Yes, I know the US senate was supposed to be aristocratic, and it is, and it frankly sucks shit. The British have been slowly stripping powers away from their House of Lords and the Upper houses of Germany and Australia and Canada are all less powerful than their lower houses.

The US is the only major Democracy with an upper house that is not only equal to the lower one, but is actually ranked higher in power and authority (and it is, power of the purse ain't what it used to be).

Politically and pragmatically there's no appetitite for senate reform in the US, but the direction should be to demote it and reduce its power in favour of the House.

Basically it doesn't do the good things it is supposed to do very often (like reject bad executive branch nominees), and more often blocks and waters down good things other bodies of government try to do.

Can the ACLU start a new lawsuit with new plaintiffs in a different court that does not report to the 6th circuit? Say one that reports to the 9th?

Since the Supreme Court did not actually rule, the 6th circuit's ruling is not binding on courts not reporting to it, right?

So another circuit court could take a fresh swing at this.

If a circuit court ruled in the ACLU's favour, then two circuit courts would have rulings at odds with each other, and the Supreme Court would be much more likely to take it up so as to settle the legal inconsistentency, right?

A new independent counsel law is needed, whereby either the Judicial or Legislative branches have independent means to appoint a prosecutor to investigate matters.

It's time to stop relying on the AG to do stuff like this. Either that, or make the AG a position more akin to the Federal Reserve Chair; appointed by the President but cannot be fired by him and make DoJ an independent federal body.

Of course the unitary executive believers won't accept any of that, but it would be an improvement.

Yeah, I came to make that point too. Surprise, John McCain is deceitfully using the specious notion that Obama has advocated "bombing Pakistan" in order to equalize his own plethora of warmongering and belicose rhetoric.

It's particularly perniscuous because even if Obama had bombs in mind, bombing some terrorist cell in a remote region is hardly tantamount to "bombing Pakistan" in the way people understand the idea of "bombing a country" meaning widespread raids.

Bill Clinton used missiles in the Sudan, did he "bomb Sudan"? When a stray bomb hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was that "bombing China"?

There is a case about violating soveignty and technically yes, if your bomb falls anywhere on someone else's turf you've "bombed their country" but in common dialog, the notion of bombing a country is taken to mean "bomb lots of stuff, infrastructure, etc"

I count two unfounded logical leaps in McCain's characterization of Obama's position. Shocking, that a Republican would misrepresent the foreign policy views of a Democrat to win an election. When in history has that ever happened?

If you're dealing with fanatics who cannot be expected to act rationally (i.e. people willing to give up their lives for a "cause"), threatening to attack only gives them warning - it won't stop them, and it won't get them to back down.

I don't want to assume things that aren't in this message, so this reply isn't necessarily aimed at you, but just a comment on "fanatics" and other "irrational" actors:

This notion is overused egregiously by the right to justify a variety of beligerent and immoral actions. While I agree there are such things as implacable enemies who will stop at nothing to hurt their enemies and so forth, there are far fewer of them then we are often led to believe. Specifically, Iran is often portrayed in this way, with almost no substantive evidence of that claim. Ahmedinejad says intemperate things, and this is aggrandized into turning Iran into 1937 Nazi Germany or something.

On an individual level, the notion of the terrorists being so savy and inhumanly dedicated is used to justify torture and even silly ideas like keeping interrogation techniques secret, otherwise the terrorists will prepare for them.

I'm well aware that many militaries do try and train their members for capture and interrogation, there really is no realistic preparation for torture. If the US was just using psychology, trickery or trust games to get information (ie not torture), these techniques could be generally described with little aid to Al Qaeda's training methods. As for waterboarding, what the fuck could you possibly do to prepare yourself for that?

If you are so dedicated to your cause as to endure physical agony and the imminent instinctual fear of death, you will do so, with or without "training." Torture is in that sense a crucible, seperating those who really do want to die for their causes from those who would really prefer not to. The vast majority will unsurprisingly be the latter category.

So like others here I'm leery of describing any adversary in terms of absolute irrationality because I think such extremes of insanity are exceptionally rare, particularly among state actors. Even North Korea with its delusional leaders hasn't invaded South Korea or shot at the US in 60+ years. Even madmen fear reprisal. Bid Laden may be "crazy" in a manner of speaking, but his actions are also quite rational from the perspective of his goals.

I guess the key is to seperate an irrational dream or goal one may have ("grand caliphate", "US Hedgemony" etc) and the means one employs in pursuit of those aims, which tend to be far more rational and pragmatic. Stalin may have dreamed of the USSR dominating the world, but even a mass murdering schizophenic like him respected MAD.