Slashdot Mirror

can he (or his successor) commute the sentence back to its original time in a few days?

The president has the power to rescind a pardon made in the past, But it has been rarely exercised.

See: http://www.democrats.com/node/...
 
 

Dear President Elect Obama,

On his third day in office President Grant revoked two pardons that had been granted by President Andrew Johnson. President Nixon also undid a pardon that had been granted by President Lyndon Johnson. There may be other examples of this, as these two have somewhat accidentally come up in a discussion focused on numerous examples of presidents undoing pardons that they had themselves granted, something the current president did last week. (See http://pardonpower.com/ ). In 2001, President George W. Bush's lawyers advised him that he could undo a pardon that President Clinton had granted.

Much of the discussion of this history of revoking pardons deals with the question of whether a pardon can still be revoked after actually reaching the hands of the pardonee, or after various other obscure lines are crossed in the process of issuing and enforcing of the pardon. If President Bush issues blanket pardons to dozens of criminals in his administration for crimes that he himself authorized, he will probably -- with the exception of Libby -- not even name them, much less initiate any processes through which they are each formally notified of the pardons. He will be pardoning people of crimes they have not yet been charged with, so the question of timing is something you are unlikely to have to worry about (except perhaps with Libby).

Virtually none of the discussion of these matters ever addresses the appropriateness or legitimacy of the pardons involved or of the revoking of them. The history would appear to establish that you will have the power to revoke Bush's pardons. I want to stress that you will also have a moral responsibility to do so and a legal requirement to do so. Morally and legally, you have no choice in this matter. When you take the oath of office, you will be promising to faithfully execute the laws of the land.

Disenfranchising is nothing new and definitely not limited to the Chicago machine (which Obama was only minimally a part of). Bush ran a particularly dirty campaign in 2000. For example, Rove's people called a bunch of voters suggesting that McCain had an illegitimate vietnamese child to win the primary (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll#Political_push_polls:_United_States ) Then a bunch of paid GOP staffers were responsible for starting a riot that stopped the recount in 2000: http://archive.democrats.com/images/miamirioters.jpg
This has been going on long before Obama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#Examples_of_voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

The GOP also uses the org TLD and the Democrats also use the com TLD. Check GOP and democrats .

come now, the Florida election in 2000 was badly flawed by the use of voter purges. The NAACP won a civil suit about this issue. http://archive.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=10360 The system that exists was systematically abused by the Republican party in 2000. Even worse abuses were alleged in 2004, especially in Ohio. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Republican_IT_consultant_subpoenaed_in_case_0929.html however, the subpoena in question could not be carried out due to the death of the IT consultant in a plane crash.

I suspect that many Slashdotters are unaware of the numerous deep ties between Goldman Sachs and the Obama Administration. A few for instances:

• Obama has put his trust in the advice of menâ"Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Chief Economic Advisor Larry Summers, and, informally, former Clinton Treasurer Robert Rubin, all linked to the investment bank Goldman Sachs."
• "Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration, a recent lobbyist for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is in line to serve as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Mark Patterson was a registered lobbyist for Goldman until April 11, 2008, according to public filings."
• "If AIG had managed to not collapse and not require $180 billion in taxpayer money, Goldman Sachs would be sitting today with some very very shaky investments. But since AIG collapsed, the folks at Goldman cleaned up. Goldman Sachs employees gave just shy of a million dollars to the Obama campaign, ranking second in contributions. Citigroup and JPMorgan ranked sixth and seventh. Goldman Sachs gave Obama four times more than they gave McCain."
• Obama nominated "Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...Gensler is a reassuring figure to the moguls of finance; he was a partner at Goldman Sachs before being brought by Goldman honcho Robert Rubin to the Clinton Treasury Department."
• "When it came time to name a vice presidential running mate, Mr. Obama turned to Goldman Sachs Board Member James Johnson. Mr. Johnson was forced to vacate the post under controversy."

This above list is by no means exhaustive. Nor are the sources cited above (The Huffington Post, The Nation, etc.) exactly known for their fierce and unstinting criticism of Obama.

