And, to be fair, they have to if the majority against them in the House isn't going to be even more lopsided. It's just one of the chronic failures of the US political system.

The Scandinavians have very homogeneous societies where the issues are relatively one dimensional, allowing the formation of coalitions without great difficulty. This was the experience in Germany, but is now breaking down because the far left 'Left' and Greens are splitting the left, whilst 'The Alternative' is offering a serious right wing challenge that splits the right, and is very problematic, whilst the collapse of the FDP has removed the traditional third party. The result has been a CDU/SPD coalition that is working well, but at the cost of alienating those who are not impressed to the point of their voting for those more extreme parties; I anticipate growing problems in Germany over the next few years.

"This is why you get, effectively, extremists on both sides." They always exist, but in a FPTP system must vote for 'their' party come what may. The effect is to weaken the power of those extremists unless they represent a large enough group as to endanger one of the main party's chance of winning specific constituencies. This is what is happening atm with UKIP; they are perceived as endangering the Tories, so Cameron is being forced to play to their tune; the same is true of the National Front in France. By contrast Muslim voters in the UK have largely been forced to remain voting for the major parties, which is helpful in encouraging integration.

The pathological case of PR taken to its logical extent is Switzerland where the same parties have formed the government in the same proportions since forever. The voters have almost no impact on government policy, except via referendums which often go against government policy, which is not a healthy way to run a country because it means your representatives are not being representative.

Whilst it is possible to see Germany as having had a stable governmental system despite PR, in most other countries it has caused substantial instability, to the extent that in many countries PR is tweeked to reduce its impact, e.g. Greece where the party with the most votes gets an extra tranche of MPs. By contrast Belgium's record of 18 months without a government as a result of PR should be a warning to us all.

The great virtue of 'first past the post' is that it forces parties to appeal to a wider group than their obvious supporters; know nothing tea partiers mashed up with business advocates are lined up against a mixture of union placemen and minority activists. The process of coalesce has got to occur somewhere; the belief that it is best done in the spotlight of publicity of the floor of the legislature is somewhat unproven, at best. Certainly the collapse of both the Weimar Republic and the French 4th Republic are usually blamed on their use of PR; I remain to be convinced its the optimal solution.

Whilst the Republicans have played this game well in recent years, it's not that long ago that the Democrats were at it equally successfully, and in many states they still do it. Which is not to suggest that it's a good thing - but let's not get partisan about it.

We have a problem with the propensity of people to want to view garbage (broadly defined). How we control this, along with harassment, is the big issue. This piece sadly offers no useful insights.

The occurence of this sort of fraud in the 19th century led to the emergence of the role of auditors, whose responsibility is to ensure that the accounts are telling the truth; as a result this sort of fraud is rare in Western countries. The question now becomes one of who the auditors were - were they ones who should have done the job, or were the banks fooled into accepting a poor audit. In either case however the auditors will be on the hook unless they can prove that the CEO was doing a VERY good job of hiding the facts.

They are so frightened of the truth, or the freedom to spread information, that they have to scare people into not doing it.

The ISPs should charge an extra amount explicitly on their bills to account for the cost of storage and administering all data requests under it. The data should of course be stored off line - a write only tape store would appear to be the obvious solution. Locating the store in another country with strict regulations about privacy would force any requests for information to go to the courts of THAT country... Here's hoping!

Because his crimes occurred whilst he was perhaps covered by an FBI immunity, but not a UK one. For the FBI to expect us not to charge under these circumstances is to impose their choices, on the lapdog, who usually merely licks the master's face in response.

n/t