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Union membership has plummeted in the U.S., from nearly one-third of workers 50 years ago to one in 10 American workers today. Under the simplest assumption, for every $30 unions had to spend on politics in 1966, they now have $10. That's a factor of three decline. Citizens United legalized unlimited untraceable political contributions. This means the disparity between, say the Koch brothers and unions is even greater.

Unions and corporations have reporting requirements, and they have accountability to stockholders/union members. Post Citizens United, PACs have no accountability. Even if a union gives money to a PAC, the spending is at least theoretically traceable. A union member can sue the union and find out what the union spent on politics. If the money went to a PAC, they could make a good case for having the PAC audited. The same goes for a stockholder, but if I understand the law correctly a stockholder has less say in political spending. For individual money donated through PACs, there is no way the public will ever know how the money is spent. The process is opaque.

Saying that unions are equivalent to individual PAC contributions is factually incorrect. You are just flat out wrong.

As for the impact of spending on the political process, some people, including the Koch brothers, think it makes a big difference. That's why they're spending $889 million before the 2016 elections.

Union membership has plummeted in the U.S., from nearly one-third of workers 50 years ago to one in 10 American workers today. Under the simplest assumption, for every $30 unions had to spend on politics in 1966, they now have $10. That's a factor of three decline. Citizens United legalized unlimited untraceable political contributions. This means the disparity between, say the Koch brothers and unions is even greater.

Unions and corporations have reporting requirements, and they have accountability to stockholders/union members. Post Citizens United, PACs have no accountability. Even if a union gives money to a PAC, the spending is at least theoretically traceable. A union member can sue the union and find out what the union spent on politics. If the money went to a PAC, they could make a good case for having the PAC audited. The same goes for a stockholder, but if I understand the law correctly a stockholder has less say in political spending. For individual money donated through PACs, there is no way the public will ever know how the money is spent. The process is opaque.

Saying that unions are equivalent to individual PAC contributions is factually incorrect. You are just flat out wrong.

As for the impact of spending on the political process, some people, including the Koch brothers, think it makes a big difference. That's why they're spending $889 million before the 2016 elections.

Yeah, a political guy thought his job (and the jobs of his underlings) was to make the President look good. Like I said - this is bi-partisan. Just look at all the jerks in the Obama admin who forgot they were working at the taxpayers' expense and think their jobs are to make Obama look good.

Here's some of the faux-gagging of Hansen:

2006 CBS hansen, while supposedly gagged rants to "60 minutes"

2007 PBS theoretically gagged and persecuted interview.

Jan 2006 NYT interview by the supposedly gagged man with the most-read paper on the planet.

2006 WaPo The supposedly gagged man gives a panel discussion on what he supposedly cannot say without being waterboarded and it's published in one the nation's most-read papers

People really need to stop being manipulated by propaganda meisters like Hansen and his friends. There are TONS of articles in the web based on interviews and talks the man made while he was supposedly wearing a dick-cheney-administered ball-gag. The man is on record admitting that the famous global warming hearings in the Senate in 1988 were political theater - they were scheduled for a hot day and the Democrats made sure to kill the AC in the hearing room so everybody would be hot and sweating in all the pictures and video. YOU HAVE BEEN MANIPULATED, possibly for your entire life by this man and his political allies.

You do realize that this story starts talking about Comcast, the same company that tried to charge Netflix for data that their customers were requesting? They also kicked out Netflix's caching servers from their datacenters before this. Comcast brought their problems on themselves by refusing to upgrade connections to accommodate the needs, and intentionally pushing more traffic onto the uplinks. I can't imagine how anyone would have sympathy for a company that intentionally causes over saturation of their uplinks when they have been offered free upgrades!

http://www.infoworld.com/artic...
https://gigaom.com/2014/10/28/...

http://consumerist.com/2014/02...
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/...
http://knowmore.washingtonpost...

If you really want to understand things, you have to understand what you're reading.

The IPCC never said that global warming had paused -- it was merely increasing at a slower rate than expected over about a decade. The general trend was still upwards, and the decade where it trended slightly less steeply was interesting and unexpected, but it still fits with the general overall trendline of the previous decades quite well given the variation in sampling. If you're reading that trend as flat, there is something wrong with your eyes.... or at the very least something wrong with the software you're using to plot a trendline -- even if you only plot the data during the period mentioned by the IPCC.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

"The Pause was an idea from a 2013 UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that concluded the upward global surface temperature trend from 1998 to 2012 was markedly lower than the trend from 1951 to 2012."

