Who said that? The difference is quantity. There's no question that the Republicans use the filibuster over 3 times as much as the democrats did when they were in the minority. Thee blocked a couple dozen appointed back in the day, but then the bipartisan "gang of 14" came up with concreate rules on when a filibuster was appropriate, thus ended the practice for the most part. The gang of 14 pact was boken when the tea party came in, and since very few appointees get through. And just to make sure congress doesn't actually go out of session anymore. That way you can't have a recess appointment.

If this continues after Obama wins again the federal courts are in real trouble because the retirement rate far exceeds the confirmation rate.

And to add whip cream on this turd, I'll point out that Republicans held up the commissioning of hundreds of military officers because they were irked about base placements. How's that for supporting the troops.

There's a scandal going on in my state right now. St. Paul crime lab, which serves a good chunk of the 16th largest metropolitan area in the US, was not accredited and was reportedly so sloppy that they are having to retry and retest a tremendous number of samples. The local media coverage has shined a spotlight on the fact that a lot of labs aren't accredited and there's no law requiring them to be.

DNA is the tip of the iceberg for labs. The majority of the work is drugs, guns and fingerprints.

The most glaring example I can think of is a 60 minutes story from a numbers years ago. Crime lab testified a DNA match, but upon further review post conviction the lab tests showed that the blood type didn't match between samples. So why wasn't that a red flag for the lab? Well they interviewed the former head of the lab and his position was that it was the responsibility of the defense to deal with. The lab is simply stating an opinion on the tests.

The AC sounds like they run a tight ship. But I contend that's the exception, not the rule. In particular with City and County run/contracted labs.

CSI is a bit of the tail waging the dog. I know one company that changed their UI to rotate through random fingerprint and mugshot photos when searching because there was an expectation to make the thing look like it does on CSI.

Almost all judges are lawyers. Most of which started as prosecutors. You can't be an esteemed law professor and get appointed to the federal bench anymore. The republicans will filibuster it.

People should keep in mind that the "Crime Lab" isn't an independent laboratory. A lot of people think that the crime lab is there to find the scientific truth (just like in CSI), when in fact they are there to serve the needs of the police and/or the prosecution. A lot of the time that means cherry picking what tests they are going to run to suit the needs presupposed by the authorities.

The sloppy science is just an extension of the prevailing attitude. Labs are often run in a highly politicized environment where the emphasis is getting convictions. Most of the time the budget is tied to that as well. In fact most police run labs aren't even accredited.

Until the crime lab is an independent fixture of the state that both the prosecution and defense can use it's going to be a problem.

Sure, but they haven't had a democratic administration in office since the 90's. I wouldn't expect the FL DOL to do much about it.

I'm going to have to disagree with that one. A bunch of old mainframe guys I know worked for Control Data Corporation in the 80s. One of their big customers was the LDS for their massive genealogy project. Most of them spent a good deal of time at LDS offices in SLC, where they clearly recall having to sneak caffeinated coke from the local 7-11 inside a thermos.

I'm not an expert on what their holy book says or doesn't say, I can only say that LDS managers back then got bent out of shape over caffeine.

The Russians are quite good at iterative design and have been for decades. They'll built a jet, make improvements, build another, make more improvements, and so on. The end result is they tend to have programs that operate at a fraction of the cost of the US analog. But what they have at 2020 won't be anywhere close to what the US has. It may never be anywhere close to the US as they have always had trouble with collecting the intellectual capital to compete with high paying US Defense contractors. In the past there wasn't enough incentive. Time will as they have had more privatization in the last decade.

That's cheap if you're young and healthy. But just as expensive as any other kind of insurance if you're middle aged or are in a risk group.

You people are under the misguided impression that the hospital is required to treat your cancer. They aren't. They have to stabilize you, but they aren't under any obligation to run you through the treatment program. Need a replacement organ? You're F'd. Nobody is going to do squat for you with out cash up front.

There's a reason why medical financing is a growing business in the US. The luck ones are the very very poor that qualify for medicaid or the very old that have medicare. The rest of us better hope we keep our insurance plans.

The UK and Canada have their issues. But there are a lot of countries that came after them and got it right.

Moreover, people have a very rose colored view of the current US system when it comes to wait times. It's not unusual to see the exact same wait issues in the US. In particular since insurance companies and HMO have specific plan networks that limit choice of who, when and where one can see a doctor.

The classic example I see is hip and knee replacement. You hear stories about Canadians coming to the US and paying cash and getting right in. In the US system Cash talks. If you have insurance it's not unusual to have mandated second opinions and referrals (which can take weeks or more). There can also be limits on who/when/where it can take place. A doctor can serve multiple hospitals in a metropolitan area, but a care network may only credential him for a specific hospital. At the very least a major surgery is going to require a pre-claim to be submitted to the insurance company. A lot of the time that means your patient records will be sent off to India or Eastern Europe where a "doctor" will review them and determine if you really need that surgery or not.

You get all sorts of red tape. And unlike single payer systems, there are dozens of different red tape. That means a billing department is dozens of people unlike everywhere else where it's a handful. Who pays for that? You do. The consultants the providers hire to optimize their claims to get the most out of the insurance company. You pay for that too. The consultants the insurance companies hire to optimization their claims process to pay the least amount of money. You get to pay for them as well.

I think emulating the Swiss would be fantastic. There are incredibly capitalistic. Almost all the insurance companies are private, but they can't make a profit on health insurance. To level the playing field the gov't sets the price list and claims policy.

What I find most interesting is while the companies actually ended up fine in the end. They can't make money on core health insurance, but they can sell other insurance products to the customers at a profit. In the end studies show the insurance companies ended up making more money because they had a semi-captive customer base to market and bundle other products too.

We pay way too much for services here in the US. MRI in the US is $1500-2500. MRI in Japan is under $200. A Cardiac Surgeon in the US makes a seven figure salary. That level of salary would be a scandal in other parts of the world.

Nothing is clear about this. When there is an acquisition there are assets and liabilities. You can't just transfer the assets to another company and then walk away from the liabilities. Without assets the TextDrive shell would have been required to go straight into bankruptcy court. And BK courts take a rather dim view of trying to get out of paying bills by playing a shell game with the assets. What we can say for sure is that kind of drama didn't seem to happen.

Given the acquisition was in 2005 and they were supporting the lifetime folks until recently, I would say that's a pretty good argument can be made that Joyent assumed the liability of the lifetime customers. I would speculate they may be taking a calculated risk that that there aren't enough people to warrant a class action and the worst case they'll cut some checks with a NDA. The problem will quietly go away.

I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice.

A good example of "Lifetime" agreements can be found with airlines. Delta Airlines has acquired several competitors over the years, almost all of them had a small subset of lifetime Lounge/Club memberships.

For Northwest airlines, which was a merger, the lifetime memberships were honored, and continue to be honored.

For TWA, Delta acquired specific TWA assets in bankruptcy court. Because Delta was one of many buyers of assets they did not assume the liability of the lifetime agreements. TWA folks were SOL.

So, in general, unless they have done something to distance themselves from the liability of the Lifetime memberships I just don't see them getting out of the obligation.

I think Apple is the only computer maker out there that actually gives a crap about audio. My load the onboard audio from most PC makers is horrible. You also get TOS out on all modern Macs (The headphone plus is also a Micro TOS out.). Still, in this day and age you shouldn't have to buy an external sound card. The audio should ben engineered from the start not to be crap.