Thanks for the post.  It gives a good context to everything that is happening.

"More stoners get their news from CNN, than from any other source."

Or, I suppose The Daily Show still holds that title...for now.

I'm very sorry for your loss.

I don't have any experience in this type of situation, but Devereaux has it right in my opinion.

Who said anything about Sen. Rubio being a preferred Republican candidate?

I find no wisdom in the idea of a Rubio, Cruz, or Paul running for President.  We've had enough problems with politicians thinking too highly of their skills and position.

Thank you Dr. Steve for adding light to this conversation with your background and experience in such matters.  Its informative.  Too many of these threads I see more heat than light. 

Some of them may have been ignorant enough to believe so, or at least thought certain methods were safer than others.  Now there is no way they wouldn't know.  AQ might have known to avoid everything and anything, but perhaps the guys on the next rung of the ladder below them aren't sophisicated enough to avoid it or did't know better.

If the bad guys weren't using these technologies in the first place, there would have been no reason to implement such a program.  It would have been a waste of resources to build the programs to do the work required to sift through the data.  As a software developer, I can tell you this isn't something you knock-out during a week of coding, let alone a year.

I would say that exposing programs that help identify terrorists such that the terrorists can now avoid being detected would be an impact.  Whether that impact is significant or not isn't something I would know, but that is the impact I can see.

Just as when the NYT exposed the secret program to work with Swiss banks (or was it some other country's banks?) to track terrorists financial records.

I grew up on TNG and DS9.  DS9 stands up well over time.  Most TNG episodes do not.  I've tried watching some of the TNG episodes through Netflix and the heavy handed "messaging" is too much in many of the episodes and it ruins the stories.  I suppose that's the benefit of watching it as a kid when much of the messaging flies over your head.

I tried to get into Voyager but didn't like the show.  I only recently watched most of the TOS episodes.  CBS hosted them on Youtube for awhile.  My roommate and I would watch a couple episodes at a time.  Enterprise was on when I was in college and didn't have access to TV.  When I became unemployed I started watching Enterprise when I wasn't applying for jobs.  I really liked that series.  Only at the end of the series, when they had their "9/11" story arc, did it become spoiled.

I'm not on the level of convention attending or dressing up (save one time I was Cmdr. Riker for Halloween as a kid).  I credit those shows with my interest in sci-fi, space travel, and astronomy.

Some in this thread have raised concerns about the government's ability to track via the metadata.  Couldn't the same have been said prior to GPS/smartphones/cell-tower triangulation if all the government had access to was the phone numbers from the pen registers?  A long time ago in a galaxy far far away everyone only had land-lines.  A phone number was tied to a physical location.  If the government could know what phone number called another phone number isn't it to be assumed that they would inherently know locations of the caller and callee as well?

As I recall there was a Supreme Court case about law enforcement using thermal imaging to determine if a house was growing pot without getting a warrant.  The Supreme Court ruled that they could not do so without a warrant.  The same could be said of the above statement, or other similar techniques.

You misunderstand.  They were asking Verizon to change its name to Echelon. It's all good.

I can't think of many Sci-Fi movies that received high-praise in the first place.  Sci-Fi movies usually don't reach a broad cultural approval.  I've never watched 2001 all of the way through but I wasn't interested in what I saw (I may try again sometime).

Avatar is one of the few that critics and movie goers gave it high praise, but I found it to be all flash and little substance.  Yes, it was fun to look at but nothing more.

I agree.  I'm a big Star Trek fan.  I was fairly ticked off at what they did to the franchise.  Both of the new movies have been fun and entertaining, but they are drastically different from what Star Trek was.  It doesn't sit well with me.

I worry what J.J. Abrams is going to do to Star Wars (though, I suppose it can't be worse than what George Lucas did in the prequels).

That's because they are Democrats.  Who needs a track record or paper trail when there was an evil Republican in office that had to be voted out?

Interestingly enough I've been reading about John Adams in The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.  I just finished reading the section discussing Adams' views on separation of powers, and government.  Adams promoted the idea of separation and balance of power to counter the notion coming out of France of direct democracy and the need for a benevolent centralized power seeking after the "general will".  How one viewed human nature had a direct effect on one's view of which government system worked best for society

I find wisdom in the idea of separation of powers (obviously, I agree with the conservative view of human nature).  Adams even viewed the separation of the legislative branch as being necessary to provide a check against a potentially ambitious, and thus oppressive, aristocratic class in the Senate.  Not knowing many details about Presidential systems in other countries I suspect that there isn't a similar balance and separation of power.  Even in our own country the appearance is that the Executive branch's power outweighs the other branches.  Whether that is true or not I don't know for certain, but our politics are very Executive-centric.

Congratulations to the Urbahn family!