They are a treaty. As such they are binding on the several states as long as the federal government considers them to be in force. But the fed (like any other government) abides by them or not as it finds convenient, and can declare them null and void at any time it finds convenient. (Meanwhile, treaties have no direct force within the country except through implementing legislation or executive orders.
Unless they recently changed the Constitution and didn't tell anyone about it then ratified treaties are consider the law of the land and the violation of said treaties can be treated as an impeachable offense. I don't know if this will be the route taken for impeachment, assuming impeachment, but legally it does apply.
Further, most of the Geneva Convention protections explicitly are not extended to terrorists and other paramilitary forces that don't themselves obey certain of their provisions - such as identifying themselves, wearing uniforms, not deliberately blowing up non-combatants
This is true, but a bit misleading. Any non-military forces are de facto civilians and military forces thus have responsibilities and limits in their treatment of civilians under the conventions.
To be honest I wouldn't be surprised either way given how the Democrats seem to cave at the first sign that someone might call them soft on national security or say that they don't support our troops.
Yes, we do not live in a direct democracy, which is what you're describing. But the US has generally been considered a democracy because of things like upholding civil rights, rule of law, etc.
One could say that we are in fact moving away from being even that sort of democracy now.
Maybe you missed the part where the Republicans held both houses of Congress and the Presidency. A Republican Congress is not going to charge a Republican Administration with contempt of congress.
I would be quite surprised if the Democrats don't start busting out the contempt charges real fucking soon, with the way justice officials seem to be making a habit of lying to congress.
Was the firing of certain federal prosecutes by bush any less questionable than Clinton firing *all* of them?
I'd say it was more questionable on Bush's part. Clinton just fired the USAs en masse when he got into office, Bush seems to have fired specific USAs that would not speed up iffy prosecutions of democratic supporters in time for the election.
As for the recess appointments, I'd say it's a bit pathetic that Bush was forced to do recess appointments while his party held the majority in the legislature. Not to excuse Clinton's actions, but he was dealing with a legislature that was in the process of impeaching him, that doesn't leave much room to agree on appointees.
heck we have the speaker of the house trying to make herself the face of American foreign policy!
Actually we have the press and the republicans trying to convince people that congress people are somehow not alowed to leave the narrow confines of DC and their home district to look into situations. I mean, what was it a week, two weeks before that a republican delegation went and talked to Syria? No one said they were trying to be the face of American foreign policy.
ice attempt at an apologia for the Administration though.
A great many people are motivated only by the threat of force to follow a great many rules, but those rules are often not good rules. I don't refrain from murdering because it is illegal and I might go to jail, I do so because it is wrong. The problem we find ourselves in is that those who are in charge want others to follow more and more rules while they follow fewer. Personally, I choose to ignore unjust laws, to the extent possible, and encourage others to do the same.
If our leaders can't follow just laws, then why should we obey unjust laws?
The only part that doesn't make me feel good is the trade off Linux gets, it gets put in the hands of developing nation children, but will they contribute as much as a plain old campaign here in the US would? I don't honestly know. It all depends on whether the recipients of the OLPC look back on it as a gift they want to give back to or whether they grow a resentment toward the people that took their chance at a better laptop ahead of them. I honestly think that as adults they will look back and think it was a great thing that was done for them and want to contribute back to the community.
The trade off? There are going to be umpteen million kids whose only computer experience is Linux, if even.001 percent of them start trying to code on the things, or hack them, then Linux has a new coder base that spans the world. It'll put the community around now to shame, no offense to all you working your ass off, but really it'll be overwhelming in terms of sheer numbers. The real question is whether the Linux community will be able to scale like that.
Actually it should be "designed by 'patriotic' parents groups who don't want you to hear anything bad about the country."
The history you get in the ivory towers is far different and critical than what you get in grammar school, or at least what I got, and that wasn't too long ago.
The difference between the two cites is that the first says that historical representation of temperature in human records can be wildly inaccurate, whereas the second says that we have the ability, through ice cores an other methods, to accurately determine the temperatures in the past.
And what we have to worry about now is not whether global warming is happening or not, but whether it will be catastrophic or merely expensive to mitigate and harmful only to the poorer nations.
The way I see it, he is pretty much not realistically aware of anything that is really going on, but his advisers understand and are putting him in a position where if something goes wrong then he takes the fall and not them. But, they have also been grooming the "duh" defense, with the pres as its foremost spokesperson. Moreover, they dont want actually fascism, because they know that american fascism would not benefit them, they want "crypto-fascism", or psuedo-fascism. Because they have more control then.
PS- yeah, I realize this is completely paranoid, but really, can you blame me after the last 7 years?
You know what worries me most about this, is that unless there is a direct confrontation between one of the other branches and the president before Bush leaves office then it leaves these questions unanswered. It scares me to think what an actually competent president would do with these powers.
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Right, so literally not a single person has done anything other than vote to express their displeasure with Bush?
I know that is not true.
Yes, I do know. And yes, one could argue that there are very few countries that have live up to the democratic ideal
The question is, was "US armed farces" and intentional typo or not.
What we need is some kind of affirmative action for rednecks.
That is probably the best line to come out of this whole thread.
So then people who are sterile should not be able to marry?
How about old people who can no longer have kids?
Why not just let gay couples adopt, then they could raise a family?
Which is also what the Iraq study Group Report said.
I suppose they too were giving tyrant states credibility?
They are a treaty. As such they are binding on the several states as long as the federal government considers them to be in force. But the fed (like any other government) abides by them or not as it finds convenient, and can declare them null and void at any time it finds convenient. (Meanwhile, treaties have no direct force within the country except through implementing legislation or executive orders.
