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US Defence officials have said charges including murder may be brought against Marines following a US investigation into the 24 civilian deaths in Haditha, a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Many Iraqis believe unjustified killings by US troops are common, though few have been confirmed by investigations.

Mr Maliki also vowed to disband militias....

By the summer of 2005, foreign jihadists - allied with al-Qaida - were ruling the city through intimidation and brute force. The situation seemed similar to Fallujah in 2004. Local police and tribal leaders were cowed, the population terrorized. Bombings, assassinations, beheadings and torture perpetrated by the terrorists against Iraqi citizens became commonplace. Even some victim's corpses were wired with explosives to kill family members coming to retrieve them.
http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20060215/OPINION/602150335/1014

US Defence officials have said charges including murder may be brought against Marines following a US investigation into the 24 civilian deaths in Haditha, a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Many Iraqis believe unjustified killings by US troops are common, though few have been confirmed by investigations.

Mr Maliki also vowed to disband militias....

By the summer of 2005, foreign jihadists - allied with al-Qaida - were ruling the city through intimidation and brute force. The situation seemed similar to Fallujah in 2004. Local police and tribal leaders were cowed, the population terrorized. Bombings, assassinations, beheadings and torture perpetrated by the terrorists against Iraqi citizens became commonplace. Even some victim's corpses were wired with explosives to kill family members coming to retrieve them.
http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20060215/OPINION/602150335/1014

You're an idiot.
When I had my second daughter, nobody came to my door and ordered her executed, as they do in China.
I can freely change jobs without getting authorization from the central party. Likewise with medical care.
Also, whatever I earn, I get to keep and use as I please.

I know in your coffeeshop mentality that equates to 'fascism', but you should bone up on history and read about what real fascist states are like for those that live in them. Take a look at the folks who are modifying 1950's era cars into boats to try and escape Castro's wonderland.

Here's something, google falun dafa. Heck, download some exercises. Read up on it.
And know that if you did so in China - you would either be imprisoned or killed.
See the difference?

As for 'their notion of property', you would do well to read this vignette.

That said, the NSA has never been that legal, from a constitutional view, but noone is willing to challenge their existance...

You're confused about both the NSA and the Constitution. The NSA's primary purpose is signals intelligence of foreign governments and their agents (some of whom may be US citizens). Foreign governments aren't entitled to the rights of a US citizen. Spying on foreign spies is fine too, even if they are US citizens.

But now we just let them spy on us, arrest us without warrants, ship American citizens off to foreign prisons to be tortured for years without any formal charges, and turn the Constitution into confetti for their personal profit.

No, we let them spy on the likes of Al Qaeda members and their supporters.

The Constitution is quite whole, you just apparently don't really understand it. Or maybe you simply don't approve of the powers of the various branches of government, especially the Executive branch in time of war.

...and other tricks used by those who wish America to live in Fear.

I think it is quite revealing that you seem to believe that it is the government that wants to repress Americans and cause them to live in fear, and not the ones actually plotting to kill 4,000,000 Americans, namely Al Qaeda. Fear the sheriff, not the rattlesnake, eh?

There are procedures for genuine whistle blowers to follow, like going to Inspector Generals or Congress. That isn't what has been happening. What has been happening is politically motivated leaks of classified information in an attempt to damage the administration.

Just so we could get past the vague, liar thing, could you be more specific? Exactly what actual liberties do you think people are trying to take from you? Voting? Free speech? Free association? Freedom of religion? Any suggestion of quartering troops in your house?

As to the terrorism thing, the news there seems to be rather concrete, even if not well known, and at times disturbing. There is nothing vague about this at all.

Stopping the terrorists means the military can stand down, just like it did after WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, and the Cold War. The Army alone is about 30% smaller today than it was in the 80s even after the small boost it was given for this conflict. Why should this conflict be any different from the previous ones? Your theory about the whole purpose of the war against the terrorists being a fabricated excuse to spy on Americans in different political parties is nonesense. (Do you also believe that it was the US government that attacked the World Trade Center (both times)? How about the Murrah building in Oklahoma City? Faked the moon landings?) If you really believe that, why was Al Qaeda attacking during Clinton's term, and planning for more attacks, like 9/11? Do you think this is all a plot to keep the Libertarians down?

By the way, under the term "domestic political "enemies"", do you include Hezbollah, recently inconvenienced in Michigan? They do seem to love being in this country. I wonder what Al Qaeda is up to? Wouldn't it be great if someone was looking into this? I wonder who would be best...who could do it?

Which is why the CIA hired him

They tried to kill each other!

While back in the 1950's the CIA supported the Ba'athists, it did not "hire" Saddam directly. He was part of the overthrow plot, yes, but he was not a hired hitman. Neither was he "installed". And there is plenty of evidence -- like Richard Clarke's "boogie to Baghdad" assessment -- that shows they were not enemies. The recently translated tapes & documents seized from Saddam's palaces add further proof. So watch the History channel. Read a book. Or read this or these or this. But whatever you do, get educated before spouting off nonsense like this again.

But he is in it up to his neck for the same reason Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld are: he's an oil man. Nothing more and nothing less. Oil and oil shares are the only things he cares about and he's as happy as the rest of them to kill a few hundred or thousands (especially if they are foreigners) to get them.

