Thanks for proving that when liberals can't win an argument based on facts and ideas that they have to resort to name calling and personal attacks rather than simply conceding a point.
If you were trying to make some sort of sense in your statement it didn't really work out for you there. If your statement is supposed to mean that I would justify killing someone because of who they are related to or their religious beliefs I would have to say that's a pretty big leap from my assertion that a human life is more important than a cats.
I don't think you need to worry about your hopes concerning our meeting not coming true. I don't hang out in juice bars, abortion rights meetings, save the wales groups or 'why is the world so mean to me' support groups so I don't think the chances of our meeting are very high.
Feel free to take break and come back when you're ready to talk to the over 12 crowd.
Wow, what a huge yawn. Honestly, if you could simply address the points without wandering off into hyperbole it would be really great.
No, fertilization isn't when a baby is created: it's a possible ancestor cell of one or more babies... or of a hydatiform mole that kills the mother without an abortion, but whatever.
Yes, I think it's safe to say we all understand that a pregnancy can go bad. Again, reference all the wonderful prenatal care which allows these issues to be caught and dealt with. The fact remains that without fertilization a baby would not be born. For anyone to contest that fertilization is the point at which the process begins that will end in the birth of a baby is ridiculous. Call them what you will but, these cells are actively growing and are unique in that they are based on the combined genetic materials of two separate people and the beginnings of a full fledged baby.
As we can see it's also pretty safe to say, at least for some poeple, that the further devoted they become in their scientific views the less likely it is that they will see humans as anything other than very lucky lumps of proteins, minerals and water. Science is a wonderful vocation as long as it doesn't blind one to what makes us uniquely human.
In any of the cases you continue to bring up where the chances of a viable baby being born are nill and the mother's life is in jeapordy, a procedure to save the mother is warranted. In all of the situations you continue to hammer at there is a direct threat to the mothers life or either no baby or a baby that has no chance at being born in a viable state involved. At the point where there is no chance at saving the baby but there is a great risk to the mother I think you would be hard pressed to find an opponent to the procedure required be it technically an abortion, DNC or other.
We wouldn't be having this moronic discussion if humans didn't use DNA methylation to turn off stem cell activity and thus could reproduce by budding or cuttings like plants can -- exfoliation would literally be murder by your worldview.
Yes, great argument, if we could reproduce like sponges this wouldn't be an issue. To add another unrelated hypothetical into the discussion, if we could travel by thought highways would be less congested. Also, debasing the conversation you are involved in debases nobody but you.
And, in fact, if scientists ever discover how to turn a differentiated adult human cell into a totipotent stem cell (i.e. capable of becoming a fetus), then exfoliation will be murder, because every skin cell is a possible ancestor cell of one or more babies as well, just like a fertilized egg.
Nice try at further muddying the water however, even if science had that capability it wouldn't change the argument concerning natural human reproduction. So, this is yet another failed attempt to counter to my very straight-forward assertion that without fertilization there would be no chance of a baby being born so, fertilization is the point at which a baby is created.
To make this concept simpler for you to understand let me be more a little more precise. At the point of conception genetic material from two contributors is combined to start into motion the process which, under normal circumstances, will lead to the birth of a baby given the process is not disturbed.
If a terrorist accidentally called me and other people I frequently called that would be called a pattern and I would hope it would be investigated. I don't care if keeping secrets from people will cause them to not trust the government. There are going to always be people who will find one reason or another to not trust it.
So instead, enemys just suspect we have capabilities and programs that maybe we don't even have.
Yep, that way they can be distracted concerning themselves with the things we might have while we're concentrating on getting to them. Instead of what if scenarios give me some examples, when do you know of an enemy striking our interests sooner because of a program they didn't know about? Or an easier one, how about examples of when they struck ahead of schedule specifically because of a capability they thought we had?
Why not? Better to show yourself unquestionably to be in a position of strength if that's where you are-- and truth is far more powerful than secret. What's the point of having ever let people know we have nuclear weapons (other than the fact we actually used them)? Should we pretend we don't have a police force? Only those whose capabilities are insufficient need to keep them a secret. And sure, this is somewhat idealized, as I'm sure our capabilities are insufficient, but we should have confidence enough in them and our abilities to be able to come clean as to what they are. What would all the Soviet spies have done if we had just handed them over all our secret information? It would have put them out of business, that's what. And they mostly got it all anyway, one way or another, so it's not like it really did a hell of a lot of good.
Because things like encryption and decryption are things that are kept secret so that in the event you need to use them people haven't already figured out ways to avoid the technology you have. You're truly naive if you think the spies would have been out of business if we were that stupid. They would then concentrate their efforts on eliminating or counteracting the capabilities we had. Every new advance in security is made on the back of the latest crack, keeping those cracks in check doesn't happen by letting people know where to attack you.
Yes, but we really don't know why. One reason may be because we've actually played into their hands in may ways, and they've got pretty much what they were after out of us-- bad blood internationally, especially in the middle east, local targets that they can hit more easily, greater instability in the middle east, and one might argue, significant economic stress on us due to the "necessity" to spend all this money on defense.
Yes, we really do know why based on the large number of documented thwarted attacks. Yeah maybe we did play into their hands if their original goal was for us to counter attack their organization in Afghanistan and create bad blood internationally. But, big picture, so what? The people that we're creating bad blood with is who, the middle eastern Muslim countries that can't stand us anyway and in many cases condoned the attacks? Big flipping deal! If it weren't for the fact that we needed their oil we wouldn't even deal with most of them on a level higher than any other third world country.
