Considering North Korea has attempted a good number of assassinations itself against South Korean targets, along with some successful high-profile kidnappings, that's a damn good question.
But it is stipulated that it can only be repealed if Public Safety requires it.
And that is where the debate should be focused - are we in a situation where public safety requires it. I agree we are not at that point.
I don't see any current situation where habeas corpus would be detrimental to the public safety. In fact, it's hard to imagine any scenario outside of fiction where habeas corpus would be dangerous to the people.
Habeas corpus has been suspended several times in our history, most famously by Lincoln (1861), but also by Grant (in 1871, actually he had several proclomations suspending the writ, but only one is enough to prove the point).
You might suggest the suspensions were unjustified in these cases, but that would only serve to show that we can survive such abuses. The best we can do at this point is to vote out ALL the bastards who voted FOR it.
Senators who voted for this bill: Alexander (R-TN), Allard (R-CO), Allen (R-VA), Bennett (R-UT), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burns (R-MT), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Coleman (R-MN), Collins (R-ME), Cornyn (R-TX), Craig (R-ID), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), DeWine (R-OH), Dole (R-NC), Domenici (R-NM), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Frist (R-TN), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Gregg (R-NH), Hagel (R-NE), Hatch (R-UT), Hutchison (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johnson (D-SD), Kyl (R-AZ), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Lieberman (D-CT), Lott (R-MS), Lugar (R-IN), Martinez (R-FL), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Murkowski (R-AK), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Roberts (R-KS), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Santorum (R-PA), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Smith (R-OR), Specter (R-PA), Stabenow (D-MI), Stevens (R-AK), Sununu (R-NH), Talent (R-MO), Thomas (R-WY), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Voinovich (R-OH), Warner (R-VA)
Representatives who voted for it: Aderholt, Akin, Alexander, Andrews, Bachus, Baker, Barrett (SC), Barrow, Barton (TX), Bass, Bean, Beauprez, Biggert, Bilbray, Bilirakis, Bishop (GA), Bishop (UT), Blackburn, Blunt, Boehlert, Boehner, Bonilla, Bonner, Bono, Boozman, Boren, Boswell, Boustany, Boyd, Bradley (NH), Brady (TX), Brown (OH), Brown (SC), Brown-Waite, Ginny, Burton (IN), Buyer, Calvert, Camp (MI), Campbell (CA), Cannon, Cantor, Capito, Carter, Chabot, Chandler, Chocola, Coble, Cole (OK), Conaway, Cramer, Crenshaw, Cubin, Cuellar, Culberson, Davis (AL), Davis (KY), Davis (TN), Davis, Jo Ann, Davis, Tom, Deal (GA), Dent, Diaz-Balart, L., Diaz-Balart, M., Doolittle, Drake, Dreier, Duncan, Edwards, Ehlers, Emerson, English (PA), Etheridge, Everett, Feeney, Ferguson, Fitzpatrick (PA), Flake, Forbes, Ford, Fortenberry, Fossella, Foxx, Franks (AZ), Frelinghuysen, Gallegly, Garrett (NJ), Gerlach, Gibbons, Gillmor, Gingrey, Gohmert, Goode, Goodlatte, Gordon, Granger, Graves, Green (WI), Gutknecht, Hall, Harris, Hart, Hastings (WA), Hayes, Hayworth, Hefley, Hensarling, Herger, Herseth, Higgins, Hobson, Hoekstra, Holden, Hostettler, Hulshof, Hunter, Hyde, Inglis (SC), Issa, Istook, Jenkins, Jindal, Johnson (CT), Johnson (IL), Johnson, Sam, Keller, Kelly, Kennedy (MN), King (IA), King (NY), Kingston, Kirk, Kline, Knollenberg, Kolbe, Kuhl (NY), LaHood, Latham, Lewis (CA), Lewis (KY), Linder, LoBiondo, Lucas, Lungren, Daniel E., Mack, Manzullo, Marchant, Marshall, Matheson, McCaul (TX), McCotter, McCrery, McHenry, McHugh, McIntyre, McKeon, McMorris Rodgers, Mica, Miller (FL), Miller (MI), Miller, Gary, Moore (KS), Murphy, Musgrave, Myrick, Neugebauer, Northup, Norwood, Nunes, Nussle, Osborne, Otter, Oxley, Pearce, Pence, Peterson (MN), Peterson (PA), Petri, Pickering, Pitts, Platts, Poe, Pombo, Pomeroy, Porter, Price (GA
And how do you propose the US government enforce the writ of habeas corpus for people living in countries outside US jurisdiction? You may be technically correct, but that isn't particularly meaningful in this case. Although I would note the preamble says the constitution is established for WE the People, which suggests very much it is intended for the people of the United States and not just for anybody on the planet, but I'm really neither here nor there on the issue and can see both sides of the argument. While I may agree with you in spirit that everybody on the world possesses inalienable rights, it is simply not possible or practical for the US government to see that everybody outside US jurisdiction have those rights properly afforded to them. Unless you are suggesting we are morally obligated to engage in an epic level of interventionism the whole world over...
