I mean, @Electro Robot - er, @Robot2 - uh, @Robot3? - wait, it's "James T. Kirk" now, isn't it? Damn, son, you've got more noms de guerre than Lev Bronstein!

Anyway:"Look, practically speaking most of the countries in the world routinely spy on their citizens with no legal restraint at all. You're always saying we're the worst of the worst. So there you have it."

So you're saying, "Everything is everything?" When did you become such a moral relativist?

...The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act (HR1955, passed; S1959, in committee) plus the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act equals not a return to McCarthyism, but to the days of the first Red Scare and the Palmer Raids.

Hell, one Andrew Stepanian is serving 3 years participating in a non-violent protest which happened be successful, thereby violating the earlier Animal Enterprise Protection Act.

Says Andrew, "I sat through a court case of about 40 days, and at the end of it, I was convicted, mainly on evidence stemming from my attendance at a protest against an auditing firm by the name of Deloitte & Touche. The prosecutors claim that because Deloitte & Touche severed its relationship with Huntingdon Life Sciences, Huntingdon Life Sciences may have incurred more than $10,000 in damages. And as long as a threshold of $10,000 is met, I could participate in legal activities leading up to that point, but the second I cause $10,000 of intellectual damage, then I could be charged under this conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. I would be charged with a substantive charge if I actually destroyed some property, for example, that was worth $10,000, but in this case, it was a purely intellectual matter." (http://www.democracynow.org/2006/10/3/first_member_of_shac_7_heads)

If the government and imprison a man for participating in a perfectly legal (but successful) protest before VRHTA and AETA and before the official legalization of warrantless spying, imagine what the government can and will do with it's Congressionally-approved powers.

And while right-wingers out there may say, "P'shaw! What do I care about animal rights freaks and the blame-America-firsters?" I say: Remember Waco. Remember Ruby Ridge. Remember them because the government doesn't have to rely on trumped-up child abuse or gun charges to get you anymore.

crubbed = cribbed ... but I kind of like crubbed, a combination of "club" and "crib" perhaps? A sort of inept or sloppy cribbing?

Since the "Global War on Terror" was pretty much crubbed from Trotsky's "Total Revolution," it's not surprising they would use the same tactics to execute it.

Isn't McCain always pretty much "visibly angry"?

Yellow Dog wrote, "If you're really pissed, organize your friends and neighbors and family and coworkers to do the same."

My question is, organize to do what? What's the action to be taken? Unless there's at least an implicit threat to withhold money and votes, what leverage do private citizens have?

Merely threatening to withhold your vote or vote for someone more in tune with your beliefs will open you to accusations of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And unless you can organize or otherwise influence a large number of people (in the thousands? tens of thousands? millions?) to actually threaten Obama's viability, you'll be ignored and following through on such a threat will serve only to marginalize yourself.

If you are successful in organizing and influencing a large enough number of people, but Obama doesn't blink, and therefore you follow through on your threat, you'll be blamed for "pulling a Nader" and pushed to the margins of the party anyway.

I raise these questions not to be a gadfly or unduly critical (b/c I too agree that organizing is the only way to improve our politics in particular and our lives in general). Rather, I raise these question b/c they are the questions that have paralyzed me politically.

He always struck me as an opportunist who started speaking out against Bush when Bush's polls were low enough to make it safe to do so. He's no Ed Murrow. He's no Phil Donahue.

I think this recent episode shows that he doesn't have a consistent set of principles that he believes in. For him it isn't about morality of issue, but the man advancing the issue.

>I wonder if bringing her dead body into court would satisfy Scalia.

I dunno. Using voodoo to re-animate the corpse might raise some 1st Amendment issues... tho' it would add a new spin to the right of habeas corpus. [HAR! KNEE SLAPPER!]

The End of the Republic is Nigh!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-giles26-2008jun26,0,7381319.story

Plus HR1955 (which passed the House overwhelmingly) and its Senate version, S1959 (which is in committe); plus presidential diktats (signing statements, executive orders, and presidential carte blanche on all matters related to "national security"); plus "enhanced interrogation" of "enemy combatants"; plus REX-84; plus indefinite detention w/o trial; plus over-classification to keep it all off the front page; equals police state.

Oh, snap! You only need to worry about all this high-minded stuff if yer a terr'rist, however that may be defined by whomever's in power at any given time.

An ever-shifting definition of "enemy" and "terrorist" would be chaos, of course, so what we need now is to make sure that the people in power can stay in power forever - or at least that only like-minded people can attain positions of power. Then the final brick will be in place and Fortress America will stand tall and strong for 1,000 years.

Question: Would a Constitutional convention be deemed a threat to national security?