What do mean, if I can say it that way? It isn't my job to report the news at all. It's the Post's job.
But they made a mistake. A delibrate mistake, or at least one the Administration delibrately caused them to make.
But it's is not my job to correct the Post, either. It is, in fact, the ombudsman's job.
I wonder where she is.
Oh yeah. She wrote the damn article, and refused to do anything about, and ended up in a online fight.
A fight that they have taken down, instead of just, you know, stopping posts to.
Yes, we have no idea how many comments they deleted, but the fact is, the existing saved copy of the board has almost no imflammetory comments, and the fact they took it down instead of just stopping all posting and deleting the few comments that had slipped through the cracks speaks volumes about what's really going on.
They don't want to admit their error, they don't want anyone to talk about their error, their error is their offical position.
This is, also, not my problem. It will, however, shortly be the problem of the Post's management when other newspapers get wind of it.
If a man donates to Red Cross, and the Red Cross is later convicted of Bribery of a government official, then that man's donation to Red Cross makes him just as guilty.
That analogy doesn't work. A closer one is:
If a man donates to a political campaign, and then the Red Cross mugs him and uses that money to bribe the same government official, then that man's donation makes him just as guilty.
Seriously, people. The casinos are not the cause of any of these problems, they are Abramoff's victims. He defrauded them. The fact that they, perhaps subconciously sensiung that Abramoff wasn't really helping, continued(1) their campaign contributions to Democrat who support them, is somehow some sort of crime on someone's part is absurd.
1) They did reduce them slightly. I guess the Republican talking point is they did that so no one would be suspicious, instead of the fact that they had less money to spend on politics because they were being ripped off.
You are the one who needs to reseach. Harry Reid is from Nevada.
Every single politican from Nevada, no matter what party, is 100% against any form of legalized gambling anywhere...except Nevada. Something like 80% of the state's income is from tourism, and something like 50% of that is due to gambling. (It's dropped a bit in the last few decades.) Politicians in Nevada who vote for any competitor to Nevada will be out of their asses faster than than you can roll snake-eyes.
Of course Indian tribes trying to keep him from authorizing other tribe's casinos are going to give him completely legal campaign contributions. Trying to turn that into bribery is insane. (Although, they really shouldn't have bothered...anyone from Nevada will vote that way, so it doesn't matter who gets elected.)
And exchanging campaing contribs for access is slimy. It is possibly unethical. It is not illegal. The straight-up bribery Abramoff did, however, is not legal, and that is why certain Republicans are under investigation.
Some Indians want to operate casinos. Some Indians already operate casinos, and don't want other Indians to.
Abramoff works the latter.He manages to get one casino attempt blocked, by getting the glorious shining sack of shit Ralph Reed to pull in the sheople who think gambling is a sin. (Reed, of course, claims he was shocked, shocked, that the money from that casino was from gambling. Or something. The bastard is running for Lt. Governor in my state.)
So then that tribe hires him, (Surely without knowing that he got it shut down) to get it back on track, which he does. While he continues to work for the other tribe. This is illegal, and rather unethical.
Meanwhile, these tribes also give money to Republicans and Democrats alike who sit on the committee that is in charge of all this. Like they always have, except, probably at Abramoff's urging, that money flows more towards Republicans than Democrats than it used to.
Over in a completely different universe, Abramoff is bribing Republicans to vote in certain ways. I mean, flat-out, money-under-the-bathroom-stall bribery. These ways are unrelated to gambling, as far as we know, because Abramoff was merely playing both sides off each other and raking in the dough, and didn't actually care who won.
Someone will have to explain to me how Abramoff's bribery can 'backtrack' though his victims, who were giving him money. Because that seems to be the Republican talking point. In reality, the only reason the Indian tribes are involved at all is that he committed a completely seperate crime towards them!
political corruption in Washington is a one-party issue
And welcome to the talking point, boys and girls.
The Abramoff scandle is one sided. Period. No debate, no argument. He bribed Republicans. He did not bribe Democrats. (He also committed fraud.)
Anyone saying otherwise is lying.
Anyone implying otherwise because Abramoff's fraud victims legally contributed to Democrats is lying.
There is a lot of lying going on on this issue. No Democrat has been indicted, or named in anyway as associated with this scandal, and they will not be, because Abramoff solely worked with Republicans.
K Street is a Republican project to stop Democrats from getting any campaign money, you fucktard. Blaming the Democrats for it is...just...so insane it probably marks you a psychopath.
Yes, Clinton did charge for access, as does K Street. And, you know what? No one's saying K Street is illegal or even unethical, although I personally think the blackmail implied is unethical. (The part that says 'Don't give any money to the Dems or we start ignoring you.', specifically.) But, regardless, K Street is legal, as are anything the Dems have done like K Street. As is normal lobbying, and as is normal campaign contributions.
They're saying a specific part of a wholely and utterly Republican thing operated illegally. Abramhoff (and others) flat out walked up to Republicans and said 'I will give you X dollars if you vote for this bill'. That is way past any of the blurry boundaries, and it happened inside the K Street project.
