EPIC is not trying to stop the government from using this system -- they are trying to get information about the system, presumably so that they can decide whether to try to rein in the system (via political or judicial means) to protect civil rights. Why oppose that, indeed?

DoofusOfDeath and AHuxley make good points as well. Some modern advocacy groups (like the Cato Institute) claim that open immigration can coexist with a welfare state, but even the studies they write admit that low-skilled immigrants consume more social spending than they pay in taxes, that welfare spending does not go down due to higher levels of immigration[1], and that working-class citizens are the hardest hit due to open immigration policies.

[1]- Unsurprisingly, political leanings explain most of the differences in welfare spending between US states, and Cato's study this year did not try to control for that at all. Illegal immigrants and non-permanent aliens are barred from collecting almost any kind of welfare. Even permanent residents are barred from collecting most welfare for five years. Naturalized citizens, of course, can collect the same kinds of welfare that other citizens can collect -- but these are typically the most motivated and skilled immigrants, and have less need of wealth transfers.

With no borders, when you break the laws of the City of Entrope, the City of Entrope Police will hunt you down to the end of the earth if the mayor tells them to. There is no reason for them to stop short of that. Does that sound good to you?

With no political borders, the only possibly stable equilibria are anarchy and uniform world government, and I am deeply skeptical that either would actually be stable. Which one of those do you prefer?

Bless your heart, CaptainEuphemism: I know you are not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I will spell out why clueful people still call them illegal immigrants rather than "undocumented" immigrants and reserve "unaccompanied minor" for kids who fly on planes without their parents.

Entering the US other than in a time and place authorized by immigration officers is punishable by up to six months in jail under 8 USC 1325, as is using forged paperwork to enter. However, in most cases, it does not make sense to lock someone up -- and have US taxpayers pay their room and board -- for any longer than necessary, so we deport them quickly rather than sending them to prison and *then* deporting them.

Illegal immigrants (or unauthorized aliens, if you prefer the statutory term) get a "free ride" home if the executive branch thinks they are likely to break the law further by trying to stay after the final order of removal. The Immigration and Nationality Act is written as if Congress assumed illegal immigrants would -- for some unfathomable reason -- pay their own way out of the country after getting that final order of removal.

I don't think you know what that fallacy actually means. Nothing I wrote is even close to an excluded middle fallacy. The particular bit you quoted might be considered a sweeping generalization, if it weren't so blatantly evident that I was mocking your kindergarten-level understanding of economics.

Hurr, durr, ad-hominem fallacy!

No one has found, much interviewed this supposed Carlos. (inb4 "Kiev had him kidnapped and executed" or some other conspiracy theory)

As for the encoding timestamp, that's simple. It was re-encoded for streaming after it was uploaded, as Youtube typically does for most video formats. Primary Youtube servers are located in California, UTC-8. Ukraine is UTC+2, a difference of 10 hours. The encoding timestamp of 19:xx hours on Youtube servers corresponds to early morning in Ukraine the next day.

Are you Kremlin shills even trying? You need to work harder for your rubles.

Not always, but you know how it is with bureaucracies ... nothing gets them motivated quite as well as a good disaster.

Naw, man. I mean, sure, there are some superficial similarities, but the things which actually caused the incidents are COMPLETELY different.

The Soviet shootdown is a simple case of browbeaten lackeys under a tyrannical regime making what they figured was the best choice to cover their asses. There was no threat to them. The aircraft was nowhere near the people who made the call, and was on it's way out of Soviet airspace. The pilot involved even told them he believed it was a civilian airliner. Yet they decided to shoot it down anyway.

The Vincennes incident was the exact opposite. It involved personnel under serious threat from Iranian forces, in hostile territory, faced with an aircraft they couldn't identify which seemed to be on an attack vector. They were scared for their lives, and under an immense amount of stress. I'm not sure how to explain that to someone who works a 9-5 job in an office. Lots of people talk about "stress" in their day-to-day jobs, and I'm sure there's some truth to their complaints, but unless you're a first responder, an air traffic controller, or a soldier in a combat zone, you really don't know what stress is, or how badly it can skew your normal behaviour. We train our people to recognize it, avoid it, or deal with it ... and we put measures in place to try and minimize it ... but when you're engaged in combat and feel that your life is on the line, even the best preparations can only do so much. It only gets worse when you're the one responsible for a multi-million dollar vessel, and several hundred lives on board it.

The difference may be easier to visualize if you relate it to something you're more familiar with. The Soviet shootdown of 007 was the equivalent of a couple police supervisors sitting at headquarters, ordering a patrolman to shoot an unarmed man running away from a property he trespassed on. The American shootdown of the Iranian flight was the equivalent of a couple SWAT guys under heavy fire panicking and shooting a civilian who was running towards them. Both are horrible incidents which should never have happened. But other than that, they have absolutely nothing in common.

Sure. So lets pass a law that says every person should be paid $50,000 per hour. Economic activity ought to be AMAZING then!

Very true. If you meet the minimum skill required for the minimum-wage job, you get a crappy job that pays your basic expenses, but won't pay off that credit card you keep racking up because now you can afford more useless crap. If you don't meet the minimum skill requirements, then fuck you - you're stuck on the government dole because we won't let you sell your services for less. Our minimum living standard says you have to be a parasite rather than contributing to society.

Totally right. Especially when we implement our $50,000 minimum wage idea. If those fatcat small business guys can't afford it, fuck 'em; someone else will come along to start a business once the economy settles down.

Totally. Just like mass-surveys become more and more useless the more people you add to them. And scientific research becomes more and more useless the more data points you gather.

The funny thing is, fulfilling his FOIA request is probably the first time anyone in government actually looked at his data.

And these days they do. It's one of those "lessons learned" things.

I, along with a bunch of other guys, once got sucked into lighting up an entire household of civilians in training. It really, really sucked. But the reason those scenarios existed is because some poor bastards lit up civilian households for real, and we got to learn from their mistakes.

I feel your pain, bro. Comments that criticize the US government and offer justifications for terrorist attacks always get SO badly down-voted.

Very true. rt.com is the propaganda outlet of choice these days, as far as external puppets are concerned. Internally ... well, all of them publish whatever they think Putin wants them to publish.

You complain about strawmen, then string together a strawman of your own. Nobody is suggesting that humans need to travel to Titan.

"mark-t" was absolutely right. Your statement was absurd, and my parody illustrated it's absurdity. Our unsuitability to space is entirely irrelevant. You're right in pointing out that there are many aspects of space exploration which are best done by machines; you're completely wrong when you take that idea and present it as an absolute for why no human should ever go into space.

The fact that mark had to explain my comment to you is ... rather embarrassing, but not unexpected.

Is it not humiliating to invoke Fox News in order to defend or deflect the actions coming from the Russian government? I mean, way to set the low bar and just barely jump over it.

Russian news sites were just yesterday trying to insinuate that Putin's presidential plane took the same flight path as MH17, and that this was a botched assassination by Kiev. Of course, a quick glance at a map will reveal that a plane flying from Brazil to Poland to Russia never even comes close to Eastern Ukraine.