WTF jackass. Were you in a coma when Bush became president and canceled every reasonable alternative energy program in existence, and then blew smoke about Hydrogen, a technology that wouldn't be commercially viable for at least another 20 years and until gasoline hit $10 a gallon?

What reasonable alternative energy program did Bush cancel? None. Why? Because currently, there is no REASONABLE alternative energy available. We have ethanol, which didn't get canceled, although it probably would have been better if were.

Bush stopped alternative energy research.

Again, source? What got canceled? If you were interested in facts, you'd know that what you say simply isn't true. Here is something from MSNBC, which is no fan of the president, btw:

Energy conservation groups and environmentalists say they're pleased that the president, a former oil man in Texas, is stressing alternative sources of energy...

Also, from HERE:

$10 billion of loan guarantees will go towards renewable and/or energy efficient systems and manufacturing, and distributed energy generation, transmission, and distribution.

Does $10 BILLION dollars equal stopping alternative energy research?

And in the area of nuclear power, Bush did absolutely nothing to lead the US into clean electricity generation of any kind. He can't even pronounce the word nuclear correctly.

Yucca mountain ring a bell? Every one of Bush's attempts to generate energy of any kind has been blocked by Democrats in congress.
Here is a little quote from Democrats.com:

President Bush is promoting the use of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. It seems a political choice. Investing in nuclear power plants can be attempted only by very large corporations, of the kind that are in his support base. They belong to a very exclusive big-money club, and there are many billions of dollars at stake. But to belong, one also has to be willing to forget Three Mile Island, to forget market economics, nuclear proliferation, radioactive waste and, in particular, to forget nuclear terrorism.

Here is how former gov of NY Elliot Spencer (D) sees it:

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has come out against the re-licensing of the two reactors at Indian Point, a nuclear plant about 30 miles north of Manhattan.

Tell me again. WHO is stopping us from producing nuclear power? (Also, Jimmy Carter couldn't pronounce nuclear either and he was a nuclear engineer!)

Please elaborate on what brilliant Bush Energy Policies were stopped by the Democratic congress.

Uh, all of them. From HERE:

Bush, whose energy plan has been stalled in Congress for four years, is facing increased pressure from Democrats...

So, for four years...FOUR YEARS, the US had no energy policy.

And before you congratulate yourself further for "understanding supply and demand," how about reading up on what a cartel is and what it does to competition? Ever hear of OPEC? The US could strip mine Alaska and OPEC could make the whole operation a bust simply by turning its valve.

So you suggest that we do nothing? Viable alternative energy is at least 20 years away. You're OK with us being beholden to said "cartel" until then?

You were identified as a troll above, I should have taken note.

Yeah, slashdot mods think that anyone with a different view than their own is a troll. They downmod you when they can't come up with a valid response. I was also modded insightful four times to two trolls. One of the trol

So what happens if a probe is launched?

Judging by what has happened with past Congressional investigations, the subpoenas will be ignored and nothing will be done about it. It's a pattern that works for Bush again and again.
Sorry but the Rule of Law doesn't seem to apply when "National Security" is on the line.

just about every form of government access to information is authorized by something.

I think what the GP meant was that there would be some sort of quasi-official authorization. Along the lines of making all of the evidence classified beyond the judges level to ever see the it, or some kind of DHS gag order + infinite postponement of the trial. Simply a classified letter from an FBI big telling the prosecutor or judge not to pursue the matter any further might work just fine. The is a fair amount of risk in challenging it, a risk many people would not like to take. I'm sure there are ways for the security portions of the government to be technically "cooperating" but never actually have to really answer to a judge. There are parallels to this kind of behavior where the politically powerful simply refuse to comply with the law and seem to be getting away with it.

If they'd taken the time to do a full and fair recount, Gore would have won. We know this because after the fact the recounts were done. While Bush would have won under some of the deals the lawyers were kicking around Gore would have won had the simply followed the laws as written.

-- MarkusQ

Right... because there wasn't a single shred of possible evidence to NYT's claims.

