Rex Kickass

Actually, it was 24 hours, and I believe when FISA was amended after 9/11, the time was extended to 72 hours - although that might have been the 1995 amendments to FISA.

I don't know, still trying to figure out yours.

FISA law: Section 1809 Condoleeza Rice: The NY Times 12/19 The Washington Post 12/22 U.S. Constitution Article 2, Section 3 So FISA makes it clear what a violation of FISA is. The Department of Justice admits that the Bush administration did not follow procedures deemed necessary by FISA. FISA defines what extraordinary measures means in relation to citizens' protection. The U.S. Constitution requires to faithfully execute the law, which the Bush administration - by its own admission - did not do. And you still want to argue that this is neither inappropriate or a violation of the law.

I would argue that he's the strongest opponent of the death penalty.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 25, 2006 -> 12:01 PM) And so many of the death penalty's strongest opponents want us to continue killing our unborn. Ironic, isn't it? Especially the Pope.

QUOTE(watchtower41 @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 03:27 PM) No, they'll probably just throw batteries at him during the game. Come on, he's no Santa Claus.

Caring is so 2005.

I think the biggest problem with Capital Punishment is the act itself. So many of the death penalty's strongest supporters also want to see the Ten Commandments in court rooms. Yet they forget that there is no asterisk on the "Thou shalt not kill/murder" one.

QUOTE(samclemens @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 10:18 PM) the great depression happened over 70 years ago. why the hell are we still funding this stuff? FDR hasnt been in office for years. the New Deal is no longer needed. It served it's purpose, but all it's remnants do today is eat up tax dollars. I am willing to say that I advocate the termination of funding of the arts. In reference to another debate that used the same question, I would be pissed as hell if $$ were taken out of my paycheck to fund a public mural. Let some Van Andel fund that crap, not my money (I am from grand rapids MI originally, so if you are from around the area you will know what i am talking about). So you're saying there should be no more funding of memorials? Because those are publicly funded art projects. This isn't about a New Deal or whether or not money is take out of your check to fund a public mural. This is about whether government should encourage cultural growth in a society. And it's not about building a wall the size of which would rival the Great Wall of China and still fail to stop people from just simply bringing a ladder with them when they cross. Publicly funded art is everywhere. Christo's Gates in New York City. The 9/11 beams of light in lower Manhattan. The Picasso in downtown Chicago. Soldier Field. In many cases supporting the arts might be built into growing economic stimulus or encouraging greater usage of designed public space. Perhaps, if you're so against the idea of public funding of art, you'd be against public funding of single use stadiums - they in many cases serve the same purpose. Would you also agree that if funding a sculpture to be placed in downtown Chicago is wrong, so would spending several hundred million dollars to build a stadium for a baseball team who will then sell the right to attend the ballpark and the right to name it without any further benefit to the government coffer?

But at the same time, you put a lot of onus on a lot of people that criticize the President as having done just that - and you have no idea whether they have or not.

That is so wrong.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 04:01 PM) There's that word again. It's in the interpretation of reasonable, or in this case ' unreasonable'. As I said before, that explanation of the 4th amendment I post the link to had 'reasonable' or forms of the word sprinkled liberally throughout. Fine, so what's so unreasonable about asking the government to notify a secret court of its intent to wiretap or perform surveillance on US Citizens especially with organizations that were created with the purpose of foreign surveillance? What exactly is the FISA preventing here that makes it necessary to flout the law? Nobody answers this question.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 04:46 PM) Could it possibly be that the Democrats have presented a fair number of decent policy proposals (to go along with some obvious bad ones), but because of the fact that the media likes to filter things as "he said versus he said" and hates policy points, you just don't hear them? That plus the people who whine the hardest about not hearing ideas here, never listen when they get presented.

I didn't. Someone else did. I just followed the example someone else gave. Of course, I could have said that NPR's Morning Edition reaches over 20 million listeners a week. More than any other radio show on the air today. I think the whole issue is fruitless. I don't think that there's an overt or intentional bias in the MSM. If there was a liberal bias, the Swift Boat Vets would not have been taken seriously. If there was a liberal bias, the media would not have exploded the Monica Lewinsky story to the point where the media was affecting what Congress thought. If there was a liberal bias, the Abramoff story would have broke months - if not years earlier. I don't think the media is liberal. I don't think the media is conservative. I think the media is opportunistic and lazy. Period.

