Blotham is certainly confused about TORTURE. I am sure that Blotham knows that the cheif proponent of the ban on torture is Senator McCain. Yet, according to a news story dated December 19, 2005, McCain made it very clear that he was pressing for legislation before Congress that would establish in US law the international standard banning any treatment of prisoners that "shocks the conscience". BUT, he said that such treatment of a terrorist suspect who could reveal information that could stop a terrorist operation that might kill hundreds, would NOT "shock the conscience".
It would appear to be highly immoral to allow innocents to die because such treatment would not be applied to a terrorist.
e-major moans - "America just keeps slipping lower and lower on my scale."
Who cares!!
BTW. Where did you finally hide your little bananna?
englishmajor
As I mentioned to you earlier, I'm living in New York now. Other than the present, I've spent quite a bit of time down here (my first wive was a yank). I love the place and love the people (big surprise to me, folks in Manhattan are more friendly than back home in Vancouver. Who'd a guessed it?) As always, we need to differentiate between the folks in a nation and the characteristics of how that nation functions as an aggregate. That too, is inevitably a mixed proposition for any national entity.
As to the press manipulation your article points to...yep, that's a hallmark of this administration (controlling information and propaganizing). Even if there weren't a 'war' on, they'd be doing pretty much the same things. It's authoritarian, heads in the direction of tyranny, and is a very dangerous tendency.
Given that, I have no problem with Bush calling editors in to try to convince them that the public interest is best served through certain information controls. Clinton had a different strategy (a far better one) where he would commonly call up reporters in the middle of the night to just policy-wonk about various issues. Not only did he manage to befriend many, but he also got a chance to convince through dialogue.
Now, if Bush tried to threaten or intimidate the two editors, that would be a different matter. But we have no evidence that he did in this case. In much else regarding relationships with the press though, intimidation and bullying have marked the administration's relationship with the press.
woiyo wrote:e-major moans - "America just keeps slipping lower and lower on my scale."
Who cares!!
BTW. Where did you finally hide your little bananna?
EH? Check your bum. Thought you sat on it.
And, who cares that you don't care?
Yawn......that's the sound of no one caring what you think.
Mortkat wrote:Blotham's statistics apparently do not mean a thing.
Facts are important. Poll numbers contradicted by election results are only numbers.
Fact- George W. Bush was elected President of the United States in 2000. The Republicans retained their majority in the House and Senate which they had seized from the glandularly challenged Bill Clinton as far back as 1994.
Fact- AGAINST ALL TRADITION, THE GOP ADDED TO THEIR MAJORITY IN 2002 IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE. THE PARTY IN POWER USUALLY LOSES
SEATS IN OFF YEAR ELECTIONS.
Fact- George W. Bush was elected President of the United States in 2004. The Republicans ADDED seats to their majority in the House and Senate
I confidently predict that the GOP will retain the majorities in the House and Senate in the 2006 off year elections thus enabling President Bush to complete his agenda.
YAWN.........yes, him being elected/relected had nothing, whatsoever, to do with the fact that the voting machines were REPUBLICAN owned. Enjoy your dictatorship country :wink:
Is Bush Impeachable?
Well, let's see what some Republicans have had to say in the past ...
"No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country." - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), October 1998
"As John Adams said, we are a nation of laws, not of men. Our nation has survived the failings of its leaders before, but it cannot survive exceptions to the rule of law in our system of equal justice for all." - Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Arkansas) December 1998
"The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door. It challenges abuse of authority
There is such a thing lurking out in the world called abuse of authority, and the rule of law is what protects you from it. And so it's a matter of considerable concern to me when our legal system is assaulted by our nation's chief law enforcement officer, the only person obliged to take care that the laws are faithfully executed." - Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) December 1998
"The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt or tyrannical." - Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), December 1998
"[A] nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law. Otherwise, it would be as if we had one set of rules for the leaders and another for the governed." - Rep. Richard Armey (R-Texas) December 1998
"No one is above the law, not even the president."
- Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Connecticut), December 1998
I wonder if their views have changed...
Published on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 by Ted Rall
The Return of Total Information Awareness - Bush Asserts Dictatorial "Inherent" Powers
by Ted Rall
NEW YORK -- Civil libertarians relaxed when, in September 2003, Republicans bowed to public outcry and cancelled Total Information Awareness. TIA was a covert "data mining" operation run out of the Pentagon by creepy Iran-Contra figure John Poindexter. Bush Administration marketing mavens had tried to dress up the sinister "dataveillance" spook squad--first by changing TIA to Terrorism Information Awareness, then to the Information Awareness Office--to no avail. "But," wondered the Electronic Frontier Foundation watchdog group a month after Congress cut its funding, "is TIA truly dead?"
