You may not know this, but the President of the United States doesn't have an office in the NSA, and doesn't have direct access to their leadership or decision-making.

Actually, he DOES have direct access to their leadership and decision-making. He's the PRESIDENT!

All he needs to do is pick up his phone and call the NSA Director, tell him to get his ass over to the White House RIGHT NOW, and, lo, the NSA Director will be heading toward the White House.

Then he tells the NSA Director words to the effect of "Stop this shit, right the F**k now!", and lo, it will be stopped.

And if that doesn't work, there's the "Fire him, right now" option. Like when Truman fired MacArthur back in the day.

Remember, he's the President. Head of the Executive Branch. Which includes both CIA and NSA. They all work for HIM, not the other way around.

The fact that this is still going on does not show a lack of power on the part of Obama, it shows agreement with this on the part of Obama.

Germany wants its own trade deals in private.

While you can negotiate a trade deal privately, it's pretty much impossible to operate one privately. After all, at least one other country has to know the details, and most (if not all) of the economic effects are easily detectable....

Yes, there are people who were born in the 19th century and were still alive in the 21st. As of a year ago, there were 21 women born in the 19th century still alive.

I have a daughter born in 1999.

A bit younger than my daughter, so your daughter has a higher chance than mine (and my kid's chances are non-zero) of living in three different centuries (20th, 21st, 22nd).

I'm thinking that noone has ever done that (unless you count some Biblical codgers)....

A few years later, and millions lives lost, England prevailed.

I am assuming you mean "millions of German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese lives lost here", since the UK lost fewer than half a million?

Corporate tax avoidance?

Would that be like when you take your Standard Deduction (or Itemized, as appropriate for you) on your Income Taxes?

Or deduct your VAT, if applicable?

Do try to remember that "tax avoidance" is synonymous with "didn't pay any more taxes than legally obligated to". What it does NOT mean is "broke the law by paying less taxes than the law requires"....

IIRC not until the early 1900 when private bank notes becaome uncommon.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. After that, privately issued Bank Notes pretty much vanished.

Why do we need a climate change bullshit bogey man to get politicians to stop blocking natural progress?

Well, mostly because you dropped an even bigger bogeyman into your argument - "nuclear". That word produces even more hysteria and foaming at the mouth than AGW does. By different people, mind you, since the people generally doing the most yelling that we need to do something about AGW tend to be the ones who panic at the thought of anything nuclear....

There are no display systems more reliable than a plate of glass.

True.

Alas, the controls are also wired to high heaven, and if the computers fail, all windows will do is give the pilots a great view of the crash caused by failure of the control systems.

The TSA is probably thinking that if the battery in your gadget doesn't work, it might not actually be a battery...so, just to be on the safe side....

Most likely, this is tied to the announcement of the discovery of explosives that don't trigger the standard explosive detectors. So the battery really could be a bomb.

And apparently, a few of them have managed to retain that mindset.

Note that they're as anti-business as they are anti-military - if it's not driven purely by SCIENCE! it's got no business here. Hence the "Elon Musk is the Debhil, and SpaceX is his Great Temptation away from the purity of SCIENCE! into crass mercantilism.

Yeah, yeah, they buy everything they use from companies way bigger than SpaceX...consistency is a hobgoblin of small minds....

Yeah I don't see how "propulsion stage is based on the motor of a rocket often used by the Air Force" is a negative thing about it.

It's a leftover from the early days of NASA. See, NASA was a CIVILIAN agency, and couldn't associate with those warmongers in the Air Force and Navy.

As a result, NASA rockets used only technology that wasn't developed with a military purpose in mind. So no ICBMs as launch vehicles, that sort of thing.

Yes, I know they ended up using Atlas and Titan II, because their civilian-designed rockets wouldn't fly at first. But from Saturn forward it's been pure as the driven snow....

Does any mention of a candidate in the news come out of the hypothetical $200M?

If not, then the incumbent has an enormous advantage in that he/she can get into the news just by proposing a piece of legislation.

If so, then a news entity can burn through a disliked candidate's share of the $200M by doing a bunch of stories maligning the candidate, leaving no money for positive PR.

Or were you planning on suspending Freedom of the Press for campaigns?

Or did Lessig just forget that news people have political beliefs too, and are willing to act on them?

And yet, here we have a German, working for Germany's foreign intelligence agency, at least theoretically spying on foreigners (by German standards - note that spying on Americans would count, since we're foreigners to Germans)

Yeah, he was working for the US's foreign intelligence agency at the same time. And deserves to be nailed to tree (figuratively, of course) for that. But can people now shut up with the whinging that the it's wrong for the NSA to spy on other countries?