I know it's common to comment without RTFA, but to make a statement of fact regarding the article without reading it is something else entirely.

"Issue: (1) Whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on respondent's vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether the government violated respondent's Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent."

I like the idea of a simple signal to someone on the other end of the line, but I feel like there are a number of great ideas in car-related communication that have never been interested, so I doubt this one will ever happen. For instance, there's still no alternative to the obnoxious car horn other than trying to press it gently (even then it sounds kind of obnoxious, but the person usually gets the idea).

Apparently that is not true. Unfortunately I haven't found a primary source yet, but I've seen/heard claims twice today by researchers that talking with a passenger is not the same as talking on a phone.

First on the Diane Rehm Show this morning: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-15/ban-cell-phones-while-driving, one of the guests specifically talked about research testing the reaction time of people in simulations under different conditions.

Second in this CBS article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57343541/hands-free-phones-just-as-risky-research-shows/
"Of course, drivers do not have to be using cellphones to have conversations — they talk with passengers all the time. But talking to an adult passenger does not involve the same risk as a phone conversation, researchers said. That is because passengers are engaged in the driving experience with the driver. If they see a danger, they'll usually warn the driver. Passengers also tend to instinctively adjust their conversation to the level of traffic and other difficulties confronting the driver."

False equivalency fallacy. My work here is done.

Of the $787B stimulus (not $1T), over a third ($288B) went to tax breaks and tax incentives, a bit less than a third ($224B) to entitlements, and another third ($275B) to various government projects. So your question then is where did the $275B go. The answer, along with the info I included here, is all at Recovery.gov. I'm sure if you don't fully trust the source, you can at least find out the programs there and then track down details via other means like news sources. Total infrastructure including roads, water treatment, broadband, etc was $48.9B (roads got broken up into two separate categories: "Transportation" and "Infrastructure"). Unemployment insurance programs got $60B.

You assume that an international minimum wage law would require the same minimum wage everywhere, regardless of local context such as cost of living. If you nailed minimum wage to cost of living, then while jobs in those countries would be reduced, those other countries would still have cheaper labor than us and thus would keep a (slightly decreased) competitive advantage. If you throw in environmental regulation, then that advantage decreases a bit more. If such a system were phased in over 10 years, the impact would not be disastrous, and should ultimately benefit the local and global environment, as well as the wellbeing of workers. The real challenges would be compliance and potential tariff retribution, but a concerted effort over time would I think produce positive results. The one other downside would be a short-term decrease in productivity since we'd essentially be internalizing external costs. However the whole point is that dealing with externalities pays off over the mid and long term.

Apparently you have no conception of how the Bill of Rights applies. mozumder never said "the government should force people to no longer be Christian (or of a middle-eastern religion)". He said he wants to socially vilify those religions, which without any explicit statement otherwise we should assume he intends to do in a legal manner. You are free to disagree with him as much as he is free to disagree with you and with any religion he chooses. This is the same sort of thing the talking heads on the Right always mistake whenever some idiot pundit says something that offends people. "So-and-so has every right to say what they said, and you're taking away his first amendment right to say it." No, we are using our own rights to make "so-and-so" accountable in the public arena.

^ NSFW

Well, this is fun, I get to agree and disagree with both of you! First of all, parent makes the right point (that I irresponsibly glossed over) that aside from the US and Al Qaeda, there were a bunch of Iraqis responsible for the majority of the deaths in Iraq. I wouldn't be all that surprised if the number dead is over 300,000, and that number (whatever it really is) does matter to me. The US is largely responsible in the sense that we opened up the can of worms, but the Iraqi factions and Al Qaeda are the primary killers, particularly in terms of innocent civilians. I do not think the US administrations have done enough to avoid civilian casualties in many instances, particularly when it comes to bombings based on bad intel, and particularly the Bush administration. Maybe it's just the coverage of bombings of things like weddings has decreased, but I've seen many fewer instances of this sort of thing in the news over the past year or so. That all being said, there is a difference between what we do and what they do in that we (usually) make a concerted effort to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the others not only don't mind killing civilians but often target them outright.

