Sovereign Immunity. You cannot sue the government without their permission, so it's not as easy as "just file in the appropriate court" when you're suing the government itself. Yes, it is that easy for suing anyone else.

Ahmadinejad is a buffoon, and he's not the person running Iran.Ayatollah Khamenei is the one that could actually order a nuclear attack. Unlike Ahmadinejad, Khamenei doesn't make threats against Israel, and has publicly stated that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral. He will also still be in power long after Ahmadinejad is gone.

The $775 is a criminal matter, a fine for negligent driving. The "compensation for two innocent victims" should be a civil matter. Unfortunately, the US legal system uses the deep pockets principle to go after anyone even remotely connected with the case provided they have money. The first rule of tort law is not "only sue the people most responsible", it is effectively "only sue the people that have money". Responsibility is up to the court to determine.

You are free to extract punishment in civil court, yes. Anything else would be a crime under our legal system.

I feel sorry for the bicyclists, but hitting a bicycle must be one of the few accidents that is seen as a criminal matter. It should be purely a civil matter. The driver's negligence caused the accident, the driver should be sued, and the driver should be paying this couple half his income for the rest of his life. While the "deep pockets" legal theory holds that someone even 1% responsible can be sued for 100% of the damages, clearly the judge felt that someone sending a text isn't even 1% responsible, because the driver did not need to respond to the text in any way while he was still driving. I can't speak for the details in this case, but in virtually every accident, there are things that all parties could have done to avoid the accident (e.g. staying at home that day). So in most accidents, all parties are partially to blame. In this case, labeling the bicyclists as victims and the automobile driver as the perpetrator is unfair -- just because the vehicle you're driving does a lot less damage does not absolve you of any responsibility for the accident.

People need to go to the stars, not to discover other life forms, but rather to give a greater chance for the survival of the species. There is always a small but finite probably that our planet or even our entire solar system could be destroyed by currently unknown phenomena... provided, of course, that we don't destroy ourselves first. Not putting all your eggs in a single basket is expensive and difficult, but it does increase the chances that at least some of the eggs will survive a catastrophe. And trust me, the history of the universe is filled with catastrophic events spaced widely in time.

Any first-generation starship will inevitably arrive at it's destination hundreds of year later only to discover that people that left later but with a faster drive are already there, waiting for them! (Can anybody name the science fiction stories where exactly this happened?)

What's with all this work on an "artificial womb"??? Shouldn't an "artificial vagina" be much more important? (Especially to slashdot readers!)

I would further argue that any market that companies like Exxon-Mobile are participating in are by no stretch of the imagination a "free market". Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" was based on the model of an agricultural economy, in which each of the buyers and sellers are infinitesimally small compared to the total size of the market. As soon as there are companies that are "too big to fail", you no longer have a free market. Additionally, if the government is allowed to interfere in a market, e.g. via the tax code, then competing by paying off politicians becomes more effective then competing based on value, and the system becomes inherently corrupt. I'd love to see a system of free market capitalism wherein all people are ultimately held responsible for the downstream effects of their actions. But that's not what we currently have.
By the way... how do I get into that 50% that is receiving government assistance? Does my daughter attending public school count as government assistance?

You fucking SOCIALIST! ;-)
There is a theory that people work harder at something if they have to pay for it, but in general I believe subsidizing education results in the greatest common good. If you don't think so, look at the African countries that have no publicly funded education at all... the people in those countries are fairly screwed, and there is little social mobility. Providing a free college education based on merit is one of the most effective means of increasing social mobility.In the US the most effective social program has been the GI Bill, which has helped more poor become comfortably middle class than any other program.