It is beyond ridiculous to imply the temperature change was flat for decades given any real data. It may even be premature to describe the temperature change as slowing without more data points to corroborate it wasn't merely an anomaly -- likely brought about through unusual El Nino, La Nina, and other weather patterns which have multiple year cycles.

NOAA investigated this pause/slowdown and used blind studies and multiple statistical methods to prove the cherry-picked period is well within statistical noise and the slowdown or pause is bunk:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Many folks would argue about his "legacy" being thin, and they would be right.

Oh really?

Obama pulled all the troops out of Iraq before Iraq was ready to defend itself, and he publicly announced the date on which Iraq would be defenceless. Result: ISIS overrunning major cities, looting banks to buy weapons, murdering and raping. I lay this death toll squarely at Obama's feet... he inherited a pacified situation from Bush and managed to screw it all to hell. Then he denied it.

Obama signed the ironically named "Affordable Care Act" but didn't write it. He did stump for it, famously promising that "if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor", promising that a family of 4 would save $2500 per year. Result: people found they couldn't keep their doctor, people found that premiums went up for everyone, and now the ACA is entering a death spiral.

Obama's "recovery" is the worst recovery since 1932.

Obama mocked Romney for identifying Russia as a strategic threat, and now Russia is making a shambles of US policy in the middle east. Obama actually started this, when he gratefully let Putin rescue him from having to actually do something when Syria crossed his "red line".

On Obama's watch, an embassy was successfully attacked and the ambassador killed, the first death of an ambassador in the line of duty in three decades. Maybe we should blame that on Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State? But she was Obama's Secretary of State. "The buck stops here."

How has the Democratic Party done with Obama as President? Not well.

I don't think Obama's "legacy" is thin at all. I think it's thick, but it's a thick legacy of failure and disaster.

Eat your heart out, UK

The court ruled that no evidence was provided by him that the FBI had control.

The court never considered any evidence because it decided that Bivens actions (suing for violation of rights) do not apply abroad. He could have video and sound of FBI agents using pliers and a blowtorch on him while raping his wife and daughter and it would not matter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

"If it was important enough he should have been willing to do the time"

Snowden has publicly stated that he is willing to do time.

However, had he not taken the course of action that he did then we would not know the extent of government spying and Snowden would be considered just another conspiracy kook making accusations without any hard evidence.

Snowden did the right thing and took the appropriate measures to do so. We all owe him our gratitude.

I agree he did the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. I personally think he did this because he is under the misguided opinion that the US can be fixed, he didn't know the half of it, how far back it goes or exactly what and who it involves. I unfortunately do not share his opinion. Technically information that is classified is done so by a sovereign nation, not one being run by outside interests of those that amount to be a batch of asshole closet case communist pedophiles that were responsible for installing Adolf Hitler and bringing about WWII. As far as sovereignty is concerned in the US, you might just want to take a glance of the Wikileaks release on the TPP deal while waving goodbye to the petro dollar. Bush Sr. did tell Jr. 'Do not go in there' for good reason, and say hello to the life style imposed on those in South Africa by the same batch of assholes mentioned above.

"If it was important enough he should have been willing to do the time"

Snowden has publicly stated that he is willing to do time.

However, had he not taken the course of action that he did then we would not know the extent of government spying and Snowden would be considered just another conspiracy kook making accusations without any hard evidence.

Snowden did the right thing and took the appropriate measures to do so. We all owe him our gratitude.

Valerie Plame was NOT outed by Bob Novak, nor by Dick Cheney or Scooter Libby. The leaker confessed to Patrick Fitzgerald (the independent prosecutor) long before Fitzgerald nailed Libby.

It is a well-documented historical FACT that the leaker was Colin Powell's assistant Richard Armitage (NOT a Cheney stooge or ally). Fitzgerald went on to prosecute and jail Libby for having a different recollection of a phone call from that of the other person on the line at the time (a "crime" with no proof or documentation and which was not part of what he was charged to investigate) and NOT for leaking Plame's name, which Libby did not in fact do. I am NOT a fan of Bush or Cheney or anybody else involved on either side in this affair - I just detest false history being passed-around until it becomes so "accepted" that more people believe it than believe in the actual facts (for this reason, I am a HUGE fan of Buzz Aldrin punching-out the moon-hoaxer who used to follow him around (smile))

Oh, and note to all you Cheney-haters who still cite the Plame case: Valerie Plame was NOT an undercover CIA agent in the field when she was "outed"; she was working in a comfortable office in Washington D.C. and plenty of people knew who she was. Are any of you "outraged" that President Obama "outed" our actual under-cover CIA station chief in Kabul Afghanistan????? Yeah, I thought so. Your faux-outrage over the Plame matter was just a political tactic - you people cared nothing for Plame or national security - if you did you'd be calling for Obama to be prosecuted and jailed as many of you were clamoring for with Cheney over Plame.

