It is truly shocking to see the attitudes of SOME within the GPL club.
This was SUPPOSED to be about FREEDOM. I started thinking that there was something else going on when I saw the debate over GPLv3. It seems that SOME in the GPL crowd are determined to steal the works of others and ram their preferences down other people's throats. This is like the difference between those of us who want unencrypted music and movies so we can use what we bought in any way we want, and those who oppose encryption because they want theft to be easier. SOME of us want full sources to software so we can run it on any machine we own and modify it to better suit our needs, but SOME seem to want source so that nobody can make a living writing code.
If GPL supporters will not respect the licenses of others, then nobody should respect the GPL and GPL supporters should not become symbols of hypocracy-writ-large by getting mad about it.
If you want others to share code, make it mandatory and use the GPL.
So much for freedom...apparently nobody is free to use another license. This attitude is part of what makes the GPL viral.
...then why are they using the BSD license?
Because they offered THEIR users even more freedom than the GPL would. The BSD license not only lets people do what they want with the code, but it also imposes no extra burdens on the user, OTHER THAN THAT THEY NOT RE-LICENSE THE CODE SO THAT BSD USERS CANNOT USE IT. There is nothing in the BSD license that says "you are hereby licensed to remove this license from this code"
Read my lips: you wanted it that way. The BSD license allows for this and you knew it
Nope. The BSD license does NOT allow you to change the license. As for giving back code, well I guess the GPL people are not as nice as they want to be seen. Are you saying that the only reason you give back code is that the GPL MAKES you do it? Are you saying that, left to their own devices, the GPL programmers would never give back any code? So much for moral superiority.
To share it with the BSD coders, they would also have to share it with the lock up coders.
OK, then stop using BSD code. If you are unwilling to be tainted by the impure users of BSD code, then take it out of your system. Do not use it. BSD license users are not implying that you are immoral by using your license of choice, but some GPL people like to make the accusation against BSD license users. OK, go for it. Get all the BSD and MIT stuff out of your Linux build. Be pure-and-clean-as-the-GPL-driven-snow... and enjoy your command line. Personally, I will continue to use and support BOTH licenses and try not to abuse EITHER ONE. Again, I thought that GPL advocates were all about freedom and sharing, but I guess they only wanna share with PURE people who will never try to earn a living. We cannot ALL make a living going around lecturing and giving speeches. Some people actually need to MAKE things.
but he fails to acknowledge that a dual licensed file gives you that permission with the other license.
Dude, you are dangerous. Nobody with that attitude and that poor understanding of licenses is safe to employ in software development. That attitude will get you into serious legal trouble someday. You do not get to just pick and choose your license and delete the other license from the code. I THOUGHT that GPL advocates HATED that form of intellectual property abuse. Do you advocate removing other programmer's names from comments in code too?
A lot of people here seem to be missing the point
The GPL was supposed to be (among other things) about passing on to others the rights you had when you got the code. When you got the (dual licensed) code, it had BOTH licenses and you had the freedom to use it EITHER WAY, but when you strip the BSD license from it and the rights to use it as the BSD license allowed it to be used, you violated your own Prime Directive. What you then passed-on to
I honestly don't know what it is with you Americans and your, in my view, totally neurotic fear that Hillary Clinton would be some strange vague, cold, Nazi like feminist who would be the death of your country.
You do not understand us because you apparently lack the intellect to grasp reality, and the expletives get attention but do not make up for this; they are a sign of low-class and poor intelligence.
MANY here are DEEPLY suspicious of her for good reasons; She makes Al Gore look almost honest. She and her husband hire a bar bouncer, give him White House credentials, send him over to the FBI to get the secret FBI background files on about 1000 of the top Republicans in the country, then they fire the bouncer and claim they do not know who hired him (but of course they KEEP those FBI files). I have never seen ANY of the lefties of the internet who always pretend to be outraged by any threat to personal info and privacy concerns raise even 1 decibel about this.
She held meetings to try to take over 1/7th of the U.S. economy, and when outsiders asked for a list of all the people on her health care task force, she refused claiming that it was a private affair (non-governmental) so it was not covered by the rules requiring openness. When it was pointed out that it was then illegal because it was funded with government money, she backtracked and said it was NOT private, but she just could not remember who was on the panel. She said various versions of "I cannot recall" more than any other person in the history of Washington DC (before Gonzales) when she had to testify on capitol hill. I have seen NO hyperventilating by lefties who hate Cheney/Halliburton over this same sort of behavior from Clinton. Her being a woman has NOTHING to do with the matter for most people I talk with. I would have voted for Jeanne Kirkpatrick to be president IN A HEARTBEAT, and most people I know would have also. If we had a Maggie Thatcher over here, she would probably be the nominee of the Republicans in 2008. As for what she could possibly do that a man hasn't done, well, pretty much nothing and everything. A woman is capable of every bit as much political corruption as any man; a woman candidate should not be presumed to be any more pure than a male candidate just because she has different genitals. People who oppose Hillary are at least giving her more respect than you are; they believe her when she says what she wants to do, and they believe that she will try to do these things.
She inserted herself into national policy matters, which is NOT the role of the spouse of the president (of EITHER gender). She was ruthless in dealing with "little people" and whenever she was confronted about her actions and had to testify under oath, her standard answer was always "I can't remember" or "I don't recall". Her standard method of responding to her critics was NOT to challenge their policies, but rather to attack their motives. When she was meddling in policy she was one of the brightest lawyers in the country, but whenever she was challenged it was unfair because she was the wife of the president. When the entire planet seemed to be aware of her husband's poor judgment, she blamed the whole matter on a "vast right wing conspiracy". There was no conspiracy, there were simply the poor behavior of Bill, many people who disliked him and/or his policies, and a woman who ended-up behaving in ways that startled many people (she acted like a coldly calculating political creature when most would have expected her to be concerned about her family FIRST).
Hillary, as first lady, was in many ways an unusual example of something the American people are nearly genetically disposed to dislike: unaccountable power. Nixon, Clinton, and Bush were all elected to office and were accountable to the people and answerable to congress and the courts. A first lady does not normally have a policy role and has no direct accountability. Most first ladies have understood this and respected it and have therefore generally been treated
Care to try to explain the Clinton impeachment process then?
That's just TOO easy...and being a literate adult, I need no childish expletives...
1. Clinton plays for the women's vote by pushing for and signing into law a bill that said that any time a woman in the U.S. sues a man for sexual harrassment, she gets to ask him all about his sex life and sexual history, under oath and under threat of perjury.
2. Paula Jones sues Clinton for sexually harrassing her when he was governor of Arkansas, AND she uses the very law he signed against him (he deserved this more than any man this law will ever be applied to!)
3. When Clinton (as chief law enforcement officer of the U.S.A.) gets dragged into court, placed under oath, and ordered to testify about his sex life, he lies. This is perjury AND BILL CLINTON SIGNED THE LAW THAT WOULD JAIL ANY OTHER AMERICAN MAN CAUGHT DOING THIS.
4. When the Republicans in congress who already detest Bill Clinton and are just ITCHING for a reason to go after him find out that he has done this (lie under oath in a court in order to interfere in a lawsuit) they go for impeachment, and successfully impeach him in the House.
5. Democrats and moderate Republicans in the Senate refuse to convict him.
Yes, Bill Clinton was "only" lying about sex... but he was doing it to interfere with a SEXual harrassment suit (so of course his perjury would be about sex). I would not care WHICH party the president was in and would not care if he lied (UNDER OATH, IN COURT) about Mickey Mouse IF doing so was interfering in a lawsuit by a poor, lower-class citizen seeking legal recourse in a case the courts found sufficiently valid to allow to proceed (as they specifically did in the Clinton/Jones case) then he SHOULD be stripped of his office and sent to the pokey.
Lefties have been screaming for years that Bush lied to get us into the war. Unfortunately, the Democrats in congress had access to the same info from the CIA that Bush had and most of them either chose to vote on the war without even reading the info or attending the briefings, OR they believed the same things Bush did (makes an impeachment a bit problematic). If they REALLY believe that Bush lied us into a war, then they have a DUTY to impeach him. They are not even going to TRY it because most of them know that the attack is a fraud they used to swing ignorant and gullible voters, and the few lawmakers who really DO believe that claptrap are more interested in politics than in principles; Democrats think that if they try an impeachment it will be harder to win in 2008. HA HA HA! this means they are no better than they accuse Bush of being (politics and power trumping truth and principle)
since anything on this scale inevitably gores SOMEBODY's oxe, and the supporters of the theory want to use the mighty and blunt instrument of government to force people to change their lives, we are in the realm of politics.
I am DEEPLY suspicious about man-made global warming for a number of reasons. Here are just some:
1. The goal posts are always moving. We can NEVER get a fixed set of predictions to hit or miss to prove or disprove the warming and/or human cause. The most-recent version of this is that we are NOW told there will not be any real heating until 2009 (AFTER the next US presidential election...so democrats can wave headlines around with doomsday predictions and not worry about being proven wrong before the election. hmmmmmmm)
2. "Warmest year ever", "Coldest year ever", "Warmest year on record", etc. Since modern weather measuring equipment has only existed for a brief flicker of time in the geologic scale, these phrases are just plain silly. Even the thermometers used a few hundred years ago may not have been calibrated to todays standards, and while indirect things like sediments and tree rings may give clues they are even less-well calibrated.
