Amazing how in one week people will be whining about how mean and terrible the RIAA and MPAA are for enforcing their copyrights and then give a big thumbs up when the FSF does the same thing.
So... people are going to actually believe the bogus science in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth? Amazing.
This is similar to people who mis-interpret history by watching movies. For instance, I know people who insist the government actually bombarded NY City during the Civil War during rioting about the war.... because it was depicted in the movie Gangs of New York.
All of those things that you said happened (e.g. industry almost collapsed, intellectual power went abroad, living standards were of the third world) occured long before the "fall" of the soviet union. The industry was already sour in the 1980s and many of the intellectual power tried their hardest to get out, claiming to attending conventions in the west, for example, and then not coming back. The living were standards at that point were already crap. When the bloc fell apart, the remains of the intellectual power left the country... and industry continued to be poor... and people were still poor. This has nothing to do with th *west*... all the west tried to do is prevent mass famine and basically prevent any civil unrest.
If your hypothesis was true, it would be true for ALL soviet bloc nations. However, nations like Romania, Poland and the Ukraine seem to have come out of it. The reason why the Russians could not come out of it has NOTHING to do with how the west handled the situation.
OTOH, China is a completely different story. China is still a communist state but slowly migrating towards Democracy by opening itself to international trade (something the Soviet Union didnt do) and allowing free enterprise (something the Soviet Union didnt do) while maintaining a government that is still fundamentally Communist. However, living conditions in China are still poor for most people (my Russian coworker's sister went to China recently and was appalled by the living conditions despite having grown up in the USSR). At the same time, China is going through an industrial boom similar to that of the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s and nothing like their problems in the 1980s which allows the Chinese to have a valid and valuable product to bring to market.
The Russians had a saying, "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
The Russian economy was in the shit hole long before any "western influence". The fact is that the USSR fell because it's economy could not keep up with the US and Europe during the boom of the mid to late 1980s. The USSR was spending more money trying to "keep up" with the advances in military power in the US that it forgot to pay it's own people... and as a result, those people became poor and inflation in the USSR skyrocketed. The ruble became worth absolutely nothing in the global economy. The USSR then finally "gave in" and once they entered the world economy with a currency worth shit, the problems in the USSR became *obvious* to the rest of the world.
Don't blame the "west" because the USSR wasn't feeding it's own people. Blame the soviets and their attitude of "government before people". The only reason people are nostalgic for the past soviet Russia is because there they felt they had a sense of power being under one of the great world powers. Under the new Russia, they are weak and their government is weaker.
Okay so the main page says "check out the release schedule" and then when I got to the release schedule it doesn't list 7.3 at all. Well, huh, so I am to assume that 7.3 doesnt exist at all let alone about to be released.
I guess I needed to check the 'changes' document which mentions the release schedule, or well, not a schedule but some arbitrary date it could be released.
Looks like Xorg needs to fix and update their documentation!
All of these "tech savvy" people who think they know all there is to know are probably also too arrogant to think they can get infected with spyware, so have absolutely no way to detect and remove it. So, what happens? Ooops, spyware on their PC figured out their AmeriTrade email address and they started getting spammed.
And, no, it's not AmeriTrade's fault you got spyware on your PC after visiting that black on blond porno site.
First, the bill in the story has nothing to do with taxing internet email. It has to do with, specifically, sales taxes on goods purchased over the internet.
The second part of the story is about the temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes which limits taxes on items such as email, web surfing, etc.
Needless to say, these things are completely different. Leave it to crap|net to mix them all up to get your feathers ruffled.
In the first case, the bill being sponsored by Mr Envi, I kind of understand where he is coming from. States and local governments get a lot of their revenue from sales tax. Since there has been an increasing number of purchases made online, state and local governments and losing out on that sales tax money, which means they need to raise other taxes (e.g. property, fuel) in order to compensate. This hurts everyone, even those that do not own computers, and especially hurts the elderly who live on limited income. This bill also simplifies how states collect taxes for retailers to reduce paperwork, and has an exemption for e-tailers that earn less than $5 million a year doing internet sales.
