Slashdot Mirror

She had intent. She knew all about email servers and how they work. She ordered an audit of her 2008 campaign's email server to try to determine who was leaking to the press.

And yeah, your comments are correct. (But the ridiculous all caps and bold and exclamation points assure that no one will take you seriously. If you don't want to be viewed as an unhinged crank, stop acting like one. )

You don't seem to have any real familiarity with the medium. Allow me to get you started:

The Dennis Prager show (Check out Prager University)
The Hugh Hewitt show
The Eric Metaxas show
The Larry Elder show
The Michael Medved show
The John Batchelor show

Now? The right wing have always accused the ACLU of having a liberal bias.

And you think that is "odd"?

The ACLU’s Communist, Atheist Roots
The ACLU’s untold Stalinist heritage

They aren't quite as bad as they started, but they still are trying to drive American society towards its vision, which is very different than that of the Founders.

Then again, I'm not sure there is anything they haven't accused of having a liberal bias.

I'm curious, have you even investigated to see if there might be anything to it?

Survey: 7 percent of reporters identify as Republican
Republicans’ media bias claims boosted by scarcity of right-leaning journalists

Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement
Moving Further to the Left

Lawyers are more liberal than general population, study finds; what about judges?

Do you think we need to cover unions? Civil servants?

And if you have the curiosity, you might find a surprise or two, or three.

Some places to find new perspectives:
National Review
Weekly Standard
Commentary
Reason
Instapundit
Dennis Prager / Prager U
Hugh Hewitt

However, the danger of the Islamic terrorism can not, and should never, be used to justify the destruction of the Constitution of the United States of America

  Two wrongs can never make a right, sir !!

I quite agree with you, the Constitution must be respected. And I acknowledge that this matter is treading on what could rightly be considered troubled ground, if not dangerous ground. Various parts of the federal government, from time to time, have engaged in behavior that didn't always properly respected the rights of Americans. Sometimes it takes a while to get it sorted out.

From what I have read, I think there are reasonable grounds to be concerned, but not to panic. While it is possible there is a genuine problem, that is far from clear. Congress needs to engage with this to perform good oversight. As more has been coming out, and responsible analysis of it performed, I'm beginning to think that it is unlikely there is a real legal problem. The biggest problems will be perception, political, and the potential for abuse, not actual abuse. I would feel much more comfortable about this if the IRS sandal hadn't demonstrated a wanton breakdown of protections inside a government agency with high potential for serious abuse.

One of the big problems with even discussing something like this is that It is fairly common for people to misunderstand the actual meaning and implications, or even existence, of the law, whether it is Constitutional, criminal, or the law of war. And sometimes there is a real question even in the legal community about what those rights really are, where the boundaries are, and what does it mean? Slashdot is no exception. There are many fanciful, faulty, or just plain wrong, ideas about how the Constitution works, the law works, what the courts have said, and what it all means. It really tends to come out at times like this.

I found this helpful:

Minimization and the “Collection First” Surveillance Model
Why Does a Terry Standard Apply to Querying the NSA Call Records Database?
The Debate on NSA and PRISM: Andrew McCarthy and Conor Friedersdorf
Helping The Terrorists Avoid Detection and Capture, 2013 Edition

I understand the danger of Islamic terrorism, first hand

I can't tell you where I am, suffice to say that I am posting this comment from outside of the United States of America, and my primary task is to penetrate some of the more virulent Islamic circles to obtain info on the global jihadist movement

I'll read between the lines and say thank you for your service, of whatever variety it is. Respect OPSEC. I pray for your safety, and that you have good hunting.

Take care.

However, the danger of the Islamic terrorism can not, and should never, be used to justify the destruction of the Constitution of the United States of America

  Two wrongs can never make a right, sir !!

I quite agree with you, the Constitution must be respected. And I acknowledge that this matter is treading on what could rightly be considered troubled ground, if not dangerous ground. Various parts of the federal government, from time to time, have engaged in behavior that didn't always properly respected the rights of Americans. Sometimes it takes a while to get it sorted out.

From what I have read, I think there are reasonable grounds to be concerned, but not to panic. While it is possible there is a genuine problem, that is far from clear. Congress needs to engage with this to perform good oversight. As more has been coming out, and responsible analysis of it performed, I'm beginning to think that it is unlikely there is a real legal problem. The biggest problems will be perception, political, and the potential for abuse, not actual abuse. I would feel much more comfortable about this if the IRS sandal hadn't demonstrated a wanton breakdown of protections inside a government agency with high potential for serious abuse.