There is no possibly way any Democrat can be the slightest bit involved with this Republican money machine that had some people quite a way past where they were allowed to be. Democrats don't get money from it! They've never got money from it! They will never get money from it! That's the whole damn point!
And, incidentally, to be fair, the money the Indians gave to Republicans is not unclean either. It's money that Abramoff touched that everyone is currently worrying about.
Later, we can try to figure out if he managed to bribe people via soliciting donations for them from others, but just straightening out the direct bribes is enough work for now.
However, considering Abramoff was part of K Street, it is extremely unlikely that he, at any point whatsoever, was responsible for any Democrat getting any money at all. Anyone who implies otherwise doesn't know what K Street is, or is a liar, period. Newspapers should, indeed, know what K Street is, and the only possible conclusion is that what's-her-name was delibrately trying to mislead people, or is so flat ignorant that she should be banned from writing about political stuff.
And, yes, for people who don't know what is going on, the ombudsman of the Post has decided not to respond to the public this problem, which is, in fact, the entire point of the ombudsman in the first place. And, no, neither the ombudsman, nor the newspaper itself is supposed to hide behind 'technically accurate'. Newspapers can write 'technically accurate' articles that make old ladies out to be mass murderers.
The whole point in using a cell is as a remote detonator.
If you can see the subway from far enough away to not be caught in the blast, and hence it's outside and the cell works, or you can't see it, and hence don't know when to detonate it, or you are willing to be caught in the blast, and hence don't need a cell at all.
Do people not sit down and think this stuff through? The use of cell phones it to hide explosives and blow up certain people when they go by. They're using it as a radio.
Now, how the heck does that translate to subway cars underground? If someone wants to blow up the subway, they'll just put an explosive with a timer on it and get off. Considering how regular subways are, you should be able to time it to go off as the car is sitting at the next station if you pushed the button and leapt out right before the doors close at the previous station.
And considering they're using it as a radio to keep security forces from jamming it and because it's cheap to get one without being suspicious, how would that apply to using them over real radios on subways? Subways do not scan nerviously for radio signals, and any idiot can buy a radio at Radio Shake.
We informed the governments, as provided for in the Geneva Convention. Al Qaeda and kin do not qualify for the protections of the Geneva Convention. There are tests in the treaty to qualify for its protections, and they fail them.
It does not work that way. Anyone captured by a signee of the Geneva Convention has a right to a trial to determine their status. It does not matter one ounce what the people who capture them 'determine' their status to be. If they dispute it, they get a determination of status by some independant authority. I quote Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal. Even if you try to pretend that the military that captured them is a 'competant tribual', the fact is that we have held people, and even interrogated them, without having even a sham tribual first.
Incidentally, the odds are they, even if working actually for al Qaeda, do, indeed, fall under Geneva protections, specifically 6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
You see, you capture someone in an act of terrorism, they, indeed, have no rights under the Geneva convention. However, when capuring random people on the ground in Aphganistan, even if they are terrorists, the same is not true. You captured them because they shot at you because you were trying to kill them, and that's all perfectly legal, and now you have to treat them as POWs. No, they don't have to be in uniform...only members of the armed forces do, and has been repeated drilled into our head to justify this whole mess, al Qaeda is not a government, and thus cannot have 'armed forces'.
Of course, you can certainly try them for war crimes or just plain old murder committed before the war.
No, they don't have to be entered into the legal system. The findings could be essentially administrative, much like the determination of POW status.
Oh, they have administrative hearings, where they are found to be innocent of everything, and they continue to be detained. Do you actually read the newspapers?
As it is, Al Qaeda and kin are making war not merely outside the law, but often violate the law of war, and as a result they have very little legal protection and enormous personal risk.
Al Qaeda does not engage in war anymore than the Mafia engages in war. They have never tried to conquer anywhere, because they have nowhere near the manpower to overrun even the crappiest military.
Al Qaeda, instead, engages in illegal acts. It is a criminal conspiracy. They, like all criminals, should be arrested and charged with a crime.
At one point in the past, al Qaeda joined forces with a nation, namely, Afganistan. They ahve also supported, and been supported by, additonal nations. However, we should not assume everyone, even all of 'al Qaeda', that were on the ground fighting in Afganistan, are the part of al Qaeda engaged in criminal acts. We should detain them like normal POWs until they are sorted out, and then charge those. (Which is allowed under the Geneva convention as long as we are not charging them with crimes based on the war itself...we couldn't charge them with, for example, shooting an American soldier during the battle.)
As for the Nazi saboteurs...the 'American citizen' came ashore in a Nazi uniform. If you're an immigrant, and you join an opposing military, you forfeit your citizenship. (Remember what I said about al Qaeda not being a military?)
That said, legally, they should have gotten civilian trials. They were cap
Yeah, that is odd, especially as I was talking about American citizens captured in the US. Who we did, indeed, tried during WWII, even while the war was going on. In civilian courts.(1)
In fact, the courts ruled, during WWII, they must be tried in civilian courts if said courts were operating, unlike the military courts the president wanted to use.
