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Anyone using anything but the National Weather Service for weather information is a fool consuming altered data proffered with the intent to draw eyeballs to adverts.

That really depends on the metro area.

For instance, in the DC area, we have the Capital Weather Gang. Read some of their blog posts and form your own opinions, but in my view, they are a valuable asset to the region. They present the NWS reports, but they also read and interpret other weather models and do a fantastic job explaining complex weather concepts to average Joes like me. They are introspective, always publicly evaluating their performance forecasting major events.

As for me, I read CWG and I get NWS alerts on my phone. That's about as accurate as you can hope for in this area.

The opinion of the "chief of operations" at the DEA on decriminalization
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dea-operations-chief-decries-legalization-of-marijuana-at-state-level/2014/01/15/17af548a-7e38-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

"Every part of the world where this has been tried, it has failed time and time again."

This is why we're not going to offer support and treatment.
This is why there will not be less suffering in our society.

It's not just enough for there to be a change in public opinion, there has to be a change in political will and a massive bureaucratic upheaval to push out everyone who has invested decades in being afraid of the public's consumption of drugs.

I would strongly disagree.. Your going to believe an agency, that by the way, wouldn't exist or be sufficiently reduced if drugs were legal, the same goons who continue to taboo marijuana with this 'it is a gateway drug', and all the other BS they continue to come out about with marijuana or any 'illegal' drug? There probably so delusional and confused if they watched Cheech&Chong movies they'd completely miss the irony of those movies, which makes fun of the taboos, to them they'd believe this is how and why marijuana should remain illegal.

Amsterdam legalized marijuana feeling that in doing so it would drop the abuse of Heroin and Cocaine, and while the DEA and other US agencies laughed it off waiting for failure it had an immediate impact on getting people off hard drugs, the other thing Amsterdam foresaw and warned the US about was the impending Meth epidemic, particularly labs popping up everywhere, which became another reason for them to legalize marijuana, figuring it would divert people from producing meth and growing marijuana, which worked, but if a person has the means and supplies there going to go another route..

And more to the point of 'legalize everything'. They also have clinics for Heroin users to acquire medical grade heroin, while it isn't country wide 'legal' it is legal to an extent, which is designed to teach users ways of getting off heroin, but should they feel the need to do it they can go to the clinic and be safer. Or get more personal care to get off of it completely.

There are ways to make it 'legal' without it being legal in the sense your thinking, hopefully you read this and realize it can be done, IF it is done the right way.

And to the /. article itself...... Which I must warn!! I cannot confirm it to be linked to the internet, as far as these people learning how to make this drug, but I will search it, I know a handful of sites where I can get the formulas for anything illegal, or 'prescribed'.

Here in western PA, we are seeing heroin OD's from the addition of fentanyl, not prescription grade either, this is real "Breaking-Bad" [in the sense Walt created a pure form of meth, compared to the mediocre shed lab grade] type fentanyl being made in a some underground lab. Most people can take 5-7 "bags" of the, usual, run of the mill heroin, even dealers are warning users not to do more then one bag of this stuff which has the stamps of "Theraflu" "BudIce" on them, but I seriously doubt that the suppliers are going to keep stamping the bags with those names.

Ironically this is a double edged knife, on one hand the State authorities came out and went public, after debating the fact that by publicly coming out, hardcore users are going to try and seek out this heroin, on the other hand a number of users going into rehab has risen because they fear this batch of heroin is going to be distributed in unmarked bags.

An instance where prescription drug formulas are causing just as much harm if not more so then illegal street drugs, in this case it is being mixed in with Heroin, but black

The opinion of the "chief of operations" at the DEA on decriminalization
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dea-operations-chief-decries-legalization-of-marijuana-at-state-level/2014/01/15/17af548a-7e38-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

"Every part of the world where this has been tried, it has failed time and time again."

This is why we're not going to offer support and treatment.
This is why there will not be less suffering in our society.

It's not just enough for there to be a change in public opinion, there has to be a change in political will and a massive bureaucratic upheaval to push out everyone who has invested decades in being afraid of the public's consumption of drugs.

So we should eliminate all systems that have waste in the government?

Absolutely!

