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U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft Resigns
andyring writes "In a move that will undoubtedly make many /. readers jump for joy (although perhaps not myself), Attorney General John Ashcroft announced he will resign, according to multiple news sources. While many here dislike him, others have more favorable opinions of him. He became the point man on the USA Patriot Act, which typically ignites harsh opinions on both sides of the aisle."
Reader cnsc1rtr , referring to the AP's version of the story, writes "He gave Bush a five-page, handwritten letter in which he stated, 'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'"
Good riddance! I wonder how long it will take to undo what he has done.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
At what cost?
Although I am afraid of the person that will replace Ashcroft, it is certainly a good thing for civil liberties and freedom that he is leaving. I think this brings to light the fact that Bush is only a part of the worry when it comes to the Bush administration, it is the goons behind him whispering in his ear that cause much of the worry.
For the Supreme Court...
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You know, when you look back Ashcroft wasn't so bad. He turned the FBI around and changed its mission radically. While the FBI has had a lot of false positives, it hasn't had many false negatives.
Compare that to the last AG, Janet Reno. The only thing I remember her doing was frying a whole bunch of fellow citizens down in Texas...and refusiing to prosecute/investigate a bunch of Clintonistas.
So they figured out how anthrax from US Army labs was mailed to various members of congress and media outlets, and captured those responsible?
Oh...they haven't done that, eh?
Well, at least gays can't marry.
Like who, Joseph Stalin is dead?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Your thinking short term. Now that he isn't a AG, he can be a SCJ.
Before 9/11, Ashcroft's top priority was targetting pornography. Since 9/11, he has been embarassingly ineffective in capturing terrorists.
I think it happened the same day that the war in Iraq ended. Remember Bush in his flight suit costume with the big "Mission Accomplished" banner? You see, the Iraq "war" ended because the US had successfully attacked Iraq, which had bombed the ... oh, jesus, forget it. I can't even keep up with all of the bullshit our government spews out anymore.
I don't respond to AC's.
Not to be mean.... On one hand I want Bush to leave.
On the other hand, I want to see Bush-voters who cheered "4 more years" to suffer financial & economical devastation. Nothing against you, but if you wanted a president who has more involvement in Iraq than your own country, you mind as well turn in your U.S. citizenship. Before you mod me down to -100, I am just fighting for the U.S middle class.
'The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.'
This is and example of one thing the Bush administration understands, how to kill discussions. The trick is to say something so outlandish and WRONG that everyone who pays attention will know as wrong and the discussion dies there, while at the the same time, the less observant get the desired impression. The fun part is, if you have a valid argument that is even remotely related (rational or emotional level) against the individual, a lot of people will dismiss you without hearing you thinking 1. you are on the same level as them (that's just how politicians are) or 2. you're a conspiracy nut. (he's just reading too much into this political nonsense).
Really impressive use of the media if you ask me. If you say enough factually wrong soundbites, people will dismis you AND the people who are after you. Those who don't dismis you will think you are amazing.
Burn Hollywood Burn
....Colin Powell is also expected to resign in the near future. So if you are celebrating the fact that Ashcroft, the biggest loonie in the Bush admin, is leaving, also be fearful that the only semi-sane dude in the building will soon be gone, too.
You have to understand... the US government has done an EXCEPTIONAL job of keeping its people scared and ignorant. Hence, the election results. People in this country have no fucking clue as to what's going on, and those who do, get it from TV, which just spews out gov't propoganda designed to keep people fucking terrified. It's very Machiavellian, actually.
We don't have an educated, informed population. Apparently, half of the US really IS made up of Jesus Freak, Nascar worshipping bigots.
I don't respond to AC's.
He is a moderate and would go a long way to make Democrats more comfortable.
Now that Mr. Ashcroft is out due to health reasons (God is punishing you John, for being so wicked!), I suppose we can look forward to a new, better Bush administration.
An administration that is pragmatic, wise, free of ideology, and a true tribute to core conservative values: less government, more freedom, and a belief that people should be left to think and act for themselves. A belief that success is its own reward and failure is its own punishment, and that government exists simply to enforce our sacred constitution and protect our borders.
