The intelligence services are together with the President and his staff. They don't get to claim they're independent. If you want independence from your boss' misdeeds, resign. If you want independence from your underlings' misdeeds, fire them.

So the argument is that they're useful enough to be somewhat worthwhile but not useful enough to make the threat to Germany a serious one? I'm not sure how that could ever make them "the good guys". Are we grading on a curve?

Acting in your own interest is one thing. Acting in the interest of spite is another.

This is a poor argument even by internet standards. If they never prevent anything, they're not "the good guys" because they're spying on people for no reason. If they do prevent attacks, they just threatened to allow Germany to be attacked for spite.

versus who else? (It's hard to follow unstated reasoning.) And why does it matter? The intelligence agencies are a party to the threat, even if they didn't say the words themselves.

It does confirm one thing: the US intelligence agencies aren't "the good guys". The good guys wouldn't condemn Germany to suffer otherwise preventable terrorist attacks for spite. Thanks to Germany for confirming this and making it known to all.

I guess there's no point in talking about it then. Knowing the future must make reading the news a little boring for you.

Denying people the ability to acquire weapons is meddling. Any kind of trade could also be called meddling, or refusing to trade. But if you trade goods, including weapons, without choosing sides, locals get to choose their own path.

It's up to the locals to do that. Locals need to choose things like rule of law, free markets, and popularly elected government. Otherwise it can't be sustained. The things that outsiders can do are:

- stop meddling
- show a positive example -- like Botswana
- trade
- don't deny weapons and ammunition to people who need them to protect themselves

TV does not offer a company like Apple much opportunity. There's no UI problem that keeps people from being able to get the most value out of their TV. People won't buy an easy to use TV at a big premium over a regular TV. This is why Apple was never going to make a TV.

The only thing people really want from their TV is cheaper, more conveniently delivered content. Apple has no TV content, and there's no way for Apple to make money offering others' TV content at a cheaper price. And there's no way to sell a new premium TV based on cheaper TV content -- the premium you gained on the TV would be more than lost on the content discount.

Natural gas is so cheap and so abundant in the US that wind power makes zero financial sense as a competitor. If wind actually does double, it will be a huge misallocation of resources.

And it won't really help the environment. The natural gas will just be burnt off or vented to the atmosphere instead of being captured to produce electricity.

Let's outsource the boss fights.

From the we-don't-really-know-how-radios-work dept.

That's her campaign slogan.

Didn't one of the candidates run on Change? Whatever happened to that guy?