Just to be clear: I meant that in a declarative sense, not an imperative one!

Is basically what these people are - or want to be. Reading the wikipedia article on the subject ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... ), it's hard to distinguish the behavior of the current conservative groups in question and the unscrupulous landowners who lived along the Rhine:

Free market my ass: the real goal of all these crony capitalist "conservatives" is rent-seeking (man, that's another good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...)

Or as Ron Swanson put it:

“Never Half-ass Two Things. Whole-ass One Thing.”

They got caught with their dicks in the cookie jar, and still (still!) they blame the kid who called them out for it.

Don't fool yourself with ideologies and policy statements and fancy speeches. It's all Bullshit. Democrats = Republicans = Cunts. Power likes to suck itself off and *hates* it when someone gets in the way. Somehow we all know this, but sometimes we need to see it to really believe it. Did many of those who voted for Obama really think the government under his administration would not only be caught spying on US citizens, but that he himself would actively defend it, and that he would use his underlings to spend more effort on the Snowden witchhunt and character assassination than looking into the NSA overreach wrongdoing? It's disgusting behavior, but not wholly unexpected for any reasonably diligent student of political history.

The only people worse than those trying to acquire power are those trying to retain it.

Terrorists were only a convenient excuse, and it's not about facts, it's about what most people are willing to believe. The surveillance machine was just happy to be humming along unchecked for a decade with the blessing of the Patriot Act until Snowden threw a wrench into the works. They're just annoyed that they can't keep playing with their toys quite like before. Oh I'm sure they're still playing, but now it's with a bit more reservation, throwing resentful looks over their shoulders at the occasional oversight committee: not the carefree spying of yore. Ah yes those were the days.

while they try to sneak through another Secret Law like the Patriot Act which will assume that everyone is a CYBER WAR CRIMINAL.

Hacked some credit cards? Cyber war criminal.

Spoofed a website? Cyber war criminal.

Changed your grades? CYBER WAR CRIMINAL.

Wrote some open-source code? CYBER. WAR. CRIMINAL.

Why do you think a show like BBT has been such a huge hit with a wide audience given its geeky characters and plot devices?

By exposing a mass audience to scientific principles and archetypes, do you think a show like Big Bang Theory somehow advances the cause of science, or is it basically irrelevant?

I don't even read this guy's posts anymore. I come here for the (mostly deserved) snide comments.

Again, someone remind me why this guy keeps popping on ./

The ruling will provide a key insight into the judicial landscape on mass surveillance. So far both the legislative and executive branches have been in a race to suck each other off with massive expansions of surveillance programs: in spite of all the "gridlock" in Washington, their seems to be little argument regarding this particular issue. And the judicial branch has for the most part remained sidelines, refusing to weigh in. But if ever the phrase "silence implies consent" rang true, it's here.

Based on this ruling we should be able to surmise if this whole system of checks and balances kinda sorta works, or is basically a farce. My guess is that they'll come up with some bullshit about such programs being vital for national security and that it's not a constitutional issue, and the farce will be complete.

But it's what happens to you afterwards that reveal its true qualities.

is one of the many reasons why I think there really is no discernible difference between Republicans and Democrats. Two sides of the same d2. I kinda fooled myself into thinking the Dems would be different after 8 years of W. But we just see more of the same. Same abuse of powers, same sense of entitlement and executive privilege, same (or expanded) levels of invasive surveillance, same police-state mentality.

The federal government has become an insatiable monstrosity of bureaucratic machinery that would have defied even the imagination of Kafka, demanding accountability and transparency from all (achieving such ends at gunpoint or through a wiretap), while offering none itself.

The great insight of the founding fathers was recognizing a need for checks and balances, and creating a theoretical system to prevent excesses of the executive (or the other branches). The problem with this nice idea is that in the real world powerful people tend to curry favor among themselves, where Supreme Court justices go on duck hunting trips with the Vice President and suchlike: the branches of government are just three sides of the same d3.

WAT?! You ever see what happens when you get a group of women together?

Sheesh. Asking a slashdotter for his insights about women is like asking a Mormon about his favorite microbrews.

On a related note, I guess it makes sense that the Walking Dead takes place in the Deep South.

Because we wouldn't anyone meddling with the tweets of our latest small-c celebrity (don't upset the beliebers!), or mocking human interest stories about heroic talking dogs, or critiquing instagram posts of various culinary abominations or leaving snide comments on your facebook page. Because that's the "way media is disseminated these days", and this is what generally passes for social communication and interaction, apparently.