Resolution To Impeach VP Cheney Submitted 1202
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has submitted a resolution, HR 333, to impeach VP Dick Cheney on charges of "high crimes and misdemeanors." The charges were submitted on 24 April 2007. Congressman Kucinich has posted his supporting documents online, including a brief summary of the impeachment procedure (PDF), a synopsis (PDF), and the full text (PDF) of the impeachment resolution.
It's about time! (Score:2, Interesting)
What's good for the goose.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying that he's not doing this for the very best of motives, but if one begins by presuming a purely malignant motivation for whatever Cheney's done, it would then be naked partisanship to assume anything but an equally malignant motivation for other politicians, no?
Big Newsday; Delayed re: Cheney's Health (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheney went to the hospital for a knee-blood-clot "emergency" in the morning.
So, Kucinich delayed it until 5 pm when it was obvious there was no emergency with Cheney's health.
The newsday got slammed with several other big stories:
- EU says Wolfowitz should go;
- UN says Bagdad surge not working;
- House passes War-funding with timetable;
- Cheney speaking at BYU (Utah) commencement w/ lots of protesters;
- Very Conservative (not neocon) New Hampshire voting for Civil Unions
So, yesterday/today is news-dense. The impeachment resolution had to compete.
Re:Unwinnable (Score:1, Interesting)
Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's see if your congresscritters have enough spine left to do follow the facts. Though I fear we will soon find out how much money Haliburton is willing to throw around in order to keep their sock puppet in office.
Re:Unwinnable (Score:3, Interesting)
However, a big part of the reason that so few house races are close is because large swaths of the country vote the same. It's a fact of life that a Dem isn't going to be elected to the house in Nebraska unless he's a football player or something. It doesn't always matter how you draw the districts.
Re:Unwinnable (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worth noting that Mr. Kucinich ain't exactly part of the Democratic leadership. He's as far off the Democratic reservation as Ron Paul is off the Republican reservation. Whether this reflects prudence or cowardice among the leadership is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Finally, does Kucinich this this will help him get elected President?"
He's playing to his national base, which is solidly anti-war* and pro-impeachment. This action may not be sufficient for him to win the Presidency, but it is necessary for him to do this to have any chance at all.
[*: It's worth noting also that Kucinich has been against this war right from the start. And if I recall correctly, he's one of a very, very small number of people to have voted against the mis-named patriot act.]
Re:"No threat" (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone that could imagine (or fabricate) Iran (or Iraq, as it was being claimed as the reason for Gulf War II) attacking U.S. territory or other U.S. targets without warning and use that as a reason for a preemptive war deserves to be impeached and removed from office. That is, the whole higher echelon of the U.S. executive power.
Re:Article III: Rattling Sabers at the Iranians (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'd like about 8 parties. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Unwinnable (Score:5, Interesting)
A change to the voting method might be a good idea, but not instant runoff.
It's easy to demonstrate mathematically, and easy to see in the places that have implemented IRV, that IRV doesn't reduce the political value of parties, nor does it effectively enable more than two parties to compete or allow voters to safely choose their preferred party rather than one of the big two. As soon as a third party gains enough votes to threaten one of the major parties, voters risk putting the major party candidate they hate most in office if they vote for the the third-party candidate.
To see intuitively how that happens, you just need to note that the rising third party will draw its support from the ranks of the major party that is most similar to it, thus effectively strengthening the major party that is most different from it. Yes, voters who vote will the third party will rank the closer major party as their second choice, but if the third party gains enough power, it will knock this major party out of the running in the first round, then lose in the instant runoff to the other major party.
What IRV does do is allow third parties to rise in power and prominence to the point that they can have a say in the debate, even though it doesn't allow them to actually win. That's a good thing, but the effect is limited by the fact that the third party is unlikely ever to win unless it can so thoroughly defeat the more similar of the major parties that it effectively becomes one of the two top parties. And during the transition era, from third party to major party, it strengthens the major party most different from it.
But assuming we could muster the political will to change the system, there are options other than IRV that don't suffer these weaknesses. The best known voting methods use the Condorcet pairwise evaluation method, and it can be shown mathematically that those methods do an excellent job of reflecting voter will in elections. Condorcet methods can even satisfy a slightly-weakened form of Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives axiom, which means that if you can accept that weakening of IIA, they're perfect voting systems.
The downside to pairwise evaluation is that while it's actually straightforward to understand and implement (simpler, in fact, than IRV!), it's conceptually complex. IMO, the best of all possible options is also the very simplest: Approval voting. In approval voting, you have a list of candidates and you mark all you find acceptable. Whoever gets the most marks wins. In some formulations if no candidate gets at least 50% approval then the election must be run again with a new slate, but that's optional. The weakness of approval voting is that it doesn't allow voters to rank their preferences, so there's information that is lost. The strengths are that approval voting does a perfect job of reflecting the information it is given, without any ambiguities or paradoxes; does not support a two-party system; does not penalize individuals for supporting other parties; and is dead simple to understand.
The other approach that seems to work reasonably well for empowering more parties is the proportional representation system. The downside to that is that it means you are truly voting for a party rather than for a person, and I and many other Americans prefer to vote for the man, not the party (excepting where they both suck, which is increasingly the norm).
