In those instances, you might spend a few hours or the night in a jail cell, that's true. It's a bit different than what they do in Venezuela, or say, Egypt.
The federal government does still utilize the death penalty, but it's very rare these days. Only three times since 1963, whereas Texas has executed 500 people since 1982.
Sure, I'll agree that Guantanamo's a stain on this country.
And while we have entirely too many prisoners in this country, they aren't 'political prisoners'. People aren't thrown into prison for protesting the government. (Or not generally, you did have McCarthyism and such in the past)
He did more than just 'mention' it, he stoled government property and disseminated classified information to the public. I'm not saying what he did was 'wrong', but it is illegal and not particularly a free speech issue.
I'm not sure how anyone could say Russia's 'way more open' with a straight face[1].
You can argue about whether they're unjust laws or not, but they still exist and if you break them, you should face the consequences. That's what the civil rights leaders in this country did, among others.
But honestly, from my reading, I'm mostly okay with what the NSA's doing and most of what he revealed isn't all that new or surprising (others reported on PRISM long ago, local governments have kept track of phone records for decades, it only makes sense the feds would as well). This is also what many citizens want their government to be doing, hence the many complaints about the Boston bombers not being adequately tracked beforehand.
The one part that troubles me is the storing of 'inadvertently' collected communications from US citizens for five years without a warrant. That seems wrong. Other than that, I only think there should be a bit more transparency. If Snowden's leaks lead to that, that's a good thing.
They do when they knowingly break the laws and run away from the consequences like Snowden and Assange have (Assange's even more appalling given the rape allegations he also ran away from). Manning, at least, didn't do that.
I stand corrected about Wikileaks role in this particular aspect of the story as they do seem to actually be helping him elude justice. But they seemed to have nothing to do with his actual leaks, yet I've seen multiple 'statements' from them on the matter that seemed to only serve as a way to remind people of their existence. At least now they have an actual reason, I guess.
Yeah, there's not much saving for me either. It'll cost $200 less over the course of two years if I go with 2 lines and T-Mobile's unlimited data plan (compared to the 2 lines and 6GB share everything plan I have from Verizon).
But, as you say, the Verizon plan lets tethering be as much as that xGB as you want. And for me, T-Mobile only offers very slow 2G service in my area while I get LTE from Verizon.
After those first two years, you do start to save real money ($40 every month, in my case), but that assumes you don't then upgrade to the latest iPhone or whatever and start all over again.
I really don't understand how people get sucked into these for-profit (scam) schools. Or why the federal government provides student loans for students going to such places.
Presuming Ms. Parker lived in Georgia, in-state tuition at most public universities there would've cost her much less, and provided a better education. (and that's not including things like Georgia's Hope scholarship program)
There might be more worthwhile things he could work on, but sports and politics are what interests him.