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It would seem that seem that RFK Jr and many in the public have a rather myopic memory when it comes to allegations of vote fraud. One would expect that Mr Kennedy would certainly be aware of the controversy surrounding the outcome of the 1960 Presdential election especially since his uncle John F. Kennedy was elected.

Or was he? Rather than Ohio and Florida, that election came down to narrow wins in Illinois and Texas. Both states were Democrat-controlled and rife with allegations of fraud. Did Mayor Daley of Chicago arrange for the dead to vote? Did Johnson's own political machine throw Texas? Like 2004, the answers depend on who you ask.

After his white supremacism was defeated in Congress, Thurmond switched to the Republican Party. Go figure...

Hard to know what to make of that, after all, the Democrats still have Robert Byrd, who formerly held the office of "Kleagle" (and possibly a higher one as well) in the Ku Klux Klan and opposed much of the civil rights agenda over the years. He was still using some disgusting language until relatively recently.

Also read the article about scientists being intimidated, and threats of cutting their funding, if they question the alarmism about global warming, by Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT Professor of Atmospheric Sciences) at http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220. I find the following paragraph particularly galling:

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful.

The Framers, however, distinguished between the power to "declare" war, which they indeed granted to Congress, and the power to "make" war, which was vested in the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Based on this power alone, presidents throughout our history have initiated military action to protect vital American interests overseas. Given Saddam Hussein's past record, President Bush could clearly take the position that this power is sufficient to support action to end the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful.

The Framers, however, distinguished between the power to "declare" war, which they indeed granted to Congress, and the power to "make" war, which was vested in the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Based on this power alone, presidents throughout our history have initiated military action to protect vital American interests overseas. Given Saddam Hussein's past record, President Bush could clearly take the position that this power is sufficient to support action to end the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

CARTHAGE, Tenn. -- On his most recent tax return, as he has the past 25 years, Vice President Al Gore lists a $20,000 mining royalty for the extraction of zinc from beneath his farm here in the bucolic hills of the Cumberland River Valley. In total, Mr. Gore has earned $500,000 from zinc royalties. His late father, the senator, introduced him not only to the double-bladed ax but also to Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., which sold the zinc-rich land to the Gore family in 1973.

The elder Gore owned more than $500,000 worth of Occidental stock at the time of the Elk Hills purchase in 1997. When he died the following year, his son became the executor of his estate and, according to the vice president's federal income disclosure forms, the estate continued, as of May 1999, to hold the Occidental stock.

The close relationship Gore and his father have enjoyed with Occidental Petroleum is detailed in "The Buying of the President 2000," a new book by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity. Lewis is the founder and executive director of the center, a nonpartisan watchdog group of journalists in Washington whose scoops include the Lincoln Bedroom fund-raising scandal. A former investigative reporter with "60 Minutes" and ABC News, Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1990.

"The Buying of the President 2000" reports that Occidental gave $50,000 after one of Gore's fund-raising calls from his White House office. "Indeed," according to the book, "since Gore became part of the Democratic ticket in the summer of 1992, Occidental has given more than $470,000 in soft money to various Democratic committees and causes." And Gore himself has received $35,550 in Occidental campaign contributions during that same period, the center estimates.

. ... And there's much, much more: Lewis' fascinating dissection of the more than 50-year relationship between Gore's family and Occidental Petroleum begins when the elder Gore was serving in the House of Representatives. Occidental was then run by Armand Hammer, once described as "the godfather of American corporate corruption" and a master of double-dealing who laundered funds and placed spies in the United States for Moscow to protect his vast oil and gas holdings in the Soviet Union. Hammer buddied up to Gore Sr. by putting him on the payroll of his New Jersey cattle ranch in the 1940s. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to prosecute Hammer, but backed off for fear of Hammer's friends in Congress, including Gore, who ascended to the Senate in 1952. Before long, charges "The Buying of the President 2000," the advantages of being friends with Hammer were inevitably passed on to Gore Jr.

. .... Meanwhile, Al Jr. and his wife, Tipper, hosted Hammer at Ronald Reagan's 1984 inauguration and again at President Bush's in 1988. "In return," according to the book, "Hammer and members of his family bent over backwards to get money into Gore's campaigns," and the largesse continued after Hammer died, in 1990, and Gore became Clinton's vice president.

