defending the frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan armada.

And whether they think Jesus is talking to them. And we know we've had leaders like that. Although I'm not sure they ever stopped playing with themselves.

Meh, we already know how to kill everybody a few times over. I'd still rather it go to research than a boring munitions buildup. Hell, even DoD gets some pretty neat things for their money, like that walking dogbot. Not to mention this here Internet we're talking on.

and remember, kids: this thread was brought to you by a 40-year-old DARPA project.

With that much money they could get a quarter of an F-22 fighter jet! How dare they spend it on research?

I don't get it -- doesn't the mainstream media get revenue from adblockers as well? Last time I checked, just about every newspaper site used it. Hell, CNN has google text ads running on the lower right. If they tried a stunt like this, they'd be cannibalizing themselves.

If there's a space for a competitor to revive for-pay content, it's as a super aggregator. Someone should reinvent the cronkite-era 15 minutes of uninterrupted daily news, make it better than anyone else's coverage, and sell it for a few cents a day.

Yes, well some day maybe we'll have the ability to quantitatively compare two scenarios. I hear mathematicians are working on some new fangled thing called a comparison operator.

so once the first period of debate is over and it goes back into committee or whatever, is there another debate period or does it just go to vote?

Actually I'm very curious about how this works. Any gov't geeks know exactly what hurdles require the 60 vote supermajority, and which don't? Like, can a bill squeak by with a few moderate republicans on board, then get changed to something that only needs a simple majority? Or will it have to pass that 60 vote test again?

Clearly this is one of those "let's-get-some-free-press" stories. How much extra ink will be used printing this story on page D-5 of every local newspaper's wacky news section?