I think the jury is still out on what their view of where things are, whether or not more attacks will come. And I'm not saying we should just turn over and expose our soft underbelly to them by doing nothing, I just think that there is an overreliance and overconfidence in the value of secrecy in the whole process, while completely ignoring its negative side effects.
It is?? No, another area you are just wrong on. The jury came back 6 years and 11 days ago on 9/12 the verdict was that there will be more attacks. There is no question in anyone's mind that has really been paying attention to the way the
It's quite simple. It's called transparency. Secrecy in goverment is counterproductive and unnecessary in my view, and is something that should belong only to the people for basic things like keeping your credit card number and certain abusable personal information secret. Government is a public institution, and must remain unerringly so.
Transparency is fine when you're talking about operating procedures in departments like the GAO, The Fed or FEMA. I would say transparency of operating procedures even for the CIA or FBI may be fine as well. However, transparency between operating procedures and national security programs are two vastly different concepts.
Again, I think this comes down to a matter of fundamental trust or distrust of the institutions of government. While I agree that left unchecked it would be quite simple for government to become overtly corrupt, I don't believe that we are constantly on the brink of that being the case especially considering the number of built in checks that already exist within the government. While I also agree there should be oversight for national security projects, and there is just not the open public type you would advocate, many or most these projects would do nobody any good if the general public and then our enemies knew about them.
It's ironic that you would advocate for secrecy for such things as, "certain abusable personal information" yet see no problem with publicizing information on covert national security operations. The undertone here being that it's ok to keep secrets to protect the public from real problems like credit card fraud but when it comes to things like defending the population from silly issues like terrorism it really isn't a major threat so we then need transparency.
Your example of an open source approach to government is simply astounding, even if you have an algorithm you believe is impossible to break why in the world would you tip your hand? I guess that way our enemies would know what it was and it would be more fair to them that they wouldn't have to guess at it? Government, and especially national security, is not an open source development project to be viewed and modified and commented on like the next new cool web browser. These are things that directly affect the ability for people to live and breath and allow them to continue doing so. And yes, I realize it must be difficult for some people to come to terms with the fact that bad things happen in the world but, they do and programs that our enemies (and yes even the general public) don't know about need to be in place to deal with them. However, one bad thing that we can't say has happened so far is another terrorist attack in the US. So, dig at the Bush administration as much as you like but, the fact remains that we haven't had additional attacks within the country.
And before you go off on a rant about the war and 5000+ lives being lost, it's a war and people die in war. Does that make it good, no it makes it a reality of the world we live in. We've been in Iraq and Afghanistan for six years so when you compare that death toll to Vietnam, Korea or WWII you can see that based on the amount of time vs. the number of troops involved that the death rate is comparatively very low. Then contrast that to how many people died in one attack on 9/11. 3000 in one day vs. 5000 in six years. That level of loss of innocent civilians seems like something worthwhile to fight against. But, I guess if we hadn't gone to them (the terrorists) and just forgot about 9/11 that they probably wouldn't have attacked us again right?
Another important factor is consensus. It might be worthwhile to recall that the founders of this country themselves did not trust the government, even the one they were constructing-- that is why they came up with the "separation of powers." For me, I prefer it when one party is in the White House and the other in Congress- in a government I want gridlock. When either party
The long and short if it is that, Yes it was a crime. Just as vigilantism is a crime.
However, certain laws don't apply to law enforcement in the course of enforcing the law. Police, for example, are allowed to speed in order to catch criminals. The whole issue you keep referring back to happened in 2006 and was a program that was put in place only after the President had been advised that it was legal to do so.
The push to suppress the story in the New York Times was an attempt to keep them from exposing a covert operation that had national security implications. This is the same program that had already been used to break up terrorist cells and the reason they didn't want it exposed was to enable them to continue to take down further cells.
After the program was exposed and and the ACLU filed suit a federal judge ruled that they needed to change they way the program worked and they did.
The big difference here is that the Federal Government was using the information to protect the nation and what "Anonymous" did was to abuse a high ranking individual's personal account and splash her e-mail and private information out on the Internet. Not to mention information about her family, friends and associates. The same outrage (although I doubt it would have ever happened to her) would have been there had it been Hillary Clinton's e-mail. Except in that case the media would have fallen all over themselves accusing the GOP of having been behind it.
If we do in fact need the ability of surveillance dragnets in fishing for terror cells, we no less need the ability of surveillance dragnets in fishing for government abuse.
Yes, precisely what we need. And how would you propose setting up this new bureaucracy to monitor the monitors? Would that be a civilian group with super secret clearance or just our good old trustworthy politicians? But, then who would watch the watchers? Really, lets bog down the government even further so that federal law enforcement can be even less efficient than it already is, great idea.
Given the track record, it seems to me we're far more vulnerable to the latter.
What record are you referring to that shows government abuse, anything substantive that happens to be newer than two years old? Please no on off cases that don't show some sort of systematic problem. One off cases don't prove anyting just like one police officer taking bribes doesn't make an entire police force corrupt.
I see no evidence it's being done by the agencies that one would think are supposed to.
Yes, that's the way it's supposed to work. Issues within national security programs are not hashed out in public because they are within national security programs. If you want visibility into these types of programs go get a job working for the DHS otherwise your going to have to accept that secret is secret for a reason.
Ok, well I had a much longer reply but since clicking on a link on this loads the page over the top of the current page and clears everything you have written I'm now just going to reply briefly.
