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June 09, 2007 04:08 PM UTC
106 Comments
to show just how sick this Democrat really is.
Comparing Bin Laden to our revolutionary forefathers is by the far dumbest thing I have heard in a long time. And anyone that defends this traitor should be ashamed.
Bin Laden is a brutal murdering wacko that will not stop trying to make all men and women bend to his perverted religious rules until he is dead, or they are dead.
Who ever this Marcy character is, she needs to be kicked out of office and now. Or better yet, move her worthless ass over to the middle east and let her see first hand how the nutjobs she defends, treat women like her.
I believe this is the original article. Not the best way of putting it but it shows that she was thinking of how going in to Iraq could be a mess and finding some corollaries.
I’ve got to give her credit for back in March ’03 seeing what Iraq would turn into.
As I recall, the Brits thought that we didn’t play fair, that we wouldn’t line up in rows as in traditional warfare. We often chose to hide behind trees and otherwise do what has become known as guerilla warfare.
Also something about sneaking across a river in the dead of winter when no good Christian soldier should be fighting.
The colonists considered the Brits occupiers, despite being of the same country. We are occupiers in Iraq and most certainly not of the same country. We won the war in 2003 but now we are occupying.
If the Chinese or the Darfurians were occupying our nation, would you just sit around, “Oh, that’s cool, they are bring us democracy. (Whazzat?) Hell no, you would be making IED’s and whatever else you could do to get rid of them. Just like me.
Yes, to my knowledge the revolutionaries (funny how sanitized that word has become when referring to our own insurgents) didn’t go around killing civilians.
Nevertheless, there is some parallel.
In 1777, the Brits did indeed complain that our patriotic forefathers were fighting a terrorist, guerilla war. Our guys were using tactics which were unheard of, and considered fighting dirty by the then-current European rules of engagement (i.e., hiding in trees and bushes, then ambushing the Brits).
Had the Revolutionary War turned out differently and were we today loyal subjects of Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, Patrick Henry, Samuel and John Adams, and Geo. Washington would probably not be venerated as heroes.
The concept of a society governed by the rule of law, and of judges who are actually accountable, seems awfully attractive to me. Perhaps we can have a do-over?
I find it infinitely easier to sing “God Save the Queen” than to prostrate myself before the black-robed band of Ba’athists who rule us today.
there were folks that could not be called anything but terrorists under our current definitions who were ambushing British troops and harming and killing civilians who were seen as too cozy with Brits. Some of them were as young or younger than John Walker Lindh. They most certainly had assistance from folks who would today be in Guantanamo.
see? And only George Bush and Republicans are able to tell the difference. That’s why they must remain in power, even if it does take a few votes disappearing and a few US Attorneys turned into RNC Operatives.
Man, I’m so glad that I don’t have to think about such matters, just turn it over to the administration.
We need more people like her, who aren’t afraid to be sacrilegous, in office. It makes people think…, at least, people who aren’t completely closed-minded.
…as they teach us to challenge our own immaculate preconceptions. I disagree with Annthrax the Coultergeist frequently, but I would not have her silenced. Let her call America a “roach motel!” If I can’t make you think, at least I can make you feel.
I am sick and tired of fascists like you abusing a word that forms the actual basis for our democracy:
http://en.wikipedia….
The American War of Independence established the first nation to craft a constitution based on the concept of liberal government, especially the idea that governments rule by the consent of the governed.
Now run along and go play in that pretend world inside your head.
I disagree with the snarky use of his handle, but I think that people today who identify themselves as liberals have very little to do with the use of the word 250 years ago. It seems to me that according to modern liberals or ‘progressives’ “choice” applies almost solely in terms of abortion. If I want a ‘choice’ of what to pay my employees, what kind of car to build or buy, what radio content I want to listen to, what kind of gun I’d like to own…
Should I go on?
I’m just trying to point something out about the term and is use. The current crop of Republicans aren’t much better in this arena, IMO.
Both “liberalism” and “conservativism” have changed (though not completely ex-changed) meanings over the years, creating the ultimate (small-government) conservatives in the form of libertarians, and a modern liberal demand for more government involvemnt, which was the “original” conservative position. However, modern conservatives are anti-liberals, in the original sense, in their program of imposing religious doctrine on secular policy, and modern liberals share much with their original standard-bearers in their commitment to civil rights.
Last time I checked, you had plenty of choices and very few restrictions on any of the above decisions. Liberal means “open to change” and support for individual rights, and liberals are all over the spectrum when it comes to particular issues.
I’m just sick and tired of wingnuts bastardizing a perfectly good word to serve their own un-democratic and authoritarian ends.
“Open to change”? Since when?
fits their liberal agenda.
By that measure, the conservative wants full “choice” to pay employees slave wages, own a howitzer and a tank, bash gays with impunity, force prayer on anyone….
I know most conservatives aren’t so extreme. You should know that most liberals aren’t either.
