Not all states require annual inspections. My state, for example, only requires emissions inspections (not mechanical inspections) every two years and only in something like five counties of the state.

No, the real problem is that the only thing that is keeping certain countries from annihilating each other is the threat of US intervention if they try. Believe it or not, the only thing that's kept off WWIII for the last seventy years has been a strong US military.

Depends on whether or not you believe the NSA has proven P=nP

Because nobody else pays people to do serious investigative journalism on a municipal level.

Newspapers serve a vital public function - they employ journalists to expose malfeasance and corruption in city governments.

You should subscribe to your local paper - even if you don't read it. Think of it as a voluntary tax, your civic responsibility to pay someone to make sure your elected officials aren't screwing you as a taxpayer.

The bill is H.R. 2356, introduced by Michael Capuano (D-Mass) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.).

Find your congressman here. Send them some sort of correspondence that says you wish them to co-sponsor the bill. If you e-mail, make sure you request a response.

In Metro's defense, neither does Android - unless you install Astro or something 3rd party. I assume iOS is similar, but I've never used it.

Anyone who merges their production industrial network with their common business network deserves everything they get.

There should be an air gap between industrial control networks and business networks, and the industrial networks should never be able to touch the internet.

THIS.

Metro should have been put inside of Explorer, as an optional component, not the other way around. Alternatively, detect if there's a mouse or touchscreen present - and if there's a touchscreen, launch Metro, and if there's a mouse, launch Explorer.

That's why the lawyer quoted in the article was lamenting not being able to move forward with his appeals - he keeps winning at lower levels, and the other companies drop the lawsuits because they don't want a precedent set.

Yep. I was a contractor there during the dot-com bust. Watched their stock drop like a stone overnight. For the company that essentially invented cellular service, the company that managed to build a global telecommunications infrastructure, and invent Unix and C on the side - it was truly sad to see what the corporate raiders did to them.

Yeah, but the touch based interface makes it almost unplayable.

Wouldn't be the first time the feds hid something in the mountains of West Virginia...

We told you so.

The National Debt goes up for two main reasons: Social Security and the Trade Deficit.

The Social Security "trust fund" is a bunch of T-bills, and represents the second largest chunk of the National Debt - $2.72 Trillion. Whenever they take in more social security payroll taxes than they pay out in benefits, they put the surplus into T-bills. Those T-bills are then counted as part of the National Debt.

In other words,

1. We owe this chunk of the National Debt to ourselves - to old people and sick people

2. The Social Security Payroll Tax is not really used for Social Security - it just goes right back into the general fund, and even worse, the general fund has to pay interest to Social Security, which means we're even more screwed than you thought.

The other reason the national debt keeps going up is due to the trade deficit.

We buy Chinese goods in Dollars. We pay them in Dollars. They can't use dollars in their domestic economy for anything - worthless paper to them. They'd have to plow the dollars into American goods to make use of them, but they don't do that. They don't buy enough of our stuff, so instead of stuffing that cash in a vault somewhere, they buy a bunch of T-bills so they can collect interest. That accounts for the largest chunk of the national debt, over 5 Trillion.

Important to note that, no matter what happens with spending, the national debt will continue to grow because of these two things. Blaming the national debt on spending alone is not accurate.

More reading and sources for my numbers are here.