The media has been convulsed for days about the revelations that the NSA has been collecting metadata on phone calls between the USA and the rest of the world for years.
I have a few blunt comments about the brou-ha-ha.
1. The PATRIOT Act, nodded through in a fit of post-9/11 zeal for stopping "terrorism", drafted by the Bush administration, is one of the underlying enablers for this kind of covert surveillance, the other being FISA. The Patriot Act was renewed more recently, by a large majority of elected representative. We, the people...voted for our representatives, who waved through one of the underlying enablers. It is the fault of the electorate that the PATRIOT Act still exists. If electors want to prevent violation of privacy and covert surveillance, they need to stop voting for people who would cheerfully have the state collect this sort of information. There are actually more fundamental requirements that the electorate needs to embrace; namely, to stop being terrified by the mere mention of the word "terrorism", and to stop pretending that the government can make everybody safe all of the time.
2. Any GOP partisan who tries to claim that the current POTUS is violating constitutional rights and privacy expectations is either dangerously amnesiac, or a bloviating hypocrite. See (1) above for the explanation. Covert collection of data has been occurring for a long time, even preceding 9/11, as this analysis from ProPublica makes clear. It didn't suddenly start a couple of years ago at the behest of the current POTUS.
3. Collection of phone call records may actually be a correct method of collecting data for analysis of patterns. However, in order to justify collection of the data, there needs to be a cogent explanation of how the analysis can be executed and how it can produce useful results. When privacy rights are being abridged, the government owes citizens an explanation. "It's secret, trust us" doesn't cut it. Citizens are being required to give up something of value to all of us (i.e. privacy) in return for...what exactly?
UPDATE - This very thought-provoking article from Jay Rosen just appeared.
UPDATE 2 - A person Tweeted a week or so ago that the Pledge of Allegiance requires a modification to say

"One Nation, under surveillance"

...

Now that Tim Tebow is a free agent, with (at time of writing) no team willing to sign him to any playing contract, it is time to wonder out loud: how did we get here?
How did one of the premier impact players of this current generation in the college game, drafted in the first round of the NFL draft, end up 3 years later almost consigned to the scrap-heap?
In reading all of the millions of bits and bytes written on this subject, and having watched Tebow in the NFL, here is my analysis of the possible answers to Why?

1. The NFL is a system-driven league
There are a couple of basic realities about the NFL that become obvious to watchers after a while. Firstly, the NFL coaching process is dominated by "systems". What is known as "The West Coast" offense is a system first used by Bill Walsh in San Francisco and now used in a number of NFL franchises. The overall approach is derived from the 49'ers, and the terminology is often similar between teams. I have lost count of the number of times that I have read that a player being talked about (usually a free agent or a soon-to-be free agent) would be a good fit for a team because "he knows the system". In fact, there is a lot of evidence that some teams, given the choice between a moderately talented player who is perceived to know the system, and a more talented player who does not know the system, will opt to sign the "system" player, on the grounds that the player can more quickly and easily fit into their team, be it offense, defense or special teams. Interestingly, the New England Patriots do not seem to suffer from this false dichotomy worldview. Their actions in signing players over the years show that they are only interested in the best players, and they will then work out how to use them most effectively.
Secondly, most NFL teams are deeply conservative in their offensive schemes, play-calling and general conduct of offenses. Gregg Easterbrook has pointed out many times with examples, how coaches, when their team is behind in a game, often prefer to play to keep the margin of losing down, rather than to go for the win, or at least try to win.
Many head coaches are also leery of a quarterback with a track record of improvising his way through a game. They expect that the quarterback, lke a good soldier, will always run the play radioed in from the sideline. A handful of quarterbacks (Peyton Manning being the best example) do have multiple plays to choose from at the line of scrimmage, and there are allowed "audibles" for many QBs if they see a certain alignment in the defense after breaking the huddle, but a lot of head coaches still expect the quarterback to run the play as called in from the sideline. A quote from Mike Holmgren from some years back is typical. "If you are going to change one of my plays at the line of scrimmage, it had better work", he once said, referring at the time to Matt Hasselbeck. Having seen Hasselbeck get chewed out by Holmgren when he changed a play and it did not work, I can see why quarterbacks end up doing as Coach wants.

2. Tim Tebow is a natural leader
One thing on which most commentators are agreed, no matter what their basic opinions are of his abilities as a quarterback - Tim Tebow, as a football player, has the charisma and confidence of a natural leader. He is also, like true leaders, prepared to go out and put his body on the line to try and win plays and games. Players respect that level of courage and committment.
Commentators have noted how, while Mark Sanchez was alone in the Jets locker room, Tebow was surrounded by team mates. If you believe in the definition that you can recognize a leader by the presence of willing followers, then Tim Tebow scores more highly than most other players in the league.

3. Tim Tebow is a "project" as a quarterback
Despite having played quarterback since high school (although he began in high school playing as a tight end), Tebow is reckoned by most observers to be far from the finished article as a quarterback. Indeed, he has been the recipient of a massive collection of sometimes contradictory observations, inputs and advice from all manner of ex-players, anonymous coaches, GMs and other opinionators. The criticism ranges from his lack of speed (he is big and powerful, but not reckoned to be agile or fast), through this throwing mechanics, which are supposed to give him a long release, to his footwork, to an inability to read NFL defenses (at which point some commentators fixate on his home-schooling, hinting at that as a cause of poor intellectual development).
The accumulated pile of criticism, some of it public and withering, would be enough to cause most normal mortals to run and hide. To his credit, Tebow has kept quiet about the criticism, and, unlike some recent NFL quarterbacks, he has enlisted the help of retired quarterbacks to try and improve his throwing mechanics and footwork. The extent to which they have been successful will only become apparent over time. Players in stress situations in games tend to revert to old habits.

