Actually, one of the first acts of the Obama administration was ordering the closure of Gitmo, ordering military interrogations to return to the policies in the Army Field Manual pre-Bush, and shutting down Bush's secret overseas torture centers. However, the authority of the Executive branch is limited by the United States Constitution, making it possible for Congress to delay funding allocated to move prisoners until the Republican majority elected in 2010 passed legislation making it unlawful to move the remaining prisoners to either the US or other countries.

The continued travesty of Gitmo is on Congress, the truly impressive part is how many effective measures Obama has put in place despite massive willful obstruction from the Legislative branch.

...and the FBI has no interest in making domestic terrorism a high-profile issue by exaggerating both the intent and abilities of 'terrorists'.

If every domestic terrorist plot foiled by the 'war on terror' had instead been wildly successful, where would we be?

Well, we'd be pretty vulnerable to threats like these from the Heritage Foundation paper listed above:

"He was arrested for conspiring to use blowtorches to collapse the Brooklyn Bridge"

"His plans, according to authorities, were to kill President Bush and then establish an al-Qaeda cell in
the United States, with himself as the head."

"The JIS allegedly planned to finance its operations by robbing gas stations."

"Derrick Shareef was arrested on charges of planning to set off hand grenades in a shopping mall outside Chicago."

"Four men plotted to blow up “aviation fuel tanks and pipelines at the John F. Kennedy International Airport” in New York City. They believed that such an attack would cause “greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks.” Authorities stated that the attack “could have caused significant financial and psychological damage, but not major loss of life.""

"Hassan Abujihaad, a former U.S. Navy sailor from Phoenix, Arizona, was convicted of supporting terrorism and disclosing classified information"

Setting aside the dubious competence and unbalanced mental state of the overwhelming majority of plotters, total success above and beyond what a reasonable person would expect given the actual capabilities of these groups would have resulted in negligible damage to society as a whole-- a couple planes bombed and a smattering of minor bombings if everything went perfectly for these disgruntled losers who are already unbalanced enough to be terrorists.

Surprisingly enough, most of these plots were 'revealed' by paid informants with a major financial stake in exhorting their idiot co-conspirators to plan something outrageous enough to warrant FBI attention and major payouts to the informants.

Modern democracies with strong civil society and no significant domestic conflict are inherently resistant to fringe nutbars-- all the 'war on terror' is getting for us is foreign oppression, dramatic restrictions on our own civil liberties, balooning 'security' spending and media scare tactics.

Even cops have to pick and choose what laws they're going to enforce nowadays, what with increased reporting, surveillance, and proliferation of criminal law. Why should corporations have it any easier?

Selective enforcement, jamming social norms down our collective throats since prehistory.

Alright, troll-- I'll bite.

In most protracted civil conflicts, the army as a whole doesn't take sides... or the conflict is already over. By the same token, a disciplined, professional army drawn from the population is unlikely to slaughter that population wholesale.

Most atrocities and civilian casualties in civil conflicts are committed by groups of lightly-armed and disorganized thugs. The .38 in Grandma's dresser won't stop an army, but it'll put holes in a jeep full of blackshirts looking for some quick rape and arson.

First they take your guns. Then they take whatever catches their fancy.

Sure, it's costly to have an armed populace. It's a lot more costly to have a disarmed populace.

fta:

Hugo Chavez's government says the ultimate aim is to disarm all civilians ...at which point the jack-booted thugs can feel much safer when ensuring that citizens do as they're told.

I am mildly annoyed that I paid money for this when it was standalone and all I got was a stupid hat.

Or you could have bought any of the dozens of 'multiplayer' shooter games that have come out since the release of TF2 where there are no servers still up, no players, and no game to enjoy.

TF2 going F2P added a ridiculous amount of content and prolonged the playable life of the game by years. You don't have a game if nobody else is playing.

Whoever leaked these documents is at fault here, be it Bradley Manning or anyone else who had access to the documents and leaked them. I'm guessing they signed something saying they wouldn't do that so they're at fault.

Because bureaucracies handling security classifications operate solely in the public interest, and have no need or desire to censor information which might cause policy-makers to look bad or provide evidence arguing against current policy trends.

The burden of proof should be on the government to demonstrate that releasing specific information about government activities is clearly and presently dangerous to the interests of the country as a whole before classifying it. Right now, secrecy is the default state because all information can be used for or against policy makers' pet projects, and government employees who risk their lives and freedoms to publicize abuses should be treated as the heroes they are.

The continuing expansion of government secrecy and opacity is one of my biggest gripes with Obama's administration. Change has to come from the top, because the natural inclination of bureaucracies is to hide everything so they can evade external oversight.

Determine gender at what precision? TFA wasn't very enlightening... indeed, listing mis-identified faces doesn't really help much here.

This is like the problem of false positives in airport scans, but without the terrorists. :P

I don't think it's reasonable to compare the difficulty controlling clusters of independent rockets using Soviet tech from the 1960s with modern materials science and computerized engineering.

They're spending a metric assload of their own money. That's likely to produce a much more reasonable assessment of capabilities and failure modes than centralized planning in the framework of a mega-bureaucracy. We'll see how it goes, until proven otherwise I expect some pretty impressive advances.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/151.html

The top marginal tax rate in the early '60s was 91%.

Under Reagan it went from 70% down to 50%.

Following the Bush tax cuts, the maximum marginal tax rate is 35%.

Fiscally speaking, the lunatics have been in charge of the asylum for 20 years, which is why I have a hard time taking 'high tax' talking points seriously. Budget deficits and continually increasing income inequality, anyone?