A pardon (commutation) that impedes the prosecution of obstruction of justice is a "high crime" because it further obstructs the ability of the justice system to do its job.
Isn't this just a more precise version of the anthromorphic principle? This principle suggests that the reason the laws of the universe are the way they are are because they are the only combination of laws that would produce entities capable of observing the universe, namely, us.
The idea of the multiverse being a repeatedly spawning singularity is an intriguing one because it does answer the question of what there was BEFORE the Big Bang. It allows for a cosmos that is both finite and infinite at the same time.
Sounds to me like Gore said he invented the Internet. I don't know where Salon's getting their info. But, the garbage comes to mind.
Where Salon got its info is from people like Vinton Cerf. You know Vinton Cerf right? He's the guy who probably has the most legitimate claim to having "invented" the internet. He supports Gore in his statements on this matter.
Now let's look at an example taken from the link, specifically the bit about Gore singing the song as a child when the song wasn't written until 1975. Probably true. It's also possible that the song is based on an old traditional song. Not uncommon, particularly for union songs. Gore could certainly have sung that song.
Anyone who watched the videotape of the incident could tell that Gore was telling a joke when he said his mother sang a union song to him as a lullaby. He has been making this joke for YEARS in stump speeches.
But the press has a story to tell. The story is "Gore lies" and they will distort any little nugget that comes along to do so. The list of these is endless: (1) Gore DID hoe a hill using nothing but a team of mules, (2) Gore WAS a model for Love Story, (3) Gore DID play a substantial role in the creation of the modern internet, (4) Gore DID lead the first congressional hearings on Love Canal and other toxic waste dumps, (5) that school in Florida DOES have overcrowded classrooms and that girl DID have to stand in the back as did several others who are STILL doing so at this time.
The truth is that the press has become a mouthpiece for GOP blast faxes that try to turn every positive accomplishment of Gore into a negative. It has been effective. Gore cannot tout his considerable record on the stump because to do so risks the wrath of the pundits and the commentariat.
How else to explain how the most qualified presidential candidate in 50 years is tied in recent polls with easily the LEAST qualified candidate in 100 years?
So two men are on death row instead of three. Now, if Bush lied all the time, I might suspect that he was lying about this. But since he doesn't lie all the time, one can certainly chalk it up to a lack of detail in his head.
He doesn't lie all the time? How about taking credit for Texas having one of the strongest patient protection acts in the country when the truth is that he vetoed the first version of the bill and then allowed the second version to become law by declining to sign it because it had been passed by a veto proof majority (he didn't want his record to be spoiled by an override).
The truth is that Bush HAS lied, repeatedly, about substantial issues (where is that extra trillion dollars going to come from to help pay off the losses his SS privatization plan will incur?) But the press has gotten into such a story telling mode in the last few years that the only thing that gets coverage are those incidents that fit those story molds (Gore is a liar, Bush is an idiot).
I, too, read about the Bush thing in Alabama, and it appears he never showed up to his unit. But he did make up those weekends later in Texas.
The commander he would have had to report back to didn't remember him showing up either. In fact, there are records that show "did not attend" next to Bush's name.
If the exact same details had come out about Gore this story would have been all over the papers. But it hasn't been. Why? Journalists, such as Howard Kurtz, when asked about this say that it hasn't been covered because it is unfair to accuse Bush of something that would require him to prove a negative. Gee, where was that sense of fairness when all the "prove a negative" accusations were leveled against the Clintons and Gore?
It's not Republican sophistry to point out egregious lies on Gore's part. In fact, his own staff pointedly wrote to him after his failed 1988 presidential bid that his biggest problem was exaggeration. A few exaggerations are one thing, and many politicians are guilty. Some are just dumb or forgetful. But Gore's have reached the point where they are pathetic and weird.
The individual who wrote that memo has said in repeated interviews that he was not warning Gore about exagerations because of any past pattern of exagerations. It was just a general comment as part of an overall checklist of things that politicians should learn to avoid.
Once again, an allegation against Gore is embellished in order to make him look even worse.
Finally, I think corporations generally increase freedom, in that they create and disseminate vast wealth, which gives us enormous amounts of leisure, and they also sell us the things we want, that we couldn't readily create ourselves, like cars, microwave ovens, trips on airplanes, cheapp books, and all that.
