Will Scalia or Roberts or Mitch McConnell pay for health insurance for the 40 million uninsured? Doubtful. The conservatives on the Court and the Republican opponents of health care do not know what they will unleash should their dreams come true and the increasingly illegitimate ad partisan court strike down this law. The reaction of the American people when they learn a handful of white male conservative justices have reached down and literally ripped their health insurance and their only ability to pay for their medical costs out of their hands will be thunderous. "Obamacare" may poll poorly, but the various individual provisions that have expanded coverage and helped lower costs for millions of people are very popular when polled separately. http://www.sunstateactivist.org

An important issue of all this is how does the Congress, Senate, and even to the Supreme Court like to be told to do your job. Well this is exactly how it is for workers. Too many times when workers try to speak up for their rights or something better and all they just get told is to do your job and put down. And workers wages, safety and benefits get pushed to nothing. And the less fortunate get taken for all they got. A long with our environment and health being ruined. And our government doesn’t seem to listen at all, because why is that. Is it they are too busy collecting those fat checks from lobbyists and those who try to something good cannot? Is it they like to play favorites to the rich only? Is it they keep trying to want to remove the rights of the people? Is it they prefer to line their pockets with cash at the despair of others?

Let's see; I million voluntarily uninsured despite many being able to take premiums as a tax write-off, vs 40 million without insurance. So much for equality.

It appears that the human race is slowly but surely consuming itself, with the main course being greed, add a big heaping of hate, a side dish of prejudice, and then wash it all down with a brimming glass of politics as usual.

Far freakin' out! I sooooooooo want one of those self-driving cars.

I hope they're in common use by the time my son, who will be 5 this summer, is old enough to drive - and I'd say there's at least a 50-50 chance of that now. I'll feel a lot less apprehensive about his driving if the car's doing the driving for him.

And I can't wait to see how they change our lives and habits. They have the potential to revolutionize how our lives and landscapes are organized. Automobile-related deaths should plummet, and that in turn should enable smaller, lighter cars that use less gas.

Zipcar can work in the 'burbs as well as downtown, once you don't have to be within walking distance of where the Zipcar is parked, since Zipcar can let the car drive itself to your door. And that means we only need to own the cars we use regularly - we don't need to own as many cars as we need for peak usage. For me, that means my wife and I, who commute together and really only occasionally need our second car, will be able to do with owning just one car.

Many Zipcars can be especially small, since most trips made are one-person trips. They could potentially lead a conversion to cars that are only one person wide, rather than with seating for 2-3 people across, which would mean you could fit a hell of a lot more cars into the same highway space: no need to build new highways for commuting for quite some time!

And once you get to your destination, in your own car or with a Zipcar, you don't need to park there; you can send it off somewhere else to park. So downtowns won't need to have parking spaces or parking garages, at least not in prime territory. We can build walkable cities again.

So I'm big on self-driving cars. I can't wait to see the changes they bring.

The Supreme Court no longer deserves our respect. Bush v. Gore was just the start. Citizens United was unconscionable, and it will be enormously damaging before we overcome that pander to the plutocrats. We have a host of less well known decisions equally radical and biased. If Scalia, Alito, and Thomas are in the majority again, that disrespect should only grow.

Taken together with Thomas' manifest conflict of interest (if not outright corruption), and it could not be clearer that what the Federalist Society project has given us is a group of conservative, activist hacks fighting a rearguard action on behalf of their Republican Party and the very rich against needed social change. The survival of our nation is actually at stake, because what the Court and the radical Republican right are doing subverts the most essential aspect of democracy: faith in the process and acceptance of policies the people don't support. The diversion of political unrest it provides is essential to governing our multi-cultural nation, and to the prevention of revolution.

Whatever is to be done must not wait decades - we don't have that luxury any more. It must also be at least as radical as the Federalist Project on which the right wing has devoted so much energy and money for decades. The alternative is to be prepared for a significant increase in violent political unrest.

If they decide that the Mandate is unconstitutional, I want to be reimbursed for EVERY penny that has been held out of Every one of my paychecks since I was 18. Social Security is a mandated insurance. You can not have it both ways.

A deeply thoughtful, and thus distressing, article on the Bales case in the Kansas City Star:

http://www.military.com/news/article/many-think-bales-case-reflects-a-military-pushed-to-limit.html?ESRC=eb.nl

The key phrase for me was:

The peacetime-sized U.S. military, and the Army in particular, has been pushed through the combat meat grinder long enough that the unspeakable becomes the unavoidable.

Also, it seems that John Nagl, of the Naval Academy, and Tim Lomperis, of St. Louis University, would be interesting and useful people to interview on the show.

Uh oh...

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Signs_of_thawing_permafrost_revealed_from_space_999.html

Although it is kind of cool to know that there's an International Permafrost Association.

I'll stack my gun collection up against anyone's, but "stand your ground" is a"bridge too far"and if it can't be walked back to A) exclude "pursue your intended target", and B) INCLUDE respect for your antagonist's "Right of Retreat", it will bite ALL gun owners in the ass!

The same jerks who enacted "stand your ground" also banned voter registration drives. Can the "Massive Hoodie Marches" protesting Trevon's murder be steered over to the Registrar of Voters's office? C.K.

Wow - loved that self-driving car!!! When all cars become self-driving, it should be a breeze for almost anyone to get a state-issued driver's license. What will Republicans use then as a voter suppression excuse?