One of the big problems with even discussing something like this is that It is fairly common for people to misunderstand the actual meaning and implications, or even existence, of the law, whether it is Constitutional, criminal, or the law of war. And sometimes there is a real question even in the legal community about what those rights really are, where the boundaries are, and what does it mean? Slashdot is no exception. There are many fanciful, faulty, or just plain wrong, ideas about how the Constitution works, the law works, what the courts have said, and what it all means. It really tends to come out at times like this.

I found this helpful:

Minimization and the “Collection First” Surveillance Model
Why Does a Terry Standard Apply to Querying the NSA Call Records Database?
The Debate on NSA and PRISM: Andrew McCarthy and Conor Friedersdorf
Helping The Terrorists Avoid Detection and Capture, 2013 Edition

I understand the danger of Islamic terrorism, first hand

I can't tell you where I am, suffice to say that I am posting this comment from outside of the United States of America, and my primary task is to penetrate some of the more virulent Islamic circles to obtain info on the global jihadist movement

I'll read between the lines and say thank you for your service, of whatever variety it is. Respect OPSEC. I pray for your safety, and that you have good hunting.

Take care.

Good luck with that. Even if Congress goes to the trouble of answering it, much of the media, including social media, will likely down play it if it might reflect badly on the current administration.

Heard anything about this one?

IRS sued for improperly seizing the medical records of 10 million Americans

It is just an adder to the growing pile.

The IRS Scandal, Day 8
Benghazi Emails Directly Contradict White House Claims
Congressman Paul Ryan on Benghazi, IRS, and DOJ Snooping the House: “Of course I’m troubled. Are you kidding?”

One of the interesting controversies regarding the MX missile was the plans for basing. One of the proposals was called "dense pack." The idea was that if you put a bunch of missile silos close to each other, attacking one silo with a nuclear warhead would result in so much turbulence, blast, and local radiation that if more warheads were arriving at the same time, they would be battered by the effects of the previously exploding nuclear warhead and be ineffective in attacking the silo they were targeted at. (No, I'm not kidding.) You might be seeing the political equivalent of that right now. There are so many scandals coming out of so many agencies, they compete for attention, confuse the public, allow the media to more or less squeeze them out, and attenuate the political damage. This could be one of those, "They are incompetent, insane, or brilliant" moments. I don't like much of any of what has been revealed, but I wouldn't place a bet on it having any lasting impact on the administration. Most of the media, minus AP, seems indifferent to being spied on, and you would expect that to rouse them if nothing else would. Apparently not.

Well we all can't be NPR listeners I guess... But Daily Show viewers did rank right under them for answering the most questions regarding domestic and international issues correctly..

Always happy to go a round: The Truth-O-Meter Says: False

or two: Rush, ‘H&C’ Audiences Smarter Than ‘Daily Show’ Viewers

when I have time.

By the way, if you like NPR, you might find this program interesting. Host is a law professor, author, worked in public broadcasting for 10 years, and hosted his own national NPR series. Lots of interesting guests. Poetry segments are on Fridays. Nationally syndicated program.

Is there an official news agency

Here in the US we call it NPR.

Fox is the media outlet the Government is trying to censure

But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.

Pay closer attention, then. And those are just the conservatives who are normally supportive of Bush...

Like any legislation, this resolution is not perfect. I have some concern that readers may misinterpret the preamble language that the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism as a new grant of power; rather it is merely a statement that the President has existing constitutional powers. I am gratified that in the body of this resolution, it does not contain a broad grant of powers, but is appropriately limited to those entities involved in the attacks that occurred on September 11.

The intellectual seeks in various ways...to endow his life with
a pervasive meaning, and thus to find unity with himself, with
his fellow man, and with the cosmos....As a consequence
there is growing demand that the world and its total pattern
of life be subject to an order that is significant and meaningful.

That being said, there are plenty of thoughtful, well reasoned arguments for Bush out there, if people take the time to look for them. Try Hugh Hewitt for example. I've actually been looking for thoughtful, well reasoned bloggers for Kerry and had little success. Many of them are pure propaganda (e.g. Michael Moore) or are mostly just sarcasm and snide comments with little real substance (e.g. Joshua Marshall).

As to Bush being a liar, a proxy, or a poor leader, you would need to be more specific to get a good counter argument. In regards to the accusation of Bush being a low IQ, there is evidence that Kerry's is lower.

A /. poll would only prove that bored computer people have a certain opinion. Generalizing from that to the "tendency" of the general population's intelligence is silly. Maybe /. is mostly slackers and all the really hardworking, intelligent computer people don't bother reading/posting/moderating here, in which case the Kerry support is simply a symptom that lazy computer people support Kerry. Of course, this theory I just made up is entirely lacking in factual basis - just as the theory that bright people choose kerry is lacking in any solid factual basis.

