You mumbled something about just wanting to win, first and foremost.

Help me out: how does one "mumble" online?

Providing a quote, I know, would be too hard... plus, it wouldn't make the point you're trying to make by stuffing words in Glenn's mouth.

The choice was never, ever between Kucinich and McCain. You know that, El. I know that, Glenn knows that, everyone higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee knows that. Your side lost largely because the people who supported ideologically-pure candidates like Huckabee or Paul sat the election out.

So your point was what, again? Oh... right. Nice try.

Government lawyers should be cautious, not reckless, in advising what can be done.

That's another wild concept that the media lepat to embrace over the past eight years: that the President's advisors should never be held to account for their advice... because that might cause them to think about what they say in the Oval Office.

The question of why that'd be a bad idea has never been addressed.

It started with retarded people being called developmentally challenged

Absolutely right. The fact that we use the word "Orwellian" to describe the dynamic - referencing a book written in 1948, satirizing tactics that were old even then - has nothing to do with it.

Anyway, thanks for making the point that marginalized people insisting on a particular form of address is exactly the same as powerful people using euphemism to obscure their crimes. That's a totally novel perspective. Except for the whole infrastructure of right-wing opinion, from blogs to the National Review to the White House Press Office, I've never heard that before.

I think there is room under civilized law for painful coercion for legitimate prevention of loss of life.

You are wrong.

You are certainly legally wrong. Furthermore, in my opinion, you are morally wrong, and in questionable possession of the title of "human."

I don't know under what schedule it was that you and shooter chose this moment to crawl out from whatever rocks you live under to defend the indefensible. I urge you both to do so frequently, as loudly as you can, and before as large an audience as possible.

More people need to know that animals like you exist.

You're a fucking animal.

My great-uncle Joe lost his mind on Bataan fighting the likes of you. This will be the last time I address you directly.

You're not even fit to type my pseudonym, let alone my name.

Those industries that are seen to be working in the common good [...] must abide by certain rules of conduct. To some extent its something that already happens with the FCC, and lobbyists seem to undo most of that anyway.

I'm kind of a reductionist in most things, and politics is no exception. When you look at this issue, like so many in this country at this point in history, it seems to boil down to a regulatory system that's been captured by the industry that it's supposed to be overseeing.

Historically, it's been shown that the only way to combat organized money is by organizing people. It's an open question, of course, whether there's not so much organized money out there that it'll overwhelm any attempt to recapture public oversight.

The cherry on top of this shit sundae is the resigned cynicism (to a very real extent consciously encouraged by those in power, IMHO) that 'the money élite always control the media, and they always will, why are you so shocked, nothing to see here, move on." It's hard for me to think of an attitude more corrosive to a democracy, but there it is.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: Leaving the Bush tax cuts alone. Putting Iraq-war supporters in as Vice President and Secretary of State. And now keeping Bush’s Defense Secretary on. I’m beginning to feel like I won this election!

Link at sig.

I guess that's the difference between me and you, Commenter Guy From Page One... but I personally find "these people are idiotic" scathing sarcasm hilarious.

what if we had captured one of the 9/11 terrorists on the morning of the attacks but before the airplanes were hijacked?

This hypothetical perfectly captures the problem with the "ticking time bomb" scenario: it relies on totaly guesswork to determine what constitutes an "extreme" situation.

Say on the morning of September 11, according to this question, we'd had Ziad al-Jarrah in custody. The idea, presumably, is that we'd begin ripping the fingernails off a man who had as yet committed no crime on the pure supposition that he might, in an alternatie timeline, be about to try and pilot a plane into the U.S. Capitol.

Fine and good, one might say, if by doing so we could have prevented the deaths on that day.

But if this is the standard: what's to prevent the government from, say, crushing the testicles of a commenter named wbegonne if they see a reason to?

What exactly?

...for reminding me the similarities between pontificating a "principled" radical stance and ejaculating into a tissue.

I'll remember you whenever I'm tempted to spout off to my pwoggy friends about how I warned them Obama would disappoint.