Remember, this issue is about surveillance of international communications. No, we're not, unless you are talking about something else. The President has admitted to authorizing wiretaps of domestic communications. Even the Justice Department doesn't think it's legal. Half the high-ranking officials at Justice threatened to resign and the President tried to get Ashcroft to sign off on it when Ashcroft was barely alive in intensive care. First, no, you do not know that was domestic. We do not have the details. You're make an ill-infomed guess. Second, you really think Bush should be impeached for a program that never went into effect, that he changed due to the concerns of the DOJ? You want to impeach him for something you think that is illegal that he DID NOT DO?
Lying to the public about a tie between Iraq and 9/11 is also impeachable, by the way. Bush never made such a claim. Cheney is also an impeachable official. And I don't recall him ever making such a claim either. If you have one, present it.
However, the proper place to adjudicate this dispute is not in a court of law, but rather before congress during an impeachment hearing. That is a matter of opinion, and one I disagree strongly with. Again, Congress can impeach over anything it wishes: it is the sole arbiter of that. But I believe it is highly improper for Congress to settle a legal dispute by enforcing its own will through impeachment.
The Constitution makes clear that the Supreme Court is the arbiter of the Constitution's meaning. I would view this as a serious breach of the separation of powers. How could a conviction by Congress on such a matter possibly be seen as legitimate? They would just be saying, "we're right because we said so," and using that as justification for removing the duly elected President.
Personally I think that that if congress were so inclined they could nail him to the wall on this one. The president failing to obey the law is a crime. I think you mean the President VIOLATING a law is a crime. Failing to obey a law is not necessarily a crime, because the President has discretion. In this case, of course, it is a violation of the law that is in question. But again, violating that law is only a crime if that law was legal to begin with. If Congress passed a law that said the President could not make a recess appointment, the President violating that law would be perfectly legitimate and reasonable, because the law itself, contradicting Article II, Section 2, would be invalid.
The question here is precisely whether this law's restrictions in this particular case were Constitutionally valid restrictions on the President. And only the Supreme Court can reasonably answer that question. The public, I assure you, would not take kindly to the Congress taking on the role of the President's Constitutional interpreter. The Congress is perfectly capable of filing with the Supreme Court to prevent the President from doing what they think is unconstitutional; do you ever wonder why the Democrats didn't do that? It's most likely because they weren't sure what the outcome would be.
I think it is likely that he willfully lied about WMD in Iraq I think it is not likely at all.
or was at least was negligent in not assembling a competent intelligence team Well, most of his intelligence came from Clinton's intelligence director.:-) That said, they could impeach on that if they wished, but what Democrats who want to be President want to open themselves up to impeachment for having incompetent underlings? Not gonna happen.
There are a mass of press conferences where he bald faced lied. All you had to do was spend 5 minutes and you could have actually known what you're talking about. Shrug. I've been asking for evdience for years, and people like you always come along and say I am full of it, but -- like you -- they are completely incapable of actually providing any evidence that Bush lied about WMD.
If there is evidence he lied about the intelligence, provide it. If you don't, then you're the liar.
Attacking me personally doesn't make you look right; on the contrary, it just makes you look more wrong, because you spend so much time attacking me instead of actually providing qa single shred of evidence that you claim is so plentiful, that would prove me wrong.
You'd be right, if this were a wide-open field of Constitutional scholarship, but it is not. That's simply not true.
History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect "domestic security." Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.
If you think that quote says what Bush did was illegal, you're wrong. All it does is lay out the general principle of the Fourth Amendment and the President's responsibilities, and doesn't address any specifics. It would be like taking a quote about not banning unpopopular speech, and saying it restricts the authority of government to restrict libel, enticing a riot, and so on.
There are many exmples of Presidents doing what Bush did, including Clinton. And even the FISA Court of Review explicitly stated:
[A]ll the other courts to have decided the issue [have] held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information.... We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power.
Remember, this issue is about surveillance of international communications. Caselaw here is very sparse.
we do not charge the President with crimes. What's impeachment, then? Impeachment. It's similar, but different. You can be impeached for crimes, but that is not being "charged" or "indicted" but "impeached." The President never enters the criminal justice system as a defendant, while he is President. (Part of the reason for this is that we have impeachment already, so it is not necessary, but further, because the President is the head of all the DOJ lawyers who would be prosecuting him; it's the old Unitary Executive thing: the President cannot prosecute himself.)
The President is charged with enforcing the law as passed by Congress... Signing statements not withstanding, of course. Signing statements are legally meaningless. Bush can write anything he wants in a signing statement, and it doesn't mean anything, unless he acts on it.
Even when grading him on a curve as you do Lie.
he comes up pretty poor. We are not talking about grading him, we are talking about impeaching him.
The grandparent is off in the weeds, but there's a perfectly good basis for impeaching Bush. He has plainly admitted to authorizing 45 wiretaps of domestic telephones without the approval of the FISA court. That is simply illegal. In fact it's a felony and it carries a 5-year jail sentence. That is a matter of opinion, and can only be properly adjudicated in court. The President's opinion -- one I largely disagree with, but am incapable of dismissing out of hand, due to precedent -- is that Congress did not have the authority to restrict him in that regard. You surely recognize that Congress cannot tell the President anything it wants to tell him, and the question is simply whether it has authority in this case. And we would be foolish to cede to Congress the authority to dictate Constitutiuonal interpretation to the President.
Some of the intelligence reports and letters handed to the President before speaking to Congress have been made public. They're in direct contradiction to his statements. That doesn't mean he lied. Case in point:
An agency reported that the aluminum tubes which the President claimed in a State of the Union address were evidence of nuclear arms buildup were not of a grade capable of deploying nuclear weapons. If you read all the reports, you would know that OTHERS reported to him that they WERE. Hell, we knew this back in July 2003. The White House declassified the NIE Iraq key judgments. Some agencies thought the tubes were evidence of a nuclear program, some thought they were not. Both judgments were made public FOUR YEARS AGO. And when we have alternate judgments being given to the President, it is simply unreasonable to say he is "lying" if he picks the one that seems best to him.