We have free energy at the end of the world.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008768/

It seems more likely that it is connected to the growing spread of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in the Middle East, which is becoming a true public health menace and cause for serious alarm.

One comes to this conclusion because it is clear that no sane person would think there is any connection between events in the Middle East, or in any other part of the world, Patagonia for example, and blowing up transatlantic passenger flights. There is really no connection. One is not going to help the other or have any effect at all on it.

It is exactly like a guy washing his hands 500 times a day. He says, he is afraid of catching Aids. You explain that this making no difference to his prospects of getting Aids. He becomes furious with you, and says he has to do something. For an insight into the state of mind have a look at

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008768& mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage

Bernard Lewis knows what he is writing about.

>There are not two sides to scientific fact.

Scientific fact is a very ellusive thing. For every issue, there are differing points of view. On global warming, it is generally agreed that temperatures have risen since the 19th century. But that's about it.

This is one of my favorite articles on the subject (appologies for the repost from my previous response)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers."

Mr. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

You make a valid point - Al Gore has his name on his work. But, that isn't the point I was making. His movie is a one-sided view of the "facts", presented as truth. See http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 as an example. Both sides are attempting to manipulate public opinion. "...I suspect you're too busy cheerleading..." Do you mean you're too busy cheerleading? I'm confused :) Yet another irony demonstrating my point. Your side propogandizes (is that a word?) and it's "truth". The other side does and its just more evidence of how evil they are.

THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Here's my problem with your statement, you ask me to provide cold hard facts that global warming isn't all it's cracked up to be. Well, I can do that with a dozen studies and web sites http://www.junkscience.com/, http://www.john-daly.com/, http://www.climateaudit.com/ are all quick and easy to pull off the top of my head.

In addition, it's recently been pointed out that there's no Nobel Prize waiting for the person who proves anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a crock, in fact it's like a death knell to your carreer to pursue global warming skepticism, even if you are totally right.

McIntyre and McKittrick, the two people who have (respectively) a PhD in Statistics and PhDs in Math and Geology were told that they had no qualifications to argue the quality of Mann's "Hockey Stick". This work was done by climate change scientists who had degrees in, hmmm, one has a PhD in Math and Geology (Mann) and the other has a degree in Statistics (the et. al. of the report.) McIntyre and McKittrick have received dozens of death threats from the AGW crowd, especially after they proved that Mann's equation would produce a hockey stick, even with totally random data.

The reason gravity, and relativity, and evolution haven't been "shot down" is very simple. They are falsifiable theories. It takes a single fact that lies outside their purview to devastate the theory. Gravity - at least Newton's version - was ruined by the fact that the planet Mercury was in the wrong place. Look up the Planet Vulcan sometime and see why Relativity knocked Newton out of the ballpark.

The current AGW debate is based on two facts. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased by approximately 80PPM over the last 160 years, and during the last 140 years, there's been an increase in temperature of about 0.6 degrees C. However, there's a big caveat in these two pieces of data. It's called "Correlation does not imply causality." It's one of the first things any good statistician should be taught. However, it's plain that the climate scientists decided to jump on the bandwagon and scream "CO2 is wrecking the Earth!".

To "prove" this, they've turned to computer models of the atmosphere. These, they say, prove that global warming is real, yet even they admit that most of their models "go runaway" and have to be thrown out. I'm sorry, but if your model is so fragile that given the same inputs it can "go runaway", then the model isn't accurate. It's equivalent to tossing a coin. It's meaningless. Who decides what is a "runaway result". Climate Prediction even admits that they threw out any run of their model that showed cooling with an increase in CO2.

Even the most powerful simulator in the world, the NEC Earth Simulator, only works on 50 kilometer wide grids. They had never even seen a hurricane on their "simulated Earth" until two years ago, and even then, they didn't call it a hurricane, they called it a "hurricane precursor" known as a "curl" because the simulation wouldn't support the actual hurricane formation and flow. Now, hurricanes are responsible, annually, for 30-40% of the rainfall in portions of the Southern United States. Their model admittedly doesn't handle this, those areas never receive that rainfall, and precipitation is responsible for a large amount of ground-cooling in models, as well as hundreds of other effects that simply aren't modeled. And that's just one of a dozen things I could list that are wrong with computer models. I've had this argument before. (And it's dropped off my lis

Thanks, I'll have to check out that article.

