[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
According to Paul in the latest debate 9/11 was done by 19 independent men. Following his logic since they are dead we need not worry about anything else.[/quote]
According to the truth these acts were accomplished by 19 individuals. Your misapplied logic reaches the incorrect conclusion. Were not letters of marque brought up to address the issues of the top al Qaeda members?
Miss the forest for the trees yet again.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
According to Paul in the latest debate 9/11 was done by 19 independent men. Following his logic since they are dead we need not worry about anything else.
According to the truth these acts were accomplished by 19 individuals. Your misapplied logic reaches the incorrect conclusion. Were not letters of marque brought up to address the issues of the top al Qaeda members?
Miss the forest for the trees yet again.[/quote]
Yes you have. Letters of Marque against AQ members is laughable. People get upset when we target them now. Imagine employing bounty hunters to assassinate people in Europe. The outcry would be horrendous. And rightfully so.
Imagine bounty hunters trying to operate in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. They wouldn’t survive 3 seconds.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Yes you have. Letters of Marque against AQ members is laughable. People get upset when we target them now. Imagine employing bounty hunters to assassinate people in Europe. The outcry would be horrendous. And rightfully so.
Imagine bounty hunters trying to operate in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. They wouldn’t survive 3 seconds.[/quote]
These people are professionals. In most cases they are prior spec ops guys right our of the military. The same military you say is capable of handling the situation. I put my faith in a team of highly trained individuals operating free from government over a politician anyday.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Yes you have. Letters of Marque against AQ members is laughable. People get upset when we target them now. Imagine employing bounty hunters to assassinate people in Europe. The outcry would be horrendous. And rightfully so.
Imagine bounty hunters trying to operate in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. They wouldn’t survive 3 seconds.
These people are professionals. In most cases they are prior spec ops guys right our of the military. The same military you say is capable of handling the situation. I put my faith in a team of highly trained individuals operating free from government over a politician anyday.[/quote]
Professionals would never take the job. Professionals work with expensive weapons systems, air cover etc. They do not do suicide attacks in the middle of Afghanistan with no hope of rescue.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Professionals would never take the job. Professionals work with expensive weapons systems, air cover etc. They do not do suicide attacks in the middle of Afghanistan with no hope of rescue.[/quote]
Why wouldn’t they be able to have helicopter support?
Hello? Blackwater? They have all the support they need.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Professionals would never take the job. Professionals work with expensive weapons systems, air cover etc. They do not do suicide attacks in the middle of Afghanistan with no hope of rescue.
Why wouldn’t they be able to have helicopter support?
Hello? Blackwater? They have all the support they need.[/quote]
You are fooling yourself.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
You are fooling yourself.[/quote]
Oh you’re right, only government is capable of using force to stop criminals.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
You are fooling yourself.
Oh you’re right, only government is capable of using force to stop criminals.[/quote]
Did I say that? I said mercenaries/bounty hunters would not be able to operate in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
You are fooling yourself.
Oh you’re right, only government is capable of using force to stop criminals.
Did I say that? I said mercenaries/bounty hunters would not be able to operate in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.[/quote]
Dude, get over it. I said you’re right. No one but an official institution can take care of this problem.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Professionals would never take the job. Professionals work with expensive weapons systems, air cover etc. They do not do suicide attacks in the middle of Afghanistan with no hope of rescue.
Why wouldn’t they be able to have helicopter support?
Hello? Blackwater? They have all the support they need.[/quote]
I’m all about the idea of having groups like Blackwater getting involved as a supplement to the military. My only concern in the idea of letters of marque on a large scale is a fear of America developing something akin to the East India Corporation.
mike
I don’t believe the numbers being presented by Gallup, et al, are accurate. The major opinion polls are only calling likely Republican primary voters. This would represent the Republican base who voted for Bush in 2004. Since Bush was running unopposed in 2004 no Republicans registered to vote in the Primaries.
Paul is pulling support from people who never even voted before to register as a Republican to vote in the primaries. I don’t put Paul’s support that much higher than what is being reported but for sure it is being under-represented (I gage it at about 10 - 13%. If the likely GOP primary voters do not get more excited Congressman Paul will take it because there is no way conservatives are going to vote in Giuliani en masse.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The actual disagreement was about what the constitution allows and what it doesn’t - which is a substantive disagreement.