My point was that everyone is so concerned about the cost of their school taxes (which they kind of can vote on) but no has a say about how much federal taxes are thrown away to the military were at least 10x the amount is spent (no one gets a 'say' on this).

We have a representative democracy so the usual "write to your state congressman/senator" advice, for what it's worth, applies if you wish to express an alternative view on how to vote on defense appropriations. I can sympathize however as, in practical terms, it feels like no say at all. Granted school taxes are decided via a more direct democratic process given the smaller and localized scale of government it involves, so one does feel more empowered.

A large percentage of people don't even pay school taxes but almost everyone gets to pay for the military.

That is a false statement. Please see this article for details. In fact, every homeowner, business, and renter (through their landlord) pays property taxes whereas slightly over half the population pays any federal income taxes. While I don't have citations, I'd wager the percentage of the population that is not homeless or living in property tax exempt homes is minuscule in comparison. So the truth is more likely the other way around.

My school district let about a third of the teachers go due to the closure of a business that was paying a 1/5 of the school taxes and is now gone. How do you fill a hole like that? Schools aren't even legally allowed to stock pile tons of cash so what prevents that type of catastrophe? No one is going to move to a school district that is teetering on collapse which only further compounds the problem.

Sounds like a pretty small tax base if a single payer shoulders 20% of the burden. The obvious solution is to increase the tax base and keep your businesses happy though that is generally easier said than done and impossible to prescribe a plan for knowing nothing of your local geography/economy. Are you living in a small and dying rural town perhaps?

Maybe if I could resolve my own town budgets before kicking a dime to the Feds we wouldn't have these issues.

That's wishful thinking and I too wish it were so! We certainly don't get much for our fed tax dollars in return. Somehow I feel that telling the IRS to get bent is unlikely to go over too well.

Throwing money at a problem doesn't magically fix things, but money seems to be the biggest complaint about schools from tax payers yet no one is screaming at voting polls i mass numbers about Federal waste.

Couple things, just cause they're bitching about money doesn't make it the correct solution to all that ails education...parenting & administrative waste are huge factors that may be being overlooked (point I was trying to make in my original post). As regards federal waste, see aforementioned remedy.

Also my original response was to the parent asking for better individual classroom instruction from teachers that let students meet their full potential. My question was how do you do that with less money? What answer did your response have to address that?

Several ways actually in no particular order

1. - consider a flipped classroom In your school
2. - Encourage parents to, well, parent better. Or learn how to if a good role model was unavailable to them. This includes taking an active role in educating one's child, attending to discipline, nutrition, physical fitness, and being a loving and available parent overall. If one cannot or will not discharge this basic parental duty (and yes th

As interesting as Snowden is, this is a distraction from the more important (and probably more urgent) question of... when are the criminals at the NSA going to be brought to justice?

Also, when do we fire the people that sold out our actual spy talent - with their far more targeted, far more 4th Amendment compatible tools like THINTHREAD - instead of continuing to give a paycheck to the assholes that let 9/11 happen so they could keep funneling money to their contractor friends to develop the far more expensive TRAILBLAZER? The families of the victims that died do this willful neglegence will probably want to file civil lawsuits, too.

A cornerstone of the very idea of "justice" is equal protection before the law, and these people need to get their day in court. If they do, then maybe we can start to put this feckless imbroglio behind us and move on, with only the usual political drama to worry about.

On the other hand, if we fail to accomplish this task - if we fail to obtain some basic symbol that the Constitution is still respected as the highest law of the land - then we've really given up any last pretense that this is any kind of civilized nation with a social contract.

He was already nominated in 2013, along with Manning, and at a time where it was very present in its implications in all the world. But the winner, if well to be respected for that, was too close to the current at that time american propaganda to sustain an invasion on Syria. What make you think this time will be different?

And since "terrorist threat" is not an extraordinary circumstance (went nine years without going below "yellow: elevated risk") that clearly wouldn't apply. It's an ordinary circumstance, our rights are being infringed, not temporarily suspended for an important cause.

Case in point: the patriot act is being used for the war on drugs, not the war on terrorism. If anyone believes that national security requests aren't likewise being used for very very ordinary law enforcement scams or industrial espionage... well then they probably can't understand most of the words in this post.