On the temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes, this is something that has been renewed every couple of years for the last several under the Republican-led congress. The idea is that general broadband services are not taxed, such as email and web surfing, at the federal and state levels. It does not appear this will be renewed which means *new* taxes could (and probably will) be added to Internet users.
Now that it is clear...
While some may point out that Mr. Enzi is a Republican raising taxes, he's not so much raising taxes as he is 1) simplifying sales taxes; 2) ensuring the "current" level of taxes imposed by states; 3) thus reducing property taxes; 4) helping maintain state governments who are having financial problems due to lack of sales tax revenue.
On the other hand, the Democrats, if they do not renew the ban on broadband taxes, will be creating new taxes that will impact every internet user. These are not taxes that are being avoided or taxes that are being suppressed.... these are NEW taxes.. and we all know how the Democrats love their taxes!
In order to complete your degree in education in PA, you have to complete, successfully, a certain number of hour student teaching. The result of her final student teaching semester was an overall performance rating of unsatisfactory by the administration of the high school she was student teaching as (keep in mind, the high school uses the same form to evaluate student teachers as normal teachers with an added on questionnaire, usually, from the university). So, because this student teacher received an unsatisfactory performance review from the high school, she did not complete the necessary number of credits to receive her degree in education.
The solution? Go back another semester to do your student teaching over again to get your credits and move on. Instead, she sues and makes a big deal, which means every school in the U.S. will think twice about hiring her.
(FYI... my girlfriend got her degree in education in PA as well, and we discussed this and all student teachers know how the process works for their evaluation).
Anyone who drives on the turnpike knows it's a virtual standstill 90% of the day, those turbines won't be spinning.
Now, back to being serious....
I drive the Garden State Parkway daily. It has taken workers at least 3 weeks to replace a 16' section of concrete barrier between the northbound and southbound lanes. So how long will this project take to implement exactly? Not to mention, what's the up front cost of such a thing? And at what point does the cost savings of the light rail energy actually outweigh the cost of this implementation. I'm guessing it's probably around 30 years. So why bother? I'm sure there will be plenty of other *better* solutions for free energy within the next 30 years. Oh wait, there already are. Like putting windmills off the shore of NJ and NY... except all the rich liberals keep complaining about how their views are being ruined.
So troll me now, you won't like what I have to say...
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a very political movie. If it wasn't, why is it presented and narrated by a Politician? Not a scientist, not someone who would actually have facts... but a guy who's job has been for the last 30 years to spin ANY news or ideas in the favor of his point of view.
So what's the problem with "Big Oil" donating money to teachers? Last time I checked, teachers were underpaid and schools underfunded. So, we have some organizations willing to give money to help out in our failing schools, and all the lefties complain. Where are the lefties donations? If they donated as much, or more than, "Big Oil" to such funds, then this wouldn't even be a discussion.
So do such organizations have the right to "protect" their funding sources? YES! Is it political? YES! Is "An Inconvient Truth" all fact? No, it's fact mixed in with a bunch of hypothesis, because in reality, no one really knows. What happened to that horrible hurricane season we were supposed to have this year... all the scientists told us it would happen... but yet it didn't!
Twenty years ago science told us we're entering an ice age... today we're "warming"... tomorrow? Who knows! Let's face it, most "science" relies on government funding. If, as a scientist, you say 'well, everything is as expected' or 'well, everything looks okay' then you don't get the next federal grant, because you just said everything was okay. So, you fudge the numbers, you make up things, and say 'ooooh this looks bad, I need to do more research' and the grant money continues to roll in. You write a few papers, get published a few times, do some talks making $10,000 per speech... and drive around in your brand new 7-series. All that doesn't happen when you say, 'I've spent the last 5 years to tell you everything is OK'.
