AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Now Foxy is an authority on debating. Where's her credentials?

She couldn't resist adding the kitchen sink to my supposed transgressions just to try and make something stick. Anything. She hasn't provided any effective counter argument so if she was on a debate team, she'd be kicked off.

She is following the conservative (right wing extremist) handbook: Duplicity 24/7, no substance.

Nixonian Condoleeza Rice in now on record as informing America: By definition, if anything is authorized by the president, it doesn't violate the law.

If someone doesn't do something about this dangerous idea it will do more damage than the torture itself. Yes, the torture damaged our reputation across the world, helped terrorists recruit fighters against us, endangered our soldiers and sullied the name of America. But if this precedent - that the president can authorize anything and make it legal "by definition" - is allowed to stand, then our whole form of government is in jeopardy.

A violation of the law is, of course, a big deal, especially on something this grave and important. This is not a jaywalking ticket. There were 34 suspected or confirmed homicides of detainees, some clearly due to torture. It does not get any more serious than this. But what is even worse is if you set the precedent that violations of the law like this will not have any consequences. That is bigger than the crime itself.

Re: Advocate (Post 3638826)
Well I'm leaving him alone but I am praying for him. I think he is honestly misreading what is being said and then puts his own spin on it. I think he then says really hateful things just to have something to say. Such people need pity so please try to be charitable.

Rice and all of Bush's henchmen learned their lesson early; don't argue with the boss if you want to keep your job. They were brain-washed thoroughly; and they're supposed to be the "intelligent" ones. Whatever king George says is the law of the land.

Well I'm leaving him alone but I am praying for him. I think he is honestly misreading what is being said and then puts his own spin on it. Only hateful numbnuts who hate God and want to persecute him would say that eating the apple is forbidden. I think he then says really hateful things just to have something to say. Such people need pity so please try to be charitable. And you know what is truly charitable? Eating this delicious apple. It's not a bad thing because the beloved conservative movement has redefined it to be good. Go ahead dear people, take a bite and then we'll pray.

I think Eric Holder will pursue this issue, and bring some closure by next year end.

Jewish World Review April 29, 2009 5 Iyar 5769
The housing boom and bust
By Thomas Sowell

In the spirit of bipartisanship, my newest book " "The Housing Boom and Bust" " shows how both Democrats and Republicans ruined both the housing markets and the financial markets.

Like so many disasters, the current economic crisis grew out of policies based on good intentions and mushy thinking.

For far too long, too many people have regarded home ownership as "a good thing." It is certainly true that home ownership has its benefits. But, like everything else, it also has its costs and its risks.

Weighing such trade-offs is something that each individual and each family can do for themselves. It is when such decisions are made by politicians " of whatever party " that trade-offs tend to vanish into thin air, replaced by pursuit of a "good thing."

Beginning in the 1990s, getting a higher proportion of the American population to become homeowners became the political holy grail of government housing policies. Increasing home ownership among minorities and other people of low or moderate incomes was also part of this political crusade.

Because banks are regulated by various agencies of the federal government, it was easy to pressure them to lend to people that they would not otherwise lend to " namely, people with lower incomes, poorer credit ratings and little or no money for a conventional down payment of 20 percent of the price of a house.

Such people were referred to politically as "the underserved population" " as if politicians know who should and who shouldn't get mortgages better than people who have spent their careers making mortgage-lending decisions.

But, in politics, power trumps knowledge. Banks whose mortgage loan approval rates for "the underserved population" did not match the prevailing preconceptions found that they could not get government regulatory agencies to approve their business decisions on opening new branches or enlarging their financial operations, the way competing banks did when those competing banks met the lending quotas set by the government.

If meeting those quotas required lowering the standards for granting mortgage loans, that was often considered a lesser evil than having government regulators stalling or vetoing the business decisions necessary for competing in the financial markets.

While Democrats spearheaded this crusade, Republicans joined in as well. The George W. Bush administration, for example, urged Congress to pass the American Dream Downpayment Initiative, which subsidized the down payments of prospective home buyers whose incomes were below a certain level.

Who could be against "the American dream" of home ownership or so mean-spirited as to ask how much it would cost the taxpayers or what risks it would create for the whole financial system? Certainly not most Democrats or Republicans in Congress or the White House.

The media were also part of this crusade for more home ownership, more widely available. If some segments of the population did not own homes as much as others, that just showed that there was something wrong with the mortgage lending process, as far as editorial office philosophers were concerned.

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch put it, "lending institutions are being far more conservative than they have to be in determining the creditworthiness of minorities."

Later, disastrous default rates and foreclosure rates among "the underserved population" who had been given mortgage loans to satisfy government quotas suggest that the old-fashioned mortgage qualifications that had been pooh-poohed in editorial offices had more basis than the crusades of politicians and the press.

There are many other complications covered in "The Housing Boom and Bust". But behind all the complexities was a very simple fact: Monthly mortgage payments by millions of home buyers were what provided the money for the banks, the financial institutions that bought mortgages from the banks, and the Wall Street firms that created sophisticated securities based on those mortgages.

Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell042909.php3

My thinking is the same, but I go one step further; if the Obama administration does nothing to correct past wrongs by any president, he becomes a co-conspirator of the crime, because they have full knowledge of the crime against our Constitution.

Justice Brandeis wrote:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. . . .

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.

Quote:

Justice Brandeis wrote:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. . . .

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.

“In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.”

Guess who said that?

Echo chambers do not make good law, Deb. You should know this.

We have been a nation of laws since our founding. Yet those of you on the left always seem to shout down opposing opinions.

We obviously disagree on the treatment of the three members of Al Qaeda terrorists who were waterboarded, as do many legal scholars. Yet, because you seem to exist in an echo chamber of left wing opinion, you don’t see the possibility you might be wrong.

I agree with the many scholars who say sleep deprivation and water boarding do not constitute torture. You don't, and seek opposing opinions from those you agree with.

My original point was prior admins, as a rule, do not investigate former admins. The fact that most of the FDR admin wasn't sent to prison proves this.

Interestingly, it was the Bush admin that attempted to block the conservative group Judicial Watch from trying to obtain Clinton White House emails when they were discovered years after Clinton weathered the FBI files scandal.

Maybe they shouldn't have, right? Rule of law, and all. In fact, Bush should have actively pursued this, don't you think?