This is a *small* problem - 30 primary transactions a day, with no great time constraints (i.e., if it worked, it'd be fine if it took a minute to enter a new grave site).

At 10,000 primary transactions a year the whole database could fit very comfortably into the memory of your bargain-basement consumer desktop computer.

The only wrinkle is the map part - but now there's Google maps. Even before that, you could have done it fine with a little more work by hand.

I'm dead serious - give me two decent programmers, two months, I or any other reasonably competent engineer could write this and even build a public web interface. (Add three months for people to do the data entry, but that doesn't require skilled work and can partly be done in parallel.)

Let's multiply everything by 3 - "government work" - that's still less than a year.

Very average programmers do this all the time. Almost any business has more primary transactions than this.

Someone should be getting a jail sentence for this...

"I can see that it might be unfair to prosecute non-lawyers who, in good faith, followed the memos thinking that if the DOJ advised that the tecniques as outlines in those memos then it must be ok."

As a matter of law, that's simply dead wrong. It's your responsibility to make sure you obey the law. Incorrect legal advice might help mitigate the sentencing, but that's it.

These aren't parking tickets we're talking about, either, this is prolonged, sustained torture, leading in many cases to death.

As Digby pointed out, if we allowed that reasoning, we'd be saying that any criminal activity at all is allowed, if a Justice department lawyer issues a secret memo saying it's OK.

It's like sending a package with the key to your house, together with a map to your front door and your work schedule.

The Republicans will never, ever ever tolerate him - because he's an African-American, but mainly because they have sunk so deeply into madness that they will never tolerate any non-Republican President ever again.

Unfortunately for those of us in the center or on the left, Obama has given us little or nothing except "not being a Republican". Time and again, Obama's come out on the wrong side. Now we're committed to a war in Afghanistan till 2019 (did no one on the Democratic team ever read a history book?); we're still running death camps all over the world; Obama gave trillions to Wall St with no oversight while simultaneously stealing auto workers' pensions; single payer health care, the only option that would actually work, was forbidden even to be discussed, and now we hear that Obama has struck a deal with the insurance companies that we aren't permitted to know the details of.

So Obama's sucked up to a group of people who will never like him, while spitting on the people who supported him.

Poor strategy. I don't expect to see a second term from him.

This is fascinating. I gave up shampoo about 15 years ago and do everything with Dr. Bronners. Now, I started to lose my hair in my 20s - I fully expected to lose all my hair by now (47) but astonishingly, my hair has been doing extremely well - and now I'm wondering if not using shampoo has been the key.

If you think you can predict an election that's three years away, you're delusional.

The fact is that this statement of Obama's is completely disingenuous. He and everyone else knows full well that if he's successful in passing healthcare, it dramatically increases his chances of being elected.

It shows that President Obama is already thinking about the next election - with more than three years to go. For shame.

The fact is that he's delivered nothing to his supporters except not being a Republican. We still have endless war (now till 2019 in Afghanistan, thanks Mr. Obama!) We still have death camps. Wall Street extracted trillions from the Treasury - and no one even got a slap on the wrist. No one's going to get slapped on the wrist for torturing prisoners to death; "We have to move forward" (would they say that if I killed my wife? I don't think so!) Hey, how about stealing pensions from the hard-working autoworkers - in the same week that he authorized huge bonuses to Wall Street ("A contract is a contract" - well, isn't a pension a contract, Mr. Obama?)

As for health insurance, Mr. Obama campaigned on single payer, and yet as soon as he was elected that option was never even permitted to be mentioned. The fix with the drug companies is already in - they get to double their prices, Obama negotiated a 2% cut off that, thanks!

We aren't going to get any decent health system, because Mr. Obama isn't interested in getting us a good health system - he's interested only in that second term.

Unfortunately, sucking up to the Right while spitting on the Left is not going to help him win a second term.

If I pay a few hundred dollars a night to stay in a hotel, there are certain expectations, and one of them is that the hotel make a best effort to protect me from harm.

This is the very reason such a hotel does, in fact, have security guards and other security measures.

The question comes down to whether the hotel could reasonably have prevented this crime. If it is in fact the case that the criminal was hanging out there for days, then a good case might well be made for it.

And throughout nearly all of that 200,000 years, mankind's life expectancy was less than 40 years.

In fact, during Neolithic times, humans were on average healthier than today - because if anything ever went wrong with you, you'd likely just die and that would be the end of it.

Is this the life you want? Do you really want to see one child in four die during childbirth again?