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Having her own email server was not illegal at the time, but sure, if you have to retroactively change the law to convict someone, go for it and feel proud.

I'm aware of no one who has said simply having or using a private server is illegal... so nice strawman you've got there. What is very illegal is mishandling classified information, a charge not difficult to prove.

Lets look at just one section of rather clear cut law, shall we? Specifically 18 U.S. Code  793 section f:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officerâ"
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

It is known that satellite imagery whose source was the CIA was found in her mailbox, and as SoS she would entrusted to lawful possession of such items... in a "proper place of custody".

Are you or she going to claim that her private email server a "proper place of custody"? The CIA (the classifying agency) would disagree I'm sure.

More so, by handing over a thumb drive full of emails, including even a single classified satellite image to her lawyer, didn't she cause it to be "delivered to anyone in violation of his trust"?

Remember, only 'gross negligence' is required for this particular statute, and above I've shown just two different ways she can wind up with up to 10 years in prison for a single image.

Now how many other emails do we think contained info "relating to the national defense" that she treated similarly?

And this all assumes that the IT guy (who has received immunity) or an aid doesn't break down and give evidence that there was an overt attempt to skirt FOIA and other applicable laws to what content she saw & sent.

At this point KKK has been pretty peaceful

Really?

Well, the "expensive" part is correct. But claiming it "can't fly, can't fight" is just not true.

A lot of people disagree:

Pentagon’s big budget F-35 fighter ‘can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run’
http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

The F-35 may have big problems fighting at long range
http://www.businessinsider.com...

The $400 Billion Military Jet That Can't Fly in Cloudy Weather
http://www.alternet.org/fail-4...

RAND Corp: F35 Can’t Turn, Can’t Climb, Can’t Run
http://www.stopthef35.com/rand...

Air Force Admits: Our New Stealth Fighter Can’t Fight
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

The F-35 Can't Beat The Plane It's Replacing In A Dogfight: Report
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.c... ...and so on.

I consider all people humans.

I hope you aren't a college student, because you can get in trouble for saying that. Seriously... it's a "microaggression" enshrined in official policy at several colleges, more to come soon I'm sure.

Why is this a "microaggression? To quote the cited policy from above: "Statements that indicate that a White person does not want to or need to acknowledge race." (That doesn't really explain anything IMHO. I guess if you are a White person [capital letter in original] you are obliged to "acknowledge race"... whatever that means. TL;DR It just is a microaggression, shut up.) But if you are lucky enough to be a non-White person, I guess maybe you would be permitted to say that? Eh, probably better not to risk it.

Remember that Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream that people would be judged, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? This is considered "problematic" now.

Personally I agree with you. Even if statistically some things correlate with race, we should attempt to be color-blind in policy and in our interpersonal relations. However, I'm a white male, so my opinion is considered worse than wrong by the people who care about microaggressions.

I was raised on the slogan "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." The current crop of college students is being taught that nothing is more important than words and labels, and that rather than trying to be a good person or set a good example that they should be invoking authority to smack down people over minor offenses.

It seem Hillary is the establishments choice, but she carries enough baggage to sink a battleship.

Yes, she is in the script to win. It could not be more obvious, but good on you, a lot of people have missed this.

Trump is a loose cannon (a combination of Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer whom Australians will know well), so why is he so popular?

Because Americans all think they're starring in their own personal movie. Trump supporters think that someone did something bad to them and kept them from succeeding, and that Trump will help them succeed. There's merit to the first part, but not the second; Trump and his ilk are part of the problem, not the solution.

I think the average American is sick of seeing their government bully the rest of the world just so the military industrial complex can make a buck for the 1%.

Yes, that does appear to be true.

I think they are tired of politicians being bought by lobbyists.

Well, they think they are, but they don't even know what the hell they are talking about.

I think they have had a gut full of their jobs being exported overseas, and their standard of living declining every decade.

Yeah, but anyone supporting Trump on that basis is a total dumbshit, because his clothing line is made overseas for example.