Remember waaaaaay back when when you were desperately trying to protect reporter's rights to not divulge their sources when an administration official leaked classified information

It's comical, actually. I read DKos sometimes, and it's painfully obvious he never reads anything that the right produces.

One time he came up with a beaut : he said that conservatives thought liberals were in bed with terrorists, but that couldn't be, because liberals hate the mean right-wing authoritarian societies that the terrorists want!

Which would be great, except that if he'd ever read any conservative publication, just once, he would read about how frustrated conservatives were that liberals were weak on terror, since, you know, terrorists are mean right-wing authoritarians and the left shouldn't like that. It could be a nice lesson about how both sides believe what they say, but that would be touchy-feely and uncynical, so we should avoid it.

Likewise, the right thought that the leak records would exonerate the administration (just as the left thought it would condemn them). So, actually, both sides wanted the information released, and condemned the reporters that wouldn't release it.

This or this were typical of the conservative criticisms of Judith Miller and Matt Cooper for not talking to prosecutors.

Remember waaaaaay back when when you were desperately trying to protect reporter's rights to not divulge their sources when an administration official leaked classified information

It's comical, actually. I read DKos sometimes, and it's painfully obvious he never reads anything that the right produces.

One time he came up with a beaut : he said that conservatives thought liberals were in bed with terrorists, but that couldn't be, because liberals hate the mean right-wing authoritarian societies that the terrorists want!

Which would be great, except that if he'd ever read any conservative publication, just once, he would read about how frustrated conservatives were that liberals were weak on terror, since, you know, terrorists are mean right-wing authoritarians and the left shouldn't like that. It could be a nice lesson about how both sides believe what they say, but that would be touchy-feely and uncynical, so we should avoid it.

Likewise, the right thought that the leak records would exonerate the administration (just as the left thought it would condemn them). So, actually, both sides wanted the information released, and condemned the reporters that wouldn't release it.

This or this were typical of the conservative criticisms of Judith Miller and Matt Cooper for not talking to prosecutors.

So, let me get this straight...

You start off by telling us that you won't tell us what the real purpose of the program is (1), but you tell us that it isn't about national security (2). You tell us, wrongly, that Al Qaeda has nothing to fear from the actual program (3)+(A), not what you describe, which is the Total Information Awareness project. Apparently just on the edge of self-restraint, you let on that the program would be a powerful tool to blackmail members of Congress (4) but don't quite cross the line and tell us directly that political blackmail is the purpose. You finish off with comparisons to secret police, evil regimes, and the Nazi SS (5).

So, basically, you want people to believe that this is all part of a secret plan to subjugate the American people and political system to a new crypto-fascist regime (sorry), and not an actual intelligence program to protect the country.

Remarkably, you want people to believe that a Republican president with only three years left in office, ever, would convince a Republican led Senate and House, still containing members of an opposition party, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an infrastructure to blackmail themselves instead of developing an intelligence capability that would actually be useful to protect them. (I guess you think 9/11 and the anthrax attacks made no impression on them, right?)

What is even more remarkable is that you want us to believe that this is all unrelated to any attempt to stop the on-going efforts by Al Qaeda and its allies to plan and execute more terrorist attacks in the US, the infiltration of the US by hundreds of terrorist group members (who we occasionally catch) and the stated goal of Al Qaeda to kill 4,000,000 Americans. I expect that you also believe it would not help contain the intelligence agents in 3,000 front companies kept by just one foreign government spying on the US, let the lone the (tens of?)thousands more from the other countries on the planet.

You are about up in the league of having a pathological fear of firemen because they carry axes, but being unable to stop yourself from going into burning buildings because they are "warm & cheery" and have good light for reading. What is even more disturbing is that you convinced enough people to get your 5 mod. Ye gods!

1: That I will let the readers figure out as they read what is the truth about what is going on.
2: I would like to make clear that this effort had nothing to do with national security.
3: It is clear that Al Qaeda etc had nothing to fear from such a system.
4: The value of data to coerse a Congressman or a citizen or to produce "faked up" arrest data would be endless. The value to compromise the integrity of any democratic process and produce extortion is endless as well. (Please use your brain here: Ask why would a government want to do this? Ask what would they do this for?)
5: The level of it is deeper and more complete information on every living person on the planet than has been collected by the secret police of any terroristic evil regieme in history. The level of data here is beyond the wildest dreams of the NAZI SS in their worst days.
A: If Al Qaeda is hand delivering their messages all around the world, they won't be saying much.

So, let me get this straight...

You start off by telling us that you won't tell us what the real purpose of the program is (1), but you tell us that it isn't about national security (2). You tell us, wrongly, that Al Qaeda has nothing to fear from the actual program (3)+(A), not what you describe, which is the Total Information Awareness project. Apparently just on the edge of self-restraint, you let on that the program would be a powerful tool to blackmail members of Congress (4) but don't quite cross the line and tell us directly that political blackmail is the purpose. You finish off with comparisons to secret police, evil regimes, and the Nazi SS (5).

So, basically, you want people to believe that this is all part of a secret plan to subjugate the American people and political system to a new crypto-fascist regime (sorry), and not an actual intelligence program to protect the country.