No US citizen was murdered by a drone, they were killed, legally. The law of war permits that. When you fight with the enemy in an armed conflict against the US you are part of the enemy and can be killed just like any other enemy combatant. That is what those US citizens had done, and it cost them.

Wrong.

Some of the Americans killed were fighting with the enemy. "Some" is not the same as "all".

http://www.motherjones.com/kev...
http://content.time.com/time/w...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.aclu.org/video/acl...

It's not like the Democratic party called him up and gave him permission to run. He declared his candidacy and then quickly and effectively put out a message that the majority of the country agrees with in a way that caused a lot of people to start talking about him. He forced his way into the Democratic contest, he was not "allowed" in. If they would have tried to push him away then there either would have been a lot of people asking questions about why some candidates aren't allowed to debate (which neither party wants to answer), or he would just run as an independent.

He wasn't "allowed" to run, he made it happen because people agree with his message. The reason why there is so much doubt around his candidacy is because the media and the parties keep telling the public that he is a fringe candidate. He's not fringe, he's mainstream. The media is trying to push fringe candidates like Clinton and Trump/Rubio/Cruz on people and call them mainstream, but the polls show that the majority of the country supports Sanders when people aren't being shoved loaded terms like "socialism", where they think it means something that it doesn't. You can see that in polls where people say that they agree with Sanders' positions, and also that they wouldn't vote for a socialist. The media is controlling the dialog, which is why you think Sanders is a fringe candidate or does not have a realistic chance at getting elected.

Paranoid bullshit.

Idiot that hasn't been paying attention.

Banning of expression and speech banning wrongthink
Banning of speech on university campuses and another banning costumes and another safe spaces, and no dissent safe spaces and pro-racial segregation. Did I miss anything, or do you need a few dozen more examples? This isn't isolated, you can find more examples of every single one.

Dude,

They don't challenge the legality of a law at trial. The Jury's role in deciding whether a law should be enforced is restricted solely to Jury Nullification, a practice that every Judge ever appointed has done his damndest to minimize because of it's unsavory use in the past. That means that if you're talking about the legality of a law, and you're using any legal phrase that includes the word "trial" you're being unforgivably imprecise. Trial is a completely different stage of the process, a challenge to the NSA's practices would happen pre-trial.l If the Judge ruled in favor of the defense there's no trial because (as a matter of law) the Judge has ruled Snowden's behavior was not illegal. Since there's no trial, the Prosecution can appeal. OTOH if the Judge rules against the defense, the Espionage Act allows no public interest defense, so Snowden's only hopes would be to prove he didn't leak any documents. But the Defense could also appeal that ruling post-trial, which could be very complicated if they won.

And, as I said, The Ellsberg debacle is why his trial will be perfectly fair. The reason you think that Judge was biased isn't that he was applying the law improperly, it's that you think the law is already written the way you want when that is clearly not the case. I don't blame you for that. The English Majors who dominate the media aren't any better at actually comprehending technical legal documents then they are at comprehending any other sort of technical document; and most of them are so busy cheering for the cub reporters who beat Nixon on getting those Pentagon Papers published they literally haven't looked into what the law says about Ellsberg.They thought Nixon sucked, so they thought that when Blume ruled for Nixon Blume sucked, and it never occurred to them that if Blume was half as bad as they say nobody would ever have heard of Nixon's offer to make him FBI Director.

They really truly are clueless about the rules.

For example, have you read the Whistleblower Protection Act? It's pretty dense, but It says Snowden can't be fired for reporting misconduct through proper channels. Which would mean if he'd done what the Founders intended, and snitched to Congress, while staying in Hawaii, it would be more difficult to fire him (altho since he was a contractor they could probably fuck with his contract). But he left his job (which makes a bill that stops his boss in Hawaii from penalizing him at work somewhat superflous), he went through a ex-lawyer journalist who lives abroad (and thus is not a proper channel), etc.

In short, it simply does not apply to this case, or any other that uses the 1917 Espionage Act.

