My kingdom for mod points.

I argue that money paid for fines should be incinerated. Seriously. Government, whether it's city hall, the local police, the statehouse, or the national government, should never, ever have a financial gain when its citizens commit crimes. Ever. Scratch that; nobody, not government, not charities, not schools, nobody, should have a financial interest in citizens committing crimes. Make crime a source of income, and suddenly you find that whomever benefits from fines thinks a lot of things should be crimes.

Crime is bad (well, real crime like murder, rape and robbery). Nobody should benefit from it.

Restitution is different; that money should go to making the victim whole (not rich, whole), as much as possible.

"Discrimination against atheists is very real, and very widely accepted."

No it's not. I'm an atheist. In Kansas. The last time I felt discriminated against was when I was in college, because finding ways to be the victim of perceived intolerance/discrimination is something that most high school and college kids, including me at that age, excel at.

I've been in the corporate world for nearly 10 years. I don't bring up religion at all and few of my coworkers have ever brought it up either. At my last employer, where I spent over 7 years, I got promoted twice. Not once did a superior ever ask where I went to church, or if I went to church, or anything of the sort.

Here's an uncomfortable truth: we're assholes in religious discussions. Wearing a colander to mock religious people is being an asshole. I know, I used to be one. Then I grew up and realized that alienating friends and potential friends over an issue that can usually be left as "agree to disagree" is a dumb long-term strategy. Perhaps if we atheists would quit treating believers as simple-minded rednecks we'd see a fair amount of that alleged discrimination go away.

Government decision makers are un-fireable and are terrified of making real decisions that might have consequences, because that means heat from their bosses. So they provide little to no actual direction. Government contracting companies just want to suck money from the organization; they don't really care much about anything else. The two would be a perfect match for each other, except for the millions of taxpayers funding their little do-nothing empires.

And every cop.

Unfortunately for McKayla Maroney, there are a number of people besides herself who could unlock her phone with this technology, most notably Obama.

Actually, you might have better luck with a label that says "Atheist":
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/03/27/0240241/usps-discriminates-against-atheist-merchandise

"I think it's inevitable that just like you have U.S. dollars used by thieves and criminals..."

Unfortunately, the worst thieves and criminals (the government and the banks that have bought the government) will be the ones doing the regulating.

What do you mean, overcharge?

I would also say that it violates the 6th Amendment. If I refuse to comply with a NSL, they'll probably charge me with something. The NSL would then be evidence. They're not likely to release that in public, which, in my opinion, would violate my right to a public trial. And secret evidence probably flies in the face of the right to a fair trial, again, infringing on the 5th Amendment right to due process.

Autonomous cars would mean the end of revenue streams from red light cameras, speed traps, DUIs, and driver's license checkpoints. It also means fewer cops would be needed, so the blue wall (cop unions) will fight it too.

I have to change certain passwords every 30 days, and I don't use them enough to commit them to memory. I'm not going through the effort of coming up with a good random password and memorizing it just to throw it away next month.

Before you say "shift a character on the keyboard; now it's new", the pattern detections are getting better and better. I've had proposed passwords rejected because they were too similar to a past password of mine. And when the system can keep track of your old passwords (some systems go back 18 months) you know the password is being stored in plaintext somewhere. At that point, password strength policies are just for show.