I get so tired of self-described serious people arguing that what they really need to do is ignore our constitutional law and legal system, which is the end product of millenia of legal thought, and instead implement legal policies that were discarded a millenium ago.

Detaining people based solely on the fear that they might at some future date do something nasty is a notion utterly antithetical to the notion of liberty. And liberty, once curtailed, can be very difficult to recover. When suspicion alone is grounds for detainment, the floodgates are open.

The sad thing is that this attitude, so pervasive in today's climate, represents a real step backwards in terms of the fitness of the society. The state that Chesney would have us approach represents a societal configuration that is untenable. It is positively medieval to countenance placing this kind of tyrannical power in the executive branch.

People did not vote for the Democratic party in record numbers in order for Obama to force them to buy health insurance in its current form.

Anybody who thinks that a trigger-based public option would help matters any is hopelessly naive.

OMG! But of course, it makes so much sense!

I think asking for Obama's birth certificate has to be elevated to "Godwin's law" status. People who continue to question Obama's citizenship are clearly too stupid to breathe without written directions in front of them, and offer no positive benefit to public debate other than a small entertainment value at how bloody stupid they are.

haufenmist, I understand that you have been living the past fifty years in a bomb shelter that your dad built in the backyard, but among people who have paid any attention to world and US politics over the past twenty years, we've kind of noticed that "Communism" is pretty much a dead philosophy. Even the PRC doesn't believe in "Communism" any more. That leaves, what - Angola? Cuba? Albania?

What is the president's job policy? You could say "stimulus," but the Recovery Act is a misnomer. It was really a bail-out of state and local governments, and funding for unemployment.

The bailouts of state governments helped them from laying off people, thus preventing a further acceleration of unemployment. And yes, unemployment benefits serve as a benefit, because it allows people to buy goods and services who wouldn't otherwise be able to do so.

Injection of money into the economy is a tested way to get a nation out of an economic downturn. The money that the unemployed (and non-fired state employees) spend that they wouldn't otherwise have then is spent by the shops and other businesses to pay their own workers, etc., etc.

The conservative faith in "doing nothing" was pretty well debunked 75 years ago. Unfortunately, today's conservatives are not 75 years old, and since they are not sticklers for reading accurate history books, we are forced to go over all the same lessons again!

Glad Van Jones is gone

I don't want someone in our Government who really believes our own government was behind the terrorism on 9/11.

I think it's pretty clear that Van Jones doesn't "really believe" that.

You understand how bankruptcy works, right?

When a corporation comes to the government and asks for a bailout, they (hopefully) do not get relief without any conditions. None of the actions you describe sound unreasonable for a government providing money to a corporation in trouble.

If a corporation does not want the government to dictate terms to it, it always has to option...to not go bankrupt!

Your moaning about "economic dictatorship" somehow conveniently avoids the fact that all of the companies in question were on the verge of going bankrupt. Many of us think that more companies should have simply been allowed to go into receivership, but for political reasons, some corporations are "too big to fail".

Yes, after I hit the 'submit' button it occurred to me that it isn't quite accurate to characterize "socialist" as "extreme left". That label is usually reserved for Communists.

But of course, you know when all the wingers deride Obama for being "socialist", they are really calling him a Communist.

They simultaneously call him a fascist, too.

Basically, these are people whose contributions to political discussions are akin to a person walking through a music shop, banging on any instrument he sees.

I think any discussion with such a person should focus solely on the fact that they are not making any kind of sensible argument whatsoever. People on the left have historically been far too self-defeating in the name of "avoiding bias". It's silly.

(Agreeing with a silly argument solely for the purpose of agreement is not a sign of lack of bias, it's a sign of a lack of principle)

And before anybody starts thinking of 1.4 million new jobs during the Bush years as some kind of accomplishment, we should note that the population of the US grew by about 20 million over the same time period.

In other words, the number of people not employed shot up dramatically during the Bush years. This number is not measured by the "unemployment rates" since those things tend to be based on flexible notions of "who is looking for work".