At the time I bet "no." Once a regime has revealed a predilection for spying on its own people, the histories of East Germany and Richard Nixon teach us, they never quit voluntarily. The cyclical clicks that appeared on my phone line after 9/11 corroborated my belief that federal spy agencies were using the War on Terrorism as a pretext for harassing their real enemies: liberals and others who criticized their policies. As did the phony Verizon employee tearing out of my building's basement, leaving the phone switching box open, when I demanded to see his identification. He drove away in an unmarked van.
So I was barely surprised to hear the big news that Bush had ordered the National Security Agency, FBI and CIA to tap the phones and emails of such dangerously subversive radical Islamist anti-American terrorist groups as Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the American Indian Movement and the Catholic Workers, without bothering to apply for a warrant. "The Catholic Workers advocated peace with a Christian and semi-communistic ideology," an agent wrote in an FBI dossier, a man sadly unaware of the passings of J. Edgar Hoover and the Soviet Union.
Old joke: A suspect running away from a cop ducks down a long dark alley. When the policeman's partner catches up he finds the first cop walking around in circles under a bright streetlamp. "What are you doing?" the second officer asks. "The guy ran into that alley!" "I know," his colleague replies, "but looking for him out here is a lot easier."
No wonder they haven't found Osama bin Laden. Tapping the ACLU's phones is easier than traipsing through Pakistani Kashmir.
The return of brazen Nixon-style domestic eavesdropping --it undoubtedly occurred under presidents from Ford to Clinton, though on a smaller, more discreet scale--indicates that the White House is flipping ahead to the next page in its Hitler playbook, the part about exploiting a state of perpetual war to stifle internal dissent on a vast scale. "As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants," the New York Times reports, "the NSA has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications." Maybe I should worry about the real Verizon guy too.
But then, last week, Bush also claimed the right to spy within the United States. Despite Congressional denials Bush said that the resolution that authorized him to use force to go after the perpetrators behind 9/11--which he used to invade Afghanistan--also gave him the right to listen in on Greenpeace and infiltrate a PETA seminar on veganism (yes, really). Attorney General and torture aficionado Alberto R. Gonzales cited the president's "inherent power as commander in chief."
Actually, as Peter Irons documents in his outstanding War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution, the Founding Fathers never intended for the "commander in chief" to have any powers beyond ordering troops to repel an invasion force. As everyone understood in 1787, the title was strictly ceremonial. A president can't declare war, much less violate our privacy, based on his commander-in-chief "authority."
Officials of a democratic republic derive their power and authority from law. As servants of the people, they can't do anything unless it's specifically authorized by law or judicial interpretations thereof. Only in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes may a legal theory be created that imbues the leader, as the personal embodiment of the state, with "inherent" powers. For example, the Nazi "führer principle," in which the head of state was answerable to no one and the legislative and judicial branches of governments were reduced to rubber stamps, required Hitler to assign himself inherent powers.
Bush and Gonzales' interpretation of their roles is alien, un-American. Do they understand our system of government? Or are they trying to change it to something more "efficient"--something closer to authoritarian state led by a strongman, or even outright fascism?
When I first read about Bush's domestic eavesdropping operation--which he promises to continue--I did what any left-of-center Bush-bashing cartoonist and columnist would do: I filed Freedom of Information Act requests to force the FBI, CIA and NSA to cough up whatever they've got on me. After all, if the feds are going after Ancient Forest Rescue, it isn't a big stretch to surmise that they might be interested in a guy who says that George W. Bush is illegitimate, dumb as a rock and the head of a cabal of sociopathic mass murderers who've done more to destroy the United States than Osama. I'll let you know what, if anything, turns up.
Interesting tidbit: When I visited the NSA's official website, my browser warned me that I was "about to enter a site that is not secure." Ain't that the truth.
©
Only 2 odd years to go people. Untill then, may I suggest Lithium?
The voting machines were REPUBLICAN owned? Do you have a link for that?
If you don't, I will re-iterate.
President Bush, as I indicated previously, has won two elections and his party has won three. The previous glanduarly challenged President lost his party's hold on the House and Senate in 1984.
I await your link showing that the voting machines were REPUBLICAN owned--English Major. By the way, have you caught up with all of the pederasts in British Columbia?
squinney wrote:Is Bush Impeachable?
Well, let's see what some Republicans have had to say in the past ...
