It may not be part of the budget, but the treasury bonds held by the social security administration are definitely part of the national debt. The fraudulent accounting schemes used to hide the size of the national debt might prevent the government from making social security payments. When the baby boomers start retiring in large numbers, the government will have to issue bonds to the public in order to redeem the bonds held by social security. Unless we get the budget balanced soon, we won't be able to afford to redeem the social security bonds.

The lottery system probably logs ticket sales and ticket checks to a central server. Attempting to check tickets before buying them would probably raise a red flag.

They probably want customers to use native ipv6 so they can eventually stop supporting native ipv4. I believe they are planning to let people run ipv6 exclusively and proxy outbound ipv4 connections which seems like a better long term strategy. I don't think that giving customers a new modem and router will complicate the rollout too much.

I just bought a house that has 50mbit service from comcast, but no dsl. The house is on the edge of a mid sized town in an outer suburb of a major us city. I am too far from the central office and they can't set up another office closer to my neighborhood. Because the radius of the town is about the same as the maximum distance for dsl and area around the town is sparsely populated, everyone who lives at the edge of town probably has the same problem.

Because comcast can install fiber directly to each neighborhood, they can easily offer fast internet to anyone who has a cable connection. Since the whole town has cable, I would guess that everyone in the town can get comcast internet.

The information is public domain by definition because neither Wikileaks or the US government claim copyright on it. The government usually can't prosecute the general public for distributing classified information they get from a government employee, a web site, or a newspaper. They can try to get an injunction against publication, but once it has been published the public can generally use the information freely. In this case, there has been no discussion about prosecuting the new york times or even an injunction to prevent publication of the leaked documents. In the case of the pentagon papers, the government only prosecuted the employee who leaked the information, not any of the newspapers that published the leak.

I agree that they shouldn't have published the cables about how our diplomats think that certain foreign leaders are dumb because it didn't provide any useful information. The cables about Iran do provide useful information about how the middle eastern governments ignore the will of their own people. Bombing Iran is very unpopular in the countries whose leaders were secretly advocating for an attack on Iran.

Isn't that why we send new prisoners to Afghanistan now?

The information may destabilize the governments of the gulf states. I would guess that endorsing an Israeli or US invasion of Iran would not be popular with the citizens of the gulf states. This knowledge might lead the public to overthrow the king and establish a government represents them better. I personally think that this kind of destabilization could be a good thing for the region. Our government worries too much about the stability of repressive governments. They prefer having friendly dictatorships over potentially unfriendly democracies.

Clearly the north didn't go to war to abolish slavery, but the south was fighting to preserve their right to hold slaves. The right to hold slaves was the primary right the southern states were fighting for. Using the claim that the north was fighting to abolish slavery as a strawman to distract people is a standard right wing tactic.

Unfortunately, BP gas stations are mostly franchises. I believe that they pay an annual fee to use the brand name. BP still gets their money unless the gas station goes bankrupt. Because there isn't much excess refining capacity in the US, BP could still sell their gas to the other stations. A boycott would hurt BP's public image, but wouldn't cost them much money.

I'm not sure that foreign intelligence agencies do have all this information. I would imagine it is much easier to find a whistleblower who will release classified information to the public than it is to find a person who will betray their country by giving information to the kgb. The whistleblower believes that he is serving his country, not betraying it. People are probably more willing to risk life in prison for a good cause than for $100,000 from the kgb. In addition, actually spending the money from the kgb would draw attention to the leaker and increase the chances of being caught.

Of course the 3/5ths rule was bad, but having slaves counted fully for the purpose of representation as the southern states wanted would have increased southern representation in the house. With more representation for southern states, the conflicts over slavery might have been settled in favor of the south and the south might not have succeeded. This would have delayed emancipation. Clearly the constitution should have outlawed slavery or forbidden counting slaves when allocating representatives because each representative was supposed to represent an equal number of citizens. Clearly congressmen who owned slaves couldn't honestly claim slaves as their constituents.

Correct. But if they did move to Nevada, for example, they could legally demand a spanish ballot.

Schools in Puerto Rico often teach Spanish as the primary language. Children born there are still citizens and have a constitutional right to vote even if they move out of Puerto Rico.

While I don't agree with the grandparent, your figures don't really address his point. He claims that americans are bad at drinking and smoking in moderation. We either abstain or consume excessive amounts. Your figures show the average consumption across users and non-users. Since most americans drink alcohol at least occasionally, the alcohol number is somewhat useful. The tobacco number is much less useful because the majority of americans don't smoke. Some countries may have a smoking rate 2 to 3 times higher than the american rate.

I strongly doubt that weed use in america would drop down to 18% if it was legalized. My guess is that the number of people smoking weed in america would increase slightly if it was legalized. I don't think that people would smoke significantly more weed if it was legalized. Unlike tobacco, nobody chain smokes weed.

You can't scan items as fast as the cashier can. I used to be a cashier at a store. I could scan and bag one small item in one or two seconds. I can't scan that fast at the grocery store because the machine wont let me. After I scan one item, the scanner turns off for 4 seconds while the register verifies the weight of the item. At the larger self check lane I can't even bag my purchases while I scan them.