So Trump is a protest vote in the hope it might blow up the system and cause a reset.

No. A thousand times no. You were doing great until here. Most of these people really do think that Trump will be good for the nation. They really think that putting the nation further into the hands of business will make their lives better, because they masturbated to Atlas Shrugged one too many times.

The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929

The link is next to the title.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2016/04/07/the-human-computer-behind-the-moon-landing-was-a-black-woman.html

For some reason the link is on the main page, but not when you view the article. Here it is.

Um, lies? The FBI worked within the confines of the constitution in the iPhone case, they had a warrant (though they didn't need one!), and requested Apple unlock the phone, like they have done numerous times:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

I agree, thinking seems to be quite hard for you, it is much easier to accuse the FBI of subverting the constitution when they are not doing anything of the sort.

You know, every time I see this argument, I reply in the exact same way. The FBI asked for nothing of the sort, and it is a lie to say they did. The court order is available to be read online, and it actually says that the exploit was to be keyed to the ID of the specific phone, and signed by Apple's signing key. It therefore would be impossible for the FBI to modify it for another phone, and Apple would be the only ones with the ability to do that.

The court order is available here:

http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/SB-Sho...

But I am unable to resolve their DNS currently, not sure what happened to their stuff.

Next you are going to claim that the FBI said they wanted to unlock numerous phones, but what does that matter? They still have to get warrants to the data on the phone, which is as far as the constitution goes on this case. The FBI also offered to pay for the work, as they pay for stuff like this all the time, so you can't bring in the slavery angle.

Also, Apple worked with FBI and local law enforcement in unlocking numerous phone previously, so they don't have any issue in doing it. For some reason Apple decided to take a stand on this one case, when they never did before. Maybe someone at Apple was implicated?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

So, Apple helps out in other cases, but this one, this one is just not going to happen!

Seems like an odd stance to take when they have no problem doing it in many other cases.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated...

Published in 1929

You can't deny this correlation, because it exists.

There are lots of correlations that exist. But trying to boil it down to one group or religion is just hogwash. You're drinking the Kool Aid, my friend. Hell, the Buddhists are killing people left and right in Burma, but you excuse that as some sort of "one off". So many examples of crazy people doing things in the name of one religion/philosophy or another, but you choose to try to classify it as all being one group?

Please see here for some more information.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone on slashdot, really. "Stealth" technology has nothing in common with Star Trek like cloaking, it simply is a matter of reducing the signature. With greater computer power available, it was only a question of time until it became obsolete.

Of course, all of that is without even talking about how unreliable and fragile the stealth tech really is (the coating must be redone after each sortie and is vulnerable to rain, among other problems)...

Why the masses hate experts.

The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929

The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929

The co-existence of primitivism and technology.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

It's the precedent that they are fighting...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/17/apple-unlocked-iphones-for-the-feds-70-times-before.html

Probably not.

Apparently Apple has helped the US Government decrypt iPhones at least SEVENTY times in the past.
Citation: http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

It is curious that Apple does not want to decrypt the phone of a jihadi (fanatical enemy of all Free People, based on Koran 9:29), but has no problem unlocking phones of US citizens. Seems like Apple prefers to defend foreign enemies and doesn't care about citizens (but then, the same can be said of mainstream media and politicians too).

"pointing out where you think the fault lies does not actually make it any less a war"

I wasn't simply pointing out "where the fault lies", because that implies that this rash of fundamentalism is some sort of unintended consequence. Although you could claim that it was unintended regarding our coup of Mossadegh, it certainly is not true of our more recent targets. Saddam? Secular. Gaddafi? Secular. Assad? Secular. ISIS, on the other hand, we handled with kid gloves until Russia got around to bombing them (not to mention a lot of civilians as well).

There are plenty of examples of the pentagon struggling with this administration--having intelligence altered, targets removed from eligibility for bombing, etc.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Of course, this comes not long after our arming of Al Nusra and other extremists in Syria from 2009 onward in a continued attempt to topple Assad.

