For those of you who do not have your own septic system, but are hooked into a sewer system...

Serious question:

Do you know, as you sit here right now, where your shit goes after you flush the toilet?

And I mean specifically, so that if I handed you a map, you could point to a spot on it and say, "My shit goes here!"

And, if you do know, do you know how it gets there? How many other people's shit goes there? And what happens to it there?

I'm pissed they stiffed me on the discount for adding the NSA to my friends and family calling plan.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

People are always whining about being ignored by the government, and then they pitch a fit when they find out the government is paying pretty close attention.

How would a kangaroo court rule on Roe v. Wade?

Kangaroos are marsupials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. The pen register was installed on telephone company property at the telephone company's central offices. In the Majority opinion, Justice Blackmun rejected the idea that the installation and use of a pen registry constitutes a violation of the "legitimate expectation of privacy" since the numbers would be available to and recorded by the phone company anyway.
Background

In Katz v. United States (1967), the United States Supreme Court established its "reasonable expectation of privacy" test. It overturned Olmstead v. United States and held that wiretaps were unconstitutional searches, because there was a reasonable expectation that the communication would be private. The government was then required to get a warrant to execute a wiretap.

In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a pen register is not a search because the "petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company." Since the defendant had disclosed the dialed numbers to the telephone company so they could connect his call, he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers he dialed. The court did not distinguish between disclosing the numbers to a human operator or just the automatic equipment used by the telephone company.

I don't understand why they won't let me post this in Latest Breaking News...

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

I still can't get over this one.

A while back on Philly's ABC affiliate's local news, these two stories ran back to back...

1. Three men arrested in ring dealing "high quality marijuana"

2. New Jersey bar owners busted for passing off cheap hooch as premium liquor

Not a hint of irony.

Inhofe's complaint about Sandy relief is that there was "stuff in there for the Virgin Islands."

Is he really too stupid to know that hurricanes travel up the coast from the Caribbean, that the Virgin Islands is part of the US, and that they were hit by Sandy?

Can a person that stupid actually occupy a seat in the US Senate?

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/04/pelham_leaders_reject_federal.html

April 29

PELHAM, Alabama -- Accompanied by a stern message about the community remaining safe, the Pelham City Council tonight officially rejected a federal grant for tornado shelters.

I just posted a comment about how these and other religious bloodsuckers will be jumping on the OK tragedy.

Since there are those who obviously did not understand the comment, let me spell it out more clearly:

There will be, very shortly if not already, persons who will ascribe this tragedy to teh gay, abortion, having a black president, or the other things that piss off their angry and malevolent God.

There will be, shortly after that, a thread on DU about "OMG Westoro Baptist...."

Let's just take it as a given that WBC, Pat Robertson, and all the usual suspects will weigh in, and do not deserve the dignity of a thread of their own here.