Corruption? Are you talking abut Russia or USAF/Boeing? I'm confused.

John Oliver on the citizenship issue in Puerot Rico, Guam and American Samoa.

According to Oliver, there are 4.1 million people living in Puerto Rico and the island territories. Of that population, 98.4% are racial or ethnic minorities, none of whom have the right to vote in U.S. elections. According to Oliver, the more you look into the reasons that the U.S. territories don’t have voting rights, the harder it is to understand why these dated laws have not been changed.

Way back in 1901, it was said that the island territories were inhabited by “alien races” that couldn’t “understand Anglo-Saxon principles” and thus were denied the vote. That hasn’t changed, despite the fact that even at the time, American legal thinkers thought that the territories’ lack of voting power should only last for a limited time. Fast forward 114 years and the U.S. citizens living on these territories still can’t vote, which Oliver compares to failing to update your computer operating system for over a millennium.

But Puerto Rico is lucky compared to some of the other U.S. territories. American Samoans aren’t even automatically granted U.S. citizenship, which, according to Oliver, renders the “American” part as moot as the phrases “social media expert” or “People’s Choice Award nominee.” Instead, they’re considered U.S. nationals, but not citizens.

Over on Guam, 27% of the island is occupied by U.S. Navy and Air Force bases, and a staggering high number of Guam citizens are veterans of the U.S. military, but they still have no voting rights. Despite that, Guam holds a straw poll every presidential election and has higher voter turn-out than any other U.S. state — you know, the ones whose votes actually count.

Funny and painful, as usual.

Reading this, and based on my personal experience, I doubt it.

How many laws do attorneys have to break before they face something beyond a fine? 100? 1000? 10000? If you read the Prenda law articles, it's clear that if a non-lawyer did even one of those things, they would already be in jail by now. Those bastards lied their fucking teeth out, and made real good money doing so. And all they have to pay is a fine. BFD.

New policy. If you see someone in a car accident, or anywhere in public suffering a medical emergency, and you figure out it's a fucking lawyer, leave it to die or live on it's own. If we lived in a just world, you would be allowed to kill it.

I've earned my hostility. Some shithole incompetent attorneys made my life hell for five years or so. There were at least three of them who couldn't find their ass in a well lit room given a full set of written directions. They finally subcontracted to someone who knew what he was doing, and it got sorted out. I don't know what was worse: they fact that they took on work that was beyond them, or the fact that it took years for them to admit/realize they were complete losers.

Punch a lawyer in the face today. You'll be glad you did.

past the life expectancy of anyone we could conceivably give a crap about.

Equivalently, "Fuck you".

Yes, loaded firearms in public are not intimidating at all. No one would ever walk around with a loaded gun with the expectation that people would act differently because of fear of violence. No group with violent or anti-social tendencies, say biker gangs, drug dealers, or gang members would ever take advantage of carrying guns to enable their law breaking activities. There would never be a situation where having loaded weapons at hand would increase the likelihood of violence. Bystanders would never be injured by stray gunfire.

I'm so glad you cleared that up for us.

Take your meds.

Scientology.

Beavis has a girlfriend? That's clearly a different universe.

The fast food industry wants to help you close the gap.

Have you ever worked for a politically connected US corporation? From your comments I assume not.

Every company has a PAC. Once you get to a certain level you had better be giving money to that PAC, or you are not a "team player". Good luck moving up in the hierarchy, or even keeping your job, if you don't.

I was in a smallish aerospace company (by now they've pass $1 billion in sales, which is not big in that industry), and I saw this first hand.

Grow up. There's no room for honest dissent in corporate culture. It's a subset of the reality that there's no room for honestly in corporate culture.

The US Chamber of Commerce is pro bribery.

The Chamber is not overtly taking a pro-bribery position. Rather, its lobbying blitz couches the proposed changes as tune-ups, a few safeguards needed to protect against overzealous prosecutors.