Well, since we're taking things out of context, Lincoln also was quoted in a letter:
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union;
And then there was also this quote:
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Abraham Lincoln was not a rich white politician... he was a poor, white lawyer who did "the circuit" (e.g. ran around with the judges who didnt reside in any one place and had to travel between small towns to do their job). He wasn't even expected to get the Republican nomination because he was not a politician.
As I have said in other posts, the people who need to determine whether the President's actions are wrong is Congress with the assistance of the Judiciary. They are the only ones who have oversight of the President's actions. The problem is that Congress was complicite in the decision to perform the wiretaps (they knew about them, didnt have a problem with them until the information was leaked to the NY Times), so it's unlikely they will do anything.
And I'm hardly polarizing the arguments... I'm just stating facts. If stating facts is polarizing to you, then you obviously live in la-la land, and no one can help you there. Hope you get better soon.
You're little story doesn't fit. You can not use, as an excuse in court, that your actions were not illegal since it's the job of the court to determine if they were illegal. Silly, silly liberals. See, in the Justice system, a person is "accused" of a crime... but they are innocent until proven guilty, therefore until the President or someone else is convicted of breaking the law, their actions are not illegal. Their crime is 'alleged'. Newspapers have been sued for calling someone a murderer before ever being convicted of the crime.
There used to be something we said as kids, "it isn't illegal unless ya get caught". Although silly, it's really true. What seems wrong in your eyes does not count until a court says the actions were wrong. You feel that the President's actions were wrong; that's your opinion. Some people believe homosexuals marrying is wrong, and that's their opinion. Whether either action is ILLEGAL is up to the courts to decide. In the case of homosexuals marrying, some states have put into law that it is illegal, however, until the couple sees their day in court, they have nothing to fear.
But hey, it was worth a try... just like how liberals don't like to call people crossing the border improperly "illegal immigrants"... but rather, "undocumented workers". maybe we should call the President's illegal actions "undocumented maneuver".
So, if you don't believe that the NSA wiretaps are to help fight terrorism, you must have some idea of why he would do such a thing. So, what is it?
So, if the "why" he gives is not reasonable in your eyes, what is the "why" that you think is the answer?
BTW, the thing about conspiracy theories and theorists is that they come up with a "how" but not a "why" that is plausable... usually it's far fetched and laughable. I'm sure some conspiracy theorist is going to say that the NSA wiretaps were put in place to make sure John Kerry wasn't calling Jaques Chirac for his endorsement... those are just silly statements. All in all, if you can not believe the President's reason (even if you do not agree with the methods), then you need to have another plausable reason why he would do that.
It's amazing, you're like the 2nd person to say that either the Department of Justice is either part of the judicial branch or is it's own branch of government when in fact, it's a department within the Executive Branch of government controlled by the President of the United States (as his directive under the Constitution). It's why he nominates individuals as the head of the Department of Justice (like Clinton putting up Janet Reno).
I think it's time you get your facts right, before you come out making statements.
The information has classified as "top secret" before the investigation began or before anyone even knew about it, so it's not like he's just decided to make the information top secret so the Department of Justice could not get to the information. The Department of Justice does not have access to this information because they are not classified appropriately to view it. By saying he effectively "blocked" them is spin, because what he actually did was implement proper access controls.
And thanks for bringing up Nixon... because it's the left's duty to try to compare Bush to Nixon as much as possible... and Iraq to Vietnam.
Why does it have to be what he has to hide? Why isn't it about what he's trying to accomplish by protecting the American people from another terrorist act? Since this is his claim, and it's a reasonable claim, why are you so suspicious to think the President is lying about it? Do you think he implemented such a program for other reasons? Or do you accept his explaination and question his methods? If the former, then you're more concerned with bashing him than actually getting answers. If the latter, then you can not say he's hiding anything, but simply trying to protect the information that gives sensitive details about a program used to protect Americans (and probably others in the world).
Yeah, but... the Justice Department is part of the Executive Branch of government.
