Hello:

Obama nicely summed up what I've been saying on these pages for YEARS: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

It's about time!

Bush must have been cringing. Obama's speech was a total repudiation of the Bush years.

It's been said recently, by pundits in the know, that once Obama finds out what's REALLY going on, he'll see that Bush was right, and he'll continue Bush's detention and interrogation programs...

I don't know how they got it SOOO wrong. Ok, yes I do. They drank the koolaid.

excon

Yeah that was nice rhetorical flourish but
Another skyscraper or 2 go down and the public will beg Obama to suspend civil liberties.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

yeah that was nice rhetorical flourish but another skyscraper or 2 go down and the public will beg Obama to suspend civil liberties.

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Hello again, tom:

That's the problem. You think our liberties are nothing but a convenience.. But, if you don't think the Constitution represents our ideals, what exactly DO you think our ideals are?

We've been communicating with each other for years. I really don't know what you stand for, in terms of OUR ideals.

Oh, I know you'll say freedom... But, if your civil liberties are only yours because the government says so, then that's not freedom... It's really not. Not even close. In fact, our founding documents say the opposite. Indeed, it's THOSE ideals expressed in THOSE documents that, in MY humble opinion, represent OUR ideals. I can't imagine where you get your stuff from.

Now, I know you're scared of another attack. I am too. But, that doesn't mean we can start changing WHO WE ARE. Because if we do, the terrorists have won. I don't understand how you don't understand that.

Obama understands that we can be safe AND adhere to our ideals. Instead of aiming our guns inward, as Bush did, we should aim them outwards as Obama will do. Maybe that way, we can catch that Bin Laden fellow.

excon

We haven't changed who we are one bit and certainly a lot less than the generation that accepted government ration stamps , mandatory curfews and other restrictions etc . During wartime.

I contend that EVERY war time American Chief executive has made the decision to make the choice in favor of greater security over sticking to rigid Camelot-like principles .

If we were actually fighting a war that could be WON, then I'd have no problem with rationing, curfews, etc.

However---we're not. We're fighting a series of battles that are going nowhere towards defeating our enemies. Not even CLOSE.

refuse to give up my liberties just because someone bombs a building, or knocks down a couple skyscrapers. That's just STUPID. That's letting THEM dictate how WE live.

Frankly, the only way we're going to EVER be able to "secure" our country is to close the borders and become an isolationist state--in which case the terrorists STILL win.

Just words?

Change we can believe in means "effectively marshaling the power of government... (to) improve the actual conditions of peoples' lives -- and consign antigovernment evangelists to the dustbin of history."

I don't like the sound of that.

NOw that you've had a day to savor the inauguration of Hopenchange I have to ask the same question David Harsanyi of the Denver Post asked, is dissent still patriotic? It sure seems that much of what's been preached to us the past few years is being thrown out the window...

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To require such fealty to power in the name of patriotism was once repugnant to the left. Now, with the right guy in charge, apparently it can once again be embraced.

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I think he's right, and quite frankly that scares the heck out of me.

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refuse to give up my liberties just because someone bombs a building, or knocks down a couple skyscrapers. That's just STUPID. That's letting THEM dictate how WE live.

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Al-Qaeda terrorists killed by Black Death after the killer bug also known as the plague sweeps through a training camp | The Sun |News

Eli Lake reporting for the Washingtom Times adds to the above UK Sun article about an AQ camp where according to Lake a biological weapons program involving the plague backfired .

authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.
Washington Times - Al Qaeda bungles arms experiment

It has long been known that AQ has attempted to develop chemical and biological weapons

Now ;please tell me what inconvenient changes have you made as a sacrifice to your liberties that makes you claim that the war against jihadistan has caused us to "change who we are " ? What liberties have you sacrificed ?

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Originally Posted by tomder55

It has long been known that AQ has attempted to develop chemical and biological weapons. What liberties have you sacrificed ?

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Hello again, tom:

Well there you go. Our founders couldn't have predicted that we'd face an enemy as bad as them. Nahhh... They didn't understand stuff...

However, I'm surprised that you'd lay down so easily, tom. All AQ has to do is knock down a few buildings, and scare you about gas. Then, rip zap, the ideals our nation was founded on are out the window...

You LOVE lists, don't you. Who else on your list is so bad that we should capitulate for?

excon

PS> Sacrificed liberties?? Habeas Corpus, government spying, carrying water on airplanes...

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Originally Posted by excon

Hello:

Obama nicely summed up what I've been saying on these pages for YEARS: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

It's about time!

Bush must have been cringing. Obama's speech was a total repudiation of the Bush years.

It's been said recently, by pundits in the know, that once Obama finds out what's REALLY going on, he'll see that Bush was right, and he'll continue Bush's detention and interrogation programs....

I dunno how they got it SOOO wrong. Ok, yes I do. They drank the koolaid.

excon

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One thing the constitutionsays is for government to protect its people. That is the one thing the government does well [ and the building of the interstate system ] thanks to the men and women in the armed forces and those in the intelligence agencies. That is Bush's legacy.


You talk of freedom and liberty, but that comes with repsonsibility. What ever happened to a person's responsibility to provide for his or her own education or health or income. We have drifted to the point where paradoxically people will give up their rights and responsibilities so that they can have the government try to provide these things. :(



Heck with the orwellian titled FOCA , doctor's and hospitals don't even have the freedom to follow their own consciences. :eek:


Now who is drinking the Kool Aid?