In related news, the Democratic Party changed their named to United Progressive Socialist States of America.

look up NEWSROOM - it's not synonymous with TALKING HEAD

You say that like it makes a difference. Newsrooms continually and consistently downplay GOP scandals when possible - i.e. the "bipartisan" Abramoff scandal - while treating non-issues as Dem scandals - i.e. Pelosi One. When a GOP scandal is too big to ignore, like with the House pages, it's a top story for a couple weeks and then the press forgets about it. As opposed to Whitewater.

I saw them discussing every major republican scandal that every other news org discussed.

You mean like calling for a pardon of Scooter Libby and listing Mark Foley as a Democrat from Florida?

As to the recount, it was the NEW YORK TIMES that reported their recount showed BUSH taking Florida. Learn to read, and get over it.

Only under selective recounts. With a full, statewide recount, Gore won under every scenario. Eat it, bitch.

Here are a couple of links. Gonzales is losing support all over the place. There are lots of reasons to impeach him.
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/94
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070514/ap_on_go_ca_st _pe/fired_prosecutors_resignation;_ylt=Ar4oJH7Anyl 79457otQRniyyFz4D??????

This is a petition to impeach both Bush and Cheney, citing offenses agaist the American public.
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/65?ad =g1&gclid=CKGNhKyZvosCFSOUEAodm3xSwg/

The goal is 100,000, they are at 85,000. You can also include a short message which they claim will be routed to your senator by state.

That's a good question. A company that produces faulty machines with all sorts of blunders and glitches in the past and present - since this is a free market surely market pressure should eradicate this company. Yet it seems the government that should look into such irregularities (especially since free market is (supposed to be) one of the pillars of the GOP) apparently has no interest in doing so.. Could it be because Diebold not only supported the Bush campaign financially, but not only had the ability, but also the intention to to deliver the victory to their crony buddies? - Noo, that would be too outlandish and could never happen; the vigilant public would easily find out about it.

The Romans had a saying: Bis peccare in bello non licet. To blunder twice is not allowed in war. Thank god big business isn't warfare or after all these blunders heads would be a'rollin (and piling up).

No.. the "headlines" cried the conclusion "gore lost".. the bodies of these articles said gore won... sadly most of these articles are 5 years old. It's hard enough finding 2 year old articles on online news sites..

but here.. enjoy.. some.. egg on your face: http://archive.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181

20 Years ago I'm sure that phone tapping ordinary citizens without a warrant would have been quite a concern, today it's hardly an issue in the minds Joe Sixpack.

a majority of americans support impeachment for illegal domestic wiretapping.

Maybe Bush really wants to wipe out all those annoying voters who are messing up his approval ratings....

No need to kill them... just send them to prison camps.

For Release: January 16, 2006

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.

For Release: January 16, 2006

New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.

I call troll.

Republicans are the only people who use this word, they and newscasters. It's a lovely thing, because they only use it as a term for people who call them liars.

Well, since recent polls have indicated that an overwhelming majority of newscasters claim to be democrats, that shoots your first assertion out of the water. This is of course, well, a lie (by which I suppose you will now call me partisan) since a quick search yielded up an example of democrats calling republicans partisan.

That's why the Democrats are such a mess. They're absolutely everyone else that isn't Bush. They aren't a side, they're the majority of us, the contrarians to Bush's view of reality.

Rubbish and non-sense. I know many who would either identify themselves as republicans or conservatives to DO NOT like Bush. While I agree with some of his moral stances (in regard to pro-life, pro-family, etc.), I do not agree with many of his policies from increased spending to an erosion of personal rights in the PATRIOT Act. Does this mean I am a Democrat? Absolutely not! I believe in a small federal government, the right of the unborn, and responsibility for our own actions -- all things that seem to be opposed by your "majority" party. There are millions of people in this country who disagree with Bush and the Democratic party. Anyone who follows anyone blindly is following a dangerous path -- you will never know where you will be led.