I'm not going to reply further to the multitude of distraction topics. I said what I believe on those and if you want to you can look up further data that supports what I have said.
On your further insinuation of illegal wire tapping, this is old news. Actually both the articles you reference from the Washington Post and USA Today are more than two years old. Not exactly current.
However, in all the bluster you have going here you never once addressed the question concerning where, even considering the complaints about wiretapping two years ago, is there any justification in someone blatantly violating the law, invading someone's privacy and then splashing it all over the Internet. I would say your tossing out all this huff-and-puff about everything else to distract from the fact that there is no excuse for it and it's just spitefulness that drove the person that did it.
Especially considering how horrible you think it is that the government is still supposedly doing this to people "illegally" one would think that you would be just as appalled by this. The fact that you aren't and actually applaud the act shows that you aren't as worried about privacy as you are simply pro-liberal agenda. If this had been Hillary Clinton's e-mail splashed all over the Internet I'm sure the story from you would be about either that GOP operatives had hacked her mail or the CIA was secretly behind it. Then it would have been a horrible act instead of payback. Hypocrisy isn't believing in something, it's believing in something only when it's convenient for your position.
You obviously haven't been reading up on this then. Even in cases that are deemed to be of imminent need to gain access for wire tapping a field warrant must be submitted and reviewed by a judge to ensure the process followed standards set in place for proceeding with such action. How is it that people, who are sworn to uphold the law and protect the public, doing their jobs is supposed to justify criminal hacking of public and private infrastructure to teach the government a lesson? I guess that because someone felt their right to privacy was infringed on that this is a justification to break the law and then trample someone else's rights, no matter who the individuals rights are that get trampled even when it's a blatant violation of the law. But, it's especially ok if it's a Republican. Yeah, that sounds like sound judgment.
Yes Orwellian indeed...
- Wire tapping has an approval procedure that is checked in the judicial system.
- Guantanamo is no different than any other prison run by the military in a time of war. As a matter of fact, prisoners held in American military prisons are treated better than those held by any other country in the world. The majority of the people there were actually captured on the battlefield actively trying to kill our soldiers. Several who have been released were subsequently killed or recaptured on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan.
- Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident of a group of idiots, the issue was brought to light and the people involved punished. What else would you have had them do? Should they just release all of the prisoners because of a few morons that couldn't do their jobs correctly?
- Enemy Combatant is a pretty simple term. If a person not belonging to an actual enemy army but believed to either have ties to an extremist organization or has demonstrated a willingness to act against US interests picks up a rifle, hand gun, grenade or a bomb or in some other way tries to actively kill US soldiers or civilians or damage US national security that person is probably an enemy combatant. I agree the term can be confusing to some, they should have just left it as 'enemy'.
- Incompetence regarding WMDs? You mean the faulty intelligence that pretty much the entire world had regarding Iraq's biological weapons program? Ok, I'll give you that the intelligence had a lot to be desired but, there is still a very good chance that much of Saddam's arsenal was moved to Syria or buried in remote locations in the desert.
However this doesn't negate the fact that during the time between the first and second gulf wars that Iraq continued to act in an openly hostile manner to UN forces enforcing the no fly zones over Iraq. This included firing on UN peace keepers and UN member nation aircraft. As well as the fact that they violated 17 UN security council resolutions many of which specifically concerned the very WMDs you are referring to. So, looking it the issue in hindsight it isn't a real surprise, given the history of Saddam gassing his own people in the Northern areas of Iraq to violating UN orders to disarm his chemical arsenal, that the intelligence community would believe he still maintained a stockpile.
The oil for food scam should also shed some light on how Saddam did business. While his people were starving, because of sanction he brought upon them by invading Kuwait, he built up huge stockpiles of cash and it has been shown that he used at least a portion of that money for supporting Hamas' homicide bombing campaign against Israel. This at the same time that internally his own people were being rounded up and killed or maimed for not agreeing with his political views. The mass graves that haven't been widely reported are a testament to just how he chose to rule. Any way you look at it the world is a much better place without Saddam Hussein leading Iraq. His own people agreed when they hung him on December 26, 2006.
- Unreasonable search and seizure, the 4th amendment guarantees that the judiciary
Oh, and yes, obviously vacuuming out a small blob of cells with no nerves, no brain, and no ability to feel pain is clearly a far more enormous moral violation, a greater shock to the conscience, than disposing of an animal...
Now I see you are beginning to understand. Human life should be held to a higher standard in every way. I'm glad to see you have come to terms with this.
Yup, even though that cat had a brain and nerves and the ability to suffer greatly before it died alone and despairing, at least Petcka didn't perform a first-trimester abortion!
What does this have to do with the conversation?? And as is typical lets avoid the entire topic of personal responsibility. Oooh someone killed a cat so that means we can avoid the whole topic of 'choice' being the 'choice' to not sleep around, use birth control or take responsibility for the pregnancy. But no, as always lets forget about the fact that there are responsible choices that people can make that would negate abortion altogether.
Honestly, I could not give a flying leap that this guy killed a cat, give him a ticket and send him to anger management class for all I care. A cat isn't a human and a human isn't a cat. A human life in any stage is worth far more than that of a cat. If that isn't clear enough or you have an issue with it just stop and think long and hard about it. If you still don't get it you have deeper issues to worry about other than abortion. The ironic part here is that people care more about a flipping cat than they do human life. If his defense lawyer could figure out a way to work in the concept that he was just exercising his right to choose to abort the cat I'm sure he would get off Scott free and probably be characterized as the victim when all was said and done.
