Southeast Asia.

China just launched its second aircraft carrier. India just launched its first, is building two more, and is buying 120 Rafales. South Korea is buying Apaches and F-15s (or maybe F-35s). Malaysia and Thailand want to buy AH-1Zs. Thailand is also modernizing its current fleet of western fighter planes. Japan just launched its first helicopter attack ship, is buying V-22s, and is no longer keeping up the pretense of only having a defensive force. The Philippines is begging us to come back and reopen a base in their country. The Norks are rattling the sabers as usual. Taiwan has some truly revolutionary anti-ship missiles. Vietnam is in the process of fielding 6 new submarines. Indonesia is in the middle of a large new naval buildup. In 2012, Singapore spent 24% of its national budget on its military.

The entirety of southeast Asia is in the midst of an arms race the likes of which hasn't been seen since the European interwar period. And similar to that same period, we're cutting our military budget and shrinking the forces, even in the face of what's brewing among our allies.

Is doing that right? Wrong? Who knows? I can't see the future. History tells us it's foolish. Maybe this time will be different.

It's why the government taxes cigarettes, alcohol, and machine guns: because they want less of those things.

If you start taxing college, you'll get fewer people going to college, and fewer people who went will work as hard as they would have otherwise. If you want to fix college tuition problems, then stop underwriting loans with tax dollars. Let private investors determine the proper risk of each student based on GPA, SAT, and the field they want to study.

It's such a daftly basic concept of economics, that it's depressing to see so many smart people trip over their own feet trying to explain why it shouldn't apply. You can rationalize to yourself why this is different all you want, but as Feynman said, "Nature cannot be fooled."

It is really telling that the ATF gave over 2500 guns to Mexican drug cartels, and no one from the ATF, DOJ, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the IRS targeted political opponents during an election year, and no one from the IRS, DOT, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that Obama campaign donors at Solyndra got $500,000,000 of tax payer money, promptly went bankrupt, and no one from the DOE is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the Fed prints $75,000,000,000 a month, totaling over $4,000,000,000,000 in the last 5 years, and no one from the fed is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the president himself breaks the PPACA on a daily basis by announcing parts he will be temporarily or permanently not enforcing, and he's not sitting in jail.

The level of law breaking that goes on in the government today is so great that the telling thing is not that a governor illegally closed a bridge as political retribution against a rival. The telling thing will be when we actually put a government official in a jail cell for breaking the law. At best, people who have been responsible for crimes on behalf of the government get fired. Sometimes they're just reassigned or have to move offices. More often, nothing at all happens.

...use the president's instead.

Call the lane closures a "fake controversy."
Refuse to let your aides testify, and when they're forced to, have them lie and/or plead the fifth.
Bury any inconvenient evidence under executive privilege.

Christie already used Obama's first and most common strategy: claiming ignorance. His only mistakes are not have an adoring press that is willing to unquestioningly parrot his talking points as the truth, and he doesn't control the federal DOJ and have the power to make it completely look the other way.

There's no honest person who can be outraged at Christie's politically motivated law breaking, and content with the last 5 years of the same, time and again, from the president. In a just America, these two men would share a jail cell.

His mistake was saying "Illinois" instead of "Chicago." Similarly, "California" instead of "Los Angeles."

Chicago's murder rate was 15.4 / 100,000 last year.
Los Angelos' murder rate was 6.6 / 100,000 last year.
Washington DC's murder rate 16.0 / 100,000 last year.
The US average was 4.7, for a recent year (not sure which).

These are murder rates, not firearm specific murder rates.

Substantively, what he said was true: a couple of gun control utopias make give us the vast majority of our murders. Technically, what he said was wrong because he adlibbed and choose his geography poorly.

One of the main issues of the Heller decision was whether the government could mandate that you store your guns in a way that makes them not easily accessible for self defense. The Supreme Court ruled that they could not.

of people setting out to the pole at summer, to highlight the damage wrought by global warming, and then getting stuck in the ice, and then their rescuers getting stuck in the ice... it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark. Right here. And all excuses about how the ice is always still thick this time of year, or it's really just unlucky winds that blew it around the ship, those don't matter. People see global warming fear mongers, trapped in ice, in the summer, in the Antarctic, and their rescuers threatened by the same ice.

We'll look back in 20 years and say, "Remember when that ship got stuck in the ice on their journey to drum up fear about receding ice?"

Hell, I remember when I was in grade school in the '90s, and we were constantly told of the horrors of the hole on the ozone layer that was going to burn us to death, and the rain forests that would be 100% destroyed by 1995, suffocating all the aerobic life of the earth due to lack of oxygen. There's something in the human brain very susceptible to environmental alarmism, and it takes a really magnificent demonstration of stupidity every generation or so to snap people out of it. This is it!

You make the false assumption that we either have to give all our power to the government or to "big business." I advocate neither of those. Reclaim your power as an individual; that's the only place that power comes from to start with.

The next time you're rooting for another new government program that you hope will allow you to shed some more of your personal responsibility, remember this story. When you keep supporting politicians and policies aimed only at growing the size and power of the government, you end up with stories like this, and like the NSA spying, and like the roadside gloveless anal cavity searches, and crashed MRAPs on the I-10.

If you want the madness to stop, you have to start taking responsibility for yourself, and telling the government that you've finally decided that you know how to live your life and take care of yourself better than the government does.

If there is a "gun violence" problem, and you remove the guns, you'll still be left with a violence problem. Violence and "gun violence" are symptoms. The sicknesses that cause them are poverty, lack of education, inequality (real or perceived), unemployment, etc. Treat the sicknesses that cause violence and the violence will go away.