Ari-
Slave wages would be illegal. There is a set minimum wage, and you won’t keep anyone worth their salt if you pay minimums.
Not talking about cannons. Trigger locks, maybe.
Define ‘bash’. People have a right to be as moronic and prejudiced as they want. If they hire and fire based on moronic prejudices, they won’t last long in a free market.
Who’s forcing prayer on anyone?
(Ah, the ellipse as subject heading. Someone should write a thesis about it.)
Your earlier comment about paying what you want sounded like “no minimum wage” stuff. Maybe it was your anti-union side speaking there.
Ah, I was going to go point by point but I was basically doing what you were doing – giving a distorted view of the opposite side’s philosophy, just to make a point. But I will define “bash” as physical assault, and before you cite laws against it, talk to some of your gay friends about how the cops let their assailants go without investigating. And lest you think that’s made up, here’s an incident that happened here in Denver on St. Patrick’s Day.
Unfortunately, I’m well aware of the gay bashing that goes on. I’m not gay, but I work in a profession with many gays, and I’ve never had any issues, just friends. I had a buddy get chased down the street near Sushi Den one night by some idiot college kids, and I wanted to hurt the guys that did that to him because he was just wrecked over it. I’m a proponent of civil unions or gay marriage – whatever they would like to do. I always figured that it’s up to the church if they want to marry them, and it doesn’t affect me or my marriage at all.
Sorry, went off on a tangent.
Yes, the ‘living wage’ entitlement thing is pretty hard for me to swallow. I don’t like artificially adjusting the market to pay high wages to people that aren’t committed to having higher skill sets. I know from my business that I pay more than the living wage to anyone I’m interested in keeping, anyway. I just don’t like to see it legislated when I think it’s just a power grab for Labor anyway.
But I’m stubborn like that.
Bigotry as a hiring practice survived quite well, thank you very much, which is one of the reasons we had a civil rights movement in the first place.
I wasn’t aware of any sharecropping going on in the current market, at least locally.
okay, that was funny – good one!
Nice try bobster. I’m glad you are sick and tired but I’m no fascist. I’m a conservative, and a liberal hater.
And I’m very happy that it pisses you off.
Anything else I can do to irritate your dumb ass?
You amuse me. Fortunately for us, like the dinosaur, you’re dying out.
And the more educated people are, the more likely they are to vote democratic.
As a newbie here, let me tell you about LIAS. He is an angry, confrontational, hate spewing, illogical, …. dang, what is the right objective word here?….moron?
Out of the blue he’s accused me of being on the dole just because I am struggling financially. He seldom has any substance to contribute to the conversation, just his knee jerk (and jerk) positions, all predicated on hating liberals.
We both know how he benefits from the many liberal concepts that this nation has embraced, including the core idea of self-government. How liberal.
Even Laughing Boy sometimes has a nugget. But LIAS? The contents of my toilet have more value.
I have a special ‘nugget’ with your name on it.
🙂
Credit where it is due!
and the Abba souvenir…
being rejected tends to make some people bitter.
Good luck with your finances. We’ve all been there (or at least, most of us have). Waay too many people are one medical problem away from disaster.
PR: As a newbie here, let me tell you about LIAS. He is an angry, confrontational, hate spewing, illogical, …. dang, what is the right objective word here?….moron?
Out of the blue he’s accused me of being on the dole just because I am struggling financially.
Look at the bright side, PR — at least, you haven’t been accused of being crazy.
There are some people here (and yes, I am calling you out, Cuervo!) who couldn’t present a logical argument on a bet, and essentially make their hay on ad hominem arguments. That is why you should never identify yourself if you can at all help it, as anything you say can and will be used as fodder for the inescapable personal attacks.
If you don’t have a thick skin, you won’t last long here.
that it was Reagan’s administration that aided bin Laden as a freedom fighter when he was fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
What we did in the Cold War (e.g., installing the Ba’athists in Iraq, overthrowing the legitimately-elected Mossadegh government in Iran, creating Israel, and propping up tyrants throughout the M.E.) is coming back to haunt us.
What we call “terrorism” today, our Founding Fathers would openly and proudly endorse. Whether it is Irgun, Sinn Fein, the Tamil Tigers, Hamas, or al-Qaeda, or individuals like Bart Ross, these people have colorably legitimate grievances that are not likely to be remedied in an orderly manner in accordance with law. If I might share a few of their “revolutionary” thoughts:
Those with power seldom relinquish it willingly; the only way that women, Negroes, and gays could secure their piece of the American dream was to get into our faces. Is there anyone here who would seriously argue that women should be barred from the learned professions? Yet, a century ago, that was the status quo. Negroes defecated in separate bathrooms, and queer dudes stayed in the closet if they knew what was good for them. How did that change? Why, confrontation, of course! Martin Luther King put it this way:
People won’t give up power voluntarily. Gays had to ‘come out of the closet’ to secure their rights, and it wasn’t easy for them. For others, violence is the only option. After all, if you cannot hope to hold your servants in government accountable for their actions, or to settle legitimate grievances via peaceful means, you will inevitably resort to violence — as our Founding Fathers did. As one particularly famous radical rabble-rouser put it:
This remark comes not from Stalin, Mao, or Che Guevara but rather, that penultimate prince of peace, Pope John Paul II. Even a future saint can understand the moral imperatives impelling a Bart Ross or a Mohammed Atta to pull the proverbial trigger. After all, as Bacon points out, “[t]he most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy.” Patrick Henry warned that “nothing will preserve [the public liberty] but downright force,” and Pope John Paul II adds that the violent result would be morally “attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about.”
