security versus constitutional freedoms

Question for the week: Where do you draw the line for personal privacy versus ensuring security of the overall society?

I went to Indy this past weekend to watch powersoccer and stayed at a nice hotel. I was asked to provide a photo ID on checking in. Hotels never used to do this, and I hesitated, but decided not to make a scene. I did a little surfing, and found that there are a number of people concerned about it, and ther are even some lawsuites in process.

So, why should a hotel have the right to not just see your drivers license, but in many cases, make a photo copy?

What do you think?

world travel- nice if you can afford it

Here is a photo from back when I was traveling a lot. I have to say, it was interesting, even though being away from home for long stretches was no fun. Not sure I will ever afford to go as a tourist to London, but it is a cool city.

I would walk from the hotel they had us in to the office in Paddington ( where Paddington bear comes from) This is Kensington Palace, where princess Diana stayed after she and the dork split up. It is on the west side of Hyde Park, which I would walk through each day. Everybody walks in London. They might take the tube or a bus for part of their commute, but they walk a lot too. Rain or shine, so they all have umbrellas. So did I.

There are palaces and huge churches all over the place, and even much of the housing is fancy stonework and built to last.

Suggestions?

It's not every day you wake up to realise that you're rich.

Not just rich, but filthy, disgustingly, soon-to-be-ostantatiously, hypocritically rich. The kinda' rich that changes your perspective from considering the merits of socialism to appreciating the obvious superiority of a solid Plutocrasy.

How so? I woke up yesterday to the news that I own 70% of General Motors! Well sure, I'm only a PART owner, but I figure to leverage my share plus the money I got from cashing in my 401K and to buy out some of my co-owners. With that voting block securely in hand I will use it as "influence equity" to back a loan application that I'll use to buy still MORE of my co-owners out and so on until I own a controlling position in the company. Within 5 minutes of that 50.000001% stock position I plan to put it on the block to sell to the Chinese! That should pay off the loans I took out PLUS a nice little fortune to dine on in perpetuity for me. Now I'm just left with deciding HOW to spend my fortune.

Any suggestions?