3. If you cannot explain the past, your predictions for the future are just well-funded guesses. Until supporters can tell us what EXACTLY caused all previous warming and cooling patterns, they cannot honestly claim to understand the mechanisms well enough to properly predict the future. This would be funny if it were not so dangerous. Supporters of the global warming claims want to force entire societies to change in dramatic ways. They want political changes and societal changes that will have sweeping effects. Many average citizens will lose jobs, and homes, and marriages. Industries will be halted/moved and allocation of resources will be shifted. Indeed, changes in politicians will ripple into changes in policies in areas completely unrelated to the climate. The risks to the lives of individuals are on BOTH sides of the action/inaction debates but the proponents of action never consider that, actually I suspect they desire that.
4. We are told the US is the biggest contributor (the BIG SINNER) but as soon as problems are found with the US data, we are told that the US numbers have little to do with the global data and that anybody who links the two is an idiot. hmmmmmmm
5. We are told "The debate is over" over and over again and anybody who says "No it's not!" is trashed with the loaded label "denier". Debates end when they end, not when partisans on one side scream that the debate is over and start hurtling epithets at the other side. In my experience, when epithets are used, the people using them are doing so as a poor substitute for hard data and good logic. Science needs no such insults, and science needs no such consensus. When I see either insults OR consensus in science, I know I am probably not seeing science.
6. Supporters of the idea of man-made global warming continually and intentionally mis-characterize their opponents as deniers of global warming. This is dishonest and simplistic. SOME deny that any global warming is taking place. SOME of these people simply disagree with the very concept that a "global temperature" is valid or of any non-political value. MOST opponents, however, agree the globe is warming, but do not agree that man is causing it. SOME opponents simply question the idea that the climate of 1900, as a random example, was perfect and that it is valid to panic whenever the climate is warmer or cooler than it was on whatever date was selected. If supporters of this are so correct and so supported by science, then they need not mis-characterize their opponents' positions.
7. The supporters of man-made global warming are all in it for the money and prestige. They inevitably get huge piles of money and resources from governments, and the money is dedicated to research into global warming. Their peers hand-out awards and back-pats over this stuff. Just how many of the researc
But unless someone leaks information about legally questionable acts in the first place, *no one will go to court*. Seriously, how fucking retarded are you?
Apparently far less "retarded" than you, given the exceedingly low-brow, and idiotic responses you offer. By your reasoning, I presume the police should break all laws with reckless abandon in order to get the criminals, to wit: "your honor, these officers HAD to break into the defendant's house without a warrant and steal his papers and then they HAD to kill his security guard and they HAD to burn the place down so that he, as a powerful mob boss, would not know we had the evidence... if we had NOT gotten this evidence, we would NOT be in this court today proving that he IS a crime boss!"
It works both ways. EITHER you believe in innocent-until-proven guilty and you believe in PROPERLY getting evidence and starting investigations, or you do not, but do go all inconsistent when it suits your cheap, lame, illogical political aims and then denounce other people with uncivilized gutter language when they disagree. Lots of kids discover that foul language is cool when they are 8, but most are over that by their 9th birthday. Happily, most people are capable of actual, reasonable dialog by the time they are adults. Grow-up and get out of mommy's basement.
I was in a good mood yesterday and the entire thing was meant as humor, albeit with a point:
Airhead journalists embracing the new as wonderful (encouraging public and political support) and THEN, LATER, seeing flaws and doing the investigative journalist thing to be the "voice of the people" speaking "truth to power" etc. (like with auto airbags, which the industry insisted might be dangerous when they came up with them but then decided against selling them...then after airbags were forced by politicians and got popular we saw stories about them killing people and the accusation that auto execs KNEW this would happen!)
I did not think anybody would take the specifics of what I wrote as literal stuff to be subjected to fact checking... (lauging) re-read and please do try to enjoy it (smile).
And I was also pointing out that there's no free lunch; people complain about what they have and want the new thing, but after they have the new thing it's not always so great (December 26th syndrome)
And I was further pointing out that we are all "addicted to oil" NOT because of some conspiracy but because it is currently to most efficient technology for what we use it for. There was a day when the world was addicted to coal (high concentration of energy, easily obtained and used, etc.) but oil came along and was better. All the ships of the world went to oil because you could pump it (which made handling it better) and you did not need crews in the engine room loading it into the engine a shovel-full at a time, and ships no longer exploded when the wrong mixture of coal dust mixed with air in nearly empty coal bunkers. The shipping industry was never "Addicted to coal" nor using it because of "Big Coal" companies... coal was simply better than sails until oil came along.
A new wave of cute and shiny new cars are appearing on our streets that run on an amazing new fuel previously only available to the space agency. These little gems will save the planet. Hollywood actors are junking their Limos and moving to these wonder cars to set an example for all of us and to help save the planet.
News Flash: Fuel Price Relief on Horizon
Owners of the new Hydrogen cars are complaining they they pay way too much for their Hydrogen; they complain that Hydrogen is in all seawater (which covers 70% of the Earth) so it should be cheap. Drivers of these great pollution-free cars suspect that Big-Hydrogen companies are colluding to keep prices high to drive-up global warming and accelerate the move to the more expensive new fuel. Suppliers say not to worry though because 30 new nuclear plants will be coming on line to make exctracting hydrogen from seawater more cost-effective.
News Flash: Gas Guzzler Graveyard
A new wave of environmental responsibility appears to taking hold. Now that hydrogen fuel is cheaper and Detroit is more familiar with the technology, high-performance hydrogen sports cars and SUVs are rolling off the assembly lines at very affordable prices. The nation's junkyards are filling-up with old gas-powered SUVs. Those new H-SUVs have hydrogen tanks four-times bigger than the ones in the cars. America's campers and and off-roaders can look-forward to LONG happy summer vacations.
News Flash: US out of Middle East
All U.S. forces were withdrawn from the world's most-troubled region today as the most recent wave of new nuclear plants came online, freeing the nation from dependence on fossil fuels. We still need petroleum products for plastics and lubricants, but industry experts say there are enough domestic supplies to meet our needs. The president, in comments today, echoed the sentiments of the nation in saying "never more will brave young Americans need to fight in foreign lands for oil"
News Flash: Paying the Price of Ignorance
Environmentalists complain that the nation's auto junkyards are leaking highly-elevated levels of toxic petrochemicals into the nation's ground water. Ever since the new hydrogen cars came out, citizens have been junking their dirty old gas guzzlers. While this always used to happen to old worn-out cars, the transition to the new clean fuel caused a huge increase in the process and many vehicles went to the dump before they had reached the end of their normal service life. The Senate today announced passage of new hydrogen taxes to make up for all the lost gasoline tax revenue; those losses had caused a new upsurge in the budget deficit. The house version of the bill includes a new tax on all new H-cars to provide a superfund to cleanup all the old G-car dumps
News Flash: Hydrogen Bomb Goes Off
One of those new hydrogen cars was rear-ended today on the Golden Gate bridge and it exploded. The flames were so intense that people in vehicles 50 feet away were melted. The flames burned so invisibly that several good samaritans who rushed to try to pull victims from the fires were, themselves, ignited and burned. Experts warned that the structure of the bridge may now be unsound
News Flash: Nuclear Genie Gets Mad
Experts today announced that the recent leak at our nation's 53rd Nuclear power plant is a bigger problem than first noted; in the rush to build domestic sources of cheap hydrogen, many plants were built by the same contractors to the same plans. In special Senate hearings, it was determined that 30% of the plants need to be closed for inspections and repairs as a precaution
News Flash: Yellowstone is Burning
Two SUVs collided this morning in Yellowstone National Park. "The fireball could be seen for MILES!" one witness told reporters. There have been rumblings recently that the evil auto companies never told the public that those huge SUV hydrogen t
There is no fear, just the assertion that religious values aren't the "conservative" values the Republican party used to stand for, despite what neo-cons would like the rest of the world to believe.
There once was a part that stood opposite to the Democrats that was fiscally conservative but not to interested in all those morals and ethics questions; It had little to offer the American people an it went away (the Whigs). An odd little party, that started as the Whigs were foundering, got all tangled-up in those moral/ethical questions and had the audacity to say it was WRONG for Democrats to own black people (those nasty Judgemental Republicans). That Republican party gradually lost its moral and ethical roots and found itself a weak and not particularly effective minority party by the early 20th century (when Rockefeller Republicans controlled the party and just used it to protect the money of rich people). When the party went pack to taking positions on moral and ethical issues, it regained its vigor. Like it or not, about half of the people in the country want a party that says nothing about morals and about half of the country prefers the opposite; if the Dems embrace religion and moral issues too much they will lose their base, and if the GOP abandon those things too much they will lose their base. As for the neocons, they are Primarily Scoop Jackson Democrats who went Republican when the Democrats went weak-in-the-knees on defense and foreign policy; they tend to be Jewish (not making an anti-semitic attack) rather than "fundamentalist Christians". You need to learn to take better intellectual aim before pulling the rhetorical trigger.
You have heard of the crusades right? Or maybe you don't know about the Spanish Inquisition... Northern Ireland mean anything to you?
