Unless a lot of the /. readership is in their late 70's-early 80's or older, no one here is going to remember Tokyo Rose or Lord Haw-Haw, outside of historical references.

That aside, it's a specious comparison. Both Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw were propagandists working for specific governments in an attempt to demoralize soldiers and citizens. Assange is a free agent ostensibly working to create a method of exposure where governments and multi-national companies can no longer operate in the shadows. And really, "agents of our enemies?" In the words of Walt Kelly, "we have met the enemy and he is us."

It's information. A Russian was arrested in Cyprus for a crime allegedly committed against a US corporation on servers operating in the US. I'd say it's germain. When dealing with international law issues, nationality is important. If his nationality was then being used to somehow intimate that people from a particular country are criminals and thieves, then yes, I'd agree there was unnecessary bias.

Because of course anyone who replaces them will spring from the forehead of Athena, walk on water then turn it into wine, poop vanilla ice cream, and give us all sweet fuzzy kittens to make us happy when we're sad.

Why not try to create a better informed electorate? One which understands that software patents deter competition and stifle innovation.

No they don't, otherwise it would have happened now. At what point of watching theory after theory, and economic model after economic model get relegated to the scrap heap do you realize that economic models won't work in a system which is being consistently gamed by those who can afford to buy the influence to continue gaming it? It's like a rigged poker game. You can spout probability and statistics of certain hands coming up all you want, but if those hands never come up, or the house's shill keeps winning while you keep losing, you have to admit at some point that someone is deliberately working to ensure you won't win.

It's not for my lack of understanding why it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because your argument is based on a very subjective and factually inaccurate view of recent history. One of the tenets of Keynesian economics that is sound is not to adopt austerity measures in the face of recession or depression. The time for austerity is when the economy is strong, and there are the tax receipts and free-flow of capital to pay down the debt assumed to spend your way out of a recession (and that's the only way out of a recession; it's what Clinton did to get us out of the recession of 1990-94, and then used the late 90's boom to pay down debt and balance the budget). The reason we've gone into double-dip now is because of this misplaced (and frankly mind-boggling) belief that after a decade of deficit spending while consistently reducing income, we can some how entice those who hold a record amount of capital back into spending by not priming the pump through government incentives. When the private sector is not spending, and people are out of work and not spending, who else is going to spend? The economy we've built is dependent upon consistent expansion and growth. When you have neither, you have nothing. This is not complicated math here. The fact there there seems to be a large segment of the population willingly suspending disbelief about conservative economic initiatives and principles is clear indication why we're going down in flames. If you're a student of history, you can why we are where we are now because a Republican-controlled congress made the same kind of demands on FDR, and if it weren't for the eventual wartime debt and spending, would have plunged us into a second great depression. Yet when you have a propaganda machine pumping out misinformation about what is really happening in the market place, it's going to remain this way until it either collapses or people finally question why we've built a corporate welfare state that pays to ensure it's participants can continue to game the system.

Explain to me using your logical model of economics why it made good economic sense for Barclays to manipulate LIBOR?

Thank you for establishing the answer to the ages-old question of "which came first, the economy or the eggs needed to feed the workforce?" Today, the present, not back in the good old neolithic hunter-gatherer days, we are in a stagnant economy because while there's record amounts of capital littering balance sheets, very few business owners are investing in expanding the economy, because there's no demand, and that's because because the majority of the segment of society which drives consumer spending has no money due to stagnant wages, higher energy costs, and subsequently is not spending like it used to. So there's your death spiral. You can talk about economic theory all you want, the current numbers available show a much different picture.

Just like everything on FOX News or in the WSJ is not factual or really news, not everything written in economic theory really happens the ways it's posited, or isn't mitigated by all sorts of presently unseen or dynamic variables.

Which also means a lot of the money made (or all of it, if it's a locally-owned business) stays in the local economy, which can mean families, schools, and your community in general benefit. Sales tax paid online goes into a state's general coffer and stays there, whereas part of the money collected locally, whether it's from a national/international chain or a local mom-and-pop store, goes back to the county/municipality where it was collected originally.

So Economic Theory 1, Actual Economy 0. Awesome.

Without jobs, who cares how low consumer prices drop for whatever reason, and who cares whether it's Amazon, Walmart, or the corner mini-mart owning online markets? No jobs mean no demand, which means no growth, which means no jobs, which means no demand. Rinse, lather repeat.

Note to Randroids: We got into this mess by lack of government regulation, not because of it. Don't believe me? Go ask Phil Gramm, or better yet, Phil Gramm's wife.

The issue is why people feel compelled to self-medicate. A beer or glass of wine or a dram of whiskey can be food and/or something to be enjoyed. Or it can be abused as a drug. Anything in excess, whether it be food, alcohol, weed, shopping, sex, exercise, etc, especially if it's being used to check out of the reality of one's life, is dangerous. Granted, pounding a bottle of Jack and running 10K may have opposite effects on the body, but if you're checking out, then you aren't dealing with the organic neurological and/or dysfunctional emotional issues.

Whether weed is more benign than alcohol hardly matters if your inclination is to wake and bake, slack at work, let the kids cook dinner for themselves while you sleep off a bong-hit or any of the myriad other chronic stoner check-outs.

I say treat emotional/mental illnesses as we would high blood pressure or any other disease. I bet if the stigma for treating behavioral health issues were removed, we'd see less in the way of substance abuse, and lifestyle diseases such as Type II Diabetes and obesity would start dropping in reported cases, because then we'd finally admit that the brain is the most important organ in the body, and its health governs much of the overall health of the body. We'd also notice a drop in child abuse, spousal abuse, personality disorders, and see a lot higher quality of life.

Or less. Given that the shelf-life of most mobile technology seems to be three years or less, and most of a new mobile handset's sales seem to be made in the first six months, why not give them one year of exclusivity, then open the flood gates? Apple is one of the largest companies in the world, and software patents didn't get them there. It was innovation and sales, and as a result, it's lead the way. Despite Android handset sales eclipsing iPhone sales at this place in time, iPhones will still be sold in record numbers. Why the hell waste money on a patent? The same goes for Bezos and his asinine One-Click to buy patent. Again, Amazon is not the company it is based on that feature.

Actually, he wasn't saying that. He was saying that making profit the primary motivating force in pharmaceutical research turns it away from science and toward a more commoditized economic model. Jonas Salk refused to patent his polio vaccine. Medical and pharmaceutical research was done before to better lives and for the glory of science. Now it's being done to better the lives of people whose lives are already better (eg. Big Pharma executives and their lobbyists). A Cost-plus economic model would move us away from fairly pointless, high-side effect designer drugs and more toward a production-distribution model with a guaranteed and reasonable profit margin and leave pharmaceutical research to the scientists, not the marketing people.

It's also better for the economy, because less money spent on medication means more discretionary spending. Think about how GM wouldn't have needed a government bailout had most senior citizens been able to buy new Buicks and medication instead of medication only

Except submicron filters don't function that way. They're designed for particulate matter, not ionic contaminants.