The penny is just as pointless in the USA as it is in Canada. Of course, the USA is considerably behind Canada in recognizing the changes wrought by inflation. In addition to abolishing the penny, it should abolish the dollar bill and introduce a $2 coin as Canada did many years ago. (If you wanted to be really far-sighted, you could establish a plan for when to abolish the nickel and the $5 bill and introduce a $5 coin.)

Unfortunately, currency reform would not only face stiff opposition from the zinc lobby (because penny is largely zinc now), but from the politically well-connected Crane Company in Massachusetts, which manufactures all of the paper used in printing US currency. The absurdity of vending machines and tollbooths needing to accept paper money (much more expensive than coins) counts for nothing as against a corporation with skilled lobbyists.

Tell the victims of 9/11 or the Madrid bombings or the Tokyo subway gas attack that 'terrorists' don't exist. If any court hearing a secret wiretap application is, ipso facto, an illicit 'Kangaroo Court', then we are giving carte blanche to anyone inclined to mass murder.

But if you admit that secret judicial proceedings are necessary in handling wiretap applications, then the entire argument against the FISA court falls apart. If the FISA court is an illicit 'kangaroo court', then any court considering a wiretap application is illicit as well.

If you want to wiretap a US Citizen, then get a warrant. Period.

How do you get such a warrant except behind closed doors? Are you proposing that all wiretap warrant applications should be public? Are you proposing that every target of a wiretap application should be informed of it and allowed to oppose it in court? This would make the wiretap a joke. Maybe that's what you propose: abolish wiretapping, with or without warrant. If so, then law enforcement will be severely hampered and people will indeed be less safe.

If you grant that a society must sometimes intercept the communications of its adversaries, you must also grant that such interception must be done in secret, since it is otherwise useless.

Unfortunately, even the most democratic society has enemies that seek to damage or destroy it. Intercepting their communications is one of the most effective ways to counter such people, and such interception would be futile if it had to be publicly announced beforehand.

Most people don't understand that, under current judicial precedent, warrantless wiretapping of international communications is constitutional, needing only the approval of the Executive Branch. The secret FISA court is a legislative attempt to regulate this executive power. Without FISA you would have a secret bureaucracy making the decisions instead of a secret court.

Right. Just what regulation would have prevented the downturn? Remember that when regulators do their jobs, they don't have 20-20 hindsight available.

It really is a free market in enterprise computing, in the sense that Microsoft does have competitors. No one can deny that Microsoft has achieved strong customer lock-in, making it quite difficult to change, but Microsoft is now testing the strength of that lock-in in two ways:

1. - Microsoft will surely lose some enterprise customers over this: the ones with the weakest lock-in. How many it will lose is difficult to predict.
2. - New, growing companies just getting into enterprise computing are now fully on notice what to expect if they drink the Microsoft kool-aid. Even if they do not lose many existing customers, they Microsoft may be eating their seed corn here.

Microsoft has built a towering edifice of customer lock-in, terrible to behold. Eventually, in the fullness of time, the edifice will fall. We may be seeing the start of that process.

This is relevant because it has a potential for bias, and also because this guy did not tell the whole truth in pre-trial questioning, raising the possibility that he was trying to get on the jury to vindicate his legal philosophy on patents. If Samsung had known about the Seagate matter, they could have objected to his being seated on the jury.

Why do you assume immigrants must be illegal? The law should allow the amount of legal immigration we need, and the immigrants that will help our country grow. Immigration is vital to our economy now, and will become more so as the population ages.

Young, vital, driven immigrants are just the sort of people we need, yet nativist know-nothings act as if immigrants are a blight, not paying taxes or contributing anything to the economy. If we shut off immigration, as the xenophobic fringe demands, we will look like Japan soon, with an aging population and not enough young people to support them.

The USA was built by immigrants. It would be the height of folly to excessively limit immigration now when we most need it.

The S&L Crisis was caused by a large number of people knowingly committing fraud, so a large number of criminal prosecutions was warranted. The recent US financial crisis, in spite of what you appear to so fervently believe, was not caused by criminal bankers, but by foolish Federal housing policy.

In the USA, there is a high threshold for obtaining a criminal conviction, and prosecutors are chary of bringing a criminal case without substantial evidence. Civil cases are easier, and that's why these cases, only marginally supported by evidence, have been brought civilly. If the civil cases fail, how in the world do you think you could prove a criminal case?

The idea that Manning is covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act is ludicrous. Disclosures which are prohibited by law or by Executive Order do not qualify for protection. Section (b)(8) of 5 USC 2302 provides that a disclosure is protected:

...if such disclosure is not specifically prohibited by law and if such information is not specifically required by Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or the conduct of foreign affairs...

Manning's disclosures were illegal and contrary to secrecy orders, so the Whistleblower Act is totally irrelevant.

Where are the criminal prosecutions for the bankers that looted the economy.

There have been several such prosecutions. They have all failed to achieve convictions, probably because what the bankers did was not illegal.

Concluding that the suicide-watch procedures are unquestionably intentional torture for the purpose of future deterrence is jumping to conclusions. A military man being made to strip to his underwear at bedtime is not the same thing as thumbscrews and the bastinado. Believe what you like, but I am certain that Manning's military jailors do not want, under any circumstances, to be blamed for allowing him to commit suicide.