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What is interesting is that apparently in this "spin-off", they are unloading debt, receiving roughly $2.7b or so, and Verizon will retain 60% ownership of this new company. It is actually a fairly strategic way to insulate yourself from any rulings that you suggest and yet still retain influential control of the market. http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/01/veri zon_to_spin.html

http://www.comminit.com/trends/st2005/thinking-105 1.html http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/12/ 12/long_distance_house_calls/

The Bush administration is also manipulating the media: Bush Spent $1.6 Bil. on 'Spin'. The practice is illegal: Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal. The Bush administration believes that it can break laws: Bush challenges hundreds of laws. "Spinning" is an overly gentle word for lying. An October 24, 2006 Washington Post story, Spinning the Course explores a few of the lies which attempt to corrupt what the voters learn about their government.

That paragraph is from a summary of Bush administration corruption I wrote because I wanted to do more than just vote: The Bush administration found support for war through manipulation. I hope other people will write their own summaries.

It's baffling to me why a country that has consistently and fairly been compared with Nazi Germany, to the point of concentration camps and illegal medical experimentation, has been allowed to exist for this long. Drudge reported this morning that they're prepping another nuke test, and it's a well-known fact that they've been developing chem and bio weapons for years. A new Hitler has risen, and we are so busy looking elsewhere that we either haven't noticed or don't care.

Man... You seem to have some reading comprehension problems.

First off, signing statements are no more legal than the line item veto, they just haven't been stricken down yet.

They're not legal for pretty much the same reason that line-item vetoes are illegal: the president is not granted the power to pick and choose the parts of the law that his branch of government executes. He either signs the whole law or vetoes the whole law. Once the law has been signed, he is obligated to enforce the law as it is written.

And speaking of the past usages of signing statements, did you know that President Bush has issued only a single veto since he took office, and has issued more signing statements than all other presidents combined?

Also, if you reread the bit of the constitution that you quoted, you'll find that it doesn't list 'public safety' as a reason to declare martial law anymore than it says that it doesn't have to be declared (just exercised, as you seem to think). It says quite clearly that public safety may require the suspension of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion. Habeas corpus is not martial law.

We are neither being invaded nor are we rebelling (yet), and since Bush and the executive branch haven't claimed to suspend habeas corpus (although they clearly have suspended it), there's no legal ground for the executive branch to act illegally. And beyond that, suspending habeas corpus doesn't imply that the government can act illegally, only that they can effectively jail people and not provide the body while the writ has been suspended. The GP was quite correct in saying that the government must be quite explicit about denying the writ and deal with the consequences thereof.

Here's an anecdote about European hate-speech laws. I think this might be the final installment. This is from the Boston Globe, but other places have covered it, too.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2 006/12/20/irving_wins_austrian_holocaust_denial_ap peal/

Here's a Boston Globe article. Basically they just wanted the dishes moved to the backs of buildings and out of site from the streets.

We could have had a large off shore wind farm if Ted Kennedy hadn't killed it because of nimby. What a blow hard, we could have powered a few homes off of him alone!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04 /27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/26/sunday/m ain560595.shtml
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /oped/articles/2006/05/07/kennedy_doesnt_play_by_t he_rules/

We could have had a large off shore wind farm if Ted Kennedy hadn't killed it because of nimby. What a blow hard, we could have powered a few homes off of him alone!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04 /27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/26/sunday/m ain560595.shtml
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /oped/articles/2006/05/07/kennedy_doesnt_play_by_t he_rules/

Did you read the part of the story where they comment on which browser the developers were using?

It was not Internet Explorer. It was Firefox. (read the article)

So should we go go through your post and replace every instance of 'IE' with Firefox?

Wasn't able to find anything that verifies your assertion. However, the US allegedly allowed the USSR to acquire control software for the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline that enabled the US to blow it up:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/artic les/2004/02/27/us_let_soviets_obtain_faulty_techno logy_book_says/

Seymour Papert was critically injured attending ICMI "Digital Technologies and Mathematics Teaching and Learning".
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/12/ 08/top_mit_scientist_injured_in_vietnam/
http://www.tatvietnam.com/conference/

"Why don't they ban "tag" while they're at it, a game which encourages *actual* attacking of another human being in the game." We're one step ahead of you... http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-06-26-rec ess-bans_x.htm http://www.washtimes.com/national/20061018-114713- 2243r.htm http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/art icles/2006/10/18/attleboro_elementary_school_bans_ tag/

an advertisement for a small business association, or something like that. One of the benefits of joining was that they had offered a group health plan to the member companies.

