You don't know what you are talking about. Lets go through it.

If you are referring to Iraq, that is pretty much pure rubbish. Iraq has been a functioning if troubled democracy since soverignty was restored to its government. There have been a number of elections, and the head of government has changed peacefully. Iraq still controls the majority of its territory, and the region controlled by ISIS is an extention of the territory it controls in Syria. ISIS is not all that different from the Taliban and al Qaida, and it is in essence an offshoot of al Qaida. Al Qaida was active in the 1990s, so your claim there is rubbish as well. The people of Iraq are far better off than they were under Saddam. You're piling rubbish to a whole new level.

Yet more rubbish. The proper members of Congress were briefed regarding enhanced interrogation, and legally those techniques did not constitute torture despite your opinion. American citizens that take up arms with the enemy to make war on the United States can be killed like any other combatant. Maybe you could examine all the trials and warrant serving that occurred on US Civil War battlefields. Hint: that didn't happen. Confederate soldiers were shot down without warrant, arrest, trail, or conviction. That's because it's war, not an action of the criminal justice system. Your confusion on this point results in more rubbish.

No "boots on the ground," .... you mean like the 170,000 soldiers that were in Iraq, and around 100,000 in Afghanistan? You're confused again.

Unfortuantely you've got it wrong again. The Congress has passed multple laws authorizing NSA activity, and the President has his own Article II powers that don't rely on Congress. The NSA's actions have been authorized, they apparently are within the limits of the Constitution. Since there have been several elections during this period it would seem that democracy in the US continues unimpaired. So, in short, more rubbish.

Just over a week ago the Russian ambassador to Denmark threatened Denmark with nuclear weapons. Please find me a comparable example of the US making a similar open threat involving nuclear weaopns anytime recent.

Russia threatens to aim nuclear missiles at Denmark ships if it joins NATO shield

Well which is it?

Which is exactly why I cited examples where any rational person couldn't get it wrong. Nobody who is fighting for the power to take away other people's freedoms (say, of speech, assembly, religion, etc) is fighting for freedom. It's possible to objectively look at two different fights, and see where one is actually about freedom, and the other is about gaining power to deny freedom.

The governance of England (not to let it off the hook there, even so) was not the same as England's governance of the colonies. Don't tell me to learn more about it when you paint with a brush so broad you miss out on that reality. The Americans were fighting to be free of how England was ruling the colonies. Even if you consider the then-state-of-affairs in England to have been the model of freedom (plainly not true), the colonists did not enjoy the same liberties or representation.

"Became?" He started out that way, and didn't stop. He was no champion of a constitutional democracy. Didn't seek one, and didn't act to establish one. What he and dictators like Castro found to dislike about the regimes against which they rebelled has nothing to do with their vision for a totalitarian communist paradise. They set out to achieve what the Castros have been using violent oppression of their own people to preserve ever since.

If they were ever about freedom, they wouldn't need to lock people away or simply kill them for speaking their minds.

Yes, there is. The only way you can get a section 333 waiver is if you are a licensed pilot. Period. Here's the existing process:

https://www.faa.gov/uas/legisl...

Their currently proposed rule changes contemplate a simpler grade of permit, but still make no provision for BLOS flight. You'd still need to pass an FAA operator's test, and pay to sit and re-take it every year. The proposed rules also require each and every aircraft to be registered - something that makes flying continually changing prototypes off the work bench a near impossibility.

I'm not "totally off base," I'm aware of the actual situation. You're just engaged in wishful thinking, or making excuses for the administration, and hoping nobody will do any fact checking.

Do you mean that when a huge undertaking involving actual, you know, human beings taking action in opposition to a monstrously violent totalitarian regime sometimes involves some of those human beings doing assholish things ... that therefore the side that's acting to prevent oppressive totalitarianism is wrong to fight it? You'd rather allow groups like ISIS, or people like Stalin, or fun outfits like the Khmer Rouge to just carry on being brutal across the board as part of their purpose and policy than risk deploying against them on the off chance that not every action taken to oppose them, by everyone involved in the fight, will pass your purity test? Better to let the house burn down than to risk having anyone involved in trying to put out the fire be a jerk, I guess.

