LowerCaseRepublican

QUOTE(minors @ Jun 26, 2006 -> 04:45 PM) I will take a stab at it. There is also a commandment that says Eye for an Eye which I take to mean that if you kill an knowingly innocent person then your life has to forfeited. Secondly yes your life is likely to be spared if you have a lot of money but what generally happens is they are let of scott free which is really wrong. That is why I favor taking the punishment out of the Juries hands the punishment should be written in black and white with no discretion, if you are found guilty of capital murder then you die no discretion. Trials cost a lot no doubt but what is forgotten in this argument is the cost to house and feed these thugs for 50-60 years which costs over 2 million in the end they equal out. Yes innocent people are executed but there are many people who served their life in prison is that any better? or giving up 20-30 years of their life in prison is that any better? The leagle system is not perfect but it is pretty damn good Yeah, about the 'eye for an eye' thing: You should check out Matthew 5 where the J-man sort of out and out repudiates that notion as being acceptable. (Specifically Matthew 5:38) Mandatory minimums handcuff judges and handcuff any mitigating evidence from being useful at a sentencing. (i.e. a man walks into his home and sees his wife having an affair. He bludgeons them both to death.) Clearly there are mitigating factors in cases that can lessen punishments given. If there is a hard-code, everybodys' hands become tied. "The cost of the apparatus and maintenance of the procedures attending the death penalty, including death row and the endless appeals and legal machinery, far outweighs the expense of maintaining in prison the tiny fraction of criminals who would otherwise be slain." (Draper) Habeas corpus reform (i.e. limiting appeals to lower cost) will only allow for more mistakes to be made and innocent people to be executed. As for the spending 20-30 years in jail and later being found innocent would be comparatively better because they wouldn't be in a box six feet under. The legal system is indeed not perfect which is the perfect argument of why the US should follow suit with the other Western industrialized nations and dump the death penalty.

QUOTE(minors @ Jun 26, 2006 -> 04:33 PM) I agree 100% I also might be willing to give but if it is still legal in this country to murder an innocent child then I will be in favor of the Death Penalty maybe if abortion was illegal then I would reconsider. Until then the liberals have no leg to stand on I'm not getting the whole "liberals" being against capital punishment yet for abortion thing. It's a nice diversion from dealing with the points brought up here and having to defend a point of view in a debate. Plus, there's always the guys and gals like, I don't know, the Pope, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, Sister Helen Prejean and other ardent pro-life activists who are against the proliferation of abortion AND, watch this, capital punishment. Perhaps you've heard that some people hold the idea of the Consistent Life Ethic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_Life_Ethic It isn't just "liberals" who are anti-death penalty. Sorry, but no cheap points in going after carefully set up "pseudo-debate points" so you all can knock them down in this thread. QUOTE(Steff @ Jun 26, 2006 -> 04:35 PM) The abortion argument is simply not as black and white as it always seems to be portrayed here... There are more factors than just rape, health of the mother, or birth control for stupid females. Steff, you're a fool and a Communist to think otherwise! How dare women have a choice to dictate the happenings in their own uterus. It is uter-U.S. That means the US government has the right to tell a woman what they can and can't do with their reproductive organs! It isn't uter-you!