One thing is new - presidents in the past have left Congress out of the decision making, but the didn't tend to flatly defy Congress, declaring that they have chosen to ignore the law and write their own.

I don't think ignoring Congress is new. This quote may be apocryphal but Jackson's actions, or lack of, aren't. "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!". An easy recent target is this. Personally, my humble opinion is that the Executive Branch does have the authority to not enforce a law. However, I do not believe the Executive Branch has the authority to enforce a law that doesn't exist. I say this with trepidation but I think the Executive Branch should only act under approval from Congress (and presumably the Supreme Court), but inaction should ultimately be at the discretion of the Executive Branch. It's one thing for the President not to choose to invade Colorado over Federal drug laws and another to invade Colorado and bust up Coors because the Executive Branch decides alcohol should be banned.

I haven't seen anyone charged with crimes for black prisons, extraordinary renditions, and torture.

Perhaps it was before your time, but we have had people charged with crimes for torture, at least.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

Citation

See, apparently it's only torture if the one pouring the water isn't a red-blooded American.

Then the COURTS will look at EVIDENCE and decide if he qualifies for Whistleblower status.

Snowden and others have already talked about this at length.
The law does not allow for him (a contractor) to be a whistleblower.
If Snowden goes before a court, he'll be prosecuted under the Espionage Act,
most of the evidence against him will be classified, and he'll be convicted in a fairly open and shut case.

And the COURTS will tell the Executive to pound sand.

That's a wonderful scenario, but extremely unlikely.
The courts will follow the law, which leaves no room for Snowden to be found innocent.

Right now Snowden is not "wanted" for any listed CRIMES.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-charges-snowden-with-espionage/2013/06/21/507497d8-dab1-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html
06/21/2013

Snowden was charged with theft, "unauthorized communication of national defense information" and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person," according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Your post needs less CAPS and more facts.

Makes us really nervous when people talk this way.

"The tea party is the Republican Party"
http://www.newrepublic.com/art...

"More than half (54 percent) identify as Republicans"
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/te...

"Views of the GOP and the tea party are virtually the same across all demographics."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Students Matter, the group singing, is a front organization for a guy named David Welsh and his money. These aren't hardscrabble parents just trying to get a better education for their kids, its a Silicon Valley libertarian trying to bust unions for the sake of ideology.

If you want to see what American fascism would look like, well this is it.

Honestly, if this is what American fascism looks like, then American fascism looks silly and weak.

Look, I'm all about fairness. I think both sides of the political divide should be subject to the same level of government scrutiny. Preferentially enforcing laws on one group and not another is a kind of discrimination.

At the same time, some of your examples are some really sketchy Republicans.

James O’Keefe - You mean the guy who put out a doctored video in order to deceitfully sway public opinion? http://mediamatters.org/resear...

Dinesh D’Souza - If he's guilty, he's guilty. I mean it's not like Republicans haven't done underhanded and shadey things in the past, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if D'Sousa was doing illegal things. For example, how about this story about how Republicans repeatedly called a voter-pickup telephone number so that they could stop real (mostly democratic) voters from getting to the election polls on the day of an election? http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

In October 2002, Charles McGee, executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, was mailed a Democratic flier that offered Election Day rides to the polls. The circular listed telephone numbers of party offices in five cities and towns.

"I paused and thought to myself, I might find out -- I might think of an idea of disrupting those operations," McGee later testified.... When voting began Nov. 5, McGee's plan worked like a charm. For two crucial hours, an Idaho telecommunications firm tied up Democratic and union phone lines, bringing their get-out-the-vote plans to a halt. The effort helped John E. Sununu (R) win his Senate seat by 51 to 47 percent, a 19,151-vote margin.

McGee and two other participants -- Republican National Committee regional political director James Tobin and GOP consultant Allen Raymond-- have been found guilty of criminally violating federal communications law. Tobin will be sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H.

Or how about New Jersey governor's latest trick of shutting down traffic lanes to punish a mayor who wouldn't endorse him for governor? http://www.nydailynews.com/new...

How about the North Carolina's admission (on camera) that election changes were being pushed forward, not because of voter fraud, but rather, to "kick democrat's butts" (i.e. stop Democratic voters from actually voting). Jump to 3:30: http://www.thedailyshow.com/wa...

