I think the OP was expressing a desire that misleading people ought to have the same or similar check as search and seizure, and for similar reasons, and undercover operations are the kind of activity that would be sanctioned for limited periods.

No, they will be too busy wondering how she ended up in the state pen for violation of federal law.

The combination of two factors:

1. Eric Holder has "broad discretion" in prosecuting federal crimes.

2. There are so many unexpected laws (Mississippi's silly ones include this list), that a committed prosecutor can always find something to convict you of.

Accountants look at the operating costs of a retail store as part and parcel of that store's profitability. Locks on doors, anti-theft devices on displays - those security systems and the people who maintain and support them are costs that impact the profitability of the store. Nobody running a real business pretends that the costs of operating that retail store aren't part of that store's profitability picture. Multi-store overhead (like, say, a loss prevention specialist who spends time at all of the stores) is still part of that store's P&L - her salary is charged to multiple accounts, so that each store's bottom line feels that cost.

In other words, you don't have anything germane to say on the subject, just snark that's disconnected from reality. That's exactly my point.

As I asked another poster: is a company's retail store a profit center? Are the locks on the front door part of that profit center?

So inside a retail store are thousands and thousands of tiny little cost centers? Does that mean that the retail store is also thousands and thousands of tiny little profit centers?

Or would a rational person perhaps look at the store as a profit center because it makes money, despite having overhead costs like ... the screws that hold the front door to its hinges? Or is each of those screws a cost center, in your view?

How about the display cases that hold the jewelry in the store?

How about the cash registers?

How about the front door?

Is every last bit of overhead inside a profit center a tiny, microscopic cost center?

So, a company's money-making, walk-up retail storefront isn't a profit center?

So, all VPNs are "the internet?"

It wasn't "out there." It was "in there." They had the compromised credentials for a top-level system admin, and spent months on the internal network collecting goodies before laying waste to the system.

Nonsense. It only doesn't sit well with the fictional, cartoon-grade MBA types that IT people like to conjure up as straw men. Security IS a profit center, because it's part and parcel of actually doing everything that generates profit. Without it, the profitable activity is impossible, and so it is part of the profit-making activity. Period. Saying it's no is like saying the director of a Sony movie isn't part of their profitable activity of making movies because he has to be paid.

No, I'm focused DIRECTLY on your comment. Which is peppered with the pretentious and (in this context) meaningless word "externalities" - in an attempt to make it sound like you're constructing an argument, when you're actually not. When you're not saying anything, the only thing to focus on IS the blather and the blatherer.

So, again, the only time the knife becomes dangerous is when YOU pick it up, or someone else does. Only human action makes it dangerous. It's not inherently dangerous, it's human action that is dangerous. Otherwise the knife is inert, sitting there, and unable in any way to hurt you or someone else. Unless it's highly radioactive or something - but I'm guessing that's not what you're getting at.

No, men who can't make up cartoon-quality villains they like to complain about. You know, sort of like you just did. Badly. So, I guess that makes you a man who can't, right?

So what you're taking great pains to say is that guns aren't inherently dangerous, people are. Because they kill themselves and each other all the time through careless acts. You've done nothing to show inherent danger in that hunk of metal, but you have shown an odd desire to absolve people of their own stupidity, shifting the blame to inanimate objects than cannot, by themselves, hurt you. It's a fundamentally irrational view of reality. Or, more likely, it's a thinly veiled agenda trying to hide behind a bit of fear mongering.