I'm sure if you really take your kids to church that they are truly benefiting from their exposure to God far beyond what you might wish for them. I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you of God's existance because if you don't already believe that God exists, you eventually will.
I may need to be in a nuthouse but, I surely wouldn't base that on my decision to believe in God's word. Many people find it pretty crazy to take the stance that God doesn't exist but, there you are.
Wow, you must try really hard to be that arrogant and ridiculous at the same time. Ever hear of prenatal care? Miscarriages, tubal pregnancies or whatever other abnormal condition you want to through out there that would be corrected with regular prenatal care doesn't affect the conversation. It's amazing at how hard people will argue against a fundamentally simple point just because they want to justify killing a baby or simply destroying life.
A baby would never occur without fertilization, so to say that fertilization isn't when the baby is created is just closing your eyes and humming as loudly as you can. Life must be present for the cells to divide, dead cells don't divide, the cells in question are those used in reproduction and save something going wrong will create a human left unmolested. Denial must be some sort of mental lubricant that prevents your brain from catching fire due to the friction between common sense and the stance you have taken.
Oh get past it already, the government needs to be able to have the ability to gather information and not have the companies that help them be put through the legal ringer. It makes everybody safer in the short and long run. If you think there is some pattern of abusive behavior then report it to your congressmen and stop lamenting about how horrible it is that terrorist might have their e-mail or phone conversations listened to. Do I like the thought that someone might listen to my conversations or read my e-mail, no not really but, if I'm sending messages or making phone calls that raise a red flag I would rather deal with it than have them miss the bomb that blows up a hotel, train station or school.
Yeah, lets all use encryption on web based e-mail accounts. Oh wait, let me install PGP and download my keyring and sign this message on every computer I check my mail from. Yes, I know it's not my computer and turns the convenience of web based mail into a huge pain in the butt but, that's the only way I can expect any privacy. Brilliant!!
I'm sorry that you feel ugly, childless, self-righteous, self important, man hating women can't be successful. I'm sure this has nothing to do with them and is truly the fault of all the pretty, nice, child baring, intelligent women. But surely this can't be true, the feminists all have jobs don't they?
Yep, that must be what it means. It couldn't just mean that she wanted to know what legal boundaries there were to allow her to have private conversations without having to worry about her personal life being drug up into public record.
She was probably planning a coup to take over Alaska and secede from the US. Yeah, that's it.
She may be a public figure but she still has the expectation of privacy concerning her personal affairs. There is no evidence that I have seen that suggest that Gov. Palin having a personal e-mail account and using it has violated any laws. However, the person that accessed her account and published her and her families information publicly did commit a crime and should receive punishment to the fullest extent that the law provides.
What value did exposing her husband and daughters cell phone numbers provide us? What evidence of any wrong doing was provided? This was nothing more than a salacious example of abusive activity to harm someone and their family period. I'm sure you are also correct in that this is way bigger than the individual, it will probably bring new and sweeping legislation to reform the laws that govern privacy on the Internet and the punishment associated with infringing upon it.
Yes, it's a really horrible thing that the United States is a country which defends the rights of its elected officials and candidates so that thugs and criminals aren't able to intimidate them. It's a real sour grapes situation for those of you who aren't putting yourself up for public office that you don't have secret service protection. Maybe you should look into the fact that the police, district attorney, states and attorney, the FBI and SEC all will act on and investigate the same types of cases for the general public. Not exactly like you have been left high and dry without any help.
The issue isn't whether she committed a crime by using a personal e-mail account the issue is that a crime was definitely committed against her. An allegation of a crime as opposed to an actual crime being committed is a difference that I'm sure most people can understand.
To state the obvious, your nick gives your belief system away and at least reduces your credibility in commenting on religious matters. A conservative view doesn't equal radical and by no means infers anyone would be more likely to use nuclear weapons.
Someone who has a belief system that says that life is a gift and is to be cherished would be less likely to act in such a way. Try to not believe all the fear mongering you hear from the hateful anti-religion folks.
Ask yourself what makes a person for the rest of your life and it won't change the fact that once conception occurs that a life has been created. Left unmolested those cells become a child.
So, in your quest to relieve your conscience or the conscience of others you can attempt to rationalize out what constitutes a person. In so doing you rationalize away your humanity. We are not simple animals to be dealt with as one would a kitten or a pig. Human life demands more respect than that of a common farm animal and a developing baby isn't a tadpole to be scooped up and flushed away.
Instead of playing the 'it's so emotionally horrible' game why not talk about the reality of taking responsibility for your actions. How about choosing to use birth control or not have sex in the first place? Have the baby and take care of it. Have the baby and give it up for adoption. How about paying for your own medical bills and not expecting the tax payers to foot the bill for your birth control abortions? There's the key to ending abortion, make it cost some money.
The opposite can be argued and quite well. The overwhelming "evidence" is in most cases supposition piled on top of guess work. Every time a bone fragment is found you see some creative (-- ironic that evolutionists are so creative) group of evolutionists fabricating an entire skeleton to show the next best proof of a missing link.
The problem is that after a 20+ year non-stop campaign of this THEORY being put forward as fact there are very few people left who have the integrity to question it. The people who control grants being given and the journals don't allow dissent in the ranks by refusing to give out money to or publish scientists that may not support their "facts". Multiple methods of dating have been disproved or shown to be inaccurate but when this happens a new piece of technology (usually unproven as well) is then used to again try to show guesswork is fact when it's still just good old guesswork.