Damn. Let me guess.... Kerry fan? With a little Moore influence? So, did you choose a glass with the red, or the green kool-aid? Well, if you paid for it, at least you got a full dose. Well, never mind.

If you take a few deep breaths, and read from a wider group of media outlets, you might still have a chance. There are now even antidotes for the F 911 fever swamp. Otherwise, I'm sorry.

And actually, impeachment is essentially an indictment, not an investigation. There actually has to be wrong-doing involved for impeachment to be considered. Anti-Bush fantasies aside, 9/11 didn't involve that. If it did, Clinton would be up for more trouble.

Ta ta, and good luck with all that.

Daily Kos, one of the top progressive political sites on the web, is now a Scoop site.

It was previously on MT, but the partisan nature of the site attracted large numbers of trolls and flamers hijacking my message boards.

RealClearPolitics - Polling data and best of the MSM commentary.
Instapundit - Smorgasboard of daily links interspersed with commentary.
Hugh Hewitt - Law professor, author, and radio talk show host.
Powerline - Commentary and links. Were very influential in the Rathergate controversy.

Tech Central Station

The Corner on National Review Online

HughHewitt.com

Hugh Hewitt's site has links to many of the conservative web blogs out there

I regulary visit www.hughhewitt.com. A great conservative radio show accompanies it. One thing I really appreciate about his show is that he occasionally interviews non-political types...often people from geeky/science realms.

See Hugh Hewitt's blog. Hewitt himself is a partisan commentator, no doubt.

But see the emails that he posts, which he received from Professor Cartwright of Rice University.

Given how fast this story is moving, this part of it is almost old news already: the documents are fake.

At this point, the story is shifting to the origin of the documents. To date, some theories have been forwarded, but no smoking guns are in evidence.

My personal view is that these documents are such cheap and tawdry forgeries that it's hard for Dan Rather to shake the impression that he has some level of complicity in the falsehoods.

The Washington Post has an side baseball account of Kerry's August collapse, but for all the focus on tactics, the weakness of Kerry as a candidate is obvious from the fact that it has now been 38 days since Kerry sat down on camera with a major figure from American journalism for an in-depth interview that would be certain to bring up Kerry's whoppers about his Vietnam service. Kerry's still in the box he built from himself of fables of CIA men and hats and gun-running to Cambodia.

"My name is Steve Gardner. I served in 1966 and 1967 on my first tour of duty in Vietnam on Swift boats, and I did my second tour in '68 and '69, involved with John Kerry in the last 2 1/2 months of my tour. The John Kerry that I know is not the John Kerry that everybody else is portraying. I served alongside him and behind him, five feet away from him in a gun tub, and watched as he made indecisive moves with our boat, put our boats in jeopardy, put our crews in jeopardy... if a man like that can't handle that 6-man crew boat, how can you expect him to be our Commander-in-Chief?"

-- Steven Gardner

You can read an interview with him regarding the story John Kerry has told about going into Cambodia, supposedly more than 50 times, including on the floor of the Senate, here on the August 10th transcript. The New York Post adds this:

The swift vets are also behind the anti-Kerry best seller, "Unfit for Command," which has already forced Team Kerry to retract his decades-old claim that he was sent on an illegal covert mission to Cambodia on Christmas 1968.

Kerry's own handpicked historian, Douglas Brinkley, told the Washington Post over the weekend that Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia claim is "obviously wrong," backing up a key claim by the swift vets who say it never happened.

6) Are you aware that the doctor who claims to have treated Kerry's wounds wasn't the one listed on the documentation as having treated Kerry, and that the doctor who did treat him affirmed Kerry's report of the wound?

Not quite. The person who signed that was the Navy Corpsman assisting the doctor who treated Kerry:

Only a treatment record reflecting a scratch and a certificate signed three months later have been produced. There is no "after-action" hostile fire or casualty report. This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this "most frightening night" of Kerry's Vietnam experience.

Letson agreed with Hibbard, in a statement the doctor gave us in April, that Kerry's injury was minor and probably self-inflicted:
"The incident that occasioned my meeting with Lieutenant Kerry began while he was patrolling the coast at night just north of Cam Ranh Bay, where I was the only medical officer for a small support base. Kerry returned from that night on patrol with an injury.
"Kerry reported that he had observed suspicious activity on shore and fired a flare to illuminate the area," Letson continued. "According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.
"The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a grenade round at close range to the shore. The crewman who related this story thought that the injury was from a fragment of the grenade shell that had ricocheted back from the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury I treated.
"What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about one centimeter in length and was about two or three millimeters in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle," Letson