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Ironically, it's Google that's facing antitrust issues by abusing FRAND standard patents for extortion on basic things like H.264 and WiFi.
Meanwhile Microsoft and Apple have made a public and binding declaration that they won't use FRAND patents for injunctions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/eu-rules-against-googles-motorola-mobility-unit-over-patent-claim/2013/05/06/00be129c-b666-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html

As it is Liz seems unable to produce a smile. Her frowning face isn't exactly the best way to promote our country and its heritage.

HM Queen Victoria seems to have done well without a cheery visage.

HM Queen Elizabeth is certainly able to smile, as you can see in the second photo as she contemplates an object of delight (to many), as well as cause them.

Neo-con: a conservative who supports a strong-pro-Israel middle east policy. I don't think Romney had a position either way on that

His whole foreign policy page was *titled* "American Century" and he gave a speech on a "New American Century."

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-10-07/politics/35277977_1_clarity-of-american-purpose-mitt-romney-isolationist-shell

He didn't think of that on his own. His foreign policy page and speech echoed the Project for a New American Century and its descendant the Foreign Policy Initiative.

Listen to his speech, then read this:

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

Then look at the signatories.

And read the FPI statement:

http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/about

Former members of PNAC are now members of FPI. Indeed, 3 of the 4 board members of FPI were Romney's foreign policy advisors. Dan Senor (his head foreign policy wonk) said on Meet The Press that we'd unquestionably back Israel in an invasion of Iran. Romney didn't back away from that.

Romney is a neocon.

We narrowly escaped having to pay for a *third* war in the middle-east.

--
BMO

...All without a single patriot in the government going public and blowing the lid off this

Thus far, we've had the same story from a number of whistleblowers:

Former NSA technical director William Binney.

Former house intelligence committee staffer Diane Roark

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein

At what point would you consider the lid blown?

What good did all the control and data for the USSR and East-Germany? The latter really had perfected the art of its citizens spying on its citizens and still: It just collapsed. You can't really control a population. There are just too many people and when they decide to do something all your control is moot.

That's actually the point Schneier tries to make: From a certain point on collecting more and more data the ROI (and eroding civil liberties is one of those "investments") just isn't there anymore. You're sitting in a nice deep hole and busy yourself with digging it deeper.

The Washington Post:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

"Impossible to determine", exactly. The US is so poor and the government spends so much without getting anything useful done because the wars it sprays over the world and the cold war on the people.

It would be wiser to accept some risks. You can't (and don't want to!) have a state in which two young people can't get at some black powder and pressure cookers and learn how to make a bomb. This is madness.

If you add in the Muslims who practice genital cutting

If you do that, you have to include most Jews and half of Genteels on your list of "terrorists". Before anyone gets butthurt over calling circumcision MGM, only a minority of FGM involves the removal of the clitoris or sewing up the vagina like a turkey - which is indeed worse than circumcision. Type IA and IIA of female genital cutting involves trimming away some of the outer labia or clitoral hood - which is of course directly analogous to male circumcision.

If you really think honor killings aren't terrorism, you need to talk to a couple females. If you can find any.

Females are the ones who usually turn in the females for "honor killings". For some reason, that part of the storyline is always left out. Just like it is with FGM, which is performed by...females:

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

        There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.

        As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.

You are incorrect about Australia's statistics. The result of the gun ban is disputed, but it's generally accepted that the ban led to a large decrease in suicides, and a smaller but still statistically significant decrease in homicides. We also haven't had a single spree shooting since the 1996 National Agreement on Firearms, whereas we had 13 spree shootings (four fatalities or more) in the 18 years before the ban.

As for gang violence, gang violence accounted for 1% of all homicides in 1980 and 6% of all homicides in 2008.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/25/yet-a-new-pearson-problem-with-testing/
Today, due to a problem with Pearson’s central server in Iowa, the test centers could not operate and we were not allowed into the test center for 5 hours after the scheduled time.

Based on this article it appears the service has not been down entirely for 5 days.

Never mind warrants, they used to convict people based on bullet alloy analysis which has ZERO validity. Dogs are at least good sometimes and sound in theory. Bullet alloy analysis was NEVER valid, and was used to justify executing people. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/17/AR2007111701681.html

Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
April 27, 2012

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges.

Romney Rules Out Compromise: I Won't Accept $1 In New Taxes For $10 In Spending Cuts
Jun 17, 2012

SCHIEFFER: You were one of the vast majority of Republicans to signed the pledge circulated by the leading antitax advocate Grover Norquist, no new taxes under any circumstances. And I remember once back during one of the primaries, you were asked if you would agree to $1 in taxes if you could get $10 cut in spending cuts, and you said at that time, no, I wouldn't even accept that. Do you still feel that way?

