and really, we're better off that way.

Photographic and video evidence are already incredibly compelling. We don't need some forensic expert telling the jury it can't be faked. We need the photographer telling the jury he didn't fake it.

Philadelphia fans ...
They boo Santa Claus

But I'll admit, that was a pretty sad pitch.

Plus high standards at Citizen's Bank Park

National currency is overrated, you just have to have a good bond rating. With a good bond rating it doesn't matter whether you fire up the printing presses because that Sword of Damocles means you wont. Without a good bond rating it doesn't matter whether you can print your own money or not, no one will lend to you in your own currency without collateral.

For that matter, nukes are overrated too, you just need a friend that has one.

Germany is doing pretty good without either, Pakistan, not so much with both.

There is no way to get reliable numbers on these planes. All their budgets are padded with money for black projects, and there is no reason to think the cost is spread proportionately.

You mean the one that stopped being good law during the Carter administration?

The only thing sillier than the assertion that a dead treaty would draw us into combat with China is the idea that China has any interest whatsoever of stirring that particular pot of worms. The only thing China has been interested in for about two decades now are markets for its labor force. Sure China likes takes the opportunity to use Taiwan for some elaborate posturing, but there is no way it would risk its economy over that tiny island.

If the Shanghai factories can't ship lawn chairs to Walmart, China falls from the inside without the US launching a single cruise missile.

Outlier now - uncommon, but statistically significant when fire fighters have a profit motive to set fires.

The whole point of this case is that patents aren't subjected to a presumption of validity. The law, as it currently stands, is that it is jurors job to decide whether the patent office was right or wrong in granting a patent by a preponderance of the evidence. If SCOTUS rules for microsoft, it may change that and give patents a presumption of validity.

What I said in the GGGP is that this is really irrelevent, because while the law may say that jurors are to basically give no presumption to the patent office's judgement (i.e. they decide a patent's validity based on the preponderance of the evidence) in reality, juries already strongly weigh the PTO's decision so effectively it already takes "clear and convincing evidence" to invalidate a patent.

well, the E.D. Tex. is chosen by plaintiffs least as much for the speed at which litigation is resolved (which is nominally a good thing and a function of judges) as for the jury pool. Additionally while E.D. Tex. has very knowledgeable judges on patent issues, if you are a senior user it is very open to debate whether you want E.D. Tex.'s particular variety of knowledgeable judge.

That's the worst of both worlds approach. Nobody is happy with how ERs are financed. Not free market conservatives, not government intervention liberals, not the doctors, and not the patients. The only people who like ER's cost structure are insurance companies, because they only pay for healthy people who don't cost money and pass the buck to the government on sick, poor, and old people.

Extending your analogy, if we took the ER model to firefighting, rich neighborhoods would be hugely profitable and have plenty of fire fighters (because they're willing to pay and don't burn very often) and poor neighborhoods would either burn or be covered by government subsidies, meaning the rich people pay for fire service twice, once directly (for which they get very little) and a second time through taxes to subsidize the poor (for which they get nothing). Everyone would be better off if everyone paid into the same pool, since now the fire companies aren't taking a cut off the top for the minimal service they deliver to the rich, while not reinvesting for coverage to the poor - because there's nothing in it there for them.

Government's most important role is that it doesn't answer to anyone when it use force. In order to maintain that monopoly it has to prevent non-governmental entities from using force. This means a police force or army. A police force or army costs money. Money has to come from somewhere. Without a restriction on the use of force, the thug who shakes down your business doesn't answer to anyone.

This also means that governments will inevitably arise spontaneously in power vacuum. They may not be benevolent or efficient governments, but as soon as they exercise control over a population, they are a government. The first thing a nascent government does is to charge taxes (i.e. extort protection money) the second is that excludes others from taking your money (i.e. restrict the use of force) - because if someone else has a claim to your money, that's less for them, and it flouts their authority - if competing entities try to take resources from the same area you get a war.

This scales from warlords in Somalia to welfare states in Scandinavia.