Remarkably, you want people to believe that a Republican president with only three years left in office, ever, would convince a Republican led Senate and House, still containing members of an opposition party, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an infrastructure to blackmail themselves instead of developing an intelligence capability that would actually be useful to protect them. (I guess you think 9/11 and the anthrax attacks made no impression on them, right?)

What is even more remarkable is that you want us to believe that this is all unrelated to any attempt to stop the on-going efforts by Al Qaeda and its allies to plan and execute more terrorist attacks in the US, the infiltration of the US by hundreds of terrorist group members (who we occasionally catch) and the stated goal of Al Qaeda to kill 4,000,000 Americans. I expect that you also believe it would not help contain the intelligence agents in 3,000 front companies kept by just one foreign government spying on the US, let the lone the (tens of?)thousands more from the other countries on the planet.

You are about up in the league of having a pathological fear of firemen because they carry axes, but being unable to stop yourself from going into burning buildings because they are "warm & cheery" and have good light for reading. What is even more disturbing is that you convinced enough people to get your 5 mod. Ye gods!

1: That I will let the readers figure out as they read what is the truth about what is going on.
2: I would like to make clear that this effort had nothing to do with national security.
3: It is clear that Al Qaeda etc had nothing to fear from such a system.
4: The value of data to coerse a Congressman or a citizen or to produce "faked up" arrest data would be endless. The value to compromise the integrity of any democratic process and produce extortion is endless as well. (Please use your brain here: Ask why would a government want to do this? Ask what would they do this for?)
5: The level of it is deeper and more complete information on every living person on the planet than has been collected by the secret police of any terroristic evil regieme in history. The level of data here is beyond the wildest dreams of the NAZI SS in their worst days.
A: If Al Qaeda is hand delivering their messages all around the world, they won't be saying much.

This is only partly true.

I watched a history channel special on this ;-)

The 911 hijackers, notable filled out some portions of their Visa applications with incredibly suspicious answers. They traveled on a student visas, and were studying at a school called things like, "In the West U.S.". They left their permanent address, both abroad and in the U.S. blank, or listed things like "hotel" as their permanent address abroad.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray10090 2.asp

Yeah, I know, its the national review, which is a crap site, but they actually have links to scans of the Visa applications.

IIRC, Mohammad Atma, the chief "hijacker", was also stopped at a security checkpoint when boarding the airplane on 9/11. The security screen could not figure out why Mr. Atma was setting off the metal detector, wanded him, and then after determing that it was his "chest" that was "beeping", passed him through.

Rather than monitoring all of our phone calls, perhaps we should spend money on processing Visa applications better and faster. These errors should not have happened, and it is probably a result of the turn around time of Visa applications being so long; the few examiners that are out there churn through them as fast as possible.

As an Iranian American, this is a big issue for me; my family is trying to immigrate, and has spent a ridiculous amount of time (on the order of 5-10 years) trying to get in. Tons of paperwork, too. That the fucking hijackers should have no problem getting student visas with such shoddy applications makes me furious.

"Legal Means" only affords you protection if the regulations are followed. Most of the hijackers student visa applications should have been denied, and the U.S. already has mechanisms to pursue proper security checks on people applying for visas. We don't need a new data mining net; we need the existing mechanisms to be applied properly.

Let me give you another article:
http://www.11alive.com/news/usnews_article.aspx?st oryid=42069

Let me highlight to particularly salient points in that article. They speak for themselves:

"U.S. authorities missed some obvious signs that might have prevented some of the Sept. 11 hijackers from entering the country, the federal commission investigating the attacks said Monday.

Government officials have said the 19 hijackers entered the country legally, but the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said its investigation found at least two and as many as eight had fraudulent visas. The commission also found examples where U.S. officials had contact with the hijackers but failed to adequately investigate suspicious behavior. ...
At the start of a two-day hearing on border and aviation security, the commission staff issued a statement saying FBI Director Robert Mueller had testified that all of the hijackers came "lawfully from abroad," while CIA Director George Tenet described 17 of the 19 hijackers as "clean."

We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to reevaluate those statements," the commission staff said."

AND

The panel said part of the problem was a lack of coordination among immigration officials and a focus on keeping out illegal immigrants rather than potential terrorists.


I have a feeling this last point is only getting worse; People think that illegal immigrants = Terrorist, and it couldn't be further from the truth.

That's it!

The real threat isn't coming from the tens of thousands Islamist extremist terrorists trained in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda, in Saddam's Iraq, and their associates (minus the captured ones). No!

The 9/11 attacks, the attack on the USS Cole, the Bali bombings, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the shoe bomb attempt, the US embassy bombings in Africa, the attacks and bombings in Saudi Arabia, the bombing in Jordan, the attacks in the Philippines, the Beslan attack, the dirty bomb plan, the plan to attack the soccer stadium in the UK, the plan to attack Heathrow, the 19 person ring just broken in Michigan, the hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the US, including the recent Hezbollah Mexican border smuggling ring broken, and the rest all show its not the terrorists that are the problem!!