I recently read one by MIT researcher Richard Lindzen that was a real eye-opener. People criticize him for accepting funding from Big Oil, but he sounds reasonable enough, his academic credentials are beyond reproach, and, hey, everybody needs to get their funding *somewhere*, and *all* funding sources (unless they are inhuman) have *some* sort of bias, right?

Yes, you'll find that many of the problems historically in the formation of the US are the direct opposite of the problems in Europe.

Mainly, ... in Europe you have plenty of labour and no land; in the US we have always had plenty of land, but a massive shortage of labour.

You see these issues work themselves out in many ways over the last 500+ years from slavery, religious warfare, socialism, to trains, and even web groceries.

Now with the amazingly suicidal birthrate in Europe at the moment that is likely to change. However, I am sure that once the Muslims have reached majority and are able to implement Sharia law, your birthrates will start to climb back up. Say, 2030-ish?

Google for Mark Steyn & "It's the Demographics Stupid"

From "Climate of Fear"
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

A report published by Timbro claims that most U.S. states individually have a higher GDP than most European states.

Somewhere I've seen a report that says the average poor family in the U.S. is better off than the average middle-class family in Sweden, but I can't find that one right now. The Wall St. Journal's Opinion Journal site does refer to this in an article, though: "[T]he percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has dropped to 12% from 22% since 1959. In 1999, 25% of American households were considered 'low income,' meaning they had an annual income of less than $25,000. If Sweden--the very model of a modern welfare state--were judged by the same standard, about 40% of its households would be considered low-income."

Or does it look like Wolverine's sticking his claws into Dad's head?

Here's his Op-Ed piece on immigration from Wednesday's Wall Stret Journal: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110008420

I read the article when it came out and overall I found it pretty reasonable and full of some good ideas.

I don't think it's a good idea to have a DNA/fingerprint database is a great idea, but the problem he was trying to solve by suggesting it -- easily falsifiable social security cards -- is an important one.

Expect to see ads for Democratic nominees in the next election, but don't expect to see any for Republicans (Google will run ads criticizing republicans, but not democrats).

Sorry, don't mean to turn this into a political discussion, but with all the Chinese censorship, and all the stuff I've been reading about liberal bias at Google, I find it harder and harder to be sympathetic towards them.

Don't hate me for having a different opinion. We should be encouraging discourse, not shouting down viewpoints we disagree with.

In 2004, we sure didn't describe it as "spying on Americans." Instead, it was called one of the "missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives."

"NBC News aired an "exclusive" story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda "switchboard" inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar's brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, "The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn't deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying." Back then, the NBC script didn't describe it as "spying on Americans." Instead, it was called one of the "missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives.""

So if you earn some magic sword that you could sell for USD$5K real-world dollars, it may be the case that you should be taxed on that USD$5K of income right now, before you sell it. Maybe.

If the market for those items were considered robust enough (not sure how you'd measure that), I'd say you're very likely going to be taxed at the time of acquisition, not the time of sale. Just like winning items on a game show, it doesn't take the sale of those items to generate a taxable event, merely the acquisition of those items represents income received. Just ask the people who got cars from Oprah...

Your concerns seem to be:

The US government's counter-terrorist surveillance program is generally effective and keeping terrorism in the US at low levels.

That, despite its heavy press coverage at the time and seemingly endless references on Slashdot, the media's attention toward a contrived study rushed into publication in an influential foreign publication in a blatant attempt to influence a US election has fallen to merely occasional reference instead of continuous.

The media focuses on the victims of terrorism and not of the suffering of the terrorists when captured or killed. The focus on the victims includes the poor Iraqis who are the continuing victims of both Islamists, and Saddam's remaining forces fighting as guerillas after having been removed from the positions of power which they used to put hundreds of thousands of Iraqis into mass graves. ( At least the Iraqis are dying at a considerably lower rate than when ruled by Saddam. The rate should fall considerably this year as the Iraqi government continues to grow stronger and more Iraqis are drawn into the political process.)

