Just an FYI, all those stamps you buy from the APC kiosk at a Post Office have unique serial numbers printed on them and are linked to your credit card and photograph. Couple that with the Mail Covers program the USPS has been running for the government since the 70's, and they know exactly to whom you are mailing that stamped letter (you know, because they literally log every single one of them).

Just look at the QR code-looking eIndicia barcodes on the stamps. Postal documentation indicates they are unique, but each APC printed stamp is obviously different upon close visual inspection.

Oh, and try covering that black plastic window by the keypad when you're using the APC... it will give you a nonspecific error message when you try to complete the transaction if you do that. It wants your photo for the log.

Buy your stamps from the counter or the grocery store.

My wife bought me my dream watch: a Citizen solar powered watch with auto synch with the atomic clock service. I have wanted atomic time synch in a watch since 1996, but only recently found this one.

It's nice that it has a sapphire face, because I want this thing to last me for 20 years and my old watch's face got rather scratched.

My perspective is that if the primary reason one is excited about a possession is its features and capabilities, then it's not a status symbol. It may be a luxury, of course. If this watch is still working/synching in 20 years, I will probably be as happy with it as the day I got it. Happier, probably, because I like durable and reliable possessions.

You know, I have never discussed my watch with anyone in person. Perhaps others who have the same watch are treating it as a status symbol. Maybe it is to them.

Your opinion, publicly stated, might negatively affect commerce, which could have ripple effects in the economy of another state. Ergo, your ability to state your opinion publicly is regulable under the commerce clause. Don't worry: you're free to express your ideas in your mind, so long as you do not communicate them to anyone else in any form.

This line of reasoning is consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling in Gonzalez v Raich, Wickard v Filburn, et al.

The Commerce Clause has been blatantly twisted into an unconstitutional interpretation. They baldly lie and say it means something it clearly does not (remember, those decisions I cited defined commerce as including "not commerce"). Once you assert B AND NOT B == TRUE, then you can apply this logical fault to reason to any conclusion you wish.

So, to answer your question: yes, they assert they have this power under the constitution (technically, it's improper to say the government has "rights").

It might even be one of those rare constitutional applications of federal enumerated powers if it were limited to interstate commerce, but we all know that's not the case.

Old and busted. I don't know how you can tolerate listening to the harshness and small sound stage caused by RF shielded optical fiber interconnects that aren't impedance matched as well.

£10 surcharge is equivalent to the tax on £15.63 of fuel... somehow, I am guessing that 2400 L costs more than that.

Unless there is some sort of tax recapture reciprocity/equalization between the UK and the rest of Europe, that fee doesn't do much of anything to level your playing field.

To be fair, the ESA's own site insinuates that this project is a quadcopter for Mars.

"The dramatic conclusion to ESA’s latest StarTiger project: a ‘dropship’ quadcopter steers itself to lower a rover gently onto a safe patch of the rocky martian surface."

Precisely. Don't simply accept their disingenuous talking points. The "subsidies" for fossil fuels are a lie. These people include things like "the cost of road congestion" when they are fabricating their claims.

They refuse to honestly report the direct subsidies to fossil fuels, because their imaginary number is close to $2 trillion per annum, whereas the actual amount is many orders of magnitude less.

Read the IMF's "fossil fuel subsidies" definition and decide for yourself.

You fail reading comprehension.

I swear, I don't understand how people can miss the first sentence of a post and then draw conclusions that blatantly contradict that.

In case you missed the first sentence of the post (again): you fail reading comprehension.

You have an interesting set of definitions, though. If W changed none of his politics, but he officially joined the Democratic party and became a card-carrying Democrat (again, while retaining his well-loved-by-liberals neoconservative values), apparently you would allege No True Scotsman if I claimed he wasn't a Democrat.

Bloomberg was alleged to be a RINO (a term which people here claimed is a No True Scotsman fallacy). Turns out, he wasn't actually a Republican after all.

Oh, hey, in case you missed it before: you fail reading comprehension. I specifically said I wasn't debating Sotomayor's claim of being Catholic.

I see you agree with me, then. As I have stated before, the present national debate context (suppressing employer religious beliefs or employee self-determination wrt contraception) is a false dichotomy predicated on the retarded idea that people should obtain their insurance through their employer.

We have spent 50+ years shoring up this brain-damaged paradigm. I support this Supreme Court ruling while also supporting contraception choice... the real solution is that we need to terminate the employer insurance model with extreme prejudice.

