I'd rather die on the hospital floor, thanks. If I'm incompetent enough not to take care after myself, then I'm a drag on society and I don't want everyone else paying for my stupidity.

I agree with you about constitutionality -- Obama could have said "we're going to raise everyone's taxes except you get a deduction if you have health insurance". Except the Dems weren't idiots because it would never have gotten past the House. Republicans wouldn't have voted for a tax hike. They could vote for the original because they viewed it as an insurance industry (in GOP lingo, "corporate") subsidy, and therefore a spending issue rather than a revenue issue.

The Republicans (and the Democrats) are statist and have no problems spending your money; the only difference between them is which special interest groups they want to spend your money on.

This petition to fine patent owners treble damages if the defendant wins is awful, because it screws small inventors. Invent something in your garage? Big MegaCorp steals it, and pays for lawyers you can't even dream of. They win, and you pay triple.

Awesome idea, got any others?

Nah, 30 seconds is way too soon, hatch openings can take a lot of time. Make it 2 minutes; give the crew some time to overcome that slight adrenaline bump from opening a door into a brand new room. And while a Rickroll would be pretty cool, I think playing the Final Countdown would be funnier.

We patent lawyers write, attack, and defend patents for the same reason that any other schmo gets up in the morning and goes into work: someone pays us to. Maybe that type of existence doesn't align with your worldview, but it's nevertheless a perfectly logical explanation.

It's been tried. Merely being a taxpayer does not grant you standing to sue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)#Taxpayer_standing

Oh dear, is this the same Adrian Lamo who turned in Bradley Manning over the Wikileaks incident?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/manning-lamo-logs/

I don't know why anyone would ever talk to this guy again for the rest of his life.

Your logic fails because everyone is corruptible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

This is unbelievably cool, and everyone involved deserves a beer. If you're in the Boston area, send me a tweet @DavidEBlau and I'll buy you drinks for the night!

No, it was filed March 19, 2009. But EQ isn't prior art; see this http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2785717&threshold=3&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=39679881#39681965

Because they filed the original application 16.5 years ago, when there wasn't so much prior art.

There is no need for this at all. The Lexus crash was a tragedy, yes, but then all of the faulty cars were recalled and now Toyota has a standard braking system installed. What problem, exactly, is NHTSA trying to fix?? Other than making more work for themselves so they can justify a budget...

That was Cold War mentality. When you go to sleep every night fearing that you might not wake up the next day because of a Soviet nuke, suddenly money and manpower are no object.

Times are thankfully a bit different now.

No, GP is correct. The federal interstate commerce clause was used to strike down a state law, because the state law (improperly) regulated interstate commerce.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause for more details.

I would think that with enough precedents against them and enough six figure settlements, any city would catch on pretty quickly that they need to fire such law-breaking cops. Hell, if another cop pulls this shit in Boston, you can bet the suit won't be for $100,000, but for a ton more because the city is showing signs of being a "habitual offender".