If your examples are examples of "fascism", then how is this also not an example of "fascism" coming from Republicans?

Republicans have used a lot of dirty tricks to win elections, so it's not really surprising that they'd end up in the crosshairs of investigations.

Now it's 2014 and the President is using the IRS, EPA, and ATF to harass and attack his political opponents.

Yeah, using the IRS, the Secret Service, the FBI, and perhaps the CIA against political opponents isn't a good thing.

I live in an area without brownouts, and have a house shaded by some large trees. What benefit do I get for buying you stuff? Sounds like someone trying to justify legalized theft. I hope you at least researched the manufacturer of the panels to make sure they're not dumping chemicals into the villages of developing countries. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Any evidence to support your allegation? I'm pretty damn sure that he got the traction he claims to have wanted before he started his attempt to systematically destroy our international espionage capability. Try him and hang him. He's proud of his treason.

Of course there is evidence.

Try this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

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

Yeah, I'm sure he got the traction he wanted...

They did not spend $700 million. The total cost of everything including call centers and all in the contract was $350 million. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Commericial company who did Healthcare.gov

And my 'favorite' - Oregon's botched by Oracle

It wouldn't be politically correct, but they could have had the work done much cheaper by cutting out the middle man and just hire Indians or an Indian firm directly.

Instead, they hired Indian developer resalers. Yep, that's all N. American companies - especially US companies - are: resalers of Indian and other Third World development talent.

Why spend the money on flashy suits with Rolex watches? Go direct! Go Indian!

Prosecutors claim Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was guilty of insider trading, and that his prosecution had nothing to do with his refusal to allow spying on his customers without the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But to this day, Nacchio insists that his prosecution was retaliation for refusing to break the law on the NSA's behalf.

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

Um, Fox corroborates their stories before they air them.

YOU might not like what they say, (and really it boils down to that, doesn't it), and YOU might find their sources suspicious, but
I suspect you had no problem believing CBS.

If a fight broke out in a british cinema, there'd be a punch-up, the police would be called and someone would be spending the night in the cells.

[..]And that's how it tends to work: there are people carrying all around, I guess, but you'd never know it 99.9% of the time (if you're a layperson who wasn't trained to recognize someone carrying), since those people understand what's at stake, take their responsibility seriously, and know that there are laws barring them from even hinting to someone else that they are carrying.

In America you get shot.

This whole story is just weird[...]. But your sort of generalization isn't helpful either, since it overexaggerates an outlier, rather than recognizing that America's gun violence problem has seen a massive decline over the past two decades, one which, ironically, has largely gone unnoticed

Well the decline seems to be less spectacular lately (link) and is also a global trend aparently. Still compared to the UK (to which the GP was refering) it is still more than 10 times higher!
(link)
Maybe not such a strange remark, since both countries are at the oposite side of curve.

Everything Snowden reveals is absolute truth... Why just the other day Iran reported that Snowden revealed the true force behind the US government. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/01/13/iranian-news-agency-says-the-u-s-is-secretly-run-by-nazi-space-aliens-really/

As a side note, the United States is already one of the biggest spenders on education, and yet gets very mediocre results.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/25/where-u-s-stands-in-education-internationally-new-report/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/

So even if they decide to throw a lot more funding for this STEM education it is unlikely to have any real impact.

This legislation does not repeal the new light bulb efficiency standards. It just de-funds them.

AFAIK, this means the law stands, but will not be enforced. Not the same as repeal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/14/heres-a-breakdown-of-whats-in-congress-1-012-trillion-spending-bill/

My guess is it is the cash crop subsidies to a large part. Keeping corn cheap makes things with sugar or oil cheap. If the food is processed/frozen it has much less spoilage. Over half of the food grown is wasted: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/22/how-food-actually-gets-wasted-in-the-united-states/ a lot of that is prevented by preservatives/freezing. The fresh greens: not so much.

How is Social Security financed?

About 96 percent of workers must pay a certain amount of their paycheck, generally 6.2 percent, into the system, an amount that is matched by their employers. (Some state and local workers don’t participate in Social Security.)

