. . . e-mail and texting, I'm surprised they could discern what was actually being discussed. What was the code and what was just bad grammar and bad spelling?

Good to See It's good to see salon getting on board with the war on terror, and why things like the FISA bill are so important. -- NotOrbitBoy

This all took place in England, not the U.S.

. . . to cause controversy vis-a-vis health care and eduction, is cutting the military budget. We could cut the military budget by 50% and still have the most lethal fighting force in the world. Of course, we'd have to leave Afghanistan, Irag, SA, Kuwait, Europe, Japan, S. Korea, etc., etc., but who cares? Either we can't do anything for these countries or they don't need us to do anything.

NYT backs up NotOrbitBoy -- slingshot5150

This case dates from 2006. That's Bush era (or error) snooping. Says nothing about how FISA is used today.

You're getting an unemployment check? I HAVE a job--that menas I'm paying for your unemployment check, dumbass. -- georgialib

Hate to counter a good, foaming at the mount, right-thinking rant, but unless you are an employer, you don't pay anyone's unemployment by the virtue of having a job and paying taxes. Unemployment taxes are paid by employers only.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=104985,00.html

However, the whole incident begs the question as to why a secondary school student is walking around with $100.00 to begin with?

. . . when they are sitting fat on oil revenue don't spend adequately on education.

Why is it the federal government's responsibility to make sure schools have adequate cleaning supplies? If the federal government has the money the states need, why not just reduce federal taxes and raise state taxes, cutting out the middleman?

-- msully72

Education, like health, infrastructure, power and water, and defense, is a national issue. As with lacking a national health care system, we are one of the few (if not the only) "advanced" (post-)industrialized democracy that does not fund education nationally. Leaving it to the states has resulted in an idiotic patchwork of funding and quality. School districts in wealthier communities or areas generally have better schools (better facilities, better materials, smaller classroom sizes). However, since the "Reagan Revolution" and the rabid rights increasingly irrational hatred of taxes of any kind, public school quality has deteriorated because no one really wants to pony up for what may be the most important public good.

Relying on property taxes, lotteries, and special levies is not the way to assure a steady and equitable level of public school funding. The only way to assure this is to have all schools funded at the same amount federally.

Again, as I wrote further up the thread, if we cut our military budget by 50%, we'd still be outspending every other nation on Earth, but we'd have billions of dollars available for national health care (that truly would be the envy of the world) and free public education through college.

"Admiring her fearlessness" Fearlessness or cluelessness? We'll see, but I think we have a working hypothesis already... -- Steve Kelner (Ph.D)

Name escapes me . . . Ah, rhymes with bailin' as in quitting.

. . . advertising because their beers sucks with extreme prejudice.

. . . dead. If WWII didn't take them, they are, statistically, just a sliver of our total population. The people sucking Medicare dry are those people born in the 1930s and early 1940s, now in their late 60s to early 70s. The Baby Boomers (which, contrary to popular misconception, does not include anyone born after 1950 - it is a sloppy cultural designation not a meaningful statistic), are just now beginning to use Medicare in significant numbers.

Remember the "Greatest Generation" Also Encouraged McCarthyism, red-baiting, and a lot were opposed to civil rights legislation. So they're not all that great, not all of them anyway. It was just a marketing myth. -- CTLiberal

. . . relationship with anyone in the U.S., though he had a peripheral role during the Soviet-Afghan war.

And since bin Laden, the alleged leader of 9/11, grew up as a billionaire, and as an adult had family and business connections to the Bush family and the Carlyle Group, . . . -- Püpenschauer

While his father and brothers may had/have commercial dealings with the Bush family and/or the Carlyle Group (why not? Prescott worked with the Nazis?), Usama is the black sheep of his family and was effectively disinherited a decade before 9/11. Get your facts straight Poopschnauzer.

. . . 9/11 attacks as they proved time and again that they weren't capable of something that sophisticated and the whole scenario pre-supposes that they all had to be in office in the first place.

. . . "Who benefits from this?" and the spotlight shone squarely upon Cheney/Bush and the other criminal idiots that they dragged into our White House with them, and upon the corrupt Supreme Court process that cemented their coup. I used to think they created 9/11 themselves, but after 8 years of watching their incompetence, I gave up that belief. But still, it was damn convenient for them! -- susaninsaugerties

However, to this day I still blame Colin Powell for the Iraq invasion. A veteran of the Vietnam clusterfuck, the leader of the highly success if unnecessary first Gulf War who was, for a time, the architect for all, post-Cold War military engagement oriented to prevent just such a war, he knew it was all wrong and yet kept his mouth shut.

Powell was highly respected by people on both sides of the aisle in Congress. All he had to do was resign and publicly state that there was no evidence that Iraq was involved with 9/11 and no evidence that Iraq had or was trying to build WMD, and Shrub and Cheney's shitty little world would have collapsed on their shoulders.