There is an unspoken assumption by abusers that the abusive way they're treating people is normal and that it's just that the person complaining is "too sensitive."

This is literally another form of abuse in and of itself. It's called minimizing.

Linus is playing the "people want me to be PC" card, and mixing it in with some anti-American-ism for popularity.

Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager and leader without being abusive and bullying. Stick to the facts, among other things.

Ie:

"Your code check-in appears to cause a bunch of compile errors, so I've rolled it back. Also, I've noticed that this isn't the first time. We're a large-scale project and it is helpful if contributors extensively validate their contributions."

Not:

"Don't you know how to validate your code? Stop wasting my time! Come back to me when you've evolved past a chimpanzee." ...and also not:

"Hello! Thank you for your code check-in! Now, I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a small problem with your code. If it's not too much trouble...." etc etc.

No, just someone who doesn't like whiny people who think that constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and assembly should only apply to them, and not to people with whom they have an ideological difference. Are you really at a loss to come up with a single association, group, union, club, or other entity that you support that has - as a group - said its piece to a legislator about something that group finds important? If you can't think of a single one, then you're much too poorly informed to have an opinion on this matter. Or to vote, as far as that goes.

Because the same PR firms aren't ONLY putting together lobbying efforts that go directly to legislators, regulators and executives - they also put together expensive, long-running PR campaigns aimed the voters themselves. Is this where you say that they shouldn't be allowed to run ads in newspapers, or use direct mail or the web to deliver their messages? Why?

Every dollar of which is a matter of public record, and open to scrutiny. Are you saying that if you and a million like-minded friends who really, really think that (for example) Ron Paul or somebody else would be a perfect person to hold office and represent their views, shouldn't be able to pool their resources and make a large donation to such a campaign? What if in a race between two candidates, one of them says that he'll make it his personal crusade in office to shut down those evil online computer games that are ruining our children's minds, and the other candidate thinks that new media entertainment is great, creates jobs, and thinks that game companies are worth our support? Should the companies being attacked by the first candidate not be allowed to put their money and other efforts where it will help to promote the views of the second candidate, or at least shine a bright light on the idiocy of the first candidate? Why not? Should the people who started and work for those companies lose their right to speak, assemble, and support politicians who represent their views?

What's wrong with that? Mr. Senator has to declare those donated travel expenses and pay taxes on them as if they were income. When politicians fail to do so, you get results like we had in Virginia last week, where a formerly high-profile, well-liked governor who took advantage of some modest such offerings without handling it correctly just got sentenced to prison. That happens with some frequency. So, what's the problem? If you know of politicians like him who are dealing under the table and personally profiting, what haven't you sent that evidence to the FEC?

This is factually incorrect. But even ignoring that, why do you have it in quotes? Are you saying that candidates, whose personal and business financial records are highly scrutinized and completely available to auditors with local, state, and federal election officials and prosecutors (if need be) are taking money paid into campaign funds (which are completely open to inspection as public records) and personally running off with it? That's big news if you know of actual examples, since politicians who do that sort of thing are held criminally liable, and go to jail.

So I'll ask you the same question as I did the GP. Do you have evidence of politicians taking large sums of money and not being prosecuted for that? As an example, the former governor of Virginia is about to go jail for doing that. Prosecutors are standing by to pursue other politicians who do the same. Which politicians do you know of who are taking large sums of money and not being prosecuted? Please list them.

Or are you referring to donations to campaigns, which have to be reported, publicly, down to the penny - as the money comes into the campaign fund, as as each penny is spent. Are you aware of politicians who are personally raiding those campaign funds and not being prosecuted? It does happen sometimes, that idiot politicians get greedy and hit those funds. And the audit trail makes that plainly obvious, and they are prosecuted. If you know of cases where they've taken such cash out of their campaign funds, but prosecutors are not aware, why aren't you saying something about it?

That sounds pretty serious! Which politicians are taking the money? If you have new information, it will be front page news tomorrow. Because that means that you've identified people who are someone handling money that career auditors with local, state, and federal election commissions are unable to see, even though they have complete access to the bank records, tax filings, and other information for every one of them. You must have some serious inside scoop! Please, share.

