Sweet Jesus, I Hate The Democratic Party

That's fine. But that doesn't preclude further administrations from using the same playbook it this one gets away with it.

 

The only one that doesn't is slavery.

 

Visit the deep south, or Arkansas, to see blue laws in action. Illinois' emission standards, for one, are pretty dumb. Ditto, Eastern Tennessee. And I can't completely answer your last question due to the Patriot Act.

 

The form of government means nothing except as it's shaped and tended by the hands of those entrusted with it. History itself is indifferent to forms of government and economy and philosophy. History is built from their bones and tatters. Democracies die. They die by revolution or they die by fear or they die by corruption. Saddest of all, they die by simple neglect.

Let the next guy worry about bad law or bad government. It'll get better.

It always does.

Doesn't it?

 

Junkie, I'm sorry but you'r wrong about that.

Whether you personally are affected by this legislation is irrelevant.

It reminds me of the reaction to Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act during the Quebec Crisis of 1970.

People were arguing that suspension of habeas corpus wasn't a big deal because 1) it was a bunch of frogs being jailed and 2) I haven't done anything wrong, so why should I worry?

 

Hence... This thread?

 

I watched All the President's Men for the first time last night (shame on me, I know), but it really got me thinking about the current administration and whether there is a new Woodward or a new Bernstein out there.

I mean, Nixon's sins seem almost quaint by today's measure. Why isn't anyone taking two cabs to meet a shadowy source in a parking garage tonight?

 

What am I supposed to do with a guy who sees this thread title and thinks I'm unaware that the Congress changed hands almost a year ago? (10 months vs. six years isn't a fair metric, but what is one to do?) I think rolling over for a president with a 28 percent approval rating who already has demonstrated a criminal lack of respect for the fundamental structure of American government is as damaging and cowardly a political act as I have ever seen. Period. Full stop.
I don't recall "blaming red-staters" for the crimes of the Bush Administration. I blame a national fear and indolence for allowing them to continue, regardless of region. Your regional paranoia is aflame on several threads, junk. You should tamp it down a little bit.
Jonesy, people have been doing it. The McClatchy DC guys have been fucking heroes for five years now, so has been Charlie Savage at the Boston Globe and Walter Pincus at the WaPo. They can't overcome basic poltroonism, though.
And junk, any time anyone's rights are diminished, mine are. Period. Full stop.

 

"Perhaps not directly. But you have."
But you're not paranoid.
No, not a bit.
And, boy, I missed this post.
Please cite the constitutional authority by which the dependent clause, and the clause on which it depends are determined to be separate issues. And I think equating, say, the Brady bill with handing habeas corpus, and the all of the protections of the Fourth Amendment, over to a secret and completely unaccountable Executive is more than a little disproportionate. Exchanging the U.S. Constitution which, for all its faults, is the single greatest statement on human liberty ever written, for the whims of a failed president and the promises of his perjurious attorney-general strikes me as a bad deal. To say that shredding the Bill of Rights is "progress," well, I knew there was still a Stalinist out there somewhere. Surprised it's you, though.

 

My "fundamental understanding" of the Bill of Rights differs from yours only in the sense that you think shredding it is "progress."
Dasvedanya.