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jun 26, 2006 -> 04:24 PM) I love the irony of this debate. Its okay to kill an innocent baby because up until it comes out the vaginal canal, gets slapped, and cries liberals think its a collection of cells. Maybe the baby could get some representation by the ACLU before it gets its death sentence. Yet the murdering thug gets a pass, because they have come to some sort of agreement that stabbing people in the neck is wrong. I love it. You want to change my view on the death penalty. I am willing to give a little, to gain a little. Outlaw abortion, unless the health of the mother is at risk or in cases of rape, and then I will buy the eliminate the dealth penalty argument. Otherwise let the murderer fry. Nice bichromatic political straw man. I actually have serious moral reservations about abortion and believe that legitimate discussion of sexual education and easy access to birth control methods would do wonders to cutting the rate of abortion. But then some fundamentalists would get offended that *gasp* sex was being discussed as something that wasn't dank, dirty and as Reagan put it "tinged with evil". Add in adequate funding of social programs, job assistance programs, education funding in areas that desperately need it and you're going to have a vastly cut down rate of abortion. I think its something that should be safe, legal and rare. Outlawing abortion will do nothing because rich women (they did it from late 1800's until it was legal) will go to places and pay to get illegal abortions. Poorer women will get unsafe backalley coathanger specials. But back to the topic at hand, you didn't really refute my statements about capital punishment. Just some anti-ACLU talking points and hammered away on abortion.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 26, 2006 -> 03:13 PM) I would contend this is being done as a combined move to appease not only voters in the U.S., but the major controlling factions of Iraqi government. The gamble they are taking is that they can still control things with a small-scale withdrawal. Given how tenuous things clearly are over there, I'd characterize that as russian roulette with out troops. I'd be pretty unhappy with it if I was in the military over there. Nuke, I'm kinda surprised you are OK with this. So, this story really didn't say *anything* because if the security situation deems it necessary, there's not going to be a rollback in troops. While it is good that some of them may be coming home -- given the security situation in Iraq, I'm going to put that they're going to be able to pull this off at about the same belief I gave to the claims of "candy and flowers" being thrown at the Army as they were greeted on the streets.

I'll bite on the death penalty stuff. I know I'm likely to be flamed and the difference is in philosophy. For all the people proclaiming that religion is being taken out of schools and the public arena, it is amazing how so many of the so-called "conservatives" (I don't even want to slander actual conservatives by putting them in with the cult of Bush personality since his ilk is anything but conservative) fail to mention capital punishment in their case. Its "Thou shalt not kill" It isn't "Thou shalt not kill, except when..." or "Amend Section A". If you're going to say that life is sacred and it is wrong for an individual to kill -- then how can it be right for the state? And these stats are not specific to the case, but I figured they'd work in a better over-arching discussion of capital punishment (remembering that the US is the one Western industrialized nation to still continue the practice) Over 80% of people executed since 1976 were convicted of killing white victims, although people of color make up more than half of all homicide victims in the US. A defendant who can afford his or her own attorney is much less likely to be sentenced to die. 95% of all people sentenced to death in the US could not afford their own attorney. Also: Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights When you add in that there is no deterrance effect from capital punishment, that the trials cost so much more than life without parole, the numerous times that prosecutors have been "thrown under the bus" and caught for hiding exculpatory evidence and that there have been innocent people both executed and released from death row -- it adds a few bumps to believing that the social and economic costs of the death penalty are worth paying for.

Go Sox! I was watching some old Wrestlemania 10 today with the roommate. Turned on the game at 9-5 at the start of the 9th. f***ing amazing work, Pale Hose. f***ing amazing. 3 grand slams in a series. This is hysterical. This team is so f***ing good.

From the article: There, fixed it for you, Jay. And oh yes: Ozzie with simulated sex, Jurassic Carl giving him a piece of his mind, Ozzie threatening to kick his ass and Big Frank wanting to shove a bat up Jay's ass sideways. Hilarious. I loooooove the Sox.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jun 24, 2006 -> 10:11 PM) Detroit WILL suffer deadarm later this year, esp with Verlander. I'm sure of it. Unless you are a total freak, which he may be, you don't go from 130 innings in one year to 200 without a hiccup. Of course, I've said this maybe 10 times now, but I stand by it. And don't forget Kenny "I fall off the map the second half of the season with struggles" Rogers. The Tigers will keep it close but I think they'll take the WC from one of the over-rated AL East teams.

QUOTE(tigerfan @ Jun 24, 2006 -> 10:01 PM) Keep in mind we still have 13 games left against you. I somehow doubt our head to head record will look like it does right now at season's end. Yeah you're right -- the Sox will have a lot more W's to add on.

Talk about a horseshoe up the ass. Jason Grilli vs Pujols and they can't plate a run?!?!