HA HA HA HA HA I had you going there didn't I!! LESS government!! HA HA HA!! FREEDOM?? BWAH AH AH AHHAH *cough*.
Anyway I hope whoever they replace him with 1) isn't such a nutjob and 2) doesn't SCOWL so damn much. I swear, Ashcroft constantly looked like a cross between an angry parent and a KKK member. "Now son, you know daddy's tired, why are you making me burn you on this cross? Why did you have to go and be black?"
AWESOME.
So, can I have my rights back, now?
So says a fellow using the words "Go back to jesusland, redneck", showing exactly how seriously his opinion should be weighed.
not to be a killjoy, but has it occurred to anyone that ashcroft is resigning as attorney general so as to prepare himself for a nomination to the supreme court?
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Ummm, we are. Been to a "free speech zone" lately?
Conseravatism is a very subjective word. I wouldn't consider any neo-con to be a conservative, but I tend to use it in casual conversation to mean someone that tends to vote Republican.
... and before I get flamed, fascism is simply authoritarianism on social issues and a corporatist economic policy.
In my opinion, Ashcroft is a fascist
Eisenhower, Bradley, Halsey, MacArthur, etc all were permitted to accept honorary knighthood from the Brits. It's just something cute nowadays. Back in 1787 it was a real consideration.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It's unlikely that Ashcroft would make it onto the Supreme Court, but Bush might use him as a stalking horse. Nominate him, watch the country go crazy, watch the Democrats use up all their time and political capital fighting off Ashcroft... then when everyone is worn out from blocking the Ashcroft nomination, Bush appoints a relative unknown who turns out to be as bad or worse.
The Democrats need to watch out for this, and keep up the resistance against anyone on the right wing that Bush tries to put on the Court. We still have 45 seats in the Senate, that's enough for a filibuster. The ability to filibuster is there for a reason -- to stop a President and 51 Senators (or in this case 55) from the same party from putting an extremist on the Supreme Court. The Democrats need to make sure Bush comes up with nominees that are at lease somewhat moderate.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Sure, they differed on economic principals, Stalin wanted his government to own everything and run all the companies, Ashcroft wanted the coporations to own everything, and run the government. Though I would bet that Stalin would have been just as happy to have a capitalistic system under him, as long as he was in charge and could rule with an iron fist.
Where they show a particular similarity is on the way they approched dealing with criminals, take them off the streets, throw them in a hole and deny them any sort of due process. Yes, Stalin tended to just kill them, but I'm convinced that Ashcroft would have done the same if he thought he could get away with it. The guy seemed to have a wet dream about the US being a police state. The fact that he is now gone is a good thing for the US.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
A Bush presidency, sans Ashcroft and with Arafat dead, or as good as. That sounds just about right to me.
This being Slashdot, I'll likely get modded down for expressing heretical opinions, but I approve of Bush's hardline foreign-policy stance. It's his domestic policies I don't like -- cutting taxes while there's a war on, raising (some) trade barriers, and of course, the Patriot Act.
Actually, I should qualify that: I don't even oppose the powers given to the FBI. What I object to in the Patriot Act is the lack of transparency -- specifically, the lack of judicial oversight. If the FBI need certain powers to successfully prosecute the fight against terrorism, fine: but USE THEM IN THE OPEN. This National Security Letter bullshit is just that.
It seems to me that Ashcroft, with his "phantoms of lost liberty" speech, was the driving force behind the damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead approach that built the Patriot Act without the necessary democratic safeguards.
I'm heartily glad he's gone.
Now, if Arafat would only hurry up and die...
Better the devil you know ..
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That's your objection? "He's obviously talking about the objective!" Of course he's talking about "the objective." That's what he actually fucking said: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." You don't have to say "it is obvious": it actually is. But then you go on to say what "the objective is." He says what the objective is: "the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror." You don't have to offer your intepretation of what "the objective" is friend, he tells you right there what it is. Quit trying to precariously argue for the existence of the "liberal bias" the foam-mouthed AC above(probably you) reflexively screamed out.
