Slashdot Mirror

Yes, yes, we know. Having established themselves as the party of people too brain-damaged to figure out a perfectly legible ballot in 2000, the left wing of the Democratic party is courting the ever-valuable felon vote in 2004. Why, next they'll probably come out in favour of infanticide. Wait a sec...

A few interesting facts:

• "People who gave less than $200 to politicians or parties gave 64 percent of their money to Republicans. Just 35 percent went to Democrats."
• "People who gave $1 million or more gave 92 percent to Democrats -- and a whopping eight percent to Republicans."

YAAARRRR!!!!!

What this really means is that NASA might see a 1% budget increase instead of a budget cut next year, and after that (after Bush is re-elected or someone else is elected), it'll go back down.

"A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed."

...ignorant anti-muslim raving pisses me off...

Yeah, I know. Ingorant anti-Christian raving pisses me off.

Next time try actually studying the subject in question, you'll be better off for it.

Great theory..except the majority of those guardsmen were carrying guns that weren't loaded, and were probably under fairly restrictive rules of engagement about when they could load and shoot..if they had bullets handy.

Similar rules had been in effect in Lebanon in 1983 before the bombing of the Marine barracks there: the guards who saw the truckbomb driving by did not have loaded weapons, which made it even less likely they could stop potential attackers.

Any terrorist attack against an airport protected by National Guardsman with unloaded weapons would have likely simply added Guardsmen to the list of the dead. It was an exercise in looking like security was provided, which was done by harassing a lot of people to no real purpose..an idea still popular, judginging from the circus at the airports this last holiday season.

Excerpt:
In 24 months the United States defeated two of the most hideous regimes in modern memory. For all the sorrow involved, it has already made progress in the unthinkable: bringing consensual government into the heart of Middle Eastern autocracy, where there has been no political heritage other than tyranny, theocracy, and dictatorship.

And:
Contrary to the invective of Western intellectuals, the American military's sins until recently have been of omission -- preferring not to shoot looters or hunt down and kill insurgents -- rather than brutal commission. While the United States has conducted these successive wars some 7,000 miles beyond its borders, it also avoided another terrorist attack of the scale of September 11 -- and all the while crafting a policy of containment of North Korea and soon-to-be nuclear Iran.

I'd say your last three paragraphs here display a rather jaundiced and inaccurate view of life in the US, so, in the spirit of Jeane Kirkpatrick's witticism that it is important for Americans to `face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is', I'd like to address a few of the points you make there before speaking to the questions you raise earlier in your post.

You begin by saying:

Where is the liberty in our proportionally huge prison population bloated with nonviolent victims of prohibition? Too many people who go down the path Rush Limbaugh has end up in jail with manditory minimum sentences measured in decades. Is that more liberty than exists in England, the Netherlands, Denmark, etc., where prohibition is an afterthought and treatment for abuse comes first?

which is certainly an improvement in tone from a few posts back, when you were suggesting that any who disagreed with Dean's plan for tax hikes were themselves abusing prescription drugs, but still falls short of being a really weighty point. :-)

First off, we can probably both agree that some prohibition, particularly of marijuana is a bad idea -- no, don't bug your eyes out when I say that: remember that National Review and the Wall Street Journal are just about the only mainstream venues calling for decriminilization of marijuana -- but this is true not because of the number of people in jail for marijuana use, but because the criminalization of such a substance (whether or not it's use is a good idea -- it's not) is a bad idea, and one which, in the case of lesser drugs such as marijuana, almost certainly does more harm than good to the state of the rule of law in the US.

But smoking a joint is hardly the most dangerous and damaging activity for the government to prohibit, so let's look at the state of civil liberties in the countries which you claim are `more free' than the US:

• England:

  Now don't get me wrong, I like England -- I value them as an ally, and I've lived and worked in London at several points. But if you think that England is somehow `more free' than the US, you're mistaken.