The real threat is that *cough* fantasy *cough* cabal in the White House which the "insiders" on Slashnut know are secretly planning to ignore the next election with mass destraction. (How this will actually work, nobody explains. The Constitution limits the term in office and provides for succession.) Meanwhile, outside Mom's basement (or with more meds), the rest of us see them trying to detect and stop the next terrorist attack, prefereably before they can use a salvaged anthrax or chemical weapon from Saddam's discards, or maybe even start a nuclear Jihad with a little help, or simply send a suicide bomber to a crowded mall.

Lets reach over into one of the Evolution v. Creation debates and grab Occam's Razor. Which way do you think it cuts here?

I think I understand the impulse behind William F. Buckley's statement that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. It seems to require a certain degree of sophistication to engage in certain forms of idiocy.

That's it!

The real threat isn't coming from the tens of thousands Islamist extremist terrorists trained in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda, in Saddam's Iraq, and their associates (minus the captured ones). No!

The 9/11 attacks, the attack on the USS Cole, the Bali bombings, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the shoe bomb attempt, the US embassy bombings in Africa, the attacks and bombings in Saudi Arabia, the bombing in Jordan, the attacks in the Philippines, the Beslan attack, the dirty bomb plan, the plan to attack the soccer stadium in the UK, the plan to attack Heathrow, the 19 person ring just broken in Michigan, the hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the US, including the recent Hezbollah Mexican border smuggling ring broken, and the rest all show its not the terrorists that are the problem!!

The real threat is that *cough* fantasy *cough* cabal in the White House which the "insiders" on Slashnut know are secretly planning to ignore the next election with mass destraction. (How this will actually work, nobody explains. The Constitution limits the term in office and provides for succession.) Meanwhile, outside Mom's basement (or with more meds), the rest of us see them trying to detect and stop the next terrorist attack, prefereably before they can use a salvaged anthrax or chemical weapon from Saddam's discards, or maybe even start a nuclear Jihad with a little help, or simply send a suicide bomber to a crowded mall.

Lets reach over into one of the Evolution v. Creation debates and grab Occam's Razor. Which way do you think it cuts here?

I think I understand the impulse behind William F. Buckley's statement that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. It seems to require a certain degree of sophistication to engage in certain forms of idiocy.

Maybe not. The article quotes Smith vs. Maryland:

[W]e doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial. All telephone users realize that they must "convey" phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed. All subscribers realize, moreover, that the phone company has facilities for making permanent records of the numbers they dial, for they see a list of their long-distance (toll) calls on their monthly bills. . . .

[E]ven if [a caller] did harbor some subjective expectation that the phone numbers he dialed would remain private, this expectation is not "one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.'" . . . This Court consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties. . . . [W]hen [a caller] used his phone, [he] voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In so doing, [the caller] assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers he dialed.

Now, what the NSA allegedly did is rather more comprehensive, but being able to say "Ah, this phone number we found on this captured terrorist laptop was in contact with phones A, B, and C. Are any of those numbers interesting?" has its merits. There's all sorts of scenarios where it's useful to know who a person of interest has been in contact with.

The "small government" conservatives at the National Review seem to be fully in support of the government spying on people judging by their blog posts.

Not a lot of time for a full response so I'm just poting the first couple of links I found when searching for LOGCAP.

The LOGCAP site (warning, government website designed by 15 year old in 1992)

A bit on Cheney/Halliburton relationship (a ver detailed breakdown with lots of stuff I hadn't seen before).

A bit more on the Haliburton government contracts.

I think I've already said that I'm pretty sure that Haliburton abuses it's near monopoly in the industry for their own benefit, and I'm not debating that. All I'm saying is that the fact they happen to get all these contracts has more to do with the fact they are the only group in town than the fact they are connected to the VP, as displayed by the same 'favoritism' they received under the Clinton admin.

So, the moral of the story is that living in the US is more dangerous than all of the terrorism in the world.

I take the moral of the story you tell to be that you assume murder doesn't happen outside the US, that the people killed by terrorists don't count for much, that the 25,000 people wounded in terrorist attacks don't exist and require no medical care, and that the considerable disruption of daily life and damage to economies caused by terrorism is of no consequence.

I suppose by your reasoning, the attacks on 9/11, and their aftermath, which killed 3,000 people and did $100,000,000,000 of damage to the US economy were just a statistical blip on the radar.

I'm curious, do incidents like Beslan make any impression on you?

Do you have any thoughts on if the US should do anything to prevent Al Qaeda from attaining its stated goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans?

Now I'm the first to admit that his public words and actions suggest someone much closer to (or even slightly below) the mean.

Public speaking is not his forte, apparently. I loved that SNL skit with him and Gore, where Bush's one-word summary of his campaign was "strategery". Did he actually ever say that word, or was that a bit of creativity on the part of the SNL writers?

In fact, Bush's seeming disdain for "book smarts" typifies the result we both expect from a poor educational system (though I'm under no illusion that he ever attended public school).

I think the disdain for "book smarts" comes more from political orientation than anything else. It's more a mistrust of the climate of arrogant intellectualism that pervades the pseudo-meritocratic structure of academia. As an academic myself (a physics grad student, to be specific), I can certainly see the off-putting aspects of the academic world. It's very easy to assume that, because you're the world's foremost expert on X, you understand Y and Z as well (I know I've done this). When that turns into preaching politics from the pulpit of science, it really pisses people off.