But since the media don't know that, they'll continue to go along in their belief that their sources are absolutely protected, they'll continue to tell you said sources are protected, they'll continue to imply that Obama's leaker conviction-spree is so bad the Courts will have to stop it soon, people like Snowden will continue leaking through them, which makes their ratings go up, makes future leakers likely to use them, and also (incidentally) makes said leakers go to prison; and people like you will continue to contribute to the process.

Seriously. A voice-mail to your Congressman asking him to call you back with his position on a) whether Snowden broke the law as it is currently enforced, and b) if so what changes to the law could fix that problem so the poor fucker could come home; would probably have taken you a lot less time then researching when that Whistleblower Act got passed. But you won't do it because you're in total denial about how the law works, and the media will continue to tell you you;re right about how the law works because if they didn't they'd feel incredibly guilty about grabbing eyeballs via leaks that will get Ed Snowden sent to prison.

I remember back in the 90s, when Loral sold US missile and space technology to the Chinese, after spending six to seven figures on key political figures and receiving waivers.

Donors want favors, politicians want money, it's a symbiotic relationship (politicians shake down donors, donors view it as an investment/protection money) which has become more and more overt over the years. It undermines the rule of law of course, and leads to corruption, but as long as politicians keep getting re-elected and donors keep getting what they want, the system will continue.

Actual position of Bernie Sanders: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"What I do not support is, under the guise of immigrant reform, a process pushed by large corporations which results in more unemployment and lower wages for American workers...."

"Furthermore, as someone who was led to believe that what economics was about was supply and demand, if you need workers in a certain area, you need to raise wages. I have a hard time understanding the notion that there's a severe need for more workers from abroad when wages for these jobs rose only 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2011. You see stagnant wages for high skilled workers, when these companies tell you that they desperately need high skilled workers. Why not raise wages to attract those workers?"

Also Bernie Sanders.

Sanders and Trump are the way to go. They're running as R and D, but they're very much opposed to the One Party.

The 3 year tech demonstration was supposed to aid in the control of the airspace around DC as reported by the Washington Post, it's supposed capabilities include detecting small radar cross section craft like cruise missiles and also manned and unmanned craft (ie large drones) so if they didn't identify something several times the size of a cruise missile in the DC airspace I'd call that a fail.

I am inviting you to move to a place where car owners are more than welcome.

Where "car culture" is in full effect.
Where vast acreage is set aside for parking, and great 10 lane freeways bustle and swell with the endless traffic you so desire.
A place where getting around with mass transit or a bicycle is possible, but very difficult and requires spending an extra two-three hours each day for your commute and the patience of a saint.
This is a place where it is routine to see massive lifted diesel trucks belching dark clouds of exhaust into the unassuming open window of a Prius owner eating a kale and hummus wrap.

A place where lowered Monte Carlos cruise slowly next to you with sub woofers so loud your fillings come out.

Please come to America! Land of the car, the truck, the traffic jam, and Road Rage.

You will be welcomed with open arms by the millions stuck in traffic, arguing over parking, raging after getting cut off on the onramp,

I'm amused at being called an SJW. Suffice to say, I'm on the opposite side of that debate. With regard to your evidence, please see this for an example of what I am talking about. There's plenty more to be found.

Furthermore, the FBI's own stats show that the ban/restriction on pseudoephedrine has made the problem worse. Before the ban, meth was mostly a mom & pop business. For the next 2 or so years after the ban meth sales dropped, but then the mexican cartels more than filled the gap with wholesale production (like Breaking Bad style industrial manufacturing importing the raw ingredients from China) and now instead of little guys who are mostly dumbasses selling to their neighbors you've got organized crime networks all over the country.

Meanwhile I don't feel safe buying a sudofed and there are a bunch of stories of people being arrested for having bad allergies. I don't have the link handy, but the very first person arrested for buying too much was buying it for his kid.

If the law says firing a gun within the city is illegal then it should be illegal regardless of other criminality in the vicinity.

People like you are why a law making it illegal to yell, "fire!" in a crowded theater actually has to spell out that it's legal when there is a fire. Because if it didn't, you would find yourself unable to apply common sense to the situation and find some poor sap guilty of the crime when he was really doing everyone a service. I'm not sure what causes it, but the inability to evaluate rules in context is a plague on our society. It leads to zero tolerance policies where kids get expelled for taking bites out of a Pop Tart in the wrong order. IMHO people who make rules like that are a threat to society orders of magnitude worse than the people their rules are supposed to effect.

trains without enough riders to break even

Wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Amtrak routes that high speed rail will replace actaully have plenty of passengers and make money. It's only the cross country routes that are the big money losers. Amtrak has wanted to shutter the routes but congress wont let them.

