Right. Problem is that the people that moved out are those wealthy and/or smart enough to move out to avoid the high taxes. The people that move in tend to be those ignorant of the true cost of living (which means they will likely move out once they smarten up) or don't make enough income to pay much in taxes.

What is happening is that the people that know how to make money are leaving and the people that know how to leach off the state move in. If New York and California don't fix this then they will go bankrupt, if they haven't already.

Something like that is done for firearms. It is illegal to sell firearms by mail so what retailers will do is sell a kit that has all the parts of a firearm except the part that is legally the firearm. Problem with your example is that the critical part that makes the collection of parts a firearm is itself legally a firearm. In other words, what keeps the state from defining that part as a "car"? If that part is now legally a car then you are back where you started, Tesla will have to get dealerships to sell the "car part" since it is defined as a car under the law.

Continuing the firearm analogy what people will do is sell an "80% firearm" through the mail. It is lawful to produce your own firearm. It is lawful to sell machined hunks of metal through the mail. So what dealers will do is machine a part that is really close to being a firearm but still requires the drilling of holes or some other critical machining to technically be a firearm.

Tesla doing something like this would be very difficult. They would have to sell a "car kit" with all the pieces required to build a car but lacking some critical machine work so that they are not technically selling a car. The problem is that while people that manufacture firearms for their own use do not have to register them, excepting places like New Jersey where state law requires it, every state requires cars to be registered to be lawfully driven on public roads. That means the person that assembles the car kit would have to go to the state and complete all kinds of paperwork so they can drive their car.

Requiring people to buy a Tesla car kit, assemble it themselves, and go through the paperwork to have it registered would likely have a serious impact on people willing to purchase it. I would also believe this would make a serious support headache for Tesla as they would have people calling about how they could not get their car put together correctly.

In short, people tried that already and the people that wrote the laws have undoubtedly thought of that too.

I recall reading some articles where people did the math on pumped hydro and other electric storage technologies we have now. There currently is no viable grid level power storage, none. There's not enough water for pumped hydro, not enough lead for batteries, not enough holes in the ground for compressed air.

Pumped hydro storage would require a dam nearly the size of Hoover Dam for every nuclear power plant.

Storing electric power is stupid. It makes much more sense to not produce it until you need it. A solution that seems obvious to me is the molten salt reactor. MSRs can load follow, no need for storage. If done right it should be cheaper than wind and solar, and competitive with coal and natural gas. All of our energy could come from MSRs. Nuclear waste from them don't seem to be an issue since they burn up more radioactive material than they produce. They'd actually eat existing nuclear waste.

Nuclear power is the only solution I can think of. Wind and solar are too expensive and unreliable to replace coal. There aren't enough rivers worth a dam for hydro power to replace all the coal plants. Things like wave power and geothermal are mostly theoretical.

If people want to replace coal the solution isn't to buy them out, it's to out compete them. $50 billion could go a long way to get some nuclear power plants built. The biggest hurdle though is not the lack of funds but the government regulations. There are plenty of people willing to invest in nuclear power but the way the laws are written no one can build a nuclear power plant without first getting permission from the federal government, and they aren't giving anyone permission.

I think the states need to have a tiny revolt on federal authority. The states need to tell the federal government that they can manage nuclear power just fine without their help, and then get some nuclear power plants built.

Driving coal power plants out of business without also replacing them with something just as cheap and reliable will leave everyone penniless, cold, and hungry. Coal is what drives our economy. People suggesting replacing coal with anything other than nuclear shows that they are ignorant of technology, economics, or both.

Right, I should have qualified that. Senator Feinstein can make it go away tomorrow with a vote.

Finally someone in Congress speaks up about the overreach of the executive branch. What boggles my mind is why Congress talks so much about it but does so little. These executive agencies exist only because Congress allow them to. If Congress wants them to stop then they should make it stop. One sure way to make it stop is to dissolve the agency responsible.

