Not that I want to litigate this story, since it's already dropped off the front page like a rock, but just in case it's helpful:
A moment's thought will reveal that the words in the guideline can be used to justify virtually any story, up to and including "intellectual" cat photos. The site guidelines, which I do not love, are mostly a framework for subtext, which you can really only get by following 'pg and 'dang comments.
Some indicators that a story is unlikely to succeed here:
* It involves current events outside of technology
* It evokes partisan politics or, worse, partisan nationalism
* It's based on valence issues, like "countries should not register their Jewish people" or "the NSA should not read your mother's email", about which nobody could reasonably disagree
* It's likely to produce terribly unproductive threads
Advocates for political stories on HN are fond of pointing out how a great community like HN should be fertile ground for interesting political debates. Old-timers on the site have seen enough HN political debates to know that the opposite is true. HN political discussion results in:
* Commenters arguing nastily with each other about how much more authentically they agree with a position they both hold
* Commenters that have had fascinating and productive discussions about technology or entrepreneurship or science reduced to slander and personal insults
* Threads dominated almost entirely by tired cliches that a sophisticated markov commenter could generate just as effectively; these are HN's equivalent of "First Post!1!111!".
I think you'll find that as you spend more time here, stories and threads like this are a sad aberration, and (fortunately) rarely survive on the front page for long.