But it's OK with you if the entire purpose of the Senate is to make the House Of Representatives fail?

The entire purpose of our structure of government is to make it adversarial. That IS checks and balances. You conveniently forget things that actually do get passed and signed, and focus only on your frustration when the agenda of one person is disliked by a majority of the people in the country, and by congress. That's the whole point. If I were elected to an executive branch office, and said out loud that my entire agenda would be to do things you, personally, find deplorable, wouldn't you want to see that agenda fail? No? You'd like to see the agenda you dislike succeed? Why is that?

Again, that's the whole point. The current president is putting on a display of policy absurdity and stunning lack of competency - and so of course the legislative branch (including many in his own party) are pushing back against his positions. The majority of the country profoundly dislikes the health care finance law they rammed through on 100% partisan grounds. The majority of the country find his foreign policy positions to be complete feckless, and clumsily handled even if they approve of them. The point is that exactly such things were plainly going to happen given his ideology and stated positions on a wide spectrum of things. People saw that while he was first campaigning for office. You're suggesting that despite knowing he was going to be a disaster, and despite there being very good reasons to oppose most of his positions on everything within his constitutional purview (as well as the things he's doing that are well outside his role), that everyone should just go along for the ride? Gotta love that about the lefties: "We should all get along a work in the spirit of compromise, by doing what we say." No. Obama and his party have solidly earned the opposition they've cultivated, and the recent mid-term election demonstrates once again how tone deaf they've been. Opposition to them as they acted in that mode isn't a problem, it's a solution.

Yeah, it's called "checks and balances."

He's had the Senate all that time, until he lost it. And he used THAT friendly house of congress to make sure that anything he didn't like, but didn't want to be seen vetoing, died on Harry Reid's desk. It goes both ways. The GOP had one house of congress, and Obama had the other house of congress and his own veto power to kill anything he didn't like that came out of that lower house. We don't elect a president to make laws, we elect him to EXECUTE the laws after the legislature has created them. That's why we have a legislative branch, and an executive branch. And a good thing, too.

Your right to bring your concerns to your elected representatives and executives is preserved, very carefully and deliberately, in the constitution. Likewise is your right to assemble in a group to get things done.

So, you think that a visit to your congressional representative's office to explain your position on (pick a topic ... net neutrality? gun control? immigration? whatever) should be illegal? Why do you think that? "Lobbying" is the act (historically) of waiting in the lobby of a building to for a moment to bend the ear of a passing legislator on his or her way between other engagements. Hence the term. You're thinking that should be illegal?

Or are you just not happy when you and ten of your friends who share a common interest designate one of you to make the trip to that same office to speak on behalf of the other nine of you, as a group? Is that the part you think should be illegal? How about when you and your ten friends realize that there's actually a million of you that have a common interest, and you decide to pool some resources and hire someone who lives and works in the state or federal capital, and who knows who and where everything is and how it all works, to explain your collective position and priorities to that same congressman? Is that the part that should be illegal? Why? Which part is the illegal part - where a million of you act in concert, or where you finally realize that having a professional pull your agenda together into a coherent, easily conveyed whole means that you hire someone for that role? Please be specific about which thing you'd make illegal:

1) Gathering in groups?
2) Pooling resources?
3) Hiring someone?
4) Talking to congressional representatives or regulators?

At which point is someone bribing somebody else? Do you mean that the congress person is actually taking cash under the table? Do you have evidence of that happening, and it not resulting in prosecution? If you do, why are you keeping it from the FEC and the other agencies that investigate such crimes?

Or is it that you just don't like the fact that people who run businesses decide to take some of their money and hire professionals to reduce the overall noise level and represent their interests in a more focused way? Do you not like that because you can't be bothered to identify a suitably large group of people who share your own interests, and who do exactly the same thing? Millions of other people do - do you think that the NAACP, or the AARP, or the Sierra Club, or the NRA, or labor unions or other groups should be barred from taking their concerns to their elected representatives in a unified way, instead of expecting all of their thousands or millions of members to descend on the same congressional office individually, all day every day, to say the same things?