Another point: if you look at Article I, Section 9, we that Habeas Corpus is a PRIVILEGE and NOT a right.
http://constitution.org/constit_.htm The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
So anyways talking about inalienable human rights actually does NOT cover habeas corpus, since it is a privilege, not a right.
It seems obvious enough that an "enemy combatant" who is a US citizen would fall under the treason clause of the constitution, Article III, Section 3: Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
I see where this new law might be abused, but that's where groups like the ACLU come in. What we TRULY need to fear is the Supreme Court. Can the courts be relied upon to do the right thing? Congress critters and presidents have always tried to pull stunts like this going back to the founders themselves (John Adams and the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798), so it's up to the courts to really act as the check against that. Will the current SC be up to the task? =O
Did the KKK ever go away? Grant's suspension was targetted at the KKK. Is the KKK gone? Did we get our H.C. back? What's the victory condition in regards to the KKK? Oh wait, never mind...
And, if you were paying attention, the suspension of H.C. is ONLY in regards to ALIENS who are ENEMY COMBATANTS. So unless your an alien, your H.C. isn't going anywhere. And even if you are, unless your an enemy combatant, it still isn't going anywhere. The situation, while certainly disagreeable, isn't anywhere near as dire as some people are making it out to be.
Fight, yes, good, good, but, as Mark Twain said: "Get your facts straight first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." You haven't yet gotten the facts straight...
Rigging elections has been the standard for a very long time, decades AT LEAST.
Of course, we really were never supposed to vote for president anyways - that's a privilege our state governments give to us, and it wasn't until a good 50 or 60 years after the constitution was adopted that most states were doing it. The results really haven't worked out very well, constrast the quality of the first dozen presidents against that of the last dozen. The office of the president these days seems to attract only the worse our country has to offer, regardless of vote rigging.
(a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):
`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.
Historically, the republicans WERE the liberals (think Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Progressives - TR was a republican), and the democrats were the conservatives. This started changing around the time of FDR, although the inversion didn't fully complete until the 1960s or 70s.
Politicians have been cheating with the vote counting for, at the very least, decades. Think Richard Daley of Chicago.
But really I'm much less worried about the elected officials than I am the appointed officials. You should be far more afraid of the Supreme Court than the President. They're not called Our Robed Masters for nothing...
Politicians have been rigging elections forever, it's hardly new with e-voting. Richard Daley springs to mind as one of the most egregious examples.
The REAL lesson we all should be learning from this is the importance of having a weak federal government. The leftoids were SOOOO close to learning that lesson after 2004, but just oh so narrowly avoided it.
If the feds were so weak that it almost didn't matter who was in federal office, this wouldn't be nearly so much of a concern. Push power back down to the state and local levels and then any corruption will be much more localized instead of screwing over the entire country.
The consolidation of power, however, has been going on since Lincoln, and greatly accelerated under FDR. I'm not sure how to decentralize again, but it's the only real hope we have.
But, too many people are government junkies, so it's not gonna happen. Thanks FDR. Bastard.
Habeas corpus was suspended on April 27, 1861 by Lincoln, and again by Grant under the 1870 Force Act and again in 1871 by way of the Ku Klux Klan Act.
The Lincoln and Grant suspensions of the writ applied specifically to US citizens. The 2006 suspension explicitly does NOT apply to US citizens, but only to aliens:
(a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):
`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.
Corruption, pollution, bought and paid for politicians, outcast single-parents, spit-on poor, these were all hallmarks of the 1960s you glorify as much as they are today, as much as they were 100 to 120 years ago (the Grant presidency was a disaster of corruption, as was McKinley, and who can forget Boss Tweed?).