The paragraph:
"The demands of justice are both rewarding and depleting. I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts. Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration. I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons."
Wether he actually meant what he said is another thing. Which I don't care about one way or the other. Useless politics...
After arresting scores of innocent people at the instigation of this and other war criminals and convicting the big amount of 0, zero, zilch, nada of activities related to terrorism.
In one case the damning evidence was a video of the alleged terrorists spending time in Disneyland.
And the only ones the neo-ayatollahs have any hope of "convicting" of any terrorism related activities they have safely guarded them in Guantanamo or Abu Gharib, were confessions can be conviniently extracted at the pleasure of the torturers and kangoroo courts will sentence in accordance to the public, on record wishes of the reelected Orwellian master overlord.
And the poster of the article still has the indecency to find something good to say about this individual.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't have mod points, but you got my respect.
It depends how you define 'terrorism'.
Outside the 19 that supposedly died on the planes in newyork (nearly half have turned up alive), how many other have been charged with the crimes relating to the largest terrorist attack on US soil.
100,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war.
1,000 US soldiers.
What is terrorism?
Who were the losers?
That is the BEST NEWS EVER! How come he didn't tell us about this before?
For the election we were supposed to be in fear of terror. There is no way Bush could get elected unless we were in fear.
Now that the election is over, we do not have to be in fear any more.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
This being Slashdot, I'll likely get modded down for expressing heretical opinions,
No, you'll get modded down by attempting to preempt.. (but not by me, obviously)
but I approve of Bush's hardline foreign-policy stance. It's his domestic policies I don't like -- cutting taxes while there's a war on, raising (some) trade barriers, and of course, the Patriot Act.
This isn't K5, the commies haven't yet taken over the asylum.
I'm heartily glad he's gone.
I am as well, largely because I felt his religious enthusiasm created an appearance of nonsecularism in the judiciary leadership, and even though I don't know enough of what he did to see whether or not he ended up weakening secularism the appearance of hostility to secularism is enough to cause concern.
OTOH, I find Spencer Abraham more obnoxious, and him in concert with Cheney have halted any useful conservation, tax, etc policies on energy, which I find stupid and inexplicable.
Now, if Arafat would only hurry up and die...
They _still_ are having difficulty figuring out what brought his illness on.. I wouldn't put it past the Mossad (the CIA is too incompetent IMHO), but yeah, I think Thomas Friedman got it right in his last editorial on Arafat's legacy.
I have issues with Bush and his policies, but I have to say, watching leftists mope, wail and gnash is much more entertaining. I recall rightists during the Teflon Don Juan (Clinton) administration going off the deep end, but I don't think they have the mercurial creative bipolar thing that the more touchy-feely, sensitive leftists have. Also, watching naive college students who really REALLY care get deflated is kind of entertaining in a purely guilty Nelsonian-Schadenfreude way.
You may be right about Powell, but it's still a load of crap. Rumsfeld should be the very first to go, even before Asscroft. He's a bumbling idiot, too naive and careless to be filling his seat. How many soldiers have died because he didn't listen when the military told him they need more troops than he was sending? Or because he stupidly believed that the Iraqis would welcome the US with open arms and occupying the country would be easy? And so on, and so on. He can't even open his mouth in a press conference any more without putting his foot in his mouth. It's time to retire him, the same way we retire an old nag of a horse with a lame leg.
but probably a solid 90% of the bill accomplished SORELY needed reforms.
If I were offered a drink that was 90% fruit juice and vitamins, and 10% stricnine, I would choose not to drink it.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
*One time* foreign terrorists killed 3000 people in the US. It's a terrible tragedy, but so are the 45,000 people who died in car accidents that year. And the 700,000 people who died of heart disease.