"No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country." - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), October 1998
"As John Adams said, we are a nation of laws, not of men. Our nation has survived the failings of its leaders before, but it cannot survive exceptions to the rule of law in our system of equal justice for all." - Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Arkansas) December 1998
"The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door. It challenges abuse of authority
There is such a thing lurking out in the world called abuse of authority, and the rule of law is what protects you from it. And so it's a matter of considerable concern to me when our legal system is assaulted by our nation's chief law enforcement officer, the only person obliged to take care that the laws are faithfully executed." - Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) December 1998
"The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt or tyrannical." - Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), December 1998
"[A] nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law. Otherwise, it would be as if we had one set of rules for the leaders and another for the governed." - Rep. Richard Armey (R-Texas) December 1998
"No one is above the law, not even the president."
- Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Connecticut), December 1998
I wonder if their views have changed...
What does any of this have to do with whether George Bush is impeachable???
Seems pretty straight forward, Brandon. These were statements made by Republicans about Clinton.
Do they not apply to Bush as well?
We'll see.
squinney wrote:Seems pretty straight forward, Brandon. These were statements made by Republicans about Clinton.
Do they not apply to Bush as well?
We'll see.
The only reason they don't apply to Bush is it doesn't appear he broke the law.
Oh, and blatham:
The Nation, and Alternet.org?
blatham wrote:Quote:Big Brother Bush
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted December 29, 2005.
I don't mean to scare you silly -- but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power.
The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.
The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.
The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap. Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the terrorists who threaten us all. Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the Quakers. We are not safer.
We would be safer, as the 9-11 commission has so recently reminded us, if some obvious and necessary precautions were taken at both nuclear and chemical plants -- but that is not happening because those industries contribute to Republican candidates. Republicans do not ask their contributors to spend a lot of money on obvious and necessary steps to protect public safety. They wiretap, instead. You will be unsurprised to learn that, first, they lied. They didn't do it. Well, OK, they did it, but not very much at all. Well, OK, more than that. A lot more than that. OK, millions of private e-mail and telephone calls every hour, and all medical and financial records.
You may recall in 2002 it was revealed that the Pentagon had started a giant data-mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), intended to search through vast databases "to increase information coverage by an order of magnitude."
From credit cards to vet reports, Big Brother would be watching us. This dandy program was under the control of Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of five felonies during Iran-Contra, all overturned on a technicality. This administration really knows where to go for good help -- it ought to bring back Brownie.
Everybody decided that TIA was a terrible idea, and the program was theoretically shut down. As often happens with this administration, it turned out they just changed the name and made the program less visible. Data-mining was a popular buzzword at the time, and the administration was obviously hot to have it. Bush established a secret program under which the National Security Agency could bypass the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court and begin eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
As many have patiently pointed out, the entire program was unnecessary, since the FISA court is both prompt and accommodating. There is virtually no possible scenario that would make it difficult or impossible to get a FISA warrant -- it has granted 19,000 warrants and rejected only a handful.
I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."
And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny." Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, do you?"
Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and, boy, if those aren't outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?
This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly. Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?
http://www.alternet.org/story/30175/
As a Canadian, you have a clearer vision (and better press coverage) than the average American. Tico can pooh-pooh all he wants but the article brings up very good points, which I notice he could not argue. Can't argue with logic eh?
Who will you blame, America, when the republic is lost? Which in my opinion, and others, is already gone.
Blatham, it's a good thing you're just in Manhatten. (Which I heard about the other day -something about rising sea levels eroding parts of Manhatten? Have you heard anything about that?) You're not too far from Canada, and when things get really bonkers in the States you can always go home to Canada. I find it refreshingly normal and fear free here. Don't you?
Blotham can't even find decent sources to quote:]
Everyone knows that the Nation was the only magazine in the US which was the American conduit for Pravda and, MollyIvins???It is well known that the unfortunate illness which, I am happy to report, she has apparently beaten, caused her to ingest a great many chemicals which addled her brain.
Blotham,being a Canadian, apparently is unaware of the most respected news sources in the USA. They are The New York Times and The Washington Post--certainly not the far far leftish Nation or the most confused Molly Ivins.
blatham wrote:oralloy wrote:The rank hypocrisy of "Democrats who want the law to apply to Bush after they placed Clinton above the law" is completely relevant to any thread where Democrats want to apply the law to Bush.
I can see how such hypocrisy is discomforting to them. Yet, so long as the Democrats are completely unapologetic about their hypocrisy, it needs to be raised anytime they go after Bush.
As an argument, this is a bit of a train-wreck.
If hypocrisy is evidenced in insisting on a standard for a disfavored party but yet not insisting on that same standard for another favored fellow, then it is clearly 'rank hypocrisy' to allow Bush leniency or faultlessness when that wasn't granted to Clinton.
Sorry about the delayed response, the holidays were busier than I planned.