After the Denver Broncos drafted Tebow in 2010, they did the right thing when they hit a slump in 2011 and decided to try using him. They then went all in, even to the extent of releasing previous starter Kyle Orton, who ended up signing with Dallas. They tailored their offense for Tebow, simpifying it and making it more like a college option-read offense. It worked to the extent that the Broncos not only made the post-season, but beat the Steelers. However, they then lost heavily to the Patriots.
Nevertheless, the Broncos elected to go with Peyton Manning in 2012 upon deciding that he was a better medium-term option. They also traded Tebow out of town instead of keeping him as a backup, and went all in with Peyton Manning, giving him a lot of his old players as targets, and adopting a lot of the Indianapolis Colts offensive system more or less unaltered. They made the post-season, but lost in the first playoff game.
The Broncos probably do not want to be reminded of this, but it is a fact - Tim Tebow has won more playoff games for the Broncos than Peyton Manning thus far.
The New York Jets, having acquired Tebow after the Broncos put him up for trade, proceeded to, let's not be too polite about it, completely eff up their acquisition. For reasons that have never been made clear, Tebow did not gel with the coaching staff, specifically offensive co-ordinator Tony Sparano and head coach Rex Ryan. He was used sparingly in games, and suffered rib injuries, meaning that he was not available when Mark Sanchez was benched for inconsistent play. Rex Ryan, instead of being able to call on the guy who had already won an NFL playoff game, had to play Greg McElroy, who had won no NFL regular season games whatsoever. Not surprisingly, Tebow was intensely frustrated.
Thereafter, Tim Tebow became the invisible man, seen wandering the touchline in games, helmet in hand, ready to go on the field, but rarely called, and when he was called, it was always for some oddball play (the Wildcat having seemingly been ruled out, despite Sparano's introduction of it while he was the head coach of the Dophins) that rarely yielded a positive result. In summary, after a short period of time, the Jets behaved like a team with no clue how to use him, and no interest in using him.
Having whittled down what little trade value Tebow had by reducing him to The Invisible Man on the field, the Jets still squatted on him through the first part of the 2013 off-season, only finally releasing him once it became clear that they would never get any trade offer for him, not even on draft weekend. In truth, no team was going to make any sort of trade offer, once the GM that traded for him was fired, and his replacement hinted that Tebow, as the last bright idea of the previous personnel leadership, was Going To Leave Town Real Soon.
The approach by the Jets resembles the attitude adopted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with Chris Simms, where the Bucaneers squatted on Simms all through an offseason after he had nearly died of blood loss when suffering a ruptured spleen, to finally release him at a point in the year when he was not able to find an opportunity of any usefulness with another team. That mean-spirited move more or less ended Simms' career.

So, why do NFL teams behave like Tim Tebow is radioactive? There are four reasons, three of which I will group together.

1. He is a "project" if you want a system quarterback
2. He plays better than he practices
There are really two ways to try and use Tim Tebow in the NFL. One is as a standard backup, running the same playbook. The problem with that approach is that very few teams think he can run a full standard NFL playbook, and they don't want to take snaps from the #1 quarterback in pre-season or in actual game situations to find out.
Second option for using him is as a "wild card" player in a different offense, most commonly in short-yardage situations. This plays to his strengths as a runner and blocker, but the downside is that most of the time he will be running with the ball, not throwing it. That usage pattern will not allow him to throw the ball around the field in a game situation, so it will most likely not allow him to work on accuracy.
I don't know where I read it, but one of the comments out of Denver when Tebow and Kyle Orton were on the roster was that Orton practised better than he played, whilst Tebow was the other way round. In other words, the coaching staff would be wincing as Tebow stunk up the joint during the week, only to exhale (eventually) when he did something freakishly effctive on a Sunday.

3. If he is a backup, the #1 quarterback will be terrified unless he is also a proven leader
4. If he is a backup, every time the team falls behind, the coaches will feel the "put Tebow in" vibe filling their minds and headsets, even if that is not the right answer
5. Tim Tebow = unpredictability
The big problem (ironic that it is now a problem) is that Tebow behaves and operates like a leader all the time. He commands attention and respect, and players instinctively look up to him. This creates tension between the natural caution of coaches (who want a player who knows his role in the system, and predictable outcomes) and players, many of whom are motivated by being around obvious leaders. Quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees command the confidence of both coaches and players. They have the track records, and they can run all of the aspects of an offense. When they march out on the field, their teams feel good about what is planned most of the time.
When Tim Tebow marches out on the field, three things are true:

1. the coaches have no real idea what will happen. this worries them
2. the players are not sure what will happen, but they believe that Tebow may well pull something out of a hat
3. the spectators expect that Tebow will once again surprise everybody (be it amazing, good, bad or ugly)

In short, Tebow brings unpredictability by the truckload. Given the notorious planning and attention to detail that many NFL coaching staffs obsess over all year round, that level of unpredictability scares coaches and team leaderships witless.
The conservatism of many NFL coaches also works against "wild card" approaches. If a team is behind in the second half of a game, typically they try to recover by throwing the ball down the field - an approach doomed to failure if your quarterback is inaccurate. Trying to advance via trick plays or quarterback improvisation is not often employed.
When coaches hear the "Tebow! Tebow! Tebow!" chant, they will be in a bind. Every neuron of their logical mind is protesting "suicide!".