G&P

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All AQ has to do is knock down a few buildings, and scare you about gas. Then, rip zap, the ideals our nation was founded on are out the window...

PS> Sacrificed liberties?? Habeas Corpus, government spying, carrying water on airplanes...

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Perhaps that weaponized bubonic/pneumonic bomb was going to target Seattle.
What freedoms would you lose as the whole city is shut down and quarantined?. much more than having to take your shoes off at the airport I bet.


Perhaps you forget that after 9-11 the only thing on anyone's mind was get the terrorists and why didn't government do more to protect us ? President Bush set out to do both;putting in the institutions to gather usable intelligence on the jihadists and to take the war into their neighborhood.

You have lost no habeas rights ;there is no unconstitutional "domestic spying " . You go about your life pretty much the same as you did on 9-10-2001.

But it is true that on his 1st day in office ,President Obama went out of his way to extend extra-constitutional rights to the person(s) who twice plotted and succeeded to topple the Twin Towers,murder apx 3000 Americans ,and attempted a decapitation of our government and economy .

You want to know what torture is ? I define it as feeling the rising heat of an inferno below you knowing there is no escape. Making a quick call to your loved ones to say goodby before you force open a window and plunge 80 stories to your death. I define it as being on an airliner that has been hijacked and being told that other planes have been hijacked and used as missiles ;that no matter what you do you are already dead.

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Originally Posted by tomder55

You have lost no habeus rights....
You want to know what torture is ? I define it as feeling the rising heat of an inferno below you knowing there is no escape. Making a quick call to your loved ones to say goodby before you force open a window and plunge 80 stories to your death.

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Hello again, tom:

I'm not sure you understand the law... As a matter of fact, you DON'T understand the law. You haven't a clue. Instead, you buy into the lies that Bush told you...

He, like you, maintains lists... Certain people on that list DON'T have habeas corpus rights... The rest do...

But, if the government arrested YOU by MISTAKE, and declared YOU to be an enemy combatant, YOU think YOU would have habeas corpus rights??

I don't think you would. As a matter of fact, YOU WOULDN'T.

Now, I know that you'll say, well, they'll NEVER arrest ME, and call ME an enemy combatant... I'm WHITE... I live in NY. I speak English...

But, of course, if the government CAN declare someone to be an enemy combatent, and there's NO court available to review that designation, then they'll get around to you some day...

So, if the government can sweep YOU and ME off the street and keep us FOREVER, what kind of habeas corpus rights do we have??

Of course, we have NONE. I don't know how you missed that... Ok, I know how you missed that. You Want to miss that...

Next is your justification for torture. You're mad and you want to get even... I get it... I've ALWAYS gotten it... It's YOU who is missing something.

excon

As Rich Lowry observed :
if you interpret our ideals as meaning enemy combatants deserve the rights and protections of our civilian criminal justice system—as most of Obama's supporters certainly do—there is indeed a tension between our safety and our ideals. Sometimes important and desirable things—our interests and our ideals; our safety and our values—are in legitimate tension.

Hello again, tom:

You still don't understand me. You seem to think I'm just a squirly little pinko wanting to give rights away to people who clearly DON'T deserve them. You think I want to do this because I'm a nice guy, and waaaaaay nieve...

Well, I'm NOT a nice guy. I want THEM to have rights, because if THEY don't have them, NEITHER do I. THAT is the point I've been driving home, which evidently missed its mark.

I'm much more concerned about ME and MY family than I am about THEM.

It's really a pretty simple legal point... It really is... I don't know WHY you can't get it. Clear out that brush in your brain.

excon

Did you READ the Patriot Act? There's your list of lost liberties.

How has it inconvenienced me? Every time I fly, I'm inconvenienced GREATLY. I don't see the same sorts of things happening to CARS and BUSES, though--how come someone can blow up a building with a plane and just because they're NOT from this country, all of a sudden EVERYONE flying is inconvenienced, yet someone FROM our country blows up a building with a moving van--and there's no new restrictions on using a moving van, just how close you can take one to a federal building.

I was NEVER in agreement, even immediately after 9/11, that our government should be our nanny. I don't WANT a nanny for a government, someone peeking in on every little thing I do and telling me I have to do it differently "for my own protection". What?

Tom, what I think you don't get is that it's always one little thing at a time, something little and "reasonable", something done for "our own protection". Screw that. My government should be a policeman, not a nanny.

So today they can suspend my habeas corpus if they want to--all they have to do is SAY that I'm a terrorist. There's no one I can appeal on that.

Doesn't that SCARE you? It scares me!

Synnen

The Patriot Act was passed by an overwhelming majority of both houses of Congress and has survived many judicial challenges.
I doubt that Obama will take any meaningful steps to scrap it ,although I have no problem with a systematic review of it's provisions to determine which are unnecessary and which have been effective .

The Patriot Act was passed by an overwhelming majority of people getting more power, backed by a whole bunch of scared and angry people.

That doesn't sound like a reasonable basis for a law to me.

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The Patriot Act was passed by an overwhelming majority of people getting more power

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As stated . It was passed by Congress ;the institution that passes laws in our system... in fact ;there was even 1 nay vote in the Senate even though the Democrats held the majority .

As stated it has been subject to judicial review and also congressional revision and will no doubt again.

Not enough Hopenchange for WaPo yet... Republican opposition to spending a trillion dollars on an economic stimulus is "petty" to them.

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Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of "petty grievances," President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support.

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Obama will not have to worry long... McCain will whip the GOP back in line.
Senate Gets Reacquainted With McCain the Maverick - washingtonpost.com