This results in a 12.4 percent tax on income, as most economists would agree that the full amount is taken from the worker’s wage compensation.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits. So, Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In exchange, Social Security receives interest-bearing Treasury securities. The value of those bonds is now nearly $2.8 trillion.

All they did was fuck up tracking guns that were sold to known drug runners by people whose idea of tracking gun sales is to write them on rolls of toilet paper and whose idea of background checks is to look behind the guy.

No, it's worse than that. They simply didn't track these weapons or notify Mexican authorities that they were doing this (Mexican authorities learned about Fast and Furious when the scandal became public via whistleblowers after the death of a US Border Patrol agent involving two guns from the program), and the gun sellers were in on the alleged sting and were authorized by the ATF agents involved to sell those weapons as they did.

In addition, the Sinaloa Cartel got a free ticket for at least a year to smuggle guns and who knows what else into Mexico in addition to those 2000 or so guns. Maybe it was a sting and maybe it was substantial aid for a favored cartel.

He's half right, Solyndra started the process to get the loan in 2007. Should Obama have known to cut them off halfway through? Who knows... They didn't get the money then "promptly go bankrupt" though.

Yes, he should have cut off the process. And yes, they did go promptly bankrupt since they were out of cash in about 15 months of getting the loan money and bankrupt in two years.

When desktop displays get to be that big, they need to be curved. Here's Samsung's 105-inch curved display.

CSEC Admits It 'Incidentally' Spies On Canadians

So, go to Europe then. Oh, that's right.

The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy Too
France - Alarm over massive spying provisions in new military programming law

Why is this going on? Is there some sort of pattern that could explain it?

Iran’s fingerprints in Fallujah
Report: Canadian Terrorists Planned Truck Bomb Attack
At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
Dutch Arrest 12 Somalis on Terror Suspicions

CSEC Admits It 'Incidentally' Spies On Canadians

So, go to Europe then. Oh, that's right.

The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy Too
France - Alarm over massive spying provisions in new military programming law

Why is this going on? Is there some sort of pattern that could explain it?

Iran’s fingerprints in Fallujah
Report: Canadian Terrorists Planned Truck Bomb Attack
At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
Dutch Arrest 12 Somalis on Terror Suspicions

Well, to be the devil's advocate, in fact fewer and fewer soldiers are dying in wars the more advanced the weaponry gets.

I realize this is a very minority position on this page. But it's pretty easy to take a position against defense weaponry and feel on a moral high ground, and pretty easy to adapt a fearful / risk-averse position to unknown change and new developments. It's harder to present a risk-benefit analysis that says electronics wars are hurting more people. It's not impossible to imagine that the robots will do a better job, and we'd have fewer headlines like "US Marine Sargent Kills 16 in Kandahar, 9 of them children". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar_massacre]

FTFY

For example:
"Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution stated that although accurate data on the results of drone strikes is difficult to obtain, it seemed that ten civilians had died in the drone attacks for every militant killed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan#Civilian_casualties

and:
  "In Yemen, Human Rights Watch investigated six selected airstrikes since 2009 and concluded that at least 57 of the 82 people killed were civilians, including a pregnant woman and three children who perished in a September 2012 attack."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-strikes-killing-more-civilians-than-us-admits-human-rights-groups-say/2013/10/21/a99cbe78-3a81-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html

So, instead of increasing prices on the Demand side of wireless data, the carriers are creating new revenue on the Supply (content) side. Sounds logical, but the next step will be data shaping so that sponsored data will get priority over non-sponsored data. The notable exception will be the carriers' media partners (AT&T Wireless has their cousins at U-Verse, Verizon has bundling with COX, etc.). As data caps inevitably drop, you'll be able to stream your CNN and Duck Dynasty, and you'll get your iTunes and Google Play; but any independent purveyor of media will now have a much higher cost to market, because they will pay up to get access to your device via wireless networks. This is a squeeze on Netflix and the would be Netflix competitors out there.

The carriers want to control your access to media and charge you more for media that isn't generating direct revenue for them (via subscription or advertising). This is why they oppose public wifi. It is a classic case of the troll under the bridge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/07/31/why-does-amazon-have-more-books-from-the-1880s-than-the-1980s-blame-copyright/ claims there is a SIGNIFICANT drop off of books on amazon after about 20 years. So it appears that something in the range of 25 years (at least for books) is a fine length of time. I don't see why that wouldn't work for any other medium.
Any period of time that is longer than the average lifetime of a human, isn't really limited.

