All Hank, all the time.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Watching the stock tank as ad revenue plummets and readership dwindles to nothing following the "Great Times Select" mistake is more than enough to satisfy one's bloodlust.

The Times Select firewall is, I agree, profoundly stupid, but much like the dynamic explaining Coulter's monetary success, I suspect that the controversy surrounding the NYT's reporting will keep ad revenue high enough even to sustain the cost of Keller's bodyguard battallion employed to protect him from self-styled "conservatives" brandishing the torches and pitchforks. Keep it up, fellas!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
So - our military is further restricted and many Americans will die at the hands of the enemy - via nothing more than judicial fiat.

The Supes expand the protections of a treaty to unidentifiable non-soldiers of no country in particular, who neither signed the treaty nor have intention of abiding by it.

I imagine now that the Marines will be taking far fewer prisoners into custody. Who manufactures bodybags and shovels - I want to buy some stock?

Oh, and you do realize that this decision just won the GOP the 2006 - and possibly the 2008 - election, right?

The Supes said this is the way the law is, and if no one likes it, Congress can change the law. That would be the Republican-run Congress.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The Supes said this is the way the law is, and if no one likes it, Congress can change the law. That would be the Republican-run Congress.

Yes, though the mantra will probably be that the remaking of the federal judiciary is incomplete. Help elect us so that we can complete the process with conservative judges who will defer to the Executive instead of requiring, as Hamdan seems to do, that the Executive comply with limitations put in place by, uh, Congress.

Balkin makes the point that there's nothing unconstitutional, necessarily, about these commissions or about rending the shit out of prisoners if that's what Bush wants to do. The problem is that "rather, the Court told the President that under Article 36 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, he could not do so."

So, Slave, the simpler route is to have Congress change the UCMJ, or declare that Geneva doesn't apply. Which you can do more directly with your Republican Congress actually passing something, instead of going back to the Judicial Wailing Wall. Wonder which approach today's GOP will take?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Yes, though the mantra will probably be that the remaking of the federal judiciary is incomplete. Help elect us so that we can complete the process with conservative judges who will defer to the Executive instead of requiring, as Hamdan seems to do, that the Executive comply with limitations put in place by, uh, Congress.

Balkin makes the point that there's nothing unconstitutional, necessarily, about these commissions or about rending the shit out of prisoners if that's what Bush wants to do. The problem is that "rather, the Court told the President that under Article 36 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, he could not do so."

So, Slave, the simpler route is to have Congress change the UCMJ, or declare that Geneva doesn't apply. Which you can do more directly with your Republican Congress actually passing something, instead of going back to the Judicial Wailing Wall. Wonder which approach today's GOP will take?

A good Republican believes that the law is whatever the President says it is, leaving Republican congressmen free to enrich themselves and their cronies instread of doing stuff like legislating.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Here's an update from the GWOT's Afghanistan front. I know Club will be particularly interested to hear how things are going there. Sounds like the Afghan government needs more help.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
The most simple answer to all this is the government of the United States is there to serve US citizens, not to serve foreign nationals or other nations. The US government exists to what is best for us.

So then I take it that personal freedom and the respect thereof is not part of your universal moral code?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
1) We are the only western nation that employs the exclusionary rule. If you believe that our country is the only country that effectively protects individual rights (and effectively protects our citizens from unreasonable searches) then you could take this position. But if you don't, then clearly there are other nations that use other methods besides the exclusioniary rule to effectively protect their citizens from an over intrusive government. In my opinion the exclusionary rule does not do a good job of protecting us. It penalizes the wrong people (the victim of another crime instead of the perpetraitor of the crime in question) so it is not an effective tool.

2) So during a war, do you think our troops need to get a warrant before they search a house in a war zone? Should the NSA get a warrant before it monitors communications in Pakistan? Do you think that the CIA should be given the power to deal with counter-espionage in the United States (instead of the FBI) like the KGB had in the Soviet Union. If the constitution applies to all humans anywhere on the globe, why would you need two different organizations to deal with domestic intelligence and foreign intelligence? The answer to these questions are so obvious, I can't even believe that I have to bring it up, especially among a bunch of lawyers.

1. We are the only nation that comes close to doing an adequate job of respecting and protecting civil liberties and an intrusive government. No other nation on the planet comes close.