For example, ITT Technical Schools is the latest in a string of disasters in privatized for profit education. They got caught lying to pretty much everyone: state and federal authorities, investors, and students. Here's an example of how these scumsuckers operate.

The consumer watchdog accused the company of providing zero-interest loans to students but failing to tell them that they would be kicked out of school if they didn’t repay in a year. When students could not pay up, ITT allegedly forced them to take out high-interest loans to repay the first ones, the CFPB said.

All told, ITT is being investigated by at least 18 attorneys general and three federal agencies.

This comes on the heels of Corinthian Colleges declaring bankruptcy. Goldman-Sachs owned a large stake in them before they went under. "In 2010, CCi reported that it received 81.9% of revenue from Title IV federal student aid programs." Corinthian is also now the target of multiple civil suits and criminal investigations.

All the money that went down these rat holes would have been better spent on existing public education institutions, like community colleges and four year degree schools. This is just another painful example of how the private sector fails at some tasks and that many activities are best left to the government.

It's usually not the manufacturing that is so expensive but the research and testing needing to get the drug on the market. In this case neither company needs to do any research or additional testing with the FDA since the drug is well known and has been on the market for 60 years. That doesn't apply with a brand new drug which may have to go through years of testing even if the first version is perfect with no side effects.

According to a study done by Tufts University, Cost to Develop and Win Marketing Approval for a New Drug Is $2.6 Billion that "cost" includes (quoting these Washington Post and New York Times write-ups:

Its estimate includes another $1.2 billion in foregone returns investors would have otherwise seen while the drug was under development.

Basically, the money investors *could* have earned by simply putting the other money used for development into the market over the development period. So not actual cost, but lost earnings.

There is no "rise in violent crime". It's still lower than it was in the '90s, and one data point does not a trend make.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Also,

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.

With his remarks, Mr. Comey lent the prestige of the F.B.I., the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency, to a theory that is far from settled: that the increased attention on the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals. But he acknowledged that there is so far no data to back up his assertion and that it may be just one of many factors that are contributing to the rise in crime, like cheaper drugs and an increase in criminals who are being released from prison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...

So really, it could very well be that the rise in violent crime is the result of increased surveillance on the general population rather than increased surveillance on police.

You don't have to be dishonest to be in law enforcement, but it helps.

... is that we citizens are filming it more, and thus able to back up claims of police violence.

Violence AGAINST police, on the other hand, is down. (Watch! While authority cherry picks data and adjusts charts to reflect their narrative! More at 11!)

Whether or not to stop, detain, punch or shoot a suspect is always a judgement call — calculations weighting pros and cons, risk and reward are automatically made in our heads.

The additional scrutiny — and TFA talks about all kinds of scrutiny, not just video, that's Hugh Pickens' manipulations — shifts that balance towards the safer (for the policeman) course of action. Because if they do apprehend a dangerous criminal cleanly, at most, they'll get a pat on the back. But if they screw up, or even if they don't, but merely appear to — the entire "Hands up don't shoot" meme is based on a lie, remember? — their lives will change dramatically. For the worse.

The scrutiny is not going anywhere and that, on balance, is a good thing, in my opinion. The public — and the police — just need to learn not to rush to judgement. And the wronged cops need to receive their days in court — of public opinion — not merely "left alone", when they are exonerated. That might push the balance back a little...

Strangely I can't find much recently about his politics. According to this he is a libertarian who supports gay marriage, gives primarily to Democrats but not exclusively, and his PAC supports both parties.

... Actually suicide rates collapse if you take the guns away ...

To all the anti-gun nuts -

While I understand that your life is so boring that you just have to go around making up all kinds of silly lies ... but please, if you need to lie, please tell lies that are believable !

Do you know that South Korea has a suicide rate which is more than double of that of the United States?

Do you know Japan has a suicide rate of more than 60% higher of that of the United States?

Unlike the Americans, average South Koreans and Japanese don't own guns

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Here is a list of countries with their respective suicide rate

Wait, you think most taxi drivers are employees with full benefits? Not so at all. So are the evil taxi companies just selfishly "externalizing" all their costs?

See, e.g.:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/16/new-york-court-guts-a-groundbreaking-health-care-fund-that-would-have-changed-taxi-drivers-lives/

I took two Ubers a month ago in Minneapolis. The first driver was a young woman, an undergrad, studying computer science. She drives Uber about 15-20 hours a week to help cover college and living expenses. At 20 hours a week, she would not be eligible for full benefits anywhere.

