Who's your daddy, Hank?
 

Well, even the Pentagon needs a source for that, and the only apparent evidence from the article is from the "detainee." Do you see another source of evidence, or can you just imagine some other place where the info came from?

The Economist always speaks in terms of the failings of the leaders. I would like to see them focus more on the failings of the electorate. One of the curses of democracy is accountability, but no one ever holds the voters of France and England and Germany accountable.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

Unless you've got some preemption going somewhere in that mess, it's going to simply be a rerun, right? I don't think they're limited by any specific law so much as by the principle of, don't make a fool of yourself and expect re-election. (Would that Congress had read this post earlier, eh?)

The lure of trolldom
 

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Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

This is sounding like a Fed. Courts hypo (boy, the profs. just had an exam handed to them, no?)

Calder v. Bull? Ex post facto doesn't apply to civil cases/private rights--that's one of the problems, since Congress is trying to change the result after it's happened.

Ex parte McCardle? In reverse, since they're granting jurisdiction to change a result, rather than withdrawing it to prevent a result. but the can do that.

It seems to run against a number of principles, but not directly.

What if you thought the state courts had gotten the case wrong in the first place? Would your views be different?

Quality Control at CBSNews.com
 

The testimony on her wishes didn't seem very clear to me either. On the other hand, RT is right when she says, "what she would have wanted" has already been looked at over and over. I think this case is unusual b/c if the wife so clearly told hubby what she wanted, hubby did not stop her treatments (and was advocating for them) even when the medical evidence was clear she was in the state she is in now. Everyone including the parents got used to caring for her and treating her and the wife certainly got used to being fed and watered (at least her body that is). The decision was made to keep feeding and watering her and some (including me) don't think its wise or right to change course at a certain point. I think the husband believes in what he is doing but let too much time go by (yes, I'm aware that's he's been fighting to stop treatment for a while; I'm talking about before that). One poster on here (the donut eater who finds me annoying**) said "her wishes as to how she wants the end of her life to be aren't really pertinent while there is reasonable hope of recovery." Fine, but the point is that her supposed wishes weren't taken into account even when THERE WAS NO reasonable hope of recovery.

**I am not assuming there is only one poster on here who enjoys donuts and finds me annoying too.

Who's your daddy, Hank?
 

It may be because Hank and I have the same twisted kind of mind, but it seemed obvious to me that the source for the pentagon statement was a detainee at Gitmo. Obviously, the veracity of the source is questionable. The pentagon was not saying the report was necessarily true. They were just saying that a terrorist had alleged these facts. General Franks stated that there were conflicting reports but nothing definitive. It sounds like to me that this terrorists statement about Osama was one of the conflicting reports that Franks was referring to. However, if Tommy Franks says that the US had no reason to believe that we had Osama in our grasp, I think you would trust that statement unless there was some definitive evidence to the contrary. Statements from a Gitmo detainee does not seem like definitive evidence to me. In addition, it does not refer to a time frame. This guy may have led Osama out of Tora Bora well in advance of the American forces arrival.

Who's your daddy, Hank?
 

Bitch, please. They could have a wide variety of other sources. Human intel, documents, confession, sigint, etc. Whatever it is, they buy it enough to represent it as the truth.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

That was where I was coming out.

Not so much. I'm the process guy. Bilmore's the one who thinks it's all about the result.

Who's your daddy, Hank?
 

What makes you think that they represented it as the truth? I don't think the article implies that, and even if it did, we would need to see the text of the Pentagon document. Have you seen the text of the pentagon document?

Who's your daddy, Hank?
 

The AP article attributes the statement to the Pentagon. It does not suggest -- as you and Hank helpfully have -- that the Pentagon merely was reciting the self-serving statements of a captured terrorist. I appreciate your efforts to defend Franks' credibility, but it is pretty clear that OBL was at Tora Bora, that we let him get away -- surely not by design, but by effect -- and that people like Franks and Bush lied about it during the campaign.

