Are you seriously trying to argue that it's a good thing apples go rotten? And that's why piracy is good?

I don't care. At this point I don't want my government going around killing people without giving justifications, because it will be abused. The risk could be worth it in times of extreme danger, America isn't under a huge threat right now, the risk of dying from terrorists is lower than the threat from our government.

Furthermore, whatever efforts the covert operations are doing have been horribly outweighed by Obama's poor policy, with terrorists controlling entire countries in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. If he's going to fight a war, he should fight the public war, not pretend that it ended while fighting a covert war on the side.

True point. It's good to pay attention to the big picture, rather than focusing on just the past couple years.

Wow, can you possibly think of a worse idea? The teacher isn't a democratic leader, he's a person who literally knows better than the students (at least, that's why the teacher was selected). I can tell you when I've been in classes where I had to grade myself, I always gave myself top marks. There is no reason to do otherwise.

If you don't like grades, here's a better solution: make the classes pass/fail. If the student learns the subject well enough to move on, then they pass. If they don't learn it well enough, then they don't. Force everyone to either get an A or an F. If they don't get an A, it's either because the teacher didn't teach well enough, or the student didn't put in the effort. In the former case, the teacher should be fired. In the latter case, the student should be held back until he learns what he needs to.

Then why did the IRS pretend to lose emails? Where there's smoke, there's fire.
Somehow, the tapes with evidence linking Nixon to Watergate were never found, either. A pity, that.

What is huge about it?

I know because I added the word 'seemed.' Which means, "so it appears to me." When I add that, I'm always right. :)

More seriously: no data has been released to indicate that their surveillance tactics are useful. If they want to convince me, as a voter, to continue supporting those tactics, then they need to convince me.

They have other options, of course; if they can convince enough of the other 300 million people, then my single vote against them doesn't matter. It only matters when joined by many who agree with me. But there are a lot of people who do agree with me.

No worries. I'm glad to know you found them interesting.

Do you know there are systems that listen to customers on hold, and if they seem angry, puts them to the front of the queue?

People in support encourage that behavior, reward it, by doing things for people when they get angry. They reward anger, even when not talking to anyone! As a result, people pretend to be angry. I know a guy, who, I've never seen get angry ever.......but when he called support once, I saw him pretend to be angry. Because that gets results.

Indeed, my comment was aimed more at the Slashdot summary than anything.

Although complaining about the Slashdot summary around here is as useless as it is common.

Your sample is definitely not representative.

Sometimes the world gets more tolerant, sometimes less tolerant. The word is 'whore' and not even the Parent's Television Council thinks it needs to be censored.

And I'm sure the names 'dummy' and 'asshole' do apply to some of the customers. And whore, for that matter, in a literal sense.

Extending your point, as far as we can tell, the data collection hasn't seemed to stop any terrorist attack at all. Why should we support it if it doesn't even fulfill its offered justification? If they were truly saving lives every day, I could support metadata collection, but it doesn't seem to be worth the expense and effort, let alone the problematic invasion of privacy.

Even the author of the patriot act opposes it. It's time to let it go.

Here's another possible reason: people who grew up sharing everything publicly on the internet don't care who looks at it.

Sure, there are such people. Do you also recognize that there are AGW 'supporters' who uncritically accept everything that supports their opinion? Do you have a term for them, or do you only label people who disagree with you?