Mergers like Comcast/NBC should be illegal. Once content providers are also content distributers, they can pull shenanigans like these.

I remember when XP came out everyone was complaining about its online activation requirement. They said they would stay with Windows 2000, which didn't have that requirement. Nowadays, barring Windows 7, it's everyone's favorite OS. Funny how things change.

What happens if your teacher is your parent?

Always taking jobs that American priests won't do.

In an audio format. Helps quite a bit with the commute.

Investing in any company has risk. Cities should obviously weigh the pros and cons of where to invest their moneys and such but to single out an entire industry because one company failed smacks of fear-mongering. You wouldn't have seen such alarmist claptrap if a city had invested in General Motors as "it is a bad idea for the government to invest in an American Car Company".

Why should students in the NCAA be any more monitored than regular students? (As in, why at all?). As is, the NCAA athletes often bring in major revenue to schools (for football programs at least) and are not allowed to benefit from it at all, does the NCAA consider them their slaves?

Direct democracy has it's drawbacks as people here have already stated (California). But what if we went back to the original representation ratio of people in congress as prescribed in the Constitution to "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand", that would require something like 10,000 representatives. That would be enough people to keep most individuals out of the limelight, so maybe they would actually try to do work rather than pander to their constituents.

The government sets up the system by which both sides can lodge complaints and seek grievances. The other side has to initiate and pay the legal costs.

It essentially is enforced by them, the government just provides the trappings of enforcement via civil court. It certainly doesn't pay for their lawyers in a breach of contract case. (Copyright infringement is a different story however)

The obvious counterargument to this is that even "unsafe" planes can be made to fly into buildings, and I'm not even a big fan of a lot of these TSA measures.

How would you feel if you got a notice saying you got a green card, but then two days later were told "sorry, just kidding."? The second batch of people might not want to celebrate just yet.

show a liberal sprinkling of alien galaxies...

Aha! So you admit it! The liberals do want illegal aliens to live here.

Really, Skylon?

I'd never trust a bastard stepchild of Skynet and the Cylons.