And the lies worked. So you Republicans can be glad about that.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

BTW, has Terri's law entirely blown up in Congress's face? (assuming a denial of cert.) They don't get the intended result, it happens really quickly that they don't, they passed an asinine law with no benefit, and are stuck explaining why they didn't do more. Good work, fellas.

Who's your daddy, Hank?
 

And Russian Submarines- Were there Russian submarines?

you don't have the Government document, you have a newspaper story that reads:

• The document, provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee ''assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora.'' It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.

You aren't dense enough to believe that is anything other than what the guy told them, perhaps "confirmed" by other detainees. What is most wrong when you dissemble here, is the less intelligent of your side take their cues from you. In essence you are a role model. When you intentionally ignore the facts, Sidd/Gatti/Tax/etc. now start seeing the fiction of your satire as truth. You harm them with this sort of thing.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

I've had days like that.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

Yea, well thought out, right.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

I now officially hate congress.

S.Ct Denies Cert
 

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

I'm guessing that you'll see such speculation from the media, but it won't happen. Congress is going to want to let this chapter in its history die a very fast, but very quiet, death.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

Maybe it's like in prison where you're supposed to kick the biggest guy's ass your first day in. You make the statement- "I'm fucking nuts- don't fuck with me or I may go ballistic"

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

To their credit, then, they really nailed that "fucking nuts" part.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

It's a little past their first day, no?

In the last century, those electorates used to all get together and kill a bunch of each other. Is that what you had in mind?

I was thinking more along the lines of Chirac and Schroeder, but your idea sounds fun too.

Looming crisis in Social Security Trustee Report
 

So when Medicare is in much worse financial shape than Social Security, why are we concerned with Social Security "refom"?

Also, why diss the two non-cabinet level trustees?

I believe that the Prescription Drug Benefit may come back to bite a lot of people in the ass.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

Let's hope they filled out the damned form.

Looming crisis in Social Security Trustee Report
 

""The way to solve a problem in the future is not to add benefits to make it more underfunded," Saving said."

Good call. We need to scale Medicare benefits back drastically.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

It's okay anyway. Delay will testify that he heard this saga whisper "please kill me" several times.

This sucks
 

If you get the shit beat out of you by someone you live with in Ohio, it's better to be married to them.

Same beating is treated differently under the law in Ohio, just in case some gay person gets plummeled.

I also have the strong desire to do violence in Ohio. Good thing I'm not married, or else I'd move up to a felony.

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

Agreed. This has made Frist and Delay look like the scumsucking whores they are. I think its fantastic that Delay has been quoted by hundreds of papers equating Terri's plight to his own "struggle" against a cabal of evil lefties. I haven't seen a quote shoved so far up someone's ass since the Lott debacle.

If you doubt for a second that Bill Frist is Damien of the Fourth Reich, you're willfully ignorant. That man has antifreeze in his veins. I could see his dead Pol Pot eyes roll back in his head like a shark moving in to rip flesh as he sits behind his desk, Monty Burns-like, scratching the number of the beast on his forehead, sniping at an aide "Get me a camera. I am a doctor. its time I diagnose this fucking vegetable."

"What's her condition, sir?"

"Her condition? Her condition is an audience of one million pieces of white trash, who are going to cheer whan I tell them I'm saving her from a morally bankrupt court system. Then, the fucking money men will look at me, instead of that fat W clone presiding over Florida. This will undo that fat ne'r do well brother. I will be the candidate in 2008. It is written."

"Written where, sir?"

"In cat innards. I dissected a cat, alive of course, in 1978. And its intestines spelled out, in sanskrit, '2008.' It is predestined. Fetch me that Hannity fellow. I'm going to save Mary."

"It's Terri sir..."

This sucks
 

Opponents of the Constitutional Amendment argued, prior to the election last fall, that bad unintended consequences would happen with this bad law if it passed. Fortunately, the good people of the great State of Ohio blissfully ignored them!

And in other good news, Ohio legislators are debating the very same kind of "Academic Freedom" bill that is causing such a stir in Florida!

Huzzah!

aV

This sucks
 

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"His public defender, David Magee, had asked the judge to throw out the charge because of the new wording in Ohio's constitution that prohibits any state or local law that would "create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals."

