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A quick review of the political spectrum:

Conservative * * * *Centrist * * * *Liberal

These type of statement make absolutely no sense to me. Can you point out the issues where Barack support your conservative/libertarian view over McCain? For that matter can you point out issues where Barack has actually proposed legitimate solutions (not just the hope and change mantra or the "we'll make big business pay for it all").

As for "he's not (yet) part of the washington culture" claim so many people make; of course you can say that (although repitition doesn't make it true) since he's hasn't even spent a full term there yet. He is however fully engrossed in the far worse Chicago poilitical culture. The political environment that made being friends with people such a Ayers, Wright and Pfleger are requirement for any Democratic nominee.

And yes, it's hard to find a conservative politician in Washington, but electing the "Most Liberal Senator In 2007" President is not the way to find one.

"a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States"

No, what really happened was the grid was overloaded and the SQL virus was playing havoc with connectivity, then a tree fell over and tripped out a line, which spread in a domino effect all the way to Canada. A similar virus tripped out the control system in a Nuclear power plant.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20080531_6948.php

"During the hour before the Aug. 14 blackout, engineers in the control center of an Ohio utility struggled to figure out why transmission lines were failing and complained that a computer failure was making it difficult to determine what was going on, transcripts of telephone communications released Wednesday show"

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/09/60285

"Software failure cited in August blackout investigation .. A malfunctioning alarm system may have played a big role in the outage Dan Verton Nov 20 2003"

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/info-notices/2003/in200314.pdf

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/recovery/story/0,10801,87400,00.html

The National Journal, the szame rag that ranked John Kerry as the "most liberal" senator back around the previous presidental election? It seems pretty obvious to anyone who pokes around in their methodology that they only reason they publish these lists is to give the right some talking points. For example, there were only two votes they scored where Barack Obama took the "liberal" side, whereas Hilary Clinton took the "conservative" side, thus earning Obama two more "liberal" points than Hilary, On one of these votes, John McCain voted with Obama, so take that as you will. Here's a source: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/02/what_the_national_journal_libe.html.

And here's the methodology: http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/votes.htm. Some of those are quite head scratchers, for example, voting for "94/SConRes21: Raise the tax rate on income over $1 million and use the revenue to increase funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. March 22. (38-58)" earns you conservative points. Who knew?

Excellent point.

And then you get guys like me. I could personally care LESS about Barack Obama's skin color. Really. His ancestry is of no interest to me.

What is of interest are his positions defined by his voting record. Barack Obama's voting record is the single MOST LIBERAL of anyone in the Senate. More liberal than Ted Kennedy, more liberal than anyone. Even the redoutable Maxine Water of the House, who recently (and infamously) threatened to "socialize" all the American oil companies, isn't as liberal as Obama (and has endorsed Hillary Clinton).

So my vote goes to McCain. Not because I particularly like him, but because he is, by far and away, the LEAST vile and frightening of the available choices.

Torture is still used because it works, and it works because it's still used? That's some nice circular logic there, Lou.

The only reason it's still used because some people are sociopaths who enjoy hurting others (or they are in search of "revenge"). This is why it's generally associated with Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and North Korea. It's a verifiable fact
that
torture
does
not
work
for
the
reasons
I
explained
previously.

There Are Four Lights!

He has not committed treason as defined in the Constitution ("levying War against [the Untied States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort");

ahem. Cheney ordered Libby to leak the NIE and to blow Valerie Plame's cover. Revealing a spy to the public certainly gives "Aid and Comfort" to your enemies, when the spy's only job is to spy on those enemies.

The rights written in the Bill of Rights apply to all humans

It's also worth pointing out that those rights aren't there to protect the guilty, they are there to protect the innocent. And there's good reason to believe that there are innocent people detained in these camps:

• The vast majority were turned in by people looking for reward money or to suck up to U.S. forces. Witch hunt, anyone?
• We know that innocent people have been detained and then killed by U.S. forces. If you're not familiar with the case of Dilawar the taxi driver, you need to read this. This guy was captured by an Iraqi warlord trying to deflect suspicion from himself for an attack on U.S. troops. Then, because they thought he screamed funny, a bunch of United States soldiers "pulped" (the words of the doctor who performed the autopsy) his legs. The other four guys were shipped to Gitmo and held for a year or so before they finally decided they posed no threat.
• The soldiers there "know" these are bad guys, and treat them that way, regardless of who they are. You ask how I know that? So, a U.S. soldier at Guantanamo is asked to impersonate an unruly detainee for a drill. Unfortunately, the soldiers sent in to subdue him aren't told it's a drill. He ends up with brain damage and seizures.

Detaining 'enemy combatants' makes sense, to an extent. But they are still entitled to a tribunal under the Geneva Convention to determine if they actually are 'enemy combatants'. Go ahead, read Convention III, Article 5 for yourself. Signatories (like the U.S.) are supposed to extend protection preemptively, until and unless a tribunal has determined that the Geneva protections don't apply.

Sure, the U.S. is better than a Soviet gulag or Saddam Hussein's torture rooms. So what? That's not much to brag about. We ought to be an example to the world of the rule of law, like when we advocated and won trial against the Nazis in WWII. The Soviets and the British were all for summary executions... how far we've fallen.

I thought they'd all be too busy advocating Ron Paul for President.

My favorite quote? We are not libertarians, we are constitutionalists. Suuuure you are.

