Off Topic - Olbermann on Habeas Corpus

For discussions not directly related to hang gliding.
User avatar
Davis
Site Admin
Posts: 15438
Joined: Thu, Feb 27 2003, 06:38:33 pm
Location: On the road, USA

Post by Davis »

User avatar
JBBenson
Posts: 802
Joined: Thu, Mar 24 2005, 04:41:25 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Post by JBBenson »

I also noticed the authorization for "procurement of V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft."

I thought that piece-of-junk Osprey was put on ice for good?
User avatar
Davis
Site Admin
Posts: 15438
Joined: Thu, Feb 27 2003, 06:38:33 pm
Location: On the road, USA

Post by Davis »

It's funny how these big institutions make so many irrational decisions.
User avatar
JBBenson
Posts: 802
Joined: Thu, Mar 24 2005, 04:41:25 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Post by JBBenson »

It may be a function of size.

For example, there is an "practical" upper (and lower) limit to mammalian size. The shrew needs to feed almost constantly, as it's small body size has trouble maintaining temperature. The elephant can't get much bigger, as the effect of gravity will start to damage the organism. This is one of the stronger arguments that dinosaurs were, in fact, warm blooded, like very large birds. Creatures dependent on environment (i.e. reptiles) for body temperature (and thus function) favor smaller body sizes.

Anyway, all systems have an optimum size. In my business, (film production), there is often an impulse to start hiring lots of people when time is short, but this often has the opposite effect: things begin to move more slowly (very suddenly), and become very inefficient, when there are too many moving parts. Simple is beautiful.

Our Federal Government has the same problem, perhaps. It is supreme irony that the party of "small government" has actually increased it's (the government's) size, and thus the inefficiency of it. It seems to be almost at a stasis (point). Now is when something usually cracks.

Help drive a wedge into this crack November 7th!
User avatar
Scare!
Site Admin
Posts: 2307
Joined: Fri, Feb 28 2003, 10:46:54 pm
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (eh!) [49.8953,-97.1385,somewhere in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada]

Post by Scare! »

President Bush has signed into law a provision which... will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law...
User avatar
Jacmac
Posts: 1994
Joined: Thu, Apr 28 2005, 03:48:16 pm
Location: San Diego, California

Post by Jacmac »

George Stebbins wrote: Mr. jacmac is taken into custody by the Bush administration, because they don't like his politics. They say he is an enemy combatant. They say he is a non-citizen. (Actually, they don't need to say anything, just keep him locked up.) He is neither an enemy combatant or a non-citizen. How does he prove it? He has no right of Habeus Corpus. He has no right to a lawyer. He cannot contact anyone. He is held incommunicado. He cannot prove that he is a citizen, because he is not allowed to do so. He cannot prove he is not an enemy combatant, because he has no right of Habeus Corpus.

"They won't do that", I hear you say! But they already have! The administration has already arrested American Citizens as enemy combatants on US soil. They have denied them access to lawyers, and held them for years without charges. In at least one of those cases, they KNEW that the person was not only a citizen, but they knew he was not the person they had originally thought he was, and had overwheming evidence of his innocence. His crime? He was a Muslim lawyer and had defended Muslim (and other) clients that the administration didn't like. That's it, he just did his job as a lawyer. Only the fact that he had friends on the outside who knew he had been taken and tracked down the facts got him out. That and the fact that the government of Spain, who the administration claimed had evidence of his guilt publicly stated that the US administration was totally mistaken. We can't all count on the government of Spain, eh? The administration let him go, admitting that he was not guilty of anything. Oops. So sorry. Months of his life down the drain. Just be glad that they didn't torture him yet.
What is this lawyers name? I defy you to come up with the name of one US citizen who has been charged as working with or for terrorists, whether in combat or not, and denied the right to a trial in a US Federal Court before a US Federal judge. Every US citizen that has been picked up for being associated with Al Qaeda, caught shooting at American Forces while fighting with Al Qaeda, or picked up in the commission of a terrorist act (ala the shoe bomber) has been given a trial in a US federal court. This has been true even if the US citizen has been caught in the act outside US territory. Not one US Citizen has been put in Guantanamo.

No government official can take away your citizenship; I don't have to worry about being seen as a political enemy of the state, stripped of citizenship, and denied the right to Habeus Corpus. The idea that what was signed into law could ever apply to someone like me is laughable. I just don't subscribe to this apocalyptic vision that you and others seem to think is occuring. There have been and always will be mistakes made by the Government. I'm sure that are occasional bad apples with sinister motives within the Government. I don't believe that George Bush is out ruin the American way of life and lock up everyone that disagrees with him or his policies.
Brian "The Capitalist Snake" McMahon
Look out for the force without form…
User avatar
JBBenson
Posts: 802
Joined: Thu, Mar 24 2005, 04:41:25 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Post by JBBenson »

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding".

-Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 479 (1928)
User avatar
Jacmac
Posts: 1994
Joined: Thu, Apr 28 2005, 03:48:16 pm
Location: San Diego, California

Post by Jacmac »

"The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."

-Justice Robert H. Jackson in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago
Brian "The Capitalist Snake" McMahon
Look out for the force without form…
User avatar
Robotham
Posts: 310
Joined: Mon, Jan 02 2006, 02:52:17 pm

Post by Robotham »

Your position (this thread) requires a belief that the government will always act to the benefit of an individual citizen. Even a quick review of case law shows such a belief to be foolish.



AGL
User avatar
Jacmac
Posts: 1994
Joined: Thu, Apr 28 2005, 03:48:16 pm
Location: San Diego, California

Post by Jacmac »

alexlandels wrote:Your position (this thread) requires a belief that the government will always act to the benefit of an individual citizen. Even a quick review of case law shows such a belief to be foolish.



AGL
I wouldn't say always, the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few or the one. The way I would put it is that we are the Government. The Government acts in self preservation and in it's best interests. By extension, all individual citizens have a hand in what is going on but that doesn't necessarily mean that each individual is going to be happy or protectected at all times by the Government.
Brian "The Capitalist Snake" McMahon
Look out for the force without form…