I have never understood the hatred and mistrust placed on drones versus aircraft, fixed or rotary wing. It seems like a bunch of Luddites. Drones are cheaper, safer, and usually more capable at doing the task at hand than fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft at doing a job thats already been done for decades by law enforcement and the military. Also a drone, in the military at least, allows for a more calm and collected engagement of targets, reducing collateral damage and fratricide.

Because only taxi drivers talk on phones while driving?

Yea, learn to read idjit. Access to. You make the entire gun debate a walk in the park for anti-gun people, so just shut up and sit in a corner and let reasonable people debate.

Yes, freedom of speech has limits, who woulda fucking thunk it? People need to take a basic constitutional law class and most of them will probably walk out thinking this is Stalinist Russia with their insane naiveness.

Idiot, someone reported him. If the government isn't spying on you, someone who doesn't like what you say or do is going to be just as bad. Your best bet is to just hole up in a bunker and not talk to anyone if you don't want people taking action on your words ever.

Except a magic wand is something silly and doesn't exist. It is not beyond reason, even a little bit, that this kid could have access to a gun. Gun control debate or not, access to guns, and personal ownership of guns is extremely high in this country, so its not really any sort of fanciful logical leap to think that he might have one. I am not saying this case is fair or right, but don't make insanely stupid comparisons like that. It just discredits the pro-gun movement.

So much wrong in this statement. No, the government is perfectly capable and within reason to assign consequences to speech. Speech can insight action, and therefore it has tangible, real world, physical results to it. They can't impede you from saying it in the first place (I am not even sure how that'd be possible), but if you say certain things you can expect consequences. Look up the dozens of precedent setting first amendment cases that have gone through the courts and you will quickly realize how blatantly ignorant your statement is.

The 200 years of precedent that says otherwise? You obviously have no idea how the law works in this country. You treat the constitution like the bible and you just thump on it and thump on it despite reality. Shut up and go to school, or at least ask someone who has a fucking clue.

... So tell people to choose one and stop freaking out. If this kid did go and shoot up a school later and they found this message then I would expect you to be the first one to jump to his defense and say "well he might have just been joking around!".

You answered your own question. These missiles have been active for 40 years. They need to be tested to make sure they work. They go out to the missile fields and they pick a missile at random, pull it out of the silo, remove the warheads, fly it over to Vandy, install instrumentation and dummy warheads, take the crew from the field it was in and fire it down range, making sure everything works right still.

This is also one of the very few times that a crew actually gets to launch a live missile, so its an exciting exercise for them as well, so much so that the exercises are called "Glory Trip".

Anyway, pretty much everyone tests their stockpile of ICBMs and SLBMs to make sure they are working, otherwise deterrence starts to lose some of its credibility.

Furthermore, and a little dark, but think about how amazing it'd look to be in north central Canada if WW3 breaks out on a clear night and you have hundreds of these missiles going down range... The end of the world would be somewhat pretty.

You aren't painting the target, its gathering range information, this can be done in literally a millionth of a second. The only time you paint something with a laser (in relation to weapons) is when you are guiding a laser homing weapon to a target.

Possibly the best chapter in that whole damn book.

But lets get realistic here, the intention of the AEGIS ABM system was NOT to counter the Russians or China, who we know full well could overwhelm our ABM systems. It is to counter "rogue" states that will have smaller, less capable ballistic missile programs and might be "unstable" and attack with a few of them. It is to prevent the people/states that might be crazy enough to sacrifice their entire populations just to get in a spiteful blow to the US. If we can prevent their nukes from hitting us, then we have no reason to then counter and destroy millions of their people. That is the reasoning behind the modern ABM system. It is not Safeguard or SDI, or even the Moscow ABM system. It is meant to prevent crazy launches or accidental launches.

Yes, but look at the K/D ratio in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Armed citizen or not, when you are facing down a platoon of US infantry with helicopter gunship support you are going to have a bad day.

Yes, gunships are only part of the solution though... Soldiers on the ground engaging enemy can walk in air support on where fire is coming from. Happens all the time in urbanized areas.

Are you uneduCated? I think this image might explain things in terms you can understand: http://i.imgur.com/XTexx.jpg