As an outsider, it seemed that the principles on which the US was founded could not be easily reconciled once it started picking up its own "colonies".

It could not be reconciled from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

All men are created equal, except for non-land owners, slaves, Native Americans who could not vote and were discriminated against. Let's also not forget women, who couldn't vote in most states until the 1920s.

As an American who loves my country, I need to have the courage to face the reality --- that my country has ceased to be the land of the free, the home of the braves, but has turned into an empire which is moving towards oblivion

Not to be too glib, but the braves died out long ago under the watch of Andrew Jackson.

I have a serious question for you: why do you love your country? I can understand why one could love the ideals that your country was founded upon as they are beautiful. I can understanding wanting to get involved in politics to try and steer the country in a direction that you think is better than where it is now. Why a love of country, especially a country that has been doing immoral things for quite some time?

The last moral war the US fought, in my estimation, was World War II. It was declared by Congress, and the entire nation sacrificed for it. There was a draft. People left their comfortable jobs and went off to defend the world against tyranny, oppression, and genocide. There was a defined end goal.

Korea certainly did not fit that bill. Our entrance into Vietnam was based on lies. Beruit was Reagan trying to take the focus off Iran-Contra. The First Iraq War was based on lies and oil. Afghanistan was perhaps justified (though by no means moral, in my estimation). The Second Iraq War was also based on lies and oil.

The CIA has a track record of overthrowing democratically elected leaders if they judge them not in the best interests of the US. Remember the Iraninan hostage crisis? That was a response to the CIA reinstalling the Shah. Remember Saddam Hussein? The US put him in power.

Ever since the creation of the NSA and Hoover's reign at the FBI there has been spying on American citizens. Do not think that PRISM is new. The intelligence agencies have been making incremental gains towards it since the Red Scare. The biggest gain of all was convincing the public that CALEA compliance was important (that is, remote, digitally tappable equipment providing both voice and data flowing over the lines).

So, given all of that, why do you love your country?

Which both Candidate Obama and President Obama supported from the get go.

The fix is in, people. Do not worry though:

We interrupt this program with a special bulletin.

America is now under martial law.
All Constitutional rights have been suspended.

Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact loved ones, insurance agents, or attorneys.
Shut up!

Do not attempt to think or depression may occur.

Stay in your homes!
Curfew is at 7PM sharp after work
Anyone caught outside the gates of their subdivision sector after dark will be shot!
Remain calm, do not panic.

Your Neighborhood Watch officer will be by to collect urine samples in the morning.
Anyone caught interfering with the collection of urine samples will be shot!
Stay in your home, remain calm.

The number one enemy of progress is questions.
National Security is more important than individual will.

All sports broadcasts will proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission!
Use only the drugs prescribed by your boss or supervisor.
Shut up! Be happy!

Obey all orders without question.
The comforts you demanded are now mandatory.
Be happy!

At last everything is done for you!

MIT has long since become a business incubator for the upper class that can make it into MIT and leave with no debt.

The hacker spirit at MIT is long dead. Only the zombie corpse of the hacker spirit lives on in people like Minsky.

As summarized humorously in this classic MTV commercial.

FTFA:

(10:23:34 AM) info@adrianlamo.com: I’m a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection.

That sure sounds like a fucking solemn oath to me.

Adrian Lamo and Kevin Poulsen are rats and not to be trusted, and Wired is no longer the magazine of record for the technology industry. I have officially cancelled by subscription, and I seriously suggest that anybody who is interested in such a trashy rag read Vallywag for free.

For more evidence of Adrian Lamo being a lying rat bastard, listen to him try to explain himself as following his conscience in Informants Panel at The Next HOPE.

PS: He also lies about never having been controlling or being the subject of a restraining order. He is a real piece of trash.

Any time you try to get a job, you have to cop to a criminal record. If you marry a woman, have children, and then get divorced, forget ever having custody of the children unless your ex-wife is a literal axe-murder and in prison.

If you're willing to do that for the sake of pride, be my guest. Me? I'll just withdraw from the situation to a safe place and call the police. If you don't hit them, they go to jail and you win.

I am kind in the same way that you are, mcgrew. There was a woman I was kind to, and she started taking advantage of that kindness. Of course, I was a dumb 20-something kid and let this happen a few too many times, and I was also a dumb man and slept with her a few times. There was never talk of a relationship, and she dated a few men without a word spoken about it by me. I really did not care, nor did I really care much for her (I saw us as friends with occasional benefits when our desires aligned).

Much like Billie, the woman that I had been kind to apparently thought we were in a relationship, despite the fact that we hadn't spoken beyond normal pleasantries in months, and hadn't slept with each other in over a year. I found a new woman, and the new woman and I started dating. The woman I had been kind to became hysterical after she found out, screaming at me about how we were supposed to be together, that I was the nicest to her and had to love her because of that, and that she couldn't believe I would cheat on her.

Leech woman has been out of the picture and new woman is my girlfriend of almost a year now. The reason that I add this comment is that I did something that mcgrew didn't do, and that was I slept with the woman I was kind to because I gave in to my urges. As a warning to the future, don't do that. It just makes things messy.

That's a game that you will never win.

The moment you hit a woman back, any passerby is going to call the police. The police are never going to believe that you were hit first, and you will go to jail. You will be charged, and you will probably be convicted at trial.

I was raised like mcgrew, so I'll never hit a woman, but I have witnessed one of my friends hauled away in a police car because he dared to hit a woman back after she decked him twice. The police did not believe any of the witnesses for my friend. They believed the uncorroborated word of the woman that punched him. Her crying and acting helpless overwhelmed eyewitness accounts (and there were more eyewitnesses than just my friend's friends).

That's the beauty of a well-equipped Asterisk server: all of the convenience of direct SS7 access with none of that pesky paper trail!

I pirate HBO's shows because HBO wont let me get their shows with an iTunes purchase, they wont put them on Netflix and they seem to think I'll happily bend over and let them and Comcast have their way with my anal sphincter.

HBO shows are available from Netflix, but not Netflix streaming. I just got done watching True Blood last night.

There is no justice system in the US. There is only the legal system. Justice has no place in the legal system.

I welcome this move. Sure hope you have enough of an infrastructure to keep, say, taxpayer SSNs, DOBs, mother's maiden names out of the cloud, not to mention the inevitable access to this cloud resource by the SIPRnet.

It's a good time for government transparency, whether intentional or not.

Is there any way that I can subscribe to his ISP, even if I'm not in the area? Someone like this should be rewarded for standing up for their principles.