Maurice Hinchey and he doesn't give a damn what I think because my political views do not align with his own and his district is so gerrymandered that he only has to worry about what his supporters think.
The U.S. government has granted this league monopoly status
No, they granted it an exemption from the anti-trust laws. There's no law stopping you from starting your own baseball league to compete with the MLB.
Baseball is also something that greatly affects many Americans
No it's not. It's something that a great many Americans (myself included, Let's Go Mets!) enjoy watching but it doesn't "greatly affect" you unless you are unlucky enough to get killed by the police while celebrating the victory of your favorite team.
My guess is the system is trying to correct itself from the abuses of the Bush Administration. I wonder if this would over-ride the Patriot Act?
Interesting that you reference the Patriot Act while talking about the abuses of the "Bush Administration" but fail to mention the fact that the vast majority of Democrats in the House and all but one in the Senate voted in favor of it.
You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical that they will do any better now that they are in charge.
It is just me or did I miss the part of the US Constitution that said Congress shall have the power to ensure the integrity of Major League Baseball? I can't be the only one that finds it absurd that our Government is devoting resources to outing cheating athletes. Surely there are more pressing issues for them to worry about?
Fox News Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Will Obama's nazi socialist policies tax the good citizens of Wasp-18b until they commit suicide by diving into their sun? Find out at 8pm on The Factor!
MSNBC Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Will Dick Cheney come back to power and invade it on false pretenses? Find out at 8pm on Countdown!
CNN Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Watch our exciting report wherein we will use cutting edge technology to display an image of this planet above a floating pie chart!
Tabloid Journalist: Loch Ness Monster seen again! Read the shocking new evidence that proves she hails from Wasp-18b!
Slashdot Editor: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
Different Slashdot Editor a week later: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
The fact that it looks more like America doesn't mean it's better.
If you don't think Seoul is better than Pyongyang then perhaps you should relocate to Pyongyang for a few months and see how you like it? Perhaps you'd find it more to your liking than the country that you are currently in. I don't know which one that is but I'd wager that it resembles America more closely than North Korea does.
Money and power are not always "better", but Americans will probably never understand that.
Who said anything about money and power? I'm talking about freedom.
Would you say they've really improved since America started poking around (again)?
Yes, actually I would. I didn't support the war but to claim that there hasn't been any improvement is absurd. Are the rape rooms still running? Is 2/3 of the population being kept under the thumb of the remaining 1/3? Is the population still starving while the government diverts international aid into rearmament programs?
EG: My right to live in a society with *less* drunks on the road is more important, in my mind, than my "right" to not be inconvenienced 5 minutes a year with random breath testing.
It might appear that way on the surface but in fact all you've done is to forfeit your right against unreasonable searches and seizures for little actual gain. Random breath tests don't do anything to deter drunk driving. We've got police roadblocks, random breath tests and implied consent laws. Guess what? We've still got drunk driving. Only now I have to justify to the police why I'm out using the public roadway when I have to travel through a roadblock. That doesn't represent an improvement in my mind.
But your "founding fathers" didn't consider the possibility of cars & alcohol, and so now privacy is a greater right than life in many cases!
Actually they did anticipate that the Constitution might need to be updated as times changed. That's why they provided a process to amend it when necessary. I don't know why you are pretending that it's set in stone when it's already been changed 27 times.
And this is the great problem with bills of rights, they codify into the HIGHEST part of the law the values and prejudices and blind spots of the day, not seeing all possible outcomes in the future.
The Bill of Rights doesn't represent the values of "today". It represents the natural rights that all people are born with. These rights would exist regardless of the Bill of Rights. All the Bill of Rights does is codify them and make it harder for the Government to infringe upon them.
We still have our right to free speech -- in Europe they restrict this right with the excuse of combating "hate speech".
We still have freedom of religion -- in Europe they restrict this right if your religion is unpopular (see Scientology in Germany) or goes against the desires of the secular majority (try wearing a Jewish yarmulke or Muslim headgear in a French public school).
We still have the right against self-incrimination -- in the UK they've passed a law saying the state can compel you to turn over an encryption key even if it's only stored in your head.
