As a train, the airplane is pitiful. It can't haul as much freight or as many passengers. It costs more. It needs to land and be refueled more frequently. And who needs an airplane anyway? Trains are safer as you are less likely to die in an accident. Trains may not be as fast, but what's the hurry? I like sitting in the car and seeing the country go by at ground level. You can't see a damn thing from an airplane and what you do see looks like little toys. Yep, only an idiot would build or buy an airplane because I like trains.

Before him it was the Bush Administration. Before Bush it was Clinton. Minions of the ruling class always do their bidding regardless of major party affiliation.

Courts and police do not predate the concept of a government. Even the Greek city-states were states. The alternative to states were tribes. Not all state's are nations and not all nations have states. Germany is a nation state, but the USA is not. Nor are most if not all African countries and other countries created by colonial or other imperial powers. The Kurds are a nation that has no state. Israel is an attempt to create a nation state by reassembling the nation into a geographic area and declaring a state. The 50 US states are part of a federal system. We tried a confederacy (in 1783-9) but found it didn't work well so we strengthened the central government. So are you saying that you don't like Germany, but you like the USA? How well are the African states working out? The problem with international institutions is that they are not democratic. Totalitarian and authoritarian governments end up with as much say as those with more representative democracies.

Who would enforce the contracts? Contracts of all kind are enforced by government, i.e. the states you think are unnecessary. It's the states that provide the mechanisms to make and enforce laws, contracts, private property, etc. How would you replace that? How does anarchy work exactly?

Yes, but then there are the data brokers who put that all together for their customers. Selling and exchanging data is a big business. A company can buy the raw data in some cases or share their data where it goes into a pool and the broker provides (sells) you details about customers, prospects, leads, partners, etc.

Then IBM would saddle it with some really complex, bloated, crappy middleware called "WebSphere Atomic Appliance for Business". It would be more expensive and run slower than a no-name Intel based blade running Linux and an open source framework. You'd need their professional services to manage it for you.

No. It's China not implementing pollution controls that is the problem, not who they are manufacturing for. They could continue to produce these products and still implement the controls they promised, but they haven't. China and a number of other countries compete on cost not just with cheap labor, but by not requiring their manufacturers to minimize pollution. It's bad for their citizens and bad for the world.

Get Fuzzy! Enough said.

I don't know if its Netflix demanding the DRM or the content providers. iTunes DRM was not Apple's desire. It was mandated by the music publishers. Eventually they relented in exchange for a higher price. Now that Netflix is also producing content they might also want the DRM. Anyone know?

Lousy analogy. Microsoft makes Word and Word competed against Wordperfect so one would not expect the manufacturer of one product to sell the competing product of a competitor. Amazon sells books. It does not write them or publish them. It is an important channel through which publishers and authors seek to sell their products. The books are electronic so the cost of stocking and selling any one book is close to zero. Amazon is simply refusing to sell certain books in order to put price pressure on a publisher or to punish an author or publisher for their behavior. If Amazon was found to be a monopoly their behavior could be ruled as illegal. That's basically the question, is Amazon's position in electronic book sales so dominant as to effectively constitute a monopoly. I don't think so as I rarely buy ebooks from Amazon, but then I don't buy contemporary popular fiction either.

Let's see. You might check on the Koch Industries environmental record. http://www.polluterwatch.com/k... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... Perhaps the Exxon Valdez disaster - still not repaired for Exxon or the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico for BP just a couple of years ago. The numerous leaks on the Alaska oil pipeline? These folks make billions (trillions collectively) and leave a trail of destruction. They actively fight most every attempt at regulation and disaster prevention. They fund global warming denial web sites and groups. Mountain top removal for the coal industry? How about strip mining. Do you think that's good for the environment? How about your drinking water? Duke Power and the pollution in the Cape Fear river some weeks ago? The spill in West Virginia weeks before that? The spill in the Tennessee river valley a few years ago? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... Would you say none of that was preventable? Their very business is the destruction of the environment in order to obtain fossil fuels. The use of these fuels is also the primary contributor to the global warming we've been witnessing. What part of this do you not get? Are you an astroturfer? How much are getting paid to pretend to be this dumb?

Koch brothers. Executives of Exxon. Executives of BP. Executives of every major coal company. On and on and on.

There was no "global cooling" phenomenon being widely touted in the 1970's. That's a myth. The climate change report recently issued http://nca2014.globalchange.go... addresses that among other things. Global warming and this particular problem of glacier melting in Antarctica were both called out in the 1970's though. According to the NY Time reporting the second case - Antarctica is related to a variety of factors in addition to global warming. There are no big bucks to be made being an environmentalist. Provide some names of a few folks who became billionaires from pushing environmental protection. There are trillions being made producing fossil fuels.

So you're a lawyer and you've researched this completely or you've latched on to a snippet out of context and are misinterpreting it to favor your own prejudices. Snopes has a nice objective write up of misinterpretations of the Dick Act (Militia Act of 1903) including yours. http://www.snopes.com/politics... Specifically, the Dick Act does not void gun control laws or address any right to bear arms. Try again. BTW, for those who assume I'm against gun ownership, try again because I'm not. I just don't think the 2nd amendment is a slam dunk obvious argument in favor of a universal right to bear arms - any arms. Personally I believe I have an inalienable right to self defense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... SCOTUS has issued different opinions on this over time. They can always change their minds again. Even if it is settled as case law it is not settled politically any more than Rowe v Wade ended the debates on abortion.