All is not lost, however.
There are handful of teams that could take Tebow as a backup. If you assume that the right fit is a team with an established #1 quarterback who will not be threatened by Tebow's arrival, then there are handful of candidates.
Broncos, Patriots, Seahawks, Saints, 49ers, Giants, Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Ravens.
All of the other teams have quarterbacks who, to greater or lesser degrees are lower tier (but established) or where the phrases "the jury is out" or "eek, what will happen on this play?" spring to mind whenever they march onto the field with their offense.
Rule out the Broncos, for obvious reasons.
The Patriots have a good backup in Ryan Mallett, who they might trade if they get a great offer, but who is set to remain there for now. Tom Brady is a prototypical pocket passer. The Patriots would be capable of creating plays for Tebow, and offensive coach Josh McDaniel did draft him for the Broncos, but it is far from certain that the Patriots want to make the effort.
The Seahawks do need a mobile quarterback to back up Russell Wilson. They traded away his primary backup, Matt Flynn, to the Raiders.
The Saints have a top-class incumbent in Drew Brees, and not much depth behind him. They do, however, run a fairly conventional pocket-passing offense. But..Sean Payton is one of the more daring offensive coaches in the NFL. He would certainly be able to devise plays to use Tebow effectively.
The 49ers, having traded away Alex Smith, might be interested. They will be using zone read as a key part of the offense with Colin Kaepernick.
The Giants have David Carr to back up Eli Manning, and they run a very conventional pocket-passing offense.
The Packers have Aaron Rodgers, with his new long-term contract, under center. Their offense is primarily pocket-based, but Mike McCarthy seems to be creative, and could probably work out how to use Tebow.
The Ravens have the latest very-rich Superbowl MVP under center, again a primarily pocket-passing attack (and Flacco has shown that he can throw a very accurate deep ball). Superficially, not a likely landing spot.
All of the remaining teams would probably be terrified of destabilizing their incumbent quaterback by signing Tim Tebow. Imagine Tebow marching into the locker rooms at the Browns, Dolphins or Bills. He would immediately have the incumbent QB of the week or month worried, and this would soon translate into all sorts of bad events. Indeed, as I write this, the Dolphins have dropped the strongest possible hint that they have no intention of signing Tebow, despite their need to improve ticket sales.
Where else? The CFL is an obvious option, with the Montreal Alouettes holding Tebow's CFL rights. However, the CFL runs three downs only instead of four, which makes throwing the ball the dominant method of advancing down the field. That does not seem like the best fit for a quarterback whose accuracy is suspect. Right now, Tebow in the CFL would be learning how to throw behind a starter, for less money than in the NFL. However, he would be out of the spotlight, relatively speaking. He would also be available for the last part of the regular NFL season, if a team suddenly loses a quarterback, or finds it needs a "wild card" player.
Move to another position? The problem with that idea is that, as his Wikipedia bio shows, the only other position that Tim Tebow has actually played (as opposed to impersonating during "gadget" plays) is tight end, which was his first high school football position. He soon moved to quarterback, where he has played through high school, college and the NFL. He has never played wide receiver, tailback or running back, so optimists thinking he can move to any of those positions may be truly whistling in the wind. At this stage in his career, switching positions is fraught with danger.

My verdict? The CFL, one of a small handful of NFL teams (both scenarios require him to accept a backup role) or retirement from professional football.
Crazy? Yes.

UPDATE - Following a couple of interesting articles that went beyond the conventional "he sucks" meme to examine some underlying realities (one them being that Tebow, as a highly kinesthetic learner, has trouble with conventional NFL playbooks and instruction modes), the news has broken that he has been signed...by the New England Patriots, one of a handful of teams who can definitely manage Tebow's media interactions. The Patriots have always ensured that their players talk as little as possible to the media, and when they talk, that they reveal as little as possible. Watch for Tim Tebow to have a very low profile indeed in the next few months...

For a change, instead of finding a web site (no shortage of those, but research has been lacking on my end due to lack of time), I will instead point readers to what may be the winner in the contest of Dumb Birther Legal Filings (2008 onwards).
The filing is by Paul Guthrie, who is not a lawyer, but clearly regards himself as superior to not only any lawyer that he might otherwise engage to argue on his behalf, but who also appears to consider himself to be superior to the entire US Court System. Guthrie posts online in various locales under the pseudonym of JediPauly and PadwanPauly, including the main website of Orly Taitz (WARNING - That site has been known to distribute malware).
Guthrie's filing against the United States of America has too many peculiarities to list, but one of the obvious ones on page 1 is his referral to an individual described as "de facto King Barack Hussein Obama II, the alleged President of The United States of America". This should give most people a clue as to where Paul Guthrie is coming from. He believes that the POTUS is an illegal usurper, despite a score in court cases against the POTUS (on eligibility grounds) of 0-201. However, Paul Guthrie is definitely persistent.
So, this WTF? gives you even better value for (no) money - not only a website, but also one humdinger of a court document.
The case that Guthrie is arguing, Guthrie vs. United States et al, is, on a legal level, one enormous eye-brow raiser from the very beginning. The history of the case can be found discussed here; suffice it to say that when one reads Guthrie's utterances, words like "completely barking mad" do suddenly start to form on my lips.
Summary: the Complaint alleges that a monarchy is being installed in the USA, and that the POTUS is in office illegally, and demands that a long laundry list of defendants be either forced to obey the law (according to Guthrie), and that the POTUS be removed from office, failing which they should be arrested for a whole host of offenses including treason.
Guthrie's case (such as it was) was dismissed by the judge on January 18th 2013, primarily because of a lack of jurisdiction. Undeterred, Guthrie then quickly filed an amended Complaint on 29th January 2013, plus demands for the removal of the judge and Relief from Judgment. Quite clearly, he has not read any part of "How to make friends and influence people". Demanding the removal of the judge hearing your case on the grounds that the judge is corrupt and has no legitimacy is low down on the charts of smartness. Unsurprisingly, Guthrie's attempts to bluster his way back into court were swiftly waved off; he was sent a letter reminding him that the case was closed.
So...he filed another complaint in a different venue. Almost-identical collection of pleadings were submitted. Then, just to up the ante, he filed an Amended Complaint on March 2nd, claiming that the FBI had given him the brush-off when he took his complaints to them. He then tried to serve (among others) John Kerry, John Boehner, and Eric Holder with subpoenas, and when that did not work, filed Motions To Compel with them, despite his Complaint having not even been accepted by the court (HINT: There can be no Motion To Compel unless the case has been accepted, and discovery has commenced).
The court system, noticing that with his new filing Guthrie was trying to end-run the original Dismissal, then moved to bring the hammer down on this latest extravaganza:

04/03/2013 16
ENTRY and Notice - The plaintiff is recycling claims put to rest in Guthrie v. Obama, et al., No. 1:13-cv-0080-JMS-DKL (S.D.Ind. Jan. 18, 2013). He shall have through April 18, 2013, in which to show cause why this action should not be summarily dismissed for the same reasons. Proceedings except as just directed are stayed until further order. Copy mailed. Signed by Judge Sarah Evans Barker on 4/3/2013.(MAC) (Entered: 04/04/2013)

Actually, this was generous. The courts were under no obligation to allow Guthrie to enter a counter-argument, but they did so out of politesse and respect for the judicial process (in other words, showing a lot more respect than Guthrie himself has shown up to this point).
Guthrie's reply to the Order To Show Cause is, by any standards, a doozy of doozies. Generally, to succeed in an Order To Show Cause, you have to demonstrate why the reasons given by the court for dismissal (in this case, a lack of jurisdiction) are not correct. As those brave people out there will soon discover by wading into his reply, Paul Guthrie believes that the normal rules of legal argument, clearly meant for lesser mortals, do not apply to him. In a nutshell, he has (in his own mind) created a stroke-of-genius argument against dismissal. President Obama is an illegitimate President, in office illegally. Therefore the entire court system, including all judges, is operating illegally. Therefore their rulings have no effect.
At this point, I should point out that if Guthrie really believes this to be true, then why the hell is he wasting his time writing Complaints for the court system in the first place...however, that might be a practical logical response. Paul Guthrie's pleadings are logical to a point, but neither practical or rooted in reality. This pleading will suffer the same fate as all preceding ones. The only reason why Guthrie will not be sanctioned is that in addition to being a pro se litigant, he is also pleading poverty.
In the meantime, for the intellectually and legally-minded, here is this week's entertainment...
UPDATE - The judge has brought the hammer down on Guthrie's latest filing, in blunt fashion.. After reminding Guthrie of the essential process for an appeal (i.e. the appeal should be focussed on why the decision was incorrect, and should not be attempting to repeat filing arguments, or introducing new information), the judge gets to the meat of the matter:

The plaintiff has responded with a compendium, a polemic. He reinforces his theory somewhat. He discounts the dismissal of the prior action as invalid. The asserted invalidity of the prior action made it an invalid decision to appeal. He does not, however, cure the jurisdictional defect.

And with that, the judge wrote "Dismissed".

Somebody (I forget who) once said that there are three reasons for Congressional hearings:

1. To get Congressmen on television
2. To get Congressmen on television
3. To get Congressmen on television

Having sat through a number of painful examples in the past of congressmen bloviating, bullshitting, posing, posturing and generally behaving like narcissistic, attention-whoring wankers at these hearings, I have to concur with this viewpoint, and I remain profoundly skeptical that anything useful and/or truthful will emerge from the Benghazi hearings. These hearings are usually convened for one of two purposes:
(a) to pick on a bunch of people who have been (for the time being) declared to be Bad Guys, who therefore need to be excoriated in public
(b) to score political points against the minority party in the House.

See the article here.
I thought I would aid understanding by translating the comments by one parent:

Sixth grade parent Kelly Adams told ABC News affiliate KAIT8 that the request to take prayer out of the opening address upset parents and students, explaining that the school’s decision to cancel was justified because “we just want to take a stand for God because we felt like out rights were taken away.”"we just want to behave like a bunch of pissants because our self-given privileges to ostentatiously push our religious messages to everybody were being threatened".
Conceding that not everyone is Christian at the school, Adams added: “I realize they have rights too but you can’t take rights away from one group and give it to another.we weren't going to abandon our entitlement-ridden mindset for those Godless...people”
Kelly, along with other parents, have arranged to hold an alternative ceremony at a nearby church, where they will be free to pray. ”We are including everyone, everyone is invitedWe are desperately hoping that the Godless jerks take the hint and don't show up, we want everyone except anybody whose religion we find inferior or non-existent to come and be a part of it,” she said of the decision to relocate.
“We’re not trying to be pushy or ugly to anybody, we just want them to know there is a God who loves thembut we cannot stop behaving like a bunch of entitlement-ridden petulant exclusivist little shits,” she said of the new ceremony.

I found this on my Facebook wall from somebody who is a GOP supporter, in response to the campaign for compulsory firearms registration.

Well the astronaut, Gabbie's husband, says it only takes five minutes to register. Its not the registration it what they do with the info. How stupid do they think we are? Well most of us are not stupid but we are not in charge at the moment.

Let's pull this apart and look at it in more detail.