When al-Qaeda was doing its worst against the Russians in Afghanistan, they were “freedom fighters.” So, what has changed, other than the target?
As von Clausewitz observed, “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” If people get in your face, they do so because they have to; our Founding Fathers were really no different than many groups you call “terrorists,” who merely seek to secure the self-determination we claim as a birthright. The only salient difference is that they don’t have cruise missiles to assault military targets, which as Sun-Tzu explains, dictates tactics.
cause I am never going to read a post that long. You might get more traction if you summed up your points and provided links instead of the entire text of what you are refering to.
While I’m not yet ready to write off rio like others have done (like parsing, I do find some substantial and interesting things in some of his comments), I will skip any post that takes up 4 screen pages regardless of the author.
People won’t relinquish power voluntarily, and those with it are wont to abuse it. Those persons aggrieved by that abuse have every right to employ any and every means necessary to secure their rights under law, whether it is Bart Ross taking a shotgun to a judge’s family or al-Zarqawi blowing up cars when an American convoy drives by. Our Founding Fathers would endorse violence where the law fails, and a future saint (Pope John Paul II) has said that the bloodshed that ensues is on the hands of the oppressor.[1]
[1]FWIW, an encyclical is canon law, uttered by the Pope ex cathedra.
‘Violence where the law has failed’ shouldn’t be able to be decided and acted upon by evil, mentally ill douchebags like Ross or Zarqawi. It has to have at its roots a righteousness that a majority of civilization would be in tune with.
To me, someone that lives in their parent’s basement and scours the internet trying to find ways that they are “oppressed” in the most free society in the history of civilization should be immediately disqualified from deciding if they are the victim of our ‘unfair’ laws.
Some people simply have too much time on their hands.
By your test, it seems to me that al-Zarqawi’s views are in fact supported by a majority of the civilization he lives in. How many Islamic children are being named Osama these days?
As for Ross, if you express the problem in the abstract, it has at its roots a righteousness that a majority of OUR civilization would be in tune with. As arbitrary discretion is the mortal enemy of the rule of law, a judge’s fidelity to precedent is essential to preservation of our personal liberties. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “[to] avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that [judges] should be bound by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case before them.” The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton). Blackstone observed that the judge’s duty to follow precedent was derived from the nature of the judicial power itself: a judge is “sworn to determine, not according to his own judgments, but according to the known laws.” 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *69 (1765). A century before, Lord Coke wrote, “[i]t is the function of a judge not to make, but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.” 1 E. Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England 51 (1642). As in all but the most exotic cases, the law has been established, judges are envisioned as administrators, playing what Professor Llewellyn called “the game of matching cases.” Llewellyn, The Bramble Bush 49 (1960).
The only salient difference between a judge and a tyrant is that the latter is not bound by the rule of law. When a judge can disregard the law whenever he damn well feels like it, he ceases to be a judge and becomes a tyrant. Judge Bork described this as a “judicial coup d’etat,” which the aggrieved citizen has every legal and moral right to oppose by lethal force. While peaceful reform is to be preferred, and this is what I am so stridently advocating, it cannot be disputed that the right to resort to violence is available. You’ll even find this one in the Colorado constitution.
By your own standards, the actions of al-Zarqawi and Ross are entirely defensible. They are not “evil”; they are men, just as yourself, seeking to realize their God-given rights by whatever means available.
Blowing up children or shotgunning families is not supported by a majority of civilization, even Muslim civilization.
I’m sorry, but you don’t get points for meandering. It dilutes your premise. Less is more,
The Revolutionary War was not exactly a gentlemanly affair, especially in our southern Colonies. Massacres of entire families were disturbingly commonplace.
. . . I would denounce them.
Nothing the fonding fathers did compares to being a total coward and shotgunning a family because you are upset by a verdict. It was also a completely different situation. I don’t need a history lesson from a faux-militia hothead.
In case you think you can pigeonhole me, I’m an NRA member and a CCW holder. I want much smaller government and I want them to leave me alone.
But – to talk of armed revolt over a court case that went south on you is madness. I am confident in the process, and to default so quickly to some self-serving form of anarchy is completely self-defeatig to anything you really want to accomplish.