  We are, after all, talking about a country which has:

  • prior restraint and other restrictions on the press
  • extensive censorship of ISPs
  • the Official Secrets Act (compare the criminal penalties placed on newspapers publishing such information in the UK with the upholding of the free press in the `pentagon papers' case),
  • and is working on mandatory biometrics files for most of the population.

  England is also facing legislation which would eliminate the right to a jury trial for most or all offenses,

  conclusion: friendlier to drugs, perhaps -- but certainly not `more free'.

• Netherlands:

  While Amsterdam is certainly pot-friendly, the Netherlands are not otherwise a particularly civil rights utopia. To start with, the Dutch have extensive laws providing for punishment of unpopular positions in the name of preventing `hate speech' (one preacher, for example, was recently fined a substantial amount of money for advocating caps on immigration). And that's not even asking why the Dutch police refused to provide protection to a popular but controversial politician who had received death threats, and who was murdered shortly thereafter.

  Conclusion: drug-friendly for sure, but `more free'? Only if your opinions are popular.

• Denmark:

  Her

Yeah right. The PC police are out in full force and it's only getting worse here. Now, you can actually be locked up or forced to pay damanges if the authorities here don't agree with your point of view. It's scary.

I'm shocked more people aren't aware of what's going on in this country. If this keeps up, I'm moving to the USA.

If the president goes ahead with the plan to announce an ambitious new program to carry Americans beyond Earth's immediate gravitational pull, he will argue that the new lunar explorations are justified not only for what they themselves might produce but also as a means of developing the technology and skills necessary for a mission to Mars, which is expected to be mentioned, though in less-specific terms, in the address.

We do have a secretary of homeland security , and in his first speech in that role he mentions candor as a very important part of security.

And we will operate from a few basic principles. First, candor. No one should be wary of coming forward when they see a problem. It's the only way to define a solution. The urgency of our task dictates candor about our challenges and confidence in our ability to solve them.

I'd say that the manner in which our reps are elected falls pretty clearly under essential infrastructure. Maybe they can send Ms. Lamone to Gitmo or something.

I suggest strongly you actually read the Patriot Act (which I assume you're referring to) and see what it is really all about. Ask you local librarian to pipe down for a moment while you read the text.

May I respectfully submit this to you ?

Iraq is also becoming a reflecting pool of the world at large. Millions are slowly learning how different the United States is from its critics in Europe. France will threaten the awful regime in Libya but only about matters of monetary recompense, in the same manner that money led both it and Germany to trade with Saddam Hussein after 1991 and haggle over oil concessions for the next half century. Neither state would remove a dictator, much less pledge lives and nearly $90 billion to create a democracy in the Middle East. All that is too concrete, too absolute, too unsophisticated for the philosophes, who would always prefer slurring a democracy to castigating some third-world bloody ideologue. The Europeans, remember, are now grandstanding about the need for American "transparency" in the distribution of their paltry few millions in Iraq in a manner that they never demanded of their billions once dumped onto a corrupt Palestinian Authority.

There are bombings regularly in Spain; over 10,000 died in France due to either a defect in its socialist government or indeed in its very national character; and Russia obliterated Grosny. But a single death or bomb in Baghdad alone seems to merit condemnation from the Europeans, whose leaders seem incapable of using the words "victory" and "freedom," much less "sacrifice" and "liberation." They may lavish awards and money on a Jimmy Carter or Susan Sontag, who criticize their own country's efforts in the midst of a deadly war; but the true moralists are those who risk taking on tyrants, not those who carp from the sidelines that such courageous efforts are sometimes messy. It seems to be a rite of old age for American progressives these days to travel to Europe and trash their alma mater as they troll for the applause of a smug, cynical audience, the more boldly when they are not answered and confronted by independent thinkers abroad. But such showboating is going to be increasingly difficult once a liberal and humane society emerges in Iraq.