We still have the right to remain silent -- in the UK they will draw a negative inference if you exercise this right.
We still have the right to keep and bear arms -- in the UK and Australia this right has all but disappeared.
Given all of these examples of parliamentary systems infringing upon your rights (which you conveniently choose to ignore) I think that any supposed drawbacks of having a codified Bill of Rights are more than outweighed by the benefits. Saying you can vote them out rather misses the point. If the infringement on liberty commands a 50%+1 majority then it's going to go through and the remaining 49% of the population has no other choice besides suck it up. Do some research on the concept of the tyranny of the majority sometime. It might open your eyes.
are the Eastern block members better under Russia or the EU?
That's a fallacy because you pretend that those are the only two options available to them. Personally I think they'd be better off if they were running their own countries and not answering to bureaucrats in Brussels or dictators in Moscow.
What would be so bad if the EU became the WU
Because several of the rights that I enjoy as an American citizen would not be protected by the EU model. In fact they would actively seek to take those rights away from me.
The EU isn't the great organization that you think it is. During my European travels I met my share of people who were opposed to the EU and whom regard it as little more than an thinly veiled scheme by France and Germany to dominate the continent. In fact I met more Euroskeptics than supporters in every single country I visited with the exception of France. It seemed
The problem is that your democratically accountable legislature is too accountable to the whims of a fickle public. Witness how easy it is for legislators to whip the public into a frenzy by over-simplifying an issue and/or exaggerating an otherwise legitimate threat.
"Think of the children" is more than just a punchline. It's a modus operandi for politicians that are interested in redirecting the public away from their other failings (yeah, I didn't live up to my campaign promises, but I cracked down on child molesters/terrorists/drunk drivers/gun violence/etc, so cast your vote for me in November!) or for more nefarious individuals who are interested in depriving you of your liberty.
Here in the states our democratically accountable legislature passed the Patriot Act with a lone dissenting vote in the Senate. Our democratically accountable legislature fed the red hysteria of the 1950s. Up until the 1960s they advanced policies that disenfranchised minorities. Given this history the legislature is the last institution that I'd trust to protect my individual freedoms. I'm sure you can find similar examples from the history of your own country as well.
The un-elected judiciary isn't perfect but at least it's shielded from public opinion and thus less susceptible to whatever hysteria is currently griping the nation. It doesn't matter whether that hysteria is terrorism, sensationalized stories about gun violence or drunk driving, fear of communism, etc, etc. Public hysteria is inherently dangerous to liberty. That's why you need a judiciary that's shielded as much as possible from public opinion.
Some of your complaints about the bill of rights are legitimate. The one I would agree with the most is the notion that it provides an absolute list of our rights and rights omitted (right to privacy?) aren't rights at all. The Framers actually considered this and it's one of the reasons why they included the 10th amendment. I still think though that having the bill of rights is better on balance than not having it.
The British don't have one and look where they are headed -- they've surrendered the right to keep and bear arms (yeah, I know, we disagree on this) as well as the right to remain silent and the right against self-incrimination (hopefully you agree with these). Clearly the notion of parliamentary supremacy unchecked by other branches of government or a founding document has drawbacks. One can only hope that the British people realize this fact before it's too late.
In any case, the claim is that they are looking for evidence that the owner of the laptop is a terrorist.
Ah yes, terrorism. The new boogieman that replaced drunk driving and child molesters. Wouldn't any halfway smart terrorist just buy a laptop here in the states and download whatever he needs through an encrypted connection to the terrorist data center back home in Dirkadirkastan?
Oh right, totalitarianism under the rule of the Chinese (who own the US)
Please stop repeating this myth. China doesn't "own" the US. It doesn't even own a majority or even a quarter of the outstanding US debt. Here is an interesting pie chart for your consideration. The data is a little out of date (I believe the Chinese have since surpassed the Japanese as the largest foreign creditor) but it shows that the overwhelming majority of the US debt is owned by the US Government itself.
This is what happens when the Government borrows money from the social security trust fund and other such accounting gimmicks. The second largest holder is American citizens and institutions. Foreign creditors account for the remainder, of which China doesn't even have a majority.