Nope, you're as wrong as wrong can be. The 1960s were NOT especially pure or middle-class friendly, it was the same as it's ever been in this country.
The problem is education, and education is only getting worse and worse the more the federal government sticks its nose into it. You want to save american? Save education, by getting government the hell out of it. The problem isn't the corporations, it's government. And unfortunately, we get exactly the government we deserve:(
Inherited wealth and windfall wealth (e.g. lottery winnings) dissipate quickly. Something like 80% of all windfall wealth is lost within 20 years, to the point of filing for bankruptcy. The rest is usually lost within a generation or two of the accumulator.
If you look at the Forbes list of wealthiest people in the world, just over half of them are self-made. And even more than that, the self-mades control considerably more wealth than the inheritors, on the order of 30% more. If wealth concentration and inheritance was as big a problem as Marx suggested, it wouldn't be possible to have ANY self-made people topping the list over 100 years later, much less having them control more wealth than the inheritors. It hasn't happened in the way Marx envisioned. (Oh gee, what a surprise...)
Many of the great families in US history are now utterly bankrupt: Dodge, Reynolds, Vanderbilt, Hunt, and many others. First it gets split between children, reducing the amount per person, and then many of those children squander it senselessly, often on things like fast cars, easy women and drugs. Even the great monolithic Krupp fortune finally fell in the 1960s, one of the longest-lasting family dynasties anywhere in the world (400 years).
All inherited wealth eventually dissipates. It is a self-correcting problem. Either the parents don't think the kids should inherit it, and thus give it away to charity, or the kids do inherit it and promptly squander it. It is rare indeed in the modern world for inherited wealth to persist across multiple generations of the same family. That was more of a problem in feudal socities where nobles wielded tremendous power both to accumulate wealth and protect their status, but it's never been quite like that in the US.
And where wealth is passed on, it is often done so through trusts, where the inheritor can not arbitrarily access the full amount of that wealth at his discretion, but is highly limited as to how much they can get their hands on, so even that isn't as big of a problem as you might fancy.
1) Democracy would NOT be nice, but the republican system originally setup in the constitution would be nice.
2) Triablism isn't a failure of democracy (or republicanism), it's a "failure" of the human animal. I put failure in quotes because it's more that it is the natural state of the human animal, and republicanism and democracy are NOT natural systems for humans, but take a lot more work to be successful than most people are willing to suffer. That they are not the natural system for the human animal is evidenced both by their relative scarcity in history and in the inevitable corruption and fall when and where they do occur. If it was natural, dictatorships and monarchy would be the exceptions in history and the democratic governments would be more enduring, but that's not what we see.
The US can already grow enough food alone to feed the entire world. The problem isn't lack of arable land, it's distribution. In many countries (mostly in Africa and the Middle East) the governments DO NOT WANT food to be freely distributed. Look at Saddam in the oil-for-food scandal. Whatever food he actually did get, he retained for himself and his cronies, almost none of it got distributed to the people who actually needed it. Food is a weapon in many parts of the world. Growing enough food is not a problem, distributing it is. So the food argument isn't.
And hell, my family has been in North America for over 400 years, so don't bother me about what is and isn't low population density. My family has seen it go from almost nil to what it is today, and you are as much a part of the problem as anyone. It isn't that I want to live in cramped conditions, it's that we are not even remotely close to approaching cramped conditions. Not. even. close.
You may like things the way they are now, but what if I said I liked things they way they were 400 years ago when my ancestors first came over? Are you prepared to leave in order to meet my arbitrary standard of what is acceptable to me? I'd appreciate if you could get the next available flight out of country, mkay? Thanks!
1) People who come into this country legally end up paying well over $1000 in fees for all the paperwork. That's PER PERSON. So that's one thing the legal immigrants have to contend with that illegals don't. Try bringing a family of 6 up from Mexico and ask them to cough up $6K as they cross the border... I'd feel pretty bitter about shelling out all the money while others manage to (illegally) evade the fees. My wife is an immigrant, actually, but we got in before they raised all the fees a few years ago. Not sure what the actual amount is up to these days. It's very, very expensive to get into this country legally. I suspect most who favor open borders don't have any idea just how expensive it is.
(BTW, I actually do favor open immigration, but if it come to pass I want a refund of the $1K we shelled out to do it the "right" way in the first place!)