However, every enemy soldier captures during WWII did, indeed, have access to a lawyer, and we did, indeed, tell people we had captured them. I'm sure that's just a minor point, though.
Of course, we didn't capture random people handed to us by bounty hunters, but solely people in uniform on the battlefield, and there wouldn't have been a lot of point in them using lawyers to challenge their status, so almost none of them used a lawyer to do so.
With the war on terror, of course, there is plenty of reason for them to do that, because not only are many of them innocent, but the whole point of POWs is that you get returned after the war is over, and one's bothered to come up when that might be in the war on terror. So even if they are guilty of everything anyone vaguely asserted about them when given 500 dollars for turning a 'terrorist' over, they would still need to be entered into the legal system at some point.
1) Of course, if you're talking about the interment of Japanese-Americans, they, indeed, did not have accessto the court. Of course, that entire thing was flatly illegal and acknoledged as such by the government later on.
I'm not responding to the 'the court signed off on it' gibberish, as the other guy followed up nicely to that.
However, I will point out we can't put our faith in the courts, because, duh, the President cannot be arrested. In theory, the Justice Dept. could start arresting itself and the NSA, but that is rather unlikely. Although it would be interesting if some states start arresting people...wiretapping without a warrant is illegal in several states under state law.
What we instead have to wait for is Congress to impeach him, and they're too busy getting indicted.
And we don't need to get the full story of what he's really doing. By his own words, he has repeatedly committed felonies under FISA. Now, in theory, he could be lying to us, but that seems unlikely. Any idiot can read the Afganistan resolution and see it doesn't say a damn thing about wiretaps, and as it doesn't specifically mention them, FISA, which explicitly says it's the authoritative law on wireatapping, is still in force.
The only actual question here is: Can the President break the law during a war?
And, in one sense, the answer is yes. The President can always break the law, and not get charged with it until he leaves office. He has to be impeached instead.
there is a standard already. It is writen in law. That standard has been followed to the extent that we know of the spying.
Where the fuck are these people getting this?
The standard has not been followed. FISA has been broken.
There are literally two possible justifications.
1) One is that the resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan justified it. The law says 'X is illegal if not done under a statue permitting it', so you can either argue that a statue authorizing military force somehow authorized the NSA to spy on Americans, despite FISA clearly saying that, in times of war, the president can do it for only 15 days. Somehow, the Aghanistan resolution magically counts as a 'statue' under FISA authorizing that, despite FISA having explicitly written to cover wartime. (It's worse than that. Congress than fairly quickly passed the PATRIOT act, expanding FISA, which rather implied they were expecting people to keep using it. And, yes, intent of the lawmakers does matter.)
2) The other is the president has the authority to do whatever he wants in time of war. That the law is null and void when applied to the president, at least at this moment. (Incidentally, this law was aimed at the president, to stop Nixon's abuses from happening again..)
Of course, there's the other option: He is, in fact, breaking the law, repeatly commiting wiretapping felonies under FISA.
I dunno, it got pretty bad there for a while. (It wasn't called the Cola War for nothing.)
You are correct about how cheap it is to produce the substance, but packaging and shipping cost money also. It is entirely possible that near the end they were losing money on each can, and not just overall due to advertising.
No, his pricing logic is completely wrong, anyway, and leads to the logicl conclusion that no gas station near other gas stations can ever raise its price.
Why? Because the second it does, everyone will go to the other stations.
This, however, is clearly not what happens, although we all wish it had WRT gas prices.
People do not, at all, bid on ads based on 'beating' other people.
They bid an amount below a few cents less than a click makes them, but, more to the point, that gets it displayed the optimal amount. If everyone is bidding eight dollars and pushing them off the page, and they are only making four per click, they stop advertising there and go find other grounds.
This idea that everyone would end up pinned at the highest amount is absurd. Stuff like that has happened before, witness the Cola War in the 80s, where both Pepsi and Coke ended up selling soda at a loss in an attempt to destroy each other, and barely managed to break out of that dive without their wings ripping off. It's the corporate version of Chicken.
But it only happens when there is one market and a few competitors, it can't happen with the number of websites in each category and the number of places they can adverize on the net.
There are plenty of dangers in ecommerce, and possible some that could destroy it altogether, but the price of ads ain't one of them. The price of ads can kill you, but that would be because some other company is willing to pay more, which means they are spending less money on the other things, and other people operating cheaper than you has been the traditional killer of companies even since commerce existed. They could just as easily pay the same for ads as you, and just have lower prices.
No, it's about whether or not the president is following the law.
However, it's beginning to look like the reason he wasn't following the law was due to the fact he was spying on Americans without probable cause, which is, in fact, a civil right's violation.
Laws don't just exist to protect rights. Sometimes they exist solely so that, if you are violating rights, someone will notice.