"The astronaut, Gabbie's husband"...a clssic sneer. Rule 1 of demonizing people or groups who you don't like is to attempt to de-humanize them. In this case, the writer did it by sneeringly referring to "the astronaut..." instead of Dr. Mark Kelly. This approach is identical to the way in which opponents refer to the PPACA, which in it's early days morphed into "ObamaCare". It was also used by opponents of George W. Bush who referred to his administration as "BushCo".

"It's not the registration it's what they do with the info. How stupid do they think we are?". This is the deployment of the #1 logical fallacy used by all fearful gun owners in the modern USA - the Slippery Slope Fallacy. There is a total conviction that any regulations or laws passed to regulate gun ownership are simply part of a conspiracy to gradually, inexorably deny residents of the USA the right to personal firearms ownership.
Individual statements by campaigners and politicians in favour of greater regulation of firearms do not meet the definition of a conspiracy. I have seen no compelling evidence produced by any representatives of gun owners for years, simply a clarion cry of "beware - they're coming for our guns!". (Or, more recently, "Obama is coming for our guns!"). When I can be shown compelling evidence of a conspiracy to abridge private firearms ownership in the USA I will be more inclined to take panic whistles like this seriously.
In response to the rhetorical "how stupid do they think we are", I think my response would be "I don't know who "they" is, but I certainly can't take this panic whistle seriously, since you have provided no evidence to support it".

"...but we are not in charge at the moment". This encapsulates quite neatly the whole "winner take all" mentality of authoritarians. Either you are "in charge" or "the enemy" is in charge. It is not coincidental that the US system of governance was defined in a way that is designed to make it difficult for a majority to tyrannize the minority. The Founders had escaped from capricious and colonial subjugation, knew it all too well, and wanted to guard against a Tyranny Of The Majority in the new USA. It is worth remembering that elected representatives are elected to represent all of the electors, not just the ones that voted for them. Politics should not about Us vs. Them, and the US governance system is not supposed to be operated on a "to the winner, the spoils" basis.

This week's winner is...

Sovereign Citizenship

Global Lessons
1. Do not align yourself with people who are on the wrong side of history
Margaret Thatcher did herself no favours by praising General Pinochet, and describing Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist". Both of those incidents showed her tendency to favor authoritarian dictatorships over inclusive democrats. She was left looking like a fool when South Africa released Mandela from jail and he ultimately became President, and she would have known at the time that Pinochet was, to be blunt, an intolerant murderer.

Political and Leadership lessons
1. All leadership styles have a finite shelf life
Thatcher would have been well advised to learn from the fate of Winston Churchill, who, after leading the UK to victory in World War II, was dumped unceremoniously in November 1945, his Conservative Party soundly beaten by the Labour Party. Churchill had done a great job as a wartime leader, but the electors decided that they did not want more of the same, or a return to patrician Conservatism.
Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 as a crisis leader, but by 1990 the UK was no longer perceived by electors as in crisis, and she had gone from being regarded as a "strong leader" who was what the UK needed, to being regarded as a cranky bullying authoritarian who needed to STFU and go away. The electoral psychology climate had changed, her leadership style had not changed.

2. When you dispense with people, say as little as possible, and do not disrespect them publicly
Firing people is a necessary part of governance and leadership. However, there is a difference between firing people and humiliating them. Humiliation activates the worst instincts of the people being humiliated. Humiliation is what has led to more wars and terrorism than we can count. On an individual level, if you humiliate multiple people over time, it leads to your enemies banding together and plotting against you. Margaret Thatcher tended to not only dispense with people rapidly, especially if they would not shut up, she also made disparaging remarks publicly and privately about them. That eventually catches up with a leader.

3. Ideology does not trump practicality
The period from 1979 through 1985 was a time when the Conservative Party enacted a number of legal changes, and won a number of key challenges to its authority, both domestically and internationally. Although there was an ideology underpinning the policies and strategies, they were easy to sell to the electorate as necessary and desirable.
After 1985, the Conservative Party seemed to become bogged down in trying to implement policies that seemed more rooted in ideology than practicality or usefulness. The Community Charge debacle was the best example, but other policies included the attempt to weaken the power of local governments (which tended to be dominated by the Labour Party) and the attempt to force local councils to sell their housing stock to private buyers, which resulted in several corruption scandals within councils under Conservative control. To the electors, these policies seemed to be the triumph of ideology over common sense. They were unpopular, and they contributed to a slow and important erosion of support for the Conservative Party.
The loss of support was only a factor in the demise of Margaret Thatcher, what really eroded support to below critical levels was the 1988-1990 recession, which the government seemed unable to combat effectively due to disagreement over tactics. However, the focus on ideology started the erosion of support.

4. Political parties whose policies are no longer viable take a long time to sort themselves out
Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party were elected to office in 1979. It was 1996 before the Labour Party would win a General Election - nearly 17 years out of national power. During that period, the party went through three leaders (Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and John Smith) before Tony Blair took charge and made the party into a unified political force once more. For most of that period, the party was riven by infighting and factionalism, as a reformist segment of the party (initially in vain) attempted to point out that the party's policies were no longer relevant or attractive to the electorate. The response from the "old guard" was that there was nothing wrong with the policies, they simply needed to be "sold" with conviction, and the electors would buy them. It took three General Election defeats, and the defection of numerous supporters to the Liberal Democrats, for the reformers to gain the ascendancy, and for the Labour Party to leave behind it's older and unattractive policies such as a committment to nationalization, unilateral nuclear disarmament etc.
The message is that Denial is a very comforting place for a failing political party to live in, and that reforming a mass market party's policies will probably take more than one electoral cycle. To back this up, the Conservative Party went through its own wilderness period after 1996, with multiple leaders (William Hague, Michael Howard) presiding over factionalism and infighting and a similar failure to win elections. Only recently did the Conservative Party win a General Election, in collaboration with the Liberal Democrats.

