Title 8 of the US Code is 1000 pages long. We have more than enough laws on the books about immigration.

What he's really saying is that Congress hasn't given him a law that he likes, so he's writing his own. Which even he admits isn't actually within his authority, but he's betting that nobody will be able to stop him.

There are already plenty of laws addressing immigration that the President has chosen to ignore. Claiming that Congress should be passing more laws on the subject is a little silly -- if the President doesn't like them, what's to stop him from ignoring them too?

We've been conducting a geo-engineering experiment by increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere and, so far, it isn't going well.

You're right. As an experiment to show CO2 causes warming it totally has sucked, because it shows in fact the opposite - over a decade without warming even as CO2 emissions continue to increase.

It's quite obvious at this point temperature changes have very little correlation to CO2 added to the atmosphere. Which was only logical one you realized what a tiny part of the atmosphere CO2 really is... so our percentage increases of it add little in terms of absolute amounts.

You are assuming that a warming climate is more helpful, but you could have a warm dry desert

Wrong. A warmer climate releases more moisture into the atmosphere from the oceans, which winds up on land. You always have a net positive effect on moisture...

This has also been noted in explanations of why snowfall amounts are up in some areas.

Deserts are the result of specific weather patterns not allowing moisture to flow to a region, but it always goes somewhere...

We also have proof of this simple fact, the medieval warm period was a fair amount warmer than we are now, and it was in fact a great time for agriculture.

Lastly, you are again ignoring jungles which are as hot as deserts... you seem to think that a great amount of heat automatically means desert which is very far from the truth.

But the most rise we are predicted to see anyway is about 2-3C.

If the climate were generally cooling, I'd agree with the thought we need to figure out how to stop or slow it.

But a warming climate? That has far more helpful benefits than downsides for life in general and biodiversity across the planet. You have only to look at the jungle compared to that arctic to realize that...

So please do NOT screw up whatever warming process is underway and move us to a cooling phase.

It's only "warming" in the sense of a global average

Which also has not been warming either for the past decade or so. :-)

For which, there are a lot of excuses but not much warming... all that time CO2 has continue to increase so obviously what temperature changes there are, is disconnected from CO2.

They were taking OTA signals and retransmitting them across the internet for profit without paying the broadcaster a dime.

I could do that myself legally (I do so all the time, recording over the air signals and replaying them later on other devices), so why couldn't I pay someone to put an antenna somewhere for me?

The key was they really did have one antenna per customer, so it was exactly that - an antenna rental.

So why do YOU see anything wrong with that?

they were trying to make money off someone else's product without paying for it.

Actually, they were paying the same price for it that all of their customers combined would have paid for it. But the networks wanted more.

I think the "world police" argument is self-defeating.

First, nobody - even the most ardent interventionist - has ever asserted that the US should send its military to (some godforsaken shithole (GSFH)) because "we're the World Police!".
Suggesting such is prima facie untrue. The only people that even use the term are ironically usually the political left who, if they had their druthers, WOULD enable just such a thing likely under UN auspices. So it's not even the "world police" thing that bothers them, it's that we're pursuing our own interests, because they're presumably too stupid to recognize that every other state on the planet is doing the same thing to the best of their ability. So their real argument isn't that we're acting like "world police" so much as a basic argument against our own success....and that devolves, folks, to simple self-loathing.

US involvement in GFSHs is based on US interests, full stop. Setting aside the public pap of WMDs, it's clear that we went to war in Iraq to protect OIL, because after air, and water, and food, oil's pretty much the most fucking important substance on the planet.

Now, we can argue priorities, cost/benefit, direct self-interests vs enlightened longterm self interest, etc all day long. I might even agree with you on some points, despite our likely opposite political dogma.

But the crux of geopolitics is that EITHER:
- you pursue naked Realpolitik, and act ONLY in your self-interest, or
- you pursue a humanitarian policy of trying to "do good" where you can.

What the naive don't seem to understand is that you don't get to "not play". It's not a choice. If millions are being slaughtered in Rwanda, action OR INACTION is making a statement about US interests, values, and cost/benefit calculations, upon which then other states will plan their expectations about our behavior.

And FWIW, the second policy pole listed above? It's far, far more blood and treasure, intervention, and judgemental side-picking, 'warmongering scumbaggery' than the former.

Basically: grow the fuck up. The world's more complicated than you apparently understand.

If A and B have to decide whether to make a transaction, while C will be harmed if the transaction happens but has no say in whether it happens, that's an externality and market forces do not account for it under any economic model I've ever heard of.

Except with the environment, it's a little murky, because A, B, and C are all affected (perhaps not equally or at the same time, I'll admit). So it's not a "pure" externality at least.

...pretty much all economists agree that a carbon price is the most market-efficient way of doing that...

But what price do you pick? There's no "free market" way to do this. Cap-and-trade will result in a free market price for the available credits or whatever, except the amount of credits is arbitrary. If there was a way for the "market" to determine the available credits, that would be one thing - but there isn't; it's all done by decree. (Kind of a reverse externality if you will - groups A and B decide that this is the level of emissions that's allowed, C's opinion or needs be damned.)

That said, yes, an artificial price on emissions may result in people reducing consumption of those things that emit, depending on the elasticity of demand for those things.

However the problem is that it can presumably notify security that you've done that. Given that they'll have full video of it, and know where the unit was, the chances of you getting caught are pretty high.

These aren't the kind of thing that would work well on their own out in the middle of nowhere but on a campus like MS's with human backup I imagine they are pretty effective. Rolling security cameras basically.

As a sense of scale:

The US public spent $7.4 billion on HALLOWEEN in 2013, including $350 million for PET COSTUMES. (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/wait-americans-spend-how-much-on-halloween/381631/)

Next Friday, on "Black Friday" US consumers will spend ~$40 billion on stuff that they & others don't need, but (mostly) want.

If they put their flag in space, doesn't that mean they own it?

Since Harvard students apparently need it put simply:
"Is it actually your money?"
"No?"
"Then shut the fuck up."