Most complaints about change in language aren't about the introduction of some new meme-ish neologism or term that's sprung into use. The real (and justified) complaints are about changes that reflect a reduction in clarity, or which make expression surrounding critical thinking or subtlety less fashionable or in real terms more difficult. Changes in language that dumb communication down should indeed be fought against, and loudly. Giving in to the habits of the incurious, the poor communicators, and the lazy is just a way to make more of them.

How have you been functioning in daily life without a form of ID? Do you never write a check, never receive any sort of government service, deposit no checks because you have no checking account, etc? Is getting a photo ID once really that much of a hardship? How much time are you REALLY wasting, every day, if you can't have been bothered anywhere along the line in your entire life to have arranged to get something like a debit card connected to the money you spend? Someone who doesn't participate in any way in the banking system is going to be going inefficiently through life at every turn, traveling everywhere to use cash and have cashier's checks made for every bill paid through the mail ... and you're considering it "voter suppression" for them to take the time involved once to get a photo ID?

And if your local municipality is such a hotbed of active voting but can't raise enough taxes to have more than one voting machine or more than a couple of poll workers on election day (to make the process more efficient), and all of those anxious, busy voters are much too busy for any of them to actually volunteer to help at the polling place, who exactly are you blaming? Is everything about every aspect of the costs and effort involved in running local election logistics always someone else's problem? People who bitch about that and yet do nothing to (with years of opportunity in advance) to actually make their local system work better are the ones making their own lives inconvenient - because they'd rather whine about it than step up, in the absence of paying more taxes (like everyone else) to fund more equipment and staff. You vote for a president once ever four years. A senator once every six. Is turnout for the generally sleepier local elections (school board, etc) really resulting in six hour waits, year in, year out, at your local library or school? I call BS. And if it happens once in several years, and that's just too much for you to stand, run for local office yourself, on the platform of spending more of your fellow local citizens' money on running more well-oiled local election machinery. Local election places are generally staffed by volunteers - and your complaint is there aren't enough people showing up to help. And you're calling that "voter suppression," presumably by some evil rich white guy somewhere else? What a joke.

Stop it. Not dragging someone to the pole isn't voter suppression. Voter suppression is when someone goes to the poll to vote, but their vote is nullified by someone else who also casts a vote, but isn't eligible to do so. Or when your vote for candidate X is suppressed by someone else's TWO votes for candidate Y. Or when you're overseas in the military, and the administration in charge of doing things like getting your tallied votes communicated/transported in time to count in the election drops the ball, thus suppressing your vote. Voter suppression is when an organization seeks out college students to make sure that they're voting in both their own home district, and by absentee ballot in another district, thus suppressing other people's votes.

You know what's NOT suppression? Asking you to prove who you are when, once every couple or four years, you walk up to play a part in influencing the legislature, the executive, various referenda, and maybe even local judges under which other people also have to live. A thousand more routine and mundane things are more demanding when it comes to simply showing some ID. The notion that it's "suppressing" the vote to do LESS when you act to empower your preferred government is completely disingenuous crap, and everyone involved knows it.

You're being obtuse, here. "Inciting" hatred is exactly something like "All Jews/Muslims/Christians/Musicians/Whatever ought to be killed." That's what's so awful about what they're doing, here. It's not about planning a killing. It's about, say, using your Mosque's web site to say that you think heretics should be done away with. That's inciting hatred among that web site's audience, right? It's not a plan, not a specific call to a specific action. And indeed it appears that in certain demographics, that sort of talk fits right in with a widely held urge to go out and kill people. But the problem is there are other demographics that don't seem to have that cultural problem, and won't react to an identically worded (other than swapping out "Jew" for, say, "Atheist" or "Catholic" or "Cartoonist") phrase the same way. And these governments are looking to set up a structure in which such speech is illegal.

Just because way too many Muslims can't restrain themselves from being violent doesn't mean that we need to make it illegal for another group to express their opinions. So we should err on the side of allowing even dimwitted, medieval-minded backwards Imams to say what they will (unless they are calling for a specific violent act), and just shout them down. Right now, they're being coddled in their police-are-afraid-to-go-there enclaves in places like France, and THAT is the problem. Not freedom of speech.

Fank you for having more of a clue than a few other folks, apparently!