2) There's no danger of running out of space in the USA. You could take the entire 6 billion+ population of the entire world, cram them ALL into the state of Texas, and it would be LESS density than New York City. Obviously we don't want to live like that, but the point is the US can still absorb a HUGE number more people before having to worry about population density issues. Montana still has an average of 6 people per square mile, for example, North Dakota = 9 per sq.mi., Wyoming = 5 per sq.mi., etc.
Heck, even some of the more populous states have vast tracts of essentially empty land, such as Virginia. Try driving up the Shanendoah Valley some time - most of the counties it crosses have population densities less than 30 per sq. mi., compared to a state-wide average of 179. Even Virginia is mostly empty space despite the high *average* population density.
Contrast with, say, Massachusetts: 818 per sq.mi., or Connecticut: 703, or New Jersey (most densely populated state in the union!): 1,134 people per sq. mi.
In New Jersey I never got a NJ history class at any level, and I went to a "Blue Ribbon" high school. Now in Boy Scouts I learned something about it, but never in school.
Their votes get more weight because the system was never designed to work in the context of a popular vote for electors, much less to work "right". In The Beginning, there were ZERO states that choose electors by popular vote. That came along much later. State governments choose them. The federal constitution lets the states decide how electors are choosen, there's nothing forcing popular election of electors, and such a system was likely never envisioned by the authors of the constitution.
If use something in a way that was never envisioned by the inventor then don't be surprised if it doesn't work exactly as you hoped.
This requires no constitutional change. The constitution intentionally does not talk about HOW electors are to be chosen, it was intentionally left up to each state to decide how they selected (not elected, but selected, by the state government, not the voters) their electors. Allowing a direct popular vote is certainly well within the realm of permissibility, but I'm not convinced it has done us any good in the long run.
There's absolutely no reason why votes should count more in Ohio/Florida than any other state.
Well right there you've hit on the REAL underlying problem - the founders likely never envisioned a scenario where electors would be chosen by direct popular vote. The weight of individual votes are different from state to state because the system was never intended to use popular vote.
And frankly, I agree with the founders - the problem we have is not a lack of democracy, but too much democracy. They wrote the constitution such that only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government (i.e. 1/6 of it) was popularly elected. It's not clear to me at all that what we have to today, where 2/3 of the government is popularly elected, is really better.
Ask a westerner who has never heard or seen mandarin and ask them to pronounce the word "ci". Then ask them to pronounce the word "tsi".
I suspect "tsi" is far more likely to produce a closer-to-correct pronounciation than "ci". "c" has too many available pronounciation options, where as "ts" has pretty much only one.
This is just one example of hanyu pinyin failing to be phonetic. There are many others. So when it comes to a language being strictly phonetic in its spelling, I'm not sure that's a particularly achievable. The example of Spanish has come up repeatedly as being highly phonetic, and yet counter-examples in spanish are promptly raised each time.
While the idea of making spelling in english may seem admirable enough, the failure of any language anywhere to be phonetic suggests perhaps there might be better places to expend the same effort. Such as convincing parents to actually give a damn about their kids education, rather than foisting off all responsibility for the thing on government.
And yet, this goes straight to the heart of the "simplification of english spelling debate". With mandarin "they" had a language with no prior romanization and an opportunity to create a system in whatever manner was "best". People creating these pinyin systems were not uneducated simpletons who didn't know what they were doing - very often they were highly trained experts in linguistics and letters. Even they couldn't agree on what was the best way to spell every sound in the language, and they had NO historical linguistic baggage to consider when developing their pinyin systems.
Hanyu works best for you, Wade-Giles works best for me. Same sounds, different spellings.
To suggest a simplification of english spelling seems to me either arrogant or ignorant. Changes that will seem obvious and sensible to one person will make absolutely no sense to another.
Probably best to just let the language follow its natural course. All written languages change over time, and english is particularly susceptible to such "natural" changes. Just let it go....
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Considering North Korea has attempted a good number of assassinations itself against South Korean targets, along with some successful high-profile kidnappings, that's a damn good question.
Haven't you people ever heard of a seance? Sheesh!
But it is stipulated that it can only be repealed if Public Safety requires it.
And that is where the debate should be focused - are we in a situation where public safety requires it. I agree we are not at that point.
