Agree about the dangers of ash and erring on the side of safety - however, airplanes "falling out of the sky" is a common misconception. Most multiengine airplanes can land safely with 1 engine running, and even if all fail, pilots practice engine out approaches in basic pilot training - at high altitude, a jetliner can glide up to 100 miles if the optimum lift/drag airspeed (different for different airplane models and one of the important emergency numbers for pilots to know) is maintained. This is one reason that most airline accidents occur during takeoff/landing - stalls, etc (while more likely due to slower speeds) have less room to recover. Unfortunately, the presence of the cloud over the oceanic portions of the airline routes will cause problems even with the glide range, since an expert ditching in the North Sea still results in a lot of cold wet passengers.

True, but then God said "Neitzsche is dead".

Not women/gays in combat - referencing how the Islamist societies of those nations treat women and gays and how the societies can hardly be called the "tree of liberty".

Tree of liberty except if you're a woman? Or homosexual (in which case you risk public flogging, execution, etc)?

Not so much. Like you said - s**t happens in war, and the large percentage of strikes are accurate. The big difference is that the kidnappings/beheadings were premeditated, while generals don't sit around with Predator feeds looking for schools to bomb.

Taxes certainly take your liberty away - try not reporting your income, or collecting sales tax as a store and see how free you remain.

The only reason the USB connection is needed is to provide the +5V power. At work, there were computers set to disable USB storage - and to report any attempts to the admins - since flashdrives etc were banned for these same security concerns. Had some small video cameras that needed recharging; 30 seconds with a pair of wire cutters and electrical tape resulted in a USB cable containing only the power and ground wires (no ability whatsoever for data to make it through). Sounds like this is what Energizer needs to do. There is no need for data transfer in a battery charger, and extra wires put in by a rogue factory are a lot easier to detect than malicious code.

No, I think your incidences were just isolated incidents of a couple nuts screwing everyone else over.

There is a universal statute of limitations for anything. It's called "can't prosecute someone when they're dead". Unless you know of any 80-90 year old soldiers in Iraq.

Except for the fact that the vast majority of those killed are more "innocent relatives" - the Iraqi/Afghan citizens killed when a suicide bomber goes into a crowded market, etc. Those fighting the American revolution may have used guerrilla tactics against the British, but they didn't deliberately go and kill their own townspeople instead.

Why? At the risk of quoting John Wayne, war isn't about giving your life for your country - it's about making the other bastard give his life for his.

Do the same rules apply to government contractors? I know of several who fill full time positions (doing actual work in accordance with their salary btw) working out of govt offices, using govt office supplies, etc. and their only interaction with their parent companies is to collect the paycheck/update their health/benefits paperwork. This is usually done because it's a lot easier to get funding for a specific position under a certain project contract than to go through the personnel gyrations required to add another government civil service billet.

According to these rules, would the contractors be eligible for federal retirement/health/etc?

Could this become a hazard similar to the fake "free wifi" adhoc networks set up in airports, etc to capture passwords, etc? It would seem that a hidden one of these could capture many phone calls; in an area with many businessmen, for example, this could be used by criminals.

Could the Google Voice capability to receive SMS for free help with this? You can receive the texts to get the pin/validate your number/etc but any scam charges could not be passed through, especially if you don't have a cell phone associated w/your GV account

National Education Association (teachers unions)