It seems to this foreigner that the US government needs to be told to pull it's fucking head in and act like a government - not the Gestapo.
Yes, because searching your laptop at the border is exactly the same as rounding up minorities and sending them to death camps. It's exactly the same as hanging enemies of the state with piano wire after "convictions" obtained in a kangaroo court. The United States Department of Homeland Security also operates without any form of judicial or legislative oversight and is answerable only to President Obama.
You raised good points in the rest of your post but this last comparison of yours is utterly absurd.
But... aren't the laptops already across the border when they are searched? The border is a very very thin line
For better or worse the legal system assumes that you haven't actually crossed the border until you clear customs/immigration. Otherwise there wouldn't be much point to having those functions at international airports wholly contained within the United States.
The insightful mods don't change the fact that there are people willing to wield mod points to silence opposing points of view. It just seems that more people who believe in an open dialog happened to have mod points today. It doesn't always work that way.
Yes, but it is easier for someone from the crowd to grab the knife/golf club.
Another bullshit argument. It's actually easier to take a gun away from someone than it is to take a knife away from them. You can grab onto just about any part of a gun in an attempt to take it away or point it away from yourself. Grabbing onto a blade typically doesn't work real well.
Even if I bought your argument it still doesn't provide sufficient justification for gun control. All freedoms come with certain drawbacks. I'd wager that we could fight crime more effectively if we got rid of the presumption of innocence. Racism could be dealt with more effectively if we got rid of free speech. Many other problems could be dealt with more effectively if we lived under a benevolent dictatorship instead of a representative republic.
moronic Queensland country folk
Nice to see your opinions of your fellow countryman on display. It must be easy to dismiss people who disagree with you when you regard them as moronic hicks from the country. Is it hard being superior to everyone else or does it come naturally?
When someone is carrying a fast loading weapon on a rampage, it's just not as easy to disarm them as it might be if a few guys approached some lunatic holding a knife.
So you are willing to give up a freedom because of a comparatively rare event? Smart move that. You are more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to die in a mass shooting here in the states. You are more lucky to accidentally drown than you are to die in a gun accident.
The bill of rights isn't one amendment, it's ten. Glad to see the Aussie educational system is on a par with our own. And what's a "wild-west cliche"? The image that comes to my mind is a shootout in the open at ten paces. I haven't heard of many of those happening in the states recently.
It just seems like some parts of your bill of rights has enshrined certain types of selfishness over the common good.
That's exactly what freedom is. Selfishness over the common good. If the common good was all we cared about then we wouldn't have individual rights. Those rights would be subordinated to the interest of society as a whole. Thankfully that's not the system we live under.
We're doing fine, in fact BETTER, in that regard than you Americans.
That's your opinion.
All your lovely words on a bit of paper does not stop you invading countries on false pretexts (WMD's my arse!)
Funny how most other western intelligence agencies also thought there were WMDs. I opposed the war and found the justification for it to be questionable at best (even if he had WMDs what's wrong with good ole nuclear deterrence?) but I'm not going to stand by and let you cherry pick the parts of the story that support your own world view.
or holding people for YEARS without trial
Hello McFly! That's what happens during a war. Did Australia give trials to the Japanese soldiers that fell into your custody during the Kokoda Track campaign or did you hold them without trial until the end of hostilities? POWs aren't entitled to trials nor are unlawful combatants that don't fight in uniform or under a flag. Hell, given the fact that they aren't fighting in uniform or respecting the laws of war we would have been well within our rights to summarily execute them as soon as they were captured.
And you're worried about our not being able to access a few kiddie porn sites?
If you think your nanny state is only going to use the power you've given it to block kiddie
It's interesting that you leap to the assumption that I'm blaming Obama for something when my post was directed at Democratic partisans and said absolutely nothing about the President.
I don't really agree with many of the things President Obama is doing but my bigger gripe is with the Democratic partisans that keep using the Bush administration as a shield to deflect criticism of the current administration. You express concern about the deficit and they make a remark about how GWB inherited a surplus. You express concern about the economy and they make a remark about how Bush ran it into the ground. You express concern about Afghanistan and they bring up the invasion of Iraq. The list goes on and on.