Yes. What's your point? Since they were created we've known that's what the FBI is up to.

The DHS is the enforcement arm of the "national security" secret police, so the FBI is moving up in the world. The DHS is already showing up a ball games, I wouldn't be surprised if they start replacing local cops -- Or, those offices just get re-branded, they're already being militarized. Anything to don the prestigious cloak of national secrecy.

Kind of makes the NSA redundant though, eh? Nothing to worry about though, eh? They're not checking for our "papers, please", they're just building dossiers on everyone of us just in case.

> I understand that this is predominantly liberal media, and believe it or not, I am predominantly liberal. I voted for Obama. I believe the Republicans are working very hard to destroy our Democracy. I believe many of the Democrats are eager to help them.

Good to hear that you have a worldview of a political simpleton. It helps explain the rest of the post.

> However, I can say this with absolute certainty. Who gave him the right? Was he elected? Did someone make him king? Did God anoint him? Access is not permission to steal.

If we followed your logic, we won’t have whistle blowers. Who gave Daniel Ellsberg the right to leak Pentagon Pagers to NY Times? Was he elected? Did someone make him king? Did God anoint him? Access is not permission to steal.

Were you fine with him then? Ellsberg believes that Snowden, given current legal climate of the Obama administration, did not have a choice to do anything differently.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html

You seem to just not like these leaks because you are a hyper-partisan.

> Snowden, by any description, by any definition is the bad guy here.

Don’t confuse your opinion with universal facts. In my opinion, there are no real bad guys. Snowden is not a bad guy; neither is NSA. Things can go horribly wrong without bad guys and someone to hate.

> He is a traitor.

Look up the definition of a traitor. He does not fit at all. His goal was to help US citizenry and the rest of the world, not help US enemies. You can argue that he was naïve (which I don't think he was at all), but you cannot argue that he is a traitor. But hey, these days it is fashionable to call people you don't agree with - traitors (Assange was called a traitor to US, even when he was not a US citizen). There are plenty of articles written on this by now, including in yesterday’s Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-make-a-deal-with-snowden/2014/01/06/33fb8e2c-770a-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html

> It doesn't matter that his results are good. It doesn't matter that the NSA takes a couple of hits or did some bad things.

Explain.

> He threatens that the "Worst is yet to come."

Cite.

> Face it, this is a bad scary world. Russia and China are not our friends.

Neither is it cold war era. Don’t forget that China is the biggest trading partner for US, that Chinese culture is fairly popular in US, as is US culture and universities among Chinese elite. You need to shed this “us vs. them” mentality.

> They look out for their own best interests.

Duh? They would be fools if they did not. You might have forgotten Opium Wars, but the Chinese did not. China is a suspicious friend of US because it got bitten before.

> When you don't look out for your own best interest as a nation then you turn into Portugal.

And US best interest is to have rule of law (can’t have life destroying treatments for whistle blowers like William Binney and expect that there won’t be whistle blowers like Snowden next) and not turn into a surveillance state. After all, that is what was supposed to separate US form the communist bloc of the old.

> Snowden will never be given Clemency. At this stage in his life I would suspect the only thing keeping him alive is the fact that there is the threat that something he has which might be "Really Big" hasn't been released.

Snowden already made it clear in the Gellman interview that there is no Deadman’s switch.

S

> I understand that this is predominantly liberal media, and believe it or not, I am predominantly liberal. I voted for Obama. I believe the Republicans are working very hard to destroy our Democracy. I believe many of the Democrats are eager to help them.

Good to hear that you have a worldview of a political simpleton. It helps explain the rest of the post.

> However, I can say this with absolute certainty. Who gave him the right? Was he elected? Did someone make him king? Did God anoint him? Access is not permission to steal.

If we followed your logic, we won’t have whistle blowers. Who gave Daniel Ellsberg the right to leak Pentagon Pagers to NY Times? Was he elected? Did someone make him king? Did God anoint him? Access is not permission to steal.