The man who investigated and officially reported no requests for uranium were made to an African nation was very surprised to hear the opposite claim by the President and Vice President. That's not true, in fact. Again, we knew this years ago, too: Joe Wilson's evidence was *separate* from the evidence Bush used in the State of the Union. The Butler Report makes clear that there were two distinct evidentiary claims being made; Wilson only reported on one of them. Also, he never made an official report, though that's beside the point.
There's plenty of direct evidence. You've provided none.
Lying to the public about a tie between Iraq and 9/11 is also impeachable, by the way. Bush never made such a claim.
To add to what Jhon said, it was not even Congress that decided to investigate the perjury, it was Janet Reno and the judges overseeing the independent prosecutor. Someone approached Starr with evidence that Clinton lied under oath, he went to Reno and the judges, and they told him to investigate it.
Note that Clinton DID commit perjury, a crime. He was not prosecuted for it while in office because we do not charge the President with crimes. When he left office, he struck a bargain to avoid prosecution.
His approval ratings are so low that the Democrats could safely bring impeachment charges without any real damage if they stick to what are the more sober charges: There are none.
1) Violating the 4th amendment. This is a legal dispute, and can be reasonably adjudicated only by the Court. For the Congress to enforce its Constitutional interpretation, which goes against past precedent and even existing opinion from the FISA Court of Review, would be a violation of separation of powers. The public would not look kindly on such a usurpation, especially when the program in question is not even in current operation.
2) Failing to protect the border, which is a legal obligation under Article 4, Section IV of the US Constitution. The President is charged with enforcing the law as passed by Congress, and in this regard he has done so as well as any President.
Also, that would be "Article IV, Section 4" not the other way around, and it is specific to the federal government, not the Executive. And the language it uses, "invasion," is something most legal experts think does not apply to illegal immigration (and again, even if it did, it would mean the Congress has failed in its duties to pass laws to repel such an invasion, and the Congress can hardly hold the President accountable for that).
3) Lying to Congress about the intelligence that lead us into Iraq. There is simply no evidence supporting this claim.
4) Lying to Congress about the true cost of his medicare expansion. Not only is there no evidence supporting this claim, but every Democratic leader is guilty of the same "crime." (And technically, Bush could not have lied to Congress about this anyway, since he did not introduce the bill! Indeed, it is not even POSSIBLE for him to do so.)
Keep trying! The Congress can impeach for any reason, of course, but you've offered only bad ones, that certainly would put the public against the Democrats, forcing them to take sides with Bush, which is the last thing the Democrats want. And besides, almost every Senator wants to be President: none of them would want to remove the President from office for such weak arguments.
Anybody with eyes can see that you think that people should not criticize sitting presidents, question electoral problems or point out possible conflicts of interest. Huh. Since I myself have many times criticized the current (as well as previous) sitting Presidents; since I have many times pointed out electoral problems (including in this very discussion); since I explicitly stated it was reasonable to point out possible conflict of interests, merely that it was inappropriate to publish a meaningless article without further facts...
Since I did not state any of the things you claim I think, and I have both explicitly and implicitly taken the opposite views, no, I don't think anybody with eyes can see any of those things. It takes a unique and willfull blindness to see what isn't there.
You've claimed that it's irresponsible to do all of those things. You're a liar. I never made any such claim, and you are incapable of showing otherwise.
Kill yourself, you democracy-hating, free-speech hating, fascist fuck. You need to get a dictionary and look up the words "democracy," "free speech," and "fascist."
I have read them. I've studied this topic in-depth. You, apparently, have not.
More lies from the self-contradictory fascist idiot. You conceded you were wrong about RFK's claims. So if you studied them in-depth, you must have done a very poor job.
And I contradicted YOU, not myself. You apparently have an identity crisis, which would explain a lot.
So you are simultaneously claiming that you have read the pre-watergate rumor stories... Yes.
... and also that there were no pre-watergate rumor stories. No, I claimed no such thing. Please learn to read KTHX HTHT HAND.
Kill yourself, you fascist fuck. As you have utterly failed to quote me saying or doing anything fascist, so I can only presume you have yet to look up what "fascist" means.
Watergate didn't break because of the reporters. It broke because of Deep Throat. With no Deep Throat, they would not have been able to break the story. Instead there would have been continued low-level stories about things that seemed fishy. And... that has nothing to do with my point, or yours.
And yes, read the papers from back them, prior to Woodward and Bernstein, people knew something was up, but couldn't quite get enough detail to nail it down. I have read them. I've studied this topic in-depth. You, apparently, have not.
Effectively, you've given MORE evidence that it's good to make suspicion public, because occasionally somebody else (Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat) will manage to get all the right access to finish the investigation. Riiiiiiiiiight. Pointing out the fact that Woodward and Bernstein did not print mere supposition as evidence of wrongdoing is evidence that it is a good thing to print mere supposition as evidence of wrongdoing.
You sure are a thinker!
But hey, keep pretending you're not a fascist. I read your horrible journal, in which you intimate that nobody should criticize the president simply because he was elected. You're a liar (or stupid... hard to tell at this point). I did no such thing. I said that a particular criticism -- that he is not listening to the American people -- is nonsense, because, well, it is self-evidently false. Feel free to use that criticism against Bush, and thereby prove yourself to be an idiot who doesn't undertsand the Constitution.
You're a fascist. Let me spell it out for you F A S C I S T. Your ability to spell is not in question. It's your ability to understand English words that is proven, which each passing post from you, to be... wanting.
I'd just like to start out by saying that I am overjoyed, filled with laughter and mirth and happiness, that when you get backed into a corner you just get angrier and angrier. I love that shit. Keep it up.
I know what fascist means you arrogant fuck.
Well, it wasn't clear from what you wrote. Either you don't know what fascist means, or you don't understand my views, as you go on to demonstrate below.