You guys need to get the fuck over it already. Bush isn't President anymore. Obama is going to rise or fall on his own merits. Stop using the actions of the previous administration to silence criticism of the current one.
BTW, I'm not a Republican either, so spare me any responses aimed at them. I'm a former Democrat turned independent who doesn't really see any meaningful change in Washington. You guys are using the exact same tactics that you spent the last eight years deploring. As far as I can tell the only difference between you and the GOP is which set of freedoms I stand to lose.
Funny, I thought that was proper politics. Oh right, under "evil Republican administrations" debate and criticism were met with cries of being "unpatriotic", "anti-american", and protests were corraled into "free speech zones" and impromptu prisons.
Yeah, sure am glad that Democrats wouldn't do the same thing.
That's a bullshit argument. Someone who is capable of losing control during an argument and blowing someone away is equally capable of losing control and killing someone with a golf club or knife. Even if I accepted your bullshit argument it doesn't provide sufficient justification to ban guns.
What you regard as 'paranoia' I regard as freedom. In any case I certainly don't think someone from a country that censors the internet access provided to it's citizens has any standing to criticize my country. Why don't you clear up the mess in your own backyard and shove your smug superiority up the ass of the nearest saltwater crocodile?
It's not my favorite but it's certainly in the Top 10. It's the quote from my signature line because I don't believe quotes from the Godfather or Tora Tora Tora would resonate the same here on/.:)
Obviously the federal government have heard of some mp3 based viruses I was not aware of.
You don't think the NSA spends all of it's time listening to our phone calls do you?;)
"National Security Agency"
"Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone."
"No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance."
"Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators."
"No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty."
"Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is... Dick"
Slashdot Mirror
You realize that your argument boils down to "Obama doesn't arrest people for engaging in a perfectly legal activity", right?
Where did Bush have people arrested for wearing shirts with messages he didn't approve of? I'm not saying it didn't happen but I don't recall it.
Do you even know your rep's name?
Maurice Hinchey and he doesn't give a damn what I think because my political views do not align with his own and his district is so gerrymandered that he only has to worry about what his supporters think.
The U.S. government has granted this league monopoly status
No, they granted it an exemption from the anti-trust laws. There's no law stopping you from starting your own baseball league to compete with the MLB.
Baseball is also something that greatly affects many Americans
No it's not. It's something that a great many Americans (myself included, Let's Go Mets!) enjoy watching but it doesn't "greatly affect" you unless you are unlucky enough to get killed by the police while celebrating the victory of your favorite team.
My guess is the system is trying to correct itself from the abuses of the Bush Administration. I wonder if this would over-ride the Patriot Act?
Interesting that you reference the Patriot Act while talking about the abuses of the "Bush Administration" but fail to mention the fact that the vast majority of Democrats in the House and all but one in the Senate voted in favor of it.
You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical that they will do any better now that they are in charge.
It is just me or did I miss the part of the US Constitution that said Congress shall have the power to ensure the integrity of Major League Baseball? I can't be the only one that finds it absurd that our Government is devoting resources to outing cheating athletes. Surely there are more pressing issues for them to worry about?
Fox News Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Will Obama's nazi socialist policies tax the good citizens of Wasp-18b until they commit suicide by diving into their sun? Find out at 8pm on The Factor!
MSNBC Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Will Dick Cheney come back to power and invade it on false pretenses? Find out at 8pm on Countdown!
CNN Journalist: Impossible planet discovered. Watch our exciting report wherein we will use cutting edge technology to display an image of this planet above a floating pie chart!
Tabloid Journalist: Loch Ness Monster seen again! Read the shocking new evidence that proves she hails from Wasp-18b!
Slashdot Editor: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
Different Slashdot Editor a week later: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet
The fact that it looks more like America doesn't mean it's better.
If you don't think Seoul is better than Pyongyang then perhaps you should relocate to Pyongyang for a few months and see how you like it? Perhaps you'd find it more to your liking than the country that you are currently in. I don't know which one that is but I'd wager that it resembles America more closely than North Korea does.
Money and power are not always "better", but Americans will probably never understand that.
Who said anything about money and power? I'm talking about freedom.
