"The right thing". Does that mean anything, really?

If they broke the law, it's time to prosecute.

If they didn't break the law yet their behavior offends someone to the point they think they government should go after them anyway, either they're too easily offended, or the law is seriously flawed.

Or both.

Instead of responding to the article title with "Not with Visual Studio, I assume" I decided to post something helpful.

In one of the volumes of Patterson's biography of Robert Heinlein, there was a reference to a blind machinist. He demonstrated by his example to disabled WW2 veterans that they could make it in the world.

Grumpiness Warning. Pedantry Warning. If you're not in the mood for either, you may want to skip this.

Did a real-world, grownup newspaper actually use this headline: "New Study Says Governments Should Ditch Reliance On Biofuels"?

It was the New York Times, so YMMV. I'd say most people think it is. It's not the "Weekly World News", a parody produced by National Lampoon, or a middle school student newspaper, at any rate.

Let's break it down, shall we?

It assumes more than one government has a reliance on biofuels.

I wasn't aware of this. I thought governments almost always used conventional fossil fuels or nuclear fuels for their tanks, jet fighters, aircraft carriers, cop cars, cop tanks, letter-carrier vehicles, etc. While it's possible I'm wrong about this, typically when my understanding and the New York Times are in conflict, the NYT is off the mark.

Let's assume that instead of what it actually says, the headline writer meant it to be about government actions to dick with the incentives markets provide people, using subsidies, punitive taxes, fines, prohibitions, mandates, and the like. (Yes, I peeked a little.)

Governments have (occasionally vigorously) pushed people towards using ethanol, wood, and such (and petroleum and coal feedstock materials a few million years prematurely), and away from using fully-processed fossil fuel feedstock. There's no "reliance" here.

Grump, grump, grump.

Oh. I didn't know.

I'll get on that right away.

Honestly, I had no idea it was that easy.

Sorry, you didn't give the Supreme Court's BS rationale. No follow-up for you.

Just kidding. Here it is.

So, is there any action a person can take in the United States that is *not* "interstate commerce"? Walking near a school while carrying a firearm, perhaps? Operating a business which transacts with retail customers in its own state, but uses supplies that were manufactured in another state?

Once Justice Roberts said that if you call it a tax with an exemption clause for doing what the government wants you to, not a fine for disobeying the government (even if it was not called a tax in the actual legislation), it's OK. Peachy keen. No problemo. Problem solved. (To coin a phrase.)

Now anything can be prohibited or mandated by the federal government, punishable by a fine (that is called a "tax" when the wind is from the right direction at the proper time of day), apparently.

I'm not sure when the Constitution was dealt its death-blow, but it's definitely not getting up and walking away from that.

It could pull a Lazarus if the majority of the voters knew what was in the Constitution and wanted constitutional government. Or even a large bloc of voters that would be the swing voters in enough states, and enough congressional districts.

I'm not holding my breath.

C'mon, Murray. That's not so.

What about ordinary criminals -- the kind who get their revenue without requiring you to do paperwork -- muggers and burglars and such?

And how's that working out lately? And by "lately" I mean the last 9 decades, more or less.

As one wag put it, it took about a century and a half to get a Supreme Court that would rule that a man raising grain on his own land to feed his own family and livestock was engaged in "interstate commerce" as he did so.

Silly me, I thought that for an act to be commerce between states, it had to be: (1) commerce, and (2) between states. What he did was neither.

Now to await the first person to provide the Court's BS sophistry that explains why I'm the silly one in all of this. (If you do, I'll have a follow-up question for you.)

An anecdote, possibly true.

Some IBM mainframe guy (Gene Amdahl?) and Seymour Cray were talking shop. Amdahl (or whoever) said to Cray that he'd wished he'd put more smarts into the peripheral side of things on System/360, as Cray did with the CDC 6000 series (and related) machines.

Peripheral Processor Units were so much more flexible. They were actual programmable computers that could run general-purpose code, not just CCW chains. (Or whatever those thinguses were.) In fact, part of the operating system itself -- not just device drivers -- resided in a PPU.

Monday morning I can't remember what I was working before I left for the day on Friday, but I remember stuff like this. (I sure wish a fella could make a living competing in Trivia Nights.)

There's a reason why people don't vote, and it's not because the choices on the ballot are all so wonderful it hardly matters.

Reasons, actually.

One that doesn't get much attention is the pre-printed ballot, where the government decides who is a "first-class" candidate and who can only be elected as a write-in (where not prohibited by law).

This comes from a series of election "reform" laws enacted in the late 19th century, designed to make it harder for immigrants and their offspring, and other undesirables, to vote.

Voter turnout and election competitiveness declined to our current low levels over the next several decades as engaged voters left the electorate through attrition.

Details in "Why America Stopped Voting", by Mark L. Kornbluh. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde...

First of all, I'm not random, I'm deterministic.

Second, I'm sure we can come to satisfactory terms, with a little diligence. We could perhaps entrust some mutually-agreed upon third party to hold the money until it was time to pay off the winner, and to decide who that person was, in the event of conflict.

I'd be willing to go with Al Gore.

I'm not sure he's trustworthy (even with people watching), but if he's not, so what? It'd be worth losing a hundred bucks (my $50 and the other guy's) to tell all and sundry what a verifiable weasel Albert Gore, Jr. is.