Beware: a few years back I came across a group that purposed to be a small business association, the "National Association for the Self-Employed", touting health insurance among its benefits, that in fact was nothing but a front for an insurance company.

So check 'em out carefully, and always say "no" to any high-pressure sales tactics.

American car manufacturers have ceded the car market to the Asians knowing that the markup and profit on a Ram or a S-10 is much higher than the cars the EPA force em to make.

Ford: $5.8 billion loss so far in 2006, making high markup profitable trucks.
GM: $3 billion loss so far in 2006, making high markup profitable trucks.
Honda: 4.8 billion profit in 2006, making those allegedly low markup high-MPG cars you disdain.
And Toyota, #2 after Honda for high-MPG cars, is the world's most profitable car company.

Oh, those poor Japanese. If only they were as smart as American manufacturers in going after profit margins, eh?

Audio Jack + braille keys

Hope you carry around a pair of headphones, though

As usual, there is more than meets the eye, especially when the original article is from the "Union Leader"..

From a fairly robust article in the Boston Globe I dug up with a quick Google News search for "Gingrich":

From this Globe article (hardly a conservative-friendly paper) it appears Gingrich's "totally different set of rules" has not to do with freedom of speech, but with the Geneva Convention as applied to terrorists, which is a whole 'nother bag of worms in and of itself; however, the question remains as to how the OP managed to spin what seem to be two separate points into one decidedly negative message.

Does anyone have the actual transcript of his speech there so we can figure out who's full of BS and who's not? Think about it -- if the man is even THINKING of running for President in '08, he certainly isn't going to get elected if he runs on a platform of RESTRICTING basic freedom of speech.

You could also get rid of the developmentally disabled programs and plough that money into educating people who might help improve society. I'm not saying there shouldn't be some sort of daycare or burger-flipping training for the special needs set, I am saying that they shouldn't get nearly as much money as they do now. I honestly think their budget would be better applied to programs for gifted children, but the real question is why schools are required to provide for special needs children out of the same budget as the rest of the childrens (won't you think of them?)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 02284831_specialed23m.html

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/11/ 05/fiscal_crisis_in_special_ed_perils_budget/

The Dutch have a more restrained version of this that works quite well, called the "woonerf." (It means "street for living.")

In heavily-trafficked areas where cars will always move slowly and multiple modes of transportation come together (bicyclists, pedestrians, mass transit, scooters, cars, etc.), it seems that it works better if they self-regulate. Woonerven came into being in The Netherlands in the '60s and '70s, and the idea is to have a common space shared by all of these types of transit. Obstacles are placed in the street (planters, trees, parking spaces, etc.) to prevent traffic from moving quickly. This also turns pedestrians into the primary users of the space, making vehicles the intruders. Cars seldom exceed 10mph in woonerven.

Holland and Denmark have converted 6,500 brief stretches of road into woonerven. Traffic fatality rates have dropped to nothing. Intersections were a few annual fatalities were routine haven't seen a single death. That's a) because automobile drivers cannot drive through quickly because they're so varying and b) because 20mph is the cap of speed at which pedestrians can avoid serious injury when being struck by a car.

Happily, 18.5mph is the speed at which urban traffic flows best, many studies have shown. Coincidentally, this is also a speed at which there's no need for traffic control systems.

We have woonerf-like traffic patterns (and self-regulating patterns, as in the article) throughout the world now. Look at rush hour on Paris' Avenue de la Grande Armee: it's got four lanes of traffic at noon on a Sunday, but come rush hour people up and decide that maybe six is better. Look at Beijing during rush hour -- hordes of bicyclists mingling with packed autos, scooters weaving through the chaos.

England's got them, too. They call them "home zones." They're in a few dozen places now. They can't be more than a third of a mile long, and can't be used by more than 100 vehicles per hour. More traffic means that it's just not a viable home zone.

For more on this see Linda Baker's 2004 article for Salon, Anthony Flint's 2004 Boston Globe article, and walkinginfo.org's page about woonerven.