So, put simply, the idea that this is a "war" against fundamentalist islam is laughable. (You might as well try to tell me how drugs are the enemy in our war on drugs, when they're actually the war's greatest friend--without the drugs, there would be no war!) In recent times, rather, our goal has been to engender fundamentalism in the western world such that we may have an excuse to intervene. This was the most salient--since you like that word--point of my comment, which you didn't address at all. Even today the west's strongest ally is Saudi Arabia, the monarchy of which pushes Wahabism, which is just as extreme as any variety of fundamentalist islam that the US could purport to be fighting.

You act as if a rash of state-sponsored fundamentalism sparked up on its own in the Muslim world, as if through some stimuli among savages that we noble westerners could never hope to understand--a very shortsighted and deliberately simple view.

Actually, the *easy* thing to do would be to claim that those on the other side of the world have a problem, and that our government represents us or always has our best interests in mind--as if we are in the seat of power. The *difficult* thing to do would be to admit that the US' military actions are caused by ripples in a deep state which neither you nor I nor even the president has control over. So your notion that just blaming "the west" is a way of standing up and dusting off our hands is pretty silly--it actually means that WE have a problem, and that WE have work to do.

So you can spare me your "so easy to blame the west" spiel.

it's already happening: http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

But in a legal brief, Apple acknowledged that the phone in the meth case was running version 7 of the iPhone operating system, which means the company can access it. “For these devices, Apple has the technical ability to extract certain categories of unencrypted data from a passcode locked iOS device,” the company said in a court brief.

Two sentences later retrieving "certain categories of unencrypted data" becomes "cracking the iphone":

But as a general matter, yes, Apple could crack the iPhone for the government.

Here's the BBC chiming in with the "if you agree with Apple, you support beheading veterans" angle: http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...

"If a court issued a warrant in the UK or United States to search somebody's house, you wouldn't stop them, you would allow them in - why should a smartphone be any different?

Gee I don't know, Ray, but I'm going to bank on houses being made out of wood, sweat, and tiers compared to my smartphone, which is more of a mathematics problem than a physical object.

The technical gap between those working on cases like this, those writing the laws, and those who are just the end-users operating devices like smartphones is large, but it's much, much more than just marketing at this point. This story wouldn't even be in the news if the government hadn't already bullied these companies into complying in the first place, hitting them with the one-two of "you're going to cause another 9/11" and "we're already reading everything anyway, don't make it harder for us" as a fait accompli.

This is one of the primary reasons for things such as the 4th amendment in the first place -- if the government only conducts reasonable searches, then people can be more trusting of the government only conducting reasonable searches. If the government oversteps its authority, and people lose some of their trust in the government to act in good faith, then searches which would otherwise be reasonable and routine start to meet resistance, especially when it is potentially costing giant corporations millions or billions of dollars.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

Isn't this the exact same story that we heard about last year?? If so, how is this news again, other than "if you missed it, it's news to you"? ex link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

Apparently it was a deliberate decision, even if you want to argue that it was a bad decision.

Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq’s Real WMD

I can think of some (unstated) reasons why they might have done that. I'm not sure there wasn't a better way.

The truth is that there were still stockpiles of chemical weapons in Iraq. The truth is that chemical munitions were used to attack coalition forces. The truth is that there was also accidental exposure to those chemical agents in some cases. They caused both death and wounds.

There were also biological weapons removed from Iraq. Oddly enough around that time Iraq suffered an outbreak of a disease that was weaponized. Coincidence?

We aren't fighting on the battlefield, we're having a discussion. I don't "blather mindless propaganda," I reference news items bearing on the discussion. The fact that some of that is contrary to what you either believe or think you know gives you a chance to examine new facts. If you are an intelligent person (I'll take no position) it is possible that you may find your previous beliefs in error and adopt a new position. Some people have difficulties doing this since not mouthing the party position will get them in trouble with friends, family, or the party, so they prefer to be wrong as part of the group instead of being right and alone. Many people on Slashdot get some fairly simple issues or questions wrong because of ideology.