The mainstream media doesn't carry much important news like this.

I think I can identify your concerns, but, other than the last one, not why they should bother you.

Oddly, Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT seems to think that it's not only "denyable", but that it's become a cult that stifles any dissent.

But hey, what does he know, right?

Before we get worked up into a frenzy over the impending doom from global warming, let's consider the other side of the issue. . .

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-03-06-1 .html

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

Climate of Fear (opinionjournal.com)
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

BY RICHARD LINDZEN
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

Ross, Read this article which is a recent Slashdot Thread: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 The volcano of which I am thinking is Mt St. Helens. Where do you get your numbers on the amount of CO2 released by humans. There is a book by Dixie Lee Ray called "Trashing the Planet" that addresses all of the issues you mention and many others. You also mention that volcano eruptions cause the Earth's temperature to drop because the sulphur compounds reflect heat. You then say that mankind releases 8181 times more that that. Why is it that the Sulphuric compounds from volcanos protect us and the same compounds from humans are destroying us? And if you decide to answer this, please leave out the insults to my intellegence. Calling people names doesn't make your argument any more valid. Jim

http://marccooper.com/chavez-again-did-uncle-jimmy -get-duped/

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110005586

The new study was released this week by economists Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard and Roberto Rigobon of MIT. They zeroed in on a key problem with the August 18 vote audit that was run by the government's electoral council (CNE): In choosing which polling stations would be audited, the CNE refused to use the random number generator recommended by the Carter Center. Instead, the CNE insisted on its own program, run on its own computer. Mr. Carter's team acquiesced, and Messrs. Hausmann and Rigobon conclude that, in controlling this software, the government had the means to cheat.

"This result opens the possibility that the fraud was committed only in a subset of the 4,580 automated centers, say 3,000, and that the audit was successful because it directed the search to the 1,580 unaltered centers. That is why it was so important not to use the Carter Center number generator. If this was the case, Carter could never have figured it out."

Mr. Hausmann told us that he and Mr. Rigoban also "found very clear trails of fraud in the statistical record" and a probability of less than 1% that the anomalies observed could be pure chance. To put it another way, they think the chance is 99% that there was electoral fraud.

" Europe is richer than America"

Hehehe . dream on my friend, dream on ...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110005242

"I don't think it is true that studio executives and producers hate America. They are too confused, ambivalent and personally anxious to sit around hating their audience. I think they wish they understood America. I think they feel nostalgic for what they remember of it. I think they find it hard to find America, in a way."

Against who, exactly?

Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Maybe you've heard of one or two of their many outrages? If you're well informed there are another three, or four, or five or six other commonly known ones. (Actually, there are many more.) And this is not counting just one or two of the many widely known foiled plots.

They even need close scrutiny in prison.

How did this escape your attention?

First off, your irrelevant conservative social ideas are just stupid.

This is a so liberal way of arguing. :) Anyway, maybe you're interested in knowing that I'm not American. I'm a very 3rd-worldly Brazilian living in Brazil, nice to meet you.

Regarding conservatism, it suffices to say that there's as much divergence among those who declare themselves as such as there is among those who declare themselves liberals. So, there're conservatives who approve of immigration and there're those who don't, and I'm among the later (I'm also among the anti-copyright conservatives).

Anyway, you're right in that more educated people vote democrat. Now, the problem for democrats is that they use to have only slightly more than one children per woman, what means that their number use to halve each generation, while conservatives use to have two or more children, what means their number either stays stable or increases. Go figure what that'll mean in two or three generations. This article has more information on this.

Now, back to the topic at hand: what constitutes an "improved" society? This topic, in this discussion, really has nothing to do with social values, unless you're a Luddite.

