The devil would be in the details. Companies would lobby hard for exceptions to be made and abused and nonsense. See the pasta sauce counting as a serving of vegetable for an example. Rules defining what is and is not a fruit, veggie, meat, and milk aren't very sexy, there's not going to be a lot of public oversight of the process until it gets ridiculous (see again pasta sauce as vegetable for an example.)

I'd like to see a pilot program where food stamps can only be used to purchase something like soylent. Nutritionally complete and defined, no ability for food megacorps to get much wiggle room, and healthy.

No one is disputing that there are pros to the spying, or that there are bad people out there. What I AM disputing is that in order to protect our way of life against ignorant fundamentalists, we need to have a massive electronic spying program, one we didn't have for the bulk of our two centuries as a country.

Ending the NSA would compromise our ability to prevent terrorism. Probably on American soil. I'm okay with that risk! I will take the increased chances of bad people doing bad things to me and my family in exchange for the government not spying on me. Deal! I won't even demand my taxes be reduced, just put the money towards paying down the debt or research or infrastructure!

I'd rather err on the side of too little spying and play it safe. I see little in history to convince me that governments can ever successfully spy only on the bad guys and never for political reasons. If you allow the NSA to listen into only one phone call a day, I suspect they'll spend each phone call listening in on people who they identify as responsible for putting that limit on them. Dismantle the whole thing and there won't be a question of "are they still spying on us even though we told them they couldn't."

What's your point exactly? "Other states and a president 22 years ago are bad too?"

CONGRATULATIONS! You have proven that Indiana's actions are NOT UNPRECEDENTED! You MIGHT have even proven that Bill Clinton is not the paragon of liberalism that... let's see here... NO ONE is claiming he is!

Speaking as someone who wants to see the NSA dismantled, I hope these shooters died painfully if they were doing it as a political statement. This will only garner sympathy for the NSA, will make NSA staff more certain that they're the "good guys" in a world full of bad guys, and will distract from valid criticisms against global spying. Violence is the last refuge of desperate men, and there's no reason for those opposed to big brother to be desperate. Public paranoia about terrorism, which allowed them to justify the spying, is waning slowly. Political opposition to the spying is growing as the spying community makes missteps like spying on senators. And younger generations don't seem too fond of the war on privacy.

Going all Rambo is a good way to threaten to reverse that momentum.

How long does it take you to read? Because 300 pages is a lot, but not a lot to read in two weeks. Is there anything that you've come across that's objectionable or is this just FUD?

Do we have any indication that Martin would allow the books to be finished if he died? The only way I could see him allowing that in his will would be if A: it was a sticking point for a contract with HBO or B: if he trusted a writer enough.

As you said, obviously the TV show wouldn't be as detailed,. But the TV show is good enough that I wouldn't throw myself off of a rope bridge if Martin died.

Hey now! Press releases from the wireless industry and political bribery on the part of the wireless industry generates an additional forty thousand jobs a year! If you question these stats, that risks two hundred billion jobs!

I do wish more people realized that cops in the US have serious problems and operate more like big brother than they need to. That said, I don't follow your logic here. "Cops do bad things, anonymous doesn't do and won't do as many bad things, therefore this thing that they're thinking of doing is okay"?

"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" has got to be the most disingenuous lie that law enforcement has ever come up with.

The fact that they're whining about how hard they have it suggests to me that they do have it easy. It's the new first rule of PR: if you're on top, make it sound like you're a victim of something, an underdog. Witness MS trying to make it sound like Linux is stealing trillions of dollars from them, or the religious majority of the country claiming there's a "War on Christmas."

You seem to be assuming that operating glass hands free is safer than pulling out your phone. This sounds unlikely to me given the available data.

Outside of a car, again, pull out your smartphone's camera.

I didn't say I hated glass.

Plus there are different fan bases reacting as far as I can tell. I watched the original "Wrath of Khan" after the latest JJ star trek and almost couldn't get through it. At the risk of the wrath of the trekkies, I'm going to say that aside from nostalgia for the old series, most viewers would prefer the newer one. The hardcore fans were pissed, but they're dramatically outnumbered by people who liked it. So I wouldn't say "some people have this opinion," I would say "very few people think JJ star trek movies were awful compared to the older movies."

Previous attempts to convince people have not been successful yet either. It's been said you can't reason someone out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into, this is true for climate change. Simply letting the truth speak for itself and guide policy has been a depressing failure. Different approaches must be tried.

My point was that politics sometimes sometimes follow facts, often they don't, but that doesn't change the nature of the facts themselves. Concluding "any facts politicians agree on must be wrong" is as stupid as suggesting the reverse. Anon-admin was suggesting that since climate change is being discussed by politicians, it's not science. That's backwards.