:-(
We have gone insanely overboard in how we handle terrorism. America is founded on the freedom of the people. So much so that these freedoms are written into our founding document - the Constitution. When someone tells me that we need to "protect America" from something that had a negligible statistical effect by taking away my Constitutional rights, I'll rightly tell them they're stupid, crazy, or very ignorant.
1st amendment - "right of the people peaceably to assemble" - except near the Republican National Convention in 2004.
4th amendment - "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause" - except when the Patriot Act says it's OK.
5th amendment - "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" - except if we can find some way to call them enemy combatants, or we declare they can't be tried publicly due to security considerations.
6th amendment - "accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial" - see above.
8th amendment - "nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" - except in Abu Ghraib, or (maybe, how can we know?) Guantanamo.
10th amendment - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." - this one's been shot to hell for ages
If I tried to live by the Constitution, I'd end up shot by federal agents inside of five years.
Have we given up? No. Big Media simply avoids reporting on most protests.
Yeah, I heard about this from a couple of other sites. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned in the article.
What else would you think he meant by saying he wanted to open himself up for new challenging areas?
I thought it was awful that he was the Attourney General.. but I can't hardly fathom him as an SPJ. The country is no longer going to hell in a handbasket.. oh no, its going on a silver platter.
You're nothing; like me.
It's the same thing as with "intelligent design." This administration will say -anything-, even the most blatant lie (like Ashcroft's victory lap quoted above), and use that as a position to -start- the "debate". Suddenly the "truth" has quotations around it and the lie get's equal play.
It's not even a strawman, it's literally the fucking Chewbacca defense.
That the press and most (maybe) of the electorate falls for this is the main reason why so many on the left are willing to believe the election was rigged.
-dameron
From the CBS.com report:
"Several names have emerged as possible successors to Ashcroft. The biggest is Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York."
Oh, that's a good idea. Let's let Giuliani do for America what he did for New York City: turn it into a police state in the name of reducing crime.
America's homeless^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hterrorists be warned -- you will be shown no mercy.
Fuck. I miss Ashcroft already.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
And literally "liberal" means "1. not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry; 2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded".
Now try to imagine the type of person that reads that definition and says "nope, that's not me at all", or even worse, thinks that word should be used as an insult. And you get an inkling of what's wrong with America.
The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.
Say, John, you ever catch that person(s) who were mailing ANTHRAX all over the country? You know, ANTHRAX, that EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS disease?
Anything at all?
So, they could be roaming about right now, planning their next, even bigger anthrax attack?
Right.
Stupid fucktard.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Does anybody else think a five page handwritten letter sounds a bit psychotic?
Maybe that and things like electronic voting machines recording 4000 votes for W in a district with 600 registered voters in Ohio of all places. Amazing coincidence out of all 50 states that it should turn up there....
In Clinton's last year in office, the national debt actually went *down* (when adjusted for inflation) for the first time in ages... probably my lifetime or even longer. Then, during Bush's first term, it has skyrocketed. It has increased by almost 50% (*not* adjusted for inflation... but inflation isn't anywhere *near* 50% per 4 yrs.)!
Every election season, there's a call to reduce the deficit, and it always seems to fall on deaf ears. I think that most Americans have no idea what it really is, but (because they keep hearing politicians mention it so much), tacitly agree that we need to keep it down. However, I think that their level of conviction to that belief ranks right up there with trying to not consume quite so much saturated fat and salt: "Yeah, yeah... I know... I need to cut down one of these days.".
With this latest election, I think I'm finally giving up. So, this is where I agree with you. I think I'm now going to support any legislation or budget that swells the deficit even further. Up until now, I've been telling people that, if the deficit is left unchecked then, someday, the interest on the debt will be more than our total tax revenue... at which point, there will be no way to stop the meltdown. However, they all seem to look at me as though I'm talking about an asteroid hitting the earth. They've never experienced it happening, so they don't really believe that it *can* happen.
Well.... okay. If it can't happen, then I have no qualms about bringing it about as soon as possible. I'll start moving my assets to a country with a sensible fiscal policy, and then we can start doing what we can to make sure that the national debt swells into a runaway freight train as soon as possible.