And if you read the Constitution, it's call very clear who has the capability to do what in what branch of the government. The Senate has the ability to oversee the actions of the President and visa versa, with the judicial being the mediator. So, if Congress really felt the President had overstepped it's authority, then they would start something, but they haven't. The Senate could use it's power to get those documents released, by committee and by using the judicial branch, if they really wanted to.
... into the matter of who exactly authorized the illegal actions to take place.
Ahem, sorry to get "technical", but the actions haven't been proven to be illegal yet. They are "allegedly" illegal, since no one has been convicted of a crime (if that will ever happen).
But this is typical spin... the fact is that part of the power of the President, of all Presidents, is to decide on the classification of information within the executive branch of government. When something is classified as "top secret", it requires the President to say, "hey this can now be released to the public" before it is legal to actually do so. This is why we've been having these leak probes (although they haven't gone anywhere). It's called access control... it's there for a reason... and it's not to hinder an investigative probe into misconduct, but to prevent the hindering of investigations into terrorist activities.
Mass transit only works in areas with a high concentration of people. In the 1960s, heck even today, there are lots of people who live outside of these areas making mass transportation highly ineffecient and costly. In Europe, on the other hand, a larger percentage of people live in urban areas and are better served by public transportation. However, the people who live in the rural parts of Europe still rely on gasoline powered cars.
Actually, despite what the "wonderful" slashdot editor says, not only did Ike see the Autobahn, but also saw it as an easy way to move troops and supplies around the country. For instance, there were standards to make sure every curve of the expressway system could handle an automobile at 85MPH (talking about a 1960s Jeep, not a 2006 Ferrari Enzo).. so it would not flip over. It also made sure there were large enough gaps between bridges and other structures to allow large aircraft to land within 10 miles of any point on the highway.
Slashdot Mirror
Amazing how in one week people will be whining about how mean and terrible the RIAA and MPAA are for enforcing their copyrights and then give a big thumbs up when the FSF does the same thing.
So... people are going to actually believe the bogus science in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth? Amazing.
This is similar to people who mis-interpret history by watching movies. For instance, I know people who insist the government actually bombarded NY City during the Civil War during rioting about the war.... because it was depicted in the movie Gangs of New York.
No, you're missing the point...
All of those things that you said happened (e.g. industry almost collapsed, intellectual power went abroad, living standards were of the third world) occured long before the "fall" of the soviet union. The industry was already sour in the 1980s and many of the intellectual power tried their hardest to get out, claiming to attending conventions in the west, for example, and then not coming back. The living were standards at that point were already crap. When the bloc fell apart, the remains of the intellectual power left the country... and industry continued to be poor... and people were still poor. This has nothing to do with th *west*... all the west tried to do is prevent mass famine and basically prevent any civil unrest.
If your hypothesis was true, it would be true for ALL soviet bloc nations. However, nations like Romania, Poland and the Ukraine seem to have come out of it. The reason why the Russians could not come out of it has NOTHING to do with how the west handled the situation.
OTOH, China is a completely different story. China is still a communist state but slowly migrating towards Democracy by opening itself to international trade (something the Soviet Union didnt do) and allowing free enterprise (something the Soviet Union didnt do) while maintaining a government that is still fundamentally Communist. However, living conditions in China are still poor for most people (my Russian coworker's sister went to China recently and was appalled by the living conditions despite having grown up in the USSR). At the same time, China is going through an industrial boom similar to that of the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s and nothing like their problems in the 1980s which allows the Chinese to have a valid and valuable product to bring to market.
You're obviously thoroughly confused.
The Russians had a saying, "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
The Russian economy was in the shit hole long before any "western influence". The fact is that the USSR fell because it's economy could not keep up with the US and Europe during the boom of the mid to late 1980s. The USSR was spending more money trying to "keep up" with the advances in military power in the US that it forgot to pay it's own people... and as a result, those people became poor and inflation in the USSR skyrocketed. The ruble became worth absolutely nothing in the global economy. The USSR then finally "gave in" and once they entered the world economy with a currency worth shit, the problems in the USSR became *obvious* to the rest of the world.