I call you fascist because you seek to quash all dissent or disparagement of the horrific joke that is our elections. I call you fascist because you do not respect man's right to criticize or investigate the government. I call you fascist because your whole line of thought presumes that one should never investigate the government.
You call me fascist for something that I not only didn't do, but that you are incapable of showing that I ever did. Gotcha!
That's the logical conclusion of your awful ideas where everybody must self-censor unless they have full access to all of the information required to do a full investigation.
You have no understanding of journalism, or what I actually wrote.
Look at Woodward and Bernstein, the canonical example of modern investigative journalism. They did not publish their stories about Nixon's coverup until they had, in hand, damning evidence. They didn't publish mere supposition. I never implied anything about not investigating; I said that publishing mere suppposition without significant evidence is irresponsible and stupid.
In fact, I explicitly implied that it should be investigated, when I wrote, "The way responsible journalism has traditionally worked is that if a journalist happens upon something that seems a bit fishy, then he investigates it."
Maybe you have some sort of mental block that makes you think such things can, or should, only be investigated by the "proper authorities," and that the only way to inform the authorities is to write a newspaper article that contains no actual evidence that even implies wrongdoing.
You say stupid shit, about how if all you have is significant suspicion of wrong-doing, you should just keep that to yourself, instead of bringing it to the attention of people who might have the power to actually confirm or deny the wrongdoing.
I neither said nor implied anything like that, of course, as any moron can plainly see.
Oh, and as for your requests of you implying that there were no problems worth discussion:
Those irregularities existed, but were not significant (according to Sekhon).
You pull this quote out of context and the word significant ends up meaning something significantly different than what Sekhon intended. In the original quote it meant "sufficient to tip the balance of the election", but out of context it implies a more general, and lower standard of significance.
So your entire repeated claim that I am a "fascist fuck" is based on you incorrectly presuming that I used the word differently from Sekhon's intended meaning.
In fact, it is, from the written record, not remotely reasonable to presume I could have meant that. What I quoted Sekhon saying was, precisely, was "There were some irregularities (such as the allocation of voting machines), but they were not large enough to change the outcome." And directly referencing that, I said Sekhon said the irregularities were not "significant." He never used the word, I did; there is no possible way to read what I wrote and presume I meant something by it other than that "they were not large enough to change the outcome." In the context, that is precisely what "significant" has to mean.
You should feel stupid right now.
When I pointed out that patterns of corruption should be investigated to see what is what, you retorted with an utterly retarded analogy about sports betting, and were so fucking stupid that you failed to notice that you were essentially provi
Translation: "fuck, pudge is right, and I can't respond to his claims, so I am going to pretend I have the upper hand by calling him a troll."
The only thing you're right of is Mussolini, you fascist fuck. Yawn. Name one thing I said that was incorrect. Just one.
And then look up "fascist" in the dictionary and describe to me what fascist views you think I have. That oughtta be fun.
It's disingenuous at best to pretend that your original posts didn't imply that there should be no criticism of the problems in the elections. Quote me implying that. Go ahead. If you're so certain of it, it must be because you can back that claim up. Or that you're full of shit.
I am betting on the latter, but go ahead, prove you're not completely full of shit. All you have to do is show one thing I said that was incorrect, and show me implying that there should be no criticism of problems in the elections.
Otherwise, there is no reasonable conclusion but that you're full of shit.
The democrats were stating that there was a margin of error on their data for both the actual count, and the exact reasons. No. Read it again. They could not show causation. "Presumably" was not a word they picked out of thin air. They do not know what the reasons were: they are guessing. It's a reasonable guess, but it is still only a guess.
RFK was incorrect to remove that uncertainty (even though he was writing for a lay audience) It's not removing uncertainty to go from presumed caustion to actual causation. That is a lie. And it's more than just the bullshit about the 174,000. Look at the rest of it. He flat-out lied on everything.
but you're equally incorrect in using this uncertainty as evidence that the data should be disregarded in it's entirety. If I had done that, you'd be correct. Now you're lying by saying I did that.
Your entire post reads the same way, that because a percentage of the problems may be incorrect, the whole thing should be ignored. Bullshit. Did you read what I posted? ALL of the other "problems" I listed in fact are not actually problems, according to the evidence. It is not a "problem" to purge voter rolls. It is not a "problem" to require compliance with voter registration laws. It is not a "problem" that people decided to not vote for President.
Is it POSSIBLE that people were incorrectly purged? Is it POSSIBLE that there were people incorrectly unavailable to vote in Cuyahoga County? Is it POSSIBLE that some of the ballots without a vote for President were incorrectly ignored? Yes, of course, but there is NO EVIDENCE of that. So to claim it is total bullshit.
Here is what I said: I have looked in-depth into the many claims made about how Ohio was "stolen," including the claims made by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone, and it is almost all total bullshit. He completely made up almost all of the "disenfranchised Democratic voters" he claimed.
My claim is entirely factual. That's not to say there weren't problems. But read what I wrote: a. Ohio was not stolen; b. almost all of the "disenfranchised Democrat voters" RFK claimed were made-up. That is all true (even if we say that only two percent, roughly 120,000, were "disenfranchised", we still don't know they were Democrats, as RFK claimed they were... at most we can claim with some certainty that roughly 80,000 Democrats were disenfranchised, against 40,000 Republicans, meaning a net of 40,000 out of the 350,000 he claimed).
I never said there were no problems, nor did I imply it. I said Ohio was not stolen, and that RFK is full of crap. And the evidence backs me up.
While I agree that scope was reported in an irresponsible way, your implication that the problems were non-existent, or not worthy of discussion is abhorrent. And you're lying by saying I did that, which is equally as abhorrent of what you accused me of, which I didn't do. You have to be seriously stupid to think I was implying the problems were nonexistent or unworthy of discussion when, to support my argument, I quoted a Democratic statistician SAYING that some of the problems were there and that they should have been fixed.