Wait, people out here care about this?

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 08:25 AM) Don't bet it. Back it up. You made that totally ridiculous comparison of a week's worth of Limbaugh vs. a single evening network newscast and I pointed out what a farce that comparison was. You asked who was more mainstream. I gave you my answer. OK, if you want to spend the quarter million dollars worth of money it would take for me to do that research, I'm right down with it. But because the numbers released publically, don't include anything but cumulative weekly audience and overall share of audience in a timeframe, I can't get specific. What I can tell you is according to Rush Limbaugh's syndicator - during any given 15 minute time frame of his show, there are 1.2 million people listening in the top 25 markets in the US. That is not an accurate measure of nationwide listening. And, beyond that, you're right. It's not an apples to apples comparison. ABC, CBS, NBC is actual news. The Rush Limbaugh show is a three hour festival of opinions and anger.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 08:35 AM) And laws passed by Congress do NOT supercede the Constitution. Please illustrate an example in which it would be constitutional for the President to wiretap or participate in surveillance on US Citizens without a warrant, yet unconstitutional to follow the FISA laws. Cause I'm confused. FISA facilitates 4th amendment rights protection. By openly flouting FISA, you are in essence flouting the 4th amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects the US Citizen, not the US Government.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 06:13 AM) 15 million divided by 5 broadcasts = 3 million. Now, who's more mainstream? Geez, Mr. Twister, you compare an average newscast, that's singular, vs. a weeks worth of Limbaugh's broadcasts and try make a point like that. How many people in a week are reached by the network newscasts? 3 networks times 7 days a week times 10 million people ... of course, we are only talking about the nightly network news. We won't include viewers to the morning hours long news shows, such as the Today Show, or the magazine format news shows such as '60 minutes, or the Sunday discussion shows such as Meet the Press, etc. Should we talk newspapers and magazines now? Actually, that's not the way it works. That 15 million is not split up evenly, and I'd be willing to bet that the real number day to day is close to or equal to the amount of people who watch the news. It's just the way they estimate radio listenership, since the process of evaluating listenership is different. And the 15 million is a conservative estimate.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 05:53 AM) Here is an excellent site that explains the 4th amendment. The word "reasonable" is scattered liberally throughout. Based on what I read here, the General does know what the amendment says and how it has been interpretted. It's, again, a matter of interpretation. There's a specific law. And a specific process to get the warrant. It isn't necessarily a hard thing to procure, and the Bush administration has not been hampered by FISA court restrictions - seeing as in the entire 28 year history of FISA, fewer than 10 warrants have ever been rejected. The Bush administration has said that the law does not apply to us, even though we are doing things specifically regulated to FISA. Yes the fourth amendment may say things, but there's also the matter of this law - designed to protect fourth amendment rights for US Citizens while enabling the government to do its job. There hasn't been a case of a court gone wild, this is an Administration who has said - we aren't following the law, we aren't going to follow the law. And somehow this is seen as legal.

But if it's smart politics to draw someone out of the Senate and increase a majority for the Republicans, it's also smart politics to try to get that person out of the Senate and replaced with someone who wouldn't consider leaving the reservation, so to speak, and head off to a Presidential cabinet.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 10:47 PM) Don't confuse this conversation with any facts, Chaos. He hasn't yet. I'm still waiting for them. The average newscast on CBS or ABC or NBC reaches 10 million people. Rush Limbaugh reaches over 15 million a week. Who's more mainstream?

That's sort of true. If you don't know, and you insist on correcting someone about what you don't know... you deserve to be burned when you're caught.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 08:31 AM) I'm uneducated about that topic. But, that genie, she was hot. Wrong show.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 12:51 PM) Now why would that be smart politics on the part of the GOP? Because, for the most part, it's not party line that people vote for in Congressional elections, it's the incumbent. Once you seat someone in a post, it's very difficult to unseat someone in the following election.

Of course if Ford made cars worth driving....