Congratulations to America

[Richard K Niner]

The only thing i'm guilty of is being pro-democrat and patiently waiting until 2008.

There's still the midterms this year, you know

[Bocaj Claw]

The only thing i'm guilty of is being pro-democrat and patiently waiting until 2008.

There's still the midterms this year, you know

He knows too much! Throw him in the slammer with Shayna!

[Richard K Niner]

The only thing i'm guilty of is being pro-democrat and patiently waiting until 2008.

There's still the midterms this year, you know

He knows too much! Throw him in the slammer with Shayna!

Pfft. They can't do that! I've got diplomatic immunity

[gen200]

The only thing i'm guilty of is being pro-democrat and patiently waiting until 2008.

There's still the midterms this year, you know

He knows too much! Throw him in the slammer with Shayna!

Pfft. They can't do that! I've got diplomatic immunity

so they can't touch you?

[Richard K Niner]

The only thing i'm guilty of is being pro-democrat and patiently waiting until 2008.

There's still the midterms this year, you know

He knows too much! Throw him in the slammer with Shayna!

Pfft. They can't do that! I've got diplomatic immunity

so they can't touch you?

The difference is, I work for a close ally of the United States. So, they can't even look at me...

[CoreyFox]

Look, the point is i don't want to be arrested for personal reasons.

[Rooster]

I don't want to be arrested because I don't want to get buggered in the showers...basically.

[Bocaj Claw]

Thats a good reason.

[Loeln]

Let me revive this for a moment, to bring to like ones' sentiments that speak well and should be heard by more than they were-

""No Need To Worry About Human Rights - We're Doing Just Fine"
Syndicated

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.
The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.
The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by Mr. Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.
It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.
None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.
To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.
Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and, after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Court will dispose of this piece of garbage.
If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.
I got some insight week before last into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for Homegrown Democrat, but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?
The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

[CoreyFox]

"The Supreme Court will strike it down." That's what i said. However, i was informed by my afternoon driver that it doesn't seem likely, considering the fact 5 out of the 9 Justices have conservative beliefs. (If you must know, they are Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, Alito and Roberts.)

[_SeHT]

It's not just the US: the UK is doing its best to move that way.

And I'm afraid to say that I now have no respect or love for my natal country - which is a horrible thing to say. The landscape, yes. In terms of scenery, it's beautiful (what's left of it). In terms of everything else... it's dead.

I am reminded of an episode of ST: Voyager. It's called "Death Wish"; the one where another Q turns up and demands asylum so he can commit suicide. I don't remember the exact line as it's many moons since I watched it, but the suicidal Q says that when you start taking away a person's right to choose, to free will, you are saying that a person's freedoms will be respected only so long as they do not conflict with the state... "Nothing is more dangerous," he concludes.

People want security. Governments promise it and instead provide low-grade fear. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I could make miles out of this. Instead I'm a writer, who can't write. To quote someone else, I feel like a citizen of Pompeii who's been asked to make a humorous comment about lava. I can't do it... It's not funny any more.

[Loeln]

Luckily, however, none of all this is set in stone. Although, yes, choice on the matters nowdays seems to reside with those currently in office, none of those people are permanent fixtures there. Eventually all of them will leave the positions they hold and be replaced. The rulings, policies, laws, and etc. they've made will all be subject to change, reversal, and repeal by those that come after them if they so decide. So, let us not forget who it is that will be the ones to decide, and remembering that, let us not put off the right decisions for the ones following us.

Civil rights, education, the third world, global warming, deforestation, mass extinction, pollution, nuclear power, nuclear arms, the internet, the death penalty, the United Nations, the Middle East, abortion, homosexuality, stem cells, genetics, cloning, Africa, AIDS, oil, oceans, glaciers, light pollution,

...

We've a lot to do.

[osprey]

In my opinion, the US are becoming what they fight: Terrorists.

[Comrade K]

And unfortunately, our puppet minister, ahh, sorry Prime Minister Stephen Harper (I cringe whenever I hear Stephen Harper and Prime Minister in the same sentence), will probably follow his idol G.dubya and try to pull the same thing here, but luckily, if you look back in our history, the only time conservatives ever really got in was after people got tired of the liberals and their arrogance.

The Liberal party here seems to think it owns the country, so every once in a while people vote in conservatives to give them the proverbial boot in the ___.
It just worries me now because this "New Conservative Party" is way too similar to the Republicans, and not similar enough to the Progressive Conservatives of old. And I hope, like their other conservative predecessors, they get the boot pretty quick.