So both of you, please put away your extreme and overly simplistic perspectives. The US carries responsibility in that we made choices and need to recognize the consequences of those choices. However to cast all blame on the US and fail to distinguish between motivations is just as childish. Obama is no leftist. Your statement saying he is tells me a lot about you, tiqui. Obama is a centrist with liberal roots. Moreover his actions, while in my opinion unconstitutional, are far less reaching than Bush's were in terms of starting an endless war against "terrorism", promoting torture as policy, and denying rights to citizens and prisoners of war alike (yeah, the Geneva Conventions are still relevant until a person has been processed to ensure they were in fact enemy combatants, something Bush failed to consider for a substantial amount of time as many innocents got stuck in Guantanamo for years). So let's can the false equivalencies but recognize the US's role and responsibility with regards to civilian deaths and mistreatment. The problem hasn't been "a few bad apples", the problems come from the top in the way we put our soldiers into war, and more specifically into a situation of having overcrowding in prisons and insufficient training and supervision. There were a few bad apples, but most of the poor treatment and bad action by US military has been due to military and civilians policies and implementation.

Maybe (actually I do agree), but that's not the issue. I don't care if this is just politics from the Republicans perspective. I want our President to follow the law and constitution. Right now he isn't doing that. I don't think it's as bad as approving torture, but it's close in its potential long-term implications.

Which Democrats are we talking about, the ones that are suing Obama over this, the ones that are disagreeing with the administration in the press and TV, or the ones at home writing in message boards like these and writing letters to the White House urging a change of course that respects the rule of law and constitution? Democrats are in fact much better than Republicans in terms of attempting to hold their own to higher standards. Unfortunately it's easy to be much better than Republicans and still not be all that effective. Stop with the bullshit false equivalencies and start actually having an adult conversation.

Also, Obama is no war monger, but he does have a too strong sense of needing to protect our soft candy-asses from any potential external threat by using power that is not constitutionally his. Let's be clear on the real problem here. And a big reason he (and every other President) does this is because so many cowards want him to do whatever it takes even if it infringes on our rights. I hear it all the time on CSPAN (when I bother to listen).

How is this insightful? Did someone get insightful confused with simple and cliched?

Why can't people who start with a legitimate argument stop while they're ahead? My goodness. The "terrorists" (let's be specific, Al Qaeda) have killed way more than 3,000 innocents. That's just the approximate number of people they killed on 9/11. Since then they've killed plenty more. While one might argue that we (via the Bush administration) are responsible for many deaths because the war in Iraq led to destabilization and gave Al Qaeda room to operate and murder (both our troops and many civilians), your assertion that "we've killed something like 300,000" is an irresponsibly nonspecific charge. Moreover, it is silly to compare numbers that way when many (most?) of the deaths it seems you are saying we are responsible for are also the responsibility of those terrorists.

I agree with your core concept there, but you'd be well served by broadening your criteria to include education. Education level is the best predictor of birth rate and the long-term health of a community. It's not that poor places produce high birth rates or that high birth rates produce poverty, it's that poverty and lack of education leads to higher infant mortality, continued poverty, continued lack of education, and continued high birth rates. Also, funding small businesses through micro-financing (e.g. FINCA), in conjunction with providing local education, can help by providing economic stability, which can in turn increase the capability of a community to become educated. So those are the sorts of things I focus my giving towards.

Name a major candidate... name a candidate on the Democratic side in the past 10 years who has been a Truther. How much coverage has that movement gotten? I'm not saying that Birtherism is something new, since a major public effort was made to discredit our previous Democratic president, but you are making false equivalencies up and down the line. There was some evidence that Bush was AWOL from guard duty, but once there wasn't sufficient evidence for it the issue, and it didn't look like there was going to be a way to find further evidence, the issue was dropped by the media. The issue was NEVER picked up by party leaders, and all of this while there was never conclusive evidence that Bush was not AWOL (while we've had plenty of proof of Obama's birth for a couple of years now, the long form simply being the most definitive). The one about Palin being Trig's mother is another one that didn't last very long and few people took seriously. I could go on. Please stop making these false equivalencies. Many on the Left are capable of being blithering idiots, but far more on the right are doing it, and it regularly reaches many representatives and even the leaders of the Republican party.