I don't see any current situation where habeas corpus would be detrimental to the public safety. In fact, it's hard to imagine any scenario outside of fiction where habeas corpus would be dangerous to the people.
Habeas corpus has been suspended several times in our history, most famously by Lincoln (1861), but also by Grant (in 1871, actually he had several proclomations suspending the writ, but only one is enough to prove the point).
You might suggest the suspensions were unjustified in these cases, but that would only serve to show that we can survive such abuses. The best we can do at this point is to vote out ALL the bastards who voted FOR it.
Senators who voted for this bill:
Alexander (R-TN), Allard (R-CO), Allen (R-VA), Bennett (R-UT), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burns (R-MT), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Coleman (R-MN), Collins (R-ME), Cornyn (R-TX), Craig (R-ID), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), DeWine (R-OH), Dole (R-NC), Domenici (R-NM), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Frist (R-TN), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Gregg (R-NH), Hagel (R-NE), Hatch (R-UT), Hutchison (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johnson (D-SD), Kyl (R-AZ), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Lieberman (D-CT), Lott (R-MS), Lugar (R-IN), Martinez (R-FL), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Murkowski (R-AK), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Roberts (R-KS), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Santorum (R-PA), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Smith (R-OR), Specter (R-PA), Stabenow (D-MI), Stevens (R-AK), Sununu (R-NH), Talent (R-MO), Thomas (R-WY), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Voinovich (R-OH), Warner (R-VA)
Representatives who voted for it:
Aderholt, Akin, Alexander, Andrews, Bachus, Baker, Barrett (SC), Barrow, Barton (TX), Bass, Bean, Beauprez, Biggert, Bilbray, Bilirakis, Bishop (GA), Bishop (UT), Blackburn, Blunt, Boehlert, Boehner, Bonilla, Bonner, Bono, Boozman, Boren, Boswell, Boustany, Boyd, Bradley (NH), Brady (TX), Brown (OH), Brown (SC), Brown-Waite, Ginny, Burton (IN), Buyer, Calvert, Camp (MI), Campbell (CA), Cannon, Cantor, Capito, Carter, Chabot, Chandler, Chocola, Coble, Cole (OK), Conaway, Cramer, Crenshaw, Cubin, Cuellar, Culberson, Davis (AL), Davis (KY), Davis (TN), Davis, Jo Ann, Davis, Tom, Deal (GA), Dent, Diaz-Balart, L., Diaz-Balart, M., Doolittle, Drake, Dreier, Duncan, Edwards, Ehlers, Emerson, English (PA), Etheridge, Everett, Feeney, Ferguson, Fitzpatrick (PA), Flake, Forbes, Ford, Fortenberry, Fossella, Foxx, Franks (AZ), Frelinghuysen, Gallegly, Garrett (NJ), Gerlach, Gibbons, Gillmor, Gingrey, Gohmert, Goode, Goodlatte, Gordon, Granger, Graves, Green (WI), Gutknecht, Hall, Harris, Hart, Hastings (WA), Hayes, Hayworth, Hefley, Hensarling, Herger, Herseth, Higgins, Hobson, Hoekstra, Holden, Hostettler, Hulshof, Hunter, Hyde, Inglis (SC), Issa, Istook, Jenkins, Jindal, Johnson (CT), Johnson (IL), Johnson, Sam, Keller, Kelly, Kennedy (MN), King (IA), King (NY), Kingston, Kirk, Kline, Knollenberg, Kolbe, Kuhl (NY), LaHood, Latham, Lewis (CA), Lewis (KY), Linder, LoBiondo, Lucas, Lungren, Daniel E., Mack, Manzullo, Marchant, Marshall, Matheson, McCaul (TX), McCotter, McCrery, McHenry, McHugh, McIntyre, McKeon, McMorris Rodgers, Mica, Miller (FL), Miller (MI), Miller, Gary, Moore (KS), Murphy, Musgrave, Myrick, Neugebauer, Northup, Norwood, Nunes, Nussle, Osborne, Otter, Oxley, Pearce, Pence, Peterson (MN), Peterson (PA), Petri, Pickering, Pitts, Platts, Poe, Pombo, Pomeroy, Porter, Price (GA
And how do you propose the US government enforce the writ of habeas corpus for people living in countries outside US jurisdiction? You may be technically correct, but that isn't particularly meaningful in this case. Although I would note the preamble says the constitution is established for WE the People, which suggests very much it is intended for the people of the United States and not just for anybody on the planet, but I'm really neither here nor there on the issue and can see both sides of the argument. While I may agree with you in spirit that everybody on the world possesses inalienable rights, it is simply not possible or practical for the US government to see that everybody outside US jurisdiction have those rights properly afforded to them. Unless you are suggesting we are morally obligated to engage in an epic level of interventionism the whole world over...