So, I'll meet you half-way given your post. You might want to actually read these stories.

Saddam-Era Chemical Weapons Now Under ISIS Control: Reports

However, according to a report published by The New York Times on Tuesday, the U.S. military not only recovered massive stockpiles of chemical weapons in Iraq, including in the Muthanna complex now controlled by ISIS, it actively attempted to keep the discovery of the munitions a secret. The report, which is based on interviews with several former U.S. army personnel, alleged that between 2004 and 2010, soldiers found thousands of rusty and corroded chemical munitions.

Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq’s Real WMD

Just because you think it sounds wrong or stupid doesn't mean that it is.

You're nuts. And an idiot.

I've checked the news report and it still says the same thing. If you want to alter events in this universe you might have to try calling me different names, or stand on your head or something ..... either that or reality doesn't work the way you think it does. It happened and you're stuck with it and even denial isn't going to change what happened. But I don't have a heart of stone so I'll throw you a bone:

Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq’s Real WMD

Just wondering if you think baseball is a sport?

Let's not forget that Robert Bigelow also bought Skinwalker Ranch in order to study UFOs and he believes we are being visited by extraterrestrials.

This is a guy who made his packet with the Budget Motel chain and whose aerospace start-up has completely shat the bed. So of course he's crazy as a shithouse rat.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

https://www.intellihub.com/muf...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The real problem, which gets far too little discussion, is that Hillary Clinton seems to have set up a system where state department employees (from the "ops" team) would read classified emails on the secure email system, and then type up a summary and send the summary to her personal (non-secure) email system.

In the first e-mail, Clinton curtly instructs Sullivan, "It's a public statement. Just email it." Minutes later, Sullivan responds, "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it."

http://www.nationalreview.com/classified-rules-hillarys-disregard-for-them

Naturally, when ops "converted" the emails, they didn't copy over any classification markings, allowing Hillary Clinton to truthfully say she never received any emails marked as classified.

It is partisan spin to use the word "retroactively" to describe these emails being newly marked with classification markings. If the information in the emails was classified, the emails were classified all along; it doesn't matter whether the emails were marked as classified or not... and Hillary Clinton, who is not dumb and is a lawyer, knows this.

This process of "converting" emails from secure to insecure is go-to-prison stuff. It's truly amazing that Hillary Clinton thought she could get away with doing this.

Unless the information in this article is fabricated or otherwise untrue, she is going to be in very big trouble:

That Hillary and her staff at Foggy Bottom were wittingly involved in a scheme to place classified information into ostensibly unclassified emails to reside on Clinton's personal, private server is the belief of every investigator and counterintelligence official I've spoken with recently, and all were at pains to maintain that this misconduct was felonious.

"The FBI will get someone to talk, we always do."

"This was about a lot more than just some classified emails," a senior Capitol Hill staffer told me, "and we'll get to the bottom of it. But we're happy to let the FBI do the heavy lifting for right now."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/02/will-hillary-clinton-s-emails-burn-the-white-house.html

Please expand upon that. I'm curious as to what you think their motivation is if it isn't ideological in nature or based on their religious belief?

Gee! You tell me! Abu Khaled, like other ISIS members, was paid $100 per month, in U.S. greenbacks, not Syrian lira, despite the latter being the coin of the realm in al-Bab. Currency exchange houses exist in the city where ISIS employees can take their salaries for conversion, although they scarcely need to, given the freebies that come with ISIS employment.

"I rented a house, which was paid for by ISIS," Abu Khaled told me. "It cost $50 per month. They paid for the house, the electricity. Plus, I was married, so I got an additional $50 per month for my wife. If you have kids, you get $35 for each. If you have parents, they pay $50 for each parent. This is a welfare state."

