Those southern states draw more federal dollars because of the 10s of millions of elderly who have retired down there -- in the warm sun and away from the northeast and west coast's insane taxes and traffic. Damn those burdensome old people!

Shouting lecturers down is yet another form of the whole free speech paradigm you hold so highly.

By definition, free speech doesn't mean anything near what you claim it does. I truly feel sorry for you if you really believe anything that you wrote here.

The trend is to attempt to censor "damaging" or "distressing" (read: conservative / libertarian / right-leaning) speakers and provide "safe spaces" free of any opposing view points, literally in a room supplied with with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets, a video of frolicking puppies, etc. And unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating in the least bit. The NY Times had a great profile on this last month (and from the comment section, its readership, to their credit, was generally appalled by this phenomenon). It's truly frightening when you think that the people advocating this type of crap are supposed to become America's next leaders. How on earth will they deal with difficult situations in the real world, where they can't run away or simply ban those who disagree with them?

Do you really think that people who think Kim Kardashian is interesting and like the NFL are really going to give this any serious thought?

Whoa . . . don't conflate the enjoyment of professional sports with contrived, superficial, reality TV bullshit. There are plenty of us geeks out there who follow both the NFL closely (the draft is a week from tonight and I'm hoping my team lands Bud Dupree!) *and* are interested and aware enough to carefully analyze what Snowden did and form our own opinions. :-)

So your argument is that because some Republicans fucked up, it's OK for Democrats from NY to get a free pass when they fuck up and waste tens of millions in taxpayer money? Your attitude is the absolute embodiment of everything that's wrong with this country, and literally how we got into the mess we're in now.

Pass a law that all politicians' and lobbyists' vehicle whereabouts are automatically posted to a publicly accessible website 24x7x365. In fact, that type of thing would pretty much immediately fix all fucked up laws in the country. E.g., I wonder if the CA governor's mansion is subject to the meaningless, bullshit water restrictions he's inflicted on the serfs?

Nope, it's legit: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/03/more-chromebooks-for-everyone.html

Yes, this country needs more kids studying the sciences, and going into science and engineering-related fields. However, just as important (if not moreso) is the ability to critically think -- something that has been typically emphasized in a traditional liberal arts / humanities-centric education. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater by "de-emphasizing the humanities" here, or else you'll end up with a nation of code jockeys who make shitty decisions and can't think for themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Do a similar search about taxis and I guarantee you that there are an equal, if not more, number of cases where taxi drivers do the same or worse. You're just picking and choosing what to post.

I've had a cab driver state to my wife that in his country, they cut off women's tits for "talking back." I've had another cabbie pull a gun on a coworker who, though intoxicated, was no violent in any way at all and certainly didn't deserve that treatment. Hate on Uber all you want, but it exists because taxis have sucked, tremendously, for years, and couldn't be bothered to fix any of their own shitty, overpriced service, and the people want something better. The genie is out of the bottle and he's not going back, no matter how much fear-mongering you and your cause try to do.

those who would rather cling tenaciously to racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia

Rappers?

Oh Dice, you knew this story would get four figures of comments so you just couldn't resist, could you? I'm not usually one of the "Not News for Nerds" crowd but this is sort of shameless -- if I want to see scorched earth on the comment boards I'll go read about this on Fox or Mother Jones.

I'm waiting for the gangsta rappers and make believe, wanna be thugs to be ruined for their racist, anti-gay, misogynistic, anti-social, violent cliched rants. You'd think with all of the cameras out there it would have happened already. Ahhh, right. When they say it, it's art. When anyone else says the exact same thing, it's a hate crime. Got it.

I wonder if those Scandinavian countries with high GINI scores have a defacto policy of importing more poor people from neighboring countries like the United States does? No, they all have very tight immigration controls and immediately deport illegal and undocumented aliens. Wanting to reduce the number of poor people and seeking to ease the process of entry for poor migrants are mutually exclusive goals.

The United States already has legal mechanisms in place for them to do this . . . they are free to get in line and apply like everyone else.