UK verdict
1. Taxation burden
Despite the massive cuts in direct taxation, the overall tax burden in the UK was almost unchanged at the end of the Thatcher era. Quite simply, taxes on income are noticed easily (and resented) by electorates, indirect taxes are much less noticed. The Conservative government either realized this and were being cynical (as is often the case with politicians) or they did not pay as much attention to indirect taxation. Either way, the much-ballyhooed attempt to reduce the overall levels of taxation in the UK was not a long-term success, and with recent tax increases, there has been an increase in tax avoidance once more, as wealthier people rebel against higher marginal rates on higher levels of income.

2. The Thatcher Funeral
As I write this, there is a lot of genuine anger in the UK at the decision to give Margaret Thatcher what amounts to a State Funeral in all but name. (The main reason that it is not a State Funeral is that the latter ceremony does require an Act of Parliament). Over 20 years after her departure from active politics, Margaret Thatcher remains a deeply polarizing figure in UK life. However, her impact on the politics and history of the UK, for better or for worse, outranks the impact of any political figure since the era of Winston Churchill.

The history of Margatet Thatcher's Prime Ministership is actually well laid out in this Wikipedia entry. I will therefore overlay some personal commentary on that entry for this part of the narrative.
In 1987, the Conservative Party once again easily won the General Election, against a Labour Party that was still unable to articulate a convincing competitive governance message. The party was still deeply fractured over political philosophy, with the hardline socialists still in the ascendancy. Advised by US political experts, the Labour leader Neil Kinnock put himself and his ministers into sharp suits (the previous Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, had attracted a lot of negative comment for his scruffy style of dress), and Labour Party rallies began to look like US party conventions, jarringly so. I remember watching a Labour Party event and thinking "this looks like American showbiz" (and not in a good way). The marketing failed to cover up the divisions in the party, and the very real lack of a coherent alternative to Thatcherism, and Labour was defeated once more.
Thatcher was now safe until (at the latest) 1992. There was a massive economic boom under way, which was making a lot of people happy, although large parts of the old industrial areas of the UK were suffering badly from precipitous decline.

From a personal political standpoint, Margaret Thatcher now entered a new and more dangerous period in her Prime Ministership, a period marked by increasing disputes with members of her own cabinet.
The first event that made people take notice was when Michael Heseltine, the Defense Secretary, abruptly resigned during a Cabinet meeting as the result of a dispute over a military helicopter deal with Westland. The cause of the resignation was a dispute between Thatcher and Heseltine over the future of the helicopter industry in the UK. Heseltine famously walked out of 10 Downing Street in the middle of the meeting to return on foot to his office down the road and round the corner, and breezily informed pursuing journalists "I have just resigned from the Cabinet". Heseltine was one of the higher profile and publicly valuable members of Thatcher's government. He was youthful, good looking, articulate and telegenic, a useful antidote to dull and more sinister looking members like Nicholas Ridley and Norman Tebbit. However, Heseltine did not need the income from a government position. His family owned Haymarket Publishing, one of the largest publishing firms in the UK, so for him, the government salary was merely pocket change. As a result, when he came face to face with what he considered a matter of principle, resigning did not leave him unable to pay the mortgage, and he took a stand and left the cabinet.
The fallout from what became known as the Westland Affair also cost Thatcher the resignation of another minister, Leon Brittan. To paraphrase an old saying, to lose one minister could be said to be unfortunate, to lose two begins to look like incompetence...

By 1987, Thatcher's policy focus seemed to have shifted to a change that would come to define her later years, and not in a good way - the introduction of the Community Charge (as it was officially known) or the Poll Tax as it was known to most people.
The Community Charge was intended to replace the rating system (which, for people in the USA, was and is the property taxation system in the UK). The rating system was vaguely progressive, it taxed people according to the value of their property. The Community Charge was not, it taxed individuals, so it penalized lower-income households, which tend to be larger than higher-income households. It was therefore deeply regressive compared to the rating system. In that respect, it clashed deeply with UK culture, which tends to be more egalitarian than the USA.
Thatcher insisted on trying to implement the Community Charge despite opposition from within her own ministers, Conservative Party advisors (who correctly determined that it was electorally unpopular) and the media. She had moved into the zone of implementing change, not because it made sense, but because ideology told her it was right.
The Community Charge dispute, coupled with the increasing tendency of Thatcher to listen to her new economic advisor Sir Alan Walters instead of her own ministers, led to the departure in 1989 of Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lawson had been Chancellor for a long time, in what is normally a fungible political position (Chancellors in the UK tend to get blamed for everything bad, including the weather, and the position wears down even the most resilient of people), so his resignation was a major political event.