Yes I have heard of all these things. The inquisition and the crusades were acts of the Catholic church (which was acting, to some extent, like the federal government of Europe at the time and exercised many of the powers of such an entity, albeit with the "authority" of the Pope). While these were wrong and EVIL, these have become the boogiemen of leftist histories. The death toll of all added together is dwarfed by the killings of just one atheist thug (Stalin). Every educated person knows that Ireland is VERY different; you have two factions fighting over control of many things, one with historical roots to the primarily protestant England and one that is primarily Catholic. The fight is NOT about interpretations of scriptures; the fight is secular and political but happens to break along religious lines for historical reasons. Show me the video of the Catholic Irish screaming latin liturgies as they suicide-bomb the married protestant ministers and I might agree with you (might make for a funny British TV show...hmmm...)
I've seen "fundamentalist Christians" stand up and say that torture is justified and that we should just drop a nuclear bomb on any Muslim country.
Nice try. I have seen left-wing bloggers call for all Christians to be killed; I guess that makes you and all who think like you evil ( I would not make that leap, so you might want to reconsider too). How many waves of "fundamentalist Christian" torture and nuclear bomb attacks have we seen?
If you think the atrocities committed by the Christian church and Christian people are any less horrific than those committed by "fundamentalist Muslims" that's your prerogative.
Well, at least here you broadened your brush so it could include the guys who DID the inquisitions and crusades instead of the "fundamentalist Christians" who opposed the Catholic church. People who self identify as "Christian" but are really just saying they are culturally Christian HAVE done some pretty nasty stuff (as have people who self-identify as adherents to nearly any other faith/philosophy). What you seem not to understand is that when "fundamentalist Christians" read a Bible they do not find any commandment to convert by
Using the current death toll of 2974, each of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 was responsible for ~156 deaths.
Nice try. I've seen lefties use that bad math before though. ( Don't know if you are a lefty or have just fallen for that argument ) This would only be true if each if the hijackers had acted alone. They acted in small teams though
If you're worried about pure numbers, why don't we have a War on Obesity and a War on Traffic Accidents?
Nope not yet, but more on that later. Yes you have a nugget of truth here I partly agree with, plenty of things kill more individuals each year (though none makes a body-blow against the society, culture, and economy) Interestingly, you made a very short list; you could have added many more big killer like booze, guns, illegal alien criminals, AIDs, and more
Basically, you've fallen for the administration's line that terrorism will Kill You, Your Family, and Your Friends Real Soon Now
No, I have not. Do not let your hatred for Bush cloud your thinking. At this very early point in the 21st century, increasingly dangerous technology is and (and will be) falling into the hands of more and more nasty people. Right now, most of the nasties who wish to harm us are adherents to Islam whose leaders have convinced them to try to take-over significant parts of the world by slaughtering innocent civilians. We need to be realistic about this and do what we can, first to prevent them getting good weapons, and second to protect the innocent civilians. This is not going away any time soon so we need to get real good at it while finding ways to minimize and hopefully eliminate the impact the efforts have on our rights and liberty. BTW: are you advocating that rather than fighting terrorism we should simply take drivers licenses from most people and ban fast food? ( I'd like to be as far away from you as possible when the great masses find out about those plans (laughing))
I have no statistics, but I wouldn't be surpised if more Iraqis have been killed by the U.S. war than Saddam had killed since the first gulf war.
Whoa there! Do not blame the U.S. for the deaths where some Iraqi (or some Saudi jihidi freak) blows up or guns-down some Iraqis. The U.S. often puts its people in harm's way in an attempt to avoid hitting civilians, when we could have been MUCH safer if we'd had our guys fire from further away or just conducted indescriminatory bombing. And don't just call it a "U.S. war" when part of the reason was that Saddam spent 12 years violating the cease-fire terms of the 1st gulf war (to which the UN was a signatory) and the spineless UN failed to respond. Oh, and the guy was shooting at U.S. pilots on nearly a daily basis while they patrolled those UN no-fly zones that the UN was gutless to enforce. He also kept lying (telling the UN he did not have the weapons, while telling his neighbors he DID have them) while interfering with the UN inspectors so that THEY could not get a good accounting of his actions (thereby averting war). Have you actually watched any of the video of his troops torturing and killing innocent civilians? When's the last time you looked at the video from his chem attacks on the Kurds? Funny the way so many who insist we should not have stopped Saddam from killing anybody he wanted to are so eager to demand we intervene in various world tragedies and want us to send our guys into a REAL civil war in Darfur where we have no strategic interests. Let the French and the UN handle Darfur; they always know better than we do, right?
After all, they might remain in a position to actually do something about it by staying where they are.
That's a good point too:-) but consider that if they went public and there were a public venting and subsequent change in the laws, then they might no longer be needed as a whistle-blower in that position. Remember that the goal should be REAL reforms and REAL fixes to bad situations and that's more likely after a major public blow-out than after a quiet little burble with no citized-turned-hero as a symbol
Is that why you can't tell the difference between leaking military intel to the enemy (for money, no less), and leaking information about illegal acts perpetrated by the government?
WOW, are you saying the subject of this current thread has been all the way through the legal system (including appeals) and the Bush administration has been found to be guilty of breaking the law?!? I missed that bit of news and I guess you saw that somewhere (other than on DailyKos) because I am SURE you would agree with me that everyone (including members of any presidential administration, even Bush's) is presumed innocent until proven guilty in the courts and you certainly are sure that what went on was ILLEGAL (not just allegedly illegal, or possibly illegal, or IMO illegal)
they have a responsibility to expose secret programs that are clearly against the law of the land
There are ways to do it (see my other posts in this thread) and this guy allegedly did not do it in the "right" way. ( I say "allegedly" because I am not willing to say he did it until a court rules that he did, just as I am not willing to run around with my hair on fire shouting that what Bush did was illegal until a court rules on THAT )
*we* decided that we give them that power in exchange of their *serving* us
REFRESHING! somebody here actually understands what makes this country's constitution SO unique in the world. We actually agree on most of that paragraph, but please, you Bush critics are so quick to throw-out titles like fascist and equate people with fascists. I might be more willing to agree if you guys screamed the same way when Hillary hired a bar bouncer, sent him to the FBI to get the background files on about 1000 top Republicans, then fired him and claimed she could not remember how he got on the payroll (while she kept those background check files on they guys who might now have to run against her)
When the state has a right to make people disappear/being tortured/executed... terrorist (Bush)...
Under Bush, NOBODY has been made to disappear! So many here have grown-up in the softness of the USA and have never seen REAL evil governments and therefore do not properly compare even the worst of what happens here to what has gone on elsewhere.
(1) the guys in Gitmo are all known and identified to the RedCross and are regularly visited.
(2) the guys in Gitmo have done something that western civilization was never prepared to deal with, so the "rules" were never established; they are engaged in acts of WAR (not individual civilian acts of crime) but they are not in uniform (so normally they would be classed as spies and shot/traded for good-guy spies) BUT they are not in the service of the organized services of any government (so THEY and not some country they serve) are the only ones who can be held to account for their acts of war. If they were uniformed soldiers, then they would be disarmed and held in camps until the war ends (happened to US/French/German/English/Japanese soldiers in the past and is happening to them now as an act of extreme goodwill; they OUGHT to have been shot where they stood)
(3) As for torture, Scaring with dogs, getting them nude, putting panties on their heads, etc. may be humiliating and waterboarding may be very scary BUT these are not the same as REAL TORTURE. Ask any US soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who was captured and then used in medical experiments, had limbs dislocated repeatedly, was electrocuted, had bamboo under the the fingernails, was burned, was deprived of food and water and exposed to malaria and other diseases, was worked to near-death building things for the enemy. I am disgusted by any IDIOTIC comparisons between Gitmo and Abu Garaib on the one hand and REAL TORTURE on the other.
You may have heard of Tranai...
I have not and I have been too busy lately for recreational reading, but it sounds interesting and I will write the title down for possible future reading. Thanks for the recommendation:-)
The difference between leaking and whistleblowing is completely lost to you.
No it is not. A whistle-blower stands-up publicly and outs the information, up the chain of authority if and when possible, before going to alternate authorities and then ultimately to the citizenry IN PUBLIC if possible. He believes in the rightness of actions so much that he takes the heat for them (possibly gets arrested and dragged into a courtroom) because he is confident the public will agree with him and he will be found not guilty and the public will demand his freedom and demand that the laws be changed. THIS is the model of Dr. King and other TRUE dissenters. The modern method of rolling a political handgrenade from under cover by way of journalists like woodward and berstein and then skulking away with no responsibility is undignified, unprincipled, and cowardly. This form of "Whistle-blowing" is more-likely a political attack masquerading as an honorable act.
Interesting idea; usually only done with money. Might make being somebody's boss a risky job
Law is so convoluted these days that IMO the days of "ignorance of the law is no excuse" are long gone.
Agreed. That concept worked early in the country's life before lawyers packed all of the legislatures and started passing thousands of laws that only lawyers could understand. You know the whole mess is out of control when lawyers need lawyers. I propose that every odd-numbered congress only be permitted to delete laws rather than add them. I further propose that a law can only become law if it can be submitted to a panel of 20 completely randomly drawn citizens from across the country (none of whom may be lawyers) and they can each read it and agree about what it means and have that agree with a legislative analysis whitepaper filed ahead of time by the lawmakers who passed it.