Bush and his co-thinkers have been wrong on the environment, tax cuts, terrorism, civil rights, causus belli, voting machines, the Swift Boat and Murtha smears, privacy, education, regulation, (repeat ad-nauseum)

Do you care to defend each and every one of these accusations? While many of your listed items may have valid arguments, I think it is safe to say that you snuck in more than a few issues that you cannot irrefutably defend. For just one example, tax cuts have given our economy the boost it needed to get back up and running again, and tax revenues are now actually higher than when Bush took office. For decades, fiscal conservatives and economists have shown that tax cuts actually help the economy since allowing individuals to invest in the economy is much more effecient than increasing government spending. Why again was Bush wrong on tax cuts? (Yes, this is a debatable opinion, but that is precisely my point!)

This post shows the very same single-minded, "borderline psychopathic" traits that you put on Bush -- if you are with him on anything (or is that, you are not in agreement with Catbeller?), you are evil. I will not and cannot defend all of the presidents actions, but just because Bush did it does not mean that the action is inherently evil or wrong. He, just like everyone else, is human. We all do some things that are good, we all do some things poorly, and we all do things that are deceitful and wrong (sadly, usually more of the latter). The first step to understanding and living with each other is to recognize this fact.

"GOP.com, of course."

Note how it's a .com (as in "profit-making enterprise"), rather than a non-profit .org. Note that http://www.democrats.com/ is a progressive advocacy group whereas http://www.democrats.org/ is the national Democratic Party's website. I do like how the official Democratic Party website's current (as of this posting) home page headline is "Arrest Warrant Issued for GOP Leader."

Has he broken any laws? If so, please list them,

Though I'm starting to worry I was wrong as nobody has denounced this tape as fake.

Oh, don't worry--just give them time. The conspiracy theorists will have an undoubtably reasonable rebuttal ready soon. It's just takes a bit longer when the words are coming out of OBL's own mouth.

Lest we forget how the CIA actually commited Nick Berg's beheading rather than, God forbid, a benevolent muslim, or how Bush, being evil incarnate that he is, actually shot down one ofthe planes himself during 9/11.

-Grym

.Watch it and then tell me how this could be acceptable under any circumstance.

Ask Bush.

(Actually it's the first thing Novak says that really cracks me up...)

I guess you weren't aware that Bush was involved in an illegal abortion back in the '70's after he knocked up some girl. Seems a bit hypocritical to run as a pro-life candidate, don't you think? If that link doesn't convince you, just google it and you will find plenty more...

BOTH parties you say? Nonsense. Show me anything even close to what the Republicans are currently doing.

The facts are (just a brief snippet really)

SPROUL & ASSOCIATES is directly financed by the RNC. Nathan Sproul is reported as the director of the Arizona Christian Coalitition.

The Charlston Gazette reported on 8/20 Sproul & Associates in West Virginia started a voter registration campaign where ONLY republicans were registered -- not Democrats -- apparently in violation of the West Virginia law. (The article is reported here).

There have been reports posted on the internet from Pennsylvania (on September 17) and Maryland (on September 16) of the the same organization -- Sproul & Associates -- pretending to be workers from the non-partisan America Votes, and registering ONLY Republicans. To obtain locations to set up shop, Sproul and Associates apparently lied to puiblic librarians about being non-partisan. (The internet postings, that took place on a librarian network, are reported here.

On September 22, Sproul and Associates did the same thing in Oregon. This is a plain violation of Oregon law, according to Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury in an interview with Northwest Cable News. See here. It also appears that another Republican group engaged in "bait and switch registration", at least according to the Daily Vanguard.

A few days ago, CBS reported that an organization in Nevada called Voters Outreach America was THROWING OUT registration forms filled out by people trying to register to vote as Democrats. The American Prospect has reported that Voters Outreach America is under contract with Sproul & Associates.

And then, of course, there is the widely-reported story from South Dakota, where the nephew of Thune, the Republican challenger to Tom Daschle, has been caught fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots for Republicans. A criminal investigation is pending. Top Republicans have been forced to resign.

What it appears here is that there are reliable reports of GOP operatives in at least SIX states engaging in sytematic and repeated attempts at voter fraud. From only registering republicans, to falsifying absentee ballot requests, to destroying democratic voter applications, this appears to be a coordinated effort at all levels to swing the election illegally to the Republicans. In fact, things are so bad that former SD goveror Janklow has issued a public statement saying that the national GOP is encouraging voter fraud.

