Visa/MC and the banks have security measures in place, merchants who follow the process aren't liable for loss from fraudulent cards. Asking for ID provides no additional protection to merchants and to the extent they rely on it instead of established Visa/MC processes it can lessen security.

The info on the ID is the security measures Visa/MC have in place. They allow a merchant to enter info like address or phone number, and their computers will tell the merchant whether or not it matches the address/phone they have on file for that card. When you pay for gas with a credit card and the pump asks you to punch in your zip code, it's not collecting marketing information. It's using the zip code as a (rather flimsy) security measure to protect against someone buying gas with a lost/stolen credit card. Yeah you can ask the customer to recite their address, but any burglar who stole the card from a house or mugger who got their victim's entire wallet would know the address. A photo ID with that info, while fairly easy to fake, requires a bit more effort on the part of the thief.

Credit card security is in the dismal state it's currently in because Visa/MC/Amex have successfully transferred all the damage from fraudulent transactions onto the merchants. Since they lose practically no money to fraud, they have very little incentive to improve security. (The exorbitant interest rates are to cover the cost of credit card holders who default on their debt.) For market forces to work correctly, financial penalties for risks which fail must be linked to financial profits when those same risks succeed. What Visa et al have done is decouple the penalties from the profits (profits go to them, penalties to the merchant), leading to a situation where they are not penalized when the risks they take (poor security) fail. Consequently there is no motivation for them to improve credit card security beyond the laughable state it's currently in.

Even your punctuation is condescending.

Oh, maybe in the abstract. Dare you involve actual people, and everything goes pear-shaped. This is why the genius of the U.S. Constitution is to assert outright that people are evil, and set up checks and balances to minimize the effects. Which #OccupyResoluteDesk is systematically ignoring, while Congress and the Courts, as a whole, are abetting.
Your assertion of the orthogonality of socialism and fascism is akin to saying that your C++ source code is crash-free--of course it is: until you compile it, execute it, and blame the ensuing stack trace on conservatives.

It is certainly true that I have long since discarded the idea of taking you seriously. That happened sometime last year, I think, around the time you tried to accuse me of calling for assassination.

Your assertions that (a) you hold knowledge, (b) I lack such, and (c) I'm not even trying to learn, are really kind of insulting, don't you think?

Fart too white and nerdy.

Ran across a phrase via Instapundit that seems to capture the Left very 'clearly': nostalgie de la boue .
Putting it theologically, so much of the Left is an appeal to the flesh.

Well, we've seen how the net education and political involvement of a country can be reduced.
Is that a one-way chemical reaction, though?

I don't know--depends upon the cash flow for the channel.

SecuROM racket
Despite how you stack it
Like a beard on a girl
They just want to hack it
Burma Shave

When we (academics) do experiments on people however trivial we usually have to go through ethical clearance, get informed consent etc. I think its skipping that part that people are uncomfortable about.

You do realize that you yourself conduct such "experiments" on your friends every day? While making conversation in the lunch room you ask, "Hey, anyone wanna see Planet of the Apes tonight?" That elicits a lukewarm response, so you then ask "Well what about How to Train your Dragon?" You get a lot of interest in that one, so next time you ask about watching movies you're more likely to make suggestions where they can bring along their kids.

I think the dividing line between when you need to get informed consent is when the experiment begins to make people do things they wouldn't have done anyway. Tweaking how people get paired up for dates is fine if they were looking for a date anyway. Forcing them to go on a date when they weren't planning to would require informed consent (and probably compensation).

We differ on the definition of federalist, then: FDR was a statist, and the intellectual heir of Wilson, who hated the Constitution.
Federalism properly confines the government to the delegated, enumerated powers, not the über-state ideas espoused by FDR.

If you like your moral superiority, you can keep your moral superiority. Like your doctor!
Hahahahahahahaha, you're such a throne sniffer. Stay beautiful.