And.... to be quite honest, I'm sincerely curious to see what *does* happen. Will the gov't default on all of its loans and have the dollar become worthless overseas, or will our own economy (and gov't, too) implode as well? - Joe
The compartmentalization of agencies was most certainly not for no good reason. It was to make law enforcement less effective, which was a good and important goal of our governmental design.
The thing that Mr. Ashcroft and the rest of the executive branch have forgotten is that we need to be at least as suspicious and limiting of our government as of the people from whom our government is supposedly protecting us. Instead, the executive branch has taken the absurd view that their enemies are "Evil", and thus that their own actions are--definitionally--Good.
This is a dangerous premise. History has taught us that governments very reliably stray from Good. Every single act undertaken by a government must be carefully evaluated with questions like, "Does this make us the bad guys? Is this worse than what we're trying to solve?" And even after such questions have been asked, we need to still assume that they've been answered incorrectly, and place harsh limitations on the fundamental things a government can do.
This is the origin of bans on interdepartmental cooperation, statutes of limitation, limitations on search and siezure, the specificity of of search warrants, and so on. After all, if your government were always the good guys, you wouldn't need any such protections, right?
Admit it. You were going to do that anyway.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
- How could you tell how much of it was lies? It
might be true that the average human being was better
off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only
evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own
bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in
were intolerable and that at some other time they must have
been different. -- George Orwell "1984"
Really. So constitution democracy includes locking people away without charges, trials, or lawyers? Constitutional democracy allows for the FBI to write themselves a warrant, plant bugs and video cameras in your home, and install a key logger in your keyboard for 6 months without telling you. Constitutional democracy intended for the 'Miami Model' of silencing peaceful demonstrations and public protest?I'll see your free speech suppression and raids on ______ists via the Sedition Act of 1918 and raise you secret searches and the elimination of habeas corpus via the "War on Terror".
You surely are an idiot, aren't you? If wealth were distributed more evenly ( as the socialists you are taking a shallow shot at argue for ), then there wouldn't be anywhere near as much misery to spread around. And you do realise that the current amount of miserly can be directly attributed to the policies of the neo-conservatives arseholes controlling the Republican party at the moment?
I agree with the grandparent post
they are the same thing, agreed.
they are not the same as slamming someone for chosen behaviour. I.E. calling someone a bigot, or a jesus freak is not the same as slamming their race or sexual orientation.
Well, with that same reasoning, how can you be sure it will be a life? At such an early stage you have absolutely no guarentee that it will survive. It could very easily have complications, especially if the parent wasnt happy having it (would have considered an abortion) and did foolish things while pregnant.
so unsure of their quote faith that whitnessing others expressing this will shake it
Not at all. Witnessing others express faith doesnt even come close to changint my mind, but its gonna piss me off if I am required to participate. The original poster was referring to school sponsored prayer, not kids praying in school which is not a problem.
Its it bad for someone born to an Atheist family to whitness others practing perhaps enjoinging their faith thus provinging opertunity to understand and perhaps decide personally if it might be for them?
Is it bad for someone born into a christian family to NOT witness atheism because everyone at school is required to participate in the same prayer? Is it bad for someone to be raised from birth with such an ideological faith that they don't believe dinosaurs existed? (I have known several people from different families like this but it seems a little extreme) Is it bad for a administrators with a religious agenda to restrict legitimate sex education on anything besides abstinance to a student body where a majority of them WILL NOT remain abstinate until marriage?
he Constitution starts out "We the people of the United States"
Correct you are. It says "people." It does not say "citizens" or "property owners" or "white males" all of which would have been probable at the time. People applies to everyone.
Oh, and you left out some important parts of the preamble. After you end your quote, it goes "do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america." Combine that with the stuff you cut from the middle of the preamble, and it reads more like "We [the current powerholders] are creating this constitution to establish justice, promote the general welfare, etc. for all people in the united states" not "We are the leaders who get to write this document so we are going to make sure it favors us..."
Bottles.
