had mostly similar stuff, as far as I recall.

But for now, we've got to play with the cards that we have...

Actually the sleeve tends to make the passport stay partially open and act as a parabola, amplifying the signal from a distance.

I think that was an attempt at a funny. But the Passport card is a flat card like your driver's license or a credit card. It's designed to be more convenient to carry for people crossing the border by land or sea. People who do that tend to live near the border, so cross frequently, and a regular passport is kinda bulky to carry with you all the time. The passport card will fit in your wallet like all your other cards.

That's just not true. Maybe *you* should check the rest of the web for more info. The RFID chip only stores a database key - everything else is grabbed from the database using that key. In other words cloning somebody else's RFID is pointless because then it'll be showing the original owner's photo on the security guy's computer display. If the security guy isn't paying attention, then that's a problem with or without the RFID.

Ok, so instead of grabbing the RFID of the first guy that walks past, instead they wait around until they see someone that fairly closely resembles them and take that RFID instead.

Passports aren't even the biggest concern here though, it's more the move to put RFID into all manner if inappropriate items like credit cards, phones (which are then tied to credit cards), clothing (yes really, and not just for inventory tracking), and probably lots of other things we haven't thought of yet. It's one thing for them to clone your passport, it's another entirely for them to clone your credit card.

Also, the passport card isn't even required.

... yet. Pretty soon it will be mandatory, and destroying the RFID chip in your passport will invalidate the passport and earn you a full body cavity search for your trouble no doubt.

That's just not true. Maybe *you* should check the rest of the web for more info. The RFID chip only stores a database key - everything else is grabbed from the database using that key. In other words cloning somebody else's RFID is pointless because then it'll be showing the original owner's photo on the security guy's computer display. If the security guy isn't paying attention, then that's a problem with or without the RFID.

Also, the passport card isn't even required. With a regular passport you can destroy or remove the chip and use it as traditional passport. So if you're really that paranoid, skip the card, get a regular passport, destroy the chip and STFU while the rest of us enjoy the extra convenience. I really don't see why people are crying about this so much.

Britain in the 50s and 60s was poor because the US delayed intervention in WW2, hoping that this would result in the collapse of the British Empire, to the gain of the US

That's funny, I always thought it had to do with domestic political considerations. It is true that FDR hoped to end colonialism but I've never heard that used as an explanation for why we didn't intervene.