If someone insinuated that people should be practically forced to obtain their housing or groceries via their employer, and in order to ensure people didn't starve or freeze we would pass myriad unconstitutional laws to keep the model even semi-viable, everyone would rightly mock the idea as absurd. The employer health insurance model is no more or less an absurdity.

It needs to end.

How much does the Discordian Society pay for you to post that?

You have insinuated I believe something that I do not.

Your belief about the unexceptional nature of conscience is taken under advisement, and I'm sure you're well aware that your view is a minority position. Feel free to change the culture, then change the Constitution (it won't work any other way). Until then, you are "wrong" in practice: religious beliefs are—and have been—treated as special by our culture and laws; barring fundamental changes in the culture, the system will continue to operate that way, as it always has.

Fair enough. I'm glad you understand that you truly have your work cut out for you if you honestly wish to effect the change you advocate.

No, it is you who has missed the point. If the Supreme Court asserts people and companies can be forced to provide health insurance as well as force people to buy broccoli, the government can indeed force a Muslim businessperson to purchase and provide bacon to their employees (whether they are a butcher or not, and whether their employees want it or not).

Who said anything about buying? This idea of a "mandatory bacon benefit for employees" is no different logically than a "mandatory health insurance benefit for employees". Both concepts are equivalently absurd and are unconscionable if it violates religious liberty.

Repeat after me: there is no reason that health insurance should be obtained through one's employer. The present, specious debate is a false dichotomy: there is no inherent conflict between employer religious liberty and individual access to contraception. These considerations are only in tension in an absurd scenario where employers provide health insurance. I mean, the whole paradigm is as retarded as people getting all their groceries via their employer.

Ah, but those choices do affect others. Or have you never attempted to shop at a store that was closed? A store that is closed on certain days is also theoretically depriving employees of the potential to earn money while the store is closed. In a post Wickard v Filburn legal landscape, that is enough of a rationale to allow federal regulation of when businesses can and/or must be open.

This scenario, of course, is absurd (though I assert it is plausible under present legal doctrine), but so is the idea of forcing employers to provide mandatory health insurance benefits, especially against their conscience. Besides, the employees can go get insurance from the exchange, so by your logic they are unaffected.

Then perhaps you shouldn't work at that religious organization, where such regulations are very legal:
Churches and religious organizations can discriminate on the basis of religion for all jobs. This includes and is not limited to secretaries, accountants, and janitors. The basis for permissible religious discrimination is the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this in Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos,483 U.S. 327 (1987).

Yes, because no employer should be providing health insurance as a "mandatory benefit". You are operating within the context of a false dichotomy that derives from the nonsensical idea that we should be obtaining health insurance through our employers.

I want universal health care, and I don't want employers involved in this at all. Just like I don't want to buy my house or groceries through my employer or myriad other aspects of life that have no fucking rational correlation with employment.

If you want to advocate for single payer (public/private, NHS-style), then I'm right there with you. I'm not going to be constrained to making a choice within a false dichotomy, though.

As I said, my analogies are equivalently as absurd as the present employer-provided healthcare insurance paradigm, and thus are perfectly cromulent and applicable in the context of this debate. I stand by them.

My point is that there is no intrinsic tension between employer religious rights and employee access to contraception. This entire national debate and Supreme Court case is the consequence of the absurdity of obtaining health care insurance from an employer.

Your proposed debate subject is irrelevant in this context if we just fix the underlying problem rather than repeatedly attempting to shore up a conceptually broken model via bizarre laws (COBRA, HIPAA portability, ACA, et al) and court decisions.

Hey, genius, what do you think Medicare/Medicaid, etc are? All of the examples of socialized healthcare I gave are taxpayer-funded (do you really believe TriCare is self-funded? The DoD budget disagrees with you, if so, to the tune of 32 billion in FY2015).

Countries with universal healthcare pay less overall and per capita than we do. Of course, this being the US, no doubt we could come up with some ass backwards implementation that could fuck it up, but we would be the outlier if that happened.

In simple terms, that means you would save money on healthcare with universal coverage vs today. If you are dissatisfied with the publicly available "free" universal care paid for with taxes, you could avail yourself of the private healthcare system like you could in the UK. You could also buy private insurance that provides access to the private system if you really wanted to do that, and this is much less expensive than it is in the US.

I am very opposed to the ACA. Getting insurance the way we do is brain damaged.

Oh, and I never voted for Obama, not that it matters.