"This is why a lot of people are joining," said Abu Khaled. "I knew a mason who worked construction. He used to get 1,000 lira per day. That's nothing. Now he's joined ISIS and gets 35,000 lira—$100 for himself, $50 for his wife, $35 for his kids. He makes $600 to $700 per month. He gave up masonry. He's just a fighter now, but he joined for the income."

But then, there is trouble in paradise ...Three years ago IS was paying several hundred dollars a month more than al-Qaeda and other rebel outfits.

And I hope you're getting paid for your work doing your little propaganda thingy here, too. I mean, after all, it is working for the most part. So, keep up the good work, I guess....

As far as the spying, Israel has 'em beat by far, but I'm sure more people believe you than me, so of course, you win the internet

Marriage equality has won at the Supreme Court, but the fight over gay marriage is far from over. Now we enter the Republican temper tantrum phase.

Even before the Supreme Court’s ruling, several prominent Republicans had pledged to disobey any high court ruling in favor of marriage equality—and had called on their fellow Republican leaders to do the same.

For instance, Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have both signed a pledge that reads, “We will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman.”

Huckabee also challenged the authority of our nation’s highest court when he said, “The Supreme Court can’t overrule God.”

Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Steve King also called for Congress and any future Republican president to flagrantly ignore such a Supreme Court ruling.

Let’s be clear: These are current and former officeholders, who have taken an oath to uphold the laws of our nation, literally pledging to violate those laws as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

In any reasonable political environment, this should be a disqualifier for elected office. Certainly, measures should be considered to charge those of them who hold office with violating their oath.

Apparently a large percentage of republican politicians and republican voters haven't got a clue either.

Yes, they ARE being paid...

  "Abu Khaled,like other ISIS members, was paid $100 per month, in U.S. greenbacks, not Syrian lira, despite the latter being the coin of the realm in al-Bab. Currency exchange houses exist in the city where ISIS employees can take their salaries for conversion, although they scarcely need to, given the freebies that come with ISIS employment.

"I rented a house, which was paid for by ISIS," Abu Khaled told me. "It cost $50 per month. They paid for the house, the electricity. Plus, I was married, so I got an additional $50 per month for my wife. If you have kids, you get $35 for each. If you have parents, they pay $50 for each parent. This is a welfare state."

"This is why a lot of people are joining," said Abu Khaled. "I knew a mason who worked construction. He used to get 1,000 lira per day. That's nothing. Now he's joined ISIS and gets 35,000 lira---$100 for himself, $50 for his wife, $35 for his kids. He makes $600 to $700 per month. He gave up masonry. He's just a fighter now, but he joined for the income."

Sorry to run your little bandwagon off the cliff there, honey. Do try to cope the best you can. Ever think of moonlighting? I'm sure they're hiring...

Don't even try to single out the Muslims. I mean, you can, and most of the idiots out there will believe you, but you only are being a bigot, and a fool for the empire.

There is clearly a strong relation between "terrorist" and "muslim". I'm not saying that all muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are muslim.

I took the time to actually look for an answer to this question. Here it is:

"Letâ(TM)s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent. [...]"

"Back in the United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims is almost as miniscule as in Europe. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were committed by non-Muslims. [...]"

Of course, as I'm sure you'll immediately point out, this neglects to include muslim-perpetrated terrorist attacks outside Europe and the USA, such as in Iraq etc. On the other hand it also neglects to include any other terrorist attack outside Europe and the USA, such as those perpetrated by hindus in the area of the Indian/Pakistani border. Barring actual statistics I would thus avoid claims along the lines of "the data we don't have supports MY story".

What's more, I myself am more interested in (read: concerned about) terrorist attacks in Europe and the USA anyway. And the picture appears to be clear there: most terrorists are not, in fact, muslims.

No, they were descendants of muslim immigrants. That's not French to me.

That's you, then. To me, "muslim" and "French" are independent traits. You can be one, or the other, or both, or none.

Also: would you also argue that people of jewish descent can never be Germans unless and until they reject judaism?

It's partly their fault, especially Saudi Arabia for pushing their puritanical form of Islam with all their money. In fact, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar are actively funding ISIS and al-Qauda.