To today's modern corporations the dissemination of wealth shows up as a loss on their books. After all. Trickle-down economis works only so long as the corporations don't view that as a sign of them running a leaky ship.
I find it interesting that you appear to define freedom and wealth by how many possessions we can get. The freedom to buy more stuff and the freedom to live our lives as we chose are NOT the same thing.
Now, you can cut that up like a lawyer, but to anybody whole is familiar with the English language, Gore was taking a granule of truth and exaggerating it out of proportion. That is another way of saying he lied. It would not be so noteworthy if he didn't do it every week, like claiming he and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story, claiming to have written the Earned Income Tax Cut law and worked on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while in Congress (both were created before he entered Congress), like claiming to have helped write candidate Hubert Humphrey's convention speech in 1968 (he didn't)... And the list goes on.
Gore's contributions to the development of the internet were not minor. He never claimed to have been the sole inspiration, creator, etc. of the internet. But, no less an authority then Newt Gingrich has admitted that Gore WAS on the leading edge of understanding the importance of computer networks and he was the leading supporter of groundbreaking legislation that lead to the privatizing and expansion of th net.
You can try to minimize his importance in these matters, but then it is YOU who are doing the exagerating.
BTW, Gore WAS an inspiration for Love Story. He never claimed that Tipper was as well. He only quoated a newspaper article that misquoted the author as saying she was. The reporters who were there have expressed suprise that the story has been so massively distorted as it has been.
Also, Gore never claimed to have written the EITC. He claimed to have written an EXPANSION of the EITC (he did). And Gore DID work on the SPR. It was first created before he entered congress. But the funding and structure of it was not put in place until AFTER he joined.
The lies, embellishments, and exagerations about Gore's alleged lies, embellishments, and exagerations dwarf those alleged lies, embellishments and exagerations.
And Gore hasn't mistated many things also about bush? I just think he would be better off saying he supported the internet when it was new than allowing the media and others to say he invented it.
Gore can't win for losing. If he makes a minor mistake he is raked over the coals as a serial exagerator. But if the press and the Bush campaign embellish the alleged Gore exagerations (btw, Gore WAS an inspiration for Love Story) then, again, that is Gore's fault.
When are people going to start holding the press and Dubya responsible for their own embellishments and exagerations?
The precise interpretation isn't that he claimed to invent it. However, the way he said it and the way many people perceived how he said it was that he came across sounding like he was claiming to have invented the Internet. Adding to that was Al Gore's claim to have attended some government function in Texas during the first debate, which he later retracted once it was revealed by the media that Al Gore was claiming to have done something that he didn't.
In other words, Al Gore has a habit of claiming to have done more than he actually has. In one instance, the Internet claim - his impact on the Internet has been minimal, trust me. The second instance, claiming to have done work that he in fact hadn't done at all - going to Texas to do whatever.
FYI, Gore DID take that trip Texas. The only mistake he made was in saying he went with the FEMA directory on that particular trip. This is an understandable mistake considering that he went with the directory on 17 other trips over the ppast few years.
Compare this extremely trivial error to the kind of gargantuan whoppers that Bush made during that debate and then ask yourself why the press focuses so much attention on Gore's trivial error while ignoring the big ones that Bush is making almost every day.
Oh, and read the articles linked above and you will see that no less an authority then Vinton Cerf would disagree with your claim that Gore's impact on the internet was "minimal". Some people want to ignore the important role the government had in the creation of the modern internet and prefer to believe some libertarian myth about the internet springing whole from the head of a bunch of hackers.
Sorry, but if it weren't for the government, it is extremely unlikely we would have the internet today.
The Pinkerton people were right about one thing: if they don't come out with this product, someone else will. In that sense then arguing their corporate ethics, while a nice intellectual exercise, is essentially pointless if the desired result is to prevent the creation, distribution, and/or use of these products.
Where Jon and others really need to make their case is to the potential customers of this product: school boards, parent's organizations, etc. It is these people that need to be told that they don't have to give in to hysteria in response to what is essentially a non-issue.
Regarding the issue of prizes on the web site: the Pinkerton officials say that they will include language that explicitly says that it is not necesary to report anyone in order to qualify for these prizes. However, Publisher's Clearing House does the same thing with their sweepstake form and a significant number of people still think it is necessary to order the magazines in order to qualify.
