Re BenE's 841am - This is in a series of continuing examples that show how the liberal mind runs into a wall during these debates. As Gregory (905am) again points out, no 2nd Amend supporter here advocates initiating the violent overthrow of our government. Our Founders meant for us to keep and bear arms to prevent the government from violently overthrowing its citizens. But that seems to be an intellectual bridge too far for many of our liberal readers.

For the interested reader. Taxpayer percentages aside, BenE's 735am again asks a question answered here many times - "So why it Americans are more productive but their wages have remained stagnant while at the same time the inequality gap has grown to the worst in the developed world?" The answer that eludes him and others of the Left is that the Americans whose wages have remained stagnant have NOT become more productive. They do simpler tasks because technology has intervened to either replace them or reduce the skill levels formerly required in their work. It is those workers' skill levels that have remained stagnant. Those who can develop/build technology or do the new jobs now in the marketplace have wages that continue to increase and widen the wealth gap. It is they who are the productive ones, and the productivity increase they have delivered is averaged over all workers, causing the ill-informed to repeat their plaintive queries. Productivity is not uniform over all workers.

BenE 749pm - You are again confused. I declare often and openly that I was once a government defense contractor (I left DOD service 32 years ago). SteveF continues as an NGO arguing issues and positions that create government regulatory policies that are a largess to his pocketbook. Good for him. But people like that should also be more open to disclose their benefits in such arguments and offer that they are also arguing in their pecuniary self interest. However, it is both remarkable and interesting that you consider such declarations of present benefit to be equivalent to someone having to quote government contract numbers of decades ago. Did anyone ask SteveF to cite even the jobs that he does pursuant to the government imposed regulatory burdens that he so energetically supports. But then again, such are the workings of liberal minds.

For the record, I have supported Steve Frisch's political speech. What I protest is his desire to speak as a 'private citizen' while attempting to hide his leadership of and material rewards from SBC, the political advocacy group for which he works. And Steve, now that you've again established your high dudgeon and called everyone else a new slew of names, why don't you either calm down or go away?

I watched the Cheney interview on Chris Wallace yesterday, and disagreed with his assurances that we have to trust government officials who have ennobled themselves over years of service. He didn't even want the outlines of the government's data monitoring activities be made known to the public. But if we are not allowed to look at patterns in communications' Big Data for telltale terrorism, and other Bayesian methods are always proscribed by the Left as 'discrimination', what methods remain to us for finding those needles in an evergrowing and murky haystack?

Janet Napolitano

Re RussS 504pm and fish 719am - The revelations of what is being done for our 'security' (from whom?) are getting creepier. A correspondent sends me this link to a Cnet report that "the National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls", and apparently it has thousands of "analysts" who do this on a regular basis including for emails and text messages. It goes on to report that "Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed 'simply based on an analyst deciding that.'" http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-admits-listening-to-u.s-phone-calls-without-warrants/

BenE 816pm - And you have missed the world. I take it you did not google to see the breadth of this story that goes a teeny bit beyond RR and Fox. For openers the NYT is not exactly your conservative news outlet. You will forgive me if i don't take such future embarrassments seriously enough to respond.

Gentlemen, again you honor me. Someone had to introduce this milestone to the public. If you google 'white births decline' you will see all the national (and international) media, blogs, and outlets who took extraordinary interest in this news after reading RR. As you and yours have pointed out over the years, this little blog has made quite an impact on the world introducing items the mention of which have been objects of disdain among the many who live in these hills. My duty as I see it.

Stevenfrisch 420pm - You may have noticed that democulture is one of a series of my "very own" port mandeaus in these pages, it is a delightful way to grow the language. However democulture's dependence on such a theory is neither intended nor required for its definition. Culture is a behavioral attribute of Man that is totally independent of race. And regardless of the exact notions our Founders had "on mixed faiths, races and nationalities", we are indeed seeing the inevitable potpourri which genetically promises to make us a stronger people, while socially taking us through uncharted territory.

Democultural - the conjoining of demographic and cultural - a new word invented right here ;-)

RussS 1118am - I'm not all that familiar with what legal baggage attaches to an acknowledged grower or user of marijuana. The grower should be fairly immune to the stigma of mental deficiency, since to him it is a putatively simple business enterprise. But that may not be the case in the several states for registered users of the weed. In the various databases they may get a checkmark in the wrong box, and then have to face the consequences on a number of activities still allowed the rest of us. I don't know.