"Our proposals are aimed at preserving existing law enforcement tools so that the government can pursue the bad actors while ensuring that the good actors have clarity and more certainty under the law, which is clearly lacking today," said Harold Kim, a senior vice president at the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform, in a statement to The Huffington Post.

But the Chamber's list of demands boils down to this: It wants four loopholes that companies could use to escape criminal liability -- and it wants the government to make a clearer demarcation between foreign officials they are not allowed to bribe and those they are.

This might be related to the fact that Chamber board members we in companies involved in bribery scandals when they were advocating these changes.

The Institute for Legal Reform has been leading a powerful and unprecedented lobbying campaign to persuade Congress to rewrite key provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 35-year-old statute that criminalizes bribes to foreign officials, on the grounds that prosecutors have been enforcing it too aggressively.

In a letter to the Chamber released Tuesday, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) -- the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, respectively -- describe how committee staff looked through the institute's tax filings and found that 14 of the group's 55 board members between 2007 and 2010 "were affiliated with companies that were reportedly under investigation for violations or had settled allegations that they violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."

We're not talking chump change here.

The Huffington Post calculated last year that a mere eight members of the Chamber -- not all board members of its legal reform arm -- had altogether paid nearly $1 billion resolving FCPA charges in the last seven years.

So I would assume that the next step would be to legalize bribes in the US. We have it effectively anyway, so why keep the pretense that "all people are created equal". Remember that "corporations are people" and "some animals are more equal then others".

How does this question relate to the legions of Slashdot readers who are living in their parents basement? Are you deliberately trying to demean them and their lifestyle? Have you no shame?

Why is Hastert worth a story here as opposed to Martha Stewart? Although her crime was insider trading, she was convicted of conspiracy and lying to the FBI, which is one of the charges Hastert is facing

After a highly publicized six-week jury trial, Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators

Could it be that old white conservative politicians are worthy of defending against government over reach, and a liberal women is not? In her case the trigger was getting a stock tip, and in his case it was sex with a high school student he was coaching. Which is a greater abuse of position? Which of the two is more of a government victim given the nature of their initial offense?

Exactly. The Nature paper cites 47 references. The AIP article cites 56. Even with overlap, that is a lot of previous effort, most of which was government funded, And that's just he first layer. Each of those papers has a similar amount of previous research.

An army of very smart people spent a lot of time and effort to get to this point. Very little of that was paid for by private enterprise. It was almost completely government supported research. If you want to solve a big hard problem that is about the only way to do it.

Governments have the resources, stability and long term vision. For profit companies rarely have this combination. When they do, it's often a situation like the old Bell Labs days, where there was a government sponsored monopoly. The Bell system planners knew the needed something better then mechanical switches and vacuum tubes. They engaged in fundamental pure research into semiconductors starting in the 1930's, which led to the transistor in 1947.

Of course the remnants of Bell Labs are now completely out of the pure research business now. Given IBM's declining fortunes it's not clear how long they will keep up their basic research efforts. So if the government is not going to do it, no one will. In the current quarterly profit driven economy, there is no other option.

The real name of the Department of Homeland Security: the Department of Homeland Pork

The TSA clowns at airports are not government employees, they are private contractors. It the last resort for someone who wants to wear a uniform and have a badge but is too incompetent to be a mall cop. So it's no surprise that they have a 95% failure rate.

A huge chunk of taxpayer money gets wasted and there is little real world payoff. Make no mistake, the real big bucks go to the upper management, political insiders who grease the wheels for lucrative contracts. Just a division of the military industrial complex.

Another example: the Air Force just signed the very first contract with Boeing for commercial manned flights to the International Space Station. The Boeing crew vehicle hasn't even flown yet, unlike the SpaceX capsule which is now going through it's manned launch escape testing. Boeing is in bed with the AF, SpaceX isn't. All the AF guys know that they will just slide over to high paying jobs at Boeing when they retire, and there are lots of Congress Critters who get campaign contribution from Boeing, and want to protect defense jobs in their state.

Saving money? Competition? Innovation? Not even on the table. It's government of, by and for the insiders. And you are paying for it.