Really? The US didn't become the number one economy until 1916 - about the time that most of the European powers (specifically, the UK - which was the biggest economy before the US stepped into that role) were deep into World War I. World War II pretty much cemented our position as the rest of the first world (and much of the 2nd) was bombed and broken. I don't think it was the slaves that made us the greatest economic power, but rather the fact we have two large bodies of water keeping us relatively safe from wars in Europe and Asia.

And yet somehow every year since Eisenhower the national debt has increased. I guess you can have a budget surplus AND increase your debt if you redefine a lot of expenditures so they're no longer budgetary items...

The vast majority of those shootings happen:

A. in cities/States where private ownership of firearms is highly restricted;

B. by people who are legally barred (for other reasons - age, criminal record, etc.) from possessing firearms

So how does adding further restrictions help this situation? We have people illegally possessing firearms, in jurisdictions which ban those same firearms, using them to commit crimes. Does another law eliminate this from happening?

Is it the thing that owned, or how it's used that makes it socially irresponsible? Perhaps rather than banning an inanimate object, we should hold those who misuse them to stronger consequences. After all, which kills more random non-combatants annually - howitzers or cars?

Easy solution - add the extra second at 1 second after midnight on the last Sunday of June. No exchanges are open anywhere in the world at that time - so there's no advantage that 1 second gives anyone.

So what you're saying is we need to create a new language, one that could be "write once, run everywhere" capable...

Agree 100%. It's all a political game so some can feel good about themselves while the State as a whole slowly dies of dehydration. But hey, on the plus side, we'll get a $70 billion train that will whisk us from Bakersfield to Fresno in just 4 hours!

You're going to upset some desert snail-darter lizard or something, and since they might have a range of [$insert_insane_value_here] miles we can't do ANYTHING in the desert. It's for the children, don't you know! After all, we're flushing 4 billion gallons - enough for the ANNUAL needs of 175,000 people - so that 6 steelhead could swim downstream.

Yeah that was the proposed 2013 rate (as reported in the Ventura County Star). My last water bill was $120.84 for 4488 gallons of water (not including service charges, waste water, or meter hookup cost). Or about $0.027 per gallon, which is about double the high-end costs for desalination.

As for Texas, that's your problem. You should also be furious that you're being charged quite a bit more than the costs associated with desalination of water. But then, you don't have an income tax, so you're probably going to pay more in direct costs for basic utilties/State/County services since you don't pay as much into a general slush fund like we do in California.

Desalinated water in most of the world is LOWER COST than the water we pay for right now. Why wouldn't we keep the desalination plants running, when it's lower cost for the consumers and leaves 100% of the "natural" water available so we can send [URL=http://www.westsideconnect.com/opinion/guest_columns/water-alliance-government-ordering-billion-gallons-of-water-for-six/article_35c2d376-df16-11e4-a347-3326ba293ded.html]4 billion gallons downstream for 6 fish to migrate[/URL]. Lower cost, no concerns about fish migration - why not use desalination?

Here in Ventura County we pay more for water than in Israel or Saudi Arabia, two countries with much more severe water problems than California - and who get a large (or even majority) portion of their water from desalination. We have the world's largest body of water right next to us - and we simply don't utilize it. Desalination.

Precisely. This is much ado about nothing. Not to minimize the deaths, but this happens quite often and isn't anything unusual. Europe's had more deaths from heat in the past...

Because writing in Chinese or Arabic is something to be sanitized? According to the summary (no, I didn't RTFA - this is /. after all), having a long enough message so that the ellipsis happens between those ISO-extended characters causes the problem. Sucks to be a user who writes/communicates in other languages!

Heat waves have been killing hundreds to thousands annually in India for the last 3 decades - and most likely much longer (but reporting simply wasn't well done much further in the past). This isn't anything new, other than we finally hear about it. Living in extreme conditions, with poor sanitation and polluted and minimal water will kill.

Better yet, those same agencies are 100% supportive of fining private enterprise for the same thing... But they believe they are simply innocent victims of outside attacks and shouldn't be held responsible.