An example: recently, a bunch of physicists signed a letter about the dangers of using nuclear weapons against Iran. That kind of thing just makes me cringe. I know some of the physicists who signed the letter, and they've given me no reason to believe they're any more informed or knowledgeable about the Iran situation that your average college graduate. The spin on the letter was something along the lines of the claim, "we invented the nuclear weapon, and we're here to tell you just how bad it would be to use it", but it's not as if any of the signing physicists actually provided any new information. Military analysts, Middle Eastern policy studies professors, Iranian exiles--all of them might have had something valuable to say--but physicists? Hardly. All that kind of stunt does is make the Republicans even more pissed off at academia.

A major backlash from the right is coming--primarily aimed perceived left-wing bias in the social sciences, etc.--but there will be collateral damage to the natural sciences as well. The more reasons we give Republicans to lump the natural sciences in with the "left-wing" crowd, the worse things will be. Read Phi Beta Cons, a higher education blog run by the conservative magazine National Review, to see what I'm talking about.

Exquisite! Well, at least exquisitely copied from The National Review .

This type of stuff happens all the time, There was a case where the judge gave the verbal ruling in the form of a rap in a case between two rappers, "Bailey thinks he's entitled to some monetary gain,/ because Eminem used his name in vain./ The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact,/ they're an exaggeration of a childish act./ "It is therefore this court's ultimate position,/ that Eminem is entitled to summary disposition." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3204318.s tm

And dont forget our favrote Federal Judge, Samuel Kent in Texas who in BRADSHAW v. UNITY MARINE http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document073 001.shtml said "Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact -- complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words -- to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions."

Judge Kent wrote in Smith v. Colonial Pen, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/skent1.html, "...Alas, this Courts kingdom for a for a commercial airport! The Court is unpersuaded by this argument because it is not the Court's concern how the Plaintiff gets here, whether it be by plane, train, automobile, horseback, foot, or on the back of a huge Texas jackrabbit, as long as the Plaintiff is here at the proper date and time" Earlier in the order he talks about the three week long covered wagon trip from Huston to Galveston being free of bandits.

Judge Kent also wrote a great one in Republic of Boliva v. Philip Morris http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/obiwan4.html

It sounds like Hoekstra wasn't the only one annoyed with Negroponte.

The consensus on NR about releasing the documents is "It's about damn time, and please post the rest of them". I would speculate that the usual TLA's didn't want to give up control over "their" intel and Bush displayed his usual aversion to firing people. He really needs to get over that.

There are an awful lot of Arabic speakers who would never consider working for the government but would likely look through the documents out of curiosity if they could browse them on the web. When someone finds something really interesting it can then be authenticated by multiple people.

As any book lover knows, books in the plural lose their solidity of substance and become a gas, filling all available space... Henry Petroski, in The Book on the Bookshelf, recommends a ruthlessly imperialist approach to the problem: "Kitchen and pantry cabinets can be commandeered in the fight to find bookshelf space, and a family's eating habits can be changed. When the china is displaced by paper plates, there is no longer any reason why books cannot be stored in the dishwasher too."

Kerry, you mean the guy who voted for the war before he voted against it?

socialism is not contrary to freedom. Socialism is in fact designed to be freedom, freedom from poverty and medical expenses as well as personal freedom.

As a Canadian, how free are you to get necessary but non-life threatening medical procedures without waiting?

[T]he percentage of the respondents in need of elective coronary bypass who had been waiting for more than three months was 0% in U.S., 18.2% in Sweden, 46.7% in Canada, and 88.9% in the United Kingdom" -- from an Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development study of waiting time for elective surgery in developed countries.

Actually, it's clear that the Supreme Court of old recognized the individual right to keep and bear arms. Strangely enough, the most famous example of this occurs in the Dred Scott case of 1857.

The Dred Scott ruling concluded (unfortunately) that slaves were property and could be "carried" into a free territory without the enslaved individual gaining his or her freedom. The ruling also established (again, unfortunately) that those descended from africans were not U.S. citizens. Now, putting those distasteful notions in their historical context for a moment, the reason the court was horrified at the idea of blacks being citizens was because of the rights this would entail.

The Dred Scott majority was policy-driven, as shown by its list of the allegedly unacceptable consequences of black citizenship: Black citizens would have the right to enter any state, to stay there as long as they pleased, and within that state they could go where they wanted at any hour of the day or night, unless they committed some act for which a white person could be punished. Further, black citizens would have "the right to...full liberty of speech in public and private upon all subjects which [a state's] own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." -- citation

The thought that blacks -- as citizens -- would have the right "to keep and carry arms wherever they went" was just too much for the racist whites of the time; but it clearly illustrates the fact that the Supreme Court recognized the Second Amendment as being an individual right.

One can of course criticize the racism, but that aspect of the case has nothing to do with the gun issue.

I think it's fair to say that the Second Amendment established the right of the individual, and that that right has been and is being whittled away by "reinterpretations" of the language of the Second Amendment and willful ignoring of the right by courts and lawmakers.

Better than Michigan. Jenifer Granholm is a pretty face with a silver toung. She changes sides on issues as it suits her. https://www.nationalreview.com/comment/payne200407 280201.asp

Of course, repealing the 2nd ammendment and banning firearms would be death at the polls

Aye, because firearms bans are working so well elsewhere.