A "plays-all" drive wasn't announced today. What was announced was a single chip that does video decoding, DRM, various video outputs, etc. [1] It's a piece of the pie, but not the whole thing. It's suggested that creating a single drive that reads both with be more difficult that building the decoding chip. [2]

By David Espo and Liz Sidoti, Associated Press Writers | November 8, 2006

WASHINGTON --Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in Iraq, intends to resign after six stormy years at the Pentagon, Republican officials said Wednesday.
Article Tools

Officials said Robert Gates, former head of the CIA, would replace Rumsfeld.

WASHINGTON -- A group of former Clinton administration lawyers are urging the American Bar Association to reject its panel's call for presidents to stop issuing ``signing statements" that reserve the right to bypass laws, saying the problem is with President Bush's use of such statements, not the mechanism itself.

On Thursday, for example, the Boston Globe published an opinion article defending signing statements by law professors Eric Posner of the University of Chicago and Curtis Bradley of Duke University.

Posner worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under former President George H. W. Bush from 1992 to 1993, and Bradley worked for the current Bush administration as a State Department attorney in 2004.

Posner and Bradley agreed with the Clinton-era lawyers that presidents have a right to issue signing statements, calling them ``a useful device through which the president can announce his views . . . rather than conceal them." They also argued that Bush's signing statements are no different than Clinton's -- a claim that the Clinton-era lawyers, who say Bush has abused the mechanism, dispute.

WASHINGTON -- A group of former Clinton administration lawyers are urging the American Bar Association to reject its panel's call for presidents to stop issuing ``signing statements" that reserve the right to bypass laws, saying the problem is with President Bush's use of such statements, not the mechanism itself.

On Thursday, for example, the Boston Globe published an opinion article defending signing statements by law professors Eric Posner of the University of Chicago and Curtis Bradley of Duke University.

Posner worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under former President George H. W. Bush from 1992 to 1993, and Bradley worked for the current Bush administration as a State Department attorney in 2004.

Posner and Bradley agreed with the Clinton-era lawyers that presidents have a right to issue signing statements, calling them ``a useful device through which the president can announce his views . . . rather than conceal them." They also argued that Bush's signing statements are no different than Clinton's -- a claim that the Clinton-era lawyers, who say Bush has abused the mechanism, dispute.

"[U]nless there are levels of theft and fraud that would truly mean the end of American democracy, a Democratic House seems as close to a sure thing as we ever get in American politics three days before an election... November 2006 will be remembered either as the time American democracy was stolen again, maybe forever, or began a brighter day. "

"Despite the loud headline, the article actually goes on to detail several candidates- both Republican and Democrat- that have been victims of these calls."

Really? The only article that talks about Republican candidates being smeared by these robo-calls is the boston.com article, and even that one only offers the American Family Voices' robo-call campaign against Mark Foley for a "Dems are bad" example. All of the other articles listed in the headline refer to examples of Republicans using robo-calls to pose as Democratic candidates in an effort to piss off Dem supporters.

Once again: What'd you expect? They're Republicans.

A few nuts usually stick with it and in the long run it comes back into mainstream if its closer to correct. There IS easy funding out there for anti-global warming if you want to appear like an industry whore.

Ironic, the USA has a preemptive war policy but ignores global warming which has already begun. Furthermore, it will not actively look for more evidence.

Actually, Bush has only vetoed one bill, on stem cell research.

You may stretch the semantics a little more.

CC.

This story from Oct. 30th Boston Globe is interesting. It talks about how we may have missed detecting life on Mars back in 1976 during the Viking 1 and Viking 2 missions. http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/1 0/30/could_we_have_missed_life_on_mars/

Things have picked up a lot in Massachusetts. When I put out a resume a year ago I was getting dozens of calls and emails every day. It was crazy and things have gotten even more heated since then.

Troll. ..or ditto-head. LA governor Blanco declared a state of emergency 2 days before landfall when predictions upgraded the severity of Katrina. The day before landfall, Bush, Chertov, and Brown were warned about the possibility of the levee failures. Brown and Chertov were the incompetent asses that botched the response, and Bush was the incompetent ass who hired him, and put FEMA under the DoHS against the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

(2 days before landfall) GOV. BLANCO ASKS BUSH TO DECLARE FEDERAL STATE OF EMERGENCY IN LOUISIANA: "I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.