I am proud to be on your foe list, for it is clear that you have no respect for logic, truth, or democracy. The proof is in the pudding. I said nothing at all incorrect or misleading, and every criticism you've made of me has been either a false representation of the evidence, a false representation of my argument, or a simple ad hominem.
Or to be more concise: go fuck yourself you stupid fucking fascist troll. Translation: "fuck, pudge is right, and I can't respond to his claims, so I am going to pretend I have the upper hand by calling him a troll."
I don't take kindly to overtly dishonest hit-and-run argument. If you decide to respond to me, I may un-Foe you; until then, I consider you incapable of rational discussion and therefore unsuitable to post in my journal. Whether you care or not is not my concern.
That said, I have looked in-depth into the many claims made about how Ohio was "stolen," including the claims made by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone, and it is almost all total bullshit. He completely made up almost all of the "disenfranchised Democratic voters" he claimed.
Having done the same, I am now sure that you are a liar, a troll or both.
Either way, further discussion is pointless, as you clearly have an anti-truth agenda.
Huh. You accuse me of wrongdoing, yet you are the one introducing several logical fallacies, including at least two overt argumentums ad hominem.
Do you really want to defend RFK Jr.'s lies? Don't give me your ad hominem bullshit. If you are too bored or lazy or disinterested to have a discussion, say so; don't try to fool people into think you are superior just because you called me a liar (and so far have shown no ability whatsoever to back it up).
174,000 of these he claims were "forced to leave" because of long lines. But that number is conjured from thin air from a stat that says something else. Democrat experts estimated that "not providing a sufficient number of voting machines in each precinct was associated with roughly a two to three percent reduction in voter turnout presumably due to delays that deterred many people from voting." (emphasis mine) RFK omits the words "roughly" and "presumably" and changes "two to three" to "three" and changes "was associated with" to "caused." That is how he came up with 174,000.
That is half of the supposed 374,000. Want to continue?
Next up is 72,000. This, he says, is the number "disenfranchised by avoidable registration errors." But the 72,000 is not how many were disallowed from voting at all. That's the number of people who were either "at risk" votes, or "may have been lost." None of those 72,000 may have actually lost the right to vote, and of those that did, they might have been perfectly legitimate reasons for losing the right to vote (such as refusing to give enough information on the registration card, or perhaps even giving disqualifying information, such as not being a citizen, etc.). Every single one of those 72,000 who was not excluded by law from voting had the opportunity to fix the problem prior to voting (including at the poll on election day).
So that one is wrong. Wanna keep going?
The 66,000 he claims were invalidated by faulty voting equipment is not backed up by any data whatsoever. 95,000 ballots had no vote for President, and he just assumes at least 66,000 of those were improperly invalidated. He completely made this number up from thin air.
Same goes for the 30,000. 300,000 people were legally purged from the voter rolls. He assumes that at least 30,000 of those would have voted AND would have gotten their notice of purging lost in the mail. Again, he just made this number up.
That leaves 15,000, and for the sake of argument, let's just say, fine, those 15,000 were disenfranchised (there's no evidence for at least 5,000 of the 15,000, but whatever). 15,000 is not enough to overturn the election.
The Democrats' own expert, Jasjeet Sekhon, said to me in e-mail:
RFK's article is misconceiving, socially damaging and simply wrong---much like his previous one on autism and vaccines. RFK selectively cites the DNC report. More voters supported Bush in Ohio in 2004 than Kerry. There is no scientific evidence that they did not. There were some irregularities (such as the allocation of voting machines), but they were not large enough to change the outcome. Bush won in 2004; Democrats have to admit that he really did if they are to fix their
no matter how antipartisan Adams claimed to be, he declined to veto the Sedition Act, which had a number of plainly partisan features. Cheif among them, it did not apply to criticisms of the Vice President -who happened to be Jefferson, of the opposing party And perhaps more importantly, it did not apply to criticisms made by Hamilton and other Federalists, of Adams himself. While the record shows it was focused only on the Democrat-Republicans, it also shows, I think, that Adams was less interested in protecting himself than he was of appeasing the Federalists in Congress.
Had he been truly antipartisan, he would have refused to take up such a tool. I don't think that's right. I think he was a willing participant of partisan enforcement of the Sedition Act as a means to gain Federalist support for, to his mind, more important things: resolution of the war with France.
Not that it worked. The Federalists eventually abandoned him entirely, and the Democrat-Republicans (led by Jefferson in the effort) undermined the very Adams policy that they agreed with.
I simply wanted to point out that Adams himself had a role in the use of government power to suppress his opponents; it wasn't just his supporters, as you seemed - intentionally or not - to be implying. I don't think I seemed to imply that. I even noted, "That's not to say [Adams] thought them entirely bad ideas, of course...." And of course, I implicitly conceded the (obviously unassailable) point that he signed the act, and executed it. I am not saying he had no role, I am saying he had different motives than those of the Federalists in Congress, and that he would not have done it if he were not pushed into it by them.
Whereas Adams merely jailed or deported his opponents without trial, while gangs of his supporters smashed up rival presses and beat the pressmen. "Whereas"? Apparently you missed the part where I made specific reference to the Sedition Act?
And as to deporation, no, that didn't happen. You should know more about your own ancestor: he never deported anyone under the Alien Acts.
Still, in the main I think Adams - my ancestor - and his supporters were guilty of the greater sins. I can't agree in re Adams. Adams did not actually use the Alien Acts, and all the acts were pushed on him by Hamilton and the Federalists: he basically agreed to them because he needed their support for his policy in the war, and so on. That's not to say he thought them entirely bad ideas, of course, I am just saying that Adams would not have done that on his own, as he was the one person at the time (apart from Washington, now in retirement) who wanted to rise above partisanship.
His supporters, yes, were worse than what Jefferson did in some ways, although as bad as the Sedition Act was, I still find what Jefferson did more offensive. Not because it was actually worse, but because politicians still do it today -- that is, sacrifice national security for politics, attacking policies for justice peace that you agree with, merely in order to get political advantage -- whereas there are no more Sedition Acts. At least we've learned from the mistakes of the Federalists.