There has been plenty of work done to show that creation is scientifically possible and that the THEORY of evolution doesn't stand up to it's own supposedly scientific roots. Even if you don't want to believe in creation have enough self respect to be critical of the scientific community and question them.
Start with the method the scientific community use s for dating objects based on the rocks and earth strata they are found in or near. Rocks are dated based on what layer of strata they are found in. Strata is dated based on the rocks found within it. This is called circular reasoning, isn't scientific but is used to date things all the time. People not bothering to ask how a scientist determined the age of something leads to "facts" like people living millions of years ago becoming accepted as true.
Stating that someone might read the story of the flood and press a button is as ridiculous as intimating that someone would go on a rampage of burning witches because of watching the Wizard of Oz.
Why wouldn't it? You know, the whole invasion of privacy thing plus posting personal information about a minor not to mention the method of accessing the account was illegal as is posting illegally obtained materials on a web site.
Your point on the creationism thing is well taken. The fact that she believes in God makes her a much higher risk than say someone that believes we and the entire universe developed from rocks created when nothing exploded. So, the evolutionist perspective is supposed to be somehow better? Thanks, but I would rather have someone in that postition that believes life is precious and a gift rather than a happy coincidence.
Besides, Obama is supposed to be a Christian as well. So, if he believes what he says you're getting a creationst either way, sorry.
FYI, if adding a quote from Matt Damon is supposed to bolster this posts credibility, not working.
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Thanks for proving that when liberals can't win an argument based on facts and ideas that they have to resort to name calling and personal attacks rather than simply conceding a point.
If you were trying to make some sort of sense in your statement it didn't really work out for you there. If your statement is supposed to mean that I would justify killing someone because of who they are related to or their religious beliefs I would have to say that's a pretty big leap from my assertion that a human life is more important than a cats.
I don't think you need to worry about your hopes concerning our meeting not coming true. I don't hang out in juice bars, abortion rights meetings, save the wales groups or 'why is the world so mean to me' support groups so I don't think the chances of our meeting are very high.
Feel free to take break and come back when you're ready to talk to the over 12 crowd.
Wow, what a huge yawn. Honestly, if you could simply address the points without wandering off into hyperbole it would be really great.
Yes, I think it's safe to say we all understand that a pregnancy can go bad. Again, reference all the wonderful prenatal care which allows these issues to be caught and dealt with. The fact remains that without fertilization a baby would not be born. For anyone to contest that fertilization is the point at which the process begins that will end in the birth of a baby is ridiculous. Call them what you will but, these cells are actively growing and are unique in that they are based on the combined genetic materials of two separate people and the beginnings of a full fledged baby.
As we can see it's also pretty safe to say, at least for some poeple, that the further devoted they become in their scientific views the less likely it is that they will see humans as anything other than very lucky lumps of proteins, minerals and water. Science is a wonderful vocation as long as it doesn't blind one to what makes us uniquely human.
In any of the cases you continue to bring up where the chances of a viable baby being born are nill and the mother's life is in jeapordy, a procedure to save the mother is warranted. In all of the situations you continue to hammer at there is a direct threat to the mothers life or either no baby or a baby that has no chance at being born in a viable state involved. At the point where there is no chance at saving the baby but there is a great risk to the mother I think you would be hard pressed to find an opponent to the procedure required be it technically an abortion, DNC or other.
Yes, great argument, if we could reproduce like sponges this wouldn't be an issue. To add another unrelated hypothetical into the discussion, if we could travel by thought highways would be less congested. Also, debasing the conversation you are involved in debases nobody but you.
Nice try at further muddying the water however, even if science had that capability it wouldn't change the argument concerning natural human reproduction. So, this is yet another failed attempt to counter to my very straight-forward assertion that without fertilization there would be no chance of a baby being born so, fertilization is the point at which a baby is created.
To make this concept simpler for you to understand let me be more a little more precise. At the point of conception genetic material from two contributors is combined to start into motion the process which, under normal circumstances, will lead to the birth of a baby given the process is not disturbed.
If a terrorist accidentally called me and other people I frequently called that would be called a pattern and I would hope it would be investigated. I don't care if keeping secrets from people will cause them to not trust the government. There are going to always be people who will find one reason or another to not trust it.
Yep, that way they can be distracted concerning themselves with the things we might have while we're concentrating on getting to them. Instead of what if scenarios give me some examples, when do you know of an enemy striking our interests sooner because of a program they didn't know about? Or an easier one, how about examples of when they struck ahead of schedule specifically because of a capability they thought we had?
Because things like encryption and decryption are things that are kept secret so that in the event you need to use them people haven't already figured out ways to avoid the technology you have. You're truly naive if you think the spies would have been out of business if we were that stupid. They would then concentrate their efforts on eliminating or counteracting the capabilities we had. Every new advance in security is made on the back of the latest crack, keeping those cracks in check doesn't happen by letting people know where to attack you.
Yes, we really do know why based on the large number of documented thwarted attacks. Yeah maybe we did play into their hands if their original goal was for us to counter attack their organization in Afghanistan and create bad blood internationally. But, big picture, so what? The people that we're creating bad blood with is who, the middle eastern Muslim countries that can't stand us anyway and in many cases condoned the attacks? Big flipping deal! If it weren't for the fact that we needed their oil we wouldn't even deal with most of them on a level higher than any other third world country.