Bot 2 Recap *Dye strikes out swinging. *Crede flies out to center field. *Mackowiak strikes out swinging. 0 Hits 0 Runs Buchholz 27 pitches through 2 IP Score 1 - 1

Top 2 Recap *Ensberg walks. *Munson walks. Ensberg advances to second base. *Ausmus sacrifice bunt to pitcher. Ensberg advances to third base. Munson advances to second base. *Palmeiro singles to left field. Ensberg scores. Munson advances to third base. *Everett grounds into pitcher-shortstop-first baseman double play. Palmeiro out at second base. 1 Hits 1 Runs Garland 35 pitches through 2 IP Score 1 - 1

Bot 1 Recap *Podsednik singles to center field. *Podsednik steals second base. *Cintron grounds out to second base. (Podsednik advances to third base) *Thome sacrifice fly to right field. Podsednik scores. *Konerko strikes out swinging. 1 Hits 1 Runs Buchholz 12 pitches through 1 IP Score 1-0 White Sox

Top 1 Recap *Taveras bunt single. *Taveras steals second base. *Lamb strikes out swinging. *Burke pops out to second base. *Berkman flies out to center field. 1 Hits 0 Runs Garland 12 pitches through 1 IP Score 0-0

QUOTE(minors @ Jun 24, 2006 -> 01:23 AM) He could be guilty but we will never know because there wasn't enough evidence to even get an indictment. I do have problem's with cases where a jury has convicted these thugs and gave them a sentence like death but some bleeding heart comes along and questions the system. They have no right to be getting involved the jury has rendered a verdict and punishment and that is that. I'll bite about the capital punishment. “Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached” - Antonin Scalia Is it just me or does that statement from Scalia sound completely insane? I'm not saying that they're innocent in this particular case but there are a lot of problems with capital punishment (i.e. when they exonerated 13 people in IL alone) Plus, capital cases cost more than life imprisonment. http://www.willsworld.com/~mvfhr/

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Jun 23, 2006 -> 03:50 PM) So now it's racists and corporate tyrants who are to blame for your inability to toke up huh? Yeah actually it was racists and people who were against the free market (not to mention racist yellow journalists like Hearst) which inhibited cannabis. And you may not know this Nuke -- but even your own beloved US Army was quite pro-hemp (even after it was banned in 1937) In 1942-43, they came out with a very pro-cannabis movie entitled: Calling AIDS patients, people with glaucoma and other sufferers of disease "jackasses". Your compassion overwhelms me It isn't about recreational use here -- it is the right for doctors to be able to prescribe the substance to patients whom they believe it can help. As for alternative drugs, here's Dr. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School: http://www.rxmarihuana.com/excerpts.htm But in the non-medicinal marijuana sense -- yes, what business is it of the government if a person who knows the risks and benefits of a substance decides to smoke it/eat it/put it in his veins as long as he's not hurting another person? You know whose business it is -- f***ing nobody's. People can make their own well informed decisions. We already have two legal drugs on the market that kill more people than crack, coke, heroin, pot and all other illegal drugs...COMBINED EACH YEAR. People are using anyways, it makes sense to provide a safe means for them to do so (and please refrain from saying "It'll cause a huge spike in use!" because case studies such as Amsterdam show that there is a brief spike in use for a short time and then...ranks lower than the United States in the percentage of people who have ever used marijuana in every age category, has a higher age of initiation among those that do try marijuana, and fewer adolescents in the Netherlands than in the United States use other illegal drugs) Not to mention -- In 1972 the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded, "The Commission is of the unanimous opinion that marihuana use is not such a grave problem that individuals who smoke marihuana, or possess it for that purpose, should be subject to criminal procedures." Gotta love when people dispatched by the President to write a report say what they said /waiting for Nixon advisors to be called "leftist extremists" Back with medicine -- there's a difference between crack and the list of drugs you had and marijuana. Marijuana is impossible to overdose on. Marijuana has clear history of being therapeutic in studies that clearly challenge marijuana's status as a Schedule I drug. We've legalized alcohol, cigarettes, barbituate sleeping pills and these have killed people. Yet people are afraid of legalizing cannabis for medicinal purposes.

