Ok, so Google can be wrong...... good to know :-)

I'm no lawyer and I hope that someone with more knowledge than me chimes in here if I'm wrong, but I believe (from a quick Google search) that to be pardoned for a crime you first have to be convicted of that crime. So Snowden hasn't been charged or convicted even though there is a warrant out for his arrest should he enter a jurisdiction that has an extradition treaty with the United States.

Snowden has publicly said that he would return to the US (and wants to), if he is promised a public trial in civilian court and so far no one from the justice department has made any promises or offers (and if it was me, I don't know if I would believe it if they said it but refused to provide it in writing). I don't know that the President has the authority to tell the justice department "Look, we're ending that program anyway and a lot of people believe he's a hero and did the country a public service so rescind that arrest warrant and let him off the hook". So Snowden would have to be tried, convicted and sentenced and then his lawyers could apply for a pardon but that could mean years in jail, possibly in solitary with only a slim hope that whoever follows Obama is favorably disposed towards him. Just as an example, many people felt George W. Bush was a stooge for Dick Chaney but at the end of his presidency Chaney had a melt down when Bush wouldn't pardon his friend Scooter Libby because of political pressure from everyone else who thought he didn't deserve a pardon. I don't think the president can just randomly choose to pardon someone, there's a process that it has to go through before the paperwork reaches his desk and I don't believe his can start that process.

I'd really like to see that but I doubt it's going to happen, there's a lot of pressure by law enforcement and U.S. intelligence and the people he embarrassed by his disclosures to make an example of him so that anyone else with a conscience that works for the government will think a few times and decide "Nope, don't want to end up like Snowden in prison / solitary for the rest of my life".

btw I realize that the AOL program actually incorporates Internet Explorer but I'm not a fan of IE and pretty much tell everyone to use FireFox or Chrome.

My thought exactly.

And yet they do, much to the consternation of any IT or tech savvy people who have to work on peoples computers that has that AOL crap software AND the people have Verizon FIOS, Comcast, Cablevision or Optonline and yet they still insist on using that dreadful, horrible, useless AOL software rather than a modern browser like Chrome or FireFox.

There may be practical problems prosecuting people who have obviously lied to congress but the fact is that if people do and there are no consequences then that sends a clear message to anyone in the future that they can lie and there will be no repercussions.

If he lied under oath and there's proof that he did then charge the bastard with perjury and put him on trial and make an example of him to show that you can not lie under oath to congress and get away with it.

It would be nice, but don't count on it. The political machine is very angry at him and wants him made an example of.

and for humanitarian reasons, I think we should leave him that way.

I like that; and address the "Comcast customer service is the worst anywhere" problem; like people who call and say "I keep getting this 900|bla bla error while watching Game of Thrones on XFinity streaming" and customer service says "Streaming service? What's that?".

You could try that but the problem there is that it's never the leadership that does the dirty work or directly gives the order to the person who gets caught; a lot like the mafia and drug cartels it's just low level or at best mid level people that do the criminal stuff and the orders to do that may come down a chain of command. I don't know that you would ever get anyone to roll over on any of the senior leadership and that like larger criminal organizations the people who do the illegal stuff may be willing to confess i.e. "No one told me to do it, I did it all on my own" rather than rolling over on who actually gave the order.

I like your thinking and while I believe that something needs to be done about Scientology I'm really not sure what the correct approach should be since as you say any type of government regulation could lead to serious abuse.

I've been very wary of Scientology since I saw the first 60 Minutes piece on it back in the 90's; they seem to have all the earmarks of a cult and seem to practice what could be construed as "mind control"; they discourage their "parishioners" from associating with any non-Scientologist family members and any number of other disturbing practices.

Since I first watched that 60 Minutes piece, I kind of keep an eye out for Scientology news mostly because (believe it or not) I went to high school with Tom Cruise (Glen Ridge High School, Class of 1980) and while I didn't know him or ever remember having met him it still baffles me how someone that I went to high school with could be such a proponent of something that seems so shady. But then on the other hand I'm sure many people went to high school with people that ended up doing really bad things i.e. maybe people who went to high school with Bernie Madoff could say "He was a great guy in high school, I don't know how he went so wrong".

I've had each item on the list go bad at one time or another but ram and power supplies probably top the list despite using relatively good brand name parts: for memory Corsair, Crucial, Mushkin, PNY, Patriot all brands I've had bad parts at one time or another. For power supplies: Corsair, Thermaltake, OCZ (too many OCZ which is why I stopped using them)

As far as cpu's I only use boxed Intel cpu's and the last Intel cpu I had that went bad was a couple of Pentium III's and one was still under the three year warranty and the other was out of warranty by like six months. But that makes it a really long time since an Intel cpu went bad on me.

Possibly but if you selectively edit out some stuff (they didn't film or include every single detail of every Harry Potter book) and perhaps do a two part movie like The Deathly Hallows it could be good. Perhaps a syfy mini series like Dune or The Children of Dune, although studios and networks don't seem to be doing mini-series these days... just too expensive I guess for too little return. Not to mention that science fiction is still seen as somewhat of a fringe subject and is not seen by networks as having the broad appeal of period pieces like Shogun or tear jerkers like The Thorn Birds. I'll have to reread the book but compared to many other science fiction movies, it seems to me that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress wouldn't be so expensive since the majority of it is indoors (no location shooting) other than when Mannie and the Professor make a trip to Earth to appeal for recognition and not a whole lot of CGI and special effects needed either.

I've also felt the same way, Citizen of the Galaxy is one of my favorite Heinlein books (as is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) and both would make good movies if you could get a good screen writer that doesn't mess too much with the theme and characters and tries to faithfully stick to the story. Although I've always felt that adapting Heinlein's books to the screen could be problematic due to his fascination / obsession with plural and group marriages but after Fifty Shades of Grey his idea's on marriages and relationships seem almost tame by comparison so no problem there anymore.