FlaSoxxJim

FlaSoxxJim: Nice, but with a few naughty marks. Neatness needs improvement. Behavior has been good sometimes, not so good other times. Manners could still use some attention. Was very nice last Monday. Monday when I refilled the gas tank of a rental car I filled up with "premium." Uncanny!!

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 11:54 AM) So if I got the joke but don't want to spoil it, what 17th century monk should I explain it to? Just happy to know you're successfully Ushering in the Christmas season (or, conversely, good to see you are happily beating the Bishop). Edited because I kan't spel for s***.

QUOTE(Balance @ Dec 22, 2005 -> 02:59 PM) Heading back to the '80's- Heard some Survivor (the rock group, not the show) on the radio a few weeks ago. Bought their "Greatest Hits" from iTunes. I was rocking out to Survivor on the Red Line this morning. (There really wasn't any other place to put this.) You are a brave man for being able to admit that. [/cues up some Culture Club on his iPod.]

QUOTE(Queen Prawn @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 11:42 AM) My pickle (it's a German-Polish tradition), some of the ornaments our moms gave us from when we were a kids and the nativity scene I have beneath the tree. We have a German Christmas pickle as well, BUT IT'S MYSYERIOUSLY MISSING THIS YEAR! We hide that one on the tree and let the kids look for it to get an extra little gift if they are the one to find it, as is the German tradition (my wife is the German, but I'm the one that has to seek out the traditions, ironically). I think our youngest kid may have gotten tired on not being the one to find the pickle and disappeared it!

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 11:39 AM) Fixed/ OK, the pressure's on you now.

I got a lotta grievances with you people!

I heard the Creationist Science Fair begins every year at nightfall in the evening preceding October 23rd. . . [/erudite joke grenade for PA or Soxy OR BALTA]

Great old tune, Big Ed!

How do I know? Because Astronomers just found More Rings Around Uranus! sorry.

To clarify re Coulter, I vaguely recall her agreeing when Congressman Tom Tancredo uttered this drivel: I'm not trying not to put words into her mouth, but it sounds like the kind of spew she typically issues forth.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:53 AM) When a Republican flip-flops, it's a compromise. When a Democrat compromises, it's a flip-flop. That's correct. NOW GET BACK IN LINE! Sen. Feingold has shed light on what the House 5-week Patriot Act extension really amounts to, and he vows that the bipartison coalition will not allow the GOP to ram the Conference Report through as it currently stands in its flawed form:

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:52 AM) According to what was said on WBBM this morning, this is beyond that. The troop level was going back to the 138,000 it was at, and now they are going to let it go closer to 130,000 by not deploying two brigades that had planned on going over, dropping from 17 to 15 brigades in Iraq. Catching up on this now, this is my understanding of it as well.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 10:34 AM) I personally, don't want to see an impeachment happen. I want my President to work within the generous laws he's to be governed by already. I don't want to see a situation where we have to decide if impeachment is warranted. We're just put there it seems. If given the choice, I'd obviously rather have this administration not have put us in this position as well. We have been put in the situation by questionable acts and the legitimacy of those acts needs to be critically examined.

It's people like Mr. Tice, with both an intimate understanding of what has been going on and also a patriotic sens of duty duty to uphold his oath to the Constitution, that have forced the admission of the existence of the NSA domestic spying program. It took at least hundreds of people to carry out the program, and now those who have felt powerless to speak out against what they saw as abuse of executive power are now finding their voice. http://news.baou.com/main.php?action=recent&rid=20695 Here is the letter by Mr. Tice, sent on Dec 18, 2005, to the Senate & House Intelligence Committee: Mr. Tice also stated: Tice specifies that the acts in question involve some big fish, namely the Director of the National Security Agency (Michael Hayden), the Deputies Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. The linked article also has statements urging Congressional hearings from the thus-far gagged Sibel Edmonds, the director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition and the former FBI translator who obviously has a thing or two to say about the FBI's 99-11/post 9-11activities if she ever gets the chance. If it becomes apparent that the FBI activities she is privy to are germane to the lead-up to the NSA domestic spying program, she might actually get a chance to testify.