The second driver was a retired lawyer who drives Uber whenever he feels like it, to keep active and talk to people (we shared some law stories, so I'm quite sure he was telling the truth about being a lawyer--not that *I'm* a lawyer!). He's retired and doesn't drive enough hours--or regularly enough--that any business in the country would consider him an employee.

Small sample size, but pretty interesting.

Uber drivers do not work set hours, have no obligation to Uber (other than completing a drive if they agree to start one), do not give two weeks notice when they quit, can work for the competition any time (simultaneously even!), etc. It baffles me that anyone would consider them employees.

You shouldn't say that anymore, because taxi drivers aren't necessarily any better off. The guy in that story was on Medicaid, you were paying for the taxi driver's healthcare.

Personally, I don't think healthcare coverage should be related to employment at all. It really doesn't make sense for them to be tied together, and makes people afraid of quitting a lousy job that they hate.

Some angry guy posted some fake stuff about Zoe Quinn, and that launched the entire shitfest. Reporting fake stuff is pretty much the definition of unethical journalism.

No her ex posted some true stuff about Zoe Quinn(FYI, those include actual screenshots and other various proofs), was hit with a gag order that blocked his first amendment rights to discuss it. It's now in the courts in MA, where Eugene Volokh and others are working to set a precedence based on the case.

Nothing but a set of speakers, anyway.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Security forces retreated from the Malaab area of Ramadi at 1:30 p.m., abandoning about 60 military vehicles, including military-grade Humvees, said Col. Nasser al-Alwani of the Ramadi police force. About half of the abandoned vehicles were sent by the U.S.-backed government on Saturday to reinforce the neighborhood, he added.

https://news.vice.com/article/...

Police and soldiers stripped out of their uniforms and abandoned their equipment on the road as they fled.

http://www.rferl.org/content/i...

One day before the Iraqi soldier gave his account to RFE/RL on May 25, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter accused Iraqi forces of showing "no will to fight" and having "failed to fight" in Ramadi despite "vastly outnumber[ing]" the enemy, retreating and leaving behind large numbers of U.S.-supplied vehicles, including tanks.

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

After the end of the war, both the CIA and the U.S. State Department were tasked with continuing to identify and collect arms that had flooded the country during the war, particularly shoulder-fired missiles taken from the arsenal of the Gaddafi regime,[32][33] as well as securing Libyan chemical weapons stockpiles, and helping to train Libya's new intelligence service.[29]

...

Multiple anonymous sources reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was used by the CIA as a cover to smuggle weapons from Libya to anti-Assad rebels in Syria.[30]:56[34][36][37][38] Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh cites an anonymous former senior Defense Department intelligence official, saying "The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms. It had no real political role." The attack allegedly brought an end to the purported U.S. involvement, but did not stop the smuggling according to Hersh's source.[39] In January 2014, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence cast doubt on this alleged U.S. involvement and reported that "All CIA activities in Benghazi were legal and authorized. On-the-record testimony establishes that the CIA was not sending weapons ... from Libya to Syria, or facilitating other organizations or states that were transferring weapons from Libya to Syria."[40]

Care to try again? The CIA was collecting arms, not distributing, unless you subscribe to the local Tin Foil Anonymous.

According to Richard Clarke's sworn testimony (you know, President Clinton's terror czar, states otherwise. His statement is that nothing the Bush Administration did - with all the evidence collected pre-Bush Administration - would have stopped 9/11. It was already underway: planned, plotted, and launched prior to the 2000 election.

For the United States hard data is surprisingly difficult to come by but the guardian says that 903 people have been killed by law enforcement so far this year. The Washington Post says that the number is consistently above 1000 per year.

In Australia between 1989 and 2011 there were 105 people killed by law enforcement so maybe 5-6 per year.

I make the US population about 14x the Australian population so per capita US law enforcement are killing more than 10x the number of people.

Why do you support high levels of gun ownership when it makes to less safe? Don't believe me? Take a look at the data. For every 1 criminal killed in self defence there are 34 murders and 2 accidental killings.

So what is your thinking here? That there is now no way to go back to a country where guns are rare and hard to come by, so it's an arms race that you are forced to participate in, perhaps? Or maybe you think most of those murders are just in bad areas and don't really affect you, so on balance your gun makes you safer. I'm genuinely curious.

I'm not going to insult you by suggesting that it might be because you think your gun will keep the government under control.

If you folks wish to repeal Obamacare, by all means try to do so.

Oh wait...you did already. 54 times.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Fail.