ROMNEY: Well, we all felt that way. And the reason is that government, at all levels today, consumers about 37% of our economy.

SCHIEFFER: But do you still feel--

ROMNEY: Let me go on and explain. The answer is I do feel that way. [...]

A Republican couldn't even run for President without dismissing 1:10 taxes to cuts.
Both parties have problems, but not all problems are equal.

It's not just the war spending, it's how the money is spent on war spending. An already expensive situation is made even more expensive through no-bid contracts and private contractors in general. You have Halliburton and Xe (formerly Blackwater) and many other private contractors gouging the government for services that would have been much more inexpensive and efficient if still done by the military. Yes that includes all those growing numbers of no-bid contracts that this administration is continuing to hand out, just like the previous one did.

That's not how the bill was written: agencies were given no discretion at all as to what and where they could cut.

The sequester is part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, but it's not the first time sequestration was used. It was first used in 1985, with the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act.

The Congressional Research Service published a report on the sequester (PDF link) that provides a very good overview of what sequestration means:

"In general, sequestration entails the permanent cancellation of budgetary resources by a uniform percentage. Moreover, this uniform percentage reduction is applied to all programs, projects, and activities within a budget account."

Sequestration is as across-the-board as you can get. Every "program, project and activity" that's not exempt from the sequester gets cut by an equal percentage. That's the way the bill was written, and that's the bill that was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President.

Sequestration was meant to be as blunt and distasteful an alternative as possible, to give the supercommittee (remember them?) and Congress incentive to come up with a deal.

Before you go blame the administration for ensuring the cuts went to essential services instead of extraneous expenses, read this.

Just to back up my claims that this is a great book and that it fits your requirements: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052601855.html

Looks like Texans are the big leechers:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-08-20/business/35270608_1_job-growth-rick-perry-public-sector-jobs

"Between December 2007 and [June 2011], private-sector employment in Texas declined by 0.6 percent while public-sector jobs increased by 6.4 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, government employees account for about one-sixth of the workforce in Texas."

Pulling up by the bootstraps, my foot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html

As I am given to understand it, the No-Fly list consists of a list of the names of known terrorists, terrorist suspects, and the aliases that they have used. Back in 2004, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times at airports because "T. Kennedy" was an alias used by a terrorist suspect. It took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed -- a process likely to be more painful and time-consuming for the average individual who only has access to the DHS TRIP ('Traveler Redress Inquiry Program') site.

Except the FBI have said he's not a suspect?

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-16/national/38574599_1_saudi-suspect-saudi-official-boston-marathon

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/terrorism/294839-saudi-student-hurt-in-bombing-not-a-suspect-not-being-deported

I think you missed the point. Google has published the patches but the carriers have not distributed them.

Actually, may be they have. In the sources the ACLU is using for its FTC complaint, the most thorough and well researched article they're using to support their point, is purposefully not counting minor updates:

(Note that we define "update" as a major point release of Android—2.2 Froyo, 2.3 Gingerbread, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. More minor updates or firmware releases are not accounted for here.)

Now I understand Android users getting pissed off for not getting major updates, but if we're really talking about "security updates", minor versions should at least be counted. Gingerbread for instance is not going away anytime soon. All manufacturers for instance are still making the cheaper single processor Gingerbread phones, and they currently have no plans of ever stopping that (at least not for the lower end of the market). Does that mean that Gingerbread is insecure? Not in the least, Google is still making minor security updates for Gingerbread and will probably continue to do so for years to come.

And ACLU's Christopher Soghian, author/first signature of the two on the formal ACLU complaint, is quoting a Washington Post article which is only quoting himself, ACLU's Christopher Soghian, as the sole source. WTF? Why did he even feel the need to reference that article? Is his ego more important than the point he is trying to support?

Also, I can no longer find the reference, but the last time his name came up, someone on slashdot found his linkedin profile in which he immediately described himself as being an iPhone owner. And yes, I realize the irony of quoting a source I can no longer find, when I just complained about someone referencing an article in support of his point quoting himself as the sole source.

But assuming I'm telling the truth, or assuming you remember seeing what I saw, who would do that on their linkedin profile? Does he post that on his resume as well? I can think of more subtle ways to communicate one's membership in the iPhone owners club. And if anyone was coming to the rescue of Android users, I would prefer that person to be an Android user/owner himself (after all, there are so many), instead of a person who proudly wears his iPhone as some kind of badge of honor instead (again, that's assuming you think I'm even telling the truth about what I read from his linkedin profile, you may not even believe me of course).