It's not surprising most of the hijackers of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. They've also screwed up places by building madrases to help push their fundamentalist puritanical version of Islam. Boys who go to these madrases for their education learn little except the Saudi brand of Islam along with hate for the west.

Just google ISIS funding.

Ever since 9/11 I've done whatever I can to stop supporting middle eastern countries and wean myself off of using oil. The fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers and their ringleader came from Saudi Arabia made me realize I don't want any of my money to go to fund these countries that promote terrorism.

Cameron (the dead pig fucker) states himself that they leave "no place to hide", no encryption (that can't be broken) no VPN, etc.
All of this while holding the specter of the the 4 horsemen of the infopocalypse.

Dead Pig Romance
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

Cameron: No Encryption
http://www.theguardian.com/com...

4 horsemen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Couple all that with CCTV, and a garden variety of other assaults on the freedoms on the UK and you get Prison Island. (My name for the UK)

The US health care ranks worse than all of the top 10 countries.

...based on criteria carefully chosen to make sure the US comes out worst. (Does anyone still give any credence to these types of rankings? If you do, do you also click on clickbait headlines because you're curious what "doctors hate" and what "your insurance agent doesn't want you to know"?)

So... I don't see a problem here.

I predicted you wouldn't in the first line of my post above.

Would you care to explain why a government handout is bad, in this specific instance?

Can we cut some other government handouts to pay for this one?

Well, how do you propose we fix it?

One suggestion worth looking at Megan McArdle's plan. You pay for all your health care up to 20% of your annual income (or buy insurance if you want) and the government pays the amount over 20% of your annual income. It partly gets paid for by getting Medicare recipients to pay for more of their health care (the part up to 20% of their income).

Hardly seems reasonable to mention exaggeration over the number of people killed by police without also mentioning the exaggerations on the other side.

I have not heard of anyone saying "the police are killing everyone!" except for law-enforcement fans setting up hyperbolic straw-men, but there is concern over the numbers. It's hard to say how much validity there is these concerns, since many police departments and states decline to release consistent (or any) numbers on people killed by police; I suspect that accurate numbers could help put the incidents we see in the news into context. But the numbers of police killed are notably more accurate, notably dropping, and notably exaggerated as the linked article explains.

If Snowden believes he was "holding Putin accountable" that demonstrates some major league naivety

Oh, he may have wisen up by now. But that's what happens when young people — even the brighter among them — are raised by the teachers, who seriously equate Beria with McCarthy and Castro with Pinochet. And by now it is increasingly harder to blame even those teachers — when their own professors are "former" terrorists themselves.

And about 15 minutes after this appeared, he made his Twitter feed private.

Some random counterpoints to your post that someone accidentally modded up (there is no other logical explanation aside from the mod also a troll)

"The Free Muslims Coalition believes that there can NEVER be a justification for terrorism." (first line on their "positions" page)

http://theamericanmuslim.org/t... (fatwa agains terrorism)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

Its a good thing all the red states have eliminated poverty with all their charity...oh wait, Texas with all its oil riches is #5 in poverty in the US. FYI, the bible belt is all about sharia law when you consider it translates more or less into "religous law". The only difference is which 1000 year old book you take instructions from on how to oppress women and non-believers.

How exactly is this not a dystopian sci-fi novel come to life?

The dystopian novels may concentrate on the methods, but the real reasons for gloom are the governments behind them. A vibrant democracy arming its peace officers with effective tools to help them fight crime is starkly different from a repressive dictatorship doing the same.

And, although the US is not any longer the vibrant democracy (republic) we once were, it is not the brutal police force, that is used by our overlords today to keep opposition at bay. Not yet, anyway — for now they still use the IRS and other "civilized" tools to suppress would-be challengers. Possibly, because their support among actual police is not all that high.

The Sci-Fi writers didn't see any of that coming.