It depends. You mention free time and talk about the "Dark Ages" (an expression, by the way, that no scholar of history still uses, since it's only Renaissance anti-medieval propaganda). The point is that, no matter how many machines you have working in place of actual people, the ones who pay taxes will still be the people, not those machines. So, if you wanna all retired people to have the same standard of living that the working ones'll have, the working ones will still need to make the whole amount of money necessary to pay their own needs as well as those of the retired. So, if the working/retired rate is 1:1, each working person will need to make money enough for himself and for another retired person. If it's 1:2, each working person will need to make enough money for himself and for two retired persons. If it's 1:3, enough for himself and for three retired persons. And so on.

So, no matter how much the technology advances, if there's always less and less people entering the work force, these people will need to work more and more to pay all their bills and the bills of the retired, no matter what these bills are about (nursing robots, voyages to health centers in Mars, genetic rejuvenation therapy, whatever).

Labor saving devices will only actually save labor if there're lots of working people to have their labor saved, so that the proportion is something like 10:1, not 1:10. Other than that, it'll be more and more work, always.

And maybe all under sharia. ;)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006139 http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/mediaSnohomi shCounty.htm

• Topple the Baath regime from power
  
• Remove one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism in the world
  
• Form a provisional Governing Council
  
• Write an interim Constitution
  
• Transfer sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government
  
• Hold elections for an assembly to write a constitution
  
• Write a democratic constitution
  
• Ratify the new constitution in a popular election
  
• Hold the first parliamentary elections in Iraq in 50 years to elect a permanent assembly

Just for the benefit of a doubt, I'm going to guess that he wants to focus on distributing more white propaganda.

That means that he seriously believes that the people opposing us would stop if they just heard how nice we are.

That boggles the mind.

I can see why your mind is boggled since it is pretty certain that you are completely mistaken as to the intent.

It's more likely that the intent is to provide another source of news and views for the mass of Muslims & Arabs who are not committed to the violent Islamists cause. It might be a good thing if they had sources other than the hateful lies of the Islamists, and the government controlled media in the Middle East, which tends to spew some pretty vile things which you can see here. Muslim spokesmen regularly say that most Muslims want to live in peace. Maybe they will be more favorably inclined to so do, and to not assist the extremists, if they have access to news which sticks to being factual, or at least programming that doesn't regularly refer to Westerners as Crusaders, pigs and monkeys, call for the reconquest of Spain, applaud the exploits of terrorists bombing pizza parlors & pubs, etc. It is hard enough getting balance out of the American & European media. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this reported in the mainstream media. Arthur Chrenkoff's column listing good news from Iraq was practically unique, and not for lack of material. It is clear that if we don't speak up for ourselves, few if any there will.

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?

Who stands to gain by provoking Europeans into an anti-Muslim stance?

No one. Old Europe is fading into irrelevancy. Powerless countries are of no consequence. When they're provoked, it just becomes obvious to everyone.

Mark Steyn's piece on demographics explains Europe's future.

We Begin:

published a number of cartoons depicting Mohammed in ways that can only have been meant to express contempt.

The cartoons themselves are here:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/02/mohammed_cartoons_ published_in.php

They are the lamest bits of "contempt" westerners have ever seen.

Compare these images to the image "Piss Christ" (a crucifix in a jar of the "artists" urine)

http://instapundit.com/archives/028348.php

and then recall the non-issue it became.

To a moslem depicting the profet is totally forbidden, apparently, which the newspaper in question certainly knew;

Completely, proveably false!

Links to Pictures of the Big Mo thru history:

http://instapundit.com/archives/028427.php

also see:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007934

So, to sum it up: Denmark is festering in xenophobia and inflamed rhetoric; a newspaper decides to try to cash in on stirring up the shit and behave a spoiled brat; instead of being mature and apologize, the West is spiteful. Whatever one may think of the moslem world, this is simply not an honourable way to behave.

First of all, we should all be making a careful distinction between Islamo-Facists and "moslems".

I personally am an escapee from communist eastern europe, so I understand quite well that not all eastern europeans were communists.

Second of all, some of the cartoons created by the I-F are here:

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm

The thoughtfull reader can compare and contrast them with the cartoons of the Big Mo and decide who is stirring shit.

The reaction of the Islamo-Facist element fits in perfectly with this cartoon

http://thestudyofrevenge.blogspot.com/2006/01/isla m-is-poopy_21.html

Note: Cartoon is being pathetically censored by blogger.