Before the amendment, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said. The gay marriage amendment no longer allows that. "

A third-grader could have foreseen this. Why didn't they change the DA statute simultaneously to not "define the unmarried couple as a family", but merely apply the statute to people living together, or some better-worded option?

Activists! Activists! Get them off of the Judiciary! Activists!
 

You could start with the 11th Amendment if you wanted to align yourself, however temporarily, with the Federalists. Or, alternatively, assuming that a judgement on a chose in action is property, you could assert that the bill is a bill of attainder, barred by Article II, IIRC. Another approach would be to simply note that nowhere does the Constitution grant Congress the power to deprive a State of its right to have its own courts' judgments enforced within that State.

And all of those arguments can be made without getting into our common law tradition.

Looming crisis in Social Security Trustee Report
 

Let medicare go bankrupt, and there might eventually be fewer old people living longer to burden the Social Security system. It's a win-win.

Looming crisis in Social Security Trustee Report
 

I am sorry but that argument really bites. Reforming either of these two programs will take a huge political undertaking and a vast amount of political capital. For years Social Security was considered the third rail of politics - if you touch it you die. Everyone from both parties always talked about how Social Security was in trouble, but no one dared propose a rational solution because it would piss off a powerful special interest groups and insure your defeat in the next election. Bush has defied the conventional wisdom and has taken on social security, and it has not destroyed him (at least not yet). Now that something is actually being done, and the problem is at least being faced people actually say - well why don't we forget this and focus on a bigger problem. As if this kind of momentum can be created with a snap of a finger. We take care of it now, or we ain't getting another chance. It would be like during WWII after the invasion of Normandy, someone saying, you know, Japan is actually a bigger threat because they can hit the US mainland, so lets pull everyone out of europe, then lets beat Japan, and then we can go back and deal with the European problem. We will never have the chance to reform Social security like we have now, to drop it and turn to Medicare before finishing the job would be beyond stupid. Yes, Medicare is a bigger problem, but it can be dealt with after social security.

I Find This Unbelievable
 

Bill Bennet in the National Review:

• The "auxiliary precautions" of Florida government — in this case the Florida supreme court — have failed Terri Schiavo. It is time, therefore, for Governor Bush to execute the law and protect her rights, and, in turn, he should take responsibility for his actions. Using the state police powers, Governor Bush can order the feeding tube reinserted. His defense will be that he and a majority of the Florida legislature believe the Florida Constitution requires nothing less. Some will argue that Governor Bush will be violating the law. We think he will not be violating the law, but if he is judged to have done so, it will be in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., who answered to a higher law than a judge's opinion. In so doing, King showed respect for the man-made law by willingly going to jail (on a Good Friday); Governor Bush may have to face impeachment because of his decision.
  
  In taking these extraordinary steps to save an innocent life, Governor Bush should be judged not by the opinion of the Florida supreme court, a co-equal branch of the Florida government, but by the opinions of his political superiors, the people of Florida. If they disagree with their governor, they are indeed free to act through their elected representatives and impeach him. Or they can vindicate him if they think he is right. But he should not be cowed into inaction — he should not allow an innocent woman to be starved to death — because of an opinion of a court he believes to be wrong and unconstitutional.

I Find This Unbelievable
 

Unbelievable in what sense?

I think it would be ludicrous to impeach someone over one pretty minor issue. Just as the reelection of Pres. Bush was not, as he frequently interprets it to be, a wholehearted endorsement of his every thought and policy by the entire country, the wacko shit Gov. Bush is pulling over Schiavo isn't a single issue that should torpedo him.

I Find This Unbelievable
 

You should repent, and come back to the family church- your high school sweetheart is still waiting for you

http://la.cacophony.org/CS_snake.gif

I Find This Unbelievable
 

In suggesting that a politician should act in accordance with moral law, whatever that is, rather than the actual law. I had this same critisism for Gavin Newsom when he starting marrying people, even though I disagreed with the law.

I Find This Unbelievable
 

The stripes and scaliness are a little disconcerting, but he's got the length, the thickness, and incredible control.