So, sorry, it's not both parties. It's the Republicans. Show me anything comparable done by Democrats, and I'll eat my own shit and vote shit, err... Bush.

Republicans think that Democrats stuff the ballot box with fraudulent votes... dead people, illegal aliens, people voting in multiple times in different jurisdictions etc. THERE IS A LOT OF TRUTH TO THIS.

Do you have any proof to this at all? There is plenty of proof about Republican action during the 2000 election (and an attempt at a repeat).

More like George Bush. Now the truth can finally be told: that debate hump was a WiFi antenna!

Thanks for that, Karl Rove. Please back that assertion up with facts. Because it sure seems to anyone who's actually paying attention that there's a huge disparity between Bush and Kerry. Let me list just a few of the differences that I've observed.

Kerry actually mentioned science in his DNC acceptence speech. Kerry actually mentioned his web site in his DNC acceptence speech. Kerry actually saved the lives of several people in Vietnam and afterwards. Kerry is a documented war hero. Everyone who was actually there at the time says so. (Lots of people who weren't there and just happen to be funded by wealthy Republicans from Texas claim otherwise.)

Meanwhile Bush's favorite philosopher is Jesus, which is fair enough. Lots of Christians love Jesus. But Bush can't name anything Jesus ever said, let alone abide by His word. Still, Jesus is a good name-drop sop to the sacreligious right for him, so he'll continue to use that line.

Bush has never saved anyone's life. Bush started a preemptive war that has so far resulted in over 1000 American deaths and at least ten times that number of Iraqi deaths -- including innocent women and children.

Come on, man, pick up the beat. Kerry is much superior to Bush. Don't listen to the right-wing talking heads. Think for yourself.

However, had all of Florida's votes been counted, Gore would have won. This argument has been beaten to death, folks. The 2000 election is over. History will recognize it as the sham it was, but does it really matter? Bush is the US president, at least for a few more months. People need to focus energy on making sure election 2004 isn't an even bigger sham.

Here is a break down of just some of the absentee votes that were, but should not have been counted for Bush in Florida 2000... (Source: democrats.com)

• Absentee ballots that could not be read by voting machines, but were illegally "duplicated" by county election officials: 10,000 (60% Bush?)
• Absentee ballots cast in Seminole and Martin counties by Republican voters following the criminal alteration of defective ballot applications by Republican operatives: 5,000 (99% Bush)
• Overseas military ballots that were not legal, but were counted because of massive pressure from the Bush campaign: 680 (71% Bush)

Here is a CNN article on the Seminole county absentee ballot application form alterations. The Republican operatives were allowed to alter incorrectly filled-out/printed applications (by Reps), but Democrat operatives were not allowed to do the same to applications by Democrats.

If your feeling rich you can purchase this July 2001 NYT article entitled "EXAMINING THE VOTE; How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote" by D Barstow and Don Van Natta.

Then there is this nice and very recent example of (gasp) Republican cheating with absentee ballots in (gasp) Florida: A fine Greg Palast article.

NASA is trying to fund lots of things and its priorities have shifted in accordance with its history and funding.

Back in the 1960s Congress funded NASA programs because it was "necessary" to beat the Soviets in technology. And the Space Race was the technology showcase that the Soviets chose for us (they were the first in Space with both unmanned and manned vehicles). Congressional candidates translated that into politics: If you did not vote for NASA funding, you were "soft on Communism."

By the time of the moon landings, the rhetoric had changed from "red scare" and "red baiting" to The Great Society, basic human rights and whether or not one was for or against the war in Vietnam. Detante was in vogue because Nixon was winning the "unfought wars" against China and Russia with his trips there.

NASA's attitudes changed from an assumption that funding would always be there, which encouraged a "can do" attitude, to wondering how to save programs and which programs to save. NASA negotiated with people who wanted launch vehicles and found it had competition -- not from the Soviets, who were still unacceptable to the West but from the newly-minted European corporation, largely funded by those governments in Western Europe who needed access to Clarke orbit for geostationary communication satellites.