These Europeans like multilateral solutions not out of principle so much as because the tortuous process of implementing them creates the illusion that, in the meantime, nothing must be done. Hence, by the time the U.N. acts, most Bosnians or Rwandans or Kuwaitis are long gone, a sort of "talk, talk/die, die policy." Had a Chirac or Schroeder said something like, "With confidence in our values and with right, as we see, it on our side, we shall fight alongside our democratic ally, the United States, and together remove this Dark Age governmen

What Emerson does in some federal courts for federal laws - as the state constitutions of all but a few states already do, in state courts, for state laws - is make it clear that ordinary, law-abiding people cannot be prohibited from owning ordinary rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

What Emerson does in some federal courts for federal laws - as the state constitutions of all but a few states already do, in state courts, for state laws - is make it clear that ordinary, law-abiding people cannot be prohibited from owning ordinary rifles, shotguns, and handguns.

The show where Sideshow Bob goes to prison, Bob says: "I'll be back. You can't keep the Democrats out of the White House forever. And when they get in, I'm back on the street! With all of my criminal buddies!"

When Grandpa Simpson starts receiving royalty checks for work he didn't do, Bart and Lisa ask, ""Didn't you wonder why you were getting checks for doing nothing?" Grandpa responds, "I figured, 'cuz the Democrats were in power again."

Or the episode "cartridge family" dealing with gun rights:

Marge: Mmm! No! [pulls gun from Homer] No one's using this gun! The TV said you're 58 percent more likely to shoot a family member than an intruder!

Homer: TV said that . . . ? But I have to have a gun! It's in the Constitution!

Lisa: Dad! The Second Amendment is just a remnant from revolutionary days. It has no meaning today!

Homer: You couldn't be more wrong, Lisa. If I didn't have this gun, the king of England could just walk in here anytime he wants and start shoving you around. [pushing Lisa] Do you want that? [pushing her harder] Huh? Do you?

Lisa: [quietly indignant] No . . .

Have you ever heard of appeasement theory? It not only applies to things like international politics, but it also works with things like the media. One good example of this is the Philadelphia Inquirer where either once or twice a week they run a feature called the "Conservative Corner" in the editorial section. First of all, there is nothing worse than making it sound like conservative's opinions need to be placed in the corner as if they did something bad. Second of all, why don't they regularly run these features without having to feature a "balance" of the news?

Here's an article from the National Review too talking about New York Times bias:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gros s031403.asp

It's also hard to hold the New York Times in very high regard after the whole scandal they had with their reporter.

I'm not saying that FOX News isn't biased, but I think it's about time that the other side of things should be heard.

If you need more information on this subject, I suggest you read the following book by Bernard Goldberg. He couldn't stand the liberal bias of the media even though he is a liberal himself. Some of the examples he uses are undeniably accurate and universal. It's very interesting to say the least.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060 520841/qid=1067618220/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/103-901353 3-0048633?v=glance&n=507846

From the Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; passed in 1978) court to issue orders for business records in international-terrorism or espionage cases -- just as federal grand juries have long been able to obtain the same records through subpoenas in ordinary criminal cases. Records can be obtained under section 215 only through a court order (not, as Mr. Lynch states, through a "subpoena"), and only if the court determines that the FBI is legally entitled to them (the FBI has no authority to issue such orders unilaterally).

Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not make it "a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter." However, Section 215's confidentiality rule is necessary to protect our national security, and is based on nondisclosure orders that courts always have been able to enter in ordinary criminal cases. For example, the judge in the Kobe Bryant case may order the news media to refrain from divulging information about the alleged victim's personal life, in order to protect her privacy. In the same way, if we were to serve a court order on a flight-training school to find out if a Mohammed Atta is taking flight lessons, we obviously would not want the school to tell Atta, who might then accelerate his terrorist plot. As with any court order, the FISA-court can consider sanction, but the Patriot Act does not make such violations criminal offenses.

We do enthusiastically welcome debate about the Patriot Act and invite all Americans to learn the facts about this important legislation by logging on to www.lifeandliberty.gov. Our new website includes an overview of the Patriot Act, its entire text, statements from Members of Congress explaining the law, factual information dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated about the act, as well as other information.

