Those rights aren't an inconvenient afterthought, they're the entire point of the country. It's critical that gays and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military, because it's defending the rights of everybody, including and especially those who are different, that makes the country worth fighting for in the first place. If we aren't doing that, then everything else becomes just a waste of time.

Hear, hear!

MasterCard is an American company. In America. . .

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks aren't. He may not have even ever been to the U.S.

In America, distributing classified documents is illegal.

No, it isn't.

Case closed.

. . .a criminal (in their jurisdiction) company.

There was no case. In America, there is a principle that says a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Income has been stagnant for the working and lower-middle classes for decades, but people feel entitled to a much higher standard of living.

Well, why do you think that is?

Working class people see the GDP increasing, see the country on average becoming more wealthy, but see the upper classes absorbing that extra wealth, getting a bigger piece of the pie than before.

Everyone around them has an increasing standard of living, why shouldn't they?

Why shouldn't the pie continue to be divided up roughly the same way, so that as the pie grows, everyone gets more wealthy?

How many people are really working with no paid time off in the US above the minimum wage/burger flipper levels?

Almost half of the U.S. makes less than $25K a year: Graph of Census data. Not everyone's white-collar like you.

Finland GDP per capita, from the World Bank: 44K USD; vacation days: 30

USA GDP per capita: 46K USD; vacation days: 0

Luxemborg: 105K; 25
UK: 35K; 20
Phillipines: 1.7K; 5
Thailand: 3.8K; 6
France: 41K; 30
Canada: 39K; 10
Czech Republic: 18K; 20

More info on Google Public Data. I haven't done a full graph of GDP against days off, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation at a glance. Thanks for playing!

Hey, me too, and seriously, if you do this: write to your favorite congresscritter(s) to let them/him/her know. The House and Senate Transportation committees are good places to send a note if you don't want to write to your own congressional reps. (The Senate committee already hauled Pistole in last week for a grilling. Hopefully they will keep on top of him.) Consider cc'ing the TSA, White House, and the Air Transport Association (airline trade group). Other good organizations to write to might be the ACLU, We Won't Fly, and Fly With Dignity.

Opting out altogether is great, but not if no one knows about it. If you let organizations like this know, you'll get included in the numbers.

Both the security guard and their supervisor broke procedure and policy, risking their jobs. . .I'd say it's a good experience to meet a decent human being. . .it's a step in the right direction.

You're absolutely right, these individuals deserve praise for using their heads rather than foolishly following mindless procedure. (Would that such behavior made them eligible for more supervisory duties where they could spread that attitude.) However, liquidsin's point is also quite good: that this shouldn't be the exception. It shouldn't be remarkable that a decent human being is working as a TSA screener; it should be expected. If the system is such that a person needs to risk unemployment to do what's right, the system is, pardonnez mon français, fucked up. If that's a step in the right direction, we need to start taking leaps.