Taxes certainly take your liberty away - try not reporting your income, or collecting sales tax as a store and see how free you remain.

The only reason the USB connection is needed is to provide the +5V power. At work, there were computers set to disable USB storage - and to report any attempts to the admins - since flashdrives etc were banned for these same security concerns. Had some small video cameras that needed recharging; 30 seconds with a pair of wire cutters and electrical tape resulted in a USB cable containing only the power and ground wires (no ability whatsoever for data to make it through). Sounds like this is what Energizer needs to do. There is no need for data transfer in a battery charger, and extra wires put in by a rogue factory are a lot easier to detect than malicious code.

No, I think your incidences were just isolated incidents of a couple nuts screwing everyone else over.

There is a universal statute of limitations for anything. It's called "can't prosecute someone when they're dead". Unless you know of any 80-90 year old soldiers in Iraq.

Except for the fact that the vast majority of those killed are more "innocent relatives" - the Iraqi/Afghan citizens killed when a suicide bomber goes into a crowded market, etc. Those fighting the American revolution may have used guerrilla tactics against the British, but they didn't deliberately go and kill their own townspeople instead.

Why? At the risk of quoting John Wayne, war isn't about giving your life for your country - it's about making the other bastard give his life for his.

Do the same rules apply to government contractors? I know of several who fill full time positions (doing actual work in accordance with their salary btw) working out of govt offices, using govt office supplies, etc. and their only interaction with their parent companies is to collect the paycheck/update their health/benefits paperwork. This is usually done because it's a lot easier to get funding for a specific position under a certain project contract than to go through the personnel gyrations required to add another government civil service billet.

According to these rules, would the contractors be eligible for federal retirement/health/etc?

Could this become a hazard similar to the fake "free wifi" adhoc networks set up in airports, etc to capture passwords, etc? It would seem that a hidden one of these could capture many phone calls; in an area with many businessmen, for example, this could be used by criminals.

Could the Google Voice capability to receive SMS for free help with this? You can receive the texts to get the pin/validate your number/etc but any scam charges could not be passed through, especially if you don't have a cell phone associated w/your GV account

National Education Association (teachers unions)

They are prescription only here as well but many patients will bully doctors into doing this; doctors also err on the side of caution because of lawsuits. Agree on the ads - if only doctors are allowed to make the decision, they should be the only ones ads are targeted at (in medical journals, etc).

I think other areas are the cause. You don't see China or India leading the world with billions of dollars of research on how life began (because it really isn't a priority). Creation vs evolution doesn't affect chemistry, physics, or 90% of biology. I know several very smart and productive hard science PhDs who espouse creationist viewpoints; somehow it doesn't affect their work (they obviously don't work in evolutionary biology though).

Democracy vs. Republic is not an irrelevant semantics bandwagon. While dictatorships reinforce the rights of a small minority against the majority, pure democracy leads to the majority oppressing the minority. This is why a republic is necessary to protect the rights of the minority as well.

Not going to call you a "liberal", "faggot", "commie", "pinko" etc but I will say you have a thin skin. There is a reason it's called a joke. Same reason we call Mac users gay and Southerners toothless.

I know plenty of military who have gotten the extra screening on flights. And didn't the late Ted Kennedy (or some other congress person) get denied a flight since his name was similar to one on the watch list?