Read the whole article here, which is in response to another article on the same website.

Another Patriot Act article.

From the Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; passed in 1978) court to issue orders for business records in international-terrorism or espionage cases -- just as federal grand juries have long been able to obtain the same records through subpoenas in ordinary criminal cases. Records can be obtained under section 215 only through a court order (not, as Mr. Lynch states, through a "subpoena"), and only if the court determines that the FBI is legally entitled to them (the FBI has no authority to issue such orders unilaterally).

Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not make it "a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter." However, Section 215's confidentiality rule is necessary to protect our national security, and is based on nondisclosure orders that courts always have been able to enter in ordinary criminal cases. For example, the judge in the Kobe Bryant case may order the news media to refrain from divulging information about the alleged victim's personal life, in order to protect her privacy. In the same way, if we were to serve a court order on a flight-training school to find out if a Mohammed Atta is taking flight lessons, we obviously would not want the school to tell Atta, who might then accelerate his terrorist plot. As with any court order, the FISA-court can consider sanction, but the Patriot Act does not make such violations criminal offenses.

We do enthusiastically welcome debate about the Patriot Act and invite all Americans to learn the facts about this important legislation by logging on to www.lifeandliberty.gov. Our new website includes an overview of the Patriot Act, its entire text, statements from Members of Congress explaining the law, factual information dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated about the act, as well as other information.

Read the whole article here, which is in response to another article on the same website.

Another Patriot Act article.

From the Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; passed in 1978) court to issue orders for business records in international-terrorism or espionage cases -- just as federal grand juries have long been able to obtain the same records through subpoenas in ordinary criminal cases. Records can be obtained under section 215 only through a court order (not, as Mr. Lynch states, through a "subpoena"), and only if the court determines that the FBI is legally entitled to them (the FBI has no authority to issue such orders unilaterally).

Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not make it "a crime for anyone who has been served with a subpoena to speak to anyone about the matter." However, Section 215's confidentiality rule is necessary to protect our national security, and is based on nondisclosure orders that courts always have been able to enter in ordinary criminal cases. For example, the judge in the Kobe Bryant case may order the news media to refrain from divulging information about the alleged victim's personal life, in order to protect her privacy. In the same way, if we were to serve a court order on a flight-training school to find out if a Mohammed Atta is taking flight lessons, we obviously would not want the school to tell Atta, who might then accelerate his terrorist plot. As with any court order, the FISA-court can consider sanction, but the Patriot Act does not make such violations criminal offenses.

We do enthusiastically welcome debate about the Patriot Act and invite all Americans to learn the facts about this important legislation by logging on to www.lifeandliberty.gov. Our new website includes an overview of the Patriot Act, its entire text, statements from Members of Congress explaining the law, factual information dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated about the act, as well as other information.

Read the whole article here, which is in response to another article on the same website.

Another Patriot Act article.

Oh yes, my mistake, I forgot about all of that starvation in Italy and Ireland, silly me.

You point to Italy and Ireland, I'll point to Mexico and most any place in South America

Over populated planet? The evidence is against you. Food production has outstripped population growth throughout the recorded history of either. Not one place on earth are farmers starving while people in the cities they serve getting fat. Not even in North Korea (where everybody not "connected" is starving).

At what cost has "food production ... outstripped population growth"?
We cut down the jungle to grow one year of feed for a cow, then it's desert.
Also, you seem convinced I'm a commie, so I'll stay in line with your odd appraisal and link to our own government starving farmers.

Then again, a Chinese-Socialist system that you seem to lean toward created a massive famine in China during the 1960's.

This I can't stand. I'm an Anarchist and proud of it.

So, please, look at the real world and skip the propoganda.

