Huge tech companies are unimaginative and clueless when it comes to being good community citizens. One would expect, at the least, their marketing departments to recognize the importance of maintaining a positive image for the neighborhoods wherein their employees reside. But then again, Apple has proven short-sighted in their brand development, on the one hand assuming a creative, individualistic brand while on the other aggressively sheltering profits from taxes and putting punishing demands on factory workers. It seems these companies will continue to ignore the dignity of outside individuals. It's up to them to be unignorable. But it would be great if these companies seized this critical moment, acknowledged that their operations displace people, and earnestly forged respectful problem-solving relationship with them.

Glad the the stop-and-frisk chapter is closing. It was a shameful stain on this city's multicultural past spilled by this city's xenophobic elite. De Blasio's settlement, along with his pre-K education proposal, advances minority youth two steps forward to Bloomberg's one step back. But, hmm... Now that the police won't be busy stopping random kids of color, we wonder which esteemed NYPD effort they'll be bolstering with their free time: • weekend mounted unit petting zoo (amid rampant crime) in the Lower Eastpacking District, • highly-praised and constructive amateur counter-terrorism research in Afghanistan, or • "undercover" participation in citywide terrorization by motorcycle gangs. Curious indeed. Only time, and the next lawsuit, will tell.

We're happy and hopeful about the peace accord reached between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Violence has claimed too many lives and wasted too much of our collective potential, and we look forward to a safer, more prosperous future. However, we must not rush to celebrate, as other violent movements remain which need to be addressed.

CBS, we thank you for cutting out almost all mention of dance, electronica, metal, rock and alternative music at the Grammys. Because those are dead or dying genres and all we really want is to have an indistinct medley of bland mid-tempo pop performances with overamplified audience cheering (to make it exciting, the same way a laugh track makes a sitcom funny!) crammed down our indiscriminate barnyard gullets.

We welcome Obama's remarks but more must be done. His speech struck us, mainly throughout the first half, as cluttered with rhetoric, deflection, and rationalization. Eventually, he rattled off a slew of Presidential directives and orders (more internal oversight and restrictions, annual internal reviews to declassify information and address private and foreign interests, and time limits on NSL gag orders and storage of foreign citizen data). We give him some credit for these executive orders, but they're flimsy. They can be rescinded at any time, by Obama or successive Presidents. So we demand Congress resolve this permanently, and affirm a commitment to prevent similar crises in the future. Our trust in government rests largely on our ability to hold Congress accountable, so we take any action that inhibits accountability as a manipulative, abusive affront to democracy. We want oversight, because oversight motivates restraint. And as technology continues to amplify the effects of these transgressions, in questionable cases we prefer our government errs on the side of transparency rather than secrecy, as we accept that a free and open society fundamentally entails risks to our physical safety. So Obama's most important statements were in this very spirit. We look forward to the replacement metadata collection program he intends to take to Congress, and on his call for them to create an independent civilian panel to argue significant cases in FISC. We expect Congress to go further, not only to strengthen oversight and other checks on existing programs, but also to institute a general oversight framework for *any* secret powers granted now or in the future (we cannot know that all such secrecy has already been made public). An American once wisely said, "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." Today, five years later, he outlined a few steps his administration is taking to uphold that.

Gov Christie's seflishness shocks and angers us! It's unbelievable that he would resort to retaliatory behavior that is so childish, unprofessional, and disrespectful (to say the least!) to the public. And we think anyone who thinks this hyper-controlling figure was not privy to the actions of his staff is fooling themselves. Along with the NSA and the recent federal shutdown, this is yet another sign of a political class that believes it's above public service, and that is consumed with promoting and protecting itself above all else. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/nyregion/chri...