Consider that the check-and-balance we want in government ALSO applies to "whistle-blowers" (otherwise we would just have anarchy)
To wit: the "whistle-blower" must believe so much in the rightness of his cause, that he is willing to face the penalty of his action with dignity. If he is not willing to face the penalty then he must not be very committed to the idea. Historically, all the great movements using civil disobedience ( like the actions of Dr. King for example, and some honorable anti-war protesters ) have involved persons who did no harm to others, or to the property of others, but who clearly broke a law for a political purpose, and then allowed themselves to be arrested. Their faith in their cause was so solid that they believed that when their cause went before a jury of their peers in a court of law the citizens of this country would agree with them and they would be freed and the laws would change. There is a LONG tradition of this HONORABLE pattern in these United States. Any other form of civil disobedience or "whistle-blowing" is simply the act of a gutless weenie who wants to score a cheap political hit.
yes, he will get his day in court like any other suspect.
Rule of law?
yes, he will get his day in court like any other suspect.
Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure?
yes, unless you are making the argument that Bush sent some private bagmen without any warrants or other legal instruments
Separation of powers?
yes, that is why neither the congress not the courts rushed to arrest this suspect. The police are an executive branch function.
The rest of your over-excited comments do not warrant too much of a comment because, in case you had not noticed, small numbers of missed terrorists will kill thousands of innocent civilians, whereas a few bad apples in government making a bad arrest (if a particular arrest is found (BY A COURT) to have violated the laws (WRITTEN BY A LEGISLATURE)) will get prosecuted themselves and will either go to jail or need a pardon which carries political penalties for whoever cuts the pardon.
Wrong. Patrick Fitzgerald was informed about Armitage's leak before he EVER went after Libby ( even Chris Matthews has admitted this ). In fact, the Armitage leak was known to the people at Justice before Fitgerald was appointed. Fitzgerald seems to have concluded that Armitage either did not know Plame's status ( and therefore did not break the law ) or that her status did not make the law valid in the case. In either event, he went looking for further lawlessness and he could not find any in the administration until Libby and Russert disagreed in their depositions and he chose to believe Russert.
Yes, we agree, lying to a grand jury is ALWAYS a crime. Libby supporters though see a difference between lying about a provable fact, and disagreeing about a recollection of a year-old event for which there is serious lack of impartial documentation. This is the U.S. where citizens are supposed to be presumed innocent, not presumed guilty. I worry FAR more about the precedents Fitzgerald set in THIS case than about anything Bush is doing in the war. ( Jail for bad memories, Jail for journalists who do not turn on their sources, etc. ) Does anybody SERIOUSLY think it will be easy in the future to get people to voluntarily sit before a grand jury? People are likely to say "no thanks, charge me or go away." If Libby had done that, he would be a free man today. Look how many people get caught in perjury traps before grand juries ( another reason to fear the precedents being set bu Bush haters )
(1) Name-calling is never a good substitute for at least an average IQ, and obscenities used anywhere other than the battlefield or the cockpit of a falling plane are just a sign of low class.
Get out of mommy's basement and learn some civility.
(2) Lots of people in DC get prosecuted and even convicted for essentially political offenses. I will agree with you IF the prosecution stands after the appeals are done. Do you agree that Bill Clinton obstructed justice and lied under oath? ( or are you one the his worshippers who cling to his "aquittal" in the Senate, even though the courts went on to fine him and jerk his law license? ) Oh, I know, Clinton ONLY lied about SEX (while interfering in a sexual harassment lawsuit ) whereas Libby disagreed with a reporter (about something that was not illegal). How about we all go with the precedent ( liberals LIKE precedent in these days of the Roberts court, don't they? ) that the senate set in the Clinton case: it's ok to lie under oath in a court if you think the underlying issue is not serious. ( I guess Libby gets off. Not only did he probably not think disagreeing with Tim Russert about a non-crime was not serious, HE was not even in a court )
(3) Bush has never dragged ANYONE in front of the TV cameras in shackles... name even ONE time Bush has done this. Oh, I know, half the readers of the DailyKos are rotting in the vast chain of Bush-Cheney Gulags right along with Bill Mahr and Arianna Huffington in the Antarctic wastelands.
(4) Everyone in DC KNOWS, because it has been so frequently publicly talked about by journalists who have talked with him, that Armitage was every BIT as opposed to the war as his boss and friend Colin Powell. Powell had the class to keep his concerns within the halls where they belonged, but Armitage did not. Depending on who's recollection you count on he either intentionally leaked it or he inadvertently leaked it. Care to guess? ( if you guess wrong and some journalist says something different, you could be going to jail ) [laughing]
Like them or not, you are a fool if you equate "Fundamental Christian"(sic) or any other fundamentalists of ANY other religion with fundamentalist Muslims... NO fundamentalist of any other religion (including Christians, whom you seem to fear) has ever celebrated sawing the head off of a living person he disagreed with on TV, or hijacked an airliner full of innocent civilians and crashed it into a skyscraper full of innocent civilians. One sign that you are an adult is that you know the difference between people you dislike or disagree with, and people who hate you and want to kill you.
First, let me say I oppose vote swapping and selling and other electoral schemes.
However, even if I supported it, I would remind you that (a) the 9th circuit is THE most over-turned circuit court in the country, bar none and (b) the justices at the Supreme Court are likely to guard The Constitution very jealously (as is their duty) in this regard. Even the supporters generally admit this scheme is an attempt to get around the Electoral College part of The Constitution. The Supreme Court ( Liberal and Conservative justices alike ) generally finds schemes to dodge The Constitution, as a form of violation in spirit but not in word, to be distasteful.
I presume your 4th point is intended to cover the Clintons hiring a bar bouncer from Arkansas, giving him authorization to go over the the FBI to grab the secret background checks files on about a thousand Republicans ( including nearly any Republican likely to run against Hillary ) then firing the bouncer and claiming they could not remember who hired him or how he got onto the White House payroll ( but NEVER handing back the backround check files )
Oh, and point 1 is probably Al Gore inventing the internet, and point 2 is probably Al Gore going onto the board of Google, or maybe George Stephanopolis going to ABC to moderate political debate while George Mitchell goes to the board of ABC.
You are so RIGHT, we need to worry about liberal Democrats taking over the country and making it into a dictatorship;-)
Individuals simply do not have the right to expose secret programs even if they do not like them. If you are angry about this but support the prosecution of Scooter Libby then you have some explaining to do ( particularly when Scooter leaked NOTHING; it was Bush critic Richard Armitage in the State Department who did the actual Valerie Plame leaking )
If this guy really did the leak, then he hurt national security by tipping-off enemies. It matters not if most enemies assumed we were listening; if even ONE enemy did not think of it but was clued-in by the leak then harm was done. If he leaked but the program ultimately is found to be an illegal program and people involved in the program are sent off to jail, then the leaker should get leniency as Scooter got a break... but even if you like this leak, it is still NO LESS ILLEGAL to DO the leak.
Here we go again... a simpleton knee-jerk anti Fox News rant.
I think it was NBC that stuffed a model rocket motor into a pickup truck gas tank a few years ago to demonstrate that a particular brand of pickup truck had dangerous gas tanks. Seems to me that it's the "mainstream" press that makes things up with reckless abandon. Kindly take the leftist hyperventilating over to the DailyKos where substance does not matter and phony accusations are the norm. Fox News is far from perfect, but they are less biased than the big three. CBS makes up stories about Bush, ABC has Bill & Hillary's campaign man run their politics show, NBC has Tip O'Neil's guy run their political show, NBC uses a guy who makes personal appearances goosestepping across the stage wearing an O'Reilly mask and doing Hitler salutes as one of their "unbiased" news guys... but you hate Fox News. I'll agree that Fox is terribly biased to the right on the day that fewer than 75% of the journalists at the other networks are registered Democrats. The funny thing is how many of the folks at Fox News have turned out to be donors to the Democrats.
WMD is a bit of a silly acronym; when I served in the military we generally referred to these sorts of devices as NBC (Nuclear/Biological/Chemical) and it had NOTHING to do with quantities. The idea was that these weapons were in a category that either was too big (nuke) or windblown (nuke fallout/bio/chem) so they were not able to cause precisely aimed military damage and were more likely to be used against large populations of people (troops or civilians). Not sure who came up with WMD and made the term popular, but it gets used the same was as NBC used to (unfortunately IMHO), so when Fox viewers are polled and say that we found WMDs in Iraq they are, in fact, correct since at least one small stockpile of mustard gas loaded shells and many smaller batches of other stuff has been found. I suppose if you are in the mindset that a small stash of pot "for medicinal purposes" is not "drugs" then you might swallow the MoveOn line and say the Fox viewers are wrong. Too bad we did not all agree on a common terminology for things before the Iraq debate began; then Clinton's CIA man (George Tenet) who was still on-duty after Sept 11th would not have told Bush and Cheney that WMDs were a "slam-dunk";-P The more interesting question is actually: why are viewers on ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN so convinced that we found NO WMDs...
So, after all the talk about "open" and "freedom", the FSF plans to shift all the code to GPLV3 and force all Linux users and vendors to accept the new license. Why does this sound like the way Microsoft keeps expanding the reach and complexity of their shrink-wrap licenses and forces users to accept the new licenses of get left behind? The good folks at the FSF are going to love Linux to death. The GPL already prevents Linux from getting any real commercial apps, now it will constrict matters even more. Linux can never get significant market share on the desktop if its licenses prevent average users from simply being able to use media they can use on Windows and that's already impossible for some codecs on Linux with the current license. It's a funny thing about political revolutionaries that they often seek so much purity that, in the end, they kill-off their friends and allies and are themselves eventually killed. Too bad to see software revolutionaries on the same path.
