The best part about so-called "common sense" is that you most often hear about it from those claiming that nobody has it.

I was going to argue with you, until I realized you were claiming the Heavenly Host was actually made up of something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike bread and wine. I for one welcome our animated bread-and-wine overlords!

Biggest difference I can see between this and SOPA, is that those proposing SOPA had elections to worry about. The FCC is appointed by the Executive branch and serves at their pleasure. Honestly, what the articles author really meant by the FCC being scared of the ISPs is that if they do something the ISPs don't like, well they can say good-bye to the revolving door and a lucrative contract with an ISP after they leave the FCC. Comcast's head lobbyist is a former FCC commissioner for Christ's sake!

I don't know if anything you said is true, but it doesn't really matter. Problem is, there are no viable alternatives!/em If you think the Dem's don't do shit just like this all the time, you're deluded. R or D, they're all a bunch of opportunistic scoundrels, taking every chance to bolster their own position and prestige, regardless of the cost to the rest of us.

That's been the reality everywhere, forever. It's cute that the founders of the USA actually believed their experiment in limited government was ever going to last. The USA is simply catching up to where the rest of the world has always been. It was inevitable.

It's really not that bad, considering most TV shows aren't really going to suffer that much by the loss of visual detail. Besides, if you can't see that well in the first place, isn't it all just blurry blobs on a big screen TV too?

Sorry Grandad, I'll get off your lawn now...

Anwar Al-Awlaki ringing any bells?

Link

I wish I could mod this up. "Competing governments" found out about this stuff merely as consequence of the American public being informed of what their government is doing in their name. Snowden's detractors try to argue that his intention was merely to inform foreign governments of the USA's intelligence tactics, rather than his stated intention of informing his fellow citizens. At this point, there is no reason to believe he was acting on the behalf of a foreign power. Believing otherwise is an unwarranted assumption .

You're absolutely right, he should have fled to one of the US lapdogs that would have returned him to their masters at the first opportunity. Or maybe some smallish country the US wouldn't have any hesitation about a missile strike or special forces operation. Nope, there couldn't possibly be a reason to go to one of the "bad guy superpowers" except because he's a communist stooge.

You're making the classic mistake of believing the two parties are anything but a political cartel, publically denigrating each other, privately scheming to keep their golden goose laying eggs. Conservatives and liberals alike are being played for fools by a corrupt and cynical political class dedicated to maintaining their power and privilege by any means necessary.

If you think about it a little more carefully you might come to the conclusion that China and Russia, despite their obvious shortcomings, are two places where he would be guaranteed that the US wouldn't do anything to get at him that would start WW3. Most anyplace else, they'd launch a few missiles at wherever they thought he was, write some letters of apology to the government there and move on.

I don't care to argue the merits of what he did, but those two countries are the safest possible places from the US federal government.

Don't worry, crazy people will have social justice advocates before long and then Crazy, even the batshit kind, will be a unacceptable term in the PC world. We don't call them crazy, we call them Differently Alligned with Reality

Looks like it might be somewhat unclear, the font of all knowledge suggests the etymology of the word is uncertain, although the Germanic origin theory is persuasive.

Ahh, the illusion of agency. We have no idea how our brains do what they do, but we're more than happy to take all the credit for it, as if we were somehow responsible for the particular configuration of neurons and electrical impulses that create whatever the hell sentience is. Don't get me wrong, I'm just a guilty of doing it as everyone else, it's just something I've thought about frequently. I've found myself doing things I can't explain enough times to realize there's more going on with sentience, will, and the like than meets then eye.

That would be Religion qua religion that is cheap. The Vatican or Joel Osteen are simply shysters that have are manifestations of Religion, and, acting in it's name, fleecing the faithful. In the case of the Vatican, they've been doing this for nearly two millennia. Osteen has a long way to go if he want's to rival the Vatican.