[/quote]
A federal court on Wednesday struck down two provisions of the Patriot Act dealing with searches and intelligence gathering, saying they violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures with regard to criminal prosecutions.
[i]On March 9, 2007, a Justice Department audit found that the FBI had “improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information” about United States citizens. [1]
On June 15, 2007, following an internal audit finding that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1000 times, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ordered the agency to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency’s national security letters program.
Business Week reported that the FBI had issued tens of thousands of “National Security Letters” and had obtained one million financial records from the customers of targeted Las Vegas businesses. Selected businesses included casinos, storage warehouses and car rental agencies. An anonymous Justice official claimed that such requests were permitted under section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act and despite the volume of requests insisted “We are not inclined to ask courts to endorse fishing expeditions”. [13] This didn’t just include financial records, but credit records, employment records, and in some cases, health records.
Furthermore, this information is databased and maintained indefinitely by the FBI. Previous legislation required that federal law enforcement destroy any records harvested during an investigation that pertained to anyone deemed innocent. The Patriot Act superseded that and now the records are maintained indefinitely. According to the legislation, they may be “shared with third-parties where appropriate” yet no where in the legislation does it define who these third parties are or what conditions would be deemed appropriate for the sharing of such records.
The large scale wiretapping and tracing of calls to and from foreign countries also falls under this. Millions of phone records were harvested, fed into a database and were searched for patterns of calling to and from numbers of known terrorists. To date, there have been no announced arrests from this program.
Public libraries have been asked to turn over their records for specific terminals. A few have filed suit, because the National Security Letters, that they were presented with were very sweeping, demanding information not just on the individual under investigation, but on everyone who had used specific terminals at the libraries during given time windows. Since many of the users in one case were minor children, one library felt that it had an obligation to notify the parents. The FBI has disagreed and the case is now working its way through the court system.
Another little-known fact is that a National Security Letter can be issued by any FBI agent with the rank of Field Supervisor or above, at their discretion. It does not require a judge or probable cause, as does a search warrant, which leads many to see it a major erosion of Constitutional rights, in particular the Fourth Amendment which reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In May 2004, Professor Steve Kurtz of the University at Buffalo reported his wife’s death of heart failure. The associate art professor, who works in the biotechnology sector, was using benign bacterial cultures and biological equipment in his work. Police arriving at the scene found the equipment (which had been displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America) suspicious and notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The next day the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Department of Homeland Security and numerous other law enforcement agencies arrived in HAZMAT gear and cordoned off the block surrounding Kurtz’s house, impounding computers, manuscripts, books, and equipment, and detaining Kurtz without charge for 22 hours; the Erie County Health Department condemned the house as a possible “health risk” while the cultures were analyzed. Although it was determined that nothing in the Kurtz’s home posed any health or safety risk, the Justice Department sought charges under Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act�??a law which was expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act. A grand jury rejected those charges, but Kurtz is still charged with federal criminal mail and wire fraud, and faces 20 years in jail. Supporters worldwide argue that this is a politically motivated prosecution, akin to those seen during the era of McCarthyism, and legal observers note that it is a precedent-setting case with far-reaching implications involving the criminalization of free speech and expression for artists, scientists, researchers, and others.
[/i]
Hey, Mick, what da ya think of this?
[quote]arnoldseven wrote:
Hey, Mick, what da ya think of this?
[/quote]
I don’t presume to answer for Mick.
However, I just wanted to pop by and say that ron paul is absolutely off his rocker.
Oh, for the record, the guys who came from behind and won, were actually part of the party that nominated them.
ron paul isn’t a Republican.
You’ll see the frontrunners reaching out to other prominent members. They’re thinking of the time when they’ll need allies.
See Rudy and McCain.
They AREN’T summarily dismissing other viewpoints as inherently Unconstitutional.
Imagine party leaders of either party sitting down to talk to this clown.
He’d pontificate and engage in verbal diarrhea.
The basis of Democracy is the ability to compromise.
ron paul would be unable to forge any sort of compromise on any issue that was in doubt.
Imagine ron paul trying to convince a doubter?
Last night he accused the men on that stage of ignoring the Constitution.