Except that at 14, you can legally own a gun in a number of states, at least as of 14months ago - Source

This would be a real big problem with black kids since over 80% of them grow up without a father. If theres guns in the house its usually dad who teaches them about safety. Now all they got is a morbidly obese black woman.

Is there any reason at all for this to be on Slashdot, except to push a general political agenda?

It's worse than you might think.

By associating toddlers with gun shootings they're making an emotional argument against gun ownership.

In short, we need to clamp down on gun ownership because we've now inflated the likelihood of a tragic incident in the minds of the reader. We do this by showing the enormous, large number without context, and by making it seem continuous and ever present.

Consider what your teenage daughter might think on reading the headline: One child a week gets shot! OMG!

This is just another non-evidence-based appeal for gun control, brought to light because the democrats are using the issue to help get elected.

And then, of course, they'll do nothing. Again.

Think it through. What contextual information might put the "one toddler a week" meme into perspective, and make it seem less important?

Except that at 14, you can legally own a gun in a number of states, at least as of 14months ago - Source

Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant).

Well, there are some cases that come very close. For example, Occidental College: Student Found Guilty of Sexual Assault After Incapacitation Standard Is Misapplied And then there are numerous articles that make it explicit that consent can be withdrawn any time during sex and going a few seconds past that "No" counts too. For example, this story. There should be more than 5-10 second grace period on that, don't you think?

Call me old fashioned or a SJW, but if I'm having sex and the other person says "no, stop" then I'll fucking stop, and stop fucking.

You don't need ten seconds to think about it.

There are records of every "official" email to and from her in the State Department servers. They have all been reviewed. Not a single one was found out of place. Not a single one was found to not be on the "released" emails Hillary disclosed. Not a single one contained classified documents. Not a single problem was found, and every single one was scoured.

That's not true. They recently found some she didn't turn over and numerous instances of classified information were on the server. Some information is classified because of where it comes from, including a lot of satellite imagery, and that was also found there.

"She's been investigated for years, and not one problem found"

There's been plenty of 'problems' found. Nothing that has yielded an indictment -- but enough that a reasonable person should keep her clear of public service.

"There are records of every "official" email to and from her in the State Department servers."

Clearly you've no idea what you are talking about.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us...

The State Department received the emails from the Department of Defense "in the last several days," State department spokesman John Kirby said. "

Those emails werent ON the state department servers. Because she sent them from her PERSONAL account to the DoD. How many other emails have yet to surface because they aren't on the State Department's archive?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...

Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community, found the two emails containing what he determined was “Top Secret” information in the course of reviewing a sampling of 40 of Mrs. Clinton’s work-related emails for potential security breaches.

You know... if I see enough tell tale clues that a rat has been in my kitchen (chewed hole in dog food, for example) I can decide that there *IS* a rat without actually SEEING it. There MIGHT be a logical explanation for the hole, but as far as Clinton goes, every excuse comes with a lot more tell tale clues. Example:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server said it has “no knowledge of the server being wiped,” the strongest indication to date that tens of thousands of e-mails that Clinton has said were deleted could be recovered.

And then this:

http://www.npr.org/sections/al...

And it was wiped....

She could be spitting your your face and you'd be saying "it's raining!" Please, I'm not saying "beyond a reasonable doubt" in the legal sense that she did anything illegal. I'm saying that a reasonable person could only conclude that she hasn't been forth-coming and should not be trusted.

(please note all my citations are either liberal or left leaning sources).

Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant).

Well, there are some cases that come very close. For example, Occidental College: Student Found Guilty of Sexual Assault After Incapacitation Standard Is Misapplied
And then there are numerous articles that make it explicit that consent can be withdrawn any time during sex and going a few seconds past that "No" counts too. For example, this story. There should be more than 5-10 second grace period on that, don't you think?

Economics is very amenable to scientific inquiry. Don't know where you got the idea that it isn't. Economics is studied using the scientific method very effectively. It is a difficult field of study because of its complexity but that is no different from any number of other scientific fields such as meteorology, ecology, geology and others.

No, it's really not. Microeconomics can be studied in a more-or-less scientific way. As for macroeconomics, the day that economists start making meaningful and accurate predictions is when I'll start taking them seriously. I'm far from alone in this.

Science frequently informs and underpins laws and morals. It also can study their effects.

We don't run experiments to determine whether homicide is good. Courtrooms are not scientific trials. The "test of truth" for morality is not something decided on the basis of repeated observation. Empiricism is not a one-size-fits-all tool.