Another point: if you look at Article I, Section 9, we that Habeas Corpus is a PRIVILEGE and NOT a right.
http://constitution.org/constit_.htm
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
So anyways talking about inalienable human rights actually does NOT cover habeas corpus, since it is a privilege, not a right.
It seems obvious enough that an "enemy combatant" who is a US citizen would fall under the treason clause of the constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
I see where this new law might be abused, but that's where groups like the ACLU come in. What we TRULY need to fear is the Supreme Court. Can the courts be relied upon to do the right thing? Congress critters and presidents have always tried to pull stunts like this going back to the founders themselves (John Adams and the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798), so it's up to the courts to really act as the check against that. Will the current SC be up to the task? =O
Did the KKK ever go away? Grant's suspension was targetted at the KKK. Is the KKK gone? Did we get our H.C. back? What's the victory condition in regards to the KKK? Oh wait, never mind...
And, if you were paying attention, the suspension of H.C. is ONLY in regards to ALIENS who are ENEMY COMBATANTS. So unless your an alien, your H.C. isn't going anywhere. And even if you are, unless your an enemy combatant, it still isn't going anywhere. The situation, while certainly disagreeable, isn't anywhere near as dire as some people are making it out to be.
Fight, yes, good, good, but, as Mark Twain said: "Get your facts straight first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." You haven't yet gotten the facts straight...
Rigging elections has been the standard for a very long time, decades AT LEAST.
Of course, we really were never supposed to vote for president anyways - that's a privilege our state governments give to us, and it wasn't until a good 50 or 60 years after the constitution was adopted that most states were doing it. The results really haven't worked out very well, constrast the quality of the first dozen presidents against that of the last dozen. The office of the president these days seems to attract only the worse our country has to offer, regardless of vote rigging.
They got rid of Habeas Corpus ONLY for aliens. Lincoln and Grant got rid of habeas corpus for US citizens and yet we survived it.
m p/~c1091oWBrq:e116721:
S.3930 Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:3:./te
(a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):
`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.
Um, Clinton failed to garner more than 50% of the popular vote in EITHER election.
49.24% in 1996 and 43.01% in 1992.
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/appendix.xls
Historically, the republicans WERE the liberals (think Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Progressives - TR was a republican), and the democrats were the conservatives. This started changing around the time of FDR, although the inversion didn't fully complete until the 1960s or 70s.
Politicians have been cheating with the vote counting for, at the very least, decades. Think Richard Daley of Chicago.
But really I'm much less worried about the elected officials than I am the appointed officials. You should be far more afraid of the Supreme Court than the President. They're not called Our Robed Masters for nothing...
The OSCE monitors US elections.p df
http://osce.org/documents/odihr/2005/03/13658_en.
Politicians have been rigging elections forever, it's hardly new with e-voting. Richard Daley springs to mind as one of the most egregious examples.
The REAL lesson we all should be learning from this is the importance of having a weak federal government. The leftoids were SOOOO close to learning that lesson after 2004, but just oh so narrowly avoided it.
If the feds were so weak that it almost didn't matter who was in federal office, this wouldn't be nearly so much of a concern. Push power back down to the state and local levels and then any corruption will be much more localized instead of screwing over the entire country.
The consolidation of power, however, has been going on since Lincoln, and greatly accelerated under FDR. I'm not sure how to decentralize again, but it's the only real hope we have.
But, too many people are government junkies, so it's not gonna happen.
Thanks FDR.
Bastard.
Habeas corpus was suspended on April 27, 1861 by Lincoln, and again by Grant under the 1870 Force Act and again in 1871 by way of the Ku Klux Klan Act.
9 30:
The Lincoln and Grant suspensions of the writ applied specifically to US citizens. The 2006 suspension explicitly does NOT apply to US citizens, but only to aliens:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.03
Section 7:
(a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):
`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.