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It is truly shocking to see the attitudes of SOME within the GPL club.
This was SUPPOSED to be about FREEDOM. I started thinking that there was something else going on when I saw the debate over GPLv3. It seems that SOME in the GPL crowd are determined to steal the works of others and ram their preferences down other people's throats. This is like the difference between those of us who want unencrypted music and movies so we can use what we bought in any way we want, and those who oppose encryption because they want theft to be easier. SOME of us want full sources to software so we can run it on any machine we own and modify it to better suit our needs, but SOME seem to want source so that nobody can make a living writing code.
If GPL supporters will not respect the licenses of others, then nobody should respect the GPL and GPL supporters should not become symbols of hypocracy-writ-large by getting mad about it.
If you want others to share code, make it mandatory and use the GPL.
So much for freedom...apparently nobody is free to use another license. This attitude is part of what makes the GPL viral.
Because they offered THEIR users even more freedom than the GPL would. The BSD license not only lets people do what they want with the code, but it also imposes no extra burdens on the user, OTHER THAN THAT THEY NOT RE-LICENSE THE CODE SO THAT BSD USERS CANNOT USE IT. There is nothing in the BSD license that says "you are hereby licensed to remove this license from this code"
Read my lips: you wanted it that way. The BSD license allows for this and you knew it
Nope. The BSD license does NOT allow you to change the license. As for giving back code, well I guess the GPL people are not as nice as they want to be seen. Are you saying that the only reason you give back code is that the GPL MAKES you do it? Are you saying that, left to their own devices, the GPL programmers would never give back any code? So much for moral superiority.
To share it with the BSD coders, they would also have to share it with the lock up coders.
OK, then stop using BSD code. If you are unwilling to be tainted by the impure users of BSD code, then take it out of your system. Do not use it. BSD license users are not implying that you are immoral by using your license of choice, but some GPL people like to make the accusation against BSD license users. OK, go for it. Get all the BSD and MIT stuff out of your Linux build. Be pure-and-clean-as-the-GPL-driven-snow... and enjoy your command line. Personally, I will continue to use and support BOTH licenses and try not to abuse EITHER ONE. Again, I thought that GPL advocates were all about freedom and sharing, but I guess they only wanna share with PURE people who will never try to earn a living. We cannot ALL make a living going around lecturing and giving speeches. Some people actually need to MAKE things.
but he fails to acknowledge that a dual licensed file gives you that permission with the other license.
Dude, you are dangerous. Nobody with that attitude and that poor understanding of licenses is safe to employ in software development. That attitude will get you into serious legal trouble someday. You do not get to just pick and choose your license and delete the other license from the code. I THOUGHT that GPL advocates HATED that form of intellectual property abuse. Do you advocate removing other programmer's names from comments in code too?
A lot of people here seem to be missing the point
The GPL was supposed to be (among other things) about passing on to others the rights you had when you got the code. When you got the (dual licensed) code, it had BOTH licenses and you had the freedom to use it EITHER WAY, but when you strip the BSD license from it and the rights to use it as the BSD license allowed it to be used, you violated your own Prime Directive. What you then passed-on to
I honestly don't know what it is with you Americans and your, in my view, totally neurotic fear that Hillary Clinton would be some strange vague, cold, Nazi like feminist who would be the death of your country.
You do not understand us because you apparently lack the intellect to grasp reality, and the expletives get attention but do not make up for this; they are a sign of low-class and poor intelligence.
MANY here are DEEPLY suspicious of her for good reasons; She makes Al Gore look almost honest. She and her husband hire a bar bouncer, give him White House credentials, send him over to the FBI to get the secret FBI background files on about 1000 of the top Republicans in the country, then they fire the bouncer and claim they do not know who hired him (but of course they KEEP those FBI files). I have never seen ANY of the lefties of the internet who always pretend to be outraged by any threat to personal info and privacy concerns raise even 1 decibel about this.
She held meetings to try to take over 1/7th of the U.S. economy, and when outsiders asked for a list of all the people on her health care task force, she refused claiming that it was a private affair (non-governmental) so it was not covered by the rules requiring openness. When it was pointed out that it was then illegal because it was funded with government money, she backtracked and said it was NOT private, but she just could not remember who was on the panel. She said various versions of "I cannot recall" more than any other person in the history of Washington DC (before Gonzales) when she had to testify on capitol hill. I have seen NO hyperventilating by lefties who hate Cheney/Halliburton over this same sort of behavior from Clinton. Her being a woman has NOTHING to do with the matter for most people I talk with. I would have voted for Jeanne Kirkpatrick to be president IN A HEARTBEAT, and most people I know would have also. If we had a Maggie Thatcher over here, she would probably be the nominee of the Republicans in 2008. As for what she could possibly do that a man hasn't done, well, pretty much nothing and everything. A woman is capable of every bit as much political corruption as any man; a woman candidate should not be presumed to be any more pure than a male candidate just because she has different genitals. People who oppose Hillary are at least giving her more respect than you are; they believe her when she says what she wants to do, and they believe that she will try to do these things.
She inserted herself into national policy matters, which is NOT the role of the spouse of the president (of EITHER gender). She was ruthless in dealing with "little people" and whenever she was confronted about her actions and had to testify under oath, her standard answer was always "I can't remember" or "I don't recall". Her standard method of responding to her critics was NOT to challenge their policies, but rather to attack their motives. When she was meddling in policy she was one of the brightest lawyers in the country, but whenever she was challenged it was unfair because she was the wife of the president. When the entire planet seemed to be aware of her husband's poor judgment, she blamed the whole matter on a "vast right wing conspiracy". There was no conspiracy, there were simply the poor behavior of Bill, many people who disliked him and/or his policies, and a woman who ended-up behaving in ways that startled many people (she acted like a coldly calculating political creature when most would have expected her to be concerned about her family FIRST). Hillary, as first lady, was in many ways an unusual example of something the American people are nearly genetically disposed to dislike: unaccountable power. Nixon, Clinton, and Bush were all elected to office and were accountable to the people and answerable to congress and the courts. A first lady does not normally have a policy role and has no direct accountability. Most first ladies have understood this and respected it and have therefore generally been treated
Care to try to explain the Clinton impeachment process then?
That's just TOO easy...and being a literate adult, I need no childish expletives...
1. Clinton plays for the women's vote by pushing for and signing into law a bill that said that any time a woman in the U.S. sues a man for sexual harrassment, she gets to ask him all about his sex life and sexual history, under oath and under threat of perjury.
2. Paula Jones sues Clinton for sexually harrassing her when he was governor of Arkansas, AND she uses the very law he signed against him (he deserved this more than any man this law will ever be applied to!)
3. When Clinton (as chief law enforcement officer of the U.S.A.) gets dragged into court, placed under oath, and ordered to testify about his sex life, he lies. This is perjury AND BILL CLINTON SIGNED THE LAW THAT WOULD JAIL ANY OTHER AMERICAN MAN CAUGHT DOING THIS.
4. When the Republicans in congress who already detest Bill Clinton and are just ITCHING for a reason to go after him find out that he has done this (lie under oath in a court in order to interfere in a lawsuit) they go for impeachment, and successfully impeach him in the House.
5. Democrats and moderate Republicans in the Senate refuse to convict him.
Yes, Bill Clinton was "only" lying about sex... but he was doing it to interfere with a SEXual harrassment suit (so of course his perjury would be about sex). I would not care WHICH party the president was in and would not care if he lied (UNDER OATH, IN COURT) about Mickey Mouse IF doing so was interfering in a lawsuit by a poor, lower-class citizen seeking legal recourse in a case the courts found sufficiently valid to allow to proceed (as they specifically did in the Clinton/Jones case) then he SHOULD be stripped of his office and sent to the pokey.
Lefties have been screaming for years that Bush lied to get us into the war. Unfortunately, the Democrats in congress had access to the same info from the CIA that Bush had and most of them either chose to vote on the war without even reading the info or attending the briefings, OR they believed the same things Bush did (makes an impeachment a bit problematic). If they REALLY believe that Bush lied us into a war, then they have a DUTY to impeach him. They are not even going to TRY it because most of them know that the attack is a fraud they used to swing ignorant and gullible voters, and the few lawmakers who really DO believe that claptrap are more interested in politics than in principles; Democrats think that if they try an impeachment it will be harder to win in 2008. HA HA HA! this means they are no better than they accuse Bush of being (politics and power trumping truth and principle)
I am DEEPLY suspicious about man-made global warming for a number of reasons. Here are just some:
1. The goal posts are always moving. We can NEVER get a fixed set of predictions to hit or miss to prove or disprove the warming and/or human cause. The most-recent version of this is that we are NOW told there will not be any real heating until 2009 (AFTER the next US presidential election...so democrats can wave headlines around with doomsday predictions and not worry about being proven wrong before the election. hmmmmmmm)
2. "Warmest year ever", "Coldest year ever", "Warmest year on record", etc. Since modern weather measuring equipment has only existed for a brief flicker of time in the geologic scale, these phrases are just plain silly. Even the thermometers used a few hundred years ago may not have been calibrated to todays standards, and while indirect things like sediments and tree rings may give clues they are even less-well calibrated.