None of the above percentages are relevant - the bottom line is the government is spending MORE than it is taking in. The ongoing spending binge is going to catch up sooner or later.
Unfortunately until there are harsh consequences directly to the politicians that overspend, there is no forseeable end to this practice.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Oh and whatever happened to that investigation of the leaking of a CIA agent's name.
evil is as evil does
I agree. We liberals should instead call you guys traitors, terrorists and haters of america. Because when you call us those things it gets your guy elected.
So come on everybody, the red state voters are not jesis worshipping bigots, they just america that's all.
evil is as evil does
When I decribe myself as a liberal to people I am most certainly not describing my position on economic issues - I am all for smaller government (I won't say "small", since that's a meaningless word without context), less taxes, a basically capitalist economy within limits, and so on. As are most American liberals. You know, the "crazy" people up here in the blue states. God forbid, we have some state regulation on health insurance premiums in Massachusetts, which means I am not getting completely gouged (only partially gouged) by my insurance company. If that makes me a commie pinko bastard then you are obviously looking cross-eyed at the world.
New York is a very liberal city, and most New Yorkers would describe themselves as liberal, and yet NYC is the home of the free market economy for the country, and the world. Almost every liberal I know is basically a social liberal and economic moderate - it's very rare outside of academia and the fringes of society to find true economic liberals in the United States. Which implies that the entire concept of using "liberal" as a defamatory to mean "socialist" or "communist" is itself a gigantic straw man, since the Republican party leadership knows damned well that the people running for national office don't meet that description.
So I return to my point - when you say that my definition is archaic and wrong because it doesn't represent the way people around YOU in the South or Midwest or whatever shitty part of the country you live in use the word, I suggest you reconsider the context in which you evaluate the English language. To people living on the coasts, it is as strange on the ear to hear liberal used as a synonym for socialist or communist as to hear Canadians or Midwesterners call soda "pop" or "coke".
Furthermore, I am not the one setting up a straw man. You are the one who seems to have intentional chosen an irrelevant definition of conservative, discussing procedures rather than values or political views.
Your general proposition that the dictionary is irrelevant for terms of broad social and political meaning is curious to me - the dictionary represents a common consensus for word meaning, outside of highly specialized areas of human knowledge. I fail to see why the fact that you have chosen to distort the meaning of the word liberal should thereby invalidate the dictionary with respect to an entire area of human thought.
If you were the CEO (President) of a corporation (US Government), and you were spending money (invasion of Iraq), leveraging assets (tax cuts and financial deals that will be dealt with in 5-10 years...) and giving away products or just slashing prices faster than Walmart (read: cheap timber sales, VERY cheap land deals for mineral extraction due to archaic federal law that seems impossible to get rid of, etc), the Board of Directors (Congress) would have your resignation secured in about two days.
But I suppose all these good businessmen Republicans who want to run Government like a business (I think that means, suck all the $$$ out of it, pay your employees as little as they will tolerate while working them to the bone while you're "managing" at your vacation home or playing golf) have got it right. Yep.
But farmers aren't businessmen, either. So what do I know?
And the Nazis championed animal rights. Yet somehow they don't seem to be much remembered for that.
No. Justice Clarence Thomas' major experience was as in-house corporate counsel for Monsanto, a company noted for repeatedly obtaining fraudulent government licenses to market harmful chemical products.
But Ashcroft won't be a Supreme Court nominee. Bush will want a much younger person, so the appointment will have a longer effect on society.
...But I hope this doesn't turn into a case of,
"Better the Devil you know."
I'll be praying to Cthulhu for you poor Americans.
Right to counsel. Right to trial. Right to confront witnesses against me. Protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Protection against unwarranted searches.
Play Command HQ online
How about the right to know if the government has peaked at my medical records, or noticed what books I've checked out at the library? Now, I can't prove they have, but no one can prove they have not since I simply don't have the right to know. I would like that right, and I would like the right to not have to think "Anything I check out here can be used against me" while I browse for books.
