A big fat duece.

If you guys aren't willing to jail the cops who do bad things, how would you feel if we just cut off body parts instead? Illegal search & seizure, lose of a finger. Beat a perp to death, lose a hand.

SS. Is this a sign of the apocalypse?

The Conservative Crackup over Bush
 

Today's edition of bilmore's favorite newspaper, the LATimes, is running a number of op-ed pieces, largely by conservatives, arguing that Bush sucks and was never really a conservative anyway. Among them is Bruce Bartlett, noted conservative and author of new book Impostor, who writes:

• AS A LIFELONG conservative, I have to be honest: George W. Bush is not one of us and has never been. There can be no denying that he has enacted policies contrary to conservative principles on far too many occasions.
  
  In my view, his greatest failing has been a total lack of control over federal spending — to the point where liberal Democrat Bill Clinton's administration is looking more and more like the "good old days."
  
  According to the Office of Management and Budget, overall spending has increased from 18.4% of the gross domestic product in 2000 to 20.8% this year, an increase of 2.4%. Clinton, by contrast, reduced spending from 22.1% of GDP to 18.4% during his two terms, a reduction of 3.7%. (This is really the best way to look at spending because it holds constant things like inflation that distort dollar figures).
  
  Although much of the Bush increase is accounted for by national security and entitlements such as Medicare, the fact is that domestic discretionary spending has also risen. Education spending, for example, is up 137%, according to Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and spending on community and regional development is up 342%. Moreover, Bush has repeatedly pushed for big projects, such as the manned mission to Mars that NASA can ill afford and that will come at the expense of basic science.
  
  The number of identifiable pork-barrel projects that benefit particular states and congressional districts has risen from 958 in 1996 to 13,999 in 2005, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group. Spending on such projects has risen from $12.5 billion per year to $27.3 billion.
  
  Bush, like most presidents, decries this wasteful spending. But unlike others, he refuses to use his veto pen to stop it. He is the first president since James Garfield, elected in 1880, not to have vetoed anything. But Garfield at least had the excuse of being assassinated shortly into his presidency. John Quincy Adams (1824-1828) is the last president to serve a full four-year term without a veto. And one must go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson (1800-1808), our third president, to find one who served in office as long as Bush without vetoing a single bill.
  
  Bush's greatest sin, in my book, was ramming the Medicare drug benefit through Congress by covering up its true cost and strong-arming principled conservatives into voting for it. According to the Medicare trustees' latest report, the program has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion in current value terms. That means we would need that much in a mutual fund today, earning a return, to pay its unfunded liability.
  
  Although there was a case for allowing Medicare to pay for prescription drugs, the rest of Medicare has an unfunded liability of $50 trillion. Bush's action, therefore, pushed it up to $68 trillion in total. By contrast, the unfunded liability of Social Security, which he told us time and again last year was in dire financial straights, has an unfunded liability of just $11 trillion.
  
  I and a growing number of other budget analysts now think the only way of avoiding a financial Katrina when the baby boom generation starts to retire is a massive tax increase. Future presidents may be the ones to enact it. But Bush's policies will have caused it.

Spanky, what kind of retarded analysts are you Republicans using these days? Doesn't this moron understand that everything will be just peachy as we grow our way out of this problem?

Gattigap

The Conservative Crackup over Bush
 

Only one person so far - a lone letter to the editor published in this morning's NYTimes - outed this "conservative backlash" for what it is - a transparant attempt by the right to position itself as moderate.

These angry conservatives aren't mad at Bush. They're using him as a foil to portray themselves as moderate. bush has become the conservative ogre against which people juxtapose their commitment to compassionate conservativism. He's come full circle - he's the "boss" he ran against in 2000. Its pure comedy to watch this unfold. I'm curious as to how Frist will pronouncce himself a moderate. Looks like it will be McCain's nomination to lose. But he'd better pick a damn good VP. I could see Hillary making the argument that McCain is too old and too entrenched in the GOP to clean up the mess left by Bush. He needs a real VP to show people that a moderate GOP admin will be around for a long time.

I think McCain can win this thing. People are very scared of what a person like Hillary would do in office. She's a mean Jimmy Carter with tits. I don't think we can suffer another Bush, but I shudder at the thought of Hillary in the White House. A repeal of tax cuts now - which would translate to a tax hike in the minds of consumers - would doom this economy. Any talk of universal health care will do the same. She's too strident and insane for these times.

If you beat a perp to death, why wouldn't murder charges suffice?

There's no real point to cutting off a finger. Why does that benefit anyone? If you allow for damages, including punitives for repeat offenses by a departmen, isn't that enough deterrence? Cops will end up on desk duty pretty quickly if they start exhausting the budget. Raises this year? Sorry, Billy's been busting down too many doors without warrants. Yeah, he'll be popular on the force.

The pain doesn't trickle down that way.

Next time you go to one of your Republican love-fests, try making this argument.

But, substitute "gun control" for "exclusionary rule," and adjust the rest accordingly. See how it goes.

Relying on TV shows and movies* should disqualify you on this Board faster than comparing someone to Hitler.


*known to scholars as "fiction." Go figure.

Probably (1), if you would make the system viable. I am waiting for someone opposed to the Exclusionary Rule to propose eliminating sovereign immunity and offering punitive damages for police violation of the fourth and fifth amendments.

Second sign of the apocalypse?


http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...077#post240077

The Conservative Crackup over Bush
 

Paul Krugman (who, for a host of reasons ranging from obvious to outable, I generally cannot stand) had an interesting column on this the other day. Basically, he quoted some of the attacks some of these same conservatives made on him several years ago, for saying the exact same things that these people have now figured out.

It was smug and self-satisfied, but still kinda funny. (Like Bilmore, but in the mirror).

I would do both if you're offering damages in lieu of the exclusionary rule. It wouldn't be an adequate substitute otherwise (I thought that was assumed from our long-ago discussion on the issue).

On punis, you'd have to have some sort of limits on it--heightened showing, pattern and practice, etc. But, yeah.

If you care to search (and I'm sure you don't any more than I do), I proposed this not-novel idea the last time Spanky raised the issue. That is, if a municipal government or state were to adopt a rule that waived sovereign immunity and allowed damages suits (against the police department or the individual cop, who would undoubtedly be indemnified anyway) for illegal searches and seizures, I believe it could then argue in court that evidence illegally seized should not be excluded under the fourth amendment.

Of course, no one will adopt that scheme because it will monetize and make transparent the costs of shoddy police work.

Free Scooter
 

From Drudge:

• THE WASHINGTON POST's famous Watergate editor Ben Bradlee claims that it was former State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage who was the individual who leaked the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame.
  
  In the latest issue of VANITY FAIR: "Woodward was in a tricky position. People close to him believe that he had learned about Plame from his friend Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's former deputy, who has been known to be critical of the administration and who has a blunt way of speaking. 'That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption,' former WASHINGTON POST editor Ben Bradlee said."
  
  'I had heard about an e-mail that was sent that had a lot of unprintable language in it.'"

The Exclusionary Rule survives for the same reason that (e.g.) rent control does -- achieving the same policy goals through better means would involve spending money, which politicians would rather not do, so better to let society absorb the costs through something other than taxes.