CSpec

That's why babies aren't charged their own fare--doing so encourages driving which is far more dangerous.

Security at whatever the cost! If you really want safe air travel, you would ban air travel. So there's some point at where security isn't worth it. Where is that line? I think being molested by government agents comes pretty close.

Again, you're ignoring our friend Sheriff Joe.

This is why I say you're anti-immigration in general, not anti-illegal immigration.

That's just incorrect: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html

This is entirely entirely entirely backwards. Why would this be a good thing? Jobs aren't something that just appear because people are charitable: companies are willing to pay people to do those jobs because they get value out of it. Why would you ban companies from filling those positions? How is that good for anyone? Again, why are the current illegal immigrants a bad thing, ignoring the fact that they're nominally illegal?

I'm gonna shift my focus a bit here: I would actually trade being forced to go into the scanner, but then be allowed to bring liquids in my carryon and not take off my shoes. I find the latter two far more annoying.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how people get here from Latin America. It's extremely dangerous, and there's no way in hell a rational person would choose to sneak through the desert for weeks when they could just fill out a simple form and arrive like a human being. And why is the immigration process so tough and lengthy anyway? What's the rationale?

This is blatantly xenophobic. If being a legal is so wonderful, why do so many risk their lives to come in illegally? For fun?

I don't understand why everyone assumes that illegal immigrants should be illegal--there is little to no discussion about why their legal admission is blocked to begin with! When confronted about their own family histories, most anti-immigrant zealots stammer and say that their grandparents came here legally. But the immigration regime was completely different back then! All you had to do was show up at Ellis Island and they made sure you didn't have some horrible disease and you weren't a wanted criminal. There were no arbitrary numerical restrictions. The fact that people risk their lives to terrible border crossing conditions and ruthless human traffickers for the chance to work in the United States should maybe be a clue that the current system makes no sense and it's totally insane to accept a military state to enforce a law that doesn't make sense, and can't actually be enforced on any large scale without turning the country into East Germany.

I think you need to meet America's favorite sheriff, Joe Arpaio: http://reason.com/archives/2010/07/20/arrest-everybody “I wish that the Phoenix police would arrest everybody,” he said, “even if they’re not sure [if they're illegal immigrants].”

Yes, but people don't actually like to live near wind turbines. They're ugly and very very loud. I assume to generate a substantial portion of CA's energy, a non insignificant portion of its area will need to have lots of wind turbines. Nuclear anyone?

I drove from San Fran to Yosemite way back in 2004 and there were many many wind turbines along the way. I assume far more have popped up since then.

Generation and fuel on my bill is almost exactly half the total cost, so I would guess we pay about the same in the end. That's still half of what these guys in CA are paying, though. I think California electricity is mostly natural gas? Not sure about that, but their prices are gonna hit us sooner or later.

Pittsburgh is coal country isn't it? My electricity is through Dominion, which I think is mainly West Virginia coal. My last bill was $0.15/kwh including all distribution charges and sales taxes and stuff. That will surely go up at some point when carbon pricing invariably gets enacted.

Inside Line: our Chevy Volt's battery miles cost more than the gas ones AutoBlog We often, though sometimes incorrectly, assume that it's cheaper to operate an electric vehicle than a comparable gasoline auto. Hey, who hasn't? While this assumption generally holds true, electrical rates vary widely across the nation and can throw off the numbers. In some instances, like when Inside Line's engineering editor, Jason Kavanagh, drove the Chevrolet Volt out in sunny California, one discovers that operating a vehicle powered by electricity can indeed cost more than running it with the liquid fuel that pours from a pump. Kavanagh explained how he discovered that operating a Volt on electricity is not always as pocketbook-friendly as it may seem: During its time with us, our 2011 Chevy Volt tester consumed energy at the rate of 39.0 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles when in electric-only mode and averaged 31.1 mpg in gas engine assistance mode. We paid an average of $0.31 per kilowatt-hour of electricity and $3.31 per gallon of 91 octane swill, so the magic of arithmetic tells us that each one of the Volt's miles driven on electricity cost us more money than if it'd simply consumed gasoline instead. That's due in part to our high electricity rate - had our rate dropped to $0.24 per kilowatt-hour, we'd have reached parity on a cost-per-mile basis between electrons and dinosaurs.

Good point. There's a difference between rational steps to ensure that you and your property are kept safe, and surrendering yourself to Big Brother with the assumption that He knows best and will keep you safe.

Ahhh, very insightful observation. CAFE was an incredibly stupid idea 35 years ago, but it just keeps getting more and more stupid with each president. Also, the STS was never very good, so that's not a big loss.

What TSA Thinks of You and Your Rights

RWD! PERFORMANCE MACHINE.

People point out that these scanners are much better at finding drugs than bombs, and in fact airport security has proven a convenient place for law enforcement to arrest people for non-security related things (despite the fact that Bush promised this wouldn't happen).

Nice photo. Can you find any stickers in German?

Nude model or groping victim? The Economist THE Transportation Security Administration, America's second-most loathed bureaucracy, has used its stimulus bucks to stock up on fancy ritual-humiliation scanners that electronically disrobe air-travellers. TSA officers are exceedingly unlikely to detect terrorist tools thereby, but they can always wince and titter at their victims' corpulence or unimpressive primary and secondary sexual characteristics. And if you are unwilling to surrender your dignity to a low-level security-state functionary in this way, you always have the option to surrender your dignity to a low-level security-state functionary in an "enhanced pat-down". The enhancement is that the TSA agent now gets right in there and gropes nearer the possibly ne'er-do-well passengers' tender bits. It is heartening that there is a growing backlash against the TSA's policies, but I am not optimistic. I have found the submissiveness and docility of the American people in the face of the state's pointless molestation incredibly discouraging. I think this is one of those subjects that demands we step back, take a deep breath, and consider with a clear mind just how phenomenally idiotic the government's policy of increasingly invasive degradation really is. Law-abiding travellers, who pose approximately zero risk of terrorism, and offer no ground for reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, must run this gauntlet of abasement because airplanes were once made the instrument of mass death. The odds of being a victim of terrorism on a flight are approximately 1 in 10,408,947—rather less than the 1 in 500,000 odds of getting killed by lightning. But nope. Who cares? Doesn't matter! Instead the government ramps up their time-consuming campaign of harassment. Is the idea that if we are not made to feel ashamed, we will not be made to feel safe? I can't figure it out. The TSA is like my dog. Once he spied a rabbit by a tree in our yard as we came in the back gate. Now, whenever we come through that gate, he freezes and stares bullets at the spot by the birch where a bunny once sat. To a first approximation, there is never a rabbit there, and any special effort devoted to detecting one there is wasted. I have tried to explain this to Winston. But the poor dog, a genius of premature inductive inference, just won't believe me. I find this a little annoying, but he's a dog, it only takes a second, and he doesn't fondle my upper thigh. I'm flying to Boston tomorrow. If forced to make a choice, I'll opt for the nudeoscope (I've been working out), but if resentment could be weaponised, I'd be a dangerous man. It's an outrage we're forced to live like this.

Congrats! The economy is picking back up for sure.

It doesn't mean nothing; it just showed that the candidates were virtually equally bad (or good), so it didn't really matter which we ended up with.