This is only news to those who have had their head in the ground, listening to fox news and government shills.

I've noticed that it seems to be mostly Republicans who are putting up the legalization legislation trial balloons.

(Can't speak about Fox. I don't follow 'em all that much since, during the (especially the last) presidential campaigns, they proved the right-hand side of their claimed "fair and balanced" coverage consisted of flogging the Neocon faction and ignoring or slamming the others - especially the "Liberty" faction and Ron Paul.)

But I haven't checked Thomas.gov to see whether this is accurate, or just an artifact of the media only covering it when a Republican does it, on the "man bites dog IS news" principle.

The Aurora Borealis are not "are an electromagnetic phenomena that can adversely affect ..."

(Putting on my grammar policeman cap, and explicitly not addressing Rob's point...)

I DO wish the author of TFA would correctly use the singular and plural
of "Phenomenon".
  - Phenomenon: One (class of ...)
  - Phenomena: More than one (class of ...)

The Aurora Borealis are a set of related phenomena, involving glows from ionization of various atmospheric elements at different altitudes, various of the Van Allen belts being pumped up with new particles and/or pushed down by magnetic field distortion from solar wind variations, upper-atmosphere currents, ground currents, and I don't know what all else. The author's apparently inconsistent use of the singular and plural makes it difficult to understand what he meant.

I'd say "citation needed" but we only have rumor, innuendo and your word that the NSA is actually serious about going after real threats.

In the arena of creating laws based upon possible worst-case scenarios -- this one has to rank somewhere.

I agree with this. For most of criminal law, we judge based upon the INTENT of the DEFENDANT. The state of mind of the aggrieved party should be irrelevant unless the attacker knows it and that goes along with intent and premeditation.

"If I'm terrorized -- you must be a terrorist" is no way to run a civilization. A cynical person might believe that was the intent of the "stand your ground laws" and other shenanigans when large corporate groups like ALEC lobbied for them. What's wrong with self defense laws? It's not perfect, but should err on the side of; "Don't shoot people unless you have to."

The company I work for is currently code-naming their projects after cartoon characters.

Are you kidding? If people were diciplined enough to wait to buy things there would be zero consumer debt. There is a multi-trillion dollar industry based on people not wanting to wait until they can afford things.

The difference is voluntary and force.

This is also how large stores give a 5% discount using their own cards. They don't have to pay the fees.

Given the hardware advances in the 6 years since the 1000HE was released, I find it hard to believe Asus can't put out a computer that serves the same purpose for the same amount of money. Or less money.

I bought an Asus X200CA (12" touchscreen, slow CPU, 4 GB RAM) for about $260 back in October. They do make computers that serve the same purpose for the same amount of money (or less money); it's just that the computer in TFA isn't it.

In the example I was thinking of, the "one computer per classroom" thing didn't actually happen until almost 2000, when networking and email did exist.

"Glorified toy?" You give those schools too much credit -- they'd put one computer in each classroom... and then the teacher would use it for email and nothing else (if he even used it at all).

Clearly, he means schools founded by magnates, like Carnegie Mellon University.

Shortening yellow light duration causes accidents. Installing cameras causes shortening yellow light duration. Use the transitive property.