I don't know about the Wahabbi, but this is informative.

I think many Muslims believe whatever their imam tells them to beleive...

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

You must mean the Oil for Food scandal.

But what you're saying is that "requiring" an ID to travel is akin to an unreasonable search, and that it somehow makes you less secure in your person (or papers). I'm not buying it; it's NOT unreasonable, and it's NOT a loss of an essential liberty. It's merely another thing people have to complain about.

When they talk about papers, they are talking about your private belongings, your personal correspondence, your journal, your research... they're not talking about an ID that the government issued you anyway. The government already knows all the information on that ID, they're the ones that gave it to you. All you have to do is present it to travel on a plane. Big Deal. It's NOT an essential liberty to travel anonymously.

Don't take me the wrong way, I don't favor big government; I wouldn't mind seeing the TSA dissappear - I don't think they do a good job and I don't think it's worth the expense. Frankly, I AM willing to give up "thousands of Americans" (as James Taranto put it here, scroll down to "Americans Want Their Government To Listen" discussing the wiretapping kerfufle) in order to preserve what I consider essential liberties - many times that have died in the past to preserve them for us and their deaths would be in vain if we just gave it up now. And yes, that includes me; and if I were put into a situation to fight and potentially die for your essential liberties, I'd do it. I simply don't see how showing your ID to travel on an airplane is giving up an essential liberty.

Now, if you want to complain about something, I think the random searches they do ARE a violation of the fourth amendment. Having the computer randomly print a star (or whatever mark they're using these days... I got stuck with a star) on my boarding pass is not probable cause.

I didn't say I take Bush's and Gonzalez's word as gospel; I said that I'll personally take a wait and see approach.

I assumed an ardent ACLU supporter would be more familiar with the organizations roots and their political stances. Heck! The ACLU even sided with Rush Limbaugh if you can believe that.

Agreed, today's ACLU is very different from when it was founded; but at the same time many of the political fights the ACLU jumps into they tend to side on the more liberal / socialist side of the argument. But again, not that that is always a bad thing. (On a side note, I find it humorous that many liberals compare Republicans to NAZIs. The NAZI were a socialist party who built support after WWI by providing jobs to its members (HAMAS anyone?) However, the NAZI party of Germany was a socialist party that espoused right-wing ideology. Socially, they stood for liberal thinking (socialism), but only for those of German blood. (Nationalism) thus their name.)

My point being, just as one can go too far to the right; so they can also go too far to the left.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERnazi.htm

But, to site the quote:

The ACLU's founder, Roger Baldwin, stated: "We are for SOCIALISM, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the state itself... We seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the SOLE CONTROL of those who produce wealth. COMMUNISM is the goal." (Source: Trial and Error, by Geo. Grant)

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-47,GGLG:en&q=aclu+%22COM MUNISM+is+the+goal%22+%22Roger+Baldwin%22

Not that the ACLU has not done anything good, America is big enough for many viewpoints; and in fact, I would argue, is my country's greatest strength. The ability to cherry pick the best of philosophies to form a amalgam of ideas that is this great experiment.

I think we agree on the NYT. However, I do believe they are left leaning and tend to slant their coverage and stories to favor a leftist viewpoint. It's actually difficult, IMHO, to find a non-partisan source of information on current events today. Sheer volume of sources has made it so that to maintain relevance and circulation, most traditinal information / news outlets have migrated more to sensationalism and away from substance.

In regards to the precedent being bunk, I'll hold judgement on that because IANA "constitutional" L. The two sites you link two are both heavily democrat party / liberal leaning sites. I don't know whose legal opinion they're handing out; which is why I think the whole debate is as hyped as it is because of the upcoming elections. Only time will tell (hopefully).

But to provide perhaps a more authoritive source to compare to the two you provided:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110007703
The Wall Street Journal:

--- Begin WSJ quote ---

The allegation of Presidential law-breaking rests solely on the fact that Mr. Bush authorized wiretaps without first getting the approval of the court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. But no Administration then or since has ever conceded that that Act trumped a President's power to make exceptions to FISA if national security required it. FISA established a process by which certain wiretaps in the context of the Cold War could be approved, not a limit on what wiretaps could ever be allowed.

