Slashdot Mirror
Bush Signs Bill Enabling Martial Law
An anonymous reader writes to point us to an article on the meaning of a new law that President Bush signed on Oct. 17. It seems to allow the President to impose martial law on any state or territory, using federal troops and/or the state's own, or other states', National Guard troops. From the article: "In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law. It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions." Here is a link to the bill in question. The relevant part is Sec. 1076 about 3/4 of the way down the page.
Why spoil such a wonderful weekend? Can't we please have a one-day moratorium, a brief respite without the word "Bush" being so obsessive-compulsively uttered?
How can the government possibly be small if they involve themselves with personal issues rooted in subjective morality like a woman's reproductive rights
First, nobody is stopping a woman from having sex or becoming pregnant. What should be stopped is the deliberate taking of an innocent human life. Second, that one of the functions of government is to prevent the strong from preying on the weak does not mean that government has to be involved in all areas. For example, I would wholeheartedly support the disbanding of the Department of Education, for example.
how can an open-ended war on an intangible opponent be considered fiscally responsible?
First, I don't consider (insert politically correct modifier here)-Islam to be an intangible opponent. I will live under the U. S. Constitution; I will not submit to sharia law. Second, do you know what percentage of GDP is spent on the war? There is far more fiscal irresponsibility in the budget (the damned prescription drug plan, for example, not to mention social security and medicare).
Either you have a government that...
I think you've offered up a false dilemma.
If you think a blastocyst or an embryo is actually equivalent to a full human life, you really should re-examine some facts.
You didn't say "-Islam", you said terror. Terror *is* an intangible.
And... do you seriously think there is anyone with the capability of actually forcing sharia law on us?
I do disagree with that continuum. I posit that human life does *not* begin with conception. I posit that it begins *before* conception. If there were some point at which life were made from completely nonliving material, you might have a potential point here. But, as I'm sure you're aware, everything involved is alive before, during, and after conception. As such, I say that conception is irrelevant to this discussion. What *is* relevant, however, is consciousness. I am quite certain that a blastocyst is *not* conscious or sentient, as it completely lacks the neural structure to be so. Until it does, it is physiologically no different than any other parasite living inside another person's body. So please tell me your justification for why a parasite living inside someone else's body has a natural right to life?
To clarify: You said "war on terror", not "war on terrorists" or something equivalent.
Does this mean you eventually see us declaring war on a European nation?
I would have expected a government site to end with .gov
Doing a Whois on www.govtrack.us turned up that the domain name was issued by godaddy.com -- is the US government getting its domain names from GoDaddy.com?
Methinks I smells a hoax.