Well, yeah, it actually does, though that doesn’t justify anything. The civil war in the south between the Scotch-Irish, generally poor, generally in the hinterland (“hillbillies”), and the anglos (mostly coastal folk or larger landowners) was as vicious, bloody, nasty, and disgusting as any machete-laden massacre you can think of. That’s just the way it was. Our real history is not some fairy tale of the good guys crowned with the light of heaven. Though, to be fair, none of what I happened, I think, was sanctioned by “our founding fathers.”
The victors invariably rewrite history, and the sanitized version of the Revolutionary War we have been spoon-fed has little relationship to what actually was. The pressures put on recalcitrant colonists to join in the Rebellion were considerable, and the internecine warfare might even have made a bin Laden blanch.
Our primary incentive for protecting everyone’s rights is to keep history from repeating itself here, as it assuredly can.
. . . faith in the system and have personal experience to prove it but, I agree with the particular point you were making
LB: But – to talk of armed revolt over a court case that went south on you is madness.
If we were only talking about a single isolated instance, I’d be the first to agree with you. But what we are talking about here goes far beyond that. We’re talking about the judiciary usurping powers far beyond what the Constitution grants them, and wielding them with all the caprice of a Saddam Hussein. Robert Bork called it a coup d’etat, and I can’t argue with him here.
While I don’t express an opinion as to the propriety of Bart Ross’ actions, I can certainly envision situations where the outcome of a series of court cases justified rebellion — if you have ever read the Declaration of Independence, you know of one set of instances.
LB: I am confident in the process,
IOW, “I don’t mind concentration camps, as long as they only contain jihadists.” Judicial misconduct is like a bear in the woods: while you might not always see him, when you find his paw-print in the mud, you know he’s out there. Professor Karl Llewellyn bluntly observed that judges routinely engage in
When our judges cook the books, the stench is unmistakable. As Llewellyn remarked, “[s]uch action leaves the particular point moderately clear: the court has wanted [the result] badly enough to lie to get it.”
Why should we have “confidence” in a process that even the experts tell us is utterly broken? Because your rights haven’t been taken away … yet?
I just don’t buy this victim mentality that you three legal Musketeers shriek about endlessly on Pols. I can live with a minute percentage of malcontents in our system. Tiltawhirl’s first post was a false one about an ‘innocent couple going to the bank to get shopping money’ who had stun grenades thrown at them by jackbooted evil DPD officers for no good reason. Except that the story was old, and the guy had a history of weapons violations, threats against judges, etc.
Kay has worked a miracle on Pols: She has brought Dwyer, Parsing, and all the other lefties together with the four conservatives on the board, arm-in-arm, begging her to go somewhere else with her gibberish. She is also not a victim of anything other than her own unbalanced personality.
Rio, I think you just have too much time on your hands. Did you really ask people to post their income level and position in order to gain some sort of credibility with you? You and I might agree on more than we wouldn’t, but I’m a big advocate of not being an anarchist. It’s silly, and the long posts and childish back-and-forth with Cuervo, etc., are a turn off. It prevents anyone from possibly taking your side because they are too annoyed by your methods to associate with you.
I wish you three would start your own blog so I could ignore it. God bless you as people, but I’d rather watch paint dry than wear out my “pg dn” key avoiding your posts.
I tend to ignore vapid discussions about the 2008 elections. There’s plenty of room for both here, as it falls well within the rubric of Colorado politics.
. . . was nothing more than a quotation or excerpt of an email that his wife distributed earlier that day (yeah, a really “old” story, right?) and which was his second such arrest of that nature (not the one that happened two years earlier that you’re referring to –get it right, if you gonna insult me) and, which I think I stated or clarified in the same post or shortly thereafter. If my credibility is forever damaged with you based upon that particular post, well then I guess I’m not going to take it personal.
You know, I sure as shit don’t go around attacking people here because I disagree with their views and telling to take it somewhere else. On my second or third day, someone complained that my lengthy rants belonged in the diary section. I caught on. End of story. You don’t like it, don’t read the friggin’ diary.
I won’t. You guys have fun at your “La Resistance” meeting. Maybe Kay will bring punch and pie.
Thanks for the laugh LB.
I think it is difficult to know what the founding fathers would endorse. Partially because the founding fathers were not monlithic. The rebellions (whiskey, Shay’s)indicate that the founding fathers didnt believe all rebels were good or justified. GW hated using irregular troops and prefered using regular line of battle tactics. Much of the fighting was ad hoc, which drove guerilla fighting and anti torie reprisals.
GW did authorize Asymetric warefare in the south and the use of snipers, but in general he rejected violating the “rules of war”.
Not all violence is morally equivalent.
Thank you, M.M. for pointing out the problem I too have with long-winded postings. I won’t read them.
What I think happens is that people don’t think about their constitutional rights unless they are in jeopardy. I read this in 1926-27 New England Lawyer which said that at the time of the American revolution most adults were talking about what the constitution should say every day.