Corruption, pollution, bought and paid for politicians, outcast single-parents, spit-on poor, these were all hallmarks of the 1960s you glorify as much as they are today, as much as they were 100 to 120 years ago (the Grant presidency was a disaster of corruption, as was McKinley, and who can forget Boss Tweed?).
:(
Nope, you're as wrong as wrong can be. The 1960s were NOT especially pure or middle-class friendly, it was the same as it's ever been in this country.
The problem is education, and education is only getting worse and worse the more the federal government sticks its nose into it. You want to save american? Save education, by getting government the hell out of it. The problem isn't the corporations, it's government. And unfortunately, we get exactly the government we deserve
Inherited wealth and windfall wealth (e.g. lottery winnings) dissipate quickly. Something like 80% of all windfall wealth is lost within 20 years, to the point of filing for bankruptcy. The rest is usually lost within a generation or two of the accumulator.
If you look at the Forbes list of wealthiest people in the world, just over half of them are self-made. And even more than that, the self-mades control considerably more wealth than the inheritors, on the order of 30% more. If wealth concentration and inheritance was as big a problem as Marx suggested, it wouldn't be possible to have ANY self-made people topping the list over 100 years later, much less having them control more wealth than the inheritors. It hasn't happened in the way Marx envisioned. (Oh gee, what a surprise...)
Many of the great families in US history are now utterly bankrupt: Dodge, Reynolds, Vanderbilt, Hunt, and many others. First it gets split between children, reducing the amount per person, and then many of those children squander it senselessly, often on things like fast cars, easy women and drugs. Even the great monolithic Krupp fortune finally fell in the 1960s, one of the longest-lasting family dynasties anywhere in the world (400 years).
All inherited wealth eventually dissipates. It is a self-correcting problem. Either the parents don't think the kids should inherit it, and thus give it away to charity, or the kids do inherit it and promptly squander it. It is rare indeed in the modern world for inherited wealth to persist across multiple generations of the same family. That was more of a problem in feudal socities where nobles wielded tremendous power both to accumulate wealth and protect their status, but it's never been quite like that in the US.
And where wealth is passed on, it is often done so through trusts, where the inheritor can not arbitrarily access the full amount of that wealth at his discretion, but is highly limited as to how much they can get their hands on, so even that isn't as big of a problem as you might fancy.
1) Democracy would NOT be nice, but the republican system originally setup in the constitution would be nice.
2) Triablism isn't a failure of democracy (or republicanism), it's a "failure" of the human animal. I put failure in quotes because it's more that it is the natural state of the human animal, and republicanism and democracy are NOT natural systems for humans, but take a lot more work to be successful than most people are willing to suffer. That they are not the natural system for the human animal is evidenced both by their relative scarcity in history and in the inevitable corruption and fall when and where they do occur. If it was natural, dictatorships and monarchy would be the exceptions in history and the democratic governments would be more enduring, but that's not what we see.
The US can already grow enough food alone to feed the entire world. The problem isn't lack of arable land, it's distribution. In many countries (mostly in Africa and the Middle East) the governments DO NOT WANT food to be freely distributed. Look at Saddam in the oil-for-food scandal. Whatever food he actually did get, he retained for himself and his cronies, almost none of it got distributed to the people who actually needed it. Food is a weapon in many parts of the world. Growing enough food is not a problem, distributing it is. So the food argument isn't.
And hell, my family has been in North America for over 400 years, so don't bother me about what is and isn't low population density. My family has seen it go from almost nil to what it is today, and you are as much a part of the problem as anyone. It isn't that I want to live in cramped conditions, it's that we are not even remotely close to approaching cramped conditions. Not. even. close.
You may like things the way they are now, but what if I said I liked things they way they were 400 years ago when my ancestors first came over? Are you prepared to leave in order to meet my arbitrary standard of what is acceptable to me? I'd appreciate if you could get the next available flight out of country, mkay? Thanks!
Two things I need to point out here:
_ population_density
1) People who come into this country legally end up paying well over $1000 in fees for all the paperwork. That's PER PERSON. So that's one thing the legal immigrants have to contend with that illegals don't. Try bringing a family of 6 up from Mexico and ask them to cough up $6K as they cross the border... I'd feel pretty bitter about shelling out all the money while others manage to (illegally) evade the fees. My wife is an immigrant, actually, but we got in before they raised all the fees a few years ago. Not sure what the actual amount is up to these days. It's very, very expensive to get into this country legally. I suspect most who favor open borders don't have any idea just how expensive it is.