I haven't read all the comments on this so forgive me if someone has already mentioned this but consider this: the Ultimate Online world uses its own form of currency for buying and selling things. Now, if a castle in UO is worth say 10,000 gold pieces, and someone goes on e-bay and buys that castle for $1,000, they have actually established a re-world currency exchange rate between dollars and UO gold pieces.
In other words, UO gold pieces have become REAL MONEY!
Electronic cash has become a reality, and no bankers were involved in its creation.
Computer games, Goth, black trenchcoats, loud music...
None of these things cause tragedies like the Littleton shootings.
All of these things are merely attempts by isolated kids to create a means of expressing their pain in a way that DOESN'T involve getting a shotgun and blowing off the face of their tormentors. They are not not unhealthy influences that corrupt otherwise innocent minds. They are mechanisms we create in order to avoid giving into our unhealthy desires to haul off and wail away on our enemies.
Suppressing these activities won't make the problem go away. If anything, this will simply limit the recourses these kids have and increase the possibility that they will resort to more violent modes of expression.
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A pardon (commutation) that impedes the prosecution of obstruction of justice is a "high crime" because it further obstructs the ability of the justice system to do its job.
Isn't this just a more precise version of the anthromorphic principle? This principle suggests that the reason the laws of the universe are the way they are are because they are the only combination of laws that would produce entities capable of observing the universe, namely, us.
The idea of the multiverse being a repeatedly spawning singularity is an intriguing one because it does answer the question of what there was BEFORE the Big Bang. It allows for a cosmos that is both finite and infinite at the same time.
Where Salon got its info is from people like Vinton Cerf. You know Vinton Cerf right? He's the guy who probably has the most legitimate claim to having "invented" the internet. He supports Gore in his statements on this matter.
Are you saying that Vinton Cerf is garbage?
Anyone who watched the videotape of the incident could tell that Gore was telling a joke when he said his mother sang a union song to him as a lullaby. He has been making this joke for YEARS in stump speeches.
But the press has a story to tell. The story is "Gore lies" and they will distort any little nugget that comes along to do so. The list of these is endless: (1) Gore DID hoe a hill using nothing but a team of mules, (2) Gore WAS a model for Love Story, (3) Gore DID play a substantial role in the creation of the modern internet, (4) Gore DID lead the first congressional hearings on Love Canal and other toxic waste dumps, (5) that school in Florida DOES have overcrowded classrooms and that girl DID have to stand in the back as did several others who are STILL doing so at this time.
The truth is that the press has become a mouthpiece for GOP blast faxes that try to turn every positive accomplishment of Gore into a negative. It has been effective. Gore cannot tout his considerable record on the stump because to do so risks the wrath of the pundits and the commentariat.
How else to explain how the most qualified presidential candidate in 50 years is tied in recent polls with easily the LEAST qualified candidate in 100 years?
He doesn't lie all the time? How about taking credit for Texas having one of the strongest patient protection acts in the country when the truth is that he vetoed the first version of the bill and then allowed the second version to become law by declining to sign it because it had been passed by a veto proof majority (he didn't want his record to be spoiled by an override).
The truth is that Bush HAS lied, repeatedly, about substantial issues (where is that extra trillion dollars going to come from to help pay off the losses his SS privatization plan will incur?) But the press has gotten into such a story telling mode in the last few years that the only thing that gets coverage are those incidents that fit those story molds (Gore is a liar, Bush is an idiot).
I, too, read about the Bush thing in Alabama, and it appears he never showed up to his unit. But he did make up those weekends later in Texas.
The commander he would have had to report back to didn't remember him showing up either. In fact, there are records that show "did not attend" next to Bush's name.
If the exact same details had come out about Gore this story would have been all over the papers. But it hasn't been. Why? Journalists, such as Howard Kurtz, when asked about this say that it hasn't been covered because it is unfair to accuse Bush of something that would require him to prove a negative. Gee, where was that sense of fairness when all the "prove a negative" accusations were leveled against the Clintons and Gore?
The individual who wrote that memo has said in repeated interviews that he was not warning Gore about exagerations because of any past pattern of exagerations. It was just a general comment as part of an overall checklist of things that politicians should learn to avoid.
