Letters to the Editor
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I'd go with Family Planning...
Even though the other anonymous prefers "charnal house" or "butcher shop" or even "abortion clinic" as if that is all they do. But then as he has already pointed out "George Orwell foresaw his type more than 60 years ago".
Perhaps because calling such clinics "Pre-Natal Care" is more technically accurate?
Pre-natal care is quite technically accurate. These clinics provide choice, options for young women in helping them plan their families. Some do choose to terminate their pregnancies, others choose to avail themselves of the low cost pre-natal care until such time as the pregnancy comes to term.
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huh!?
If what you say is true, don't you wonder why Moussaoui has not been charged with those crimes?
Huh!? Moussaoui is doing life without parole in the Federal Supermax in Colorado for being part of the 9/11 conspiracy.
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punkout lacks one thing...
Name, addy, social security, phone, bank account, etc.
You've got nothing to hide and aren't worried about being spied on.
You say otherwise?
What if you were to find that confidential info of your is being sold out and people you don't want knowing about you do?
Stop being disingenuous in the meantime.
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I confess
Huh!? Moussaoui is doing life without parole in the Federal Supermax in Colorado for being part of the 9/11 conspiracy.
--Anonymous
I killed JFK.
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Responsibility
There's a rather important difference between new Orleans and Iraq. New Orleans is within the borders of the United States of America. As such it's easier to assign responsibility for its protection to the US government. Iraq is a sovereign nation that has been invaded and occupied by a foreign power. That foreign power is currently occupying the country against the will of most of its inhabitants.
There is no moral basis with which to continue justifying the occupation other than the one that states that anything the US does is automatically good. There used to be a basis for that claim, but it has all but disappeared within my own reasonably short lifetime.
It isn't rocket science but it does require the removal of one's partisan/nationalistic blinders. That's why the rest of the world is looking on at us in horror.
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Habeas corpus is our last defense against either; take that away.....-- William Timberman
I'm glad you brought that up.
I'm sorry, has it been taken away? Are you afraid it will be taken away even though it's been reaffirmed by the Supreme Cout in Hamdi? Is there some group that fall outside the usual parameters of Habeas protections you'e concerned about? Do tell.One doesn't have to point to the people unjustly constrained by such laws -- although there've already been some notable examples -- to understand the dangers it poses in the hands of people willing to use it against folks who've done nothing against the law, but are merely inconvenient to those who hold power, or make policy.
Sort of like, Eminent Domain, or the IRS, or Asset seizure laws, and such? I only use these to point that nearly every law with a penalty can be used "against folks who've done nothing against the law". That doesn't precluse wariness, but as a fatal flaw, being dangerous doesn't qualify.
Not being allowed to get on a plane may seem like a trivial matter until it happens to you. Being treated as the protesters against the Republican Convention in New York were treated may seem trivial if you don't yourself feel strongly enough about anything to protest against it.
LOL. You guys are getting really soft. Bereft of heinous crackdowns on dissidents, you're reduced to citing inconviences. What happened to the shootings and stabbings and beatings of yesteryear? Heh.
Not so under the provisions of this legislation, which leaves people like shooter in a position to say, if his neighbor disappears overnight like a Jew in pre-war Germany: Well, he must have done something. No one will contradict him; no one will ever get the chance to contradict him.
And here we arrive in fantasy land. Even al-Maasri is getting his day in court. Tsk. You can scare the daylights out of yourself if you like but it just isn't resonating out there.
As for privacy, it's certainly true that most of us have volunteered enough information about ourselves to private agencies over the years to compile a pretty good profile of who we're likely to be. Still, data isn't a person, and it can't predict guilt in advance of any crime which appears likely to a paranoiac government operative to be in the offing.
As the man said, we have tacitly (and specifically in some cases) agree to let computers and agencies compile information about us. So what. I'm willing to bet you are happy about that and even advocate more govt. information gathering of our most private data via universal healthcare. This is just liberal hypocrisy. You don't mind information gathering just not being the one currently in charge of the data.
Using such data to incarcerate a person is testimony more to an insane desire to control uncontrollable events than it is to any criminal predilection on the part of the person being hauled away.
You're asserting that the info my grocery store collects is sufficient to have me jailed? Who knew?
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The ultimate in insider trading
This from the same person who created the Republican Contract with America:
http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.
A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.
(Note: Someone forgot to tell Gingrich that there is no such thing as petro-dollars.)
"None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war," the ex-Georgian told a group of about 300 students attending a conference for collegiate conservatives.
"We have got to get past this partisan baloney, where I'm not allowed to say anything good about Hillary Clinton because 'I'm not a loyal Republican,' and she's not allowed to say anything good about me, or she's not a 'loyal' Democrat. What a stupid way to run a country."
"We've been engaged in a phony war," said Gingrich. "The only people who have been taking this seriously are the combat military."
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/08/03/newt0803.html?=roflcoptorattack
So, . . .
According to Gingrich the War on Terror is phony. The War in Iraq is about oil. The Iraq war is a phony war and the only people who are taking it seriously are the US soldiers who are dying in it.
That is the legacy of the Republican party's Reign of Terror. And now, by association, the Democratic Party's as well.
Now that we have given the administration (Bush, Rove, Cheney and Gonzales) extrajudicial permission to spy on just about anyone, anywhere, anytime, what can we expect? Imagine what you could do with that information. You could make or break people, organizations and companies. You could manipulate the media and global economic markets. You could blackmail almost anyone you chose, except saints and those who have nothing to lose. The plans and communications and individual lives of your political opponents would be completely transparent to you. The only people who wouldn't be affected would be those who were intelligent, organized and technically savvy enough to thwart all of your attempts to track and record their electronic messages and transactions. In other words, international terrorists.