It's like a law that prohibit a crematory from accepting a body from someone off the street, requiring instead bodies go though the proper channels. It won't stop any crimes, but it makes it harder to get rid of the evidence.
Bush's complete ignoring of the law is, in itself, very suspicious, but we won't know more until someone with authority steps in and says 'Who, exactly, are you spying on? I want a list.'.
And, incidentally, this whole thing will get very ugly, very fast, if Republican cheerleaders keep conflating the money Abramoff gave with the money given by people who hired/were-scammed-by Abramoff gave.(1)
Why? Well, you see, if they keep it honest and only include the people who got bribed, they still have some Republicans who were honest. If they start including layers of indirection to suck in Democrats, they will suck in some...and probably suck in all Republicans.
1) Making campaign contributions to people who support your position is not illegal. The Democrats who got money from casinos already voted against gambling. Some of them were from frickin Nevada, and any elected official from Nevada instantly and automatically votes against any gambling located any place except Nevada for economic reasons. Pretending that was any sort of bribe is completely dishonest.
'in the original draft'? What sort of fucking qualification is that? How about I start quoting proposed laws, or things I've written down that could be laws?
FISA, as passed, did not cover physical searched until the middle of Clinton's presidency.
And, incidentally, the reason he authorized searches without a warrant in the case of foreign intelligence is that he needed to be able to do them quickly. Which is also why he later managed to get FISA extended to them, so he could do them with a retroactive warrant. He wanted FISA extended because he wanted to use FISA. He signed the damn extension into law.
Attempting a judical and legistlative coup isn't treason?
Breaking the law by accident is one thing. Breaking the law to cover your own ass is one thing.
However, asserting the legal right to break the law, in conflict with the constitution, which he swore an oath to uphold, is treason in my book, exactly the same as if some General marched into the White House and declared himself President. Bush has, in essense, marched into Congress and declared himself Congress, and marched into the Supreme Court and declared himself the Supreme Court.
The really interesting question is, is he still going to have his cheerleading bastards after after he's impeached and refuses to leave?
I'm pretty certain people would have started yelling about six years, minus 3 days, ago if Clinton were still in power, considering, you know, term limits, and the fact he wasn't even on the ballot in 2000.;)
However, yes, it's amazing how the Right has gotten people to cheerlead them.
Look, I used to think both political parties were run by greedy old bastards who cared alot more about pleasing their lobbists than their constitutants, and both parties had 75% good ideas and 25% pure stupidity. Congress is, like Mark Twain said, statistically the most criminal class in America, but they're the only government we have.
My opinion of the Democrats has not changed, except I've added 'craven' and 'spineless'.
My opinion of the Republicans? Unless they immediately do something to stop this madman in the White House, and do something to clean up this K Street bribery scandal of their own making, and I mean within two months, not by the time the elections roll around, I will never vote for anyone who runs on the Republican ticket ever again. I don't care if it's my own mother running against Hitler, and she's tied with him. I'll vote for Mickey Goddamn Mouse before I'll vote for the party running this country full-speed into the ground.
Secondly, Ames himself chose not to pursue having any evidence thrown out based on the issue of warrents as you seem to be claiming
This, incidentally, is a very good point. It is possibly that that single search was illegal. Well, cops do illegal things all the time, those things just get thrown out.
Screwing up and searching a single suspect without a warrant is not the same as implimenting a vast spy network designed to do that.
The first happens due to all sorts of stuff, and can even be justified. Remember, as it wasn't covered under FISA, they couldn't get a retroactive warrant. In an emergency, they may have, indeed, placed 'stopping the spy right now' over 'being able to charge the spy later', and were actually surprised when any evidence gathered from there wasn't thrown out.
Which is why we got FISA. We don't need to do that anymore WRT to intelligence.
No, there are not. Everyone flatly says this is illegal, period, and Bush's 'I was granted this powers when given authority to invade Afganistan' will never hold up in court, especially as he's admitted the reason he didn't ask for these powers is that he never would have been granted them.
FISA quite clearly says it is the final authority on the matter, and trying make out the Afghanistan resolution as overriding it is insane. A driver's license does not grant me the right to run over people or steal their car. When given an ability under the law, you still have to follow all other laws unless you are explicitly granted some sort of exception to them. Bush was not given any sort of FISA exception when given the authority o use the military against the WTC terrorists. (Why would he? FISA would already happily grant warrants for that, without Congress getting involved at all!)(1)
The only legal experts who are on Bush's side in this are people who literally think he has the right to do anything he wants in time of war, to break any law for national security purposes. That is the only possibly legal justification he has left.
Which justification, incidentally, the Supreme Court already shut down, back when Nixon tried to use it.
1) And I just know someone is going to mention the number of warrants that FISA started modifying. Well, it did that because Bush started giving it crap warrants, but, more to the point for this discussion, it started doing that a good year after Bush had already started his illegal spying bypassing FISA, so cannot possibly be used as justification for anything.
Clinton and Gore did it, Reagan did it as have others
Okay, check your Republican talking point. You meant to say Clinton and Carter, as Gore was not, in fact, president.