"No controlling legal authority."

When I first started hearing these tech giants complaining about H1-B rules, I thought, "I guess that's okay. I've had many good friends from out of the country and I wouldn't mind more diversity in my field." However, at this point (and at the risk of sounding like a racist), I find Zuckerberg's suggestion that "the most talented and hardest-working people" are elsewhere as a borderline insult. His article arguing for reform offers little more than his own personal opinion. Where are the facts? Even the ones he lists out aren't that convincing. If we really do grant VISAs to ~60% of the foreign graduate students that are educated in this country, I'd call that extremely generous. What would it say to the world if we granted VISAs to 100% of graduate students? That the United States is the only place worth being for an educated person?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201703.html has some references where one of Bush's large nominal vacations included work being done.

Actually, that 90% number seems to have been pulled out of thin air. From the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/08/why-do-people-hate-deficits/

"The 90 percent figure comes courtesy of Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart in their paper “Growth in a Time of Debt.” They found that debt loads above 90 percent were associated 1 percent lower growth rates. That’s pretty bad. But there are a lot of potential pitfalls in this analysis. “If one reads their paper carefully, it is clear that Reinhart and Rogoff picked the 90% figure almost arbitrarily,” Yale’s Robert Shiller has written. “They chose, without explanation, to divide debt-to-GDP ratios into the following categories: under 30%, 30-60%, 60-90%, and over 90%. And it turns out that growth rates decline in all of these categories as the debt-to-GDP ratio increases, only somewhat more in the last category.”

Shiller, John Irons and Josh Bivens, and Mike Konczal have also noted that’s it’s much more likely that causality runs in the other direction. That is, countries have high debt-to-GDP ratios because they have slow growth, rather than the other way around. This makes sense. Slow growth means lower tax revenue, greater social service payouts, and a whole lot of other factors that contribute to increased deficits and debt. It’s possible to tell a story where high debt hurts growth, but it’s much less intuitive and only holds when interest rates are high and choking off private investment."

The second paragraph is what I found particularly interesting... you would have thought Rogoff & Reinhart would have at least tried to determine what came first, the chicken or the egg. Instead, they just kind of threw a guess out there....Then, as the experts they were, people quoted Rogoff & Reinharts findings without ever looking into how they came up with their findings in the first place!

*face palm*

Or, we could simply reduce the deficit by that amount, instead of continuing to spend money we don't have.

Yes, because we all saw how well austerity worked in Greece, Ireland, Cypress, etc. Everywhere austerity has been tried it's failed. You have to spend your way out of recessions. If money isn't moving on its own, we have to force it to move. Austerity simply doesn't work.

The link points to page two of the article. For those that wonder why it started in the middle here is the proper link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2013/04/07/a0c29f48-972f-11e2-b68f-dc5c4b47e519_story.html

You're talking strictly about income tax, which is an incomplete if not overtly wrong way to look at taxation.
here is a link from the washington post that shows a more accutate percentage of taxes paid versus percentage of income. It isn't even close.

In other news (aside from the Twitter and Flickr accounts):

Sorry, Anonymous probably didn't hack North Korea's intranet

Really? It's merely disagreement? Posturing with nuclear weapons = crazy. Being the darkest country on Earth = crazy. This computer setup = crazy. Their people are literally starving and this is how they spend what resources they have.

For the record, I'm personally sitting somewhere in the top 20% and could easily end up in the top 10% next year, so this isn't about self-interest for me.

Also, you're comparing apple to oranges by saying that "you could [...] save enough in about 4-5 years to stop working and still be making 10 times what your average American makes." No, because they already have the income they have, and they have a different lifestyle -- and guess what? They haven't done anything wrong.

My point is not that they've done something wrong, just that they're in a privileged position compared to those who don't earn that kind of cash. And I agree it's quite possible they earned that cash fair and square.

The place where anything that can be defined as actual unfair "abuse" is occurring is in the 0.01% and up, and it's not even all of those people. To wholesale target the "top 1/5/10%" as evil or the cause of our problems ignores the fact that the top 10% -- who themselves are making over $100,000/year -- are paying 70% of the federal income tax share.

The portion of the "1%" the Occupy types are upset with (at least as far as taxes go) are the ones that are working the various tax loopholes to pay 15% on 8-figure incomes while people making a fraction of that pay 28%.