Would you say they've really improved since America started poking around (again)?
Yes, actually I would. I didn't support the war but to claim that there hasn't been any improvement is absurd. Are the rape rooms still running? Is 2/3 of the population being kept under the thumb of the remaining 1/3? Is the population still starving while the government diverts international aid into rearmament programs?
EG: My right to live in a society with *less* drunks on the road is more important, in my mind, than my "right" to not be inconvenienced 5 minutes a year with random breath testing.
It might appear that way on the surface but in fact all you've done is to forfeit your right against unreasonable searches and seizures for little actual gain. Random breath tests don't do anything to deter drunk driving. We've got police roadblocks, random breath tests and implied consent laws. Guess what? We've still got drunk driving. Only now I have to justify to the police why I'm out using the public roadway when I have to travel through a roadblock. That doesn't represent an improvement in my mind.
But your "founding fathers" didn't consider the possibility of cars & alcohol, and so now privacy is a greater right than life in many cases!
Actually they did anticipate that the Constitution might need to be updated as times changed. That's why they provided a process to amend it when necessary. I don't know why you are pretending that it's set in stone when it's already been changed 27 times.
And this is the great problem with bills of rights, they codify into the HIGHEST part of the law the values and prejudices and blind spots of the day, not seeing all possible outcomes in the future.
The Bill of Rights doesn't represent the values of "today". It represents the natural rights that all people are born with. These rights would exist regardless of the Bill of Rights. All the Bill of Rights does is codify them and make it harder for the Government to infringe upon them.
We still have our right to free speech -- in Europe they restrict this right with the excuse of combating "hate speech".
We still have freedom of religion -- in Europe they restrict this right if your religion is unpopular (see Scientology in Germany) or goes against the desires of the secular majority (try wearing a Jewish yarmulke or Muslim headgear in a French public school).
We still have the right against self-incrimination -- in the UK they've passed a law saying the state can compel you to turn over an encryption key even if it's only stored in your head.
We still have the right to remain silent -- in the UK they will draw a negative inference if you exercise this right.
We still have the right to keep and bear arms -- in the UK and Australia this right has all but disappeared.
Given all of these examples of parliamentary systems infringing upon your rights (which you conveniently choose to ignore) I think that any supposed drawbacks of having a codified Bill of Rights are more than outweighed by the benefits. Saying you can vote them out rather misses the point. If the infringement on liberty commands a 50%+1 majority then it's going to go through and the remaining 49% of the population has no other choice besides suck it up. Do some research on the concept of the tyranny of the majority sometime. It might open your eyes.
are the Eastern block members better under Russia or the EU?
That's a fallacy because you pretend that those are the only two options available to them. Personally I think they'd be better off if they were running their own countries and not answering to bureaucrats in Brussels or dictators in Moscow.
What would be so bad if the EU became the WU
Because several of the rights that I enjoy as an American citizen would not be protected by the EU model. In fact they would actively seek to take those rights away from me.
The EU isn't the great organization that you think it is. During my European travels I met my share of people who were opposed to the EU and whom regard it as little more than an thinly veiled scheme by France and Germany to dominate the continent. In fact I met more Euroskeptics than supporters in every single country I visited with the exception of France. It seemed
Yeah, it's real cute how that works, isn't it?
BTW, I love your sig :)
The problem is that your democratically accountable legislature is too accountable to the whims of a fickle public. Witness how easy it is for legislators to whip the public into a frenzy by over-simplifying an issue and/or exaggerating an otherwise legitimate threat.
"Think of the children" is more than just a punchline. It's a modus operandi for politicians that are interested in redirecting the public away from their other failings (yeah, I didn't live up to my campaign promises, but I cracked down on child molesters/terrorists/drunk drivers/gun violence/etc, so cast your vote for me in November!) or for more nefarious individuals who are interested in depriving you of your liberty.
Here in the states our democratically accountable legislature passed the Patriot Act with a lone dissenting vote in the Senate. Our democratically accountable legislature fed the red hysteria of the 1950s. Up until the 1960s they advanced policies that disenfranchised minorities. Given this history the legislature is the last institution that I'd trust to protect my individual freedoms. I'm sure you can find similar examples from the history of your own country as well.