Don't blame the "west" because the USSR wasn't feeding it's own people. Blame the soviets and their attitude of "government before people". The only reason people are nostalgic for the past soviet Russia is because there they felt they had a sense of power being under one of the great world powers. Under the new Russia, they are weak and their government is weaker.
Okay so the main page says "check out the release schedule" and then when I got to the release schedule it doesn't list 7.3 at all. Well, huh, so I am to assume that 7.3 doesnt exist at all let alone about to be released.
I guess I needed to check the 'changes' document which mentions the release schedule, or well, not a schedule but some arbitrary date it could be released.
Looks like Xorg needs to fix and update their documentation!
Not even x.org has 7.3 yet! Fedora is really on top of things!
All of these "tech savvy" people who think they know all there is to know are probably also too arrogant to think they can get infected with spyware, so have absolutely no way to detect and remove it. So, what happens? Ooops, spyware on their PC figured out their AmeriTrade email address and they started getting spammed.
And, no, it's not AmeriTrade's fault you got spyware on your PC after visiting that black on blond porno site.
There are two separate things going on here.
First, the bill in the story has nothing to do with taxing internet email. It has to do with, specifically, sales taxes on goods purchased over the internet.
The second part of the story is about the temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes which limits taxes on items such as email, web surfing, etc.
Needless to say, these things are completely different. Leave it to crap|net to mix them all up to get your feathers ruffled.
In the first case, the bill being sponsored by Mr Envi, I kind of understand where he is coming from. States and local governments get a lot of their revenue from sales tax. Since there has been an increasing number of purchases made online, state and local governments and losing out on that sales tax money, which means they need to raise other taxes (e.g. property, fuel) in order to compensate. This hurts everyone, even those that do not own computers, and especially hurts the elderly who live on limited income. This bill also simplifies how states collect taxes for retailers to reduce paperwork, and has an exemption for e-tailers that earn less than $5 million a year doing internet sales.
On the temporary moratorium limiting broadband taxes, this is something that has been renewed every couple of years for the last several under the Republican-led congress. The idea is that general broadband services are not taxed, such as email and web surfing, at the federal and state levels. It does not appear this will be renewed which means *new* taxes could (and probably will) be added to Internet users.
Now that it is clear...
While some may point out that Mr. Enzi is a Republican raising taxes, he's not so much raising taxes as he is 1) simplifying sales taxes; 2) ensuring the "current" level of taxes imposed by states; 3) thus reducing property taxes; 4) helping maintain state governments who are having financial problems due to lack of sales tax revenue.
On the other hand, the Democrats, if they do not renew the ban on broadband taxes, will be creating new taxes that will impact every internet user. These are not taxes that are being avoided or taxes that are being suppressed.... these are NEW taxes.. and we all know how the Democrats love their taxes!
In order to complete your degree in education in PA, you have to complete, successfully, a certain number of hour student teaching. The result of her final student teaching semester was an overall performance rating of unsatisfactory by the administration of the high school she was student teaching as (keep in mind, the high school uses the same form to evaluate student teachers as normal teachers with an added on questionnaire, usually, from the university). So, because this student teacher received an unsatisfactory performance review from the high school, she did not complete the necessary number of credits to receive her degree in education.
The solution? Go back another semester to do your student teaching over again to get your credits and move on. Instead, she sues and makes a big deal, which means every school in the U.S. will think twice about hiring her.
(FYI... my girlfriend got her degree in education in PA as well, and we discussed this and all student teachers know how the process works for their evaluation).
Anyone who drives on the turnpike knows it's a virtual standstill 90% of the day, those turbines won't be spinning.
Now, back to being serious....
I drive the Garden State Parkway daily. It has taken workers at least 3 weeks to replace a 16' section of concrete barrier between the northbound and southbound lanes. So how long will this project take to implement exactly? Not to mention, what's the up front cost of such a thing? And at what point does the cost savings of the light rail energy actually outweigh the cost of this implementation. I'm guessing it's probably around 30 years. So why bother? I'm sure there will be plenty of other *better* solutions for free energy within the next 30 years. Oh wait, there already are. Like putting windmills off the shore of NJ and NY... except all the rich liberals keep complaining about how their views are being ruined.