The issue of government spying is, IMHO, a symptom of professional politicians. Senator Feinstein has spent her entire life in government. She knows nothing about living a life outside of the privileges of a government paycheck. She must think she's "better" than those that voted her into office. That she's "more equal" than the other animals.

I used to think that no one should be able to serve more than two terms in the same office. Now I think that no one should be able to serve more than one. The terms "re-election" and "incumbent" should be foreign to us. There are more than 300 million people in this country, it's nearly statistically impossible that we cannot find someone better for the job than her. She's 80 years old and has served as a Senator for 22 years, it's time she retired.

So, Senator, you don't like the government spying on you? Welcome to the party, there's a lot of us that don't like the government spying on us. The difference between you, Senator, and me is that you can make it all go away with a vote. As a Senator you can have anyone you deem responsible fired, including the President of the United States.

I know you won't though, Senator, because the people that are spying on you work for the same entity that you work for. I don't mean the federal government, I mean the Democrat Party. If there was a Republican POTUS right now you wouldn't be talking to reporters right now, you'd be hauling people in front of a Senate committee and have them answering uncomfortable questions under oath.

Senator, you allowed this beast to be created, now you and I have to live with it. You are the reason we need term limits, you just don't know when to quit. I suspect that you will be like many of your predecessors, the only way you will leave office is feet first. So, FOAD already.

How many of these five million people with security clearances work for or are related to an elected member of Congress, a state government employee, or someone in the federal court system?

Will Congress ignore the executive branch spying on them? I suppose they will, they don't seem to be doing much of anything to keep the federal government from growing out of control.

TSA agents are not law enforcement, they have no authority to arrest.

I disagree that to have a uniform standard for searches that the agents performing the search must be government employees. There are several major airports that go fed up with the poor quality work done by federal employees, and with the complaints from passengers on the federal employees. What they did was hire their own security that had to meet the standards set by the TSA. People were happy as complaints were met with greater interest and care, those being rude or not doing their job were fired or moved away from the passengers. There is still a TSA presence at these airports but they act as inspectors and supervisors, never performing searches themselves.

As to your second question I never did have my colon searched but I have been given additional searches at just about every airport I visit. Might have something to do with my appearance. I'm a pale white farm boy, 240 pounds, 6 foot 5 inches tall, crew cut hair (slightly grayed), eyeglasses, business casual dress, and since I despise checking in luggage I tend to carry two bags on board with me. With my bad feet I tend to carry a cane. And considering that the flights are typically cool I'll carry a long duster style coat. Considering my business I might have a magazine on guns, computers, military, hunting, or flying. Carry on bag may contain a computer, multimeter, safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, and steel toed boots.

Someone inevitably asks me to step aside so they can poke around through my bags and ask me about where I'm headed, what I plan to do there. I'll talk about high voltage oscillators, fast running pigs, airplanes, and shooting things.

Perhaps they find me interesting. Perhaps they want to make double sure I have nothing sharp on me. Perhaps they want to keep me aware from their women and children are safe from someone so dangerous. I can only guess they have heard of my motion sickness. I drug myself as I board the plane.

I don't know what they look for, whatever its they don' find it.

As much as people would like it to be otherwise our economy runs on oil. Without cheap oil we'd be living a life not much different than Little House on the Prairie right now. We burn oil now to drive our economy and we will burn oil for another century.

I'm glad that BP found a way around this stupid law, we need to keep the oil that drives our economy flowing or we will have to choose between starving or freezing to death. President Obama is doing everything he can think of to drive out oil and doing next to nothing to find a replacement. Without a replacement to cheap oil we starve.

Sure, he gave gobs of money to people that claimed they could turn sunshine into gold but anyone that took even a glancing look at their business plans would have to know they were just throwing that money away. We need real solutions. We need nuclear power.

I've seen research in fusion power and I think it looks promising if given the freedom to conduct their research and government funds even close to on par with solar. Advanced fission power is even better. People like Flibe Energy have designs that they claim can burn up our existing nuclear waste. It seems that they aren't even asking for government money, just permission to conduct their research.