Nice job, ron.
Unless we want to elect ron paul the emperor of the United States with the power to remove anyone who disagrees with him, forget it.
I do admit that I’m amused at the lunatics who froth at the mouth over this broken record.
In summary, lifty, I’m scared he’ll rock the establishment!!! (or not).
JeffR
Jeff, I agree that his public speaking skills leave a lot to be desired. That said, I don’t see how having principles, and calling out viewpoints that you believe are wrong, somehow displays an inability to compromise. If you want to see a stellar example of that type of problem you only have to look at Bush, and his refusal to represent the populace of this country by spending all of our money on a pointless war.
Ron Paul is only “not a republican” by the warped standards of today, where republican means “fight anyone, anywhere, for any reason, even if it’s made up.” And the “spend money like it’s going out of style” republicanism. That’s not what Republican meant 10 years ago, and I don’t think any right-minded American believes that’s a good policy today.
If you told me the world is flat, I’d summarily dismiss you. No negotiation necessary.
I think the only people frothing at the mouth over Paul are people tired of the same rhetoric by bought-and-paid-for candidates who don’t have any new ideas. There’s a reason why Paul is getting a huge amount of donations from individuals (not corporations), because they have become aware of the fact that his ideas are better than the other candidates’.
[quote]ryanjm wrote:
Jeff, I agree that his public speaking skills leave a lot to be desired. That said, I don’t see how having principles, and calling out viewpoints that you believe are wrong, somehow displays an inability to compromise. If you want to see a stellar example of that type of problem you only have to look at Bush, and his refusal to represent the populace of this country by spending all of our money on a pointless war.
Ron Paul is only “not a republican” by the warped standards of today, where republican means “fight anyone, anywhere, for any reason, even if it’s made up.” And the “spend money like it’s going out of style” republicanism. That’s not what Republican meant 10 years ago, and I don’t think any right-minded American believes that’s a good policy today.
If you told me the world is flat, I’d summarily dismiss you. No negotiation necessary.
I think the only people frothing at the mouth over Paul are people tired of the same rhetoric by bought-and-paid-for candidates who don’t have any new ideas. There’s a reason why Paul is getting a huge amount of donations from individuals (not corporations), because they have become aware of the fact that his ideas are better than the other candidates’.[/quote]
ryan,
I’ll cut to the essence of your rant: Bush was able to build coalitions of both parties.
paul couldn’t.
Don’t be confused, the modern dem won’t come to the table unless he/she is forced through public pressure.
paul doesn’t have nearly enough support for any sort of meaningful mandate.
The dems would love to see him flail.
JeffR
[quote]ryanjm wrote:
Jeff, I agree that his public speaking skills leave a lot to be desired. That said, I don’t see how having principles, and calling out viewpoints that you believe are wrong, somehow displays an inability to compromise. If you want to see a stellar example of that type of problem you only have to look at Bush, and his refusal to represent the populace of this country by spending all of our money on a pointless war.
Ron Paul is only “not a republican” by the warped standards of today, where republican means “fight anyone, anywhere, for any reason, even if it’s made up.” And the “spend money like it’s going out of style” republicanism. That’s not what Republican meant 10 years ago, and I don’t think any right-minded American believes that’s a good policy today.
If you told me the world is flat, I’d summarily dismiss you. No negotiation necessary.
I think the only people frothing at the mouth over Paul are people tired of the same rhetoric by bought-and-paid-for candidates who don’t have any new ideas. There’s a reason why Paul is getting a huge amount of donations from individuals (not corporations), because they have become aware of the fact that his ideas are better than the other candidates’.[/quote]
Oh, as far as ideas: paul is a nut.
Pull out, we’ll trade with them.
Hey ron, what happens when they interrupt trade? What happens when they take your ships?
He must not have read his Founding Fathers very well.
Barbary Pirates and Tom Jefferson ring a bell?
JeffR
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Hey ron, what happens when they interrupt trade? What happens when they take your ships?
He must not have read his Founding Fathers very well.
[/quote]
See, to me, you’re nuts. Why fight a war over stuff that may or may not happen? If it happens deal with it and move on. We don’t need endless wars of aggression to prevent “bad stuff” from happening.
Get a night-light if you have bad dreams or get over it.