Sigh... another waste of *my* taxpayer dollars.
So troll me now, you won't like what I have to say...
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a very political movie. If it wasn't, why is it presented and narrated by a Politician? Not a scientist, not someone who would actually have facts... but a guy who's job has been for the last 30 years to spin ANY news or ideas in the favor of his point of view.
So what's the problem with "Big Oil" donating money to teachers? Last time I checked, teachers were underpaid and schools underfunded. So, we have some organizations willing to give money to help out in our failing schools, and all the lefties complain. Where are the lefties donations? If they donated as much, or more than, "Big Oil" to such funds, then this wouldn't even be a discussion.
So do such organizations have the right to "protect" their funding sources? YES! Is it political? YES! Is "An Inconvient Truth" all fact? No, it's fact mixed in with a bunch of hypothesis, because in reality, no one really knows. What happened to that horrible hurricane season we were supposed to have this year... all the scientists told us it would happen... but yet it didn't!
Twenty years ago science told us we're entering an ice age... today we're "warming"... tomorrow? Who knows! Let's face it, most "science" relies on government funding. If, as a scientist, you say 'well, everything is as expected' or 'well, everything looks okay' then you don't get the next federal grant, because you just said everything was okay. So, you fudge the numbers, you make up things, and say 'ooooh this looks bad, I need to do more research' and the grant money continues to roll in. You write a few papers, get published a few times, do some talks making $10,000 per speech... and drive around in your brand new 7-series. All that doesn't happen when you say, 'I've spent the last 5 years to tell you everything is OK'.
And then there was also this quote:
Oh and those quotes comes from... OH YEAH THE SAME LETTER YOU QUOTED FROM. In fact, here's the full text of the letter
Abraham Lincoln was not a rich white politician... he was a poor, white lawyer who did "the circuit" (e.g. ran around with the judges who didnt reside in any one place and had to travel between small towns to do their job). He wasn't even expected to get the Republican nomination because he was not a politician.
Does the Democratic party have a forum?
Obviously with a vote of 410-15, the Democratic party has had their forum and agrees with the legislation. Now begone you partisan whorebag!
As I have said in other posts, the people who need to determine whether the President's actions are wrong is Congress with the assistance of the Judiciary. They are the only ones who have oversight of the President's actions. The problem is that Congress was complicite in the decision to perform the wiretaps (they knew about them, didnt have a problem with them until the information was leaked to the NY Times), so it's unlikely they will do anything.
And I'm hardly polarizing the arguments... I'm just stating facts. If stating facts is polarizing to you, then you obviously live in la-la land, and no one can help you there. Hope you get better soon.
You're little story doesn't fit. You can not use, as an excuse in court, that your actions were not illegal since it's the job of the court to determine if they were illegal. Silly, silly liberals. See, in the Justice system, a person is "accused" of a crime... but they are innocent until proven guilty, therefore until the President or someone else is convicted of breaking the law, their actions are not illegal. Their crime is 'alleged'. Newspapers have been sued for calling someone a murderer before ever being convicted of the crime.
There used to be something we said as kids, "it isn't illegal unless ya get caught". Although silly, it's really true. What seems wrong in your eyes does not count until a court says the actions were wrong. You feel that the President's actions were wrong; that's your opinion. Some people believe homosexuals marrying is wrong, and that's their opinion. Whether either action is ILLEGAL is up to the courts to decide. In the case of homosexuals marrying, some states have put into law that it is illegal, however, until the couple sees their day in court, they have nothing to fear.
But hey, it was worth a try... just like how liberals don't like to call people crossing the border improperly "illegal immigrants"... but rather, "undocumented workers". maybe we should call the President's illegal actions "undocumented maneuver".