It's not a matter of skipping the propaganda, it's more a matter of reading everyone's propaganda and drawing your own conclusions. I would have thought a guy with a nick like yours would understand that.

seriously, he's no more than 5'-10". 5'-9" is probably the truth.

have a look about 3/4 down the page on this article at National Review which I might add is a *very* right leaning/pro-Bush publication.

or at this cnn photo of Bush and Putin, keeping in mind that Putin is a *very* short man.

Read this for starters. If it was utter lies, even the Jerusalem Post wouldn't let it be posted there.

Then read this one . Specifically Item #3, but alot of the info there will challenge the (Israel is all bad, Israel is only bad) mantra most of the "liberals" repeat. To quote it

Turning a blind eye to article 15, Great Britain also decided that no Jews could reside or buy land in the newly created Emirate. This policy was ratified -- after the emirate became a kingdom -- by Jordan's law no. 6, sect. 3, on April 3, 1954, and reactivated in law no. 7, sect. 2, on April 1, 1963. It states that any person may become a citizen of Jordan unless he is a Jew. King Hussein made peace with Israel in 1994, but the Judenrein legislation remains valid today.

The first quote is a column by Alan Dershowitz, if you hate pro-Israel folks then skip to the 2nd link, but I don't know who wrote it. But if either of these was pure propoganda or lies, then surely they would have been challenged by now.

Anyway, regarding the conflict, I'm not saying Israel is innocent. But to treat the situation like Israel is doing these things in a vacuum, instead of in reaction to decades of similar violence and hatred against it, is foolish and misleading.

An anonymous reader writes "Alan Gore [no, not the inventor of the internet] and John Derbyshire have weighed in on outsourcing. They're both old-school big iron guys, and both exude a flair for classical libertarianism, but even they see the writing on the wall. Gore imagines a September 11, 2011, during the second Hillary Rodham administration, when all our outsourced systems suddenly say, 'You've been 0wn3d!' Derbyshire, on the other hand, is reacting to a bizarre phenomenon that's here already: African-American parents sending their children to boarding schools in AFRICA, because it's cheaper than sending them to day school here in America. Derb asks, 'Feel the ground shifting under your feet? If you don't, you soon will.'"

drives us further into recession

What evidence is there of this? If anything, the economy is recovering at a record pace. I don't think it's any coincidence that it started almost to the day that dividend tax relief went into effect.

Paying taxes is the price you pay to be a part of our society.

Only because you've been conditioned to believe this. Paying taxes is the price you pay for common defense and the enforcement of property rights. Nearly everything else has been added through, ah, shall we say, creative interpretation of the Constitution.

Don't you give a fuck about the legacy - our country, our world, our oceans, our sky - you leave for your kids?

Yeah, I do. Don't think you leftists have a monopoly on the moral high ground. You don't. Just because I don't agree with your methods for achieving a happy, prosperous world doesn't mean I'm against it. Such a statement is incredibly insulting, and demonstrates both arrogance and tremendous ignorance.

What is next Buckley on P2P? Whoops to late.

http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=2071033
http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=2067837
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/2002_09_29 _corner-archive.asp#85505821
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/001/435tebxi.asp

(You may have to search for "welfare" on the pages above to find the section addressing the link.)

...than the French?

A more interesting question is what the under/over line is for the Euro collapsing. Given that France and German are blithely ignoring the deficit constraints required by the Euro agreement, it's only a matter of time. By then, all investments outside France, even in a failed American dot-com magazine, will look farsighted.

Primates capitulards et tou-jours en quete de harengs.

I do not belive Bush has vetoed anything yet.

Reference "Instead we are getting the first full presidential term to go without a veto since John Quincy Adams."
National Review

Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review mentioned Halliburton's performance in its Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense, issued in September 1996. In a section titled "Outsourcing of Logistics Allows Combat Troops to Stick to Basics," Gore's reinventing-government team favorably mentioned LOGCAP, the cost-plus-award system, and (Halliburton), which the report said provided "basic life support services -- food, water, sanitation, shelter, and laundry; and the full realm of logistics services -- transportation, electrical, hazardous materials collection and disposal, fuel delivery, airfield and seaport operations, and road maintenance."