Once again, an allegation against Gore is embellished in order to make him look even worse.
To today's modern corporations the dissemination of wealth shows up as a loss on their books. After all. Trickle-down economis works only so long as the corporations don't view that as a sign of them running a leaky ship.
I find it interesting that you appear to define freedom and wealth by how many possessions we can get. The freedom to buy more stuff and the freedom to live our lives as we chose are NOT the same thing.
Gore's contributions to the development of the internet were not minor. He never claimed to have been the sole inspiration, creator, etc. of the internet. But, no less an authority then Newt Gingrich has admitted that Gore WAS on the leading edge of understanding the importance of computer networks and he was the leading supporter of groundbreaking legislation that lead to the privatizing and expansion of th net.
You can try to minimize his importance in these matters, but then it is YOU who are doing the exagerating.
BTW, Gore WAS an inspiration for Love Story. He never claimed that Tipper was as well. He only quoated a newspaper article that misquoted the author as saying she was. The reporters who were there have expressed suprise that the story has been so massively distorted as it has been.
Also, Gore never claimed to have written the EITC. He claimed to have written an EXPANSION of the EITC (he did). And Gore DID work on the SPR. It was first created before he entered congress. But the funding and structure of it was not put in place until AFTER he joined.
The lies, embellishments, and exagerations about Gore's alleged lies, embellishments, and exagerations dwarf those alleged lies, embellishments and exagerations.
Gore can't win for losing. If he makes a minor mistake he is raked over the coals as a serial exagerator. But if the press and the Bush campaign embellish the alleged Gore exagerations (btw, Gore WAS an inspiration for Love Story) then, again, that is Gore's fault.
When are people going to start holding the press and Dubya responsible for their own embellishments and exagerations?
In other words, Al Gore has a habit of claiming to have done more than he actually has. In one instance, the Internet claim - his impact on the Internet has been minimal, trust me. The second instance, claiming to have done work that he in fact hadn't done at all - going to Texas to do whatever.
FYI, Gore DID take that trip Texas. The only mistake he made was in saying he went with the FEMA directory on that particular trip. This is an understandable mistake considering that he went with the directory on 17 other trips over the ppast few years.
Compare this extremely trivial error to the kind of gargantuan whoppers that Bush made during that debate and then ask yourself why the press focuses so much attention on Gore's trivial error while ignoring the big ones that Bush is making almost every day.
Oh, and read the articles linked above and you will see that no less an authority then Vinton Cerf would disagree with your claim that Gore's impact on the internet was "minimal". Some people want to ignore the important role the government had in the creation of the modern internet and prefer to believe some libertarian myth about the internet springing whole from the head of a bunch of hackers.
Sorry, but if it weren't for the government, it is extremely unlikely we would have the internet today.
Where Jon and others really need to make their case is to the potential customers of this product: school boards, parent's organizations, etc. It is these people that need to be told that they don't have to give in to hysteria in response to what is essentially a non-issue.
Regarding the issue of prizes on the web site: the Pinkerton officials say that they will include language that explicitly says that it is not necesary to report anyone in order to qualify for these prizes. However, Publisher's Clearing House does the same thing with their sweepstake form and a significant number of people still think it is necessary to order the magazines in order to qualify.
I haven't read all the comments on this so forgive me if someone has already mentioned this but consider this: the Ultimate Online world uses its own form of currency for buying and selling things. Now, if a castle in UO is worth say 10,000 gold pieces, and someone goes on e-bay and buys that castle for $1,000, they have actually established a re-world currency exchange rate between dollars and UO gold pieces.
In other words, UO gold pieces have become REAL MONEY!
Electronic cash has become a reality, and no bankers were involved in its creation.
Computer games, Goth, black trenchcoats, loud music...
None of these things cause tragedies like the Littleton shootings.
All of these things are merely attempts by isolated kids to create a means of expressing their pain in a way that DOESN'T involve getting a shotgun and blowing off the face of their tormentors. They are not not unhealthy influences that corrupt otherwise innocent minds. They are mechanisms we create in order to avoid giving into our unhealthy desires to haul off and wail away on our enemies.
Suppressing these activities won't make the problem go away. If anything, this will simply limit the recourses these kids have and increase the possibility that they will resort to more violent modes of expression.