By the summer of 1990, Margaret Thatcher was on a shortening rope in terms of power. She had alienated a number of people in her own party. At the same time, her domestic popularity was at an all-time low. A recession caused as a reaction to the mid 1980's economic boom had eroded her popularity and that of the Conservative party.
The final blow, which essentially led to her opponents gaining critical mass, was the resignation of Geoffrey Howe from her government in November 1990. Within days of his resignation, rumours began to spread that disaffected party members were working to force her to resign. Under the somewhat arcane rules of electoral politics in the UK, there would be a General Election due by the end of 1992, and the Conservative Party feared, that with Thatcher as their leader, they would be defeated.
One thing that politicians value above oxygen and publicity is power or the prospect of power. They therefore began to organize to replace her.
A true personal story; the weekend that the Conservative Party crisis came to a head, my wife and I flew to the Maldives for a vacation. We left on the Saturday, with rumors swirling of a vote of No Confidence being planned in the House of Commons. The general view was that Margaret Thatcher was doomed, and it was only a matter of time before she resigned.
On Tuesday morning, at breakfast on the island, our travel rep. brought us to order by banging on a water jug with a spoon. "I have some news for you", he shouted."Margaret Thatcher resigned last night".
The whole table of 20+ vacationers (and I mean the whole table) broke out in cheering and clapping. The Maldives is not a blue-collar destination. We had managers, lawyers, accountants, and IT people on this table, all white-collar people who had benefitted from the Thatcher governments. Yet, to a man (and woman) they were apparently glad to see the back of her. That single incident told me how badly she had overstayed her welcome and her time in office, and how she had been reduced to (as they saw it) a Pain In The Arse over time.