I think that when people’s rights are invaded to a certain point when they are constantly afraid of imminent assault and cannot defend their reputation and libertiees of thought, speech and movement, that they start to think that maybe life isn’t worth it and they should commit suicide.
I think that once someone has seriously considered suicide because of deprivation of rights the only logical next thought is that if they are going to die they might as well accomplish something and that leads directly to so called revolutionary acts and that the only alternative is for them to think that nonviolent protests will somehow be effective.
I think that as soon as someone starts reading about the rights of citizens that they are reading the words of the citizens of the past and that those thoughts and words are radicalizing. Words like “give me liberty or give me death”.
I think that the only way that the U.S. will avoid an endless number of foreign citizens feeling anger at the U.S. is to show by action that we care about their political and civil rights.
I think one way to do so is for the U.S. to develop a model of pro se litigation using electronic case filing and use our best efforts to distribute it to other countries so that citizens there will believe that they can find effective and safe redress in courts without the necessity to engage in violent overthrow of their governments.
I think that if citiizens of 3rd world countries knew that U.S. citizens are jailed and strip searched in order to stop their presentment in court tht they would never trust the U.S. government again.
I told a refugee from Africa that I met in Toronto what happened to me in Colorado Judge Garrecht and Federal Judge Nottingham’s courts and he said “I didn’t know that the U.S. was like that. That sounds like Africa.”
What a beautiful world it would be if every public official had a credible fear of not seeing his daughter come home from school at night! As Thomas Jefferson intoned, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” After all, if a public official has no respect for the inalienable rights of the citizens s/he serves, s/he has no right to expect that his or her own daughter’s rights will be respected, either.
Let’s face it: Our Founding Fathers said a lot of outrageous — and, outrageously true — things. We need the kind of boldness Rep. Kaptor displayed.
I’m starting to think that Colorado Pols needs a feature that allows readers to block certain user accounts from appearing when reading comments or diaries. I was willing to just skip over riogrande’s and DHGQ’s posts, but this crosses a line. The only people who should be unwillingly subjected to riogrande’s posts are the good law enforcement officers protecting our representatives.
If users of this site could designate certain readers with the word ‘ignore’ that would show in red at the beginning of their post. That would relieve one of the necessity to scroll down multiple pages to see the ID and then realize what content you may have just avoided. With ‘ignore’ you have been warned that you have chosen to ID that individual as one you’d rather not read, but still, on the day hell freezes over, you might choose to read it.
[Don’t Ignore]
Now, I like that idea. Would save us all some time!
I just ran out of time. I don’t believe Biddle is on leave. Rather, his job is over, period. He’s already been replaced. As to his PERA collection, I don’t know. But I would be surprised if his resignation would eliminate his right to collect PERA money when/if he’s otherwise eligible. After all, I assume he’s been paying into the system for years.
Freedom is a revolutionary concept, and it always has been. I may make you feel, but I can’t make you think, however.
It would certainly dampen my political ambitions! As it would, I imagine, the ambitions of *anyone* who loves her daughter. So, this beautful world of yours would be one led by people who are more enamored with power than they are with their own chidren’s safety. Lord save us from such brilliant innovations!
That was precisely the response I was looking for.
I live in legitimate fear of my government, as I have learned through direct experience that the Bill of Rights doesn’t even have value as toilet paper. If you would find it so categorically unacceptable (and you should), why is it fair for me to have to live with this fear?
If public officials knew that they were personally responsible for their actions, and that they could suffer real and serious consequences for malicious actions, they would not indulge in them. It is the same logical principle as prosecuting people for murder: the deterrent of punishment is supposed to keep us from violating the law.
Or let me put it to you this way: If I were a public official, and I did not respect your God-given inalienable rights to liberty and property, why should you respect my right to life?
because I have hard time believing that the government makes a habit of kidnapping little girls on the way home from school.
And, Lo and behold! You are still posting, for all to read, despite your concerns and criticisms. Seems the Bill of Rights is good for something after all, and your fears are a bit overstated.
And, most importantly, if mine was precisely the response you were hoping for, why didn’t you reply to what it said, instead of just rephrasing your original post? The comparison to the penal system is a non-starter, since penalties for murder do not carry with them the incidental consequences I identified (that is, they only dissuade people from committing murder, not from engaging in some other productive activity, like running for office if they are the most qualified). And, even aside from the absurdity of your premise that the Bill of Rights is dead and you are condemned to live in fear for your life at the hands of a death-squad-wielding government, your program for remedying this situation is impractical and counterproductive: The threat of violence toward oppressive regimes makes oppressive regimes more repressive. It is more practical to throw out the public officials you find offensive, and to work toward the implementation of institutions that prevent future officials from acting oppressively. Threatening to kill their children isn’t likely to yield the results you are hoping for.
You actually argued against your notion that this threat would be a productive one when you asked “If I were a public official, and I did not respect your God-given inalienable rights to liberty and property, why should you respect my right to life?” Exactly.