You may want to read up on a good FEMA director. James Lee Witt was the FEMA director during the Clinton administration, and is credited with turning FEMA into a top-notch emergency response team. Possibly because he had real emergency preparedness experience. <snark>

By 1996 an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial said that "FEMA has developed a sterling reputation for delivering disaster-relief services, a far cry from its abysmal standing before James Lee Witt took its helm in 1993. How did Witt turn FEMA around so quickly? Well, he is the first director of the agency to have emergency-management experience. He stopped the staffing of the agency by political patronage. He removed layers of bureaucracy. Most important, he instilled in the agency a spirit of preparedness, of service to the customer, of willingness to listen to ideas of local and state officials to make the system work better."

Witt's term of office saw approximately 348 Presidential declared disaster areas in more than 6,500 counties and in all 50 states and territories. Witt supervised the response to the most costly flood disaster in the nation's history at that time, the most costly earthquake, and a dozen serious hurricanes.

Amazingly, Bush has declared his intention to disregard a law passed by Congress that requires real emergency preparedness experience when hiring a FEMA director with one of his infamous signing statements.

but the governor of Louisiana didn't authorize their use

Wrong.

and once she did, the guard was actively hampered by the press reporting imaginary riots and snipers which redirected the guard from actually helping people.

I'm not about to start defending our press (or rather, the entertainment industry hive mind corporate pod-people who replaced it while we were sleeping), and undoubtedly a few of them wasted time following up false leads. But many more (over a third of their number and about half their equipment) were unable to do anything because they were in Iraq.

Seriously, why do you think Mississippi, where the storm surge went right over the shore counties, didn't have the kinds of problems they had in New Orleans?

Perhaps because they were above sea level and thus not dependent on levies to keep them from flooding?

--MarkusQ

Um, you guys know that bills don't just magically appear on the president's desk, right? One swipe of the pen?! If he was able to sign something that screws you, it's because hundreds of people, working against your interest, put it there. Yes, blame Bush for not vetoing it, but don't stop there. If you can only count ONE pen, you're retarded.

It's a quagmire to be sure, but I, and many conservatives believe that it was still the right call. I believe that it was the right call, given the information that we had at the time. Of course much of what we *thought* turned out to be incorrect. Liberals somehow assume that this means we were "lied" to. I do place blame on the administration for being lazy and running with the one rationale that seemed to resonate with the press (WMDs) when we in effect already in a state of war with Iraq (at the least they were violating the terms of the truce on a daily basis). Does it have anything to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda? Of course, not. However, before 9/11 the US used to just ignore thugs like Saddam who opently threatened and provoked the US. The amount of grief that the US would put up with changed that day. Do I think there have been mistakes our post-war Iraq policy? Absolutely. Do I think it would be worse for all involved if we simply pull out our troops on some arbitrary date or worse yet signal weakness by legislating an end date? Absolutely.

Or to take another point, I can understand why a conservative would worry about fiscal responsibility... but we don't have fiscal responsibility, do we? How about that deficit, eh?

I love this point. Liberals love to throw this one around - somehow trying to show that they are more fiscally responsible than Republicans when in fact they hemorrage federal money. Name me a social program that the Democrats would not like to spend more money on. They don't like the GOP Social Security plan because it doesn't spend enough money. They don't like the GOP prescription plan because it does spend enough money. They don't like No Child Left Behind because it isn't backed up with federal funds. They don't approve of homeland defense legislation because it doesn't spend enough federal funds on infrastructure. Am I proud that we are running a deficit right now? No - of course not... but I am pretty impressed that the deficit has been cut in half over the last 5 years. Unemployment is lower than during the Clinton presidency. Inflation is low. The economy is doing pretty damn well. The irony of course is that the left yells for the Republicans compromise with them on these spending bills. This universally means spending more (not less) than the Republicans originally propose. If the Republicans were not compromising with the Dems the deficit would be even less (of course the Democrats would be making even more noise about the lack of "bi-partisanship").

By the way, I've been meaning to ask some Repubican or other... do you think you guys could return some of the money Enron stole for you? Seriously, how do you feel about your party recieving stolen goods?

Troll.

(And what kind of "conservative" has such contempt for the Magna Carta, not to mention the Constitution? Aren't they time-tested enough? How can you just shrug off what's being done to central fabric of our country?)

Easy, I don't believe that I or anyone else has lost any constitutional rights. I don't for instance believe that I have a right to make international phone calls with international terrorists overseas without being surveilled. Now, I do think the administration has certainly been pushing the envelope of presidential powers - however the SCOTUS and Congress have pushed back - that is reassuring to me. Government is working.

