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Re: This inflames me

Hey, all.
      I wasn't going to respond to all of these issues, but I have had enough.  Let me bring something to the forefront.  You are all correct.  People who justify these laws have very good points aka Mr. Schafer.  At the smae time there are VERY strong moral reasons why Mr. Smith's argument holds a great deal of water.  The thing that you folks seem to be missing in your rant on the failure of our little democracy, if you can really call it that when one of you doesn't vote along with millions of other Americans, is that it is a political system filled with flaws.  The number one being that these elected officials are at the beck and call of every citizen.  So on one hand you have those that are saying, "I don't want to pay taxes."  At the same time they want gov't subsidies to help them out in times of need, or not so need.  They want a guarantee from the law enforcement personnel that they will! be safe wherever they are, but they don't want anyone's rights trampled on.  
      You can't have it both ways.  The world doesn't work that way.  The problem to some extent stems from the fact that the Constitution is an ideological work that lies outside of the constraints of reality.  This is not to say that we should hold the Bill of Rights above all else, but it is  matter of priorities that we, as a nation, must set.   
      Now, Dan, I think earlier stated that he hasn't voted since 94.  I don't blame him.  There hasn't been much to vote for, but at the same time he CANNOT hold the Constitution as the goal for every citizen and claim that his non-participation is truly a statement that will hold weight within a Constitutional system.  In effect one who does this is claiming all of the rewards, or at least some of them (stupid not being able to be President if you are not "native" born, of course this was written to avoid British "carpet bagger" noble from coming over from Britain or France, etc and using their status to gain the Presidency, there were many many loyalists still in American in 1781).  
      Anyway I digress,  My point is that You cannot have your bread buttered on both sides and not get your fingers oily.  You must accept the responsibility of the system in order to claim the rewards.
      There are a ton of other points that I want to makke, but there isn't time.

But they do have human rights.  What worries me about this bill is that the
punishment is so out of proportion to the crime.  So they overstayed a visa.
Is it *really* appropriate to haul these people into jail for *months* (where
they are subject to physical and mental abuse), deny them access to family and
lawyers, not charge them with anything, not send them back home, etc.?  There
are *still* an undisclosed number of people in jail *now*, nine months later.
No charges filed, no cases pending, just hidden in the system.  Doesn't that
worry you?  


Sure it does, but what is the alternative.  Let us pretend that you are the head of the FBI.  The president, the media, and the people of America are all breathing down your neck because they believe that you allowed the 9/11 disaster to take place.  They don't realize that you get hundreds if not thousands of calls from crackpots, and that you just don't have the budget or the manpower to sort through each one with the quality that it deserves.  Now, they are telling you that there MUST not be a repeat of 9/11.  They want total security.  Now, you are pretty sure (let's say 85%) that a sleeper agent in the US one of 300 people that you have in front of you.  How do you find out who it is?

Isn't it hypocritcal that we're fighting a "war on terror" and yet

the people in Guantanamo Bay are not prisoners of war?  


Ummm...no because the "war of terror" is a rhetorical war.  Those fighting it from the other side have decided to dispense with the formalities of war in favor of terrorism, which frankly is much to their benefit.  How are you to fight a traditional war on terrorism?  Where are the battlelines?  
      Do you want another Vietnam?  This war on terrorism is using much of the rhetorical terms that LBJ used in the mid 60s. Now the trouble with Vietnam, which was basically a standard war fought against supposed terrorists, besides the fact that we should never have been there in the first place was that we tried to fight it like a war.  The most successful units in Vietnam were the Navy SEALS who through the course of the war learned to fight it close to the terms that the VC fought it (ie small units moving from cache to cache making short insurrgent trips to destroy logistical hubs and cause havoc.
      The truth of the matter is that the battle really lies in the the hearts and the minds of the people of the nation.  Are we willing to live free but in fear?  Or do we prefer comfortable oppression?

  Isn't it troublesome
that Jose Padilla is being transferred to a special military situation where
they don't have to put together a case against him, precisely because they
don't have a strong enough case against him to stand up in a regular court?
I'm not defending him, for all I know the guy might be guilty as sin; what
troubles me is the *process* here.  For better or worse, Padilla *is* an
American citizen, and his constitutional rights were blantantly trampled on.
That could happen to you or me, if someone decides they don't like us enough to
invent an accusation.  


True.  This is very troubling especially since his IS and AMerican.  There is no real excuse whatsoever.

Remember the poem: "First they came for the Jews, and I

didn't say anything because I wasn't a Jew..."  That's why this citizen watch
thing is *such* a bad idea.  When you get scared and angry people who want
something to get *done*, because they're *sure* this guy (or these people, or
whatever) is guilty, even if they can't prove it... that's when you either get
a lynch mob or a Gestapo.  That's what due process and the Bill of Rights is
supposed to prevent.  


True, but our situation is infinitely different from the Germany of the 30s.  The reason that it was so easy for the Nazis to scapegoat the Jews, Gays, Commies, etc.  was because Germy had been raped following the First World War.  The people were starving and out of work.  America today is in a very different position.  This is not to say that something dreaful couldn't happen.  I merely must point out that your parallelism of Nazi Germany has a number of very large holes.

  If we give that up, we're just a few short steps away
from the Japanese-American internment camps of WWII (or worse), which I think
we all agree now was a shameful wrong, despite the fact that it was legal at
the time, and even the Supreme Court declared it constitutional.  So there's
legal, there's constitutional, and then there's *right*, and we have to
remember that those three are not always synonymous.


Definitely.  I agree.  We as individuals and then as a people must make these distinctions.

I guess that's enough politics from me.  I now return you to your regularly
scheduled program.


Which is "Arthur"....What a wonderful kind of day.  We can learn to work and play...and get along with each other...

What a crock of shit.

Steve Swanson