What I said, to refresh your memory, was that your suggestion would dissuade many or most good people from choosing to enter public service, and would leave only mafiosa-types (those who are comfortable accepting the risk of violence to their loved ones in exchange for power) in public office. If you’d like to respond to that, without the obvious glib response, then you might end up adding something to the conversation.
CJ: It is more practical to throw out the public officials you find offensive, and to work toward the implementation of institutions that prevent future officials from acting oppressively. Threatening to kill their children isn’t likely to yield the results you are hoping for.
Q: What do they call a petty thief in Saudi Arabia?
A: “Lefty.”
This, incidentally, is why theft is so rare in Saudi Arabia, and you can leave your bicycle on the rack without locking it up. As a general rule, the higher the price associated with tortious and/or criminal conduct, the less likely people are to engage in it. If a public official had to face personal reprisals for acts of willful misconduct, s/he would not be likely to engage in them. Or even more briefly, deterrence is effective as a way to control misconduct.
Right now, public officials can pretty much be as despotic as they want to be, as there are no meaningful mechanisms for punishing them for even felonious misconduct. How any society can stand the status quo ante for as long as it has is almost unfathomable, but that is the state of affairs we find ourselves in today.
I am actively working to create legal mechanisms to prevent current and future officials from acting oppressively, such as the Judicial Accountability Act of 2008. (Of course, to those who stand to reap advantage from black-collar crime, this is anathema.) While I believe a thorough discussion of the merits of this idea would be of benefit to all, it seems that others disagree.
do not dissuade many people from “running” for office, nor do they prevent the Saudi family from oppressing their people. As I said (and as you disregarded), punishing people for a crime does not create any disincentives for positive behaviors, whereas “creating fear” just for being a public official does. There are already too many reasons not to go into public service. We need to be careful about what kinds of new disincentives we produce.
Of course, we all want reasonable and effective penalties for official misconduct, including jail time. It is important to have the rule of law apply to everyone. In fact, though we haven’t perfected the art, we are way ahead of most countries in our level-headed commitment to accomplishing that ideal. What we most cetainly DO NOT need, is the rise of shrill agendas: This is the bane of many underdeveloped countries, and even many otherwise developed countries.
If you want to live in Saudi Arabia, however, I’d be glad to chip in for your (one-way) ticket. For my part, veils just don’t suit me.
If Rio thinks America is a banana republic with no rights, I’m more than happy to help send him to Saudi Arabia.
If you can persuade Australia to take me, I’m all over it! The Aussies don’t even have a Bill of Rights on paper, but they have one in practice. And I almost speak the language. 🙂
If you don’t mind, CAR, I would like you to answer one VERY serious question for me: If you can’t go into a courtroom to enforce your “rights” at need (because the judge is free to disregard the law whenever s/he damn well feels like it), what “rights” do you actually have? Keith Olbermann does the analysis for you (within the context of habeas corpus, but the net effect is still the same):
See also, http://www.youtube.c…
It is not without cause that Justice Moody wrote a century ago, “The right to sue and defend in the courts is the alternative of force. In an organized society it is the right conservative of all other rights, and lies at the foundation of orderly government. It is one of the highest and most essential privileges of citizenship.” And if you doubt him on that point, ask Dred Scott.
Venezuela as a destination!
I think we’re getting lost in semantics, and it is entirely my fault.
CJ: As I said (and as you disregarded), punishing people for a crime does not create any disincentives for positive behaviors, whereas “creating fear” just for being a public official does.
While I agree that no public official should fear simply by virtue of his or her becoming a public official, if s/he had a legitimate reason to fear the possibility of retaliation if s/he acted in an illegal manner, this would be a good thing. As Justice Stewart wrote, “if intimidation would serve to deter its recurrence, that would surely be in the public interest.” Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 369 (1978) (Stewart, J., dissenting).
When it comes to egalitarian and equitable application of the law, the America of my youth was far and away the head of the pack. Every meaningful international norm of human rights now part and parcel of jus cogens international law has its genesis in our own law, and was instituted at our behest. “Pax Americana” has done wonders for the world at large, even if our Muslim brothers have a litany of valid grievances.
That having been said, the mighty have fallen precipitously, as exemplified by the Gonzales “caging” scandal. Criminal prosecution is selective and political, which is why George W. Bush was free to engage in blatant insider trading while Martha Stewart was nailed for merely being disingenuous. We can no longer rely on our government to protect us from crime and indeed, no longer have any meaningful protection against crimes that are perpetrated against us BY the government. Doctrines of immunity and feckless watchdog agencies mean that the Bill of Rights has been reduced to the status of toilet paper, and we are beyond the protection of the law.
My solution: Give power to the people to enforce the laws when our public officials will not, and eliminate official immunity.