In 1997, when LOGCAP was again put up for bid, (Halliburton) lost the competition to another contractor, Dyncorp. But the Clinton Defense Department, rather than switch from Halliburton to Dyncorp, elected to award a separate, sole-source contract to (Halliburton) to continue its work in the Balkans. According to a later GAO study, the Army made the choice because 1) Brown & Root had already acquired extensive knowledge of how to work in the area; 2) the company "had demonstrated the ability to support the operation"; and 3) changing contractors would have been costly. The Army's sole-source Bosnia contract with (Halliburton) lasted until 1999. At that time, the Clinton Defense Department conducted full-scale competitive bidding for a new contract. The winner was . . . (Halliburton). The company continued its work in Bosnia uninterrupted.

Gosh, oddly enough every single story here seems to talk about what a nasty, horrible person George W. Bush is, and how America is an evil capitalist empire bent on global domination. There are just two big problems with this:

1. It isn't true.

2. In no way, shape or form is this "censored news."

Point 1 I'll leave as an exercise for the reader (it's not like I have all day to puncture liberal theories that have already been punctured quite extensively elsewhere), but for Point 2, just take a look at their #1 "censored story": "The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance".

Let's ignore the usual liberal ignorance in using the word "neoconservative" to vilify anyone who supported the liberation of Iraq, never mind that most of them have be unhyphenated conservatives their entire lives (Richard Pearle or Donald Rumsfeld, anyone?). Can anyone seriously suggest that this story has been "censored"? Liberals have been bitching about "neoconservative" this or "Wolfowitz" that for well over a yeaar. It's no secret. There's no way in hell that this "story" has been "censored." It's merely that Americans have heard their theories and rejected them.

In fact, none of these can be called "censored stories." Did George W. Bush or Dick Cheney send armed thugs to shut down The Nation's printing press? No? Did they arrest people for publishing any of these stories? No? Hell, they didn't even arrest that asshat Geraldo for giving away our troop's positions. Some "censorship."

All this really amounts to is one long whine: "The American media hasn't unquestioningly taken up the radical liberal view that George W. Bush is worse than Hitler! That's censorship!" No it isn't. It's a sign that America doesn't buy your conspiracy theories. It's amazing that in a country where 86% of journalists regularly vote for Democrats, these people just don't think that the American media is liberal enough.

If this were a real list of censored stories, would every single one of them support liberals and attack conservatives? No. How about kidnapped Americans being held against their will in Saudi Arabia? There's a real under-reported story, but you won't hear about it here because it doesn't support liberal policy goals.

Slashdot, if you want to slam the Bush administration so badly, why don't you just post an editorial and be done with it. Not only is the linked list not true, not balanced, and not fair, it's not even remotely news.

Is it too hard to

The real reaction to this act from conservatives is more interesting and diverse. Some share the views of Attorney General Ashcroft. Others oppose it just as strongly as the geek community -- many of the articles about the act on the conservative National Review site describe it with terms like the "so-called", "wrongly-termed" or "misnamed" Patriot Act. A director of the Cato Institute raised many interesting questions about the act, to which the Justice Department wrote up a reply.

Also worth looking at is the Justice Department's own Patriot Act Web site. From here you can view the text of the act itself as well as all the arguments for it and rhetoric used to justify it. A valuable resource for any of us trying to formulate counterarguments about why this act needs to go away.

The real reaction to this act from conservatives is more interesting and diverse. Some share the views of Attorney General Ashcroft. Others oppose it just as strongly as the geek community -- many of the articles about the act on the conservative National Review site describe it with terms like the "so-called", "wrongly-termed" or "misnamed" Patriot Act. A director of the Cato Institute raised many interesting questions about the act, to which the Justice Department wrote up a reply.

Also worth looking at is the Justice Department's own Patriot Act Web site. From here you can view the text of the act itself as well as all the arguments for it and rhetoric used to justify it. A valuable resource for any of us trying to formulate counterarguments about why this act needs to go away.