Well, that and they'd like to categorize the people who criticize them as "terrorists."

Once the public accepts that "propaganda is necessary" and "this is a war of ideas," they'll see that as a mandate to crack down on the "enemy ideas."

Under this government's preferred reading of current law, you are technically providing support to terrorists by criticizing American leaders.

The US government is composed of adults who can discern between people trying to kill Americans with explosives, poison, bullets, knives, or radioactive materials versus those who don't like its policy and express their disagreement verbally or in writing. One is going to get you in big trouble, maybe even killed, and the other might get a laugh behind closed doors. Sadly, you don't seem to be able to figure it out. Here is a hint: Since the media currently feels completely free and comfortable exposing ongoing CIA and NSA operations against the same terrorists who are trying to kill Americans by the millions, what makes you fantasize that the government will be rounding up people who simply criticize it? What a wonderful example of nonsense.

1. the Muslim world settles down or
   
2. the West abandons free speech and other principles.
   

Secondly, and this is a question about biology and learning, what is it that makes some people believe that

because something is spoken or drawn or carved, that somehow it is true?

The above belief pattern is found in (among others):

• in almost all children (and many adults), who believe in the efficacy of tokens (a lucky charm, a lucky T-shirt, etc.),
  
• among some Japanese, as the concept of "saving face",
  
• among some Chinese, as the fear of speaking/writing/depicting possible future bad outcomes, for fear such depiction may cause them to come true,
  
• Muslims rioting over images of Mohammed(?).
  

Everyone I've known who thinks like that is not able to free himself from it. The childhood ditty:

Sticks and stones may break my bones
but words will never hurt me.

Spoken words or images can be extremely shocking, nauseating, upsetting, etc. but to me they are, at bottom, only words and images. They are representations of reality, they do not control reality. There is a fundamental difference between the mind of a person who thinks that way and the mind of a person who goes boinkers when he sees Mohammed depicted with a lit dynamite stick in his cap.

What does it take to show people that words/images/pictures/movies are not reality? Or should we leave it for an attitude adjustment?

1. the Muslim world settles down or
   
2. the West abandons free speech and other principles.
   

Secondly, and this is a question about biology and learning, what is it that makes some people believe that

because something is spoken or drawn or carved, that somehow it is true?

The above belief pattern is found in (among others):

• in almost all children (and many adults), who believe in the efficacy of tokens (a lucky charm, a lucky T-shirt, etc.),
  
• among some Japanese, as the concept of "saving face",
  
• among some Chinese, as the fear of speaking/writing/depicting possible future bad outcomes, for fear such depiction may cause them to come true,
  
• Muslims rioting over images of Mohammed(?).
  

Everyone I've known who thinks like that is not able to free himself from it. The childhood ditty:

Sticks and stones may break my bones
but words will never hurt me.

Spoken words or images can be extremely shocking, nauseating, upsetting, etc. but to me they are, at bottom, only words and images. They are representations of reality, they do not control reality. There is a fundamental difference between the mind of a person who thinks that way and the mind of a person who goes boinkers when he sees Mohammed depicted with a lit dynamite stick in his cap.

What does it take to show people that words/images/pictures/movies are not reality? Or should we leave it for an attitude adjustment?

Information about domestic spying must be kept confidential... Oh, but here's the name of an active CIA operative.

Your national security "spider senses" are failing you.

Apparently you don't see the damage in releasing the list of names (for publication?) of people who have been under surveillance when communicating with known agents of a terrorist organization with a goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans, and that has already killed thousands. (You don't suppose they will escape, go into hiding, change their communications methods, figure out how to avoid future detection, or attack early, do you?) So, for the possibility of real harm to national security: don't care.

On the other hand, you do seem greatly concerned about the career of a woman known to be a CIA employee* who for years made the dangerous trek through traffic to CIA headquarters where she used her influence to help get her husband a CIA assignmnet after which he conducted a public campaign to lie to the American people and the media, in what was an apparent attempt to sway the policy of the American government. And nobody who actually knows is saying who the whistle blower is, although some people have their suspicions. So for a matter with no genuine effect on national security, or even what was possibly a positive one: it's an outrage.

If you were really worried about disclosures regarding the CIA that damaged national security, you would be outraged about the exposure of the CIA's movement of prisoners by air. Ongoing operational cover blown. Damage: real. Mention: zip.

It looks like it's time for you to recalibrate your national security spider senses. They only seem to tingle when you sense a way to damage the administration, not for things that could actually undermine national security.

* "operative" seems a little high flung for a desk job in DC, where she had been for years, don't you think?

Information about domestic spying must be kept confidential... Oh, but here's the name of an active CIA operative.

Your national security "spider senses" are failing you.

Apparently you don't see the damage in releasing the list of names (for publication?) of people who have been under surveillance when communicating with known agents of a terrorist organization with a goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans, and that has already killed thousands. (You don't suppose they will escape, go into hiding, change their communications methods, figure out how to avoid future detection, or attack early, do you?) So, for the possibility of real harm to national security: don't care.

