"it could have gone to medical or space research."

That's rich. Who do you think has been at the forefront of identifying the problem?

Plus a place like that might support us.

No, huge difference. Blue dogs are self-declared.

RINOs are labelled by others. And you don't have to be liberal to be a RINO, you only have to disagree with a talk show host.

A "blue dog democrat" is a democrat whose constituency is conservative.

A "republican in name only" is a guy who wants to be a republican but is rejected and disowned by the base when they catch a whiff of non-zealotry regarding their party line.

This. The obvious truth is that each party wants the programs they don't like to vanish, and the programs they do like to expand.

Only purist libertarians honestly want the whole government small. Regardless of their rhetoric, the actions of every other party show they want the government to be ginormous, domineering, and bent on shoving their agenda down the world's throat.

"To impeach the first black would be racist!"
That might not be far off, considering that nobody impeached Bush for doing the same things.

"confidential informants, undercover work, legal wiretaps, etc. are all things which should be protected"

So says the government. The Constitution says the defense is supposed to get all the evidence. That's been taken to include the whole story of what opened the case, and what led the cops to look where.

Maybe the Constitution is wrong; I wouldn't know. But this "parallel evidence" is a secret end run around the Constitution, and it is illegal.

If you want to allow this "parallel evidence" history revision, amend the constitution to say the government can lie about their evidence trail to keep secrets from defendants and even the prosecutors.

Until then, follow the law. Or just stop pretending we have a Constitution.

I know, it reads like that for me too. But if your UAV is going down, you ditch it the nearest place where it's unlikely to hit people.

I think most libertarians don't want to circumvent laws. If there is a law they disagree with I expect they'd want to rescind it, not dance around it.

And I think most libertarians would probably assess a bitcoin's value at the value of the commodity that backs it, which is zero. But some may like to gamble that they could buy some and sell them to a bigger sucker.

Effort to Salary ratio, rough estimates

me:
  $100k/50 hrs/week, no enemies, and a private life

congressman:
  $174K/70 hrs/week, 200 million enemies, and a public life

" I am moding."
Well, that explains a lot about Slashdot.

" [skeptics]prefer not to jump to conclusions that can`t really be asserted from this data"

" [skeptics] defy the notion that human factors are as significant as the alarmists say"

Sounds to me like skeptics have arrived at a conclusion.can`t really be asserted from this data.

The idea that human activity doesn't alter the composition of the atmosphere may have made some sense in 1870, but by 1970 anybody who lived in a major city could see with their own eyes that we were changing the atmosphere.

I think the ones jumping to conclusions without supporting data are mostly right-wing idealogues. Because I know of no science to support their position, only politics.

All I've seen against AGW is selective pseudo-scientific microqubbles copied and pasted from energy industry shills, attacks on Al Gore, and laughter at cold spells..

Why the personal attack, friend? We seem to be on the same side.

> a potential reality that will inevitably include you

FWIW, my future in "a potential reality" is probably not "inevitable".

Regardless, there are other "potential reality" scenarios which concern me more, so I'll leave this particular battle in your capable hands.

Or a way for the automakers to get nothing. I'd just buy older cars whose features I didn't need to rent.

"the theory that what is happenign now is outside the bounds of what already happened to Earth many many times"

I think the theory you refer to was probably about human history, not planetary history. But if I'm wrong, please point me to a URL proferring that theory.

"Skeptics ... defy the notion that human factors are as significant as the alarmists say"

Do these skeptics have any hard data about what the human contribution is and what greenhose effect it should have?

Each of the 7,000 who registered successfully first failed on average 9 times.