Semantics aside, if you trust “the people,” meaning every single one of the people, including the Timothy McVeighs, the Hinkleys, the David Wayne Gacys, et. al., to properly enforce “retaliation” when and only when appropriate, without due process, then you must have the most stunted understanding of human nature yet to grace the planet!
You said: “While I agree that no public official should fear simply by virtue of his or her becoming a public official, if s/he had a legitimate reason to fear the possibility of retaliation if s/he acted in an illegal manner, this would be a good thing.” But without due process, and with some kind of license to retaliate by the public when “they” (that is, any single lunatic among them) are pissed off, then indeed all public officials will fear simply by virtue of being a public official, and all sane and reasonable people will avoid public service (as many sane and reasonable people already do).
I’ve read you arguing vociferously for the “rule of law” on other threads, and now you propose that mob rule is needed to hold public officials accountable, and that it is is the only way to guarantee the rule of law, since judges won’t! Okey-dokey.
I am merely proposing that individual citizens be empowered to enforce the law through the mechanisms of law, which is hell and gone from the “mob rule” strawman you created here. We already have a few situations in our law where citizens are effectively deputized as “private attorney generals”; expanding this practice gets us around the problem of the corrupt AG or DA as “gatekeeper.”
if politicians lived in mortal fear; continued by advocating that we “return power to the people;” argued that the people shouldn’t inflict violence on politicians and there families unless the politicians really, really deserve it, in the decentralized “people’s” opinion; and now are knocking down my strawman that you’re advocating mob rule? Thanks for clearing that up.
I noticed you mentioning the importance of a “thick skin” on this blog. There’s a difference between a thick skin and a thick head: One is admirable, and one is not.
to wit: “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Or maybe you would prefer the observation of Sir Francis Bacon: “The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law or remedy.” Or, perhaps you would prefer the exposition in our state constitution: “All persons have certain natural, essential and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; and of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.” You can’t do that without resort to force, and that defense may be as against our own government.
When government agents have a healthy fear of serious personal reprisals, they will act with more caution and introspection than they would otherwise, and insist upon a robust system by which can be fairly and consistently resolved.
What I’m doing here is reasoning from abstract positions that can be described as absolutes to a nuanced position, through the lens of mutual enlightened self-interest.
summoning authority for your arguments rather than arguing them. Jefferson meant the people collectively, not individually, and if he meant that such violence should be exercised as easily as you advise, then Jefferson was wrong (as, in fact, he was, on many issues).
And, Please! There is NOTHING nuanced about your positions!!! One thing I have noticed in the weeks that I have been reading this blog is that you love to flatter yourself, even turning the disgust you arouse in others into a badge of honor (“they oppose me because they fear the dangerous truths I represent”). You sound like a complete nut-job when you write those things, since, indeed, that is precisely how complete nut-jobs talk about themselves.
I understand what you were trying to say in response to Kay (and I actually agree with you, there) but, I do love my daughter but, haven’t seen her since July of 2003. I live and have lived with the fear you describe for the past seven years.
What’s amazing is that, if I stop or delay one monthly child support payment, the entire collective weight of the county and state child support enforcement machine will find me, like the dog that I am, and suspend my license[s], garnish my wages, attach my checking or savings account, imprison me for contempt and put me in the JeffCo’s profitable work-release program (see prev. post in the Friday Open Thread that subject).
On the other hand, if my ex decides to unilaterally sever my relationship with my child (as she has done), the onus is on me to spend thousands of dollars to chase her down and futiley attempt to enforce the court order[s] with or without counsel competent. And, if I try to pursue valid tort or contract claims in federal court, . . . well, just take a look my latest diary entry for an example of what might happen, as just did happen to one fool.
I met a guy from a former Soviet Bloc country a year or two ago and he expressed essentially the same thing, hiding his eyes from me in a peek-a-boo gesture and saying, that “U.S. is like communism under the covers.” My wife, who is from Thailand, is befuddled that our government (most especially our courts and law enforcement) is the way it is. The stories she hears from me (based on accounts from others), as well as what she has observe in my own personal situation are practically beyond her belief. Certainly, I could offer a bunch of very specific factual examples, however, I will spare everyone for the reasons noted hereinabove (that long posts won’t be read). (In fact, another incident
supportingproving my thesis occurred just yesterday). However, if someone refutes with a retort that I’m over generalizing with unsupported conclusory statements, I hope you’ll understand if I respond with details.“I left Communism. It followed me here.”
Freedom of speech is an endangered species in this country, if for no other reason that people are afraid to hear subversive thoughts. The reactions I have gotten from prose grounded in our Founding Fathers’ statements is proof positive that we no longer deserve our freedom — because no one understands what it is any more.
It is completely out of character with what is normally heard from emigrees from former communist countries. They, having experienced the real thing, are least prone to such sophomoric exaggerations.
….even though they are private (ChoicePoint), government officials can search your mail and house and place tracking devices on your car without a warrant, they can discriminate against you with respect to entry to the learned professions based upon your views, they can detain you indefinitely on the grounds that you are an “enemy of the State” (see, Gitmo), and the courts can decline to protect your rights under law when you ask….
