Thanks for the replies. Note an anon pointed out that I was most definitely wrong about what I thought I remembered of gas prices; your estimate is spot on.

Destroying religious sites would invite neighboring Muslim countries to join the fight, with an enemy that can be proven to deserve holy retribution. It would also significantly accelerate the recruitment of the angry and dispossessed into terrorist cells. If you pushed it far enough and really had the will to bomb the entire region into submission, sure, we could probably do that before the rest of the world decided we'd lost our marbles and need to be taken out.

It's easy to poke holes when I haven't proposed an alternative, of course. I do agree with you that we need to do something different. Perhaps we should trade advanced combat drones and automated checkpoint tools for oil and get our people the hell out. Perhaps a very public warning that we will be running massive bombing campaigns in the mountains, and civilians should leave because our intelligence isn't as good as our bombs. Then carpet-bomb the areas that are bleeding our people and equipment away until anyone hiding in a cave is buried under a few hundred tons of rock. Then leave. I dunno, but thanks for your opinion.

I was flat-out wrong.

See, you've caught me in some messy internal cognitive dissonance. When I posted that, I remembered paying over $3/gal, but when I actually went and researched the prices in my area, they were in fact more like $1.50 to $1.70. Part of my problem is I was driving something that required premium gas as well (ouch).

Something else bothering me is that although I pay slightly less than 100% more for gas right now vs. 2002, I am paying less now than I was in 2008, and about the same as I was paying in 2006. My last fillup was at $3.81/gal.

Under the current usage of the interstate commerce clause, our federal government can and does do exactly this in areas other than politics. Getting that to happen would require that the government actually wants it to happen pretty badly, which will never happen.

Who exactly do you think is responsible for that debt?
  Consider the Republican tactic of starving the beast. The idea is to cut the federal income as drastically as possible (tax cuts) so that the government (regardless of who is in charge) simply cannot afford to expand via new programs. The real-world result is that the government expands anyway on debt and the Republicans have no plan in place to deal with that result.
  As a consequence, the yo-yo cycle back and forth between the two parties involves one party getting popular by tax cuts and defense spending (popular with voters and with their campaign contributors, respectively) while running up the debt to incredible levels, while the other party gets stuck with trying to pay not only for their own programs but for the other party's programs as well after they are finally voted out for massive debt, foreign relations nightmares, or both. If it were not for this starve the beast approach and the lunatic fringe, I would probably be a Republican voter despite not being Christian. However, I simply cannot support willful infantile irresponsibility.
  Any joint effort involves watering down the often self-funded programs proposed by Democrats with numerous loopholes and exceptions designed to limit actual effectiveness and hamstring the self-funding aspects. On the other hand, Republican compromise bills are often forced to either provide more social service or at least try to make it look like the bill might pay for itself. In either case, the compromise is often much worse than either option because it achieves neither group's goals while still costing time and money.

To make myself perfectly clear, the two parties hold different ideals, not opposite ideals. Their stated goals are for the most part worthy causes. It's the individual people, the lies, greed, and corruption; namely, the implementation and operation of those goals and ideals that sickens me. I vote Democrat because at least they are responsible enough to try to pay for it all.

Freedom of assembly has nothing to do with campaign finance, which is where you cut the root of the political party system. If organizations are prohibited from performing interstate fundraising and cross-candidate contributions, then the national two-party system will die a well-deserved death. The non-financial aspects could go on, but without the megabucks behind them, I doubt it would amount to much.

Where are you getting your gas from, airmail straight from Chile? I spend about $1.50 LESS per gallon today (in the midwest) than I did at this point into GWB's first term.
As for Afghanistan, what do you suggest? Keep in mind that your solution must uphold our treaty obligations with other countries at the very least and should at least heavily favor upholding private political agreements with our close allies. Keep in mind also that simply removing all U.S. troops immediately would lead to overnight massacres in many parts of the country, the collapse of their current government, and the immediate end of all rebuilding and nearly all humanitarian efforts.
It's not like Obama has had much of a choice in that quagmire, and it's not like there even is one clear answer. I don't have a favorite solution, so I am genuinely interested in what you want to happen.

As for a little on-topic text, the idea of President Palin scares me (only slightly) more than the idea of Emperor Bush. If anyone else bothers reading this far, democrats voting Palin in the republican primary in no way means democrats voting Palin in the general election. She may beat all the other republican candidates and get to the general election, but a substantial portion of her on-paper power base would evaporate at the polls. It's still an insane move; anything that offers her even the faintest glimmer of hope for the presidency is a course of action to be avoided with extreme prejudice.

Threatening violence is also a felony in many states. Take care that your psychotic trolling doesn't actually land you in jail.

Actually, OP appears to be stating that all countries, regardless of their natural resources, deserve to be free of covert interference by the United States. Releasing all available information about U.S. activities public, private, and secret is a step towards reducing the impact of said actions in the hope of reducing them in the long run.
  Certainly that idea has some merit. If we could justifiably trust that governments would behave themselves, there would be little need to go digging into covert activities and secret communications. Since we cannot trust that governments will behave themselves, it is in our best interests to investigate and publicize their activities. This will cause some amount of political damage, as in this case, but it also highlights and helps reduce abuses of many types.