Mathematics is really a language used by scientists to describe the world. It describes the world around us with uncanny precision. It's not a science but virtually every scientific inquiry utilizes math.

You're really failing at the core concept here. Mathematics is a formal system, probably best described by rationalism. Mathematical truth is the product of logic, not observation. The real world can frequently be modeled with mathematics, and with the right chosen axioms so can many other fictional worlds.

Religion is by definition NOT rational. It is faith in an unfalsifiable concept. What rationality it does have is largely argued from false or unprovable premises. Furthermore religions do not restrict themselves to purely logical conclusions from their premises. They frequently cherry pick arguments to support whatever view they wish to hold at the time. No, I disagree that religion is a form of rationalism.

I did not say religion was a form of rationalism. However, having absurd or unprovable axioms does not mean logic can no longer be applied. But when your system of logic is not based on "objective" observation, petitio principii is hard to avoid. Wait, are we talking about religion or economics here?

Where religion makes statements about the observable world, it can and often does conflict with empirical truth. Sometimes these things are called miracles.

Those of us who are not beholden to religions call them fictional stories or sometimes unexplained phenomena instead of miracles.

And those of us who are from Alpha Centauri call them "kkrgch'n". I'm pretty sure that, assuming you understood it, you agree with the point I was making there. I guess sometimes you're just so argumentative, even a semantic argument will do.

You need a Philosophy of Science 101 course. Religion, mathematics, and empiricism are all ways to determine truth, and empiricism (practiced as science) is not without its flaws. Namely, you can only verify what you can observe repeatedly, there is no absolute truth, and given that all observations have an error factor, all observations and theories are at least a tiny bit wrong. This is why science deals with levels of certainty, not proven facts.

Proof is the realm of mathematics. Not being dependent on this reality gives it the ability to express universally true statements. It can be used to model the world very accurately, but per Gödel it can either be complete or consistent but not both. And again, with any non-empirical system you cannot be sure that your truth applies

You must be Russian. Only they and the Americans have such a lopsided perspective of World War 2.

You must not be letting facts interfere with your storyline. If millions of Russians hadn't died defending their country, just how much harder would it have been to take back the continent if the western allies had faced the full might of the German military? We're talking three times or more the Nazi military presence, if they hadn't been tied up with fighting the very Russians you despise.

Quick deflection though.. Did the Germans kill more Russians than Stalin and Lenin?

What does that do to change the fact that Russia did more to beat the Germans than all the other Allied forces combined? Jack and shit, and Jack left town.

In any case, are you sure you want to move the goalposts to domestic deaths in the USSR, most of which were due to famine. Why is it that communists are always 100% responsible for every death through famine - completely ignoring the impacts of of WWI, a drought, a civil war, not to mention a foriegn invasion. Yet, Capitalist Exceptionalists are never are responsible for any famines resulting from their policies. Irish Potato Famine, heard of it - the country had a food surplus throughout the blight, but much of their agricultural output was exported for British profit. There's plenty of other examples to choose from.

So, you're not objecting to the famine, you're objecting to the communism. A classic case of Western Exceptionalists only giving a flying fuck about human lives or human rights as long as it serves their politics and historical revisionism.

"Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff."

I recall a moment in college when I was standing in the ruins of classic Rome with a friend of mine, reading to him a sign in one of the structures indicating where Julius Caesar was stabbed, and having him ask me, "Who's Julius Caesar?" Smart guy, graduated from college in three years, and has been a middle school science teacher ever since.

A central problem with our K-12 educational system has been too many cooks, i.e. politicians, in the kitchen. The central message they have been preaching without ceasing has been "More, more, more," and schools continue to suffer. Schools have become bloated with educational mandates that keep adding to the curriculum, and expect it sooner. For example, 25 years ago, my kindergarten classroom met for a half-day three days a week, where we learned our ABC's, learned how to count from 1-10, and otherwise drew crude drawings with crayons and played on the playground. Now every kindergartner needs to know how to read. The Finns still enjoy play time, and who has the better test scores? And don't get me started on Algebra expectations...

If we really want students to succeed, we need to give them room to grow by relaxing curricula standards, not adding more to them. If a smart guy can get through college and succeed in life not knowing who Julius Caesar was, does he need to know how to program a computer?

In my personal opinion, beyond the 8th grade, I think the only class every student should be required to take by law nationally is Civics. The care and maintenance of our nation depends on it. Leave the rest up to the states, and let national benchmarks like the ACT and SAT serve as a common metric students can measure themselves by.