Even if we could have the bottom, say, 50%, or even the bottom *90%* pay NO tax of any kind, including payroll, sales, or anything else, and shift that ENTIRE burden to the top 10% (which is absurd, but let's just roll with it for the sake of argument), there would still be a massive wealth disparity. The very poor would still be very poor.

There wouldn't be a massive wealth disparity, actually, because there's a good chance we just put the wealthiest people in the poorhouse. That's a large part of why no one is seriously suggesting doing that.

It's not your business how much someone else has. Surely you can do with less; shall we take it away? Of course not.

If it's a choice between taking away some of my income, when I can live on about 30% of what I earn (after taxes), or taking away some income from somebody who is having a tough time paying the rent, then yes, I'd say it's wise to take away more of my income rather than theirs. To pay its bills, the government needs to tax somebody, and it makes more sense to tax those with extra cash than those without.

What we should be targeting is actual ABUSE and people who are getting off scot-free...and hint, it's not the vast, vast, vast majority of people in the top 1%.

It's not just about "scot-free", it's also about those who are paying less than their share. For example, according to one study, almost 100,000 millionaires paid a lower percentage of their income in taxes than people in the 28% bracket. That makes no sense.

China will "intervene" (as in attack the North Koreans at our request) if we ask, so long as we promise to take care of the refugees.

I wouldn't be too sure. The way China has been acting towards its neighbours lately, I wouldn't be surprised if North Korea ratcheting up the tension is part of a bigger plan.

Great post, to me financial innovation is defined as "when one or more parties take advantage of legal edge-cases (loopholes) to their benefit". This happens a lot in the insurance industry.

Now to nit-pick, but with a comedic approach...

You said: "One cannot eat gold, wear it, drink it, shelter under it, use it to bind wounds or cure ailments."

* Eat Gold - Gold flaked ice cream: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-08-05/world/35270313_1_ice-cream-iranians-oil-windfall
* Wear Gold - Seriously, this is extremely common...
* Drink Gold: Goldschläger
* Shelter Under Gold: http://www.barnettassociates.net/a-house-made-of-gold-where-to-see-it/
* Bind Wounds or Cure Ailments (medical use in general): http://ezinearticles.com/?Medical-Uses-of-Gold&id=3234400

Yeah, they are mostly edge cases, but searching for them was fun...

Thanks again for the post, it was well spoken and I don't have karma at this time.

Umm, it is easy enough to find those stories in other sources.

The first one, and the second one.

And those stories seem to be a non sequitar from your starting point. I do think the administration should not have reacted as it did in both stories, and I have nothing against guns... but kids getting in trouble for waving around a toy gun is not getting "arrested for thinking of anything heroic." Either you are knowingly exaggerating or stretching your point, or you have a twisted sense of what it means to be heroic and I would hope to never be around you with a gun (regardless if I had mine or not...).

college for all needs to be replaced with more vocational education and Apprenticeship programs

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-27/opinions/35456501_1_college-students-josipa-roksa-private-colleges-and-universities

That’s why college-for-all has been a major blunder. One size doesn’t fit all, as sociologist James Rosenbaum of Northwestern University has argued. The need is to motivate the unmotivated. One way is to forge closer ties between high school and jobs. Yet, vocational education is de-emphasized and disparaged. Apprenticeship programs combining classroom and on-the-job training — programs successful in Europe — are sparse. In 2008, about 480,000 workers were apprentices, or 0.3 percent of the U.S. labor force, reports economist Robert Lerman of American University. Though not for everyone, more apprenticeships could help some students.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-07-25/business/35488447_1_skype-law-enforcement-online-chats

Seems to be tight lipped on the ability, but MS has a history of cooporating with Law Enforcement.

Yep. 3D Printing won't put the ATF out of business anytime soon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/politics/35454066_1_operation-fast-and-furious-assault-weapons-gun-traffic

ATF can't inventory guns dealership, which means they can sell to terrorist and never take it off the books.

ATF has no permeant leadership, so there is no one to create a long term plan to both protect our right to own guns and protect our right to be protected from those who like to kill people.

ATF can't share records, must destroy 20 days so when a criminal or terrorist tries to buy guns, they can try again and there is no record of the repeat offense. We have no idea who is trying to game the system.

On straw purchases only buyer is liable and the standard for conviction is high enough so that people seldom get convicted. Again, if purchase records were kept, then we might know about these staw purchasers. If we had universal background checks, which many people think we do, and the NRA strongly implies we do when they say "apply current laws", then much of this would go away.