Point taken, and I will attempt to avoid such subtle pop culture references in the future when they could indeed be misconstrued as brainwashed ignorance.

Oh, if only it were so easy to convince the Rush worshipers to do the same (or an approximation, namely to stop mindlessly mouthing his claims).

regulation requires enforcement.

Reality has a pronounced liberal bias.
The BBC isn't too bad (re: American news), though it is pretty sad that some of the best news sources about our country come from other continents.

1. Thanks for contributing; a lot of people don't bother.
2. It is not possible* to provide open-source DRM software that works (from the perspective of content owners). If your users have the source and it is not tied to crypto hardware, then you (the content owner) have no control over your content. If Netflix was to provide a Linux client, they would have to write it as a binary blob (and a bunch of us would complain about that).

*If, however, your users are given something like an RSA dongle (ie. crypto hardware), then an open source DRM solution could be as strong as the crypto hardware. Note that this isn't open source DRM, just an open source interface to a closed device. For a service like Netflix, that solution would make sense and I would certainly pay a (small, one-time) fee for the hardware.

Before anyone tries shooting me down over this, yes I smoke and I occasionally drink.
  Good luck getting your third chemo dose with no insurance and no money paid to date. Hit by a car? Sure, we'll patch you up. Something stupid and long-term like smoking-induced lung cancer? Go screw yourself. Hospitals are not specialists, but oncologists are specialists that can and will demand cash up front from the uninsured (even if they work in a hospital). This is not the problem you make it out to be, and your ideology of 'screw you' is already the one implemented. The socialist healthcare cost of the *uninsured* smoker is largely a myth pushed by rabid neocons who oppose universal healthcare. Having said that, smoking is a really stupid thing to do. Believe me, I smoke and I wish I had never started, so when I say it is stupid it is experience talking.
  Smokers do legitimately generate more medical costs, and should legitimately pay more for health insurance (as they already do today). By the same reasoning however, drinkers should be paying more for both health insurance and car insurance. Alcohol is a major factor in motor vehicle injuries/fatalities, assaults, and other forms of violence in addition to being a risk factor for liver failure, heart disease, and a host of other problems. Why, then, is there no insurance premium for legal consumers of alcohol when there is one for legal consumers of tobacco? If we can agree that certain groups have differing risk factors (and that's an easy agreement), and can further agree that differing risk factors justify differing premiums (again an easy agreement since that is already the case), then we should turn the actuarians loose and live with the mathematically accurate results. Now, defining the various groups is a hot topic for debate and flame wars. I wish us all good luck with that.
  So, what do we do? We can't successfully outlaw these substances (see: prohibition). We already tax the hell out of them and penalize users in a number of ways justifiable and not. We could improve education and addiction treatment, though those areas are steadily improving. Smoking cessation efforts are working, over time. My suggestion? Help replace tobacco with (legalized) cannabis and eliminate the physical addiction potential of the smoked material. Ignore that if you want, but if you disagree please provide an alternative with a chance of actually improving things.

I'll have to second the pegboard and label maker. Our lab has one full-size rack, workbenches at standing level, tall chairs, walls lined in pegboard, tools and pull-out bins of many sizes attached to said pegboard. The high benches leave enough space for toolchests, filing cabinets, miniracks, hidden wiring, etc. under the bench. It's smaller than the OP's proposed space (more like 10x10ft) and just big enough for two people to work on machines at the same time. We had to run additional power and HVAC to handle the heat, current draw, and occasional soldering fumes, but it was a simple in-house job.
  Consider good mounting of any connective devices or peripherals you will need; having little hubs (USB, ethernet), extender ports (KVM, serial), and power strips right at hand will save a lot of time and cable madness. Good lighting is important; having a bench light mountable to your pegboard on a flexible neck is awesome for small parts and tight spaces. Those tall benches really make a difference too; if yours match the height of your drill press bed, etc., then it is also a lot easier to move workpieces to and from the heavy-duty tools.

You seem to consider yourself intelligent and educated. How do you suggest the rest of us intelligent, educated folk overcome the epically gargantuan financial advantage of major corporate interests, convince more than 1 in 5 people to vote at all, let alone to vote on the issues and not on a party ticket, and somehow fix our corrupt 2-party system in such a way that other motivated, intelligent, educated people stand a snowball's chance in a working blast furnace of getting elected? How then do we make sure that those people are and remain ethical and committed to fulfilling the will of the people?
The whole Bush is dumb vs. Bush is conspiring is not so hard really; he was a figurehead in many ways, and the power of his office was sorely misused by his advisors. In reality, Bush is quite intelligent and charismatic, and he chose people to run things that were intelligent and motivated. Unfortunately for his reputation, most of those people turned out to be power-mad psychos. For the record, I disagreed with nearly every major piece of legislation he authorized, numerous executive orders, appointments and nominations. I believe our nation would be a better place if he had not been elected. With that said, he's neither a moron nor a conspirator on the scale that is often implied. I could easily believe that he was in bed with the oil interests, though. Palin on the other hand may actually qualify as the dumbest decision in US history if elected.