Today it was announced that the candidate "Deez Nuts" was polling a 9% in North Carolina. I am not joking.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

As a card-carrying member of the Bofa Party, I am announcing my full support for this candidate. Mostly because I want to be able to say "I support Deez Nuts".

who bites the heads off doves

Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat
Alice Cooper did not decapitate a chicken, but was savvy enough to make sure nobody said otherwise.

There was not dove, though.

Weather Underground has posted a fascinating discussion of the recent improvements made to the major weather models that are used to forecast hurricanes and the like

Pardon me, but Weather Underground was (is?) a far-left terrorist organization with a respectable number of murders and robberies to its name. Some of its surviving members are teaching students these days, and have likely influenced the President, but they aren't teaching them anything about predicting weather.

"I have never understood the blatant lies coming out of the Russian military or their proxies ..."

Did you miss (pretty much) everything about the Soviet Union from 1923 until 1991? The entire system was based on the premise of the "big lie".
It is a major, persistent technique used by governments generally but elevated by Russians to an art form. I'm not sure if it's their cultural history of totalitarianism, some desperate nationalism that makes their people particularly gullible, or more likely a Slavic nihilism that doesn't really believe anything matters much anyway, but really, the "big lie" has been a staple of Russian government, well, FOREVER.

Probably because it works; their people don't care (or support the government blindly regardless of what they know to be true) and the west sees them as all barely-civilized savages *anyway* so how would the admission of some new barbarity surprise anyone? In any case, the West's attention-span is far shorter than Russia's, so ultimately the Big Lie becomes the story everyone accepts, in polite company, at least.

Viz:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
(Quote of the day: Kingsley Amis aphorism about Robert Conquest, that "...(he) told his American publisher that the first reissue of The Great Terror be titled, âoeI Told You So, You Fucking Fools,â)

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

You mean like this person was detained for disturbing the peace?

The headline is a little clickbait-y, but the article is neutral. how do you associate one headline with the "SJW-side"?

I find your sneer about a "parliament" rather odd. It's not a "bogeyman" to note that people who generally take one side of an ideological issue will... generally take one side of an ideological issue. Yes, there are disagreements within teams, but it's not unfair to make general statements about ideological teams when those teams usually act like teams.

How many do I need to post to prove my point? Here's Arthur Chu, the self-described "social justice stormtrooper," again expressing the "SJW side": Reddit’s Terrorists Have Won: Ellen Pao and the Failure to Rebrand Web 2.0. A big feminist blog: Pao! Right in the Kisser: Reddit assholes celebrate CEO’s resignation after a week of abuse. SJWs Brianna Wu and Randi Harper are lining up just as one would expect. The NY Times puts their editorial view directly into the news. I'm sure there will be more in the coming days.

Great theory... but, no.

Stealth technology is a marketing ploy. Even the engineers that designed the F-16 laughed about how the F-35 has "stealth" capabilities because they knew the Russians and everyone else with any decent military early-warning radar system made within the last 30 to 40 years can pick up the F-35 easily.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

The "theory behind the F-35" was that it was supposed to be a cheap replacement for almost all aircraft used by all branches of the military - a bomber, a fighter, and a ground support plane with vertical take-off capabilities for the Marines. It was supposed to be cheap b/c it could be bought in bulk and have interchangeable parts across the services. The reason it's a crappy dog-fighter is because when you create a Homer Simpson Mobile of an aircraft, you get a crappy aircraft.

Specifically, because the Marines wanted vertical take-off, the body has to be fat to support the downward thruster, and the wings have to be small as well. This means the plane has to go reeeeeally fast to support itself with its tiny wings. The high speed and tiny wings means terrible turning. The lack of a bubble cockpit means the pilot has to rely on sensors rather than turning their heads and looking around. It also can't really support ground troops for very long because it burns through fuel due to its speed and poor maneuverability. It can't hold much of a payload for bombing either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As for future warfare, we still need fighters (drones or not) to combat enemy fighters. We also need bombers and we need ground-support. The F-35 does none of those things well.