It is?? No, another area you are just wrong on. The jury came back 6 years and 11 days ago on 9/12 the verdict was that there will be more attacks. There is no question in anyone's mind that has really been paying attention to the way the
Transparency is fine when you're talking about operating procedures in departments like the GAO, The Fed or FEMA. I would say transparency of operating procedures even for the CIA or FBI may be fine as well. However, transparency between operating procedures and national security programs are two vastly different concepts.
Again, I think this comes down to a matter of fundamental trust or distrust of the institutions of government. While I agree that left unchecked it would be quite simple for government to become overtly corrupt, I don't believe that we are constantly on the brink of that being the case especially considering the number of built in checks that already exist within the government. While I also agree there should be oversight for national security projects, and there is just not the open public type you would advocate, many or most these projects would do nobody any good if the general public and then our enemies knew about them.
It's ironic that you would advocate for secrecy for such things as, "certain abusable personal information" yet see no problem with publicizing information on covert national security operations. The undertone here being that it's ok to keep secrets to protect the public from real problems like credit card fraud but when it comes to things like defending the population from silly issues like terrorism it really isn't a major threat so we then need transparency.
Your example of an open source approach to government is simply astounding, even if you have an algorithm you believe is impossible to break why in the world would you tip your hand? I guess that way our enemies would know what it was and it would be more fair to them that they wouldn't have to guess at it? Government, and especially national security, is not an open source development project to be viewed and modified and commented on like the next new cool web browser. These are things that directly affect the ability for people to live and breath and allow them to continue doing so. And yes, I realize it must be difficult for some people to come to terms with the fact that bad things happen in the world but, they do and programs that our enemies (and yes even the general public) don't know about need to be in place to deal with them. However, one bad thing that we can't say has happened so far is another terrorist attack in the US. So, dig at the Bush administration as much as you like but, the fact remains that we haven't had additional attacks within the country.
And before you go off on a rant about the war and 5000+ lives being lost, it's a war and people die in war. Does that make it good, no it makes it a reality of the world we live in. We've been in Iraq and Afghanistan for six years so when you compare that death toll to Vietnam, Korea or WWII you can see that based on the amount of time vs. the number of troops involved that the death rate is comparatively very low. Then contrast that to how many people died in one attack on 9/11. 3000 in one day vs. 5000 in six years. That level of loss of innocent civilians seems like something worthwhile to fight against. But, I guess if we hadn't gone to them (the terrorists) and just forgot about 9/11 that they probably wouldn't have attacked us again right?
The long and short if it is that, Yes it was a crime. Just as vigilantism is a crime.
However, certain laws don't apply to law enforcement in the course of enforcing the law. Police, for example, are allowed to speed in order to catch criminals. The whole issue you keep referring back to happened in 2006 and was a program that was put in place only after the President had been advised that it was legal to do so.
The push to suppress the story in the New York Times was an attempt to keep them from exposing a covert operation that had national security implications. This is the same program that had already been used to break up terrorist cells and the reason they didn't want it exposed was to enable them to continue to take down further cells.
After the program was exposed and and the ACLU filed suit a federal judge ruled that they needed to change they way the program worked and they did.
The big difference here is that the Federal Government was using the information to protect the nation and what "Anonymous" did was to abuse a high ranking individual's personal account and splash her e-mail and private information out on the Internet. Not to mention information about her family, friends and associates. The same outrage (although I doubt it would have ever happened to her) would have been there had it been Hillary Clinton's e-mail. Except in that case the media would have fallen all over themselves accusing the GOP of having been behind it.
Yes, precisely what we need. And how would you propose setting up this new bureaucracy to monitor the monitors? Would that be a civilian group with super secret clearance or just our good old trustworthy politicians? But, then who would watch the watchers? Really, lets bog down the government even further so that federal law enforcement can be even less efficient than it already is, great idea.
What record are you referring to that shows government abuse, anything substantive that happens to be newer than two years old? Please no on off cases that don't show some sort of systematic problem. One off cases don't prove anyting just like one police officer taking bribes doesn't make an entire police force corrupt.
Yes, that's the way it's supposed to work. Issues within national security programs are not hashed out in public because they are within national security programs. If you want visibility into these types of programs go get a job working for the DHS otherwise your going to have to accept that secret is secret for a reason.
Ok, well I had a much longer reply but since clicking on a link on this loads the page over the top of the current page and clears everything you have written I'm now just going to reply briefly.
I'm not going to reply further to the multitude of distraction topics. I said what I believe on those and if you want to you can look up further data that supports what I have said.
On your further insinuation of illegal wire tapping, this is old news. Actually both the articles you reference from the Washington Post and USA Today are more than two years old. Not exactly current.
However, in all the bluster you have going here you never once addressed the question concerning where, even considering the complaints about wiretapping two years ago, is there any justification in someone blatantly violating the law, invading someone's privacy and then splashing it all over the Internet. I would say your tossing out all this huff-and-puff about everything else to distract from the fact that there is no excuse for it and it's just spitefulness that drove the person that did it.
Especially considering how horrible you think it is that the government is still supposedly doing this to people "illegally" one would think that you would be just as appalled by this. The fact that you aren't and actually applaud the act shows that you aren't as worried about privacy as you are simply pro-liberal agenda. If this had been Hillary Clinton's e-mail splashed all over the Internet I'm sure the story from you would be about either that GOP operatives had hacked her mail or the CIA was secretly behind it. Then it would have been a horrible act instead of payback. Hypocrisy isn't believing in something, it's believing in something only when it's convenient for your position.