By Eli Lehrer

I will not disagree that Bush is a spendhappy freak right now. It's true that the deficit is the biggest in history but you aren't looking at the math.

Admittedly this is from National Review (ugh) but facts are facts:

Deficit Numbers

Yes I know that both major parties want big government. Just from different angles. Dems want in your wallet and Reps want in your bedroom.

What bugs me is that people assume they have to vote for one of the major parties. Why? Isn't it Norway that has 30 odd parties and representatives are elected from almost everyone?

Look at the real alternatives. I've been a libertarian for the past 5 years. Registered no less. I'd suggest you look at them or an Independant of some nature. Stop perpetuating the two party system!

What with all the other anti-bush lies in the queue, I imagine your second example is probably still awaiting it's well-deserved debunking.

What with all the other anti-bush lies in the queue, I imagine your second example is probably still awaiting it's well-deserved debunking.

I also don't agree with him lying the the nations of the world either (esspecially in a way that makes them feel as though they are in mortal danger)

Name ONE nation that didn't believe that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction. If you can, provide a link to where they stated it.

According to our own legal system, if I tell someone to kill you, and they do, then I am guilty of murdering you, regardless of whether or not I'm even on the same planet as you, and it would be accurate to say that I murdered you. In the same way, if Osama bin Laden tells some guys to kill people, and they do, then he is guilty of murdering them, and it would be accurate to say that Osama bin Laden murdered those people.

I was patronizing you.

Actually it was stated by, "a former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday"

Correct... With information coming from ... THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT. And I quote:

The problem with many of the most frequently cited studies is that they rely primarily on official Iraqi information sources. The 1995 FAO study contains a table reporting more than 500,00 deaths among children due to sanctions, but the source for these figures is the government of Iraq.

The study also contains an estimate by the Itaqi Ministry of Health that 109,000 people died annually because of sanctions, but it observes that the study's investigators "had no way of confirming this figure."

See here also.

You would believe the Iraqi government after the Iraqi Information Minister? Are you nuts? I suppose the Iraqi military is going to slaughter us now...

âoeMany Europeans know so little about the EU that the convention's debates would mean nothing to them. A poll taken for Britain's Foreign Office in 2001 discovered that a quarter of Britons did not know that their country was actually a member of the European Union, and 7% thought that the United States was in it. In Germany, a founder member of the Union whose serious papers devote acres of space to EU affairs, another recent poll found that 31% of the public had never heard of the European Commission, the EU's most important institution.â

âoeMany Europeans know so little about the EU that the convention's debates would mean nothing to them. A poll taken for Britain's Foreign Office in 2001 discovered that a quarter of Britons did not know that their country was actually a member of the European Union, and 7% thought that the United States was in it. In Germany, a founder member of the Union whose serious papers devote acres of space to EU affairs, another recent poll found that 31% of the public had never heard of the European Commission, the EU's most important institution.â

by Jonah Goldberg, Editor of NR Online

ORAL SEX, LINUX, AND SMASHING THE THIRD WORLD
I'm back. Italy was beautiful, but then again, that's what it's there for.
I planned on coming back tanned, rested and ready. Instead, I'm paler,
jetlagged, and even fatter. But I am back.

[...]

Fortunately, there was an interesting piece in yesterday's New York Times
on the topic of web magazine statistics. Apparently I am not the only one
who can't think straight until he's gotten his morning dose of page
impressions, user sessions, and the like. Apparently the gang at Salon,
Slate, and the Industry Standard spend as much time as I do walking around
bus stations in fishnet stockings and I'll-work-for-Bill-Clinton-pumps in
order to satisfy their page-impression cravings. Michael Kinsley, the
editor of Slate, calls web stats insidious because of their baleful
effect on journalistic standards - or something like that.