BenE 1127am - I think we're done trying to exchange ideas until you at least read my post. Your deduction - "If I had to take a guess what Reverend Sharpton described was if we were to go straight off of % the ratio of white to black would be 3:2." What I had already written - "...Rev Sharpton argues that a non-racist SQF policy calls for a quota system based on population proportions. This means that at least three whites should be SQF’d for every two blacks." Let's give it a rest for a while.

BenE 1022am - You seem to be getting all of your news like SteveF, totally from the lamestream. In the topic commentary you completely miss the point that I'm reporting on a national issue which goes way beyond the "4 or 5 supporters" on RR that seem to be your only visible evidence of any topic considered here. Click the posted link, widen your horizons, confirm that all the 'bad stuff' you see is not happening only on RR. How come you guys always run out of ideas and turn on the messenger? Are you capable of doing anything beyond emoting about NYPD's SQF, and criticizing me for writing a commentary about it. Talk about the policy, the utility is mis/serves, what are the numbers that you believe are relevant about SQF or profiling in general, ... ??? I'm interested and listening; so are we all if you had anything to say.

SteveF 956am - I'm afraid the way you raised the 'probable cause standard' does indicate that you don't understand the use of 'random' with the policy in question, and probably other public policies. You see, the probable cause standard is already subsumed under the application of Bayes. And your asking "at WHAT POINT do 4th amendment rights kick in?" speaks to your knowledge. That amendment now 'kicks in' at arbitrary politically determined points (think of them as probability thresholds) that have no consistency other than what cohort is screaming loudest at the time of application. It was ever thus, and you intend to keep it so. Well, it really turns out that your news sources are jaundiced, at least re IRS targeting, else it would not be a national scandal that even the Dems are climbing aboard. In any event, please inform your members of Congress of your equal opportunity harassment discovery. BTW, all rogues and tyrants in declining democracies have been voted in with overwhelming majorities. They have all been big winners.

StevenF 732am - I'm not sure I (or you) understand your use of "random". But I strongly support using reason, in this case Bayes, to allocate scarce resources for the purpose of reducing crime and saving lives. My only "problem" with PRISM is that I don't understand its use, not that we are under surveillance. (I am a former holder of top security clearances and am very familiar with the kinds of surveillance I have been under all my life.) And yes, I have a big problem with the IRS selectively holding conservative organizations to higher levels of scrutiny (aka harassment) than liberal counterparts, especially leading up to the re-election of a demonstrated loser like Obama.

PaulE 556pm - Reported tonight on Fox News. Here are the entire poll results (see page 11). http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2013/06/12/fox-news-poll-voters-weigh-in-on-obama-administration-scandals/

Confirming the astute and oft repeated admonitions of our liberal readers, the recent (9-11 June) poll results show that only the following percentages of Americans think that Congress should continue to investigate these fast fading Obama scandals. IRS - 78% DOJ - 76% Benghazi - 73% (MOE +/-3%) This is probably the last week that we'll hear anything about them.

BenE 1032am - You're off topic again; to what NSA spying "straw man" are you referring? And does anyone really understand what is a "civil libertarian", and how that dovetails with your economic socialism?

re BenE's 958am - Don't we all have a "hybrid of ideals" based on our "own priorities" for which each "chooses to fight"? Appellations are awarded to people based on where the weight of their expressed ideals is preponderant. And even that appellation is in the eye of beholder. No one here has claimed to meter ideologies from the heights of Mt Olympus.

Gregory 808am - You're right Greg, I failed to include 'growth of' in the following - "We rank in the mud – the sixth worst in the world - with the likes of Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Yemen in the *growth of* regulatory friction that it takes to carry out a set of benchmark business practices." I recall that the citation was a rate, but my fingers didn't pick it up ;-) I've corrected it. Thank you. RyanM 849am - Readers have forwarded to me MichaelA's comments from other blogs that leave no doubt in the mind of the reader that the man effuses leftwing sentiments. Perhaps he is adaptive in what he writes where. I started with the notion that he was a centrist, and given his remarks here and elsewhere, I have had to modify my assessment. Perhaps I err.