Unless they recently changed the Constitution and didn't tell anyone about it then ratified treaties are consider the law of the land and the violation of said treaties can be treated as an impeachable offense. I don't know if this will be the route taken for impeachment, assuming impeachment, but legally it does apply.
Further, most of the Geneva Convention protections explicitly are not extended to terrorists and other paramilitary forces that don't themselves obey certain of their provisions - such as identifying themselves, wearing uniforms, not deliberately blowing up non-combatants
This is true, but a bit misleading. Any non-military forces are de facto civilians and military forces thus have responsibilities and limits in their treatment of civilians under the conventions.
To be honest I wouldn't be surprised either way given how the Democrats seem to cave at the first sign that someone might call them soft on national security or say that they don't support our troops.
There is more than one type of Democracy.
Yes, we do not live in a direct democracy, which is what you're describing. But the US has generally been considered a democracy because of things like upholding civil rights, rule of law, etc.
One could say that we are in fact moving away from being even that sort of democracy now.
Maybe you missed the part where the Republicans held both houses of Congress and the Presidency. A Republican Congress is not going to charge a Republican Administration with contempt of congress.
I would be quite surprised if the Democrats don't start busting out the contempt charges real fucking soon, with the way justice officials seem to be making a habit of lying to congress.
Was the firing of certain federal prosecutes by bush any less questionable than Clinton firing *all* of them?
I'd say it was more questionable on Bush's part. Clinton just fired the USAs en masse when he got into office, Bush seems to have fired specific USAs that would not speed up iffy prosecutions of democratic supporters in time for the election.
As for the recess appointments, I'd say it's a bit pathetic that Bush was forced to do recess appointments while his party held the majority in the legislature. Not to excuse Clinton's actions, but he was dealing with a legislature that was in the process of impeaching him, that doesn't leave much room to agree on appointees.
heck we have the speaker of the house trying to make herself the face of American foreign policy!
Actually we have the press and the republicans trying to convince people that congress people are somehow not alowed to leave the narrow confines of DC and their home district to look into situations. I mean, what was it a week, two weeks before that a republican delegation went and talked to Syria? No one said they were trying to be the face of American foreign policy.
ice attempt at an apologia for the Administration though.
A great many people are motivated only by the threat of force to follow a great many rules, but those rules are often not good rules. I don't refrain from murdering because it is illegal and I might go to jail, I do so because it is wrong. The problem we find ourselves in is that those who are in charge want others to follow more and more rules while they follow fewer. Personally, I choose to ignore unjust laws, to the extent possible, and encourage others to do the same.
If our leaders can't follow just laws, then why should we obey unjust laws?
The only part that doesn't make me feel good is the trade off Linux gets, it gets put in the hands of developing nation children, but will they contribute as much as a plain old campaign here in the US would? I don't honestly know. It all depends on whether the recipients of the OLPC look back on it as a gift they want to give back to or whether they grow a resentment toward the people that took their chance at a better laptop ahead of them. I honestly think that as adults they will look back and think it was a great thing that was done for them and want to contribute back to the community.
.001 percent of them start trying to code on the things, or hack them, then Linux has a new coder base that spans the world. It'll put the community around now to shame, no offense to all you working your ass off, but really it'll be overwhelming in terms of sheer numbers. The real question is whether the Linux community will be able to scale like that.
The trade off? There are going to be umpteen million kids whose only computer experience is Linux, if even
ClassmatePC is basically only useful in a classroom setting, whereas OLPC is useful anywhere, because of the power supply.
Assuming power in the classroom setting. That's one of the reasons the OLPC is so nice.
That and the little ears. So cute.
Actually it should be "designed by 'patriotic' parents groups who don't want you to hear anything bad about the country."
The history you get in the ivory towers is far different and critical than what you get in grammar school, or at least what I got, and that wasn't too long ago.
Yeah, government and business working in collusion, more so than usual.
Just what I always wanted.
Oh, and now someone can make counterfeit licenses that double as fake debit cards.
Nah, no problems here.
The difference between the two cites is that the first says that historical representation of temperature in human records can be wildly inaccurate, whereas the second says that we have the ability, through ice cores an other methods, to accurately determine the temperatures in the past.
And what we have to worry about now is not whether global warming is happening or not, but whether it will be catastrophic or merely expensive to mitigate and harmful only to the poorer nations.
Idi Amin was in Uganda, not Uraguay.
That's in Africa, Uraguay is in South America.
The way I see it, he is pretty much not realistically aware of anything that is really going on, but his advisers understand and are putting him in a position where if something goes wrong then he takes the fall and not them. But, they have also been grooming the "duh" defense, with the pres as its foremost spokesperson. Moreover, they dont want actually fascism, because they know that american fascism would not benefit them, they want "crypto-fascism", or psuedo-fascism. Because they have more control then.
PS- yeah, I realize this is completely paranoid, but really, can you blame me after the last 7 years?
You know what worries me most about this, is that unless there is a direct confrontation between one of the other branches and the president before Bush leaves office then it leaves these questions unanswered. It scares me to think what an actually competent president would do with these powers.
Nope, they have to send it back to the redundancy committee for a full review before it returns to the house floor.
You don't even want to know the senate and conference procedures.
er...
Thats crazy talk.
Everyone knows that'll be off the dash and on a HUD by 2050.
Lets be honest here, both parties want cheap labor and cheap votes.
They just have to tailor their rhetoric to the right parts of society.
In most parliamentary democracies the PM is far more powerful than the President.
And by broad brush you mean pretty much every conservative pundit, right?
And a lot more than that.