The un-elected judiciary isn't perfect but at least it's shielded from public opinion and thus less susceptible to whatever hysteria is currently griping the nation. It doesn't matter whether that hysteria is terrorism, sensationalized stories about gun violence or drunk driving, fear of communism, etc, etc. Public hysteria is inherently dangerous to liberty. That's why you need a judiciary that's shielded as much as possible from public opinion.
Some of your complaints about the bill of rights are legitimate. The one I would agree with the most is the notion that it provides an absolute list of our rights and rights omitted (right to privacy?) aren't rights at all. The Framers actually considered this and it's one of the reasons why they included the 10th amendment. I still think though that having the bill of rights is better on balance than not having it.
The British don't have one and look where they are headed -- they've surrendered the right to keep and bear arms (yeah, I know, we disagree on this) as well as the right to remain silent and the right against self-incrimination (hopefully you agree with these). Clearly the notion of parliamentary supremacy unchecked by other branches of government or a founding document has drawbacks. One can only hope that the British people realize this fact before it's too late.
In any case, the claim is that they are looking for evidence that the owner of the laptop is a terrorist.
Ah yes, terrorism. The new boogieman that replaced drunk driving and child molesters. Wouldn't any halfway smart terrorist just buy a laptop here in the states and download whatever he needs through an encrypted connection to the terrorist data center back home in Dirkadirkastan?
Oh right, totalitarianism under the rule of the Chinese (who own the US)
Please stop repeating this myth. China doesn't "own" the US. It doesn't even own a majority or even a quarter of the outstanding US debt. Here is an interesting pie chart for your consideration. The data is a little out of date (I believe the Chinese have since surpassed the Japanese as the largest foreign creditor) but it shows that the overwhelming majority of the US debt is owned by the US Government itself.
This is what happens when the Government borrows money from the social security trust fund and other such accounting gimmicks. The second largest holder is American citizens and institutions. Foreign creditors account for the remainder, of which China doesn't even have a majority.
BTW, I agree with everything else you said.
It seems to this foreigner that the US government needs to be told to pull it's fucking head in and act like a government - not the Gestapo.
Yes, because searching your laptop at the border is exactly the same as rounding up minorities and sending them to death camps. It's exactly the same as hanging enemies of the state with piano wire after "convictions" obtained in a kangaroo court. The United States Department of Homeland Security also operates without any form of judicial or legislative oversight and is answerable only to President Obama.
You raised good points in the rest of your post but this last comparison of yours is utterly absurd.
But... aren't the laptops already across the border when they are searched? The border is a very very thin line
For better or worse the legal system assumes that you haven't actually crossed the border until you clear customs/immigration. Otherwise there wouldn't be much point to having those functions at international airports wholly contained within the United States.
The insightful mods don't change the fact that there are people willing to wield mod points to silence opposing points of view. It just seems that more people who believe in an open dialog happened to have mod points today. It doesn't always work that way.
Yes, but it is easier for someone from the crowd to grab the knife/golf club.
Another bullshit argument. It's actually easier to take a gun away from someone than it is to take a knife away from them. You can grab onto just about any part of a gun in an attempt to take it away or point it away from yourself. Grabbing onto a blade typically doesn't work real well.
Even if I bought your argument it still doesn't provide sufficient justification for gun control. All freedoms come with certain drawbacks. I'd wager that we could fight crime more effectively if we got rid of the presumption of innocence. Racism could be dealt with more effectively if we got rid of free speech. Many other problems could be dealt with more effectively if we lived under a benevolent dictatorship instead of a representative republic.
moronic Queensland country folk
Nice to see your opinions of your fellow countryman on display. It must be easy to dismiss people who disagree with you when you regard them as moronic hicks from the country. Is it hard being superior to everyone else or does it come naturally?
When someone is carrying a fast loading weapon on a rampage, it's just not as easy to disarm them as it might be if a few guys approached some lunatic holding a knife.
So you are willing to give up a freedom because of a comparatively rare event? Smart move that. You are more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to die in a mass shooting here in the states. You are more lucky to accidentally drown than you are to die in a gun accident.