3. If you cannot explain the past, your predictions for the future are just well-funded guesses. Until supporters can tell us what EXACTLY caused all previous warming and cooling patterns, they cannot honestly claim to understand the mechanisms well enough to properly predict the future. This would be funny if it were not so dangerous. Supporters of the global warming claims want to force entire societies to change in dramatic ways. They want political changes and societal changes that will have sweeping effects. Many average citizens will lose jobs, and homes, and marriages. Industries will be halted/moved and allocation of resources will be shifted. Indeed, changes in politicians will ripple into changes in policies in areas completely unrelated to the climate. The risks to the lives of individuals are on BOTH sides of the action/inaction debates but the proponents of action never consider that, actually I suspect they desire that.
4. We are told the US is the biggest contributor (the BIG SINNER) but as soon as problems are found with the US data, we are told that the US numbers have little to do with the global data and that anybody who links the two is an idiot. hmmmmmmm
5. We are told "The debate is over" over and over again and anybody who says "No it's not!" is trashed with the loaded label "denier". Debates end when they end, not when partisans on one side scream that the debate is over and start hurtling epithets at the other side. In my experience, when epithets are used, the people using them are doing so as a poor substitute for hard data and good logic. Science needs no such insults, and science needs no such consensus. When I see either insults OR consensus in science, I know I am probably not seeing science.
6. Supporters of the idea of man-made global warming continually and intentionally mis-characterize their opponents as deniers of global warming. This is dishonest and simplistic. SOME deny that any global warming is taking place. SOME of these people simply disagree with the very concept that a "global temperature" is valid or of any non-political value. MOST opponents, however, agree the globe is warming, but do not agree that man is causing it. SOME opponents simply question the idea that the climate of 1900, as a random example, was perfect and that it is valid to panic whenever the climate is warmer or cooler than it was on whatever date was selected. If supporters of this are so correct and so supported by science, then they need not mis-characterize their opponents' positions.
7. The supporters of man-made global warming are all in it for the money and prestige. They inevitably get huge piles of money and resources from governments, and the money is dedicated to research into global warming. Their peers hand-out awards and back-pats over this stuff. Just how many of the researc
But unless someone leaks information about legally questionable acts in the first place, *no one will go to court*. Seriously, how fucking retarded are you?
Apparently far less "retarded" than you, given the exceedingly low-brow, and idiotic responses you offer. By your reasoning, I presume the police should break all laws with reckless abandon in order to get the criminals, to wit: "your honor, these officers HAD to break into the defendant's house without a warrant and steal his papers and then they HAD to kill his security guard and they HAD to burn the place down so that he, as a powerful mob boss, would not know we had the evidence... if we had NOT gotten this evidence, we would NOT be in this court today proving that he IS a crime boss!"
It works both ways. EITHER you believe in innocent-until-proven guilty and you believe in PROPERLY getting evidence and starting investigations, or you do not, but do go all inconsistent when it suits your cheap, lame, illogical political aims and then denounce other people with uncivilized gutter language when they disagree. Lots of kids discover that foul language is cool when they are 8, but most are over that by their 9th birthday. Happily, most people are capable of actual, reasonable dialog by the time they are adults. Grow-up and get out of mommy's basement.
I was in a good mood yesterday and the entire thing was meant as humor, albeit with a point: Airhead journalists embracing the new as wonderful (encouraging public and political support) and THEN, LATER, seeing flaws and doing the investigative journalist thing to be the "voice of the people" speaking "truth to power" etc. (like with auto airbags, which the industry insisted might be dangerous when they came up with them but then decided against selling them...then after airbags were forced by politicians and got popular we saw stories about them killing people and the accusation that auto execs KNEW this would happen!)
I did not think anybody would take the specifics of what I wrote as literal stuff to be subjected to fact checking... (lauging) re-read and please do try to enjoy it (smile).
And I was also pointing out that there's no free lunch; people complain about what they have and want the new thing, but after they have the new thing it's not always so great (December 26th syndrome)
And I was further pointing out that we are all "addicted to oil" NOT because of some conspiracy but because it is currently to most efficient technology for what we use it for. There was a day when the world was addicted to coal (high concentration of energy, easily obtained and used, etc.) but oil came along and was better. All the ships of the world went to oil because you could pump it (which made handling it better) and you did not need crews in the engine room loading it into the engine a shovel-full at a time, and ships no longer exploded when the wrong mixture of coal dust mixed with air in nearly empty coal bunkers. The shipping industry was never "Addicted to coal" nor using it because of "Big Coal" companies... coal was simply better than sails until oil came along.
News Flash: Green Wonder Car
A new wave of cute and shiny new cars are appearing on our streets that run on an amazing new fuel previously only available to the space agency. These little gems will save the planet. Hollywood actors are junking their Limos and moving to these wonder cars to set an example for all of us and to help save the planet.
News Flash: Fuel Price Relief on Horizon
Owners of the new Hydrogen cars are complaining they they pay way too much for their Hydrogen; they complain that Hydrogen is in all seawater (which covers 70% of the Earth) so it should be cheap. Drivers of these great pollution-free cars suspect that Big-Hydrogen companies are colluding to keep prices high to drive-up global warming and accelerate the move to the more expensive new fuel. Suppliers say not to worry though because 30 new nuclear plants will be coming on line to make exctracting hydrogen from seawater more cost-effective.
News Flash: Gas Guzzler Graveyard
A new wave of environmental responsibility appears to taking hold. Now that hydrogen fuel is cheaper and Detroit is more familiar with the technology, high-performance hydrogen sports cars and SUVs are rolling off the assembly lines at very affordable prices. The nation's junkyards are filling-up with old gas-powered SUVs. Those new H-SUVs have hydrogen tanks four-times bigger than the ones in the cars. America's campers and and off-roaders can look-forward to LONG happy summer vacations.
News Flash: US out of Middle East
All U.S. forces were withdrawn from the world's most-troubled region today as the most recent wave of new nuclear plants came online, freeing the nation from dependence on fossil fuels. We still need petroleum products for plastics and lubricants, but industry experts say there are enough domestic supplies to meet our needs. The president, in comments today, echoed the sentiments of the nation in saying "never more will brave young Americans need to fight in foreign lands for oil"
News Flash: Paying the Price of Ignorance
Environmentalists complain that the nation's auto junkyards are leaking highly-elevated levels of toxic petrochemicals into the nation's ground water. Ever since the new hydrogen cars came out, citizens have been junking their dirty old gas guzzlers. While this always used to happen to old worn-out cars, the transition to the new clean fuel caused a huge increase in the process and many vehicles went to the dump before they had reached the end of their normal service life. The Senate today announced passage of new hydrogen taxes to make up for all the lost gasoline tax revenue; those losses had caused a new upsurge in the budget deficit. The house version of the bill includes a new tax on all new H-cars to provide a superfund to cleanup all the old G-car dumps
News Flash: Hydrogen Bomb Goes Off
One of those new hydrogen cars was rear-ended today on the Golden Gate bridge and it exploded. The flames were so intense that people in vehicles 50 feet away were melted. The flames burned so invisibly that several good samaritans who rushed to try to pull victims from the fires were, themselves, ignited and burned. Experts warned that the structure of the bridge may now be unsound
News Flash: Nuclear Genie Gets Mad
Experts today announced that the recent leak at our nation's 53rd Nuclear power plant is a bigger problem than first noted; in the rush to build domestic sources of cheap hydrogen, many plants were built by the same contractors to the same plans. In special Senate hearings, it was determined that 30% of the plants need to be closed for inspections and repairs as a precaution
News Flash: Yellowstone is Burning
Two SUVs collided this morning in Yellowstone National Park. "The fireball could be seen for MILES!" one witness told reporters. There have been rumblings recently that the evil auto companies never told the public that those huge SUV hydrogen t
There is no fear, just the assertion that religious values aren't the "conservative" values the Republican party used to stand for, despite what neo-cons would like the rest of the world to believe.
There once was a part that stood opposite to the Democrats that was fiscally conservative but not to interested in all those morals and ethics questions; It had little to offer the American people an it went away (the Whigs). An odd little party, that started as the Whigs were foundering, got all tangled-up in those moral/ethical questions and had the audacity to say it was WRONG for Democrats to own black people (those nasty Judgemental Republicans). That Republican party gradually lost its moral and ethical roots and found itself a weak and not particularly effective minority party by the early 20th century (when Rockefeller Republicans controlled the party and just used it to protect the money of rich people). When the party went pack to taking positions on moral and ethical issues, it regained its vigor. Like it or not, about half of the people in the country want a party that says nothing about morals and about half of the country prefers the opposite; if the Dems embrace religion and moral issues too much they will lose their base, and if the GOP abandon those things too much they will lose their base. As for the neocons, they are Primarily Scoop Jackson Democrats who went Republican when the Democrats went weak-in-the-knees on defense and foreign policy; they tend to be Jewish (not making an anti-semitic attack) rather than "fundamentalist Christians". You need to learn to take better intellectual aim before pulling the rhetorical trigger.
You have heard of the crusades right? Or maybe you don't know about the Spanish Inquisition... Northern Ireland mean anything to you?
Yes I have heard of all these things. The inquisition and the crusades were acts of the Catholic church (which was acting, to some extent, like the federal government of Europe at the time and exercised many of the powers of such an entity, albeit with the "authority" of the Pope). While these were wrong and EVIL, these have become the boogiemen of leftist histories. The death toll of all added together is dwarfed by the killings of just one atheist thug (Stalin). Every educated person knows that Ireland is VERY different; you have two factions fighting over control of many things, one with historical roots to the primarily protestant England and one that is primarily Catholic. The fight is NOT about interpretations of scriptures; the fight is secular and political but happens to break along religious lines for historical reasons. Show me the video of the Catholic Irish screaming latin liturgies as they suicide-bomb the married protestant ministers and I might agree with you (might make for a funny British TV show...hmmm...)