Partisan politics seem to get worse and worse every year. No, it doesn't. It's actually far better than it used to be, back when the sitting Vice President hired a newspaperman to slander the sitting President, just because they were from different parties. Thomas Jefferson not only hired James Callendar to lie about John Adams, he himself lied about Adams' plan to peacefully end the Quasi-War with France -- even though he agreed with Adams' plan! -- in order to make the plan fail, just so he could have a better chance to win the presidency himself.
Of course, some of this was after Adams' party, the Federalists, voted to make it illegal for Jefferson's party, the Democrat-Republicans, to criticize the Federalists. And people went to jail for it.
It's an interesting play because the Dems do have enough votes to impeach Cheney No, they do not. There are enough Democrats to impeach Cheney, but not nearly enough Democrats who would vote to impeach Cheney. The resolution won't break 100 votes probably, let alone 200 or a majority.
With all respect, it seems crazy that the US lets political parties touch the votes at all. We do not. We let the individuals elected by the voters for the expressed purpose of touching the votes, touch the votes. Sometimes those people have political affiliations, but they are not themselves parties, or acting as representatives of the parties.
That is, for example, why a Republican keeps getting elected Secretary of State in Washington, even though it's a left-leaning state: because people trust him, despite that he is from the "other" party. That is why I am supporting a candidate for county auditor who some say may lean Democrat, because I know her personally and trust her.
The parties themselves do not touch the votes. They do often have representatives watching the vote counting process etc., one or more from each party. But those people do not touch the votes.
Most democracies (afaik) have their electoral system set up so that vote fraud could only be accomplished by a conspiracy of a dozen or more people who held key positions. How do you think it would be possible to do it in the U.S. without a conspiracy of dozens of people in key positions?
Using physical ballots makes this much easier, by the way. Makes what easier, vote fraud? Not sure what you mean here.
Where is the accountability? There's a ton of accountability, from the voters themselves choosing those key people in charge, to the auditing process, and in between.
The voting system should be above reproach. It is. These people complaining are grasping at straws.
If you want to see change in the politics of the US, don't vote for a third party, vote for electoral reform. Which would entail what, exactly?
When I notice dozens of hinky "coincidences", I tend to assume that I have noticed a pattern, and should act as though the pattern is likely to continue.
My scientific mind knows that there are, in fact, far more examples of mere coincidence in this world than actual patterns. All four major Boston sports teams beat St. Louis either for their first championship (Celtics in '57, Patriots in '01) or for their first in several decades (Bruins in '70, Sox in '04). And all four teams lost the following season, but the Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots all came back to win the championship the following season ('59, '72, '03).
If you assumed the pattern was likely to continue (as I jokingly did at the time), you would have put a lot of money down on the Sox to lose in '05 and win in '06, shortly after they beat St. Louis in '04. And you would have been extremely foolish to do so. And you would have lost any money you put down for '06.
Have you seen the documentary "Loose Change"? It pulls together lots of claims of "coincidence" and so on to weave a fairy tale about how the federal government was behind 9/11, not Bin Laden. Total bullshit from start to finish. Funny, really. Now, I am not trying to say you're a crazy conspiracy theorist; I am just saying, you can tell any story you want to through "coincidence." But upon examination of all the facts, it often comes crumbling down.
Now I don't know if they were trying to use early access to results to play a recount selection or some other manipulation game, but no matter what, the coincidence deserves attention.
Knock yourself out. I never implied that no one did anything wrong, or that people should not be curious. I only stated, factually, that there is no substantive evidence of wrongdoing that's yet been presented.
It seems quite unlikely that the low-bid for this contract service would come from the same company that also runs the RNC infrastructure.
No, it's actually not at all unlikely. I put myself in their shoes. I am the Secretary of State of Ohio, a Republican, and my IT people tell me we need to move some serving duties to an outside source to handle the increase in traffic for election week. So I think, hey, I know about this company over here, we've done a lot of work with them, and they're good. They can handle it. I put in a call and that's that. Just where did you come up with "quite unlikely"?
It's all quite "coincidental".
Pet English peeve: any two events that are linked by incidence are "coincidental." Me replying to you is coincidental, too. A ball being dropped, then hitting the ground, is coincidental. What people usually mean when they say "coincidental" is "merely coincidental," where the "merely" implies that the only relationship between the two events is coincidence, and nothing more.
So I'm not making any specific accusations of wrongdoing
Fine. But you are implying that there was LIKELY some wrongdoing, and the facts do not warrant that claim.
but I think that only an extraordinarily optimistic fool would look at Ohio or Florida and say "there's no story here."
I never said anything of the sort. I never said there is no story in either place, I only say that there is no substantive evidence of wrongdoing. What I implied about "no story" was not general to Ohio or Florida, but to this specific claim of IP addresses.
That said, I have looked in-depth into the many claims made about how Ohio was "stolen," including the claims made by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone, and it is almost all total bullshit. He completely made up almost all of the "disenfranchised Democratic voters" he claimed.
It seems far wiser to raise awareness that there was an unusual and outwardly untoward pattern of events, and see if somebody can investigate further to shed more light on the data.
No, it really doesn't. Not to me. I can come up with
Slashdot Mirror
The Constitution makes clear that the Supreme Court is the arbiter of the Constitution's meaning. I would view this as a serious breach of the separation of powers. How could a conviction by Congress on such a matter possibly be seen as legitimate? They would just be saying, "we're right because we said so," and using that as justification for removing the duly elected President. Personally I think that that if congress were so inclined they could nail him to the wall on this one. The president failing to obey the law is a crime. I think you mean the President VIOLATING a law is a crime. Failing to obey a law is not necessarily a crime, because the President has discretion. In this case, of course, it is a violation of the law that is in question. But again, violating that law is only a crime if that law was legal to begin with. If Congress passed a law that said the President could not make a recess appointment, the President violating that law would be perfectly legitimate and reasonable, because the law itself, contradicting Article II, Section 2, would be invalid.
