No, in fact, I don't. I can tell you, however, that one of the most successful American genre writers in recent years, Robert A. Heinlein, was an unabashed partisan of libraries, and even in his years of declining health accepted as many speaking invitations from the American Library Association and its affiliates as he possibly could. He wrote several times, I believe, of his reasons for his stance on this. He did not face the issue of ebooks ... that came after his time. But I doubt that it has invalidated any of his points in favor of libraries.

I have yet to meet a debate in which I did not favor the side of the Libraries, if there was one.

Don't look at me. I donated to Senator Paul's campaign two years ago. I don't think the Republic is in any peril of falling any time soon ... unlike a number of left-wing groups, who were certain (in 1972) that Nixon would never allow an election to take place in 1976 and would make himself permanent ruler of the country. Little did they know that Nixon would not even be a factor, except as a very bad example, in the '76 election.

No, It certainly isn't Democrats today. But as I say, it easily could be in the future. Political winds change.

Can't wait until some future President (a la Nixon, and then some) declares the Democratic Party to be a terrorist organization. After all, if they persist in opposing THE President, they are obviously coming together to overthrow the established order, aren't they?

Funny, we seem to have missed that message. My senior year in high school, the lead player on the state high school basketball championship team (kind of a state religion here in Indiana), who also won the Arthur Trester Award that year as the outstanding individual player was also a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. In fact, the coach coach of that team attributed their victory at least in part to the fact that his team had the highest GPA and highest standardized test scores of any team in the Final Four.

When I lived in Chicago (until 2002) the Jewel Food chain (largest chain of groceries) had a service (affiliated or not I'm not sure) called PeaPod that delivered fresh food from their stores ... pretty much anything they stocked ... for a reasonable fee (plus a tip, if you had any sense and planned to order again). This was a GREAT service. I really missed them when we moved, and would welcome a similar service in my area.

One method I used for this some years ago when I was traveling on business was to create a very lengthy random encryption key and have it written down only at my home (protected against searches by constitutional provisions not yet invalidated by court rulings) and sent to someone in the place to which I was traveling (who had no idea what it was, or even where it was once I got there). I NEVER MEMORIZED IT. Truly. It meant, of course, that my computer was useless en route, but it was secure from anyone's prying eyes because I could NEVER be forced to reveal information I did not possess. Not that I was ever stopped for that or anything else. Had a LOT more trouble when I travelled with my wife, because she was disabled and had to ride a mobility scooter, which needed special security precautions.

Or maybe the cellular telephone? I served briefly on the product team that introduced cellular telephony to this country, at Illinois Bell, back in the 1970's.

Remember the day when Apple Computer reached an agreement with the Beetles' company that in order to avoid a lawsuit over their name they would NOT get into the music business? Wonder what ever happened to that?

Yes. One of the most all-around productive private research enterprises that ever existed was Bell Telephone Laboratories. They did fundamental research, and although most of their work usually had SOME application to telecommunications, it often reached much wider than that. The classic example, of course, is their invention/discovery in the late 1940's of the transistor effect, which enabled the entire electronic/information age. All of the integrated circuitry and things of that sort introduced since then have been, in one way or another, extensions (some of them, of course, EXTREMELY sophisticated) on that fundamental invention. This is only one of the many advances on their ledger. (Do I dare mention Unix?)

Nobody seems to be supporting research on this scale or with this freedom today, and our society is the poorer.

A number of years ago, a woman who wrote perhaps THE seminal book in one of the branches of systems design was given a humorous award by her peers as "the person who most needs to write another book because we've stolen all we can from her last one." (or something like that). I think that perhaps our entire society is reaching this point in a lot of ways.

Actually, if I remember, there WAS a serious proposal to that effect back in the 1990's, when a federal law making anything more than a certain level of encryption (I believe it was 128-bit, but I could be wrong) illegal, and providing for penalties for anyone producing or distributing software that contained any such ability.

Did Mr. Obama make any projection as to how long it might take such a rail system to be self-supporting even on OPERATING expenses? OK, so maybe an extra few billion (BILLION?????) poured down that particular rat-hole will do our economy some good right now. But I'm not minded to spend it on a home-made Viet Nam War, where we have to CONTINUE to pour more and more dollars into it every year, with NEVER a hope of getting out from underneath.

Show me the dough, Mr. O!

My point is, I'm looking for someone who wants to subvert the United States Government to have the ability to turn the internet here back ON if our overlords in Washington ever decide to "protect us" by turning it (or parts of it) off. John Glimore notwithstanding, I'm not entirely sure that anyone without the resources (and will) of a nation-state can entirely counter the concentrated efforts of the U.S. Government.

As I read TFA, this is something we could do to, say, Egypt under circumstances not all that dissimilar to today's, WITHOUT the messy necessity of a physical invasion. Certainly they would likely see it as a hostile act, but not an actual invasion.

In light of the Liebermann bill, where are the Russian spies now that this country really NEEDS them?

(And I invite CirleTimesSquare to consider this. Might LBJ not have found it a matter of "national security" to interrupt to flow of information to prevent efficient communication during the "Chicago Riots" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention? If you think not, you probably weren't IN Grant Park that Wednesday the way I was! The "kill switch" is not just "on or off". It's deep packet inspection, site targeting, local cutoffs, and everything in between.)