I've seen "fundamentalist Christians" stand up and say that torture is justified and that we should just drop a nuclear bomb on any Muslim country.
Nice try. I have seen left-wing bloggers call for all Christians to be killed; I guess that makes you and all who think like you evil ( I would not make that leap, so you might want to reconsider too). How many waves of "fundamentalist Christian" torture and nuclear bomb attacks have we seen?
If you think the atrocities committed by the Christian church and Christian people are any less horrific than those committed by "fundamentalist Muslims" that's your prerogative.
Well, at least here you broadened your brush so it could include the guys who DID the inquisitions and crusades instead of the "fundamentalist Christians" who opposed the Catholic church. People who self identify as "Christian" but are really just saying they are culturally Christian HAVE done some pretty nasty stuff (as have people who self-identify as adherents to nearly any other faith/philosophy). What you seem not to understand is that when "fundamentalist Christians" read a Bible they do not find any commandment to convert by
Using the current death toll of 2974, each of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 was responsible for ~156 deaths.
Nice try. I've seen lefties use that bad math before though. ( Don't know if you are a lefty or have just fallen for that argument ) This would only be true if each if the hijackers had acted alone. They acted in small teams though
If you're worried about pure numbers, why don't we have a War on Obesity and a War on Traffic Accidents?
Nope not yet, but more on that later. Yes you have a nugget of truth here I partly agree with, plenty of things kill more individuals each year (though none makes a body-blow against the society, culture, and economy) Interestingly, you made a very short list; you could have added many more big killer like booze, guns, illegal alien criminals, AIDs, and more
Basically, you've fallen for the administration's line that terrorism will Kill You, Your Family, and Your Friends Real Soon Now
No, I have not. Do not let your hatred for Bush cloud your thinking. At this very early point in the 21st century, increasingly dangerous technology is and (and will be) falling into the hands of more and more nasty people. Right now, most of the nasties who wish to harm us are adherents to Islam whose leaders have convinced them to try to take-over significant parts of the world by slaughtering innocent civilians. We need to be realistic about this and do what we can, first to prevent them getting good weapons, and second to protect the innocent civilians. This is not going away any time soon so we need to get real good at it while finding ways to minimize and hopefully eliminate the impact the efforts have on our rights and liberty. BTW: are you advocating that rather than fighting terrorism we should simply take drivers licenses from most people and ban fast food? ( I'd like to be as far away from you as possible when the great masses find out about those plans (laughing))
I have no statistics, but I wouldn't be surpised if more Iraqis have been killed by the U.S. war than Saddam had killed since the first gulf war.
Whoa there! Do not blame the U.S. for the deaths where some Iraqi (or some Saudi jihidi freak) blows up or guns-down some Iraqis. The U.S. often puts its people in harm's way in an attempt to avoid hitting civilians, when we could have been MUCH safer if we'd had our guys fire from further away or just conducted indescriminatory bombing. And don't just call it a "U.S. war" when part of the reason was that Saddam spent 12 years violating the cease-fire terms of the 1st gulf war (to which the UN was a signatory) and the spineless UN failed to respond. Oh, and the guy was shooting at U.S. pilots on nearly a daily basis while they patrolled those UN no-fly zones that the UN was gutless to enforce. He also kept lying (telling the UN he did not have the weapons, while telling his neighbors he DID have them) while interfering with the UN inspectors so that THEY could not get a good accounting of his actions (thereby averting war). Have you actually watched any of the video of his troops torturing and killing innocent civilians? When's the last time you looked at the video from his chem attacks on the Kurds? Funny the way so many who insist we should not have stopped Saddam from killing anybody he wanted to are so eager to demand we intervene in various world tragedies and want us to send our guys into a REAL civil war in Darfur where we have no strategic interests. Let the French and the UN handle Darfur; they always know better than we do, right?
After all, they might remain in a position to actually do something about it by staying where they are.
That's a good point too :-) but consider that if they went public and there were a public venting and subsequent change in the laws, then they might no longer be needed as a whistle-blower in that position. Remember that the goal should be REAL reforms and REAL fixes to bad situations and that's more likely after a major public blow-out than after a quiet little burble with no citized-turned-hero as a symbol
Is that why you can't tell the difference between leaking military intel to the enemy (for money, no less), and leaking information about illegal acts perpetrated by the government?
WOW, are you saying the subject of this current thread has been all the way through the legal system (including appeals) and the Bush administration has been found to be guilty of breaking the law?!? I missed that bit of news and I guess you saw that somewhere (other than on DailyKos) because I am SURE you would agree with me that everyone (including members of any presidential administration, even Bush's) is presumed innocent until proven guilty in the courts and you certainly are sure that what went on was ILLEGAL (not just allegedly illegal, or possibly illegal, or IMO illegal)
they have a responsibility to expose secret programs that are clearly against the law of the land
There are ways to do it (see my other posts in this thread) and this guy allegedly did not do it in the "right" way. ( I say "allegedly" because I am not willing to say he did it until a court rules that he did, just as I am not willing to run around with my hair on fire shouting that what Bush did was illegal until a court rules on THAT )
*we* decided that we give them that power in exchange of their *serving* us
REFRESHING! somebody here actually understands what makes this country's constitution SO unique in the world. We actually agree on most of that paragraph, but please, you Bush critics are so quick to throw-out titles like fascist and equate people with fascists. I might be more willing to agree if you guys screamed the same way when Hillary hired a bar bouncer, sent him to the FBI to get the background files on about 1000 top Republicans, then fired him and claimed she could not remember how he got on the payroll (while she kept those background check files on they guys who might now have to run against her)
When the state has a right to make people disappear/being tortured/executed ... terrorist (Bush)...
Under Bush, NOBODY has been made to disappear! So many here have grown-up in the softness of the USA and have never seen REAL evil governments and therefore do not properly compare even the worst of what happens here to what has gone on elsewhere.
(1) the guys in Gitmo are all known and identified to the RedCross and are regularly visited.
(2) the guys in Gitmo have done something that western civilization was never prepared to deal with, so the "rules" were never established; they are engaged in acts of WAR (not individual civilian acts of crime) but they are not in uniform (so normally they would be classed as spies and shot/traded for good-guy spies) BUT they are not in the service of the organized services of any government (so THEY and not some country they serve) are the only ones who can be held to account for their acts of war. If they were uniformed soldiers, then they would be disarmed and held in camps until the war ends (happened to US/French/German/English/Japanese soldiers in the past and is happening to them now as an act of extreme goodwill; they OUGHT to have been shot where they stood)
(3) As for torture, Scaring with dogs, getting them nude, putting panties on their heads, etc. may be humiliating and waterboarding may be very scary BUT these are not the same as REAL TORTURE. Ask any US soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who was captured and then used in medical experiments, had limbs dislocated repeatedly, was electrocuted, had bamboo under the the fingernails, was burned, was deprived of food and water and exposed to malaria and other diseases, was worked to near-death building things for the enemy. I am disgusted by any IDIOTIC comparisons between Gitmo and Abu Garaib on the one hand and REAL TORTURE on the other.
You may have heard of Tranai...
I have not and I have been too busy lately for recreational reading, but it sounds interesting and I will write the title down for possible future reading. Thanks for the recommendation :-)
The difference between leaking and whistleblowing is completely lost to you.
No it is not. A whistle-blower stands-up publicly and outs the information, up the chain of authority if and when possible, before going to alternate authorities and then ultimately to the citizenry IN PUBLIC if possible. He believes in the rightness of actions so much that he takes the heat for them (possibly gets arrested and dragged into a courtroom) because he is confident the public will agree with him and he will be found not guilty and the public will demand his freedom and demand that the laws be changed. THIS is the model of Dr. King and other TRUE dissenters. The modern method of rolling a political handgrenade from under cover by way of journalists like woodward and berstein and then skulking away with no responsibility is undignified, unprincipled, and cowardly. This form of "Whistle-blowing" is more-likely a political attack masquerading as an honorable act.
How about loser pays?
Interesting idea; usually only done with money. Might make being somebody's boss a risky job
Law is so convoluted these days that IMO the days of "ignorance of the law is no excuse" are long gone.
Agreed. That concept worked early in the country's life before lawyers packed all of the legislatures and started passing thousands of laws that only lawyers could understand. You know the whole mess is out of control when lawyers need lawyers. I propose that every odd-numbered congress only be permitted to delete laws rather than add them. I further propose that a law can only become law if it can be submitted to a panel of 20 completely randomly drawn citizens from across the country (none of whom may be lawyers) and they can each read it and agree about what it means and have that agree with a legislative analysis whitepaper filed ahead of time by the lawmakers who passed it.