Not at all, as I said, Congress has the ability to analyze the actions of the President. If they wanted to do so, they would be.
So, if you don't believe that the NSA wiretaps are to help fight terrorism, you must have some idea of why he would do such a thing. So, what is it?
So, if the "why" he gives is not reasonable in your eyes, what is the "why" that you think is the answer?
BTW, the thing about conspiracy theories and theorists is that they come up with a "how" but not a "why" that is plausable... usually it's far fetched and laughable. I'm sure some conspiracy theorist is going to say that the NSA wiretaps were put in place to make sure John Kerry wasn't calling Jaques Chirac for his endorsement... those are just silly statements. All in all, if you can not believe the President's reason (even if you do not agree with the methods), then you need to have another plausable reason why he would do that.
It's amazing, you're like the 2nd person to say that either the Department of Justice is either part of the judicial branch or is it's own branch of government when in fact, it's a department within the Executive Branch of government controlled by the President of the United States (as his directive under the Constitution). It's why he nominates individuals as the head of the Department of Justice (like Clinton putting up Janet Reno).
I think it's time you get your facts right, before you come out making statements.
The information has classified as "top secret" before the investigation began or before anyone even knew about it, so it's not like he's just decided to make the information top secret so the Department of Justice could not get to the information. The Department of Justice does not have access to this information because they are not classified appropriately to view it. By saying he effectively "blocked" them is spin, because what he actually did was implement proper access controls.
And thanks for bringing up Nixon... because it's the left's duty to try to compare Bush to Nixon as much as possible... and Iraq to Vietnam.
Why does it have to be what he has to hide? Why isn't it about what he's trying to accomplish by protecting the American people from another terrorist act? Since this is his claim, and it's a reasonable claim, why are you so suspicious to think the President is lying about it? Do you think he implemented such a program for other reasons? Or do you accept his explaination and question his methods? If the former, then you're more concerned with bashing him than actually getting answers. If the latter, then you can not say he's hiding anything, but simply trying to protect the information that gives sensitive details about a program used to protect Americans (and probably others in the world).
Yeah, but... the Justice Department is part of the Executive Branch of government.
And if you read the Constitution, it's call very clear who has the capability to do what in what branch of the government. The Senate has the ability to oversee the actions of the President and visa versa, with the judicial being the mediator. So, if Congress really felt the President had overstepped it's authority, then they would start something, but they haven't. The Senate could use it's power to get those documents released, by committee and by using the judicial branch, if they really wanted to.
... into the matter of who exactly authorized the illegal actions to take place.
Ahem, sorry to get "technical", but the actions haven't been proven to be illegal yet. They are "allegedly" illegal, since no one has been convicted of a crime (if that will ever happen).
But this is typical spin... the fact is that part of the power of the President, of all Presidents, is to decide on the classification of information within the executive branch of government. When something is classified as "top secret", it requires the President to say, "hey this can now be released to the public" before it is legal to actually do so. This is why we've been having these leak probes (although they haven't gone anywhere). It's called access control... it's there for a reason... and it's not to hinder an investigative probe into misconduct, but to prevent the hindering of investigations into terrorist activities.
My milkshake brings all the boys to my blog... and they're like, it's better than yours, damn right it's better than yours!
Mass transit only works in areas with a high concentration of people. In the 1960s, heck even today, there are lots of people who live outside of these areas making mass transportation highly ineffecient and costly. In Europe, on the other hand, a larger percentage of people live in urban areas and are better served by public transportation. However, the people who live in the rural parts of Europe still rely on gasoline powered cars.
Actually, despite what the "wonderful" slashdot editor says, not only did Ike see the Autobahn, but also saw it as an easy way to move troops and supplies around the country. For instance, there were standards to make sure every curve of the expressway system could handle an automobile at 85MPH (talking about a 1960s Jeep, not a 2006 Ferrari Enzo).. so it would not flip over. It also made sure there were large enough gaps between bridges and other structures to allow large aircraft to land within 10 miles of any point on the highway.