You are a typical example of this misdirection. Blame the justice department for not enforcing the laws. Choose a atypical example to show that gun regulation does not work. Hope enough dumb people believe you and aren't smart enough to check the facts. This is exactly what Romney said the liberals did.

Red light cameras are a great example of over enforcement leading to massive pushback.

And then there's the fact that they appear to *increase* accidents at the intersections where they are placed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2005100301844.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2012/12/04/why-i-wont-be-cheering-for-old-notre-dame/

The typical American gets more out of SS and Medicare than they put in. Single men who don't pay an average of about $2000 a year in income tax are freeloaders at the federal level. So are single women who pay less than about $5000/yr and married couples who pay less than about $7500/yr. Take a look here for the info - that's the Urban Institute, not the Tea Party.

Next, the famously conservative Ezra Klein points out that the median taxpayer pays 13.9% of their income in federal tax and 11.3% in state and local. That's sourced here, where they point out this person makes about $42k/year. Now, since payroll taxes at the time the article talks about were 4.2% to SS and 1.45% to Medicare (from the employee's perspective), that means that they're paying 5.65% of their income as payroll tax, so the median taxpayer here is paying 8.25% of their income as federal income tax, meaning: $3465. This is muddied significantly by the fact that these figures represent all returns, not all individuals, so married couples' returns are mixed in with single people's returns, but since over half of people are women and quite a lot of those who aren't are married, it's pretty clear that a majority of people are getting a great deal from the federal tax system regardless of how they vote. Just because states don't hand out nearly as much free money (they can't print it) doesn't change that.

he was going to get raped by a terrorist

- and he would be right to be worried about it, people do get raped in US prisons, which are nowhere near being "correctional" facilities. The only thing those facilities correct is the trust in the justice system.

Of-course the supposed 'terrorists' in US prisons also do get raped and the people doing the rape are the government representatives, sometimes proxy government representatives.

that starts with the premise that north korea will only do things that are rational and make sense, and never anything stupid, is a losing argument

citation: the behavior so far of north korea

Victor Cha, former director of asian affairs in the white house security council amd top advisor on north korean affairs for Bush disagrees with you.

Most people who say things like you did don't understand that NK considers itself to still be at war - that everything they do is predicated on that belief. And it isn't wholly irrational to believe that either, we've never signed a peace treaty with them. The USA and, to a lesser extent, South Korea act like the armistice is a full-blown peace treaty, but it ain't and as far as NK is concerned fighting could break out at any time.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Err, what absolute power? The pope cannot have me executed, cannot seize my property or bank accounts, and would have a very hard time building an empire in the geographical sesne, considering that they have no army.

You speak of money. Well, let's see what the money looks like.. not a lot of money there, as they mention tens of millions of Euros and USD, not billions.

Net worth? Not anywhere near as much as, say, the market cap of Intel, Microsoft or Apple...

So, err, yeah. Not much absolute power there, even accounting for your false ideology that money somehow == power at some even ratio.

To say that an auction on ebay wouldn't absolutely blow up with bidding on The Pope's used shoes...

LOL! Seriously? You place a lot more faith in eBay (or Christie's, or whoever) than I would credibly want to (fake bids notwithstanding).

But you could sell a lot of vatican stuff and put that money to good use helping the poor. They don't and they still ask for donations instead -- often from the poor.

Oh? 'splain this. Note that we're not necessarily counting hospitals, clinics, refugee camps, schools...

...no, no -- that's not how it's going to be "picked up".

Let's take a look:

NBC News: Particle confirmed as Higgs boson

Associated Press: Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson

Reuters: Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN

Wall Street Journal: New Data Boosts Case for Higgs Boson Find

FOX News: Physicists say they have found long-sought Higgs boson

Washington Post: A closer look at the Higgs boson particle that helps explain what gives matter size and shape

Chicago Tribune: Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN

Sky News: Higgs Boson: Experts Sure Of 'God Particle'

New York Daily News: Physicists say they have discovered crucial subatomic particle known as Higgs boson

Boston Globe: Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson

BBC (UK): LHC cements Higgs boson identification

BusinessWeek: Case for Higgs Boson Strengthened by New CERN Analysis

The Daily Mail (UK): Scientists say they HAVE found the 'God particle' - but admit they still aren't sure what type of Higgs boson it is

The Independent (UK): Have they found the Higgs boson at last? Cern physicists say they're confident of 'God particle' breakthrough

Telegraph (UK): Higgs boson: scientists confident they have discovered the 'God particle'

News Limited (AU): Higgs boson, the God particle, discovered by CERN

US News and World Report: Physicists Observe Higgs Boson, the Elusive 'God Particle'

None of these articles make any links to "God" other than a few -- mostly UK, not US -- sources referring to it as the so-called "God particle", but even those explain exactly what this particle is theorized to be, not anything supernatural, "proving God exists", or having anything whatever to do with God.