The parallels are both numerous and robust. He sees the handwriting on the wall, even if you don’t.
of the current political situation in the United States. You ignore the fact that many of these abuses are indeed being heard in the courts, and that the legislature is becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to them. The difference between those many of us on this blog who share this perspective and you is that we avoid the hysterics, pursue a reasonable and balanced point of view, and avoid being grandiose about it.
He just came back from there (I think it was that eastern bloc nation) and he noticed that it took a LONG time for web pages to load. He was told that a real live human being looks at each page beding called up on the system.
Thom was incredulous, of course. The man then asked, “Don’t they do this in the U.S.?” After assuring him we don’t, he grinned and said, “You only think so. We know Big Brother, we have lots of experience. You don’t, so you don’t know when Big Brother is looking over your shoulder.”
I would add that as rio says, we do it with greater sublety and by using proxies like Choicepoint so that it appears the government isn’t doing the dirty work.
. . . the alleged quote from the Polish immigrant but what I wrote about a few posts above was accurate. I don’t have a propensity for lying but, I suppose you’ll have to take my word for that. Also, I speak Russian and was involved in an immersion program several years back, so I have a slightly different perspective on evaluating the context within which such comments might have been made. I wouldn’t have posted the report, if I thought he didn’t genuinely mean what he said.
do I file for lawyer abuse or exercise my God Given Right to become violent? Disclaimer (so no one misunderstands): Tongue firmly planted in cheek.
I know you were being facetious but, the answer is neither. Option A is an exercise of futility. Option B is, in most contexts, immoral and will land you in jail for life –besides, as noted in a few of my other posts, there is absolutely no deterrent to building more prisons and imprisoning an even higher percentage of the population. They’ll gladly take you in.
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (July 6, 1775) (excerpted):
And at a certain point, would not the weight of oppression become too much to bear? Have we become such sniveling cowards that we have forgotten that freedom isn’t free? And do we not defecate on our forefathers’ graves when we declare unequivocally that we would not fight for our freedom, when the time came?
My question to you is, have we fallen so far from the tree of liberty that the declarations of our Founding Fathers have become subversive? Now to me, that is a frightening thought.
http://www.cnn.com/2…
This time he’ll use it as the reason to step down as VP and join the stampede and leave the administration. I just wonder who Bush will choose to replace him. One of the idiots running for president perhaps? Even if someone agrees to be VP just till the next presidency and not run himself, can that person be counted on not to run?
He can’t resign as V.P. because who could this administration pssibly nomniate as a successor to Cheney who could conceivably be confirmed by Congress?
Besides, as presiding officer of the Senate, Cheney soon might have the opportunity to work with wife. Rumor has it that Lynne wants her name submitted to Wyoming’s Governor as a possible successor to the late Sen. Craig Thomas.
Speaking of other current news which sort of seques from the gay bashing posts, it sounds like Musgrave’s polling numbers suck and the NRCC is telling her to get the hell out out of Dodge (and D.C.). Stay tuned for some nice little announcement one of these days where she says she wants to devote “more time to her family.”
I took that as a sign she plans to be around for a while. But, I guess it could mean she is going to get a “job” in DC requiring her to spend more time there.
I don’t know why the RNCC would be worried about her re-election. She will win. If they are worried about spending the money, they’ll have to spend it anyway cause the D’s are going after this seat.
for instance, Mark Hillman could win that seat w/ a 60% (or more) margin over Angie or Betsy Markey, and for a fraction of the cost that Musty will incur for her three percentage point victory.
I like that idea.
Though I’d love to see her gone, despite the fact that only her presence puts this seat in play for D’s, there hasn’t been any activity amongst Rs. If you see Mark Hillman or that opportunist cory gardner sniffing around then I believe it.
There’s no sniffing around by any R’s yet because she threw them off the potential trail by announcing all over that she “would soon be announcing she was running again.” Lots of folks were sniffing around prior to that. Now that she’s gotten word that her poll numbers suck worse than previously thought, the NRCC isn’t going to support her. No matter how many temper tantrums Shorty has, her numbers suck and they ain’t gonna support her.
…and OQD — contain your self on your response 🙂
to be solidly with.
If Cheney leaves, who is going to be President?
🙂
Can you believe it?
Pro-embargo Tom Delay smoking a real Habano.
http://www.time.com/…
In Farenheit 911 there is a scene where Bandar Bush is smoking a readily identifiable Cohiba in the White House while the smoke from the Pentagon still rises a mile away.
“I’m not supporting their economy, I’m burning their fields.”
if only for his outspokenness. Whatever he says, he’s speaking the truth as he sees it.
Those Founding Fathers said some of the darnedest things, and anyone who might take them seriously is deemed “dangerous” or worse….
You’re neither funny nor Jewish! 🙂