Then you are supporting the ideas and principles the United States of America was founded on.

I read most of the way through your rebuttal, only to find you making the very point that completely invalidates your rebuttal. And that's the truth, the system is broken. Maybe at some hypothetical point in history, the point was to find the criminal. But now, the system is focused on getting a conviction. Any conviction will do. You don't just get charged with *a* crime anymore. Instead, even a minor incident can see you charged with 10-15 separate crimes. Why? Because even if you are innocent of the main crime, they hope that at least one will 'stick' so they can justify their time and energy. No concern is made as to how innocent or guilty you might be. They just want to get you with something.

I used to work for a company that tried to market a tool to keep animals off the highway. But testing revealed that wild animals can become used to almost any stimulus over time. So the tool will work great for a while, then eventually fail. Drones are the same. Eventually the geese will learn not to fear the drone, and then they will happily munch away while it buzzes them. So this is a short term solution at best.

By what standard? It doesn't even crack the top five for land (British Empire, Mongol Empire, Russian Empire, Spanish Empire, Umayyad Caliphate), nor for population (Achaemenid Empire, Mauryan Empire, Sassanid Empire, Qing Dynasty, Ymayyad Caliphate) and, I'm not even going to look it up, but trust me it's nowhere near the top for duration.

The only one the US 'wins' is historically adjusted GDP (America, Qing Dynasty, Mughal Empire, British Empire, Russian Empire) and even there, China is expected to surpass the US by 2016. So be careful with your claims of "Most successful in history". There are some of us out here who actually know history. And by histories standards, the US is notable, but hardly #1.

This, in a nutshell, is the real problem with censorship, even well intended. If you have a human doing the censoring, you'll get personal opinions influencing your judgement. (Example, see the judge who prevented parents from naming their child 'Messiah' because "There is only one true Messiah".) If you automate it, you get pieces falling through the cracks like Hamlet. Now, in this case, they were able to reverse the censorship because everyone knows Hamlet. But suppose this wasn't already well known? What if this was the first work of a new author? And you saw it, thought it might be interesting, but it's blocked. Are you going to 'know' it's not really something that should be censored? Are you going to know that it's a mistake and get the library to do something to fix it? Nope. A potentially ground-breaking work like Hamlet gets buried, never to see the light of day instead of becoming a classic for the ages.

That struck me as Bradley saying "I should not be thinking for myself, questioning my superiors and acting according to my morals. I should just follow orders."

Thank goodness the Nuremberg trials have shown that this is the right attitude for a soldier. Never question superiors, never act in a way contrary to their orders no matter how many rights you violate. Bradley Manning has learned...

This right here. Rights are being trampled, billions of dollars are being spent by TSA, NSA, and other 3 letter organizations to protect the average American from something (terrorist attack) that is less likely to kill you than spider bites or shark attacks and FAR less likely to kill you than driving a car or standing on a ladder. Even if you agree with the mission, surely it's obvious the money is being misspent. (Or, more likely, being funnelled off to make a select few very rich.) It's clear we need to bring this all out into the light and stop spending billions behind the scenes on a 'hush hush, you don't have the clearance to know' way.

If it was a bear from Canada, it would stop, spit out a few teeth, then get up, walk over to the car, pull the driver out the drivers side window and then, while holding the drivers shirt with one paw, he'd start beating the driver about the head with his other paw.

You don't understand. The poor security of the police meant those whistleblowers were already exposed to anyone with a little computer skill. This put them at risk without the whistleblowers even knowing about it. So Anonymous took this public step that, whatever reason they said they did it for, at the very least let the whistleblowers KNOW they were vulnerable.
You're trying to say "Just because a door is open doesn't mean you can walk in". But what I'm saying is there are innnocent people who counted on that door being locked. Anonymous showing behind the door publicly is a way to warn those people that anyone could've already walked in that door.

...It was always vulnerable. People seem upset that 'Anonymous' has revealed the list of whistleblowers. What you have to realize is that the police had that information so poorly secured, anyone with any computer knowledge could easily access it. So the police were leaving a list of whistleblowers out there dangling in the wind for anyone who had any ability to look. All Anonymous has done is reveal what the police were doing... Poorly securing important information. Hopefully that message won't be lost as people try to pin the blame for poor security on the people who revealed it was poor. Don't blame the messenger. Blame the people who have sensitive information and don't put in the effort to secure it.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't think the sentences are reasonable. However, given how insane recent sentences have been for any computer related crime, I fully expected all of them to get 50 years with billions of dollars of fines.

The irony is palpable. Zero tolerance rules were instituted because application of penalties was uneven. So for example, a black student doing science experiments would get a felony charge whereas a white student who kills a sibling is not charged. So what do we have here? We have people complaining the application of penalties from the prosecutor are uneven AND complaining that zero tolerance from the school is wrong. It's like people flipping a coin and getting upset with heads or tails.

Particularly amusing as I'm in Canada and pinging 38ms...

So, taking your argument to it's logical conclusion, if we make more guns, guns become even safer? (You're saying 99.9945% of guns don't kill anyone in a given year. Forget trigger locks and gun safes... Just make a billion more guns and you could up that number to 99.9999%!)

I just flew last weekend. As we're sitting in line for the runway (taking a good 15-20 mins) I'm on my nexus 7. The stewardess runs up and says "No electronic devices!" I say "It's in airplane mode, so it's not transmitting or receiving". And she says "We didn't invent airplane mode. Who knows what it does. You have to shut it off." (Keep in mind this isn't a safety/stow items issue... Everyone around me is reading books unmolested) Really? "You didn't invent it"? "Who knows what it does?" Are you kidding me that you haven't taken 5 minutes to investigate what airplane mode means on well known electronics like nexus and iPad? You're that gleefully ignorant? I'll give credit to the stewards and say they're probably just saying what's been directed from the top, but still, it would just be smarter to say it's a directive from up top instead of trying to claim you can't trust airplane mode.