Obama Treasury dude Jack Lew knows where to hide his cash

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz knows where to hide hers

Obama's pal and advisor Valerie Jarrett seems to like Bermuda for her cash

Nancy Pelosi Seems to like hiding her money in asia (see: Matthews International Capital Management LLC)

And then Obama himself seems to like parking cash in the Cayman Islands

The truth is that the political class lives by a very different set of rules than the rest of us and if you think Democrats are any more "for the people" than Republicans then you're just another "useful idiot". Many of the richest politicians in the US who hide cash offshore to avoid taxes are Democrats.... and it's worse when they do it because they are being hypocrites; Republicans at least call for everybody to have lower, flatter taxes...... but Democrats are always trying to fool the public into liking them by yelling "Tax the Rich!" while quietly hiding their personal fortunes from those very taxes they endorsed.

That's the beautiful two party system for you. Two fucked choices both backed by banks and hollywierd.

Fucking hell.
The banks are certainly not endorsing the limits the Obama Administration keeps trying to place on them.
It's almost like there wasn't a global recession kicked off by endemic banking fraud, quickly followed by Republicans who've done their damndest to stifle regulatory solutions to keep it all from happening again.

Letâ(TM)s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/opinions/35453898_1_republican-party-party-moves-democratic-party

There are plenty of big bright lines composed of objective factors which leave little or no room for interpretation.
Anyone still pushing "both parties are bad" needs to pull their head out of their asshole.

While I realize that censorship and monitoring are nowhere nearly as bad in the U.S. and Europe as they are in the included countries (though perhaps more insidious for its subtlety and secrecy), I still would very much like a public shaming of the contractors who are helping those governments too. As big as the homeland security contractor craze has gotten in the U.S., you can't tell me that there aren't a bunch of companies out there happily helping the U.S. spy on its citizens (and you can bet it's happening in Europe and other Western countries too).

Get real: the people on that list are stone-cold psychopath murderers, leading cadres of stone-cold murderers, most of them trying to murder Americans. The President would be in remiss if he didn't have list of them titled "exterminate on sight."

Yeah, just like this guy, right?

Which is only /one/ of the problems with this sort of list.

And frankly, outside of military action - which this is definitely /not/ - the idea of "exterminate on sight" sickens me. It should be "arrest and then presented to a full jury to determine his guilt in a speedy trial on sight".

Because otherwise we have abrogated a significant fraction of the citizen's power to nameless authority which has no oversight.

Even the most villainous deserves a chance to plead his case. That's what rule by law is all about.

Yes, but he does need to be in a foreign country to be hit that way

Negative.

Maybe there's more rape in North Korean prisons?

More of everything.

Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag

North Korea is Dark

Japanese families fear that North Korea is still abducting

Care to take a holiday?

The world's worst cruise holiday?

Two resources that they will apparently never run short of:
Nitwits that take up their cause.
Soldiers and weapons

Food, on the other hand....
The Cannibals of North Korea

NK is brutal. The problem is the US is brutal as well. Maybe if a country which actually didn't have the most prisoners in the world were to comment people wouldn't view it as a joke. It's clear the US government is not serious about human rights. Do we care about the rights of our prisoners?

I do think that American citizens care abut human rights but the lawmakers aren't voting that way. They won't even end the brutal war on drugs and outlaw for profit prisons. How can I take them seriously when they are building the worst prison state in the history of mankind. A prison state which will allow rich people to own shares in the prison camps. Laws which will arrest people on any charge they need to, in order to meet some quota so the prisons can profit.

I don't see how it's any worse or any better than what NK does. NK uses less humane methods, but the result and plan seems to be the same. Both nations have a prison industry. If the US has a prison industry it cannot speak on prisons. Outlaw for profit prisons and then you can speak on it.

Maybe there's more rape in North Korean prisons?

More of everything.

Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag

North Korea is Dark

Japanese families fear that North Korea is still abducting

Care to take a holiday?

The world's worst cruise holiday?

Two resources that they will apparently never run short of:
Nitwits that take up their cause.
Soldiers and weapons

Food, on the other hand....
The Cannibals of North Korea