So if they ban it in soap, will people start washing their hands with Colgate's Total toothpaste? I'm sure there are already people who rub Colgate's "Optic White" in their eyes to whiten their vision.

Perhaps you just need a brand in a shinier box? I suggest you try the new Crest 4D White toothpaste. It has every bit as much fluoride as 3D White, but comes in a new extra-shiny with sparklies box. Those matte boxes will make your teeth rot.

I'd say it's becoming more like the techie version of the Howard Stern Show. McAfee is just one of the premier members of The Wack Pack, like High Pitch Erik. People are fascinated by train wrecks:

• CrackAfee (John McAfee)
• Crazy Lauren Guy (Lauren Weinstein)
  The name informs people up front to take Lauren's submissions with a grain of salt, and heads off all the uninformed incorrect gender-specific pronouns that inevitably get applied to him
• Nick the Troll Prostitute (Nerval's Lobster)
  The name informs people up front that Nerval's Lobster is actually Nick Kolakowski, slashdot "editor" and self-described "literary gun for hire" who writes brief provocative opinion pieces (often about stories we've already discussed) and sells them to generate page views by pushing slashdotters' buttons (he's a paid troll)

I'm just surprised they didn't go with "McAfee's Home Set A Belize" for the headline.

The AC is right about the Orwellian two minutes hate. As soon as I read the headline I knew it would have been submitted by Nerval's Lobster and link to a slashdot/topic/cloud or slashdot/topic/bi opinion piece by Nick Kolakowski.

• The headline evokes childish playground antics
• The headline is about a news story we already covered yesterday
• The headline takes the position that big company buying little company will ruin it, but provocatively flips it around to get a rise out of Slashdotters who will inevitably argue against it

As previously noted, "Slashdot Editor" Nick Kolakowski is once again promoting his own "Business Intelligence/Cloud" opinion pieces under the guise of the fake user Nerval's Lobster. He's simply trolling for pageviews, as he does just about every weekday... but this one is particularly shameless, as he's writing something almost no one will believe about a story we discussed yesterday. It's almost like his day consists of reading the comments of slashdot stories to see what deeply-seated opinions he can play off the next day to justify his job.

Don't feed the troll. Don't comment on stories "submitted" by Nerval's Lobster.

Disclaimer: I am a former Washington Post journalist

First of all, TFA is at The Washington Times. That alone makes its credibility dubious. The Washington Times was founded by Sun Myung Moon (crazy "Unification Church" cult leader) who stated that the purpose of the "newspaper" was to be "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world." Moon was convicted that same year of filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy and served 13 months in prison. The Times has long been known as a conservative shill (although it has a decent sports section) that had to be financially supported by Moon's "church" to survive. Moon spent nearly $2 billion of his followers' money over 20 years to keep the paper afloat.

Second, The Washington Times article doesn't even claim to have done any reporting on its own... it cites some article from UPI that isn't readily available on UPI's home page or even by searching UPI for "IRS." Ultimately found the "article" here. It's a 9-paragraph blog posting. UPI was once a respectable news agency like AP or Reuters, but its relevance diminished to the point where it was bought out in 2000 by... you guessed it: Sun Myung Moon. UPI's White House correspondent retired the next day after 57 years with the organization. These days UPI doesn't even have a White House correspondent, and its finances have gotten so bad that it relies on free articles contributed by college students.

The UPI blog posting cites a Courthouse News Service article: John Doe Company sued 15 John Doe IRS agents in Superior Court. The plaintiff's attorney alleges that the records affected may include those of "politically controversial members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, and prominent citizens in the world of entertainment, business and government, from all walks of life." He goes on to complain that the unnamed IRS agents "decided to use John Doe Company's media system to watch basketball, ordering pizza and Coca-Cola, to take in part of the NCAA tournament," but "Plaintiff's attorney Robert E. Barnes declined to elaborate on the complaint's allegations, saying he will have more information 'in a few months.'"

Why publish a story no one can verify, since all you can say for now is that that unnamed people at the IRS are illegally snooping on unnamed politically controversial people through an unnamed medical firm? Because it helps fuel the fire driving the current Republican party line of "the IRS is evil and Obama is responsible." Because some ignorant blogger might pick it up and run with it, thinking that The Washington Times and UPI are real news organizations, and not even bother to look for the source of this story. Great job Timothy.

There are not an insignificant number of cases where a normally responsible person becomes an irresponsible person,

When we're talking about irresponsible enough to commit homicide, yes, that is an insignificant number. (In terms of frequency; of course in personal terms any murder is highly significant to those, to friends and family of both the victim and, in a different sense, the murderer.)

Murder is something people work their way up to. 90% of murder suspects in Milwaukee in 2001 had a criminal record; the same proportion was found in NYC in 2003 through 2005. Keep in mind this is just guys (mostly, some women too) who got caught at previous crimes, more would have committed crimes and not been caught, and more would have displayed irresponsible but non-criminal behavior (the sort of stuff a good mental health system would catch).

The good citizen who suddenly snaps and kills is a favorite fictional trope, but bears little relationship to criminological reality.

Making a zip gun from plastic tubing is, however.

Citation needed.

However, it is easy enough to understand a reluctance to accept the casual and uncontrolled production of murder weapons.

Roughly 6% of murders are committed with fists and feet. Not only are such weapons produced in an uncontrolled manner, we even give out tax breaks to those that produce them.

nor do they really have the power to do jack didlysquat about it if they DID care. Really.

. . . well, to be fair, the same contingent of "geniuses" took us to war in Iraq based on a "1% chance" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . .

Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).

These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.

And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.

If you have insurance you pay the medical expenses for smokers, alcoholics or drug users . . . who are presumably WORKING, and on an employer-provided plan.

It's the NON-WORKING drug-users that I have a problem with. Gee, I wish I had the luxury to sit around all day, play video games, smoke crack, and have someone else work their ass off to pay for it.

the State has no power to overturn economic realities

Right. And one of those economic realities is that health care is not an area where a "free market" can efficiently allocate resources. Buyers and sellers do not meet in the marketplace with equal power and full knowledge.

If you think corporate profits are the only reason, or even the major factor in the exorbitant expense of health care, you are naive. It's expensive because it takes vast resources to do the job.

It takes no more resources to provide an American citizen with health care than a German or a Japanese one. Yet every other developed nation has better outcome at less cost. The difference is the obscene profits realized by companies like United Health.

Let me know when you feel like waiting a month or so for a MRI or longer, unless it's serious

Guess how long I had to wait for United Health to approve an MRI?

there should be no worries about medical records being leaked and/or used against individuals or organizations since the IRS will keep those safe for all of us.

No, the ACA does not allow the IRS to access your medical records.

They're so eager to begin, they simply walked in and seized without explanation approximately *sixty million* medical records in California

The allegation is that they exceeded the authority of a warrant and demanded copies of servers containing records for ten million people from an unnamed company. Is it true? Neither you nor I know. But the suit is unrelated to the ACA.