Wasn't it a combination of all of the above? The FBI collected video recordings and photos from all available sources, and identified two suspects. The FBI had one of the suspects putting the backpack on the ground right before one of the explosions, and also saw the two of them walk away from the scene afterward. That information was enough to pick those two and, for example, rule out the people identified by the NY Post and Reddit. But the images weren't clear enough, so they asked for the public's help for clearer images and for the suspect's names.

That's the thing about the case that bothers me the most. I'm not religious so I'm a little biased, but what exactly does the ID card have to do with the so-called "mark of the beast"? The school has a right (and well, responsibility) to know where students are during school hours, and takes attendance because it only receives money when students show up. The school even offered to disable the RFID, which should have dealt with the "mark" issue. And like the situation involving the nurse fired for refusing the flu shot, the policy is applied to everyone and isn't narrowly targeted at a small group. I fail to see how this is even a religious issue, other than some random defense against a rule that the girl and her father dislike. Or even another chance to claim "religious freedom!"

If the Antichrist were so evil, I think there would be more serious ways for he (it?) to make his presence known than as RFID. Business people and lawyers, for example.

Darrell Issa strongly opposes net neutrality, with a Republican platform that supports some ironic thing called "internet freedom". Last year, Issa ripped into FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at a Congressional hearing, accusing him of doing Obama's bidding regarding net neutrality (wtf?).

In short, Issa is a conservative Republican who has been on a mission to destroy net neutrality.

Influenza is and has always been lethal. There are different types of influenzavirus A, and they are named based on the two main proteins that allow it to infect cells: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). A new strain can result from mutation after an influenza virus is transmitted from an animal species to humans. My understanding is that (small) viral mutations occur all the time; thus, we create a flu vaccine based on the three strains that we believe are going to be most common in the next year. These are the seasonal epidemics, and are caused by antigenic drift. The "old" strains will either have died out or many people will still have immunity to them. However, if a gene reassortment occurs involving strains from different animal species (antigenic shift), then a global pandemic can result. The pandemic ends after people begin developing immunity to the new strain, and new infections begin to drop, and this phase is called the post-pandemic phase.

(In response to your other post...) incidentally, I have narcolepsy, although it wasn't caused by the vaccine. I wonder how the vaccine may have lead to these cases, though.

I'd much rather not have Santorum go Santorum on my ass...

I'm not so sure I would agree with Google's typical defense on this issue, which is that they have an algorithm that automatically ranks all the search results and they can't change that. Except they manually change the results. When companies break their rules, they can punish them. For example, when BMW's German website was found to influence results, Google banned them from their index. An eyeglass company, DecorMyEyes, verbally abused its customers to generate bad reviews ... and more publicity. After being published in The Times, they dropped the company from the index. Even in the Santorum case, they eventually made some results less prominent. Google has also been accused of pushing up the rankings of its own products. So it's kinda hypocritical to say that Google doesn't adjust individual results.

The irony is that the FDA, through the investigation of its own scientists, released companies' trade secrets. An FDA contractor had compiled a report, and one of the fired scientists came across it by doing a search online.

Also, spying on members of Congress and making an "enemies" list of them is certainly a great way to piss off some powerful people...

Why does Apple need to complain and whine about all these stupid patents? It's already the largest and most profitable technology company, and its cash reserves are insane. Everything it's doing is just like the Microsoft of the 1990's. And Steve Jobs was possibly a bigger asshole than Gates and Ballmer. Except, for some reason, people actually liked Jobs.

Sure, I agree with your points. But they don't have much to do with government control and regulation. What's your solution to these problems? Having a single-payer healthcare system and schools run by the federal government? Half the country would start to scream "socialism," even though it's much more like the systems in other developed countries. The problem isn't the tax deductions that employers get from offering health insurance, it's from the healthcare system and health insurance itself. Do you know what else isn't sometimes covered by insurance? Anesthesiologists. Because when you're going into surgery, nobody asks whether the anesthesiologist is in-network or out-of-network.

What? The free market has produced very few advances in medical technology. Many of the advances in the basic sciences (including biochemistry and physics) are sponsored by the government. The same goes for drugs and medical equipment. The free market has actually not developed many items on its own, without piggy-backing on projects that were originally or partially government funded. Interestingly, the government also pays a large portion of the costs of training medical residents.

Price controls? There aren't any. I used to work at a very large biotech that sold good but absurdly expensive drugs, because there aren't any price controls that prevented it from doing so. And I actually argue for greater barriers to entry in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. There are too many drugs and devices on the market that don't work, and may do more harm than good. One of the first things we learned about in my CS courses was the Therac-25. Additionally, things like metal-on-metal hip replacements should not have been approved, given their high failure rates and higher tendency of causing metal toxicity.

As the sibling posters have pointed out, you're falsely equating two things. Although the Republicans essentially block any Democratic bill, that doesn't mean the Democrats knew they would oppose it. When it was revealed in 2004 that John Edwards was exploiting the tax loophole, Republicans everywhere assailed the loophole. According to that article/blog post, the Wall St. Journal's editorial page, which is just as conservative as Fox News, criticized Edwards. As did Robert Novak and Sean Hannity. So no, you're wrong. Only the Senate Republicans' proposal was made because they knew the Democrats would vote against it.