My guess is that the FBI was trying to catch American citizens in the act of whistleblowing, so that they can make an arrest. America is not kind to people that expose corruption. Although we have "whistleblower protection programs", they have so many exceptions that they are a sham. Whether they go to the press, the police, or directly to the FBI, many whistleblowers end up in serious legal trouble and often spend time in jail. Citation: List of whistleblowers.

No, they are not. They believe in transparent government. But they also believe in personal privacy.

The identity of people exposing corruption. Some of these people have risked their lives to do so.

Adoption in many countries is very difficult, and plenty of potential parents do not qualify. My wife and I are financially secure, and are very successfully raising two of our own kids. But we had room in our home and our hearts for at least one more, and looked into adoption. We were turned down. The reasons given were that we were too old (I am in my 50s and my wife is in her 40s), and we already have kids of our own, and childless couples would be given priority.

If there really are orphanages full of desperate children, then governments are doing an incredibly poor job of matching them up with willing and capable parents.

Indeed. Most of our people were hired either through referrals, or through our internship program. Less than 10% were hired by submitting a resume to HR. Instead of shotgunning resumes, you should be using your network. If you don't have a network, you need to start building one: go to meetups, volunteer for a FOSS project, etc.

If manufacturers don't want to deal directly, they why do we need laws prohibiting them from doing so?

If middlemen really added value, then customers would be willing to pay for that value, without government coercion.

Unlikely. Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past, and there is little reason to think this time will be any different. China is transitioning to a service economy much faster than western nations did, and due to the one child policy, China's labor force has already peaked, and it will be more and more difficult for companies to find enough workers.

I have seen no evidence that this is true. Most people that start a free software business fail. Most people that start a proprietary software business fail. But among the people I know, the failure rate for the former is lower.

PV produces electricity in the midday when demand is highest, especially on hot summer days when the demand is even higher. PV certainly isn't THE solution. But is better than solar thermal. To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single solar thermal project under construction anywhere in the world. PV has displaced it completely for all new solar installations.

Solyndra used exotic materials. Solyndra is also bankrupt. Current producers are using more conventional processes. The Chinese seem to be doing mass production just fine. Mass production has failed in the west because our governments tried to "pick winners" and ended up directing subsidies into losers instead (Solyndra, etc.).

Solar thermal projects all over the world are being cancelled because they can no longer compete with solar PV. I don't think this is the "actual solution" we are looking for.

Maybe we should find something that actually makes economic sense before we add another trillion to our national debt.

It is not illegal to dominate a sector, nor is it even illegal to have a monopoly. It is only illegal to use your dominant position to engage in anti-competitive practices. Standard Oil was notorious for this. Microsoft also used their OS dominance to muscle in and crush competitors in office applications and browsers. I haven't see Amazon doing anything like that. Their competitors are just a click away.

Foreign students usually pay full, unsubsidized tuition. So they do not display US students. The limiting factor in education is money, not the number of chairs in the classroom.

Do you have any evidence whatsoever that this is true?

Baloney. People are not upset at the IRS for being picky. They are upset at them being partisan. Your claim that they "looked at groups from both sides" is more baloney. Sure they looked at a handful of progressive groups, but the tea party groups were subjected to far more scrutiny.

Not true. A shadow can move faster than light. If a wavefront is impacting a linear object, the impact point can move far faster than the propagation speed of the wave. Researchers have found numerous "action at a distance" phenomena that occur instantaneously between entangled particles. None of these phenomena can transmit information, but they are still faster than light.

They are not spraying DDT. Most modern pesticides (especially those used in aerial spraying) have little toxicity to humans. When there were protests about the safety of malathion used in aerial spraying to kill medflies in California, the governors chief-of-staff went on TV and drank a glass in front of the cameras.