Having been elected with a comfortable majority, Thatcher set about transforming the governance and economic landscape of the UK. Her government was composed largely of new faces, younger, more radical politicians with little or no ties to any previous Conservative governments. Edward Heath, the preceding Conservative Prime Minister, was henceforth treated rather like that embarrassing old aunt at family gatherings, shunted off into the corner and given tea and crumbs, and best forgotten about. The "one nation" Tories were informed that their era was over.
One of Thatcher's key leadership styles immediately became apparent. She demanded total fealty, publicly and privately. Any minister or government official who dared, however politely, to disagree could expect a tough time, and if disagreement continued, a blunt My-Way-Or-The-Highway ultimatum. This would have profound long-term consequences, but at the time it simply looked like Decisive Leadership.
One of the first items of business was the taxation system. The UK had progressively increased marginal tax rates for high income earners, starting in the late 1940's, initially to pay for the National Health Service, but also to pay for any new government programs that did not generate income. (The UK was basically almost bankrupt at the end of World War II, so there was no national kitty to raid to support government spending increases). By the end of the 60's, the top marginal rate for earned income was a confiscatory 83%. The top rate of tax on investment income was an even more mind-boggling 98% (and, unbelievably, somebody in a Labour government, quite seriously, proposed increasing it). These confiscatory tax rates had the effect of sending a significant number of high-earning individuals into what was known as "tax exile', either in the local self-governing UK provinces such as the Isle Of Man or the Channel Islands, which retained different taxation laws, or, if really large amounts of income were involved, more exotic locations such as the USA, the Caribbean, or even Monaco. At the time that Thatcher took office, for example, the three members of The Police, who had just broken into the big leagues of pop, were all coming to terms with life in rented country houses in Ireland, advised to flee there for a minimum of a year by their accountants.
The government slashed the top marginal rate down to 40% and similarly slashed the investment tax rates. They also began to simplify the entire taxation system to reduce the cost of collection. That simplification was eventually a bi-partisan initiative, and today the UK taxation system is a model of simplicity compared to the USA. The reduction in rates did not just impact showbusiness and business leaders, it had a positive impact on middle and high earners in the whole of the UK.
The defining event of the first Thatcher electoral period however was the Falklands War.
The Falkland Islands were one of a number of British Empire acquisitions scattered around the globe, retained over the centuries not because of their profitability, but for geopolitical reasons. They mostly comprised islands and archipelagoes, some of them in higher latitudes. The Falklands, lying off the coast of Argentina, were like the Hebrides South - a treeless collection of windswept moorlands, occupied by sheep and a collection of hardy farmers and fishermen, all of them fiercely loyal to the Crown despite the 9000 mile distance between London and the Falklands capital of Port Stanley.
To Argentina however, the Islas Malvinas were a national humiliation, an embarrassing turd in their yard. They claimed the islands as their own, and had been asking for them back for hundreds of years, receiving an almost-annual brush-off from the UK.
Finally, under economic pressure at home, the Argentinian military government decided to up the ante and invade the islands. They duly assembled a flotilla and set off to reclaim "their" Islas Malvinas. It is interesting that, like the Gulf War of 1991, there is evidence that the Argentinians decided to invade partly because the British government, over a period of years, had been insufficiently firm in its responses to Argentinian demands over the Falklands, thus lulling foreign policy experts in Argentina into the conclusion that Britain would not ultimately prevent the seizure of the islands. That potentially embarrassing issue was never properly investigated after the war was over; official government inquiries managed to swerve around it.
The Falklands were lightly defended by the UK, being generally regarded as the sort of place that nobody in their right mind would want to invade anyway. The Argentinians duly occupied the Falklands and the neighboring (and even more inhospitable) South Georgia in a matter of days. They calculated that the UK would huff and puff but would ultimately concede. The Falklands were a long way from the UK, and who would care about a couple of million sheep and a couple of thousand farmers?
This was a grave miscalculation. The UK government announced that it regarded the invasion as an act of war, and was going to reclaim the islands. In a mobilization not seen since World War II, the UK assembled a combined forces task force of carriers, ships, soldiers and airmen, and made it clear that they were going to the South Atlantic to get the Falklands back. The move ignited national jingoism and fervour. Thatcher had tapped into hidden British reserves of determination, appealing to aspects of British DNA not activated since we had mobilized to fight Mr. Hitler. The appeal was reminiscent of Kitchener and Churchill in previous wars, fuelled by a jingoistic media. Newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, a Thatcher supporter, would run tasteful banner headlines such as "Up Yours Galtieri!", referring to the Argentinian military President.
The USA, fearful of the negative consequences for its interests in Latin America, sent Alexander Haig on a shuttle diplomacy tour to head off the conflict, but he withdrew after discovering that both sides were unwilling to meet anywhere other than where they stood. The USA then fell in line behind the UK, providing covert support.
The task force duly sailed south, and after a few weeks of sometimes fierce fighting, the Argentinian invaders were rounded up, captured, and sent back to Argentina. The biggest controversy, which continues to this day, was the torpedoing of the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano, with significant loss of life, when it was allegedly sailing away from the Falklands.
The Falklands War cost the Argentinian military rulers their credibility and they were soon replaced. Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, had presided over a war victory, which was political gold. She soon called another General Election. The Labour Party, led by Michael Foot, was in shambles, torn by infighting over how to adjust to the new political reality in the UK. Most of the party loyalists demanded "more socialism", but that turned out to be a losing strategy, and the mild-mannered, intellectual Foot was no match for the aggressive and domineering Thatcher. In the 1983 election, the Conservative party was returned to office with a massive majority.
The stage was now set for another defining moment of Thatcher's political career - the collision with the trade union movement. Thatcher regarded the trades unions with disdain, in her opinion they had become way too powerful, almost a shadow government, and their role seemed to have coalesced around the idea of less work for more pay. Previous governments, fearful of the damaging impact of strikes, had pandered to the trade unions, inviting them to stage-managed displays of "tea and sandwiches" in 10 Downing Street (the London office of the Prime Minister). These tactics had merely emboldened many of the larger unions, whose leaders often seemed to be venal and hubristic.
The opportunity arose for a conflict when the National Union Of Mineworkers threatened a national strike over pay and conditions, and plans by the coal industry to begin a new round of pit closures. The NUM was led by Arthur Scargill, a charismatic, articulate Yorkshireman who had talked himself into the role of Chief Working Men's Opponent of Thatcher.
Although Scargill made all of the right public noises about workers rights and other socialist issues, in reality he was a deeply hypocritical Stalinist. He was a fan of democracy as long as his members kept electing him, and elections delivered the results he wanted. Many of his tactics would have been highly familiar to George Orwell. His membership seemed unwilling to notice that he awarded himself a very large salary and drove expensive union-provided cars, for example.
The NUM leadership decided to call a nationwide strike, despite not formally balloting its members about whether a strike was the correct approach. Scargill contemptuously waved off demands for a ballot as outside interference. In reality the NUM was a collection of regional unions with differing levels of militancy, and several of the regions were not overly enthusiastic about a strike. The refusal to hold a strike ballot was a major strategic blunder, which undercut the perceived legitimacy of the strike from day one.
When the strike started, the NUM began organizing picketer parties to ensure total obedience to the strike call. The government in turn aggressively used public order laws to try and impede the pickets. There were numerous clashes at coal mines and distribution depots, and large numbers of miners and other sympathisers were arrested, some of them on decidedly dubious grounds. Over a period of months, the actions by the government, together with tactical errors by the NUM, led to the strike slowly breaking down, and one by one the union regions folded and miners returned to work.
At the end of the strike, the NUM had achieved nothing except to weaken itself, and Scargill's hubris was exposed. The failure of the strike was a major setback to trade union cohesion and power. The government swiftly took advantage of the situation, passing or repealing laws that reduced the ability of unions to run "closed shops", and to make it easier for employers to fire striking workers. The coal industry also rapidly contracted through the 1980's, with numerous coal mining areas being closed down. This would have significant social consequences, many of them negative, as entire communities were gutted by the loss of their only source of employment.
To date the government, led by Thatcher, had won almost every conflict that it entered. It had even renegotiated the terms of Britain's membership of the EU. The UK was paying in a lot more money than it was receiving from the EU, and Thatcher decided that it was time to redress the balance. Bold and aggressive, she annoyed just about every European leader by consistently referring to the money in public speeches and press conferences as "Britain's money", and took a hard line in negotiations. Eventually a new deal was agreed that was much more favorable to the UK, although the UK's image in Europe suffered, as many mainland Europeans regarded the UK as a whining lackey of the USA (the Europeans had noticed the mutual admiration that seemed to exist between Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and did not like what they saw).
Another pivotal moment occurred when a deputation of car industry leaders went to see Thatcher to ask for more government aid. The car industry in the UK was in deep trouble, crippled by high labour costs and poor design and engineering. By the 1980's, many people had given up buying British cars, so bad was the design and reliability. The car makers had already burned through many hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies and grants from previous governments, none of which seemed to have actually helped them to make better quality vehicles. When they went to see Thatcher to ask for yet more government aid, she smoothly told them that they needed to build cars that people would actually buy, then they would probably make a profit. The makers went away empty-handed. The message was clear: failing industries could not expect government handouts.
By the end of 1985 Thatcher's personal popularity was still high, helped by a sustained economic boom that led to the government being able to dispose of much of the UK's medium and long term debts. However, she had rapidly become a polarizing figure in the UK. There were areas of the country that she would have been well-advised to stay out of, so great was the disdain for her personally. She had also managed to alienate almost the entire artistic and musician communities in the country. Many of them used their art to attack her on a personal level, and the animosities continue to this day. One of Thatcher's weaknesses was that she was never convincing as an advocate of the arts. She always gave the impression that art should be left to its own devices, an approach decidedly at odds with that of other European governments.
After 6 years, Thatcher strode the political landscape in the UK like a colussus. The government was confident, aggressive in its pursuit of solutions based on reduced government expenditures, lower direct taxation, and a robust foreign and European policy. However, in hindsight, this was the high water mark of her period as Prime Minister. The next 5 years would be a lot more difficult.