If the US government wants freedom to be "on the march" shouldn't we, as an example to the nations we wish to make free, be steadfast in preserving our own rights and freedoms? While the death of 4,000 on 9/11 was of course a tragedy and measures need to be taken to make us safer, is sacrificing freedom worth it? About 40,000 people die in car accidents every year, yet we don't have a "war on cars" that I am aware of, and I'm pretty sure in every state you can drive before you are legally an adult.
Americans are still very emotional about 9/11, and will likely remain that way for years to come, just as it was with Pearl Harbor. However we can learn from history, and I tend to believe that perhaps half a century from now the PATRIOT Act will be viewed almost as negatively as the Japanese Internment after Pearl Harbor is viewed today.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Technically (which is what counts in court) he didn't lie. He asked beforehand what the phrase "sexual relations" was defined as, got the answer that it specifically meant intercourse and proceeded to tell the narrowly defined truth: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". He omitted "She did suck my dick once and I did push a cigar up her pussy which I then proceeded to smoke with great pleasure, but y'all didn't ask about that, now did'ya?".
Then again, it's more serious if the President almost lies about if he got a blowjob or not than if he lies to invade a sovereign nation, killing 100,000 ragheads and a few thousand GI Joes in the process.
They just happened to be the ones he was stupid enough to utter under oath.
Clinton is many things, but stupid isn't one of them. He's like a combination of Nixon's slickness, JFK's libido and the fiscal sense of FDR. Bush OTOH has Nixon's malice, no libido, no fiscal sense and Quayle's brainpower.
Money for nothing, pix for free
"the US government has done an EXCEPTIONAL job of keeping its people scared and ignorant."
I'm not sure which to comment on: the way you assume that only the US government could make people ignorant, or the way you believe that those who disagree with you are ignorant.
"Apparently, half of the US really IS made up of Jesus Freak, Nascar worshipping bigots."
What about the bigots in places like Michigan and Oregon that voted for Kerry on the same ballot on which they supported a "defense of marriage" amendment to their state constitutions? Would you say they were somehow more enlightened than those that voted for Bush?
Look, if you insist on living under a single, large representative government with these people you're going to have to learn how to get along better with them, at least able to think about them in a way that is a little more constructive than "Jesus Freak, Nascar worshipping bigots." Part of living under a democracy means having to put up with the will of the majority, whether you happen to be a part of it or not.
Personally, I think we might be able to get along better if we went back to living under 50 smaller representative governments instead of all of us fighting for control of a single large one, but uttering something like "states' rights" tends to get one labelled as a " Jesus Freak, Nascar worshipping bigot."
I don't understand why everyone's celebrating Asscroft leaving.
Who the hell does everyone think Bush is going to replace him with? Michael Moore??
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
*cough*EnlightenmentPhilosophersNotPagans*cough*.
You lot took it, along with much of the rest of the founding principles, from the French, specifically Voltaire and Montesquieu. Those gentlemen were informed in turn by Paine, Hume and Locke, none of whom could be called pagans in the sense of a pre-christian heritage.
In the 17th and 18th Centuries, a secular state was a novel, radical concept, not some underlying thought from over a thousand years before (ie the time before Christianity became a state-sponsored religion). And even before that, state religions were standard practise, if only to deify the king/emperor.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Wait, you say - there was no terrorist attack at Y2K new year. Exactly! When Richard Clarke made the same warnings to Clinton that he made to Bush, Clinton began meeting with him every morning, and they established measures to help hinder terrorists.
What I'm telling you is that Bush did a bad job of preventing the terrorist act that actually happened, that he had advisors telling him to watch out for it, and that the American people rewarded him for his willful ignorance.
See:
From my reading of the situation, the entire line of questioning was improper - the whole ken starr investigation was a giant fishing expedition (link). The only thing that Ken dug up was a sexual dalliance which, according to the definition provided by the judge, was not sex. Further, the grand jury is supposed to meet in secret, not release tapes to the public. Yes, it looks bad, but it's hard to look good when somebody spends $40M to smear you.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"