Were you fine with him then? Ellsberg believes that Snowden, given current legal climate of the Obama administration, did not have a choice to do anything differently.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html

You seem to just not like these leaks because you are a hyper-partisan.

> Snowden, by any description, by any definition is the bad guy here.

Don’t confuse your opinion with universal facts. In my opinion, there are no real bad guys. Snowden is not a bad guy; neither is NSA. Things can go horribly wrong without bad guys and someone to hate.

> He is a traitor.

Look up the definition of a traitor. He does not fit at all. His goal was to help US citizenry and the rest of the world, not help US enemies. You can argue that he was naïve (which I don't think he was at all), but you cannot argue that he is a traitor. But hey, these days it is fashionable to call people you don't agree with - traitors (Assange was called a traitor to US, even when he was not a US citizen). There are plenty of articles written on this by now, including in yesterday’s Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-make-a-deal-with-snowden/2014/01/06/33fb8e2c-770a-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html

> It doesn't matter that his results are good. It doesn't matter that the NSA takes a couple of hits or did some bad things.

Explain.

> He threatens that the "Worst is yet to come."

Cite.

> Face it, this is a bad scary world. Russia and China are not our friends.

Neither is it cold war era. Don’t forget that China is the biggest trading partner for US, that Chinese culture is fairly popular in US, as is US culture and universities among Chinese elite. You need to shed this “us vs. them” mentality.

> They look out for their own best interests.

Duh? They would be fools if they did not. You might have forgotten Opium Wars, but the Chinese did not. China is a suspicious friend of US because it got bitten before.

> When you don't look out for your own best interest as a nation then you turn into Portugal.

And US best interest is to have rule of law (can’t have life destroying treatments for whistle blowers like William Binney and expect that there won’t be whistle blowers like Snowden next) and not turn into a surveillance state. After all, that is what was supposed to separate US form the communist bloc of the old.

> Snowden will never be given Clemency. At this stage in his life I would suspect the only thing keeping him alive is the fact that there is the threat that something he has which might be "Really Big" hasn't been released.

Snowden already made it clear in the Gellman interview that there is no Deadman’s switch.

S

Al Qaida killed as many people on 11 September 2001 as the Japanese killed on 7 December 1941. The US went to war with both despite the fact that traffic deaths killed more people than enemy attacks in both those years by 10x or more.

Al Qaida has not reached the Gates of Vienna yet, but they aspire to eventually. There is a choice: Fight the fire in the frying pan, wait to fight it until the kitchen burns, or wait to fight it when the house burns. Plenty of people seem to be saying, "Don't fight it at all." That isn't the choice you have unless you are content to consign your children or grandchildren to being slaves.

Al-Qaeda-linked force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq

Al Qaida and its allies have retaken Fallujah, which was taken by US forces in one of the harder battles in Iraq. They fight to take Syria, Yemen, and other lands. They cast a longing gaze at Spain. In time they think Europe and the world.

Alarm in Spain over al-Qaeda call for its "reconquest"
HAMAS Targets Spain

Interesting thesis but facts don't back it up.

1. Waning economic power. 'Waning' means decreasing. Well it isn't. It's just some alarmist claim, just like when Gen LeMay was going around claiming the Russians had 1500 ICBMs. Well after the fact it was found they had 4.

2. Over-sized military spending isn't a sign of collapse.

3. Religion becoming more important than science and education. Um this is not new. Religion has always been #1 in the US. If anything religion is declining in the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-an-america-that-is-losing-faith-with-religion/2013/03/25/10d9fcb8-9582-11e2-bc8a-934ce979aa74_story.html

In fact 2012 was the year in which Protestants became a minority in America.

we will not be happy .... until the fear mongering military industrial complex bankrupts this country. Rome was not built in a day, but neither did it fall in a day. We are falling now, will we catch it?

Rome didn't go bankrupt, it fell to barbarian invasion. Well, the barbarians just took another city, one we had taken from them, but now they have it back.

Al-Qaeda-linked force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq

They are fighting in many places around the world to advance their causes. Eventually they are almost certain to become an enormous problem in Europe.

If you are worried about the US going bankrupt, it won't be because of defense spending, which is a part of the Constitutionally designated responsibility of defending the country, but rather social welfare spending combined with the growing weight of the deficit.