It's amazing -- when it was the possibility that Karl Rove was going to be indicted for the CIA leak, Nuke and the rest of the people here trashing moi were saying "INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN TEH GUILTY!!!11!!1!" But now, when it suits them politically, they turn the precedent on its head and become hypocrites.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Jun 23, 2006 -> 06:10 PM) I find it sad that people like you feel no sense of justice or optimism when terror suspects are caught red-handed by the FBI pledging allegiance to al Qaeda, declaring jihad on America, and requesting weapons and money to carry out attacks on major commerical and government centers in our country. :headshake Last time I checked, conspiracy to levy war against the United States is a pretty serious crime. :rolly They haven't had their day in court yet, but the evidence appears to be pretty damning. If they're found guilty, I'll cheer. In the initial post-9/11 roundups, using the PATRIOT Act, they rounded up 5,000 people and convicted 1 (which was later overturned on appeal) So the number of terrorists caught with the PATRIOT Act remains at zero. With the specter of preventative detentions of people without charges and the 0 fer put up with the PATRIOT Act, I'm skeptical until there's a conviction reached and have healthy reason to be. Not only that but it's the good old American tradition of innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Jun 23, 2006 -> 04:36 PM) Better to catch these lowlifes while they're still planning the operation than to wait until they're on the Dan Ryan in a van full of ammonium nitrate. The indictment shows that each is facing four counts of conspiracy. They're going away for a LONG time. Nuke, I'm just a fan of the American presumption of innocence before guilt being proven. Plus, when the government is 0 for 5,000 in actually convicting anybody -- I'm gonna hedge my bets here.

I'm just waiting for the next episode of Discovery's "Dirty Jobs". Sure, we've seen exterminators, chicken sexers, shrimpers and avian vomitologists. But today we look at one of the dirtiest jobs on the planet... Soxtalk Filibuster Moderator Congrats on the modship!

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Jun 23, 2006 -> 01:59 PM) When your approval rate gets down to where it's been with Bush and the war, it has to eventually go up. The approval numbers aren't sinking. They're soaring. If anything, they're rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg! /colbert

Really now -- why does the Ambassador hate America so much? And as for the war being handled well, even Nuke can attest to the lack of a post-war plan being set up by military planners. From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Dec24.html The U.S. military invaded Iraq without a formal plan for occupying and stabilizing the country and this high-level failure continues to undercut what has been a "mediocre" Army effort there, an Army historian and strategist has concluded. "There was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended. Looking at the chaos that followed the defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime, a military officer's study says, "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since." "While there may have been 'plans' at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these 'plans' operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse" -- that is, laid out how U.S. forces would be moved and structured, Wilson writes in an essay that has been delivered at several academic conferences but not published. "There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations." CS Monitor: US Postwar Plan Almost Non-existant http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/dailyUpdate.html And Minors: How can Al Qaeda be almost in complete destruction yet we've stopped lots of attacks here? (If they're destroyed, they shouldn't have the power and ability to go forward with lots of attacks) I won't even get into the preventative detentions being the main conduit for radicalizing the population against the United States (since they arrested, treated miserably and later released many innocent people since most of the arrestees were innocent people)

Let's keep up the bichromatic political rainbow! Pro-choice? Congratulations, you must also want a ban on assault weapons! Pro-life? Congratulations, you must also agree with the war on Terror and the methods used to fight it. Sorry but no -- see, there's this thing called the politcal spectrum and there's multiple parties on whose platforms people can agree. Even better, people can be conservative about some issues and liberal about others with set platform dictating how they're supposed to believe. It's a really nifty thing.

