I'll agree in part and disagree in part. I'm an informal (deliberate-lowercase) tea partier myself; I've many friends who count themselves the same. To a man, we all want to simply be left the hell alone, and are perfectly willing (nay, eager!) to give up Medicare, Social Security, etc., though we would prefer to keep the premiums we pay for those services and save/invest them for our future needs.

The media doesn't interview us, though.

The tea party is a marvelously robust and dynamic crowd, sharing many values with the occupy (again deliberate) crowd. The media and the political class like to quantize the people into easily-defined camps; as the great-grandparent poster noted, it's a multivariate problem even after simplification. You're right in complaining that the Libertarians and Greens aren't capitalizing on the movements (not respectively, as there's a fair degree of overlap), but the real problem is that the Republicans are co-opting the Tea Party (deliberate caps) movement (and, to a lesser degree, the Democrats are co-opting the Occupy movement).

The fundamental problem is--again, as GGP poster said--the reduction to a Boolean variable. Reality doesn't fit neatly into black-and-white, but black-and-white is the easiest thing for people to understand. Black or white; is or isn't; with us or against us. It's Duckspeak in its purest form. The real problem is that thinking is hard. I've known people who will spend ten hours a day doing backbreaking physical labor in the heat of an Oklahoma summer's day, but if you try to spend two minutes engaging them in thought, they give up. Thinking is harder than just about anything else man has conceived. I don't discount myself: I can run two miles and feel energized, but after a day of hard work at my terminal, sitting in a comfortable chair in an air-conditioned office, I'm ready for a beer and a good night's sleep.

I seem to be drifting. To return to the point: the real issue is that the system propagates the black-and-white myth, when reality recognizes not only shades of gray, but an entire spectrum of color. Try getting the media to report on that; there's talk of the Fairness Doctrine--try getting the babbling class to recognize that "fairness" required not one opposing commentator, but hundreds, if not thousands, all differing subtly, and most with at least some degree of validity.

The majority may not be active thugs, but they are at the very least silent enablers. Look at what happened to NYPD's Adrian Schoolcraft: he secretly recorded roll call, exposing police corruption. After he let the public know the truth, several officers--including supervisory officers--concocted stories to arrest him and forcibly commit him to psychiatric care.

To the best of my knowledge, not a single one stepped up and said "hey, he's telling the truth."

Enablers, the lot of them, and that puts them squarely on the side of the wrongdoers, more interested in their positions and their paycheques than in the safety and well-being of the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect.

$DEITY forfend! Somebody might have to cut back from six movie rentals per week to five! Next thing you know, Redbox will be making its clients sell their children at discount prices just to heat their cardboard boxes!

Perspective. Get some.

Ahem. "The Congress shall have Power To..." is authority, not a mandate. The Congress can choose not to exercise its power in a given area if it wishes. In fact, in some circumstances, the fact that Congress has chosen not to legislate may itself be considered a form of regulation, and not subject to further regulation by the states.

We landed men on the moon a decade before the Department of Education was created. It's not that education isn't necessary, its that it doesn't have to be managed at the Federal level. Do you really think our education system is substantially better than it was in the fifties and sixties, and that the improvement is a result of Federal action?

Are "thinking rationally" and "checking the sources" options?

Because moon phases and tides are notoriously hard to predict.

Assuming arguendo that drone-fired weapons don't constitute "hostilities," what about F-15's? Helicopters and ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles? F-16's and EA-18's? (Note: that's the DOD's press release, so it's probably reliable.)

Here's a great graphic breaking down just who is sending what. Breakdown for the US: 12 ships, 153 airplanes, 228 cruise missiles. It doesn't break down by aircraft type, but it's a fair bet they're not all UAVs.

I don't. I know very well that I'm running on a software-controlled PBX, and that calls are routinely monitored or recorded. It's the company's phone line, not mine; why shouldn't the company have the right to monitor it?

Punishing the responsible parties is forbidden by the union contract.

Sorry, the law only recognizes a cause of action if your expectation was reasonable.

Not necessarily. A court may be able to exercise long-arm jurisdiction under the "minimum contacts" rule--when Ryan went out of his way to make contact with Liberty Media, his actions were clearly directed to the forum state (wherever Liberty Media is based). As such, he may have subjected himself to that state's jurisdiction, at least with regard to this matter (this definitely wouldn't be enough to subject him to general jurisdiction, that is, he couldn't be sued for just anything in that state).'

Jurisdiction can be complicated and ugly; we spent a full semester on just that in Civ Pro I (Civ Pro II covers venue, the Erie doctrine, pleadings, and more) because there's just that much to cover.

"I'm dead, Jim."

Or, put slightly differently, you have people who don't break the law, but your cops just can't stand the idea of somebody not respecting their authoritah, and write tickets for non-offenses.

Sounds like you need a better class of cop. Perhaps you can find a model with a "self-control" upgrade.

...an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.

The freedom to publish anonymously extends beyond the literary realm. In Talley, the Court held that the First Amendment protects the distribution of unsigned handbills.... ...

Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.

McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334 (1995)