And, no, they did not, you are basically lying, although I'm sure you're just repeating lies you have been told. Carter and Clinton followed the law. Bush did not.
Regardless of whether or not it's 'best' or not, I haven't noticed them running around setting up a militia.
A militia is a group consisting of all adult men (and, hey, women now) who have trained to use a gun and are able and willing to use that weapon in the event of emergencies. They should either form into preplanned units, or just sort of mill around until they hook up with people, or operate on their own.
As the government is not seeing fit to create this group, people should feel free to train themselves and procure their own weapons.
While in the event of an emergency, the National Guard will, indeed, pass out weapons, their idea of emergency and yours might differ, and obviously they don't have the resources to train people. And, no, they aren't a militia themselves. A militia is explicitly people not in a 'regular' government-operated fighting force who choose to grab a gun and fight.
For an example of how this can work, look at Switzerland. The government trains people and gives them guns. They are expected to work together to fight off any enemies to the country.
Although this entire discussion is somewhat idiotic, as, indeed, the reason given that people have a right is not related to the existance of that right. Rights are inalienable.
Slashdot Mirror
But they made a mistake. A delibrate mistake, or at least one the Administration delibrately caused them to make.
But it's is not my job to correct the Post, either. It is, in fact, the ombudsman's job.
I wonder where she is.
Oh yeah. She wrote the damn article, and refused to do anything about, and ended up in a online fight.
A fight that they have taken down, instead of just, you know, stopping posts to.
Yes, we have no idea how many comments they deleted, but the fact is, the existing saved copy of the board has almost no imflammetory comments, and the fact they took it down instead of just stopping all posting and deleting the few comments that had slipped through the cracks speaks volumes about what's really going on.
They don't want to admit their error, they don't want anyone to talk about their error, their error is their offical position.
This is, also, not my problem. It will, however, shortly be the problem of the Post's management when other newspapers get wind of it.
In fact...everyone who's ever won at a casino is dirty, too. Arrest em all!
That analogy doesn't work. A closer one is:
If a man donates to a political campaign, and then the Red Cross mugs him and uses that money to bribe the same government official, then that man's donation makes him just as guilty.
Seriously, people. The casinos are not the cause of any of these problems, they are Abramoff's victims. He defrauded them. The fact that they, perhaps subconciously sensiung that Abramoff wasn't really helping, continued(1) their campaign contributions to Democrat who support them, is somehow some sort of crime on someone's part is absurd.
1) They did reduce them slightly. I guess the Republican talking point is they did that so no one would be suspicious, instead of the fact that they had less money to spend on politics because they were being ripped off.
Every single politican from Nevada, no matter what party, is 100% against any form of legalized gambling anywhere...except Nevada. Something like 80% of the state's income is from tourism, and something like 50% of that is due to gambling. (It's dropped a bit in the last few decades.) Politicians in Nevada who vote for any competitor to Nevada will be out of their asses faster than than you can roll snake-eyes.
Of course Indian tribes trying to keep him from authorizing other tribe's casinos are going to give him completely legal campaign contributions. Trying to turn that into bribery is insane. (Although, they really shouldn't have bothered...anyone from Nevada will vote that way, so it doesn't matter who gets elected.)
And exchanging campaing contribs for access is slimy. It is possibly unethical. It is not illegal. The straight-up bribery Abramoff did, however, is not legal, and that is why certain Republicans are under investigation.
Some Indians want to operate casinos. Some Indians already operate casinos, and don't want other Indians to.
Abramoff works the latter.He manages to get one casino attempt blocked, by getting the glorious shining sack of shit Ralph Reed to pull in the sheople who think gambling is a sin. (Reed, of course, claims he was shocked, shocked, that the money from that casino was from gambling. Or something. The bastard is running for Lt. Governor in my state.)
So then that tribe hires him, (Surely without knowing that he got it shut down) to get it back on track, which he does. While he continues to work for the other tribe. This is illegal, and rather unethical.
Meanwhile, these tribes also give money to Republicans and Democrats alike who sit on the committee that is in charge of all this. Like they always have, except, probably at Abramoff's urging, that money flows more towards Republicans than Democrats than it used to.
Over in a completely different universe, Abramoff is bribing Republicans to vote in certain ways. I mean, flat-out, money-under-the-bathroom-stall bribery. These ways are unrelated to gambling, as far as we know, because Abramoff was merely playing both sides off each other and raking in the dough, and didn't actually care who won.
Someone will have to explain to me how Abramoff's bribery can 'backtrack' though his victims, who were giving him money. Because that seems to be the Republican talking point. In reality, the only reason the Indian tribes are involved at all is that he committed a completely seperate crime towards them!
And welcome to the talking point, boys and girls.
The Abramoff scandle is one sided. Period. No debate, no argument. He bribed Republicans. He did not bribe Democrats. (He also committed fraud.)
Anyone saying otherwise is lying.
