Battle fatigue. Rubio makes me want to cry.

Love it!

Ration the food according to government nutritional rules, as a taster for Obamacare.

Everyone has to fill out a form that includes questions like: what are the contents of your prayers? How much do you weigh? How old are you? How much did you give to charity last year? Which ones?

Wonderful. More stories!

Help me get this straight, because I would hate to get it wrong:

We are supposed to be fine with the surveillance because, even though every agency we can track (irs, epa, fbi, atf etc) has committed breaches against Americans for political reasons, we are supposed to believe that the agencies we cannot track would never do so.

Right?

I am with the others who defended the Patriot Act, as I thought it meant tracking communications between known jihadists, around the world.

I did not realize it meant recording, for a period that may as well be eternity, EVERY communication that EVERY person has from the perceived safety of their own home or office.

I am actually gobsmacked at Krauthammer and Yoo and the rest of the "right" wing.

When the whistleblower says he could read any email, wiretap any phone, without any oversight or control, is he lying? And if he is telling the truth, do we really think having that power in the hands of, say, the IRS, is a GOOD thing?

The government that could not find the Boston bombers, that overlooked the Ft. Hood shooter.... but who can bury any of us in paperwork at whim.... these are the guys who can and should be trusted?

So in this scenario, is Snowden a patsy, or an actor?

I find either very hard to believe.

Herbert, you have a point. But it is also true that the growth in the programs, and their enhanced stretch and perfect memories, allow those of us who are alarmed now to point out how much has changed.

These programs were to nail down Bad Guys. We did not know the programs were going to capture comprehensive data on everyone. Perhaps we were naive. But that does not make us wrong now.

Et tu quoque.

Imagine if the IRS employees and the NSA information were pooled, just as somehow the BOLO from the IRS triggered a range of other government audits.

Full IRS tapping of all communications, going back years and years.

Anyone could be destroyed, just from the scrutiny.

This is an argument for unions.

Either the service supplier supplies a better service, moves up the food chain, or finds something else to do.

This is NOTHING immoral about trying to get the most for the least. That is the essence of the market. It only becomes immoral or exploitative when coercion is used.

Why is it immoral? Novody is coerced in the process. And there is nothing to stop the contractors from aggregating themselves.

I find in general that government contracts are ridiculous - look at the union requirements alone!

This is very, very big. And it does not detract from the IRS scandal - it ADDS to it. It all helps build the Big Story that the government can (and does) wield enormous power without any effective limits. And that power destroys freedom.

I think he is a hero.

And what kind of event would lead to circulation?

When the government issues debt, which another division then buys up, all to fund the overspending of other branches of the government, why on earth does it matter if you name it fiscal or monetary policy?

The Europeans pretended that since the Greeks and Italians and Spaniards did not control the printing presses, the Euro would be safe. they did not understand that offering debt was just another way to print money.

It is obvious to me that printing money absolutely is connected to devaluation. It may be a convoluted and elastic connection, but it remains there, nonetheless. Sooner or later....