Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I've never understood how the supposed original intent of the framers of the Second Amendment is supposed to trump the plain language, which indicates pretty clearly that the purpose of the amendment is to ensure a well-regulated militia, as opposed to deer-hunting or self-protection, as worthy as those goals are. The NRA deals with this problem by just omitting the inconvenient part of the text.

You know Ty -- I absolutely agree with you on the correct result as a policy matter, but I wouldn't say that the language of the Amendment is so darn clear that denying the personal right to keep and bear arms is a slam dunk.

Yes, the "well-regulated militia" language is right in there, but I don't think it is crazy to interpret it to say that, because [in 179_] we want to be able to have a rapid-response militia, we are preserving the individual's right to "keep and bear" weapons.

[I really don't want to debate this. My God! What have I done!]

Happy Thanksgiving to All.

S_A_M

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
You know Ty -- I absolutely agree with you on the correct result as a policy matter, but I wouldn't say that the language of the Amendment is so darn clear that denying the personal right to keep and bear arms is a slam dunk.

Yes, the "well-regulated militia" language is right in there, but I don't think it is crazy to interpret it to say that, because [in 179_] we want to be able to have a rapid-response militia, we are preserving the individual's right to "keep and bear" weapons.

No, it isn't. But nor is it crazy in those circumstances to say that the only weapons you get to keep and bear are those you need as a part of your service in a militia. In other words: Under your approach, gun control is constitutional.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No, it isn't. But nor is it crazy in those circumstances to say that the only weapons you get to keep and bear are those you need as a part of your service in a militia. In other words: Under your approach, gun control is constitutional.

I think so.

Under my approach, most things are constitutional, except waterboarding, and we just need to make policy decisions. I am very results-oriented.

S_A_M

Gobble-Gobble-Gobble!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Look at the 6th comment - is that our girl?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Look at the 6th comment - is that our girl?

politics are not her avenue, i don't think it's her.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
politics are not her avenue, i don't think it's her.

Doesn't sound like her either.

[Diane_Keaton]

So Aruba has arrested the 3 boys again and at the same time, Natalee Holloway's Dad just shelled out money to hire guys to do a search of waters in Aruba even though searches were already done. The reason given was new evidence.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11222007...ain_958557.htm
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...CO6FwD8T2Q6A80

Anyone have any insight into the latest developments? Counsel for one of the boys is poo-pooing the rearrest but wouldn't it seem that Aruba prosecutors have something big to get the judge to allow a re-arrest? And the rearrest coming on the heels of the Dad's renewed search in the water?

[sgtclub]

This sounds like real progress: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...201568_pf.html

[Gattigap]

Tom Tancredo clearly doesn't know that Joel Stein's singular role at the LA Times is to be a wise-ass columnist - if he did, he'd never have agreed to sit down to lunch with the man. Personally, I blame Tancredo's staff.

At any rate, it results in a couple of good lines in Stein's piece.

• Inever thought GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo would eat Mexican food with me. The Colorado congressman has proposed anti-immigration legislation so draconian that he's been banned from the White House and called a "nut" by Jeb Bush. And I definitely never thought Tancredo would tell me that Mexican is his favorite cuisine. That was like finding out that CNN's Nancy Grace gets turned on by violent criminals. Only surprising.
  
  Tancredo agreed to our Mexican lunch during a campaign sweep through Iowa last month. But the night before our appointment, I found out he was already headed to Mami's Authentic Mexican Food in Muscatine for dinner. The man was planning two Mexican meals in a row. I had little to teach him.
  
  On my way to Mami's, however, I got a call from his aide. A local Republican had tipped Tancredo off to the fact that Mami's owners marched in the Great American Boycott on May Day 2006. So Tancredo was now driving all the way to Davenport to go to Carlos O'Kelly's Mexican Cafe instead. If his campaign staff was as skilled at finding voters as Mexican restaurants in Iowa, Tancredo would win the nomination.
  
  Carlos O'Kelly's makes the finest Mexican food with an Irish flair of any chain restaurant in Iowa. The enchiladas came with a sort of hollandaise sauce that constituted a greater insult to Mexicans than anything Tancredo has ever said.

I thought the name of this place was a joke, but apparently there actually is such a chain, located primarily in the Midwest. NotBob? Are these guys a client together with Piggly Wiggly?

Gattigap

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by sgtclub
This sounds like real progress: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...201568_pf.html

It appears, up to a point - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&sn=012&sc=359 .

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ironweed
Bush has been making us look bad for years among casual observers around the world by just being an inarticulate idiot. That's one thing - it's personality-based, it's specific to him, and I would have hoped that our image would get a bit better with someone else at the helm and on the news all the time. But being a complete and utter hypocrite about promoting the idea of democracy overseas is going to do much more lasting damage to American credibility, or what's left of it, than his casual idiocy could ever do.

Understood, but the devil you know is always preferable when dealing with a nation full of idiot fundamentalists and nuclear bombs. He really has no choice here but to get behind Musharraf.

And every Democrat should be damn glad he did. If Musharraf fell and some pack of religious buffoons were to somehow get the reins of that nation, protecting us from Pakistan and its nukes would be the battle cry Rudy rode into the White House by the biggest margin in recent electoral memory.

Be happy Bush is keeping the status quo. The Democratic Party is always one globally destabilizing and frightening incident from irrelevance. As long as Iraq and the economy remain the main issues, however, it has a pretty rosy future.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Indeed. We all know that Ike was (as Robert Welch, head of the John Birch Society, put it) a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy."

I don't know. I'd say "oracle" fits more these days.

You can all call me crazy, and you'd be right in a lot of regards, but I really believe that Bush and Cheney put us over there knowing it would lead to our decades long presence in the Middle East because they believe we have to eternally engage that part of the world, and it happens to suit the interest of their party and their benefactors.

They had to know this was not a war we'd end quickly.

They bought forty more years of relevance for the right wing of the GOP and the defense industry. The war in Iraq:

1. Pump primes sectors of the the economy that donate heavily to the GOP;
2. Promotes nationalism among their rabid base;
3. Provides a rallying point the economic and social conservatives can both get behind; and
4. Replaces the Southern Strategy that is no longer working with a perpetual argument that they are the party of choice in times of conflict.

Maybe I'm nuts, or maybe this is obvious.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by LessinSF
It appears, up to a point - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&sn=012&sc=359 .

Wasn't trying to paint a rosy picture. It's just seems that there is a consensus starting to build that there has been real progress over the last few months. Even the DEM candidates are starting to hedge/re-message on Iraq.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Wasn't trying to paint a rosy picture. It's just seems that there is a consensus starting to build that there has been real progress over the last few months. Even the DEM candidates are starting to hedge/re-message on Iraq.

We are never getting out. Never.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
We are never getting out. Never.

if algore is right, the whole place will be under water in 25 years.