You obviously haven't been reading up on this then. Even in cases that are deemed to be of imminent need to gain access for wire tapping a field warrant must be submitted and reviewed by a judge to ensure the process followed standards set in place for proceeding with such action. How is it that people, who are sworn to uphold the law and protect the public, doing their jobs is supposed to justify criminal hacking of public and private infrastructure to teach the government a lesson? I guess that because someone felt their right to privacy was infringed on that this is a justification to break the law and then trample someone else's rights, no matter who the individuals rights are that get trampled even when it's a blatant violation of the law. But, it's especially ok if it's a Republican. Yeah, that sounds like sound judgment.
Yes Orwellian indeed...
- Wire tapping has an approval procedure that is checked in the judicial system.
- Guantanamo is no different than any other prison run by the military in a time of war. As a matter of fact, prisoners held in American military prisons are treated better than those held by any other country in the world. The majority of the people there were actually captured on the battlefield actively trying to kill our soldiers. Several who have been released were subsequently killed or recaptured on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan.
- Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident of a group of idiots, the issue was brought to light and the people involved punished. What else would you have had them do? Should they just release all of the prisoners because of a few morons that couldn't do their jobs correctly?
- Enemy Combatant is a pretty simple term. If a person not belonging to an actual enemy army but believed to either have ties to an extremist organization or has demonstrated a willingness to act against US interests picks up a rifle, hand gun, grenade or a bomb or in some other way tries to actively kill US soldiers or civilians or damage US national security that person is probably an enemy combatant. I agree the term can be confusing to some, they should have just left it as 'enemy'.
- Incompetence regarding WMDs? You mean the faulty intelligence that pretty much the entire world had regarding Iraq's biological weapons program? Ok, I'll give you that the intelligence had a lot to be desired but, there is still a very good chance that much of Saddam's arsenal was moved to Syria or buried in remote locations in the desert.
However this doesn't negate the fact that during the time between the first and second gulf wars that Iraq continued to act in an openly hostile manner to UN forces enforcing the no fly zones over Iraq. This included firing on UN peace keepers and UN member nation aircraft. As well as the fact that they violated 17 UN security council resolutions many of which specifically concerned the very WMDs you are referring to. So, looking it the issue in hindsight it isn't a real surprise, given the history of Saddam gassing his own people in the Northern areas of Iraq to violating UN orders to disarm his chemical arsenal, that the intelligence community would believe he still maintained a stockpile.
The oil for food scam should also shed some light on how Saddam did business. While his people were starving, because of sanction he brought upon them by invading Kuwait, he built up huge stockpiles of cash and it has been shown that he used at least a portion of that money for supporting Hamas' homicide bombing campaign against Israel. This at the same time that internally his own people were being rounded up and killed or maimed for not agreeing with his political views. The mass graves that haven't been widely reported are a testament to just how he chose to rule. Any way you look at it the world is a much better place without Saddam Hussein leading Iraq. His own people agreed when they hung him on December 26, 2006.
- Unreasonable search and seizure, the 4th amendment guarantees that the judiciary
Now I see you are beginning to understand. Human life should be held to a higher standard in every way. I'm glad to see you have come to terms with this.
What does this have to do with the conversation?? And as is typical lets avoid the entire topic of personal responsibility. Oooh someone killed a cat so that means we can avoid the whole topic of 'choice' being the 'choice' to not sleep around, use birth control or take responsibility for the pregnancy. But no, as always lets forget about the fact that there are responsible choices that people can make that would negate abortion altogether.
Honestly, I could not give a flying leap that this guy killed a cat, give him a ticket and send him to anger management class for all I care. A cat isn't a human and a human isn't a cat. A human life in any stage is worth far more than that of a cat. If that isn't clear enough or you have an issue with it just stop and think long and hard about it. If you still don't get it you have deeper issues to worry about other than abortion. The ironic part here is that people care more about a flipping cat than they do human life. If his defense lawyer could figure out a way to work in the concept that he was just exercising his right to choose to abort the cat I'm sure he would get off Scott free and probably be characterized as the victim when all was said and done.
I'm sure if you really take your kids to church that they are truly benefiting from their exposure to God far beyond what you might wish for them. I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you of God's existance because if you don't already believe that God exists, you eventually will.
I may need to be in a nuthouse but, I surely wouldn't base that on my decision to believe in God's word. Many people find it pretty crazy to take the stance that God doesn't exist but, there you are.
Wow, you must try really hard to be that arrogant and ridiculous at the same time. Ever hear of prenatal care? Miscarriages, tubal pregnancies or whatever other abnormal condition you want to through out there that would be corrected with regular prenatal care doesn't affect the conversation. It's amazing at how hard people will argue against a fundamentally simple point just because they want to justify killing a baby or simply destroying life.
A baby would never occur without fertilization, so to say that fertilization isn't when the baby is created is just closing your eyes and humming as loudly as you can. Life must be present for the cells to divide, dead cells don't divide, the cells in question are those used in reproduction and save something going wrong will create a human left unmolested. Denial must be some sort of mental lubricant that prevents your brain from catching fire due to the friction between common sense and the stance you have taken.
Oh get past it already, the government needs to be able to have the ability to gather information and not have the companies that help them be put through the legal ringer. It makes everybody safer in the short and long run. If you think there is some pattern of abusive behavior then report it to your congressmen and stop lamenting about how horrible it is that terrorist might have their e-mail or phone conversations listened to. Do I like the thought that someone might listen to my conversations or read my e-mail, no not really but, if I'm sending messages or making phone calls that raise a red flag I would rather deal with it than have them miss the bomb that blows up a hotel, train station or school.