Wired posted this story last week ( http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/gonzales_ hides_.html ) after someone spotted this story: http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070510nj1 .htm.

The blogger had this to say: Put simply, this stinks. Earlier this months, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) subpoenaed (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/leahy_su poenas_.html) all e-mails between the Justice Department and the White House over the attorney firings. Yet our nation's top lawman refuses to obey the law of the land. And continues to be our nation's top lawman.

The Bush administration continues to openly flaunt their complete contempt for the laws of this country. Bring respect back to the White House my ass.

Check CNN - Bush is out stumping *against* greenhouse gas emissions. His oil-based corporate masters are having to take a back seat to Bush finding some kind of bandwagon that has public support that he can ride the coattails of. The same for Gonzales - they need every shred of positive press they can get right now.

With stories about how all those e-mails Gozales said didn't exist being leaked by insiders (http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070510nj 1.htm), and three US soldiers captured and most likely being tortured/killed, BushCo is pulling out the stops.

Hell, George might even roll Cheney over and sacrifice Rove for the Plame leak the way things are going.

The republicans running in the primary must really be proud.

Remember when Lieberman's website was molested?

flack : one who provides publicity; especially : PRESS AGENT

Do you remember Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness proposal that came out shortly after 9/11? A gigantic database that aggregated all available electronic information on US citizens -- financial and credit card records, grocery store shopper cards, movie rentals, library books, maybe even medical records? And how people raised such a stink that congress cut off funding for it?

Well, guess what. It's still up and running.. It simply moved over to the pentagon, that's all.

"We'll bring the parties responsible for the leaking of classified documents to justice.
                                          --- George W. Bush
Take another snort George.

Sincerely,
K. Trout, Patriot

To quote from BoingBoing:

This long, excellent article on the history of broadcast spectrum allocation in America is the single best explanation of the mess that we're in today. In short: greedy broadcasters tricked Congress into giving them free spectrum for a second set of digital channels, so that Americans who bought digital TVs would have something to watch. Then they did nothing with them. Meantime, cops and firefighters and EMTs are (literally) dying for some of that squat-upon spectrum so that they can coordinate their rescue efforts.

That's nonsensical. If he didn't vote because he wasn't present, how can you assume that means he would've voted according the majority opinion? It's not like he abstained, he just wasn't there.

The National Journal article is up on their website, for what it's worth, as is a second article, apparently to clarify the first. Haven't read either one yet, too busy. A brief glance at the second suggests that his lifetime Senate voting record is a bit more flattering than the last couple year's. He still shows up as pretty liberal, but not quite so much. Moderate, he ain't.

That's nonsensical. If he didn't vote because he wasn't present, how can you assume that means he would've voted according the majority opinion? It's not like he abstained, he just wasn't there.

The National Journal article is up on their website, for what it's worth, as is a second article, apparently to clarify the first. Haven't read either one yet, too busy. A brief glance at the second suggests that his lifetime Senate voting record is a bit more flattering than the last couple year's. He still shows up as pretty liberal, but not quite so much. Moderate, he ain't.

Are they? They have got a lot of headlines, but do suicide bombings actually achieve anything other than convince the target that the terrorists cannot be negotiated with, only eliminated?

It seemed to have worked in Algeria.

Congress now needs to make a law authorizing the FTC to implement a Do-Not-Call registry.

According to the Washington Post , there is activity on the House side to do just that:

Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the committee's ranking minority member, issued a joint statement this morning saying they "will take whatever legislative action is necessary to ensure consumers can stop intrusive calls from unwanted telemarketers."

I've listed the members of Energy & Commerce below. Members of Congress do care what their constituents think, and if they hear from enough of them, they are less likely to listen to lobbyists for the direct marketing industry. If you are a constituent of one of the members below, please do one of the following (in decreasing order of impact):

1. Write a snail mail letter c/o U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515.
2. Place a telephone call to 202-224-3121 and ask for your congressman's office.
3. Send an email.

If you're not sure who represents you, go here and type in your Zip code where it says "Find Your Representative."

If they don't hear from you, they will think you don't care.

Here are the members of this committee (as listed in The Almanac of American Politics ):

Majority (31 R): Tauzin (LA), Chmn.; Bilirakis (FL), Barton (TX), Upton (MI), Stearns (FL), Gillmor (OH), Greenwood (PA), Cox (CA), Deal (GA), Burr (NC), Vice Chmn.; Whitfield (KY), Norwood (GA), Cubin (WY), Shimkus (IL), Wilson (NM), Shadegg (AZ), Pickering (MS), Fossella (NY), Blunt (MO), Buyer (IN), Radanovich (CA), Bass (NH), Pitts (PA), Bono (CA), Walden (OR), Terry (NE), Fletcher (KY), Ferguson (NJ), Rogers (MI), Issa (CA), Otter (ID).

Minority (26 D): Dingell (MI), RMM; Waxman (CA), Markey (MA), Hall (TX), Boucher (VA), Towns (NY), Pallone (NJ), Brown (OH), Gordon (TN), Deutsch (FL), Rush (IL), Eshoo (CA), Stupak (MI), Engel (NY), Wynn (MD), Green (TX), McCarthy (MO), Strickland (OH), DeGette (CO), Capps (CA), Doyle (PA), John (LA), Allen (ME), Davis (FL), Schakowsky (IL), Solis (CA).