The question here is precisely whether this law's restrictions in this particular case were Constitutionally valid restrictions on the President. And only the Supreme Court can reasonably answer that question. The public, I assure you, would not take kindly to the Congress taking on the role of the President's Constitutional interpreter. The Congress is perfectly capable of filing with the Supreme Court to prevent the President from doing what they think is unconstitutional; do you ever wonder why the Democrats didn't do that? It's most likely because they weren't sure what the outcome would be. I think it is likely that he willfully lied about WMD in Iraq I think it is not likely at all. or was at least was negligent in not assembling a competent intelligence team Well, most of his intelligence came from Clinton's intelligence director.
If there is evidence he lied about the intelligence, provide it. If you don't, then you're the liar.
Attacking me personally doesn't make you look right; on the contrary, it just makes you look more wrong, because you spend so much time attacking me instead of actually providing qa single shred of evidence that you claim is so plentiful, that would prove me wrong.
If you think that quote says what Bush did was illegal, you're wrong. All it does is lay out the general principle of the Fourth Amendment and the President's responsibilities, and doesn't address any specifics. It would be like taking a quote about not banning unpopopular speech, and saying it restricts the authority of government to restrict libel, enticing a riot, and so on.
There are many exmples of Presidents doing what Bush did, including Clinton. And even the FISA Court of Review explicitly stated:
Remember, this issue is about surveillance of international communications. Caselaw here is very sparse.
To add to what Jhon said, it was not even Congress that decided to investigate the perjury, it was Janet Reno and the judges overseeing the independent prosecutor. Someone approached Starr with evidence that Clinton lied under oath, he went to Reno and the judges, and they told him to investigate it.
Note that Clinton DID commit perjury, a crime. He was not prosecuted for it while in office because we do not charge the President with crimes. When he left office, he struck a bargain to avoid prosecution.
Also, that would be "Article IV, Section 4" not the other way around, and it is specific to the federal government, not the Executive. And the language it uses, "invasion," is something most legal experts think does not apply to illegal immigration (and again, even if it did, it would mean the Congress has failed in its duties to pass laws to repel such an invasion, and the Congress can hardly hold the President accountable for that). 3) Lying to Congress about the intelligence that lead us into Iraq. There is simply no evidence supporting this claim. 4) Lying to Congress about the true cost of his medicare expansion. Not only is there no evidence supporting this claim, but every Democratic leader is guilty of the same "crime." (And technically, Bush could not have lied to Congress about this anyway, since he did not introduce the bill! Indeed, it is not even POSSIBLE for him to do so.)
Keep trying! The Congress can impeach for any reason, of course, but you've offered only bad ones, that certainly would put the public against the Democrats, forcing them to take sides with Bush, which is the last thing the Democrats want. And besides, almost every Senator wants to be President: none of them would want to remove the President from office for such weak arguments.
Since I did not state any of the things you claim I think, and I have both explicitly and implicitly taken the opposite views, no, I don't think anybody with eyes can see any of those things. It takes a unique and willfull blindness to see what isn't there. You've claimed that it's irresponsible to do all of those things. You're a liar. I never made any such claim, and you are incapable of showing otherwise. Kill yourself, you democracy-hating, free-speech hating, fascist fuck. You need to get a dictionary and look up the words "democracy," "free speech," and "fascist."
More lies from the self-contradictory fascist idiot. You conceded you were wrong about RFK's claims. So if you studied them in-depth, you must have done a very poor job.
And I contradicted YOU, not myself. You apparently have an identity crisis, which would explain a lot.
So you are simultaneously claiming that you have read the pre-watergate rumor stories
... and also that there were no pre-watergate rumor stories. No, I claimed no such thing. Please learn to read KTHX HTHT HAND. Kill yourself, you fascist fuck. As you have utterly failed to quote me saying or doing anything fascist, so I can only presume you have yet to look up what "fascist" means.You sure are a thinker! But hey, keep pretending you're not a fascist. I read your horrible journal, in which you intimate that nobody should criticize the president simply because he was elected. You're a liar (or stupid
I know what fascist means you arrogant fuck.
Well, it wasn't clear from what you wrote. Either you don't know what fascist means, or you don't understand my views, as you go on to demonstrate below.
I call you fascist because you seek to quash all dissent or disparagement of the horrific joke that is our elections. I call you fascist because you do not respect man's right to criticize or investigate the government. I call you fascist because your whole line of thought presumes that one should never investigate the government.
You call me fascist for something that I not only didn't do, but that you are incapable of showing that I ever did. Gotcha!
That's the logical conclusion of your awful ideas where everybody must self-censor unless they have full access to all of the information required to do a full investigation.
You have no understanding of journalism, or what I actually wrote.
Look at Woodward and Bernstein, the canonical example of modern investigative journalism. They did not publish their stories about Nixon's coverup until they had, in hand, damning evidence. They didn't publish mere supposition. I never implied anything about not investigating; I said that publishing mere suppposition without significant evidence is irresponsible and stupid.
In fact, I explicitly implied that it should be investigated, when I wrote, "The way responsible journalism has traditionally worked is that if a journalist happens upon something that seems a bit fishy, then he investigates it."
Maybe you have some sort of mental block that makes you think such things can, or should, only be investigated by the "proper authorities," and that the only way to inform the authorities is to write a newspaper article that contains no actual evidence that even implies wrongdoing.
You say stupid shit, about how if all you have is significant suspicion of wrong-doing, you should just keep that to yourself, instead of bringing it to the attention of people who might have the power to actually confirm or deny the wrongdoing.
I neither said nor implied anything like that, of course, as any moron can plainly see.
Oh, and as for your requests of you implying that there were no problems worth discussion:
Those irregularities existed, but were not significant (according to Sekhon).
