and no, a few comments on a web-board isn't going to "google bomb" McCain

Damn! What if everybody got together and typed it over and over? Would that work?

It's weird though- I thought we were supposed to be using the old "irresponsible not to speculate" standard these days.

Personally, I'm an Obama supporter who still believes in what that man is trying to do in elevating politics above the gutter.

Personally, I'm an Obama supporter who believes that man's run for the Presidency will drag us down into the gutter as never before. And a lot of people will be in the gutter after he's elected, too.

When will this little squabbles start breaking out in my comment sections? I yearn for the day...

I think I responded responsibly since you made two points in a short post headlined *quote* Don't swift boat McCain *unquote*

I made it clear in my first sentence that the alleged carrier deck incident was something that I was not prepared to comment on as the proof was ambiguous at best and lacked merit, therefore it was and is not a part of the discussion.

You, on the other hand, said in your closing sentence, *quote* I find it ironic that in response to an article criticizing

McCain for hypocrisy on torture, a bunch of people who

probably howled in protest over the swift-boating of

John Kerry (and rightfully so) are lamenting that

the media won't do the same to McCain. *unquote*.

I still remain unsatisfied as to how you can reconcile your closing sentence with the facts available.

Fact: McCain's voting record proves that he supports torture.

Fact: John Kerry's sliming by the right-wing 527 has been proven to based on falsehoods.

One of these things are not like the other...

I will take your advice and get some rest.

I'd love to squabble over at your place, and I am sure Mr. Greenwald, who knows a bad liability risk when he sees one, won't be sorry to see me go, but I don't like that Blogger-Google comment system.

If you are looking for a good squabbler, I'll have to register under a different name, there seems to be a problem with my Blogger-Google account. I'm even locked out of my own blog, Moosehall, or I would go squabble there.

If I can't work out that Google-Blogger password ID thing Monday, I'll register a comments account under a new ID so I don't miss out on any good squabbles.

I looked but I didn't watch it so I'm not sure exactly what your point is. I don't watch the Rush videos when Atrios posts them and he's only goofing when he does that. There is as much truth to the contention that the framers all feared standing armies as there is to the notion America is a Christian nation or that Washington's Farewell Address argued for America forever avoiding "entangling alliances".

Harry Truman... Throughout my years in the Senate I listened each year as one of the senators would read Washington's Farewell Address. It served little purpose to point out to the isolationists that Washington had advised a method suitable under the conditions of his day to achieve the great end of preserving the nation... for the isolationists this address was like a biblical text. The America First Organization of 1940-41, the Ku Klux Klan, Pelley and his Silver Shirts - they all quoted the first President in support of their assorted aims.

Washington's address was written by Hamilton and it was Jefferson who used that phrase, "entangling alliances" a few years later. The colonists were concerned about the quartering of standing armies.

American Journal of Legal History (Temple)

35 (1991): 393

Posted for Educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please visit the local law library or obtain a back issue.

The Third Amendment and the Issue of the Maintenance of Standing Armies: A Legal History

by WILLIAM S. FIELDS* and DAVID T. HARDY**

To us, after four-fifths of a century have passed away since occasion has existed for complaint of the action of government in this particular, the repetition of this declaration seems to savor of idle form and ceremony; but "a frequent recurrence to the fundamental principles of the Constitution" can never be unimportant, and, indeed, may well be regarded as "absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty, and to maintain a free government." It is difficult to imagine a more terrible engine of oppression than the power in an executive to fill the house of an obnoxious person I with a company of soldiers, who are to be fed and warmed at his expense, under the direction of an officer accustomed to the exercise of arbitrary power, and in whose presence the ordinary laws of courtesy, not less than the civil restraints which protect person and property, must give way to unbridled will; who is sent as an instrument of punishment, and with whom insult and outrage may appear quite in the line of duty. However contrary to the spirit of the age such a proceeding may be, it can never be impossible that it will be resorted to in times of great excitement and violent party action...

Thomas M. Cooley

Constitutional Limitations (1868)

[...]

In defense of the military provisions of the proposed Constitution, James Madison took a more pragmatic approach, which clarified the distinction between the two issues:

He says that one ground of complaint, at the beginning of the revolution, was, that a standing army was quartered upon us. This is not the whole complaint. We complained because it was done without the local authority of this country -- without the consent of the people of America. As to the exclusion of standing armies in the bill of rights of the states, we shall find that though, in one or two of them, there is something like a prohibition, yet, in most of them, it is only provided that no armies shall be kept without the legislative authority; that is, without the consent of the community itself. Where is the impropriety of saying that we shall have an army, if necessary? Does not the notoriety of this constitute security? If inimical nations whereto fall upon us when defenseless, what would be the consequence? Would it be wise to say, that we should have no defense? Give me leave to say, that the only possible way to provide against standing armies is to make them unnecessary.[139]

To Madison and the Federalists, the standing armies issue was a political issue, not a question of individual rights. The problem of involuntary quartering was a specific grievance, which emanated from a politically undemocratic, and thus unsound, resolution of the standing armies issue. If the standing armies issue was solved, as proposed, by placing control of the military establishment in the hands of a government which in turn was controlled by the people; then the problem of [Page 424] involuntary quartering would itself be solved, since no popularly controlled government would engage in such an onerous practice. In short, there was no "individual right" against the maintenance of a standing army in peacetime.

The Anti-Federalists were not fully convinced by this logic. Since the form of government proposed in the new Constitution had never before been tested, there was legitimate concern that it might not be as democratic in practice as it appeared on paper. Further, there was the fear that a strong majority in control of a democratic government might use its position to abuse the rights of a weaker minority. They demanded additional assurances. Accordingly, as part of the compromise process necessary to gather support for ratification, specific articles for inclusion in a national bill of rights were recommended by eight of the thirteen states. Five of those eight states included among their articles a provision relating to the quartering of soldiers.[140]

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/FieldsAndHardy2.html