Regardless, in the piece the pros from the big web mags offer some hints
about what kinds of stories and headlines generate serious traffic. A
headline relation to oral sex always seems to grab the attention more
than, say, an article on Orrin Hatch's views on judicial review. And - get
this - the editors at Salon have found reasons to include Oral Sex in a
number of headlines. Funny how that works.

More interesting is the fact that articles relating to Linux - the name
the Peanuts character assumes when he stars in Roman Empire-motif porn
movies (like The Erotic Adventures of Hercules with Norman Fell as Zeus) -
get huge hits. No, actually Linux is a programming language. But
coincidentally, its boosters do tend to think they live in Ancient Rome
and they are Christians trying to topple the world with their selfless
philosophy of open, free software as opposed to the imperial tyranny of,
say, Microsoft. Apparently there's this thing called the Slashdot Effect
(it sounds better if you say it like it's a preview for a new Bruce Willis
movie: Bruce Willis is Arliss McKinkledorp. When others go on dates, he
writes code. See why in: The Slashdot Effect. It seems if you mention the
LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM, millions upon millions of people see the link on
the Slashdot.com website and come on over, because Slashdot.com monitors
all mentions of LINUX SOFTWARE and links to them. Who would have thought
that so many people were interested in Linux software? Maybe if Linux
software told us something about Oral Sex? Oh well, never mind.

Now, in the past I have admitted that I am not above debasing myself for
cheap high-traffic thrills. In fact if you search for Lesbian Love Goats
on google.com the first couple of results should be the Goldberg File.

[...]

That he did. He additionally opposed Allied intervention against Hitler. That article, which summarizes Gandhi's beliefs with regard to the Jews, is comprised of quotations from articles Gandhi wrote in 1938, all of which can be readily found through search engines.

What if they'd been called to respond to gun shots, but found two adults smoking a small amount of pot for recreational purposes, should they have excused themselves and walked out?

I mean, an individual cop might walk out, maybe. But, if they witness the crime as a group, and they know it's a crime, there's going to be an arrest.

I found this article on the issue to be pretty interesting. It's by a Republican senator who believes the law should be abolished, legislatively.

The Bubonic Plague started in China in the 1330's, actually. I wonder what would have happened if they'd spent some cash doing research on that "crazy backwoods disease" before it hit London in 1665?

I'm not going to touch the Moore side of things, I have several problems with his "documentary", and the contents thereof, and how it is presented.

did you ever read this story by Cyril Kornbluth? the smart people running Earth devised an ad campaign to convince all the idiots to board a rocket and move to Venus. in fact, the rockets blew up once in orbit. just seems very appropriate to this story, somehow...heh heh heh

...large groups of American minorities to protect ...

Curiously, American minorities are somewhat underrepresented in actual combat MOS's.

But ignoring the facts makes it sound better, doesn't it?

And here: ...in a March 9 interview on CNN's Late Edition/Prime Time Gore insisted: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

And here:
Several times, George W. Bush and his campaign have questioned Al Gore's credibility. One of their favorite examples is when on 09March 1999, Gore told CNN's Wolf Blitzer....

And here:
During a March 1999 CNN interview, while trying to differentiate himself from rival Bill Bradley, Gore boasted: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

And here:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," Gore said during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer

And here:
In March of 1999 while appearing on a CNN program hosted by Wolf Blitzer, Al Gore briefly alluded to his role in the development of the Internet. This comment became controversial overnight and was used to the former Vice President's disadvantage during the 2000 campaign.

And EVEN here:
March 9, 1999; CNN interview
CLAIM: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Or, if you still want to believe Gore said "I invented the Internet" during a debate, than go ahead. But I will reserve the right to get pissed off when people like you falsely accuse me of lying.

Actually, latest election results from Iran say differently. Tehran had a 1% turnout. Now, granted, these were local elections. If they were national ones, they might have doubled turnout!

Hey goofball, shouldn't you be getting drunk on Tequila & Lone Star, catching syphilis and celebrating Davie Crocket Day out there in TX?