Now what could he say to get the people and congress to go into Iraq....hmmmmm....what could he say - how about

"Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom. Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror..."

from here His Jan 2002 state of the Union speech.

But wasn't he just getting bad information? Well, no he wasn't getting bad info, it just wasn't the info he wanted.

So he went on the air and *lied* to the american people about Iraq's involement with terrorists. And if he would lie to start a war I have no trouble believing that he would lie about anything else. So, is that enough proff yet?

Sera

ya, we are supposed to have checks and balances, etc. Perhaps you need to take a gander at the issue of "signing statements", and read what the attorney general has to say about federal judges who might actually want to do their jobs. They have just been told to fuck off, to put it impolitely but in normal phraseology.

Oh ya, and the little matter of blackbox voting....links a-plenty there. Sure go ahead and vote! You have zero guarantees anymore, they can completely control the vote and you won't know-or be able to do-anything about it. Now, I will vote, but only from inertia. I knew this jig was up three elections ago when they got away with the hijacking, and then it happened *again*, and then again. It is the *system* now, entrenched, it is *controlled*.

All we have now is the executive branch issuing edicts. That's it. That's called a police state. The other branches are now for political show business purposes, to maintain the illusion. We now live in a dictatorship that arose from a bona fide coup, complete with a reichstagg fire event, and one which just passed a new version of the enabling act.

I thought the PC term for them was 'white nationalists'? You guys are gonna have to get this straight before I start listening to what you have to say.

Do you ignore the ideas of blacks because some of them use the term black while others use African? "Until the Leninists, Trotskyists, and Stalinists agree to one lable I won't bother learning the difference between them."

Blue eyes are in decline in America. How diverse will humanity be when everyone looks the same?

Schools get sued more than you think. Just the act of defending yourself is enough to drain valuable funds from a town. And one big successful lawsuit, especially if the town's insurer deems it not covered, can really impoversh a town. The threat of a lawsuit alone is enough to turn government agencies and businesses into pathetic nannies who have to point out the obvious dangers of everything so someone can't claim they didn't know better in court.

Now you can get sued if the curriculum doesn't make every single parent happy. Good luck with that! Lexington MA Lawsuit

James Foley? Or did you mean Mark Foley?

4. Wave power is too ugly to be built (too lazy to Google for it but Kennedy / Kerry vetoed the idea because it was too close to THEIR vacataion home).

You mean the Nantucket Sound wind power project.

But for South Korea, a more immediate danger may be North Korea's artillery.

The capital Seoul, only 60 km (37 miles) south of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has long been within range of one of the world's most powerful artillery batteries.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said the North had amassed more than 13,000 pieces of artillery and multiple rocket launchers, much of it aimed at Seoul.

Jane's International Defense Review estimates that if North Korea launched an all-out barrage, it could achieve an initial fire rate of 300,000 to 500,000 shells per hour into the Seoul area -- home to about half the country's 48.5 million people.

The biggest are 170-mm self-propelled artillery guns and 240-mm multiple rocket launchers. It also has hundreds of Scud missiles that could hit any part of South Korea.

"We have reason to believe that the chemical weapons are with the forward artillery units that are targeting Seoul. If we don't get those early, we end up with chemicals on Seoul." North Korea: The War Game

When negotiators were hammering out the 1994 accord - over similar concerns about North Korea's nuclear intentions - Pyongyang also warned that it would turn the South Korean capital of Seoul into a "sea of fire".

SEOUL, South Korea -- In an unusually explicit threat to its neighbor yesterday, North Korea warned that Japan would be immersed in a "nuclear sea of fire" if the United States were to attack the North.

Speaking to the BBC's Mike Thompson in Pyongyang, Mr Ri said his government was becoming increasingly alarmed at signs that Washington planned to send more aircraft carriers, bombers and troops to the region.

He said such actions would mean that the US was either planning to invade the North or launch attacks against it.

In response, he insisted, Pyongyang would not just sit and wait, and might decide to strike first if necessary.

The country currently has a standing army of more than one million soldiers. The US has about 37,000 troops based in South Korea.

Yeah, same with facebook and other social networking sites. Not only are employers using social networking cites to background check potential employees, but schools (including universities) are monitoring social networking sites and punishing students for material posted on them, but that's all old news.