If the reduction is in the form of cancelling deployments of army brigades that had been scheduled for combat tours as suggested then I am happy to see it. If it represents the beginning of our 'standing down' as more Iraqi security forces 'stand up,' then I consider it to be some welcome news.

Happy Happy, Willie!

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 08:27 AM) And she's a dumb b**** looking for attention, too. Your point is? The point is that spewing that kind of rhetoric is pretty damn irresponsible.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Dec 22, 2005 -> 08:55 PM) Given her track record, I wouldn't doubt if she was serious. She just throws all sorts of s*** at the wall and sees what sticks. Much like most political hacks (Rush, Moore, etc. etc.) Is she one of the dumbf***s who have suggested that 'nuking Mecca" should be left open to future consideration if we decide the Muslim world is noot doing enough to fight terrorists in their respective countries? If so, yeah what a laugh riot she is.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 07:46 AM) BTW Flaxx... I wasn't insinuating that you personally are all "gleeful"... sorry to have that appearance. . . de nada Well then you certainly picked the right side.

The Federalist papers cited are indeed interesting and inciteful – almost to the point of being precient in terms of historical evens that have happened since then. But their argument for the need of an unencumbered executive branch that can be agile and expedient in its decision-making in wartime has more application in instances where the executive is nt already given the tools to execute his actions with expediency. The fact that the FISA courts were in place to allow him to do what he wanted to do (but with some minimum levvel of constitutionally mandated oversight) is a critical aspect here and one not forseen by the Foundinng ather authors. And I was under the impression that the constitutional guarantees were not simply about "MY RIGHTS". but the rights of individual American citizens. If the acid test for you becomes whether the rights of 99.999999% of individuals remain intact then the Schiavo case was not one in which you thought here were constitutional issues of importance, nor are cases where individuals act to about a single fetus because that act leaves 99.9999999999999999% of individuals' rights untouched. If you don't see the danger in the failing to be alarmed by assaultts on personal freedoms so long as 99.99999999999% of American's rights are NOT being eroded, then I don't think you really get what the Founding Fathers were all about. For my part, I acknowledge that I would indeed love for this to be the "magical bullet to bring Bush down" (though you areright that I'd hardly call my temperment gleeful). As you have intimated that you wanted to see Clinton impeeched for acts other than what eh was charged with, GWB has abused the office in ways above and beyond the current crisis. Capone was brought down for tax evasion because that was where he slipped up, not because the worst thing he evver did was fail to pay taxes. Saddam Hussein is currently on trial for a ffraction of his crimes because the prosecution tthought this was the bast case to bring forth. And I'm not at all confident that "WE FINALLY GOT THIS ASSHOLE." But I do think this brings us a step closer.

I need to add one oher critical point that would, in a rational universe, bring the war-making authority argument crasing down around Bush's ears. Today's (Friday - damn it's late) WaPo has an important piece in which Daschle reveals that Bush requested AND WAS DENIED by Congress war-making authority "in the United States" immediately after 9-11. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5122202119.html So if Congress refused to explicitly to grant such authority even as they were drafting the 9/18 use of force authorization, how can BushCo. logically argue such authority is implicit in that resolution? This is critically important, especilly for Kap and anybody else who still contends that Bush thought what he was asking NSA to do was implicitly authorized: We know what Bush wanted to be able to do and we know that he went ahead and did it. Now we know that there was no misunderstanding as to what autthority Congress had granted, because they flatly denied him wartime authority in the US in the same session 9/18 session in which the Afghan resolution was passed. How much more spelled out does this need to be? Bush asked for this specific power and was denied this by Congress – which is the ONLY PLACE such authorization can come from. He then knowingly went ahead and approved the NSA surveilances without FISA warrants and in excess of the authority specifically granted by Congress.

