Yes. A thousand times yes.

Just stop feeding the cat entirely. In about 3 weeks, he will stop bothering you.

God bless America. Or flying Spaghetti monster. Or random evolutionary processes. At least it wasn't that mutant.

Now, we have to:

1. Declare a national holiday so all can vote on a day off to eliminate the lines.
2. Get rid of the electoral college.
3. Get Congress to override Citizen United.
4. Take the money out of the electoral system.

I'm looking for a new one with a warranty, to give as a gift. I'd prefer not to buy a fragile, commonly-counterfeited product out of the back of somebody's van for $500.

I would have loved them to slot the 3 where the 2 is now, and further lower the price of the 2.

From the looks of the store, they've completely dropped the iPad 3. Their comparison now shows an iPad 2 vs. an iPad 4. Does anyone know if there will be some sort of clearance event anywhere to clean out stock of 3s? Looking to get one for my girlfriend for her birthday.

I have a patent on the letter E. Everyone in this thread owes me money.

Given their tanking financials, it's time they listen to SOMEBODY in the marketplace.

Oww.

Even if you lost 90% of the power, you're still talking about 50 TW. That's not small change, when what you're shooting is made out of ice.

Good thing comets are made out of ice.

As a means to prevent malicious use of the weapon, require multiple access keys to activate it, and provide one each to the governments of the UN Security Council members. Unanimous, active participation would then be required to fire the weapon, which would only realistically be achieved due to a true threat to the entire planet.

I'm thinking, mount this bad boy on a turret on an island somewhere, and use it to destroy asteroids in threat range. I'm much more inclined to do this on a turret on the ground than a satellite; although the satellite would make the weapon more effective against space-based targets, it would also allow it to be directed at points on the earth. As a laser beam can't bend, all you could do to attack terrestrial enemies with it is shoot planes/satellites out of the sky.

I presume that by "dirty bomb" you mean "weather-related accident that occurred over 1000 miles from our shores"? Yes. One day, some American is gonna get hurt by a drone. Hell, one could crash on your house. People also have been injured or killed accidentally by every branch of the armed services. A woman was accidentally killed with a police officer's sidearm next. I presume, then, that for safety against accidental injury/death, we should disarm the entire country. But wait, that would run afoul of your precious Constitution, which apparently to your mind reads, "The most advanced military in the world cannot be trusted with sophisticated weapons, but a beer-guzzling pheasant hunter living in a trailer in Alabama should have 30 assault rifles because CONSTITUTION!"

Government has had the ability to spy on you for a long, long time. The methods have gotten more advanced, but the "spooks" are the same as they were in the 1940s. In those intervening years, you haven't seen Americans whisked away to death camps. You haven't seen the Thought Police, or Big Brother in Room 101. Am I a fan of some government agent at Langley reading my email? Of course not. But I also know that my email will only be read by a real agent at all if something is flagged by a computer algorithm, and I promise the NSA's super-computers are bored to tears reading about my eBay auction purchases and the e-bills from the power company. Are the algorithms overly broad? Sure. But that doesn't mean that the guy who eventually screens that mail doesn't shrug and say, "Yeah, just some redneck yutz talking about his camping trip," and moves on.

I absolutely think we have given up too much liberty to the prevention of terrorism. Terrorism has cost fewer American lives than lightning strikes. Some security is needed, but the level to which we protect against it is absurd, and it's brought upon by two factors: money-making for the defense contractors, and the fact that in our polarized politics, no elected administration who "let an attack happen on their watch" would get re-elected, and the American public would see video of some burning plane every day for the entire 18-month election cycle.

This executive order, like many others Obama and his predecessors have issued, don't have anything to do with terrorism, and they sure don't have anything to do with commandeering your precious Fox News if Rush Limbaugh mouths off one too many times. This is nothing but assigning areas of responsibilities among the cabinet-level officials. Government bureaucracy is huge, and in an emergency, communication can be difficult. It is necessary for everybody to know what their job is in the event of an emergency, so that they can do it without waiting for instructions. It's the national equivalent of a fire drill, for heaven's sake.

I'm an independent voter, but I'll admit to lean Democratic. This isn't because I like what the Democrats are doing. It's because they are the only party who seems to be trying. They're the people who are proposing solutions, for Republicans to downvote, stonewall, filibuster, and not replace with constructive suggestions of their own. They're the one whose adherents, from media personalities and candidates to soapboxing constituents like me, seem to actually be educated and involved in the issues at hand, rather than just freaking out on some obviously uninformed rant. We can, and we should, disagree and debate things. Deciding what to do, given the facts, is what lawmakers are elected to do. Deciding what the facts ARE is not.

One final note while I'm up on my soapbox and inviting the slings and arrows of outraged fortunate. Elected officials are in office to serve the common good and the civic needs of the people they represent. They are not responsible for saving our immortal souls, and must stop trying. According to the Christian 10 commandments, I must honor my mother and father, but I can't go to jail for calling my dad a jerk. We mustn't covet our neighbor's wives, but it happens every day. Nobody's passing laws preventing me from posting my tape dispenser on eBay and telling you that you should worship it, even though the commandments say that's a no-no. (Why do you think Scientology is still in business?)

If an elected official feels that a person is going to burn in eternal damnation for getting an abortion, getting into a homosexual marriage, or taking birth control, LET THEM. The fact that you personally might find the behavior abhorrent does NOT give you the right to deny the choice to others. Similar legislative attempts to codify moral choices (for example, the flag-burning laws and the recent Stolen Valor Act) have been shot down time and time again by the Supreme Court, and rightly so. If you think my actions or inactions are going to condemn me to hell, then pray for me about it if you want, or protest on a corner to make your opposition known and maybe change my mind. However, you have no responsibility nor right to stop me from doing it anyway unless it negatively impacts others without their permission (for example, a law upholding "thou shalt not kill" is reasonable). You are NOT the Judeo-Christian God's right hand on Earth, and people who publicly claim that they are tend to get visited by the ATF.

This all goes back to the same reading comprehension and/or selective understanding problem that many conservatives seem to have. People point to the fact that Leviticus bans homosexuality. Yes, it does, and if I cared at all what the Christian god thought of my actions, I might worry about my soul if I were gay. However, until you present laws and demand constitutional amendments banning shellfish, braided hair, polyester, football, working on Sunday, sacramental wine, eating fat, snakes, lying, defrauding your neighbor (good luck passing that one in Congress), Doberman pinschers, home fruit gardens, tattoos, palm reading, tarot cards, showing partiality to the rich and disrespecting foreigners (another set of Congressional show-stoppers), and selling land, I name you either fool or hypocrite, and probably both. (See http://leviticusbans.tumblr.com/post/23730370413/76-things-banned-in-leviticus for source and even more laughable ones.) /soapbox

The main difference here is that they have to delegate the power to the Director of HS, since that position didn't exist when the original order allowing this came into being. All this is saying is that the government can use civilian means to communicate with people in the event of an emergency. We need to put a 50% tax on tin foil hats and pay down the debt.