You pull this quote out of context and the word significant ends up meaning something significantly different than what Sekhon intended. In the original quote it meant "sufficient to tip the balance of the election", but out of context it implies a more general, and lower standard of significance.
So your entire repeated claim that I am a "fascist fuck" is based on you incorrectly presuming that I used the word differently from Sekhon's intended meaning.
In fact, it is, from the written record, not remotely reasonable to presume I could have meant that. What I quoted Sekhon saying was, precisely, was "There were some irregularities (such as the allocation of voting machines), but they were not large enough to change the outcome." And directly referencing that, I said Sekhon said the irregularities were not "significant." He never used the word, I did; there is no possible way to read what I wrote and presume I meant something by it other than that "they were not large enough to change the outcome." In the context, that is precisely what "significant" has to mean.
You should feel stupid right now.
When I pointed out that patterns of corruption should be investigated to see what is what, you retorted with an utterly retarded analogy about sports betting, and were so fucking stupid that you failed to notice that you were essentially provi
The only thing you're right of is Mussolini, you fascist fuck. Yawn. Name one thing I said that was incorrect. Just one.
And then look up "fascist" in the dictionary and describe to me what fascist views you think I have. That oughtta be fun. It's disingenuous at best to pretend that your original posts didn't imply that there should be no criticism of the problems in the elections. Quote me implying that. Go ahead. If you're so certain of it, it must be because you can back that claim up. Or that you're full of shit.
I am betting on the latter, but go ahead, prove you're not completely full of shit. All you have to do is show one thing I said that was incorrect, and show me implying that there should be no criticism of problems in the elections.
Otherwise, there is no reasonable conclusion but that you're full of shit.
Is it POSSIBLE that people were incorrectly purged? Is it POSSIBLE that there were people incorrectly unavailable to vote in Cuyahoga County? Is it POSSIBLE that some of the ballots without a vote for President were incorrectly ignored? Yes, of course, but there is NO EVIDENCE of that. So to claim it is total bullshit.
Here is what I said: I have looked in-depth into the many claims made about how Ohio was "stolen," including the claims made by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone, and it is almost all total bullshit. He completely made up almost all of the "disenfranchised Democratic voters" he claimed.
My claim is entirely factual. That's not to say there weren't problems. But read what I wrote: a. Ohio was not stolen; b. almost all of the "disenfranchised Democrat voters" RFK claimed were made-up. That is all true (even if we say that only two percent, roughly 120,000, were "disenfranchised", we still don't know they were Democrats, as RFK claimed they were
I never said there were no problems, nor did I imply it. I said Ohio was not stolen, and that RFK is full of crap. And the evidence backs me up. While I agree that scope was reported in an irresponsible way, your implication that the problems were non-existent, or not worthy of discussion is abhorrent. And you're lying by saying I did that, which is equally as abhorrent of what you accused me of, which I didn't do. You have to be seriously stupid to think I was implying the problems were nonexistent or unworthy of discussion when, to support my argument, I quoted a Democratic statistician SAYING that some of the problems were there and that they should have been fixed. I am proud to be on your foe list, for it is clear that you have no respect for logic, truth, or democracy. The proof is in the pudding. I said nothing at all incorrect or misleading, and every criticism you've made of me has been either a false representation of the evidence, a false representation of my argument, or a simple ad hominem. Or to be more concise: go fuck yourself you stupid fucking fascist troll. Translation: "fuck, pudge is right, and I can't respond to his claims, so I am going to pretend I have the upper hand by calling him a troll."
I don't take kindly to overtly dishonest hit-and-run argument. If you decide to respond to me, I may un-Foe you; until then, I consider you incapable of rational discussion and therefore unsuitable to post in my journal. Whether you care or not is not my concern.
That said, I have looked in-depth into the many claims made about how Ohio was "stolen," including the claims made by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone, and it is almost all total bullshit. He completely made up almost all of the "disenfranchised Democratic voters" he claimed.
Having done the same, I am now sure that you are a liar, a troll or both.
Either way, further discussion is pointless, as you clearly have an anti-truth agenda.
Huh. You accuse me of wrongdoing, yet you are the one introducing several logical fallacies, including at least two overt argumentums ad hominem.
Do you really want to defend RFK Jr.'s lies? Don't give me your ad hominem bullshit. If you are too bored or lazy or disinterested to have a discussion, say so; don't try to fool people into think you are superior just because you called me a liar (and so far have shown no ability whatsoever to back it up).
I'll even go first, and I'll make it simple.
RFK Jr. says that 374,000 voters were disenfranchised by Republicans.
174,000 of these he claims were "forced to leave" because of long lines. But that number is conjured from thin air from a stat that says something else. Democrat experts estimated that "not providing a sufficient number of voting machines in each precinct was associated with roughly a two to three percent reduction in voter turnout presumably due to delays that deterred many people from voting." (emphasis mine) RFK omits the words "roughly" and "presumably" and changes "two to three" to "three" and changes "was associated with" to "caused." That is how he came up with 174,000.
That is half of the supposed 374,000. Want to continue?
Next up is 72,000. This, he says, is the number "disenfranchised by avoidable registration errors." But the 72,000 is not how many were disallowed from voting at all. That's the number of people who were either "at risk" votes, or "may have been lost." None of those 72,000 may have actually lost the right to vote, and of those that did, they might have been perfectly legitimate reasons for losing the right to vote (such as refusing to give enough information on the registration card, or perhaps even giving disqualifying information, such as not being a citizen, etc.). Every single one of those 72,000 who was not excluded by law from voting had the opportunity to fix the problem prior to voting (including at the poll on election day).
So that one is wrong. Wanna keep going?
The 66,000 he claims were invalidated by faulty voting equipment is not backed up by any data whatsoever. 95,000 ballots had no vote for President, and he just assumes at least 66,000 of those were improperly invalidated. He completely made this number up from thin air.
Same goes for the 30,000. 300,000 people were legally purged from the voter rolls. He assumes that at least 30,000 of those would have voted AND would have gotten their notice of purging lost in the mail. Again, he just made this number up.
