You won't be flagged in the database if you aren't already in trouble for something else.

Are you sure about that? With the contractually-enforced anti-transparency provisions baked into these agreements with various police agencies, how would you even know? By design, the gov't is FORBIDDEN from discussing any of it with us serfs.

Ahhh, so you're saying it's legal for MD to automatically scan license plates, cross-check them with FL's published list of CCW permit holders, and make a traffic stop *solely* based on that info? That's what happened here, and that's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment.

Reading comprehension not so good, eh? He left the gun in FL at home, locked up . . . MD cops stopped him, somehow knew of his FL permit (there is absolutely no legal way they could have, of course), and ordered him to give them them the gun. When he wouldn't (couldn't) comply, they proceeded to tear the car's contents apart on the side of the highway and terrorize his family. So just maybe, it's the "batshit-crazy" behavior of jack-booted fascist states like Maryland that is the problem here.

RTFA. The guy had no gun in the car (he'd left it locked up in FL), but the MD cops knew he had a CCW permit even though he was a FL resident . . . how is that possible?

The state refuses to stop spending more money each year than the last and is addicted to revenue like it's crack. According to Gallup, 67% percent of Marylanders think their state taxes are too high and 47% of them literally want to leave the state.

Link to the story that you mention from the Tampa newspaper. Maryland police forces have a history of this kind of thuggish behavior; even now, the MD State Police and the MD press (e.g., the Baltimore Sun) refuse to comment or even report on this story.

You are stating that the only reason someone would act the way this killer did was because they were mentally ill. You are dangerously assuming that every one of these violent people is unable to tell right from wrong. I would say that history is filled with examples of people who committed mind-blowing atrocities for political reasons, greed, lust, revenge -- you name it. These are people who knew that what they were doing was wrong and chose to do it anyway. To blame every extreme act of violence on "severe mental illness" is an oversimplification at best. The vast majority of criminals absolutely consciously choose to do what they do. Face it -- people generally have free will, and some choose to commit heinous crimes. Saying that *every* violent killer is unequivocally severely mentally ill because "there's no other reason they would do that" is just silly, and some might say that such a statement seeks to remove accountability and personal responsibility from the equation.

Poor people can get gov't-subsidized smart phones. There's no reason in the world they can't use these apps the same as the evil rich folks. This is blatant race- / class-baiting from the White House to further distract the masses from matters of real importance -- you, destruction of our civil liberties, telling the NSA not to talk to the press, etc.

Just what is needed . . . another Photoshop-esque filter for all the douchebag hipsters of the world to make their snaps look even more deep and brooding.

Yes, let's base compensation on seniority rather than merit or anything related to real-world performance, and make it impossible to fire someone for anything short of mass murder. Then let's take a chunk of each worker's paycheck against their will and give it to the goddamn politicians to fund their campaigns. Yep, that sounds like exactly what the tech sector needs.

Correct. Maryland is one as well, and MD police used the anti-wire tap law as an excuse for years to prevent people from videotaping their actions before the Supreme Court finally called them on that perverse interpretation. Even now, MD police hate to be recorded.

I think you meant the Steubenville High School football players. Steubenville is actually in Ohio.

Yet, the NSA is part of the Executive Branch and, as its head, the buck stops with him. James Clapper LIED to a Senate panel -- right to Ron Wyden's face -- and nothing has happened. The Snowden leaks are almost 11 months old now, and Obama obviously knew of a lot of those activities before then. He has chosen to DO NOTHING, or worse, in the case of mass surveillance, kick the ball to *Congress* (yes, the same Congress he's constantly bitched during his two terms about being dysfunctional and blocking his every move), which is completely unnecessary as NSA is part of the Executive Branch. Let's suppose that, as you contend, Obama is sooooo high up that he was in fact completely ignorant of any of the technical details of these activities, or even the existence of some of these programs. If he cared even the tiniest bit about our rights and upholding the Constitution -- especially in the wake of disclosures about leaving all US Citizens completely vulnerable to exploits such as HeartBleed -- he'd at least hit the Pause button on these programs via Executive Order so they could be properly investigated. He hasn't done *anything* close to that -- nothing. Just a bunch of bullshit lip service. This indicates he approves of all of these programs, and is attempting to wait until the noise dies down so they can be continued and expanded. Giving Obama a pass on anything NSA-related is weak and people that do it look like apologists from where a lot of us sit.

The NSA is part of the Executive Branch. Obama could immediately, at the very least, put a temporary halt on all of these types of activities and conduct a review gauging the potential impact on ordinary US citizens as collateral damage. He has done no such thing -- not with mass surveillance, not with HeartBleed, not with any of the other nasty shit disclosed in the Snowden leaks. Don't DARE give him a pass on anything NSA-related -- he doesn't need Congress in this case and can personally shut it all down at any time.

All of their petabytes of data about US citizens, our supposed allies (and probably, a handful of real terrorists too), a virtually unlimited budget, a license to shit all over the Constitution, and an explicit heads-up from Russia, and they STILL couldn't get this guy before he and his brother made their attack. It should be obvious to everyone at this point that the reason for NSA's mass surveillance isn't to prevent terrorism -- it never was.