Anyway, the problem is, leniency
was granted to Clinton. The Democrats refused to remove him from office.
If the Republicans had succeeded in removing Clinton from office, I can see how it would be hypocritical of them to refuse to treat Bush the same if it were shown he committed high crimes or high misdemeanors.
But I don't think it would be hypocritical of the Republicans to give Bush the same pass that they watched the Democrats give Clinton.
blatham wrote:oralloy wrote:Torture is certainly a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and Bush is flagrantly violating this.
And what remedy then?
Civil lawsuits, probably.
I don't know that the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction.
blatham wrote:Surely, this is constitutes a greater insult to morality and to the stature of the office of the President than that which Clinton was guilty of.
I don't see how. Clinton's crime was impeachable because it was a crime against the US government (the courts are the victim with perjury and obstruction).
I don't see how torture would fall into the same category.
Some of the more outlandish things Bush is accused of (such as claims he used the NSA to spy on his political opponents) are impeachable as "abuses of power". But I don't think it is likely that those charges will be proven.
The Bush administration has succeeded in making the United States one of the most feared and hated countries in the world. The talent of these guys is unbelievable. They have even succeeded at alienating Canada. I mean, that takes genius, literally. 
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oralloy-
There are several points which are unassailable
l. The various charges made against President Bush and his administration may, in some areas, such as the Ivory Tower, indeed be a matter of principle. But only those completely ignorant of modern day politics would dare to say that there are no Democrats and/or left wingers who are not throwing mud for political advantage.
2. Clinton admitted his guilt.
http://australianpolitics.com/news/2001/01-01-19c.shtml
"President Clinton has struck a deal with the Independent Counsel, Robert Ray, ADMITTING HE LIED during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and accepting a 5 year suspension of his license to practice law IN RETURN FOR NOT BEING INDICTED"
3. Any charges like the gasbaggery of Blatham concerning "torture" or "abuses of power" can only be adjudicated in the courts. I am sure that someone will prod the ACLU to file such charges. I have perfect confidence, as John Schmidt, the Assistant Attorney General during CLinton's tenure has mentioned concerning the alleged violation of the FISA law by President Bush, that no Supreme Court would ever second guess the President in such a case--eg. safguarding our country by allowing wiretaps of ALQaeda communications as part of his function as commander in chief as delegated to him by the Congress on Oct.11th and Oct. 12th when the President was given the full go ahead to use the military "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate" .
4. Blotham has been reminded that his outrage concerning torture is invalid insofar as it is not COMPLETELY shared by the author of the Anti-Torture legislation- Senator John McCain. Indeed, Senator McCain admitted that although Torture was generally something that would shock the conscience and should not be used, the use of torture in circumstances where it was evident that a subject was aware of and knew of a plot that would kill scores if not hundreds of people, would not, as McCain put it, shock the conscience. I would hold that the lack of action on the part of captors who KNEW a subject was aware of a plot to kill many people would BE A HUGE MORAL FAILURE.
Blotham may indeed file his protests with the Hague.
oralloy wrote:
Quote:The rank hypocrisy of "Democrats who want the law to apply to Bush after they placed Clinton above the law" is completely relevant to any thread where Democrats want to apply the law to Bush.
I can see how such hypocrisy is discomforting to them. Yet, so long as the Democrats are completely unapologetic about their hypocrisy, it needs to be raised anytime they go after Bush.
blatham wrote:
Quote:As an argument, this is a bit of a train-wreck.
If hypocrisy is evidenced in insisting on a standard for a disfavored party but yet not insisting on that same standard for another favored fellow, then it is clearly 'rank hypocrisy' to allow Bush leniency or faultlessness when that wasn't granted to Clinton.
oralloy wrote:
Quote:Anyway, the problem is, leniency was granted to Clinton. The Democrats refused to remove him from office.
If the Republicans had succeeded in removing Clinton from office, I can see how it would be hypocritical of them to refuse to treat Bush the same if it were shown he committed high crimes or high misdemeanors.
But I don't think it would be hypocritical of the Republicans to give Bush the same pass that they watched the Democrats give Clinton.
A nod to the facts...ten Republican senators voted "not guilty".
Your argument is meritless, and you likely know it. How the vote turned out is irrelevant.
Your charge of hypocrisy for dems is itself a hypocritical claim. Republicans set impeachment in motion for alleged crimes. Dems may do precisely the same to Bush without valid charge of unique hypocisy. Your formula would have the Clinton impeachment as proper but ANY subsequent impeachment of a Republican president hypocritical. Clearly that doesn't make any sense. It would be nice if you played straight and went for the truth/logic of the question here rather than a tired partisan one-upsmanship.