If walking down the street with every 2nd person packing like some wild-west cliché is your definition of freedom, then you deserve your American constitution and bill of rights amendment.
The bill of rights isn't one amendment, it's ten. Glad to see the Aussie educational system is on a par with our own. And what's a "wild-west cliche"? The image that comes to my mind is a shootout in the open at ten paces. I haven't heard of many of those happening in the states recently.
It just seems like some parts of your bill of rights has enshrined certain types of selfishness over the common good.
That's exactly what freedom is. Selfishness over the common good. If the common good was all we cared about then we wouldn't have individual rights. Those rights would be subordinated to the interest of society as a whole. Thankfully that's not the system we live under.
We're doing fine, in fact BETTER, in that regard than you Americans.
That's your opinion.
All your lovely words on a bit of paper does not stop you invading countries on false pretexts (WMD's my arse!)
Funny how most other western intelligence agencies also thought there were WMDs. I opposed the war and found the justification for it to be questionable at best (even if he had WMDs what's wrong with good ole nuclear deterrence?) but I'm not going to stand by and let you cherry pick the parts of the story that support your own world view.
or holding people for YEARS without trial
Hello McFly! That's what happens during a war. Did Australia give trials to the Japanese soldiers that fell into your custody during the Kokoda Track campaign or did you hold them without trial until the end of hostilities? POWs aren't entitled to trials nor are unlawful combatants that don't fight in uniform or under a flag. Hell, given the fact that they aren't fighting in uniform or respecting the laws of war we would have been well within our rights to summarily execute them as soon as they were captured.
And you're worried about our not being able to access a few kiddie porn sites?
If you think your nanny state is only going to use the power you've given it to block kiddie
It's interesting that you leap to the assumption that I'm blaming Obama for something when my post was directed at Democratic partisans and said absolutely nothing about the President.
I don't really agree with many of the things President Obama is doing but my bigger gripe is with the Democratic partisans that keep using the Bush administration as a shield to deflect criticism of the current administration. You express concern about the deficit and they make a remark about how GWB inherited a surplus. You express concern about the economy and they make a remark about how Bush ran it into the ground. You express concern about Afghanistan and they bring up the invasion of Iraq. The list goes on and on.
You guys need to get the fuck over it already. Bush isn't President anymore. Obama is going to rise or fall on his own merits. Stop using the actions of the previous administration to silence criticism of the current one.
BTW, I'm not a Republican either, so spare me any responses aimed at them. I'm a former Democrat turned independent who doesn't really see any meaningful change in Washington. You guys are using the exact same tactics that you spent the last eight years deploring. As far as I can tell the only difference between you and the GOP is which set of freedoms I stand to lose.
Funny, I thought that was proper politics. Oh right, under "evil Republican administrations" debate and criticism were met with cries of being "unpatriotic", "anti-american", and protests were corraled into "free speech zones" and impromptu prisons.
Yeah, sure am glad that Democrats wouldn't do the same thing.
It's kind of amusing that you got an informative mod for this ;)
That's a bullshit argument. Someone who is capable of losing control during an argument and blowing someone away is equally capable of losing control and killing someone with a golf club or knife. Even if I accepted your bullshit argument it doesn't provide sufficient justification to ban guns.
What you regard as 'paranoia' I regard as freedom. In any case I certainly don't think someone from a country that censors the internet access provided to it's citizens has any standing to criticize my country. Why don't you clear up the mess in your own backyard and shove your smug superiority up the ass of the nearest saltwater crocodile?
It's not my favorite but it's certainly in the Top 10. It's the quote from my signature line because I don't believe quotes from the Godfather or Tora Tora Tora would resonate the same here on /. :)
Go fuck yourself mod. I can do this all day. Got lots of karma to burn :)
Statists?
Obviously the federal government have heard of some mp3 based viruses I was not aware of.
You don't think the NSA spends all of it's time listening to our phone calls do you? ;)
"National Security Agency"
"Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone."
"No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance."
"Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators."
"No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty."
"Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is... Dick"
Way to prove my point, whoever modded me and the parent troll. Mind pointing out exactly what in the GP's post constituted trolling?