How has it not been enforced? That quote is about limitations on individual state governments, as it comes from Article I, section 10. It says absolutely nothing about the Federal government, which is perfectly entitled to make paper dollars into legal tender.

Actually, many companies do issue shares of stock. It's common at many companies to match 401(k) contributions with company stock. If I put in 5% of my salary to my 401(k), and the company matches it with stock, then the company is effectively paying 4.762% of my salary in directly issued stock. Then there's all sorts of other wacky stock-based compensation programs like ESPPs, non-qualified options, restricted stock grants, etc.

And there are some companies that still issue actual shares instead of incentive options, even to executives. I may be wrong, but I have heard that it's fairly common in the utility industry to do restricted stock grants instead of options, because options encourage a level of risk taking that utilities can't handle.

I was not aware that my privacy concerns about Street View or any other Google projects had "melted away." If anything, my concerns have only intensified.

As a non-UK citizen, all I ever hear about anyone watching in the UK is Hollyoaks, Eastenders, Doctor Who, Top Gear, Midsomer Murders, and Sherlock. I'll grant you Doctor Who is pretty good, but the rest just seems to be roughly the same mix of shows the U.S. has.

Of course, if this is just a problem with my perceptions, I'd be happy to have someone from the UK correct me.

He almost certainly means that from a strictly legal standpoint, rather than as a general statement. It's somewhat common for the Supreme Court to put a disclaimer in an opinion stating that the opinion was so narrowly focused that it shouldn't be used as a precedent in other seemingly analogous cases. Presumably, this comment is more of a command to the lower courts, rather than a prediction of the future.

So, if Company X wants to start a business that is similar to, but not exactly the same as, Aereo's business, any legal challenge against Company X would still have to be upheld on its own merit. Challengers couldn't cite this Aereo decision as legally relevant.

Now, whether this ruling will have chilling effects, other than its legal precedent, is a different question.

Secular as in "generational" or "over long periods of time." It's a perfectly valid use of that word, if a bit uncommon. In fact, that meaning of secular is much, much older than the (non)religious meaning you're thinking of.

In English, it means "from age to age" or "generational." This meaning is actually older than the meaning you're probably thinking of.

It ultimately comes from the Etruscan word saeculum, via Latin. In Etruscan & Latin, it meant the amount of time needed for a complete renewal of the human population, and if I'm remembering correctly, it was eventually standardized at 110 years.

I believe that all Romance languages use some variant on seculo as their word for century.

It's a common misconception to think so, but a flat income tax would either 1) not tax dividends and capital gains at all, or 2) would not tax business income at the corporate level. If both were taxed, then the tax rate on corporate income would be doubled (actually not quite doubled, it would be 2*tax_rate - tax_rate^2) when all other sources of income were taxed only once.

In fact, that's basically what happens now in the U.S.; we tax business income at 35% but capital gains and dividends have a very low tax rate (15% iirc) with many exemptions - you don't have to pay if you buy through an IRA, if you make less than ~$70,000 per year, if you run a retirement fund, etc.

You may be thinking of Florida State University. They have a well developed relationship with the Seminole tribe. I believe that members of the tribe actually perform at FSU football and baseball games, and the university gives some money to the tribe and its charities as a goodwill gesture. I don't remember other details off the top of my head.

Indeed, I moderately dislike Tesla generally and Elon Musk specifically, and I'm neutral on both electric cars and luxury cars. Nevertheless, I'm cheering myself hoarse for Tesla in this fight. I'd cheer equally for just about anyone who would make a similar effort to reduce the amount of sliminess involved in car purchases.

And it's been that way for a while. The Archbishop of Canterbury, more-or-less the leader of the Anglican Communion, announced his enthusiastic acceptance of the basic tenants of the theory of evolution...in 1884.

Well, that's sort of the point. I'd rather see the NHTSA spend its time (and my money) testing, say, the structural integrity of the aluminum in the new Ford F-150. They seem to be surprisingly good at that sort of thing. I'd rather not see them regulating smartphone apps because I think they could be doing something more useful, like regulating cars.

I don't live close to my job and I still drive nowhere near 15,000 miles per year. I would have thought that a 12 mile commute one way was a lot, but that's still only ~6,000 miles per year. Even throwing in a very generous 2,000 miles of weekend driving and a yearly 1,000 mile round trip to the beach, I'm still only at 9,000 miles.

I'd really love to know how many urban or suburban 2-car families actually manage to put in 30,000+ miles a year in driving

Netflix's own website goes out of the way to block the use of unapproved browsers. I found this quite annoying.

Well, since Mary Barra worked in their human resources department at the time, I do find a little hard to believe that she was retroactively responsible for a fault in their engineering department.