It's not irony. The Declaration of Independence was an illegal act. High Treason against the Crown. Every signatory was eligible to be executed, if the war had turned against the colonists.

You just take them outside immediately they begin to disturb others.

Nice trick at 40,000 feet.

They do not like this and they learn.

You've obviously made an unannounced subject transition from "baby" to "school-age child". The earliest the "take them outside because they don't like this" trick can possibly work is about 3 years old. Much younger than that, and the kid is crying for purely internal reasons, and the only thing "taking them outside" does is remove the child from the presence of other people whom their crying is disturbing. An acceptable approach, if feasible, but not a learning one. Besides, at some point choosing between "being someplace for important reasons" and "not annoying people around you" has to come down to "being someplace for important reasons", and "other people" will just have to suck it up.

Actually, if you're a REALLY dedicated terrorist, replace all the cells with explosives triggered by the power switch. Kill everyone in a 10-meter radius in the security checkpoint at the specific command of the TSA agent, and make sure the post-event propaganda plays that up.

States with greater privacy protections written into their constitutions outlaw DUI checkpoints. Those more closely aligned with the Feds' "guilty until proven innocent" mentality, use DUI checkpoints.

By accepting the propriety of a search without any articulable suspicion that you may be engaged in illegal activity, DUI checkpoint states, and the people who support such laws, are steepening the slope we're on as we glide toward police state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Once loaded, do a text search for "ten states" to get the list of those on a higher moral level with regard to this issue.

I read somewhere that the heavens and the Earth came first.

If you aren't a member of the government, the same or less will get you a decade or more. What I meant without being clear enough, was that the special treatment is shocking given the special access government officials have. If the government cared about people's privacy, those in a position of trust who fail to safeguard that privacy would be subject to the same or more punishment as any random person who did the same thing.

Actually he _was_ convicted of misusing the DB (max sentence 12 months). He's been in jail for more than 18 months so at this point, he has served more than enough to satisfy the highest possible sentence.

As a side note, the most disturbing part of this case to me, was Valle's illegal use of the DB to find out information about people for purely personal reasons. I'm sort of shocked that such a crime carries a max 12 month sentence. What that says to me is that law enforcement agencies and the governments that set them up, don't really care how their own misuse government power. Nor does the media for the most part as demonstrated by the thousands of words spent on the prurient charms of this case, but in any article, there is at most a single sentence about the DB issue.

Here's an example:

Tabloid same as NY Times, you'll have to search the page for "database" to find that single sentence.:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

Of course you can be exposed for a short period of time to 500 times the legal concentration of most chemicals. The "legal limit" is usually designed so that regular, 8-hour daily exposure has no long-term health effects, just like the legal radiation limits. Granted, legal limits back then were less conservative.

Then of course it depends how you are exposed. ingestion is not the same as having skin contact. Methanol has a legal limit of 200 ppm, but I can put my hand in liquid methanol (by definition 1 million ppm, 5000 times the legal limit) for a short time and suffer no consequences.

Does not seem legal.

It's legal if the law says it is. And when the lawmakers are in bed with Big Business, like they are in the US, anything goes.

The best money could buy.

Does a "dumb phone" exist? Wouldn't it be more accurate to call them weak computing devices with few _user_ accessible features?

Not my "meme." I rarely, if ever, refer to it.

But, it's true. Capitalism relies on private control and a free, competitive market. Crony capitalism is government control and a resulting non-free market by explicitly decreasing competition.

I mean, sure, you can call it whatever you want to, but when I say "capitalism works" and someone says "crony capitalism is proof it doesn't," that's just stupid, because crony capitalism flatly violates some of the primary tenets of capitalism.

So you admit you lied.

False, but telling that you think such a stupid thing. To you, there's no difference between freedom, and not-freedom. It's just two different options, neither better than the other.

a. I never saw you ask that. It might've been in the comment I replied to, and I didn't see it, because after your massive whopper about what you want people to think crony capitalism is, I stopped reading.

b. Why would I produce an example of something I never asserted? Once again: holy shit, you're retarded.

I haven't seen the case strongly made. If you have a link, I'd be obliged. Stories I saw all handwaved at it.

But they are Republicans. Voter suppression is expected. It's OK.

Only because I see YOU STANDING BEHIND ME. What the fuck, man?!?