That leaves 15,000, and for the sake of argument, let's just say, fine, those 15,000 were disenfranchised (there's no evidence for at least 5,000 of the 15,000, but whatever). 15,000 is not enough to overturn the election.
The Democrats' own expert, Jasjeet Sekhon, said to me in e-mail:
Not that it worked. The Federalists eventually abandoned him entirely, and the Democrat-Republicans (led by Jefferson in the effort) undermined the very Adams policy that they agreed with. I simply wanted to point out that Adams himself had a role in the use of government power to suppress his opponents; it wasn't just his supporters, as you seemed - intentionally or not - to be implying. I don't think I seemed to imply that. I even noted, "That's not to say [Adams] thought them entirely bad ideas, of course
And as to deporation, no, that didn't happen. You should know more about your own ancestor: he never deported anyone under the Alien Acts. Still, in the main I think Adams - my ancestor - and his supporters were guilty of the greater sins. I can't agree in re Adams. Adams did not actually use the Alien Acts, and all the acts were pushed on him by Hamilton and the Federalists: he basically agreed to them because he needed their support for his policy in the war, and so on. That's not to say he thought them entirely bad ideas, of course, I am just saying that Adams would not have done that on his own, as he was the one person at the time (apart from Washington, now in retirement) who wanted to rise above partisanship.
His supporters, yes, were worse than what Jefferson did in some ways, although as bad as the Sedition Act was, I still find what Jefferson did more offensive. Not because it was actually worse, but because politicians still do it today -- that is, sacrifice national security for politics, attacking policies for justice peace that you agree with, merely in order to get political advantage -- whereas there are no more Sedition Acts. At least we've learned from the mistakes of the Federalists.
Of course, some of this was after Adams' party, the Federalists, voted to make it illegal for Jefferson's party, the Democrat-Republicans, to criticize the Federalists. And people went to jail for it.
That is, for example, why a Republican keeps getting elected Secretary of State in Washington, even though it's a left-leaning state: because people trust him, despite that he is from the "other" party. That is why I am supporting a candidate for county auditor who some say may lean Democrat, because I know her personally and trust her.
The parties themselves do not touch the votes. They do often have representatives watching the vote counting process etc., one or more from each party. But those people do not touch the votes. Most democracies (afaik) have their electoral system set up so that vote fraud could only be accomplished by a conspiracy of a dozen or more people who held key positions. How do you think it would be possible to do it in the U.S. without a conspiracy of dozens of people in key positions? Using physical ballots makes this much easier, by the way. Makes what easier, vote fraud? Not sure what you mean here. Where is the accountability? There's a ton of accountability, from the voters themselves choosing those key people in charge, to the auditing process, and in between. The voting system should be above reproach. It is. These people complaining are grasping at straws. If you want to see change in the politics of the US, don't vote for a third party, vote for electoral reform. Which would entail what, exactly?
When I notice dozens of hinky "coincidences", I tend to assume that I have noticed a pattern, and should act as though the pattern is likely to continue.
My scientific mind knows that there are, in fact, far more examples of mere coincidence in this world than actual patterns. All four major Boston sports teams beat St. Louis either for their first championship (Celtics in '57, Patriots in '01) or for their first in several decades (Bruins in '70, Sox in '04). And all four teams lost the following season, but the Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots all came back to win the championship the following season ('59, '72, '03).
If you assumed the pattern was likely to continue (as I jokingly did at the time), you would have put a lot of money down on the Sox to lose in '05 and win in '06, shortly after they beat St. Louis in '04. And you would have been extremely foolish to do so. And you would have lost any money you put down for '06.
Have you seen the documentary "Loose Change"? It pulls together lots of claims of "coincidence" and so on to weave a fairy tale about how the federal government was behind 9/11, not Bin Laden. Total bullshit from start to finish. Funny, really. Now, I am not trying to say you're a crazy conspiracy theorist; I am just saying, you can tell any story you want to through "coincidence." But upon examination of all the facts, it often comes crumbling down.
Now I don't know if they were trying to use early access to results to play a recount selection or some other manipulation game, but no matter what, the coincidence deserves attention.
Knock yourself out. I never implied that no one did anything wrong, or that people should not be curious. I only stated, factually, that there is no substantive evidence of wrongdoing that's yet been presented.
It seems quite unlikely that the low-bid for this contract service would come from the same company that also runs the RNC infrastructure.
No, it's actually not at all unlikely. I put myself in their shoes. I am the Secretary of State of Ohio, a Republican, and my IT people tell me we need to move some serving duties to an outside source to handle the increase in traffic for election week. So I think, hey, I know about this company over here, we've done a lot of work with them, and they're good. They can handle it. I put in a call and that's that. Just where did you come up with "quite unlikely"?
It's all quite "coincidental".
Pet English peeve: any two events that are linked by incidence are "coincidental." Me replying to you is coincidental, too. A ball being dropped, then hitting the ground, is coincidental. What people usually mean when they say "coincidental" is "merely coincidental," where the "merely" implies that the only relationship between the two events is coincidence, and nothing more.
So I'm not making any specific accusations of wrongdoing
Fine. But you are implying that there was LIKELY some wrongdoing, and the facts do not warrant that claim.
but I think that only an extraordinarily optimistic fool would look at Ohio or Florida and say "there's no story here."
I never said anything of the sort. I never said there is no story in either place, I only say that there is no substantive evidence of wrongdoing. What I implied about "no story" was not general to Ohio or Florida, but to this specific claim of IP addresses.
That said, I have looked in-depth into the many claims made about how Ohio was "stolen," including the claims made by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone, and it is almost all total bullshit. He completely made up almost all of the "disenfranchised Democratic voters" he claimed.
It seems far wiser to raise awareness that there was an unusual and outwardly untoward pattern of events, and see if somebody can investigate further to shed more light on the data.
No, it really doesn't. Not to me. I can come up with