Anyone implying otherwise because Abramoff's fraud victims legally contributed to Democrats is lying.
There is a lot of lying going on on this issue. No Democrat has been indicted, or named in anyway as associated with this scandal, and they will not be, because Abramoff solely worked with Republicans.
Yes, Clinton did charge for access, as does K Street. And, you know what? No one's saying K Street is illegal or even unethical, although I personally think the blackmail implied is unethical. (The part that says 'Don't give any money to the Dems or we start ignoring you.', specifically.) But, regardless, K Street is legal, as are anything the Dems have done like K Street. As is normal lobbying, and as is normal campaign contributions.
They're saying a specific part of a wholely and utterly Republican thing operated illegally. Abramhoff (and others) flat out walked up to Republicans and said 'I will give you X dollars if you vote for this bill'. That is way past any of the blurry boundaries, and it happened inside the K Street project.
There is no possibly way any Democrat can be the slightest bit involved with this Republican money machine that had some people quite a way past where they were allowed to be. Democrats don't get money from it! They've never got money from it! They will never get money from it! That's the whole damn point!
Later, we can try to figure out if he managed to bribe people via soliciting donations for them from others, but just straightening out the direct bribes is enough work for now.
However, considering Abramoff was part of K Street, it is extremely unlikely that he, at any point whatsoever, was responsible for any Democrat getting any money at all. Anyone who implies otherwise doesn't know what K Street is, or is a liar, period. Newspapers should, indeed, know what K Street is, and the only possible conclusion is that what's-her-name was delibrately trying to mislead people, or is so flat ignorant that she should be banned from writing about political stuff.
And, yes, for people who don't know what is going on, the ombudsman of the Post has decided not to respond to the public this problem, which is, in fact, the entire point of the ombudsman in the first place. And, no, neither the ombudsman, nor the newspaper itself is supposed to hide behind 'technically accurate'. Newspapers can write 'technically accurate' articles that make old ladies out to be mass murderers.
If you can see the subway from far enough away to not be caught in the blast, and hence it's outside and the cell works, or you can't see it, and hence don't know when to detonate it, or you are willing to be caught in the blast, and hence don't need a cell at all.
Do people not sit down and think this stuff through? The use of cell phones it to hide explosives and blow up certain people when they go by. They're using it as a radio.
Now, how the heck does that translate to subway cars underground? If someone wants to blow up the subway, they'll just put an explosive with a timer on it and get off. Considering how regular subways are, you should be able to time it to go off as the car is sitting at the next station if you pushed the button and leapt out right before the doors close at the previous station.
And considering they're using it as a radio to keep security forces from jamming it and because it's cheap to get one without being suspicious, how would that apply to using them over real radios on subways? Subways do not scan nerviously for radio signals, and any idiot can buy a radio at Radio Shake.
It does not work that way. Anyone captured by a signee of the Geneva Convention has a right to a trial to determine their status. It does not matter one ounce what the people who capture them 'determine' their status to be. If they dispute it, they get a determination of status by some independant authority. I quote Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal. Even if you try to pretend that the military that captured them is a 'competant tribual', the fact is that we have held people, and even interrogated them, without having even a sham tribual first.
Incidentally, the odds are they, even if working actually for al Qaeda, do, indeed, fall under Geneva protections, specifically 6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
You see, you capture someone in an act of terrorism, they, indeed, have no rights under the Geneva convention. However, when capuring random people on the ground in Aphganistan, even if they are terrorists, the same is not true. You captured them because they shot at you because you were trying to kill them, and that's all perfectly legal, and now you have to treat them as POWs. No, they don't have to be in uniform...only members of the armed forces do, and has been repeated drilled into our head to justify this whole mess, al Qaeda is not a government, and thus cannot have 'armed forces'.
Of course, you can certainly try them for war crimes or just plain old murder committed before the war.
No, they don't have to be entered into the legal system. The findings could be essentially administrative, much like the determination of POW status.
Oh, they have administrative hearings, where they are found to be innocent of everything, and they continue to be detained. Do you actually read the newspapers?
As it is, Al Qaeda and kin are making war not merely outside the law, but often violate the law of war, and as a result they have very little legal protection and enormous personal risk.
Al Qaeda does not engage in war anymore than the Mafia engages in war. They have never tried to conquer anywhere, because they have nowhere near the manpower to overrun even the crappiest military.
Al Qaeda, instead, engages in illegal acts. It is a criminal conspiracy. They, like all criminals, should be arrested and charged with a crime.
At one point in the past, al Qaeda joined forces with a nation, namely, Afganistan. They ahve also supported, and been supported by, additonal nations. However, we should not assume everyone, even all of 'al Qaeda', that were on the ground fighting in Afganistan, are the part of al Qaeda engaged in criminal acts. We should detain them like normal POWs until they are sorted out, and then charge those. (Which is allowed under the Geneva convention as long as we are not charging them with crimes based on the war itself...we couldn't charge them with, for example, shooting an American soldier during the battle.)
