SELinux came from...... the NSA. Oh...

...... get Google Glass (to access your One Account for All of NSA Convenience)

True then and true now. Most democracies (almost 90% today) avoid this problem by using proportional voting systems that deliver diverse, multi-party legislatures where no one party controls everything. So they must work together....and if one party refuses to play ball, then usually someone else will. It's not perfect, but it's massively better than how the US does things. (In a system using proportional representation (dependong on how it is set up), voters vote for a party (list PR with candidates on ranked lists), or a person who represents a party (STV - Single transferable Vote) - or both - (Mixed-Member Proportional with local and list candidates) and seats are allocated to parties based on their share of the total vote. Ten percent of the vote gets a party 10% of the seats. Votes actually count! They elect people that voters actually want. No matter where you live..... It's so much better. It's insane the US is incapable of revising it's failed political institutions. Most Americans have no idea how their own country actually works.

Presidents tend to be selectively amoral egotists......or they never get to be President in the first place. Why else would someone sacrifice almost their entire lives to the pursuit of such a thing? The US system is badly set up. At almost every level the US Constitution encourages, allows or requires corruption. It's a system designed to fail under load....and with over 300 million people in 50 states.....it's definitely overloaded.

The USA hasn't qualified for at least 50 years.....though most people prefer to believe otherwise. Cases like Manning and Snowden make that very clear.

The main reason I don't trust any government in any country to provide a just outcome in whistle blowers cases is that the governments typically show no regard for the law themselves. Over and over we have seen governments break their own laws in spying and data acquisition and use....and when they are caught they just make it legal anyway and no one is ever prosecuted. The whistle blowers are talking to the people. The governments are deaf to news of their own crimes. It's up to each of us to see to it that criminal governments are at least held to account through the ballot box. if you don't......well.....Germany found out how that turns out back in the late 1930s. Sooner or later you get a leader who doesn't even make excuses for his crimes.

Sounds like he would prefer to be a dictator. All that accountability and over sight stuff wore him down.

Your 4-pack of incandescents will last 4 x 8 weeks of use (in my experience)....whereas one CFL will last several years.....

Totally agree. Monitoring the activities of foreign diplomats in your own country is standard operating procedure. To be expected. This story is interned to confuse the ignorant and weak-minded.

China is governed by people who see themselves as deeply rational. The modern Republican Party, to them, is deeply irrational and exemplifies the reasons for avoiding democracy and hindering religion. I can't disagree with them on this. . China and Russia signed a treaty back in 2000 for much the same purpose: to give the world an alternative to American domination.

I agree. Any sales guy who does well at the top probably wasn't a very good sales guy. It's a completely different mindset.

These are deliberate "leaks" because they know few people actually believe official statements. That's why no one is looking for these "lakers"

You're on shakey ground there. Employers ARE responsible for the actions (and their consequences) of their employees. This has been true for decades. Nothing new.

The US has always been somewhat corrupt and not very democratic. Technology tended to limit the reach and power of the corrupt and to constrain the worst consequences of a lack of fair democracy. Those days are over. The corrupt can now listen to you in your home through your own computer or cellphone without you knowing it. You have nothing to fear if THEY think you've done nothing wrong.

Americans are "safe" now....in much the same way Germans were "safe" in 1936.