(BTW, I actually do favor open immigration, but if it come to pass I want a refund of the $1K we shelled out to do it the "right" way in the first place!)
2) There's no danger of running out of space in the USA. You could take the entire 6 billion+ population of the entire world, cram them ALL into the state of Texas, and it would be LESS density than New York City. Obviously we don't want to live like that, but the point is the US can still absorb a HUGE number more people before having to worry about population density issues. Montana still has an average of 6 people per square mile, for example, North Dakota = 9 per sq.mi., Wyoming = 5 per sq.mi., etc.
Heck, even some of the more populous states have vast tracts of essentially empty land, such as Virginia. Try driving up the Shanendoah Valley some time - most of the counties it crosses have population densities less than 30 per sq. mi., compared to a state-wide average of 179. Even Virginia is mostly empty space despite the high *average* population density.
Contrast with, say, Massachusetts: 818 per sq.mi., or Connecticut: 703, or New Jersey (most densely populated state in the union!): 1,134 people per sq. mi.
The US ranks 172 out of 230 for density of population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
I always get so annoyed when I hear people talk about overcrowding in the US. Such utter nonsense.
In New Jersey I never got a NJ history class at any level, and I went to a "Blue Ribbon" high school.
Now in Boy Scouts I learned something about it, but never in school.
Their votes get more weight because the system was never designed to work in the context of a popular vote for electors, much less to work "right". In The Beginning, there were ZERO states that choose electors by popular vote. That came along much later. State governments choose them. The federal constitution lets the states decide how electors are choosen, there's nothing forcing popular election of electors, and such a system was likely never envisioned by the authors of the constitution.
If use something in a way that was never envisioned by the inventor then don't be surprised if it doesn't work exactly as you hoped.
This requires no constitutional change. The constitution intentionally does not talk about HOW electors are to be chosen, it was intentionally left up to each state to decide how they selected (not elected, but selected, by the state government, not the voters) their electors. Allowing a direct popular vote is certainly well within the realm of permissibility, but I'm not convinced it has done us any good in the long run.
There's absolutely no reason why votes should count more in Ohio/Florida than any other state.
Well right there you've hit on the REAL underlying problem - the founders likely never envisioned a scenario where electors would be chosen by direct popular vote. The weight of individual votes are different from state to state because the system was never intended to use popular vote.
And frankly, I agree with the founders - the problem we have is not a lack of democracy, but too much democracy. They wrote the constitution such that only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government (i.e. 1/6 of it) was popularly elected. It's not clear to me at all that what we have to today, where 2/3 of the government is popularly elected, is really better.
Ask a westerner who has never heard or seen mandarin and ask them to pronounce the word "ci".
Then ask them to pronounce the word "tsi".
I suspect "tsi" is far more likely to produce a closer-to-correct pronounciation than "ci".
"c" has too many available pronounciation options, where as "ts" has pretty much only one.
This is just one example of hanyu pinyin failing to be phonetic. There are many others. So when it comes to a language being strictly phonetic in its spelling, I'm not sure that's a particularly achievable. The example of Spanish has come up repeatedly as being highly phonetic, and yet counter-examples in spanish are promptly raised each time.
While the idea of making spelling in english may seem admirable enough, the failure of any language anywhere to be phonetic suggests perhaps there might be better places to expend the same effort. Such as convincing parents to actually give a damn about their kids education, rather than foisting off all responsibility for the thing on government.
And yet, this goes straight to the heart of the "simplification of english spelling debate". With mandarin "they" had a language with no prior romanization and an opportunity to create a system in whatever manner was "best". People creating these pinyin systems were not uneducated simpletons who didn't know what they were doing - very often they were highly trained experts in linguistics and letters. Even they couldn't agree on what was the best way to spell every sound in the language, and they had NO historical linguistic baggage to consider when developing their pinyin systems.
Hanyu works best for you, Wade-Giles works best for me. Same sounds, different spellings.
To suggest a simplification of english spelling seems to me either arrogant or ignorant. Changes that will seem obvious and sensible to one person will make absolutely no sense to another.
Probably best to just let the language follow its natural course. All written languages change over time, and english is particularly susceptible to such "natural" changes. Just let it go....