Have you seen our national seal? An eagle with arrows and olive branches. We dictate the terms of peace because we have the weapons to do so.

Great Seal of the US - first used in 1782.

US becomes a world power - 1943, perhaps. An argument could be made for 1942 if you tried real hard. Before that? Requires a rather huge stretch....

The deficit from Clinton's years was due to Republican Congress setting the budget. It was also disappearing by time he left office.

Interesting theory, that.

Oddly enough, a quick check shows that the Democrats controlled Congress during the only part of Clinton's Presidency that the deficit increased.

The deficit began decreasing pretty much as soon as the Republicans took over...

Hard to worry about what happened over a 100 years ago. Had the issue bothered a lot of people, Hawaii wouldn't have voted to join the U.S. in 1959 by 93%.

It should be noted that the vote to join the USA was a popular vote by the Japanese citizens, the Chinese citizens, the Parsee citizens, the White citizens, and the Black citizens. The natives didn't have much say at all, since they are a teeny, tiny fraction of the population....

For those who are interested in such things, racial politics are...unusual (by American standards) there - the Parsees and Chinese are on top, then the Japanese, then the Whites, then the Blacks. The natives are somewhere down below there.

1) A jury-like panel of practitioners to judge obviousness.

It should, perhaps, be noted that a lot of things are obvious AFTER they've been invented.

NO doubt there are some that were also obvious before they were invented too, but it's by no means the same set of things....

The old "you can't yell fire in a crowded movie house" comes to mind.

The proper quote is "you can't FALSELY yell fire in a crowded theatre".

Pay close attention to that extra word - it's important....

Democrats are far more likely to have no valid ID

What, Democrats don't drive?? And can't be bothered to get the DL-equivalents that every State offers for non-drivers to use as ID?

consider that the Apple Watch is just the start of wearing things around your wrist. .

And here I thought the cellphone was the END of wearing things around my wrist....

Unless something is done about the population growth

Absent immigration, population growth in the US is negative.

Ditto Europe.

And China.

India isn't quite there yet, but their population growth rate has been steadily declining for most of my life.

In other words, the Third World is the only place where population growth is an issue today. So, yes, we do have the resources....

Nothing in your agreement with the ISP requires them to peer with the people you want them to peer with, at the capacity you want them to have.

And nothing in the net neutrality rules requires your ISP to peer with the people you want them to peer with, at the capacity you want them to have.

The operational phrase being "at the capacity you want them to have"....

All of these recent failues (including the U.S. ones) give some insight into the Apollo program's amazing success (except for 13) in the U.S.

Umm, Apollo had two failures (1 & 13). Out of 17 Apollos (not all of which carried crew). So a failure rate of 11% or so....

As opposed to Shuttle's failure rate (two shuttles of 133 flights) of 1.5%.

Admittedly, Soyuz also had two failures, of 117 flights (as I recall - could be off by a few), which amounted to a failure rate of 1.7% or so.

Oh, look! Shuttle had a lower failure rate than either Apollo or Soyuz! How is that possible?!

and a lower per capita rate of crime than half the nation.

Though higher than New York. Or South Carolina. Or Mississippi....

Well, here's your mistake, then:

We EXPECT the government to serve our needs and prevent abuses such as this.

You mispelled "their own" in the above.

So, who does the "biomatter" belong to when the "biomatter" is a fertilized egg?

It's not her DNA, it's not his DNA. And the fertilized egg is not a human in the eyes of the law...

So, who does the "biomatter" belong to? And why?

I'm no cardiologist, but couldn't these fractions be simplified?

Cardiology has nothing to do with this. Cardiology is about hearts, not eyes....