On the other hand, you do seem greatly concerned about the career of a woman known to be a CIA employee* who for years made the dangerous trek through traffic to CIA headquarters where she used her influence to help get her husband a CIA assignmnet after which he conducted a public campaign to lie to the American people and the media, in what was an apparent attempt to sway the policy of the American government. And nobody who actually knows is saying who the whistle blower is, although some people have their suspicions. So for a matter with no genuine effect on national security, or even what was possibly a positive one: it's an outrage.

If you were really worried about disclosures regarding the CIA that damaged national security, you would be outraged about the exposure of the CIA's movement of prisoners by air. Ongoing operational cover blown. Damage: real. Mention: zip.

It looks like it's time for you to recalibrate your national security spider senses. They only seem to tingle when you sense a way to damage the administration, not for things that could actually undermine national security.

* "operative" seems a little high flung for a desk job in DC, where she had been for years, don't you think?

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject....

. ...The federal appellate courts have unanimously held that the President has the inherent constitutional authority to order warrantless searches for purposes of gathering foreign intelligence information, which includes information about terrorist threats. Furthermore, since this power is derived from Article II of the Constitution, the FISA Review Court has specifically recognized that it cannot be taken away or limited by Congressional action.

That being the case, the NSA intercept program, which consists of warrantless electronic intercepts for purposes of foreign intelligence gathering, is legal.

There is one relevant constitutional provision that acts as a restraint on the President's inherent power as Commander in Chief. That is the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So all searches and seizures of Americans or their property (including, as the courts have appropriately ruled, interceptions of telephonic and electronic communications) must be reasonable. Note, however, that this requirement does not apply to terrorists overseas. A Special Forces soldier can pick a cave arbitrarily and search it. He isn't trying to prosecute terrorists, he is trying to kill them. He doesn't need probable cause.

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject.

... Abu Laban's [celebrated] status is about history in Denmark. Danes have no more patience for those who preach love in one language and war in another, those who publicly play the role of the victim, demand tolerance and then secretly incite hatred. While much of Europe has been asleep at the wheel, oblivious to the monumental threat radical Islam poses to its future, at least one country is increasing awake ...

Billions of dollars to fund the entire operation despite weapons ban and sanctions.

You must mean the Oil for Food scandal.

Billions of dollars to fund the entire operation despite weapons ban and sanctions.

You must mean the Oil for Food scandal.

A simple search on Google will yeild the results you seek:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=WTC+9%2F11+PU T+options+AMR+UAL&btnG=Google+Search

Oddly enough, snopes claims this rumor is false:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp

Then they go on to say that yes, there was unusual trading, but that it was explainable. But if that were the case, if the traders really do have an iron-clad alabi that it was just their good fortune, why was over $2.5 million in profits never claimed?
Also note that if these trades were done as part of some strategy connected with the generally declining stock market, then why wasn't Delta given the same PUT option treament as AMR and UAL?

Another doubter:
http://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rose20040726070 0.asp

If you buy that story, then you need to look deeper:
(note: not a single source I could find comes from a "major news outlet" - so keep your salt shaker handy)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HEN204B.html
OR
http://www.unknownnews.net/010918911.html
OR
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?nof rames;read=73104
OR
http://www.humanunderground.com/archive/lucy.html
(don't read too much of this one, if you value your sanity).
OR
(one of the better articles "connecting the dots")
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/apocalypse/ins ider_trading.html
OR
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?nof rames;read=73104
OR
(scarier:)
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?nof rames;read=73105
OR
Sadly, Wikipedia lists this as a "conspiracy-theory":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theor ies

...And I believe that's exactly why no one has to fear a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl. ... Terrorists have their target audiences. The Al Qaeda wants to impress people in the muslim countries, who think of "football" as the sport that's played by kicking a round ball with the feet. If 90% of the TV news anchors around the world have to explain what this "super bowl" thing is, and its true importance in the collective American mind, the intended message of the attack would be wasted.

You are focusing on the wrong metric. You seem to think that the sport will have something to do with it. You're wrong. What will matter will be the fact that there is an attack and a large body count. I doubt if even 5% of the Muslim world had heard of the World Trade Center in New York before it was hit, and yet that didn't seem to dampen the rejoicing after the 9/11 attacks. If the Islamists terrorists could attack the Super Bowl by flying a 707 into the stands and kill 20,000 outright, mortally wound 10,000, and maim or psychologically scar the rest, not to mention the nation, there would be joy in the hearts of Bin Laden's followers. They wouldn't care a wit about the sport*.

Al Qaeda has a stated goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans. Don't kid yourself, if they could find a way to attack and kill 60,000+ defenseless, tightly packed Americans, they would.

*Actually it is entirely possible that the fact that it would be an almost uniquely American ("barbarian/infidel") sport might even make it more enticing as a target.

I, for one... Welcome our new terrorist-smeller pursuivant overlords

And well you should. The terrorists have the will, and a plan to become our new overlords. If they succeed, you will be living in a genuine theocracy uniting church and state, governed by Sharia law, in all of its harshness, including threat of crucifixion, beheading, stoning, and amputation.

Our present "overlords" do well in defending us against the malice of the would-be Islamist terrorist overlords. The Islamist terrorists have a demonstrated interest in conducting infamous attacks aimed at mass murder, and a stated goal of killing four million Americans in pursuit of their nightmare state. The Superbowl is a natural target. The terrorists have the will to kill everyone at the Superbowl, but lack the opportunity due to the vigilance of our present "overlords",.... long may they "reign".