NASA's first proposal, which I remember from my World Book Encyclopedia, was to build a reusable manned vehicle that it could fit atop a Saturn rocket engine. NASA would use the Saturn V (which was used to launch the moon missions as well as Skylab) to construct an outpost in low Earth orbit and use these reusable vehicles to transfer men and cargo to a space station. The space station would, in turn, be a waypoint for launches to the moon and beyond.

But NASA had problems getting customers to buy into its new concept, because its reusable launch vehicle, or "shuttle" was too small. The military insisted that its cargo bay be of a certain size, so that they could launch large spy satellites. NASA, fearing that all satellite launches would go to Arianespace, kowtowed to the US military and built our present shuttle system. The delay in changing the program cost them ten years and billions of dollars. It cost them most of their "can do" managers. It also cost them support in Congress and among the American people. With no regular launches, media started asking NASA the questions previously reserved for congressmen and the President: "Is this a good use of taxpayer money?"

NASA administrators and PR people started talking about spinoffs from their scientific endeavors to answer many of these questions and even initiated the publication of a magazine in 1996 to help convince the public and corporations that NASA programs are relevant.

Then came the shuttle program. It was over budget, very, very late and hugely popular, until the launches became routine. And what made them routine was a consistent refusal, within top level managers to see that space flight is more dangerous than flying in a private plane. Also, there was no funding for a place for the shuttle to get to as before the first shuttle launched, Skylab fell from the sky. By the time of the Challenger accident in 1986, upper level managers were no longer listening to the scientists assembling and handling the equipment And I would argue that the recommendations in management behavior didn't change.

Nowadays, NASA is infected with a "can't do" attitude as the Columbia tragedy grounds NASA and the facts are reported that managers felt it was best to risk the lives of the astronauts and the shuttle because they

Seems they could have bought the Kerry campaign a copy of windows so thier site would crash more.

All of this, of course, ignores the fact that when the President of the United States decides to embrace the doctrine of preemptive war, claiming that there is an imminent threat to his own nation, the burdern of proof is on him to support those claims. Let's see the evidence of WMDs in Iraq. How about those aerial drones that could be used against the US? An Iraq-Al Qaeda link? Some uranium from Africa? Anything?

The trouble in America would be that you would have to wait until everyone agrees on the count. We would still have people counting ballots in Florida today if that were the case.

It doesn't matter how you count them. Gore won.

I certainly wish we didn't have the Patriot act, but what are the alternatives? Citizen vigilance, or martial law. That's about it. How many terrorists have you caught today? Didn't think so.

James Woods (the actor) identified 9/11 hijackers on a flight they were using as a dry run. He got the information to authorities, who did nothing about it. (The link tries to spin this as a "Bush knew" conspiracy, but it's far more likely to be typical bureaucratic inertia and incompetence). Thanks to citizen vigilance, we had the information we needed to stop 9/11 without invasive laws like the Patriot Act.

At risk of feeding a deliberate troll, you do realize, of course, that:

• "murderous" - "Military shrugs off attack on wedding party"
• "torturing" - More accounts, photos of Iraq abuse surface...
• "liar" - Bush misstated report on Iraq
• " rewarded people who attacked you"
• "spoke fondly of it" - Mission Accomplished!

Oh, yes, he was elected. As spelled in the Constitution, by representatives sent to Electorate College by all of the States of the Union.

This is a commonly believed lie.

He was not elected. The election results in Florida were miscounted, as has been reported by a number of independant (as well as biased but detailed and cross-referenced) sources.

This isn't about theGore winning the popular vote by over a half million votes. It isn't even about the 11,000 individual complaints to the Justice Department about voting rights violations in Florida.

This is about the fact that Al Gore legally won Florida, and therefore the 2000 presidential election.

This sounds to me like the government will be putting in standardized backdoors, not helping to secure our yada yada yada. You want to see who's responsible for terrorism? That's all I have to say.

You know, I hate to burst your anti-american screwed-up fishbowl view of america, but there were more than just AMERICANS killed September 11th.

