Wait wait what? The FBI investigating threats against a "commoner" is now reason for concern? Gosh, I'm sorry you feel it's so alarming that the FBI has decided to take a phone call from one of the little people.

They threatened to shoot up a school if one of their targets was allowed to speak at a conference. That's most likely the only reason the FBI gives a shit.

3. Victims of #gg, if any can be found.

I would say that people who've received death threats, rape threats, had their blogs vandalized, etc would count as victims. Given that a crapton of those threats were on twitter & posted in comments on blogs as well as e-mailed, the FBI isn't going to have a hard time showing they didn't come from the 'drama queens' looking for attention.

Have there been death threats - yes

Have there been threats of rape - yes

Have there been threats to shoot up a school - yes

To suggest that their are no "victims of #GG" is utterly inconsistent with known, provable facts.

GJ isn't a trial, it's an inquiry - under normal circumstances it's a witch hunt.

The DA goes in & says, this is the law, this is my evidence, does it meet the demands of the law. There is no defense attorney, there is no defense at all - just the DA questioning if he can get over the hurdle of sufficient evidence. That's why out of the 168K GJs over the last 5 years, there have only been 200 that returned no indictments. (~90 GJs were for police with ~85 cleared & 5 indicted)

2 party consent only applies in areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. in the middle of a public road doesn't qualify.

Their immunity stems from the heft of their night-sticks, the nozzle of their pepper spray cans, and the barrel of their nines.

Their immunity stems from the lack of integrity on the part of the DA's office. If the DA's office held them accountable for the crimes they commit, their nightsticks, spray, & 9mm would be no more formidable than a common criminal's. The DA's won't prosecute & cops know it. Hence they have no incentive to follow the law.

A tough measure? Sure. By I don't expect it to work *because* it's tough. I expect it to work because any officer who erased someone else's personal data without a court order would lose his job and be ineligible to work as a cop anywhere else, ever again.

Won't work because the prosecutor won't enforce the law. Cleveland the cops clearly shot a person who was just turning around to see who was yelling. The DA started his "we didn't get an indictment" press conference with "It's important to remember there are no bad guys here". This is a DA that has previously spent hours ranting about tagging, prostitution, and homeless loitering.

Baltimore has lost/settled over $60M in cases involving filming cops in the last 2 years. "Qualified Immunity" has become "Immunity" and the officer's are not directly subject to any punishment - no docked pay, no criminal complaints, not a penny payed out, nothing. So why the hell should they change what they are doing - it works for them & when they get caught at it, the city pays.

I am leaning toward "bypass the grand jury for public servants" as a solution to ensure that not only is justice done

Won't help a tinkers damn if the prosecutor isn't going to actually prosecute. Do you think prosecutors fail to get a GJ indictment 98% of the time against cops because the system is rigged for cops or because they throw those cases? They can get a murder indictment on the sworn testimony of a meth head who admits to being higher than a kite at the time, but they can't with video evidence when it's a cop?

Look at the Brown case -

1. the DA let the cop tell his story for 4 hours with no interruptions and made no attempt to challenge any of the discrepancies.
2. The DA presented "the law" to the GJ before starting, telling them they had to view the evidence in relationship to it. At the end of presenting the prosecutions evidence, they 'corrected' themselves by essentially saying 'not really, but don't worry about it.' The law in question was thrown out 30 years earlier as promoting unconstitutionally excessive force.
3. The DA is the president of a police organization that was helping fund Wilson's defense.

He threw the case deliberately because he couldn't be seen to do nothing and didn't want to take the case to trial. It's why he refused to step aside for a special prosecutor despite the state's AG recommendation - the special prosecutor would have done their job.

Oh, it will go back up. Probably once Russia has learned their lesson.

Actually it's the shale & oilsand reserves that are supposed to be pressured here. Both are much higher resource costs than traditional pump wells - they can turn a profit at $80/b and be subsidized @ $60 by traditional wells from the same company, but under $60/b things get very dicy.

See, managers don't manage things, they manage people. And as long as you can manage your people you will lead your business to success. It says so right there in every MBA book ever written.

They got cheaper gas they were entitled to. They didn't get a deal for cheaper gas. They essentially stole cheaper gas.

Um.. I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

They already sent a directive in the budget that they are not to spend money preparing for global warming related issues. That includes things like loosing some of the atoll emergency landing strips in the far east, the failure of the south Florida fresh water supply. Coastal base issues etc.

Formally, a flash bang is a "stun grenade" and falls in the "less than lethal" category of offensive weapons.
Note it is not harmless, most people report significant temporary (1 year or less not 5-10 minutes ) or permanent hearing loss. If close to the detonation point, 2nd & 3rd degree burns are common. Vision problems (retinal damage, corneal burns, etc) are another frequent side effect.
These weapons are designed for high risk breaches, not raiding a house in the middle of the night to serve a search warrant after you've already arrested the suspect.

You mean the patent to use the technology already baked into the web protocols - that was patented after the web protocols were written? that IP? "On a computer" is a magical phrase. If no one has patented it yet, it's fair game - everything on a computer is novel to the patent office. - I'll be very happy if the courts actually apply July's ruling on patent eligibility like they are supposed to, rather than just ignore it again.

Trade has existed long before mathematics were formally codified.

Not really. The whole 60 seconds to a minute & minutes to hours is because the Babalonians used a base 60 counting system for trade - that's pushing math in trade back 5K years to when they BUILT THE WHOLE NUMBER SYSTEM AROUND IT.

Individual barter goes back earlier, but pretty much as soon as you get into "Trade", you need math to handle it.