Try as you might, your attempt to come across as a "gun person" fails miserably.

AR15s make wonderful hunting weapons. Many companies make AR15s with specific features chosen for hunting. Here are a couple:
http://rockriverarms.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=552
http://www.dpmsinc.com/KINGS-DEAERT-SHADOW_ep_146-1.html
Typically they include a flattop upper receiver, a low profile gas block, skeletonized stocks, and a free-float hand guard.

The standard .223 round is more than sufficient for North American animals up to moose-size when using the proper loading: a 75grain BTHP. And many ammunition manufacturers offer .223 loadings specifically for hunting with an AR15. This is one of many fine examples:
http://www.hornady.com/store/223-Rem-75-gr-BTHP-Match/

Additionally, anyone with more than a passing knowledge of guns and AR15s would know that the platform does not only come in .223. In the last 5 years there has been a surge in popularity of upper receivers chambered in calibers such as 6.5 Grendal, 6.8 SPC and 300 Blackout. Additionally, the venerable .308 has been an option for AR-style guns for almost 50 years. While not being a necessity for using an AR15 to hunt with, these other optional calibers provide longer range hunting options.

But if you still believe that it's impossible to hunt with an AR15, please, whatever you do, don't tell the hundreds of people who posted pictures of their hunting ARs along with trophies in these two threads:
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_23/605991_Show_us_your_AR15__and_other__deer_kills___and_60___retitled.html&page=1
http://www.ar15.com/mobile/topic.html?b=10&f=3&t=618206
They would be devastated to find out that what they were doing was impossible.

As far as target shooting goes, the annual National Matches, held at Camp Perry, Ohio every summer since 1907, and widely seen as the Olympics of the shooting sports world, uses.... you guessed it: AR15s. And it's not hard to understand why: they're light weight, ergonomic, light recoiling, and cheap to train with (compared to other competition rifles).

And your claim that an AR15 is worse at self defense than all other things you think it's bad at.... get real! Nearly every SWAT team in the US, and NATO-allied special forces group in the world has moved to the AR platform, and those guys have the money and latitude to choose anything they want. After a brief love affair with various pistol-caliber carbines and bullpups in the late 90's and early 00's, they have almost all gone to the AR15.

The US Army could replace all of its rifles for the cost of about a dozen F-35s. Cost is not an issue that would hold the army back if there were a better rifle available.

AR15s are cheaper today than they have ever been. There are over 100 companies in the US producing them, and a nice mid-grade AR can be had for under $600 today.

The next time you want to appear to be an expert on guns, and then denounce the most popular, most capable, most flexible gun ever made, for reasons that don't stand up to even casual examination, stick to the comment sections at Mother Jones or DU, where at least people like me will be banned for dissenting instead of being able to set things straight. Never thought I'd see Mobys on /.

I'm getting beaten. *Press panic button* *Wait 10 -15 minutes for the police to arrive.*

The police are there to write reports and do light investigation. They are not, and never were, a rapid response force, ready at a moment's notice to alleviate your panic.

The suggestion of panic buttons on phones is not only not helpful, it sends the problem further in the wrong direction. Some people will reason that since their phone has a panic button, they can take risks they might otherwise not.

Some amount of those 1M jobs would have very quickly been picked back up by other car manufacturers buying GM's assets (from GM or its creditors) and hiring people to make cars that the economy would have still demanded. How many? Neither of us can say, but to say that 1M jobs would have been LOST, as in gone and never returning, is disingenuous.

Besides, 1M jobs (again, wrongfully assuming they would have all disappeared for good) would still just be a drop in the bucket next to the skyrocketing U6 numbers for the last 5 years. Put in that context especially, $70B was a steep price to pay.

The government previously forgave $15.4 billion in loans to GM: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/19/gm-bankruptcyplan-idUSN1943363120090519

The government also made a "special ruling" for companies receiving bailout money... http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704462704575590642149103202

Not only is the taxpayer out over $70 billion to bail out GM, but the original bond holders who were illegally robbed are still waiting for their money too.

The demonization has been going on for a while. Here's an article from almost a year ago: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/01/18/meet-steve-israel-the-congressman-who-wants-to-ban-3d-printable-guns-qa/

Steve Israel wants to ban your access to 3d printers, and he's using guns as a way to get the camel's nose under the tent. Here are some particularly telling quotes from the interview in the story linked above:

Catch that? If you're a business, doing it for commercial gain, then he thinks it's okay. If you're the little guy, doing it as a hobby, then simply doing it even if no one ever gets hurt will get you sent to jail.

Again there, if you're a business he's fine. If you're an individual, it's banned. He even slips and admits he want to criminalize the sharing of the information.

Make no mistake: the forces working to ban private ownership of 3d printers are already moving against you. The bogey man of undetectable guns is simply a convenient way to get people on board with the first step of restriction. Once that's in place another big-business congressman will come back and say, "Poor GM is losing money because it can't sell overpriced factory parts because people are just printing them. Ban all private 3d printer ownership!"

The only thing in question is how many people will be fooled and take up the torch and pitchfork against 3d printed guns, not realizing that they're working against their own desire to have privately owned 3d printing technology. As is commonly the case, the fight for gun rights is only a microcosm in the larger fight for natural and civil rights. You want 3d printers? You're going to have to fight to protect 3d printed guns. You want marijuana legalized? You're going to have to fight for private ownership of machine guns. You want to continue to be free from poll taxes? You're going to have to support repealing the NFA.

Issues of law and politics don't each exist in separate vacuums.