Fortunate Son was withdrawn from the publisher because A.) The author was utterly unable to provide a single shred of proof for the only new, "bombshell" revelation in the book, i.e. that George W. Bush was once arrested for cocaine possession, and B.) The author turned out to be a liar and convicted felon. He was an ex-con on parole for attempted murder, had pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $34,000 in federal housing funds, none of which he happened to mention to St. Martin's while pitching the book. Plus he was caught making up stories about his background; as a science fiction writer, I especially liked the one about how he was recipient of "the prestigious international Isaac Asimov Foundation Literary Award for Outstanding Biography," which, oddly enough, doesn't exist.)

Michael Bellesiles' Arming America was another demonstrable (although initially more believable and well-crafted) fraud that argued gun ownership in early America was rare. Researchers following up on his work found that some of his source material said the exact opposite of what he claimed. That eventually got Bellesiles fired from his university position, and even had the Bancroft prize committee not only rescind the prize it had awarded him, but ask for the prize money back!

Compare the results of a Google image search for "tiananmen" on American Google with an image search on Chinese Google.

So far as we have been able to determine, Presidential signing statements that purported to create legislative history for the use of the courts was uncommon -- if indeed it existed at all -- before the Reagan and Bush Presidencies. However, earlier Presidents did use signing statements to raise and address the legal or constitutional questions they believed were presented by the legislation they were signing. Examples of signing statements of this kind can be found as early as the Jackson and Tyler Administrations, and later Presidents, including Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, also engaged in the practice.

Today's Washington Post has one more item of interest, an article about Samuel Alito's role in sketching, in 1986, the Reagan administration's strategy of issuing presidential "interpretive signing statements" declaring the executive branch's understanding of the bills the president signed into law. If Congress's committee reports and published debates were going to be routinely used by courts in interpreting the meaning of statutes, Alito reasoned, then the president too should be able to influence such interpretation by formally stating his view of a law's relationship to the Constitution. This would be particularly important, of course, in cases where a law might impinge on the executive power under the Constitution as the president understood it.

. ...

The Post story notes that "courts have yet to give [presidential signing statements] much weight" since Alito proposed this strategy 20 years ago. That's too bad. Justice Scalia makes a compelling case that the "legislative record" behind a statute is worse than useless, arguing that it is only the statute itself that can recommend itself to a court's attention as a guide to its meaning. But if courts don't follow Scalia's view here -- and they generally don't -- then they should give as much weight to the executive's understanding as to the legislature's.

Today's Washington Post has one more item of interest, an article about Samuel Alito's role in sketching, in 1986, the Reagan administration's strategy of issuing presidential "interpretive signing statements" declaring the executive branch's understanding of the bills the president signed into law. If Congress's committee reports and published debates were going to be routinely used by courts in interpreting the meaning of statutes, Alito reasoned, then the president too should be able to influence such interpretation by formally stating his view of a law's relationship to the Constitution. This would be particularly important, of course, in cases where a law might impinge on the executive power under the Constitution as the president understood it.

Alito's idea caught on in the Reagan years, and has remained very popular with presidents ever since, especially with the current President Bush.

Economic freedom is defined as the absence of government coercion or constraint on the production, distribution, or consumption of goods and services beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty itself. In other words, people are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in the ways they feel are most productive.

All government action involves coercion. Some minimal coercion is necessary for the citizens of a community or nation to defend themselves, promote the evolution of civil society, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. This Lockean idea was embodied in the U.S. Constitution. For example, citizens are taxed to provide revenue for the protection of person and property as well as for a common defense. Most political theorists also accept that certain goods-what economists call "public goods"-can be supplied most conveniently by government.

When government coercion rises beyond that minimal level, however, it risks trampling on freedom. When it starts interfering in the market beyond the protection of person and property, it risks undermining economic freedom. Exactly where that line is crossed is open to reasoned debate. The goal in the scoring of economic freedom is not to define these extremes-either anarchy or utopia-but to describe the world's economies as they are.

Throughout history, governments have imposed a wide array of constraints on economic activity. Many constraints can be measured by assessing their impact on economic choices. Constraining economic choice distorts and diminishes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services (including, of course, labor services).2

One fact, however, is overridingly true: When governments restrict people, their behavior changes, and probably not for the best. Coercion alters choices that ordinary people make. Economic freedom is diminished, and economic growth suffers.

"We have the right to kill 4 million Americans -- 2 million of them children -- and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands." - Suleiman Abu Gheith, al Qaeda spokesman

I don't know which is more shameful, the sorry state of government today, or that so few people think there's a problem. It's sad.

Most people don't think it is a problem for one of two reasons:

1) They think that conducting surveillance on people in direct communication with known members of terrorist organizations that have recently attacked the United States is actually a good idea.

2) They understand that the NSA program is very likely legal, as noted by:
The current Attorney General
A former Clinton administration Assistant Attorney General
The Lawyers at Powerline blog
and others in commentary & response.

High treason is quite explicitly attempting to forcibly overthrow the government. While that might be the effect of the Bush administration, it would be very difficult to prove it as the aim

High treason? Impeachment? right....