There's a difference here. A public beach is a public area, by definition, and you don't really have any expectation of privacy there (beyond, say, being stalked or harassed). A private residence's back yard with a 6-foot fence is a totally different matter. You can legally film people in a public area in most places (though the stalking/harassment stuff still applies, so don't focus too much on any one person without permission), but you cannot film people in a private area without permission.

Also, a house's front yard and back yard are very different, especially if the back yard is fenced. People are allowed to walk into your front yard and knock on your front door, though they have to leave the premises if ordered to by the resident. They're not allowed to wander into your fenced-off back yard. They're also allowed to photograph your front yard (within reason: the Google car is OK, stopping for a long time and taking zoom shots in one house's window is not). Photographing a fenced-in back yard is not allowed, and falls under peeping tom laws.

If you shoot and injure (or kill) a 15 year old who is running at you with a knife and appears intent on causing you bodily harm, you will be charged. But you will also be allowed to argue that you were acting in self-defense. If the jury believes you, you will go free.

This isn't universally true, it depends on state laws.

In some states, the decision of whether to charge someone for a crime rests with a Grand Jury (Texas is one state like this). The facts are presented to them and they decide whether to charge or not. If they don't think it's a chargeable offense, then you don't even get charged, much less go to trial.

I have no idea what the law in Kentucky is.

I think you're missing that that's still a bunch of money coming from the Federal government, even if it is a minority of their overall funding. The Republicans would just love to eliminate that expenditure altogether, and move it to the defense budget (even if it is puny in comparison already).

That just sounds like "regulation"; Europe is known for being more regulated than the US, and for a lot of things, that's a good thing. Just look at the privacy laws Europe has; they prevent a lot of the abuses going on in the US now. The downside to regulation, of course, is that it makes it very hard for new businesses to start up and grow quickly; there's a reason Silicon Valley is in the US instead of Europe. However, for large, established industries, Europe generally does them much better than the US. What kind of fool would choose a Lincoln over a BMW or Mercedes, for instance? Also, have you ever taken a cruise on a multi-billion dollar cruise ship built in the US? Of course not, because the US can't build such a thing. All those ships are built in Europe. Government regulation doesn't seem to be a problem there. They also build a lot of high-end airplanes and helicopters in Europe.

And since when does industry in the US cling to traditional values of right and wrong? Corporations in the US are infamous for being completely sociopathic. I don't think I need to go into too many examples, but the Ford Pinto is a pretty good one (they decided to allow people to die in crashes and just pay out settlements because it was cheaper than adding a $1 part to prevent the cars from catching fire). For a more recent example, look at GM and their ignition switch fiasco which they actively covered up and refused to fix. Strange that I never see that kind of stuff from European corporations, or Japanese ones. The US is also the home of patent trolls. They don't seem to have that problem in Europe either, again probably because of regulation.

The problem with regulation, of course, is that you need a government that has a low enough level of corruption to make it work. That's why regulation never seems to work well in the US; the government is far too corrupt. Why European governments aren't as corrupt, I don't know, but I suspect it's because the US is too large, powerful, and diverse.

How many Americans never leave the country in their lifetime? Probably a large majority of them. So how's being stuck in Russia much different?

Apples and oranges. Assange did his playing around in Sweden. Russia is nothing like Sweden, or even the US. Accusations of date-rape in Russia are probably laughed at.

(first off, teacher pay isn't in the same money bucket as NASA, they do not compete).

This is totally incorrect. They're all part of the overall government budget. Yes, a lot of funding for schools is at local levels, but not all. And there's plenty of politicians who would love to eliminate one or the other, or better yet both, and use the savings to pay for tax cuts for the rich or for more bloated defense programs.

Exactly. The only rock involved is the pedestal it's sitting on (which actually is a pretty impressive piece of work by itself).

You're right about the primaries, but it's unlikely your vote is going to change anything, so once you get to the general election, it's pretty pointless. Still can't hurt to vote in the primary to try to fix things there though.

Just look at the upcoming election: there's tons of excitement and buzz about Bernie, but of course Hillary will be the one who gets the nomination. There's no point in electing Hillary over Jeb.

Snowden himself suffers minor inconveniences relating mainly to lifestyle and the ability to see friends and family.

The friends and family bit is easily the biggest problem for him. The lifestyle might actually be better over there. Over here, an early-30s geek has a terrible time with dating; American women are mostly fat and ugly after the age of 25 (and certainly over 30), and if they're not, they absolutely hate geeks. Russian women, OTOH, are famous for being hot. I'm not sure how Russian women feel about geeks, but if he's well-employed over there, I imagine he has beautiful women lining up to date him.

The main lifestyle problem for him over there is that the Ruble isn't worth much these days for various reasons, so he likely doesn't have nearly the buying power with a job there that he had working here. So if he could get out of the country without trouble, he probably couldn't afford any decent foreign vacations like you can on an American IT worker's salary, and probably has to drive some crappy Lada instead of a BMW.

One important difference between Obama and Sanders is that Obama had pretty much zero track record before he took office. He was a state senator for a brief time, and then a US senator for a very brief time, and that's it. He was really an unknown; why people elected him is a mystery, probably just because they thought he was an "outsider". Sanders, OTOH, has a very, very long track record in politics, so you can just refer to that. If he ends up behaving completely different after being elected, then you really have to wonder if the Presidency isn't being completely controlled by someone else.

The evidence is classified, so the trial can't be public. Classified information doesn't suddenly become unclassified when it's made public. It doesn't matter if the whole world knows; these are government rules, they're not supposed to make sense.

Of course, being banished to Russia, is fine too

He's a man in his early 30s. Have you seen what Russian women look like in that age range, compared to American women? He's probably having a great time over there.

This is exactly why Star Trek ships had "deflector shields". As a bonus, they look much nicer than big blocks of ice when you're doing a camera shot of the outside of the spacecraft.

You'd have to use magnetic confinement. Of course, that itself would require a constant power source, or else BOOM.