1. Innocent until proven guilty. After they went 0 for 5,000 in their initial post-9/11 roundups claiming that people were terrorists/wanting to blow things up, I'm a bit hesitant in saying "OMG WE CAUGHT TEH TERRORISTS!!!11!11!1! ELEVENTY!" 2. I didn't see anything in the article pointing towards this "success" being attributed to the Unneeded Safeguard Abolition Preparing Americans To Readily Ignore Overt Totalitarianism Act (USA PATRIOT Act) or the illegal, warrantless wiretapping. What I did see rather was the "on-the-ground" intelligence being used with an undercover operative and good old detective work of getting information from neighbors. The ends do not justify the means. If (and a big if) they did act in an illegal fashion (via warrantless taps, etc.) to gather information, it doesn't justify the illegal methods they used to elicit the information. 3. Gonzales said there never was an immediate threat to the alleged targets. "We felt that the combination of the planning and the overt acts taken were sufficient to support this prosecution and that's why we took this action," Gonzales said. "There is no immediate threat ... part of the reason for that is because they didn't have the materials they requested, they didn't receive the weapons, at least we don't know of." So, the organization wasn't an immediate threat, didn't have the materials and didn't have weapons. WTF kind of terrorist group is that? I mean, talk about f***ing lazy in getting off the boards. If, and this is a big if, they actually prove that the people are guilty then hoo-f***ing-ray, we caught some terrorists and actually prosecuted them. But 'til then, color me a bit skeptical because the track record of claiming people are terrorists and actually convicting them of the charge has been really clear in the fact that the government often times fails to do so.

A brief history of how marijuana was made illegal in 1937. Nuke, marijuana was made illegal because of two reasons: racism and pressure from interest groups. First -- marijuana had the stereotype of being used by Mexican laborers and jazz musicians (aka mostly minorities) The laws in individual states banning cannabis were clearly going after the Mexican population. When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator's comment: "When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff... he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy." Again, racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice." I'd also throw in some choice statements from the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930 (Harry Anslinger) to further prove the racism point. "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others." "...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races." "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." Now for the part about special interest groups. Hemp is a very viable plant and can be used for lots of things. For example -- paper. Hemp provides four times as much pulp with at lest four to seven times less pollution compared to the process for trees. Not to mention it is stronger and more flexible than tree paper and it doesn't damage the environment because hemp plants can be replenished without having to wait years and years for actual trees to grow. (from The Emperor Has No Clothes) In the mid-1930s, when the new mechanical hemp fiber stripping machines and machines to conserve hemp's high-cellulose pulp finally became state-of-the-art, available and affordable, the enormous timber acreage and businesses of the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division, Kimberly Clark (USA), St. Regis - and virtually all other timber, paper and large newspaper holding companies - stood to lose billions of dollars and perhaps go bankrupt. Coincidentally, in 1937, DuPont had just patented processes for making plastics from oil and coal, as well as a new sulfate/sulfite process for making paper from wood pulp. According to DuPont's own corporate records and historians, these processes accounted for over 80% of all the company's railroad carloadings over the next 60 years into the 1990s. If hemp had not been made illegal, 80% of DuPont's business would never have materialized and the great majority of the pollution which has poisoned our Northwestern and Southeastern rivers would not have occurred. In an open marketplace, hemp would have saved the majority of America's vital family farms and would probably have boosted their numbers, despite the Great Depression of the 1930s. But competing against environmentally-sane hemp paper and natural plastic technology would have jeopardized the lucrative financial schemes of Hearst, DuPont and DuPont's chief financial backer, Andrew Mellon of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh. Then you can add in the Hearst yellow journalism of "marijuana crazed Negroes" trying to rape white women and other bulls*** stories about people going nuts on pot and killing their whole families, etc. It was because Hearst wanted to sell papers and he was an active racist. Hell, the American Medical Association in 1937 was against the banning of marijuana. From Congressional testimony by the AMA to Congress: "We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman," Woodward protested, "why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any intimation, even to the profession, that it was being prepared." He and the AMA" were quickly denounced by Anslinger and the entire congressional committee, and curtly excused. The AMA knew marijuana was a benign substance that had been used for over 100 years in curing diseases and helping out the sick. __ /ends the history lesson So, Nuke. If you're for the free market then you should support this. If you're against government intrusion into peoples' lives and in the medical profession, you should support this.