You're wrong on a couple points. First of all, it's not entirely about stopping violent crimes. If that was the case, it would simply end after a determination that the person didn't have weapons. But in the majority of instances, they rifle through every little thing in your pockets looking for drugs and interrogate you about your activities. Even the small percent of stops that lead to an arrest are overwhelmingly for petty drug possession charges. And further, they wouldn't engage in the despicable tactic of telling people to empty their pockets and then elevating the charge to public display of marijuana, something that continued after Ray Kelly "ordered" them to stop.

Second, calling them "terry stops" is not accurate. Terry requires them to be able to cite "specific and articulable facts" that give them reasonable suspicion to believe the individual was involved in a crime. Also, Terry limits the search to the outer garments solely for the purpose of checking for weapons for officer safety. As noted above, this is not the case. 780 guns from 685,724 (2011) isn't limiting themselves to this standard.

Also, the evidence is quite clear that they have quotas on how many of these stops they have to make. How fair do you think an officer struggling not to get reassigned to traffic duty is going to be? Is he really stopping people to help end violent crime?

And just to add an anecdote, I used to routinely conduct business on a block with one of the highest stop and frisk rates in Manhattan, in East Harlem. But I'm white and clean cut and well dressed. I was never been stopped in over a year of just standing there for 20-30 minutes 3 times a week. And the majority of white people in the neighborhood are there for a particular reason, but I wasn't profiled.

You don't turn the computer on and it just starts streaming porn to your desktop

Clearly you weren't around during the days where plugging in a stock Windows machine resulted in just that if you didn't update it fast enough.

It's perfectly legal to record things with your VCR, and something the average person is able to do. Ripping streams violates the DMCA and the TOS of the providers, and is not something the average person can do. Pretty big difference.

This is the same Scalia who believes the federal government has the authority to arrest and jail you for a plant grown in your own home for your own consumption and never transferred to anyone else. He's just as selective as anyone else about what the original meaning is. You'll never convince me the founding fathers intended the commerce clause to be interpreted the way Scalia did in that case (Gonzales v. Raich).

That's definitely just for you. Just look at all the places that have the death penalty for drug offenses. Doesn't stop it one bit.

New front? Where have you been? That's all the drug war is unless you or a loved one is actually the one arrested. If a dealer is busted, it's a minor inconvenience to find one of the 10 dealers who took his spot. If a trafficker loses a major shipment, it's a minor inconvenience since it's a cost of doing business. If a mule goes down, it's a minor inconvenience for everyone else. Hell, Mexico seized a lab with 15 tons of pure meth worth $4 BILLION dollars. That was a minor inconvenience- they didn't even bother to defend it, and there was virtually no impact on availability or prices.

And that's the totality of accomplishment for spending billions and billions every year for decades trying to stop it, while eviscerating the constitution and running a mass incarceration policy that sees higher per capita imprisonment than any nation on earth, so-called 'oppressive' countries included... not to mention all the collateral damage, like an epidemic of forcing people to live in pain, torturing them and being a drain on the economy; or the complete loss of trust in a now profoundly corrupt law enforcement sector which views citizens as an enemy.

While a significant portion of plea bargaining is an abusive deprivation of rights, in certain circumstances it's actually useful. For like, when you know there's absolutely no way you'd be found innocent. And there's other issues around this, but speed matters too. Say you can't make bail or were denied bail on a charge you're clearly guilty of. You can either plea out to probation and community service and be out of jail in a few weeks, or take it to trial and stay in jail for 6-12 months and be highly unlikely to get a lesser sentence anyway.

Take vice crimes off the books and we could improve a lot of this.

That being said, I highly doubt that these things will be tamper proof in the slightest (manufacturers will simply pick the cheapest possible way to comply with the law). Black boxes will be easily hacked so it's a bit of moot point for people who are bad drivers and dont want the proof hanging around (however for good drivers, it does help clear them of fault in an accident).

Because everyone would have the knowledge and skills to do it? The world isn't like /. - only a tiny minority of the general population would be able to do it, just like with the many other things that are so easy to us; we lose sight of what normal people are actually like.

You missed the other thing responsible for nearly as much civil rights loss as terrorism:
- Fighting drugs
The constitution has been gutted in the name of stopping people from voluntarily ingesting certain substances since even before 9/11. I guarantee someone is going to stand up and say, 'Why can't we use this information to stop those evil drug traffickers?' and no one will object.

This is about the Facebook version. The Android version, already run by EA, has neither changed dictionaries nor dropped scores and ratings (I just logged in to check). Also, I'm a bit confused about the dictionaries. Isn't the Collins/Chambers list for international play? Doesn't the US version still use OWL2+Long Words from NASPA? Or is there only 1 version? I don't play on FB, and TFA doesn't clarify.

This is about the Facebook version. The Android version, already run by EA, has neither changed dictionaries nor dropped scores and ratings (I just logged in to check).

Also, I'm a bit confused about the dictionaries. Isn't the Collins/Chambers list for international play? Doesn't the US version still use OWL2+Long Words from NASPA? Or is there only 1 version? I don't play on FB, and TFA doesn't clarify.

This is exactly why we need more awareness of jury nullification.

Juries are perfectly free to refuse to convict because they think the law is wrong, even if they know the defendant broke it.

Originalist only where he deems fit. This is the same guy who voted that a plant grown in your own home, consumed only by you, entirely within a single state, where no state law had been broken, was something you are rightly arrested and incarcerated for under federal commerce clause powers (Gonzalez v. Raich). Consistent with his praise of Wickard v. Filburn. You can't possibly think they would have found that acceptable in 1791.

Terrorism or homeland security is just the pretext. I suspect that NSLs are mostly used for non-violent drug offenses. This suspicion is of course based on the fact that one of the other post-9/11 powers, conducting searches and not telling the target until much later (if at all), has been revealed to be used for mostly for non-violent drug offenses and almost never for terrorism (the report I refer to, 65% were for drug cases and well under 1% for terrorism--5 of 763).

Because drugs are bad, mmkay?

Good for you. Not everyone would want it. My use case is different.

I sit 2-3ft away from a 27" screen, and would absolutely love to have a 4K screen in a 27-32" form factor in front of me. I have a second monitor and a laptop to form a 3 screen setup, but the single large screen in the center is my preference for primary tasks. Even though there's limited video content for 4k right now, being able to display more information on the screen would be awesome. And I'm sure 4K content will become more prevalent in the coming years.

Not everyone likes sitting 2ft away from a 27" 1080p screen either, but I do. Use cases vary. Bring on the 4K.