Medicare and Other Entitlements Are Crowding Out Spending on Defense

So to be accurate you should be complaining about Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and so on, piling up a crushing weight of spending and debt. That constitutes the major part of Federal spending.

Snowden said two things on this matter in the Gellman interview:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

1. “I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

2. Deadman switch is a terrible idea in his case. He said it was more like a suicide switch (even if he hypothetically wanted to harm NSA) since now he would be painting a target on himself for other foreign intel services that might want to see the full cache.

“That sounds more like a suicide switch,” he wrote. “It wouldn’t make sense.”

Ellsberg himself is on record saying that Snowden did the right thing and that doing what Ellsberg did would no longer have worked:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html

Perhaps, but that has no bearing on what Snowden did. he made a choice and now faces the consequences. Quite frankly, since he committed espionage against the US while a citizen, given the challenges others have had trying to secure a release in such circumstances I would be surprised to see Snowden get any sort of clemency. A plea deal, perhaps, but that's his bets hope if he wants to return to the US.

Ellsberg himself is on record saying that Snowden did the right thing and that doing what Ellsberg did would no longer have worked:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html

The Washington Post cites this incident as a reminder that Java has become an Internet security menace.

You can read about Java as the Internet security menace in the link above, but first you need to enable Java Script to read the article.

It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Tornado activity hits 60-year low 2013 Atlantic hurricane season wrap-up: least active in 30 years

Yes it will. Or next week. That's kind of the point.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/unseasonable-tornadoes-in-midwest-damage-illinois-towns-killing-6/2013/11/18/36c26332-5064-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html

It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Tornado activity hits 60-year low
2013 Atlantic hurricane season wrap-up: least active in 30 years

First off, most of the military is right out in the open. There are SMALL funds that are black, but more than 95% of the budget is in the open. As to NSA's budget, here you go. You will see that we spend 10B on NSA. THAT is not much at all. In fact, our entire blackbudget is less than 53B. That is what we use to figure out what terrorists, and hostile nations such as China, are up to. Basically, it allows us to stay OUT of war, or at the least minimize it, rather than putting us into deep war.

And had Snowden simply released information about spying on Americans or even the budget (which was also bad), he might be considers a whistle blower. All of the rest is a disaster.

To a first approximation there are no terrorists.

Not really. It depends on where you are.

Al-Qaeda-linked force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq

Terrorists are not static, and can move from country to country. It is common for terrorists in one country to be part of a plan to attack another country. One of the terrorist cells that attacked the US on 9/11 was from Frankfurt, Germany. Al Qaida eventually ended up fleeing Iraq back around 2007-2009 due to the effectiveness of US forces in combating them. One of the places they fled was Afghanistan, which is why it heated up again so much. Now they are concentrating in Syria, and moving into Iraq again with ugly results.

You should also recognize that many people have been arrested and convicted of terrorism related offenses in the US, Canada, and Europe since 9/11. There have been hundreds in the US alone.

I think you just show your ignorance of Catholic theology and ecocnmics here. Pope Francis did not say that supply side economics were a failure. He said that adherance to supply side economics could not replace charity when dealing with the poor.

That is a very interesting interpretation of what Pope Francis wrote. In fact, he never mentioned anything about supply-side economics and its ability or inability to "replace charity".

Here's the money quote from his mission letter:

âoeSome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,â Francis wrote in the papal statement. âoeThis opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacraÂlized workings of the prevailing economic system.â

âoeMeanwhile,â he added, âoethe excluded are still waiting.â

He's pretty clear about the "inability" of free markets and economic growth to "succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.â

I'm amused by the way conservative Catholics and other purveyors of the American Civil Religion (evangelical Christianity) are trying to spin the Pope's pretty straightforward statement.

Here's the full text of the Pope's letter:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/pope-francis-denounces-economic-inequality-consumerism/619/

Let's be clear; the NSA has not broken the letter of the law, simply because there are judges, and a government backing those judges, that deems what the NSA is doing is appropriate and legal.

Except the courts were lied to, and there is no oversight. There are thousands of documented cases of abuse. What the NSA is doing is far from legal.