Wind power has promise IMHO, but it has to be set free from the constraints of government subsidies. There isn't profit in it unless they qualify for government funds so no one is doing any real research in it. Instead of trying to make it profitable through competition they make it profitable by lobbyists.

We'd have all kinds of jobs if only the federal government got out of the way. We'd be building nuclear power plants, oil wells, and windmills. We'd be swimming in cheap energy. It's energy that drives the economy, everything we produce, ship, or compute takes power. Cheap power means cheap everything else. We'd be exporting energy if the government got out of the way. Instead we have to play nice with dictators in far off places. We have to send our young men and women over to these hell holes to die because we just can't seem to figure out that it'd be much cheaper, easier, and safer if we drilled for the oil here instead.

We're going to be importing and exporting oil until we figure out something better to power our way of life. Dumping money into solar panels, windmills, and bio-energy is going to leave us cold, hungry, and poor. We've been subsidizing these things for decades and have little to show for it. Research in nuclear power has brought us a long way. We need more. Mostly we just need government approval, not their money. People know nuclear is safe, clean, and most importantly it is profitable.

I believe the judge ruled correctly. The law stated a condition of "undress or partial undress" or words that are similar. If the judge ruled that the act was illegal then he'd be ruling that all women in skirts are partially undressed. That would make for an interesting precedent for other court cases to follow.

Go ahead and try that, good luck with your second degree murder trial.

That's not how "stand your ground" works and you should know better. You can't just shoot someone and then claim after the fact "I thought he had a gun" and expect to get away with murder.

I don't want my colon rooted through, how do you propose I not bring that on the plane?

Also, it's one thing to be searched by a private entity, it's another to be searched by an agent of the government. The government cannot issue a warrant to search but upon probable cause and with making note of what is to be searched and what items or persons are to be seized.

If American Airlines wants to have an employee look through my bags before I board their plane then fine, go and search. If the government wants to search my bags before I board an American Airlines flight then they need to get a judge to sign a warrant.

Yep, I agree. While we're at it let's stop subsidizing the solar power industry, the windmill industry, and the ethanol industry.

Part of the reason fuel is so expensive is that there is a subsidy in the form of mandated ethanol use. Another reason is a ban on cheap imported sugar. All so the corn growers can make a lot of money and turn the Great Plains into a corn monoculture.

It's very unfortunate that the oil spill happened, that was a lot of oil that could have been used to keep people warm and fed. Much has been done already to keep something like this from happening again, just simply requiring all oil tankers to have a double hull would prevent many spills like this. The United States has already required all oil tankers that travel between US ports to have double hulls.

Less transport of crude oil in tankers would help. A really big pipeline would be nice, like the Keystone XL. More domestic oil drilling would be nice too, I understand that there is a lot of oil just off the California coast. So much it's seeping out of the ground and washing up on beaches. But, no, we can't drill for that oil. Somehow allowing "natural" oil to collect on the beach is "good" but "unnatural" oil collecting on the beach is "bad". I say that all oil on beaches is bad. Much better to burn it and get some benefit from it rather than wait for it to decompose to CO2 on its own.

I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix. They are much cheaper too. But the tree huggers think that if we don't build pipelines that somehow we won't be burning that oil. No, we will burn it. We will move it from where it is plentiful to where it is needed. We will just move it by means more likely to spill.

If we want to stop burning oil we need something better. By "better" I don't mean something with less carbon emissions. If less carbon output was the goal then the solution is not doing whatever it is we do with that oil. I mean like we let our food spoil and we freeze to death in our homes. Of course people suggest that is precisely what we should do, and I suggest they do it first and I'll consider it.

Conservation is an excellent goal but all it does is mean we burn a limited resource at a lower rate, we will still run out but just later. By "better" I mean something just as convenient, just as cheap, and just as safe but also more plentiful. I say we need nuclear power. Anything else means choosing between starving to death or freezing to death.