As for the Nazi saboteurs...the 'American citizen' came ashore in a Nazi uniform. If you're an immigrant, and you join an opposing military, you forfeit your citizenship. (Remember what I said about al Qaeda not being a military?)
That said, legally, they should have gotten civilian trials. They were cap
In fact, the courts ruled, during WWII, they must be tried in civilian courts if said courts were operating, unlike the military courts the president wanted to use.
However, every enemy soldier captures during WWII did, indeed, have access to a lawyer, and we did, indeed, tell people we had captured them. I'm sure that's just a minor point, though.
Of course, we didn't capture random people handed to us by bounty hunters, but solely people in uniform on the battlefield, and there wouldn't have been a lot of point in them using lawyers to challenge their status, so almost none of them used a lawyer to do so.
With the war on terror, of course, there is plenty of reason for them to do that, because not only are many of them innocent, but the whole point of POWs is that you get returned after the war is over, and one's bothered to come up when that might be in the war on terror. So even if they are guilty of everything anyone vaguely asserted about them when given 500 dollars for turning a 'terrorist' over, they would still need to be entered into the legal system at some point.
1) Of course, if you're talking about the interment of Japanese-Americans, they, indeed, did not have accessto the court. Of course, that entire thing was flatly illegal and acknoledged as such by the government later on.
However, I will point out we can't put our faith in the courts, because, duh, the President cannot be arrested. In theory, the Justice Dept. could start arresting itself and the NSA, but that is rather unlikely. Although it would be interesting if some states start arresting people...wiretapping without a warrant is illegal in several states under state law.
What we instead have to wait for is Congress to impeach him, and they're too busy getting indicted.
And we don't need to get the full story of what he's really doing. By his own words, he has repeatedly committed felonies under FISA. Now, in theory, he could be lying to us, but that seems unlikely. Any idiot can read the Afganistan resolution and see it doesn't say a damn thing about wiretaps, and as it doesn't specifically mention them, FISA, which explicitly says it's the authoritative law on wireatapping, is still in force.
The only actual question here is: Can the President break the law during a war?
And, in one sense, the answer is yes. The President can always break the law, and not get charged with it until he leaves office. He has to be impeached instead.
Where the fuck are these people getting this?
The standard has not been followed. FISA has been broken.
There are literally two possible justifications.
1) One is that the resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan justified it. The law says 'X is illegal if not done under a statue permitting it', so you can either argue that a statue authorizing military force somehow authorized the NSA to spy on Americans, despite FISA clearly saying that, in times of war, the president can do it for only 15 days. Somehow, the Aghanistan resolution magically counts as a 'statue' under FISA authorizing that, despite FISA having explicitly written to cover wartime. (It's worse than that. Congress than fairly quickly passed the PATRIOT act, expanding FISA, which rather implied they were expecting people to keep using it. And, yes, intent of the lawmakers does matter.)
2) The other is the president has the authority to do whatever he wants in time of war. That the law is null and void when applied to the president, at least at this moment. (Incidentally, this law was aimed at the president, to stop Nixon's abuses from happening again..)
Of course, there's the other option: He is, in fact, breaking the law, repeatly commiting wiretapping felonies under FISA.
Pick one.
You are correct about how cheap it is to produce the substance, but packaging and shipping cost money also. It is entirely possible that near the end they were losing money on each can, and not just overall due to advertising.
Why? Because the second it does, everyone will go to the other stations.
This, however, is clearly not what happens, although we all wish it had WRT gas prices.
People do not, at all, bid on ads based on 'beating' other people.
They bid an amount below a few cents less than a click makes them, but, more to the point, that gets it displayed the optimal amount. If everyone is bidding eight dollars and pushing them off the page, and they are only making four per click, they stop advertising there and go find other grounds.
This idea that everyone would end up pinned at the highest amount is absurd. Stuff like that has happened before, witness the Cola War in the 80s, where both Pepsi and Coke ended up selling soda at a loss in an attempt to destroy each other, and barely managed to break out of that dive without their wings ripping off. It's the corporate version of Chicken.
But it only happens when there is one market and a few competitors, it can't happen with the number of websites in each category and the number of places they can adverize on the net.
There are plenty of dangers in ecommerce, and possible some that could destroy it altogether, but the price of ads ain't one of them. The price of ads can kill you, but that would be because some other company is willing to pay more, which means they are spending less money on the other things, and other people operating cheaper than you has been the traditional killer of companies even since commerce existed. They could just as easily pay the same for ads as you, and just have lower prices.
However, it's beginning to look like the reason he wasn't following the law was due to the fact he was spying on Americans without probable cause, which is, in fact, a civil right's violation.
Laws don't just exist to protect rights. Sometimes they exist solely so that, if you are violating rights, someone will notice.
It's like a law that prohibit a crematory from accepting a body from someone off the street, requiring instead bodies go though the proper channels. It won't stop any crimes, but it makes it harder to get rid of the evidence.
