Seriously. Civilization started going downhill the day someone demanded "respect" and someone else gave it. (That may have been the very first day.)

. . . like gonorrhea is the most popular venereal disease.

*That's* what they mean by Intel Inside (R) !

OUST FEINSTEIN

. . . when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. (Sansui 3000A tuned to KCRW)

(ca. 2008-2009). So why would anyone listen to this asshole?

This has become the modern version of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Millennial pussyfoots, I guess.

"Self-evidently fair" to whom ? Fairness is subjective and what you're missing is that no one intended the E.C. to be "fair" to the populace but, rather, "fair" to the states. After all, the presidential is an election by the States and not an election by the people of the United States. It is "fair" because its the deal that the people of the states agreed to when they agreed to yield some of their states' sovereignty in exchange for a federal union.

An astute POTUS with business acumen could use this capability to gather industrial intel and turn a tidy profit for himself !

If faithless electors were to vote for third persons (not Trump or Clinton) in sufficient numbers to bring Trump below the needed 270 then the House of Representatives would choose the President from among the top three recipients of Electoral College votes. The most realistic scenario is for a small number of Trump electors to choose some different, palatable republican candidate that the republican-controlled House can support over Trump. Perhaps some establishment moderate such as Jeb Bush could pull this off? Currently, only 21 faithless electors are needed for this scenario but the number could change depending on the Michigan and recount results.

Actually the "Government" would never have a choice in the matter. Rather, a constitutional amendment ratified by 3/4 of the states would suffice. My thinking is that many states would like to see California gone because then they can be "Red As they Wanna Be" (tm)

No one is advocating violent conflict. Rather, what is sought is a peaceable and consensual separation. RTFA: http://www.yescalifornia.org/

Asswipe, the Alien and Sedition Acts wouldn't speak to this situation. But no one worth mentioning doubts the invalidity of the Acts under the First Amendment. See, e.g., New York Times v. Sullivan (376 U.S. 254, 276) (1964) "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history" (Moreover, the Sedition Act expired by it own terms on March 3 1801.)

How long will that last? How does it matter? At that point, its no longer your business!