Almost completely agree with you :-)
Consider that the check-and-balance we want in government ALSO applies to "whistle-blowers" (otherwise we would just have anarchy)
To wit: the "whistle-blower" must believe so much in the rightness of his cause, that he is willing to face the penalty of his action with dignity. If he is not willing to face the penalty then he must not be very committed to the idea. Historically, all the great movements using civil disobedience ( like the actions of Dr. King for example, and some honorable anti-war protesters ) have involved persons who did no harm to others, or to the property of others, but who clearly broke a law for a political purpose, and then allowed themselves to be arrested. Their faith in their cause was so solid that they believed that when their cause went before a jury of their peers in a court of law the citizens of this country would agree with them and they would be freed and the laws would change. There is a LONG tradition of this HONORABLE pattern in these United States. Any other form of civil disobedience or "whistle-blowing" is simply the act of a gutless weenie who wants to score a cheap political hit.
Innocent until proven guilty?
yes, he will get his day in court like any other suspect.
Rule of law?
yes, he will get his day in court like any other suspect.
Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure?
yes, unless you are making the argument that Bush sent some private bagmen without any warrants or other legal instruments
Separation of powers?
yes, that is why neither the congress not the courts rushed to arrest this suspect. The police are an executive branch function.
The rest of your over-excited comments do not warrant too much of a comment because, in case you had not noticed, small numbers of missed terrorists will kill thousands of innocent civilians, whereas a few bad apples in government making a bad arrest (if a particular arrest is found (BY A COURT) to have violated the laws (WRITTEN BY A LEGISLATURE)) will get prosecuted themselves and will either go to jail or need a pardon which carries political penalties for whoever cuts the pardon.
Wrong. Patrick Fitzgerald was informed about Armitage's leak before he EVER went after Libby ( even Chris Matthews has admitted this ). In fact, the Armitage leak was known to the people at Justice before Fitgerald was appointed. Fitzgerald seems to have concluded that Armitage either did not know Plame's status ( and therefore did not break the law ) or that her status did not make the law valid in the case. In either event, he went looking for further lawlessness and he could not find any in the administration until Libby and Russert disagreed in their depositions and he chose to believe Russert.
Yes, we agree, lying to a grand jury is ALWAYS a crime. Libby supporters though see a difference between lying about a provable fact, and disagreeing about a recollection of a year-old event for which there is serious lack of impartial documentation. This is the U.S. where citizens are supposed to be presumed innocent, not presumed guilty. I worry FAR more about the precedents Fitzgerald set in THIS case than about anything Bush is doing in the war. ( Jail for bad memories, Jail for journalists who do not turn on their sources, etc. ) Does anybody SERIOUSLY think it will be easy in the future to get people to voluntarily sit before a grand jury? People are likely to say "no thanks, charge me or go away." If Libby had done that, he would be a free man today. Look how many people get caught in perjury traps before grand juries ( another reason to fear the precedents being set bu Bush haters )
(1) Name-calling is never a good substitute for at least an average IQ, and obscenities used anywhere other than the battlefield or the cockpit of a falling plane are just a sign of low class. Get out of mommy's basement and learn some civility.
(2) Lots of people in DC get prosecuted and even convicted for essentially political offenses. I will agree with you IF the prosecution stands after the appeals are done. Do you agree that Bill Clinton obstructed justice and lied under oath? ( or are you one the his worshippers who cling to his "aquittal" in the Senate, even though the courts went on to fine him and jerk his law license? ) Oh, I know, Clinton ONLY lied about SEX (while interfering in a sexual harassment lawsuit ) whereas Libby disagreed with a reporter (about something that was not illegal). How about we all go with the precedent ( liberals LIKE precedent in these days of the Roberts court, don't they? ) that the senate set in the Clinton case: it's ok to lie under oath in a court if you think the underlying issue is not serious. ( I guess Libby gets off. Not only did he probably not think disagreeing with Tim Russert about a non-crime was not serious, HE was not even in a court )
(3) Bush has never dragged ANYONE in front of the TV cameras in shackles... name even ONE time Bush has done this. Oh, I know, half the readers of the DailyKos are rotting in the vast chain of Bush-Cheney Gulags right along with Bill Mahr and Arianna Huffington in the Antarctic wastelands.
(4) Everyone in DC KNOWS, because it has been so frequently publicly talked about by journalists who have talked with him, that Armitage was every BIT as opposed to the war as his boss and friend Colin Powell. Powell had the class to keep his concerns within the halls where they belonged, but Armitage did not. Depending on who's recollection you count on he either intentionally leaked it or he inadvertently leaked it. Care to guess? ( if you guess wrong and some journalist says something different, you could be going to jail ) [laughing]
Like them or not, you are a fool if you equate "Fundamental Christian"(sic) or any other fundamentalists of ANY other religion with fundamentalist Muslims... NO fundamentalist of any other religion (including Christians, whom you seem to fear) has ever celebrated sawing the head off of a living person he disagreed with on TV, or hijacked an airliner full of innocent civilians and crashed it into a skyscraper full of innocent civilians. One sign that you are an adult is that you know the difference between people you dislike or disagree with, and people who hate you and want to kill you.
First, let me say I oppose vote swapping and selling and other electoral schemes. However, even if I supported it, I would remind you that (a) the 9th circuit is THE most over-turned circuit court in the country, bar none and (b) the justices at the Supreme Court are likely to guard The Constitution very jealously (as is their duty) in this regard. Even the supporters generally admit this scheme is an attempt to get around the Electoral College part of The Constitution. The Supreme Court ( Liberal and Conservative justices alike ) generally finds schemes to dodge The Constitution, as a form of violation in spirit but not in word, to be distasteful.
I presume your 4th point is intended to cover the Clintons hiring a bar bouncer from Arkansas, giving him authorization to go over the the FBI to grab the secret background checks files on about a thousand Republicans ( including nearly any Republican likely to run against Hillary ) then firing the bouncer and claiming they could not remember who hired him or how he got onto the White House payroll ( but NEVER handing back the backround check files ) Oh, and point 1 is probably Al Gore inventing the internet, and point 2 is probably Al Gore going onto the board of Google, or maybe George Stephanopolis going to ABC to moderate political debate while George Mitchell goes to the board of ABC. You are so RIGHT, we need to worry about liberal Democrats taking over the country and making it into a dictatorship ;-)
Individuals simply do not have the right to expose secret programs even if they do not like them. If you are angry about this but support the prosecution of Scooter Libby then you have some explaining to do ( particularly when Scooter leaked NOTHING; it was Bush critic Richard Armitage in the State Department who did the actual Valerie Plame leaking ) If this guy really did the leak, then he hurt national security by tipping-off enemies. It matters not if most enemies assumed we were listening; if even ONE enemy did not think of it but was clued-in by the leak then harm was done. If he leaked but the program ultimately is found to be an illegal program and people involved in the program are sent off to jail, then the leaker should get leniency as Scooter got a break... but even if you like this leak, it is still NO LESS ILLEGAL to DO the leak.
Here we go again... a simpleton knee-jerk anti Fox News rant. I think it was NBC that stuffed a model rocket motor into a pickup truck gas tank a few years ago to demonstrate that a particular brand of pickup truck had dangerous gas tanks. Seems to me that it's the "mainstream" press that makes things up with reckless abandon. Kindly take the leftist hyperventilating over to the DailyKos where substance does not matter and phony accusations are the norm. Fox News is far from perfect, but they are less biased than the big three. CBS makes up stories about Bush, ABC has Bill & Hillary's campaign man run their politics show, NBC has Tip O'Neil's guy run their political show, NBC uses a guy who makes personal appearances goosestepping across the stage wearing an O'Reilly mask and doing Hitler salutes as one of their "unbiased" news guys... but you hate Fox News. I'll agree that Fox is terribly biased to the right on the day that fewer than 75% of the journalists at the other networks are registered Democrats. The funny thing is how many of the folks at Fox News have turned out to be donors to the Democrats.
WMD is a bit of a silly acronym; when I served in the military we generally referred to these sorts of devices as NBC (Nuclear/Biological/Chemical) and it had NOTHING to do with quantities. The idea was that these weapons were in a category that either was too big (nuke) or windblown (nuke fallout/bio/chem) so they were not able to cause precisely aimed military damage and were more likely to be used against large populations of people (troops or civilians). Not sure who came up with WMD and made the term popular, but it gets used the same was as NBC used to (unfortunately IMHO), so when Fox viewers are polled and say that we found WMDs in Iraq they are, in fact, correct since at least one small stockpile of mustard gas loaded shells and many smaller batches of other stuff has been found. I suppose if you are in the mindset that a small stash of pot "for medicinal purposes" is not ;-P The more interesting question is actually: why are viewers on ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN so convinced that we found NO WMDs...
"drugs" then you might swallow the MoveOn line and say the Fox viewers are wrong. Too bad we did not all agree on a common terminology for things before the Iraq debate began; then Clinton's CIA man (George Tenet) who was still on-duty after Sept 11th would not have told Bush and Cheney that WMDs were a "slam-dunk"
So, after all the talk about "open" and "freedom", the FSF plans to shift all the code to GPLV3 and force all Linux users and vendors to accept the new license. Why does this sound like the way Microsoft keeps expanding the reach and complexity of their shrink-wrap licenses and forces users to accept the new licenses of get left behind? The good folks at the FSF are going to love Linux to death. The GPL already prevents Linux from getting any real commercial apps, now it will constrict matters even more. Linux can never get significant market share on the desktop if its licenses prevent average users from simply being able to use media they can use on Windows and that's already impossible for some codecs on Linux with the current license. It's a funny thing about political revolutionaries that they often seek so much purity that, in the end, they kill-off their friends and allies and are themselves eventually killed. Too bad to see software revolutionaries on the same path.