The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the c

We have concluded that the allegations of research misconduct, related to plagiarism, misuse of other's work and fabrication, have sufficient merit to warrant further inquiry.
. ...
The Standing Committee also will be asked to inquire into whether Professor Churchill committed research misconduct by misrepresenting himself as an American Indian to gain credibility and authority for his work.

As to those in the World Trade Center: Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire--the 'mighty engine of profit' to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved--and they did so both willingly and knowingly. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

Except that even Benjamin Franklin knew that sometimes you have to keep secrets from people:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/? id=110007823

The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). - Robert Turner, co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, FISA vs. the Constitution

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, 1978

Not to mention that he'd be diametrically opposed to everything the current Administration stands for.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/? id=110007823

'Better Than Well Said'
Ben Franklin understood the need for secrecy in matters of national security.

BY PETE DU PONT
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Has President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority or acted illegally in authorizing wiretaps without a warrant on calls between American citizens in the United States and people abroad who are, or are suspected of having ties to, terrorists?

Benjamin Franklin (whose 300th birthday is today) would not have thought so. In 1776 he and his four colleagues on the Continental Congress's foreign affairs committee (called the Committee of Secret Correspondence) unanimously agreed that they could not tell the Congress about the covert assistance France was giving the American Revolution, because it would be harmful to America if the information leaked, and "we find by fatal experience that Congress consists of too many members to keep secrets."

For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful.

In other words, you can no doubt come up with examples, and any security system needs to constantly use tiger teams to try and reduce them, recognizing that no system will be perfect. Act yes, government is largely incompetent. However, it' all we have, unless you want vigilantes protecting us from terrorism.

Regarding American terrorists vs Islamic... a single attack by Islamic extremists killed more Americans than all previous terrorist attacks in history. That should give you a clue: the old days of terrorism are gone. The world has changed. It is now possible for a few people, aided by advanced technology (whether a 767, a nuclear explosive device, or a bioengineered virus) can kill a whole lot of us. At the same time, terrorists have changed from limited goals to seeking much, much greater death and destruction. Those two changes - modern deadly technology and terrorist cults with limitless goals (Islamofascists are the largest, although Aum Shinrikyo's incompetence is the only thing that kept their use of a WMD from killing thousands) together change the terrorism issue in a qualitative manner. This is a very unfortunate fact, and if we don't do our best to combat it, we deserve what happens to us.

We are truly at war in an existential sense. We didn't choose it and are not responsible for it. A suicidal cult - the Islamofascists - want to destroy or convert the entire non-Muslim society on earth and are willing to kill vast numbers of people to do so. Al Qaeda claims publicly to have dispensation from Allah to kill up to 4,000,000 innocents to achieve their goal. I'm sure they will find ways to justify ten or a hundred times that number. Furthermore, there are at least tens of millions of Muslims who support Al Qaeda, and of that number, some significant percentage are willing to participate and die to kill you and me. That is an enormous threat.

It is hard to put this threat into perspective, because the only thing close to it for the US is global thermonuclear war with Russia.

The problem with privacy fundamentalists is that you are doomed to lose, and you would be better off trying to set reasonable balances by helping the government do the best it can to check this threat. Unfortunately, privacy advocates ultimately lose at the expense of hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of the rest of us. You lose when the next big attack occurs, and the populace stops listening to theorists and demands a fix, and to hell with the details.

If you want to read a different take on this threat, check out what Mark Steyn has discovered.

Finally, for the sensitive. I did not say that *all* Muslims are part of this terrorist cult, or that there were no Muslims who oppose it.

I've got your proof right here!

For your next monologue can you rant about how flu vaccinations are resulting in ADD for US children?

Apparently the main outrage comes from ICAAN reassigning control of the little used .iq Iraq domain from two Palestinian immiagrants living in the US, currently in jail after being convicted on a variety of charges resulting from their supporting terrorists organizations, and giving control to the Iraqi government (which just had an electionwith unexpected support). This seemed to have fairly strong support on Slashdot just a few months ago. It was viewed as a positive thing in Iraq.

I'm finding it difficult to get worked up about this.