Yes there will be... in small, fundamentalist Christian towns. I seriously doubt, even the small town in Florida that I am from, that any of the teachers I had would be spouting off wildly ridiculous and offensive material such as that. I can't argue that no one would *start* teaching pure nonsense (but most who want to teach that probably already are - just in a more underhanded manner), but the fact is - most will not. So the down side to making education more local and specific to the needs of the area... is that some fundamentalist towns will teach their students things that they are probably already getting outside of the classroom? I am more liberal than most, but even I don’t buy that one.

errr, so THATS why there is a forced preview, eh?

Yeah! Lower profits for the car companies means more innovation - innovation in things we need, like electric cars.

Hey if the logic works for healthcare, it has to work for everything right? :)

sp3d2orbit's words are a metaphor... not to be taken literally... That's how you know they're true.

Agreed +1

This post is preposterous - assuming the absolute best case scenario. Call me skeptical of this thorium lobbyist, but I bet we barely get half that... which by my calculations, would put us right back in the same boat ~10,000 years from now... with a lot more clouds... and a lot less Thorium.

Now Clean Wood... that's a renewable energy we can ALL can get behind.

There, fixed that for you

As an avid centrist (and frankly, an Obama supporter) - I couldn't agree with you more here (weird right?).

What is the problem with the 17th Amendment exactly? I feel like the Senate is a lot less dysfunctional than the House. I attribute this to 6 year terms, so they aren't as worried about short term political gains. Maybe you have some good examples for me? I grant the fact that the states 'lose rights' here to a federal mandate, but isn't a popular vote the epitome of a republic? Lets not forget the Blago scandal.

There is obviously something that needs to be adjusted in the federal reserve. If for nothing else, than to allow for more transparency so we can have confidence that they are doing the right things for our country. But really.... I do NOT want the stability of our economy in the hands of elected representatives.... nor do I want a bunch of people (with no understanding about any of the prevailing financial theories) calling up their representatives to tell them they should raise/lower interest rates because some talk show host made them feel like an expert.

I believe from time to time, the responsibilities of the federal government will need to be shifted in order to benefit our nation as a whole. Even the most right wing among us, believe we should all have clean food and water, and a national effort to prevent the spread of diseases when they outbreak. We can either have 50 different organizations, each tasked with doing these tasks... and hope they work together... or we could have some sort of central command to make things run more efficiently.

Question to you: For each of the situations you believe the government is overstepping... Is your stance based on what you believe will run the most efficiently, and be the most effective (bang for your buck), or is it based on a belief that just because it worked in the past, it is the best and only solution to every problem?

While there may be a number of valid arguments to be made about why the label "land of the free" should not apply to the US.... but doing our part (even if it is through laws) to prevent the rise of a fascist regime does not, to me, constitute one of them.

PS... nice way to ruin a decent post with trolling.

Yeah, it would be a shame if they started getting some rain in the desert...

Let us break it down then... How many terrorist attacks have we really gotten on American soil? Let's assume (outrageously I would probably say) that every year, there is an attack on the scale of 9/11. 3,000 people tragically died that day, and lets assume that happens EVERY YEAR (crazy right?). With 300,000,000 people in the US, the odds of this affecting you are, frankly, quite small. Even if you take a 100 year lifespan, we are talking about a 1% chance of you EVER being a victim (Compare this with the risk of dying in a car accidents for an interesting perspective :). With that said....

There are currently 1,430,895 US active duty military in this country.
The oath these fantastic men and women take, says nothing about making American citizens safe.

With 85,600 military personnel deployed in Iraq, the 103,700 in Afghanistan, and many more in other countries risking their lives and personal security (and families, really) to defend the constitution... what are YOU willing to give up for the same cause? Would you be willing to take the extremely small percentage chance YOU personally will be affected by terrorist activity in order to defend our constitution? Or are you going to give up your rights written directly in the constitution in order to hide behind the idea of (false) security?

Is that a good enough reason? (Now... how can I mod myself up so people stop asking stupid questions? :)

Great article, and I think this solution is just excellent!

I'm sorry... but unfortunately, the internet is NOT secure. That is the problem. These people are not making us FEEL that the internet is insecure...we're being shown just how insecure it really is. Not that I attribute any altruistic intentions to this group - but I don't understand the 'get rid of these guys, so we can put our heads in the sand' mentality.

I would, frankly, prefer using this recent publicity to push the corporate sector to actually fund their IT and Security department(s), instead of trying to undermine the only silver lining we can find in all of this nonsense. I know there is a fine line between 'pushing people to get something done' and 'giving an opening for the government to take move power'... but if we can figure out how to walk that line, we'd all be better off for it. Can we discuss how to do that, instead of giving ourselves a false ultimatum of insecurity and helplessness versus loss of freedom?

Wheres an extra mod point when you need it?

It really is an interesting fact - but really proves little about what really was the correct path for the crisis. The real question I'd like to know is, who is investing in Ireland now and how close are they connected to the banks that were bailed out? I would find it hard to believe Ireland would be growing today if all those bailed out (both in the US and Europe) were allowed to fail. The situation would have been drastically different, and the results likely so as well. Game theory - bah! who needs it.