2. You tell me. Is the right to be secure and free in your person and property a moral right or not? Cut it out with the relativist bullshit.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
So - our military is further restricted and many Americans will die at the hands of the enemy - via nothing more than judicial fiat.

The Supes expand the protections of a treaty to unidentifiable non-soldiers of no country in particular, who neither signed the treaty nor have intention of abiding by it.

I imagine now that the Marines will be taking far fewer prisoners into custody. Who manufactures bodybags and shovels - I want to buy some stock?

Oh, and you do realize that this decision just won the GOP the 2006 - and possibly the 2008 - election, right?

And the sweetest part of the whole thing is that it's your Court. See, even a few conservatives still respect the rule of law.

[SlaveNoMore]

taxwonk
And the sweetest part of the whole thing is that it's your Court. See, even a few conservatives still respect the rule of law.

Are you actually calling Kennedy a conservative?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Are you actually calling Kennedy a conservative?

Now that Bush's approval ratings are down, conservatives have decided that he's not a conservative. Listening to you guys hit this note is like listening to die-hard Reds explain that Marxism was never put into practice.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub

• US-led coalition forces in Iraq have found some 500 chemical weapons since the March 2003 invasion, Republican lawmakers said, citing an intelligence report.
  
  "Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent," said an overview of the report unveiled by Senator Rick Santorum and Peter Hoekstra, head of the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives.
  
  "Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf war chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf war chemical munitions are assessed to still exist," it says.
  
  The lawmakers cited the report as validation of the US rationale for the war, and stressed the ongoing danger they pose.
  
  "This is an incredibly -- in my mind -- significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," Santorum said.
  

An update on these so-called "WMD":

• FOOL'S GOLD. Folks may remember the newly declassified discoveries of WMDs being touted by Rick Santorum, Curt Weldon, and others. The haul amounts to about 500 munitions which include sarin and mustard gas components and they are very, very scary. At least if you're a common household insect. That, at least, is the opinion of folks who actually know what they're talking about. Salon's Michael Scherer went by the congressional hearings meant to ascertain the potency of these armaments. The testimony, if it weren’t disproving the lies that led us into war, would've been funny. David Kay, the nation's top weapons inspector, explained that:
  
  As far back as September 2004, the CIA had disclosed the discovery of the old chemical munitions from Iraq's war with Iran. The CIA also explained that these weapons were not the ones the Bush administration had used to justify the invasion of Iraq. What's more, Kay said, the decades-old sarin nerve gas was probably no more dangerous than household pesticides -- and far more likely to degrade at room temperature. "In terms of toxicity, sir," Kay told Weldon at one point, "I suspect in your house, and I know in my house, I have things that are more toxic than sarin produced from 1984 to 1988."
  
  True to form, Weldon yelled at him. And the hearings got no better from there. Two Defense Intelligence Agency experts came to testify, explaining that the munitions were too corroded to be of use, and their embedded chemical weaponry was probably inextricable. The Committee's Republicans, somewhat pathetically, were reduced to protesting that these weapons do, indeed, fit the "category" of chemical weapons, even if they were no longer useable. Watching all this, Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat, mocked his colleagues by comparing them to prospectors who come across a shiny nugget of fool's gold. "Well, old-timer," Skelton said, "that's a piece of pyrite." He then read aloud "a list of the vast quantities of chemical weapons that the CIA, and the Bush administration, had expected to find in Iraq. This laundry list, as described in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, included between 100 and 500 metric tons of chemical weapons agents, most of which had been allegedly produced after 1991. As Skelton put it, 'The goalposts seem to have been moved.'"

Do you feel safer knowing that Santorum and Weldon are writing this nation's laws?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Do you feel safer knowing that Santorum and Weldon are writing this nation's laws?

To be fair, your list is about 533 names short.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
To be fair, your list is about 533 names short.

Do you feel safer knowing that Santorum and Weldon are involved in writing this nation's laws?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Do you feel safer knowing that Santorum and Weldon are involved in writing this nation's laws?

That list is still 533 names short.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
That list is still 533 names short.

I feel better knowing that Jim Leach and Olympia Snowe are involved, to take two examples. Craig Enzi and Randy Pombo, no so much. I wasn't asking about the other 533. Weldon and Santorum are jokes. With any luck, we won't have them to kick around after November.