At first, I thought this article was about something I have been waiting for: precedent for lawsuits against employers and schools who use MySpace and Facebook against employees and students. Anyone else see a problem with deciding whether or not to hire someone based on a picture of them drinking on MySpace? In case that question didn't lead enough, how do you prove that the prospective employee is the holder of the MySpace account, is actually the person in the picture, and that the picture is not doctored? Hopefully, this woman's fight against a fake MySpace account will let more people realize that not everything you see on MySpace, or any other social networking site, is necessarily real.

To both of you look here:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles /2006/01/01/a_chronology_of_the_death_penalty/

In my state of WV it is unlawful. So it by far is not lawful everywhere.

B.

There's little question that companies like Blackwater could be more effective operationally than the African Union, which has been hampered by its peacekeepers' lack of command and control experience. Private military companies boast a roster of former special forces officers and law enforcement officers who are accustomed to volatile conflict and post-conflict areas like Sudan.

Blackwater also subjects all of its personnel to an impressive array of extra training-whether they're training to work in Baghdad or the firm's North Carolina headquarters. They take classes in international humanitarian law, leadership, ethics, regional awareness, and ''customs and traditions." They've recently approached Amnesty International about teaching human rights education classes. And the International Peace Operations Association boasts that its code of conduct was written by human rights lawyers.

The industry also claims that it's far cheaper than its multilateral or military counterparts. ''We offer the ability to create a right-sized solution-which creates a cost savings right off the bat," says Taylor. By contrast, Brooks notes, ''NATO is insanely expensive; it's not a cost-effective organization. Neither is the [African Union]. Private companies would be much, much cheaper. When we compared their costs to most UN operations, we came up with 10 to 20 percent of what the UN would normally charge."

try 509 billion http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articl es/2006/09/28/cost_of_iraq_war_nearly_2b_a_week/?p age=2

(ten times the number of space probes based on you 50 bil estimate)

Things you've said that are wrong:

None of those things are wrong.

The funny part, is that you follow up that *stunning* display of ignorance about the roles of both the President & the Courts with this gem: And yes, the President should, and will, abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court. There's no question about that.

That's also not wrong.

Excuse me? No question? The above statement and your point (C) directly contradict one another.

Well, no, they don't. What's stunning is that you would think they do. The "above statement" is in the context of this particular situation, and "(C)" was related to a hypothetical crazy decision the Court might come up with, which isn't the case with this particular situation: either way the Court goes, it would not be, in the words I used, "blatantly and unquestionably unconstitutional."

Just to be clear, I was referring to "unitary executive" as described by John Yoo, not the literal interpretation of the words "unitary" and "executive".

False. You were referring to it as it is used by the President, which is the same way it is used by Justice Alito, who said the theory means that the President has "not just some executive power, but the executive power -- the whole thing."

you begin by stating the literal meaning

True.

then supporting the John Yoo version

False.

Perhaps you think what I said about the President having the authority to interpret the Constitution on his own, until the Court steps in, as part of the "unitary executive theory." You're wrong. It's a separate notion. And it's unquestionably true anyway.

Either way, you seriously need a remedial class in civics.

Straw man, and ad hominem. Two for one!

Perhaps you've absorbed too many talking points to recall exactly how the balance between the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial branches work.

Nope. I understand it quite well; you're the one in error.

Seriously, this Republican controlled Congress may have given up on their job and refused to do anything about a Republican President usurping their powers

Congress has no power to enforce its interpretation of the Constitution on the President.

Show me where in the Constitution you think the Congress has this power. Congress can haul the President to the Supreme Court; Congress can impeach the President if he doesn't abide by the will of the Court; Congress can participate in the changing of the Constitution. Congress cannot interpret the Constitution for the President. Such a notion is complete nonsense.

You said the things I said were wrong, but you haven't actually backed any of it up. I wonder why that is ... ?

It further says that any application of an act of Congress (including that 1978 law) to shift Constitutional responsibilities from one branch (e.g. the President) to another (e.g. the Courts) is automatically void, and that the President has an independent responsibility to honor the Constitution, even if the Congress and the Courts disagree.

About a week

How fast does $2 Billion get used in Iraq? I'm all for efficiency, but lets have it across the board

1 week

Japanese automakers manufacture a substantial portion of their vehicles in North America.

If you buy the numbers:

http://www.boston.com/cars/news/articles/2006/09/2 4/made_in_america_hard_to_tell/

Japanese are at ~50% North American content and the big 3 are at ~75%.