Provide links to public records or other documented proof of these discussions.
No, this is a really great example of someone breaking federal law by breaking into someone's personal e-mail. They deserve what they get.
Yeah, lets all use encryption on web based e-mail accounts. Oh wait, let me install PGP and download my keyring and sign this message on every computer I check my mail from. Yes, I know it's not my computer and turns the convenience of web based mail into a huge pain in the butt but, that's the only way I can expect any privacy. Brilliant!!
I'm sorry that you feel ugly, childless, self-righteous, self important, man hating women can't be successful. I'm sure this has nothing to do with them and is truly the fault of all the pretty, nice, child baring, intelligent women. But surely this can't be true, the feminists all have jobs don't they?
Yep, that must be what it means. It couldn't just mean that she wanted to know what legal boundaries there were to allow her to have private conversations without having to worry about her personal life being drug up into public record.
She was probably planning a coup to take over Alaska and secede from the US. Yeah, that's it.
She may be a public figure but she still has the expectation of privacy concerning her personal affairs. There is no evidence that I have seen that suggest that Gov. Palin having a personal e-mail account and using it has violated any laws. However, the person that accessed her account and published her and her families information publicly did commit a crime and should receive punishment to the fullest extent that the law provides.
What value did exposing her husband and daughters cell phone numbers provide us? What evidence of any wrong doing was provided? This was nothing more than a salacious example of abusive activity to harm someone and their family period. I'm sure you are also correct in that this is way bigger than the individual, it will probably bring new and sweeping legislation to reform the laws that govern privacy on the Internet and the punishment associated with infringing upon it.
Yes, it's a really horrible thing that the United States is a country which defends the rights of its elected officials and candidates so that thugs and criminals aren't able to intimidate them. It's a real sour grapes situation for those of you who aren't putting yourself up for public office that you don't have secret service protection. Maybe you should look into the fact that the police, district attorney, states and attorney, the FBI and SEC all will act on and investigate the same types of cases for the general public. Not exactly like you have been left high and dry without any help.
The issue isn't whether she committed a crime by using a personal e-mail account the issue is that a crime was definitely committed against her. An allegation of a crime as opposed to an actual crime being committed is a difference that I'm sure most people can understand.
To state the obvious, your nick gives your belief system away and at least reduces your credibility in commenting on religious matters. A conservative view doesn't equal radical and by no means infers anyone would be more likely to use nuclear weapons.
Someone who has a belief system that says that life is a gift and is to be cherished would be less likely to act in such a way. Try to not believe all the fear mongering you hear from the hateful anti-religion folks.
Ask yourself what makes a person for the rest of your life and it won't change the fact that once conception occurs that a life has been created. Left unmolested those cells become a child.
So, in your quest to relieve your conscience or the conscience of others you can attempt to rationalize out what constitutes a person. In so doing you rationalize away your humanity. We are not simple animals to be dealt with as one would a kitten or a pig. Human life demands more respect than that of a common farm animal and a developing baby isn't a tadpole to be scooped up and flushed away.
Instead of playing the 'it's so emotionally horrible' game why not talk about the reality of taking responsibility for your actions. How about choosing to use birth control or not have sex in the first place? Have the baby and take care of it. Have the baby and give it up for adoption. How about paying for your own medical bills and not expecting the tax payers to foot the bill for your birth control abortions? There's the key to ending abortion, make it cost some money.
The opposite can be argued and quite well. The overwhelming "evidence" is in most cases supposition piled on top of guess work. Every time a bone fragment is found you see some creative (-- ironic that evolutionists are so creative) group of evolutionists fabricating an entire skeleton to show the next best proof of a missing link.
The problem is that after a 20+ year non-stop campaign of this THEORY being put forward as fact there are very few people left who have the integrity to question it. The people who control grants being given and the journals don't allow dissent in the ranks by refusing to give out money to or publish scientists that may not support their "facts". Multiple methods of dating have been disproved or shown to be inaccurate but when this happens a new piece of technology (usually unproven as well) is then used to again try to show guesswork is fact when it's still just good old guesswork.
There has been plenty of work done to show that creation is scientifically possible and that the THEORY of evolution doesn't stand up to it's own supposedly scientific roots. Even if you don't want to believe in creation have enough self respect to be critical of the scientific community and question them.
Start with the method the scientific community use s for dating objects based on the rocks and earth strata they are found in or near. Rocks are dated based on what layer of strata they are found in. Strata is dated based on the rocks found within it. This is called circular reasoning, isn't scientific but is used to date things all the time. People not bothering to ask how a scientist determined the age of something leads to "facts" like people living millions of years ago becoming accepted as true.
Stating that someone might read the story of the flood and press a button is as ridiculous as intimating that someone would go on a rampage of burning witches because of watching the Wizard of Oz.
Why wouldn't it? You know, the whole invasion of privacy thing plus posting personal information about a minor not to mention the method of accessing the account was illegal as is posting illegally obtained materials on a web site. Your point on the creationism thing is well taken. The fact that she believes in God makes her a much higher risk than say someone that believes we and the entire universe developed from rocks created when nothing exploded. So, the evolutionist perspective is supposed to be somehow better? Thanks, but I would rather have someone in that postition that believes life is precious and a gift rather than a happy coincidence. Besides, Obama is supposed to be a Christian as well. So, if he believes what he says you're getting a creationst either way, sorry. FYI, if adding a quote from Matt Damon is supposed to bolster this posts credibility, not working.