QUOTE(Mercy! @ Dec 23, 2005 -> 01:09 AM) That is very good.

Here is the long and short of it regarding the "openness" in all of this that Kap keeps talking about. What else can they do? The NYT authors knew about this. And knew it was a serious matter if the White House asked them to sit in it for 13 months and again tried to make them kill the story a couple weeks ago. Boxer and Rockafeller (sp?) are documented as knowing about it and there are written documents from them to that effect. A handful of other Congressmen have been briefed in a token mattter on it. It is obviously beyond the point of deniability. If that is the case, the only strategy is to come out with it and stand behind it as iff you thought you had the legal authority to do whhat you did. And that is what they are doing. And they are not scrambling and trying to figure out a strategy at this stage. They were aware this was coming out and they knew this strategy is their best bet. Hopefully alll of the smoke and mirrors are not going to amount to anything here, however. The 'any reasonabel and necessary force' clause, or whatever the exact wording in the post 9-11 Congressional authorization was, is a "whereas clause" and not a "resolving clause." Such clauses are typically used as tablesetters or clarifiers but are almost never found to be legally binding when they ere scrutinized by the courts. The fact that I have yet to see any Congressperson agree that their authorization to use appropriate and necessary force (I think that is the wording) included authority to circumvent the FISA courts and overstep the Constitution suggests the administration is going to be on shaky ground. Also, what I think is going to be important in countering Cheney's argument asserting unlimited wartime presidential authority is the fact that there never was a formal declaration of war, re the Invasion of Afghanistan. there was a Congressional authorization of tthe use of force but no formal war declaration, so I believe an argument in support of unchecked presidental power will be difficult to sustain. Finally, nobody will be able to argue that telling a handful of Congresspersons what they were doing, giving them no capacity for advise and consent, and not even responding to formal notifications as to serious misgivings about the program constitutes meaningful ovversight. See yesterday's Bizzaro World press runaround with Scotty Mac for a glimpse of just how much the administration is missing the mark on what is defined by statute as oversight. OK, that's it for the rational content of this post. The rest is a partial laundry list of hurdles the administration is going to have to overcome in defending its actions and in rallying support from its footsoldiers. A couple of years' worth of GWB and Abu Gonzalez assurinng both Congress and the public that domestic spying always always ALWAYS requires court approval, even as they were secretly carrying out the NSA activities without court knowledge or consent isn't going to help them. Nor is the now common knowledge that Ashcroft had previoussly bbeen rebuked by the FISA courts for bulls***ting his way through warrant requests or failing to share intel on more than 75 occassions. I truly wonder if concerns about this stuff hitting the fan help[ed Ashcroft in his decision to bail out before a second term. The Alito confirmation hearings all of a sudden have a new dimension, as he is now going to be asked specifically about his opinions on Presidential authority and Congressional oversight. And hopefully some moderate Republicans who might want to vote no on him over abortion but fear voter backlash can find better justification in voting no if he doesn't come out a firmly against and disgusted by the NSA spying program. If Rove (and possibly Hadley) can be neutralized as the primary fallout from Plamapalooza before the Spygate investigations take off then then the Admministtration is already going to be gasping. Depending on how many GOP lawmakers are brought down by Abramoff, there's also going to be a lot of Congressional disarray as well, and hopefully the Republicans will lack either the will or the strength to circle the wagons around the president.

QUOTE(Iwritecode @ Dec 22, 2005 -> 02:41 PM) Never resorted to forwarding an email to 100 people though... Agreed. The hurt and the anger I can understand, but emailing everybody in his directory also crossed a line that shouldn't have bbeen crossed.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Dec 22, 2005 -> 02:31 PM) There were foreign operatives on the other end of the intercepts. Not one of these, at least my understanding, was 100% domestic. If this statement is in reference to the current Bush affair it is incorrect. There were intercepts of purely domestic communications. although they are for the moment presumed to be accidental. http://nytimes.com/2005/12/21/politics/21n...artner=homepage