Bush's complete ignoring of the law is, in itself, very suspicious, but we won't know more until someone with authority steps in and says 'Who, exactly, are you spying on? I want a list.'.
Why? Well, you see, if they keep it honest and only include the people who got bribed, they still have some Republicans who were honest. If they start including layers of indirection to suck in Democrats, they will suck in some...and probably suck in all Republicans.
1) Making campaign contributions to people who support your position is not illegal. The Democrats who got money from casinos already voted against gambling. Some of them were from frickin Nevada, and any elected official from Nevada instantly and automatically votes against any gambling located any place except Nevada for economic reasons. Pretending that was any sort of bribe is completely dishonest.
FISA, as passed, did not cover physical searched until the middle of Clinton's presidency.
And, incidentally, the reason he authorized searches without a warrant in the case of foreign intelligence is that he needed to be able to do them quickly. Which is also why he later managed to get FISA extended to them, so he could do them with a retroactive warrant. He wanted FISA extended because he wanted to use FISA. He signed the damn extension into law.
Breaking the law by accident is one thing. Breaking the law to cover your own ass is one thing.
However, asserting the legal right to break the law, in conflict with the constitution, which he swore an oath to uphold, is treason in my book, exactly the same as if some General marched into the White House and declared himself President. Bush has, in essense, marched into Congress and declared himself Congress, and marched into the Supreme Court and declared himself the Supreme Court.
The really interesting question is, is he still going to have his cheerleading bastards after after he's impeached and refuses to leave?
However, yes, it's amazing how the Right has gotten people to cheerlead them.
Look, I used to think both political parties were run by greedy old bastards who cared alot more about pleasing their lobbists than their constitutants, and both parties had 75% good ideas and 25% pure stupidity. Congress is, like Mark Twain said, statistically the most criminal class in America, but they're the only government we have.
My opinion of the Democrats has not changed, except I've added 'craven' and 'spineless'.
My opinion of the Republicans? Unless they immediately do something to stop this madman in the White House, and do something to clean up this K Street bribery scandal of their own making, and I mean within two months, not by the time the elections roll around, I will never vote for anyone who runs on the Republican ticket ever again. I don't care if it's my own mother running against Hitler, and she's tied with him. I'll vote for Mickey Goddamn Mouse before I'll vote for the party running this country full-speed into the ground.
This, incidentally, is a very good point. It is possibly that that single search was illegal. Well, cops do illegal things all the time, those things just get thrown out.
Screwing up and searching a single suspect without a warrant is not the same as implimenting a vast spy network designed to do that.
The first happens due to all sorts of stuff, and can even be justified. Remember, as it wasn't covered under FISA, they couldn't get a retroactive warrant. In an emergency, they may have, indeed, placed 'stopping the spy right now' over 'being able to charge the spy later', and were actually surprised when any evidence gathered from there wasn't thrown out.
Which is why we got FISA. We don't need to do that anymore WRT to intelligence.
FISA quite clearly says it is the final authority on the matter, and trying make out the Afghanistan resolution as overriding it is insane. A driver's license does not grant me the right to run over people or steal their car. When given an ability under the law, you still have to follow all other laws unless you are explicitly granted some sort of exception to them. Bush was not given any sort of FISA exception when given the authority o use the military against the WTC terrorists. (Why would he? FISA would already happily grant warrants for that, without Congress getting involved at all!)(1)
The only legal experts who are on Bush's side in this are people who literally think he has the right to do anything he wants in time of war, to break any law for national security purposes. That is the only possibly legal justification he has left.
Which justification, incidentally, the Supreme Court already shut down, back when Nixon tried to use it.
1) And I just know someone is going to mention the number of warrants that FISA started modifying. Well, it did that because Bush started giving it crap warrants, but, more to the point for this discussion, it started doing that a good year after Bush had already started his illegal spying bypassing FISA, so cannot possibly be used as justification for anything.
This is called 'The Big Lie'. Repeat it often enough, and people will believe it.
Okay, check your Republican talking point. You meant to say Clinton and Carter, as Gore was not, in fact, president.
And, no, they did not, you are basically lying, although I'm sure you're just repeating lies you have been told. Carter and Clinton followed the law. Bush did not.
A militia is a group consisting of all adult men (and, hey, women now) who have trained to use a gun and are able and willing to use that weapon in the event of emergencies. They should either form into preplanned units, or just sort of mill around until they hook up with people, or operate on their own.
As the government is not seeing fit to create this group, people should feel free to train themselves and procure their own weapons.
While in the event of an emergency, the National Guard will, indeed, pass out weapons, their idea of emergency and yours might differ, and obviously they don't have the resources to train people. And, no, they aren't a militia themselves. A militia is explicitly people not in a 'regular' government-operated fighting force who choose to grab a gun and fight.
For an example of how this can work, look at Switzerland. The government trains people and gives them guns. They are expected to work together to fight off any enemies to the country.
Although this entire discussion is somewhat idiotic, as, indeed, the reason given that people have a right is not related to the existance of that right. Rights are inalienable.