Right. Because that's what they (the country of Japan) set out to do. Cruelty and torture and rape weren't the actions of a few idiots/asshats in the Japanese army, those things were the stated tactics, the official policy, from the top down. That wasn't assholishness by abberration, and prosecuted (a la the WV guards at Abu Ghraib), that was marching orders. Your need to confuse the difference between that, and things like what Japan systematically did in China, shows you to be either completely misguided, or simply trolling. The latter, most likely.

When the people who actually drag school teachers out of their classroom to shoot them in the head for teaching girls publish videos of doing so online to show how serious they are about it, you can claim "land grab" and "it's all fake" to your heart's content, but you'll know you're lying, just like the rest of us will know you're lying.

Who's "we" and who is doing the telling? There are more women in college then there are men. So, basically you're just blathering.

They "land grabbing" revolutionaries you're complaining about fought, among other things, to tear down the form of government under which they were living ... one that DID establish a government-backed single religion. They were so opposed to that, in the form of the constitution's first amendment, they baked freedom from that ever happening again right into the nation's chartering document. Not that you've probably ever read it or anything.

No, the answer is: look at what they're actually fighting for. "Freedom fighters" who fight for the opportunity to deny women the right to go to school, or to set up a regime where people who aren't willing to claim faithfulness to one single state religion are not freedom fighters. It really is that simple. US revolutionaries fought to be free from what was essentially a military dictatorship (the monarchy) that didn't provide some rather important freedom-related features (like those we see protected in our constitution). When freedom fighters are fighting for actual freedoms, then that's what they are. When "freedom fighters" are fighting to institute totalitarian rule (like, say, Che Guevara and company did) they're not freedom fighters at all. The Taliban aren't fighting for freedom, they're fighting to set up a ruthless medieval theocracy. Doesn't matter what they call themselves, it's what they do.

Nothing. The NSA exists because nations like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union existed, China, Russia, and North Korea still publicly threaten the US and other nations with nuclear weapons (and Iran hoping to join the club), and terrorist groups exist. If you think NSA exists because of "dishonest" politicains in the US you competely misunderstand the issues.

Although you are quit bright, at times you express some really bad ideas. This is one of them. Politicians are accountable to their constituents, and ordinary law enforcement will do fine, thank you. Keeping the military and intelligence agencies apolitical in a democracy is a good thing unless you have a taste for coups.

Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional. Unfortunately the law, courts, and Congress are against you. Your wish is just that, a wish, and it isn't coming true any time soon.

So you openly advocate having the national intelligence agencies spy on politicians to find incriminating evidence that makes them vulnerable, but you disparage the Stasi? Hmmmmm......

Ah yes, the "NSA" scene from Good Will Hunting. Overall it is a great movie, but that scene in nothing but polemic. The narrative is based on rubbish that most anyone with critical thinking skills should be able to identify.

You find that "persuasive," somehow, do you?

Not surprised I guess, you apparently think the NSA wants to be "popular." Hey guys! Who is the most popular secret agency!! That kind of defeats the purpose of being "secret" doesn't it?

Sure, perfectly legal if you make all of your drone research team run out and get a pilot's license, and then file flight plans for every single test. You know, if you take a quadcopter out into the parking lot and hover it ten feet off the ground to test a delivery mechanism, you need an FAA licensed pilot and a filed flight plan for all 30 seconds that will take. Sounds like a really great environment in which to conduct thousands of man hours of testing, huh?

And no, there is no provision in the FAA rules for Amazon to test a single flight where the vehicle goes out of line of site of the hands-on operator. The entire premise of what they're researching is prohibited, barring a waiver that they've only issued to an operator in rural Alaska inspecting pipelines while using existing, military-class equipment.

There's only one way to punish Amazon for taking this activity outside of the US. We must find a way, since they have a business presence in the US, to add a larger regulatory and tax burden onto them until they submit, and return this activity, which we won't let them do anyway, to US soil. At which point of course we will not reduce that new tax or regulatory burden, but that'll show 'em anyway.

Way to go, Executive Branch.