We are the only country with the balls and the hardware to nip this in the bud.

And for invading 2 countries? Hmm.. hasn't been a plane Hijacked in the US in over 2 years.

Casualties? More people die choking on a sandwich while they drive their cars than we are losing daily, Iraqis included.

The fact of the matter is, somebody hits you, you hit back. But you don't hit back tit-for-tat. You hit back so they say "Hmm... maybe I f*cked with the wrong person". If you remember correctly, 3 times we played make-love-not-war with these bastards and 3 times we got screwed. They don't GO AWAY if you ignore them.

People save every penny and sell everything they have just to move to this country for a chance at a better life. Your pissy little specks of countries get in a financial mess and we bail you out. You get overtaken by a druglord or religious zealot, we get your country back for you. There isn't a country on this planet that hasnt received needed assistance from the US, but all we get in return is a "Thanks, now piss off Nazis" as you run us out of town with weapons we supplied you to protect yourself.

I tell you what: Go to Democrats.com if you want to piss and moan about america. These idiots are hell-bent on turning us into the Prison-bitch of the UN, you'll love 'em. Or even better, why don't you order a subscription to a Radical Muslim newspaper and get your fill.

Leave slashdot for slashdot-type things: News for NERDS and the feedback relating to nerd-ish things.

But, if you look through the Florida law on election results you will find that an "overvote" is perfectly valid (aka "Will Of The People.")
That's why all the Media reports said that Gore didn't win, because if you only look at the 'controversial' counties, and you don't follow Florida election law for overvotes he wouldn't get enough votes to win.
'Every scenereo' is counting the overvotes, which is the law. The Florida Election
Just think what would happen without a paper trail to give a real account.

There are laws against such activities. But as long as a bunch of corrupt, self-serving, unconstitutional cowards are in charge, no real action against white-collar crimes will ever be taken.

Or, to put it differently: As long as white-collar criminals are in charge, white-collar crimes will be tolerated.

What I don't understand is why ordinary people tolerate and defend Bush's actions. After all, it is you and I who pay the bill at the end of the day.

AWOLBush has the basic facts. Shrub's military record shows that he did not show up for duty between May 1972 and October 1973.

There is no statute of limitations for desertion in time of war. If this was Clinton, Ken Starr would have investigated. However because it is a republican he gets off.

See also Bush's Top 10 Lies, Exaggerations And 'Obsfucations' About His Military Service

1. Perhaps I'm too much of a purist, but I've always seen the internet as an ever-changing medium, not a permanent one. Archives have bothered me ever since the fledgling days of DejaNews.

...are (admittedly controversial) articles that are posted on a major news web site, then taken off a few days later, like this one, or this other one. This is a dangerous trend, and asks a sensitive question: why "remove" stories instead of putting out counter-arguments? Freedom of speech has it that you can say anything (almost: libel and slander are not acceptable), but anyone can challenge what you say by bringing their own arguments to the discussion. Too often, though, the american media silences alternative viewpoints by excluding them from the debate, so that the public doesn't even know they existe. Case in point: how come Chomsky hasn't been invited to present his views about the 9/11 events on television? If his arguments are so weak as the conservative pundits claim, why not simply try to prove him wrong on the air? Well, there's a good answer to that: they can't, and they know it. So they just ignore his existence altogether, and immediately try to discredit him (without ever challenging his arguments) whenever he is mentioned. Quite revealing...

Not quite so funny when you consider the following:

Did Al Gore Win After All? US Newspapers Would Rather Not Say.

Media Supresses News That Bush Lost Election to Gore.

Palast Clarifies "Gore Won" Statements.

The NORC Florida Ballot Study.

We can all use our National ID that Ashcroft wants.

Political Cartoons at Political Strikes

"I think he is being unjustly accused and that's the kind of case I like to do," Keker said Thursday.

Bravo.

As programmers write code to further the cause of opensource software, we need skilled Lawyers to protect our rights. Its war, and the battle will take place in the courts.

Ashcroft tells it all - Political Cartoons at Political Strikes

Guess again.