I'm so glad to see Slashdot at least covering this (Score:4, Interesting)
What a sad indictment of what has become of the broadcast media. The above posts that mention the re-alignment of the "center" way off to the right is clearly evidenced by this example. NPR has no time to even mention the beinning of an impeachment of Cheney but, on the other hand, there's plenty of time for a pleasant chuckling interview with Billy Kristol on the brighter side of McCane's chances on this so-called left leaning media outlet.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
With Bush's reelection, I lost my last shred of hope for politics.
Re:It's just politics, no justification (Score:3, Interesting)
Harry Reid publicly stating the fact that "this war is lost" is not a constitutional offense. It is simple recognition of reality. There is no way to win a war in the way that we are currently fighting this one. Cheney trying to start another one, or expanding the current one, is political posturing at the cost of thousands+ lives.
Re:Unwinnable (Score:3, Interesting)
Because he's a loose cannon. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that nobody takes Kucinich seriously, even within his own party. He's maybe not quite as ridiculous as Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson on the list of "hopeless ideologues who continually run for President," but he's definitely on that list. Hell, he gets regularly ridiculed by Jon Stewart, who is practically the mainstream Democratic party's mouthpiece on national television. He is, in general, a loose cannon, and I doubt that earns him many friends on either side of the aisle. (Well, some Republicans might secretly like him just because of his entertainment value, and because he creates things they can point at and use to condemn Democrats in general with; e.g. his proposals to ban handguns make for great NRA campaign fodder.)
None of the real players in Congress are going to touch this, because they don't want to be associated with him. He's practically famous for introducing feel-good bills with no cosponsors, that get him a little media attention and then get tossed in the circular file in committee.
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:5, Interesting)
To crib from Sorkin, there are times when we're fifty states, and there are times when we're one country solving problems that require the pooling of resources.
Your passport says "The United States of America."
Re:Article 1: Why stop at Cheney? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems actually that you might be the one cherry picking data, eh?
Re: Article 1: Why stop at Cheney? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:2, Interesting)
However when asked if he would implement such things, Badnarik gave a very honest reply that although he was the candidate for libertarians, he would also be the president of the American people. That means attempting some minor reforms in attempting to relinquish some of the governments control, but in a manner that would be acceptable to the people.
But of course that always gets lost in "You libertarians want anarchy" speeches.
I hope (Score:0, Interesting)
Re: Unwinnable (Score:5, Interesting)
You're talking about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, first published in 1950, and there are five axioms, not seven. One of them is the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion that I mentioned in my previous post, and it's the only one that pairwise evaluation fails to meet. However, many people (including me) think that IIAC is too strong, and that the Local Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion is adequate. This local version basically says that the method is still immune to changes in outcome when new candidates are added that don't end up creating or modifying a cyclical preference (where more people like A than B, and more like B than C, and more like C than A). Condorcet methods satisfy LIIAC.
That also assumes that the specified desired properties are in fact the ones we want. I think Arrow's axioms make a lot of sense, and that what his impossibility theorem points out is that there can arise situations where the populace fundamentally cannot agree, in which cases there can be no system that chooses the "correct" winner because there is no such thing. In those cases, a good method needs to have a deterministic and fair way of picking from among the cyclical preference, and that's the best you can possibly do.
Pairwise evaluation with Schwartz Sequential Dropping satisfies all of Arrow's requirements except IIAC, and satisfies LIIAC, meaning it handles perfectly all situations except the paradoxical one, and it provides a sensible heuristic for deciding in the paradoxical case. That seems to be about as good as you can possibly get, and it's vastly better than majority rules or IRV.
Re:Bit of a broad brush there. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but I don't see it. The local Libertarian party in California has consistently opposed not only all taxes, but all bond measures. I mean all. Every one. I guess they want to hold a bake sale to build a sewer line, rather than having the city do it. Sounds like economic anarchism to me.
Re:There's no crime here, more's the pity (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unwinnable (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a complicated time, and both sides behaved in ways that today would be considered outrageous or criminal. Still, in the main I think Adams - my ancestor - and his supporters were guilty of the greater sins.
Re:I'd like about 8 parties. (Score:1, Interesting)
There was bout 30 pro war protesters there that and they had their day the following day, The major news outlets aired the pro war 'protest' of a couple hundred people but the ignored the protest of more than 300k.
I couldn't belive it, i got home from this hugly moving experience and noone even knew the difference. None of my friends/family even heard about the protest. That was the day I realized we are all sheep and we are told what to belive.
That's absurd (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not much of a libertarian if you disregard fundamental economic freedom in favor of government regulation, a form of coercion.
Because of how wealth is created (through voluntary exchange), the truly free market is the most efficient method of wealth generation. A free market operates in pareto efficiency, the most efficient form a market can hope to attain. This means it operates at a level of 99.9999999999% efficiency (ten signifigant digits).
A fair criticism of the free market is that wealth distribution is not equal. This is true. But in the real world, wealth creation is spread out, and all members do benefit, although some more than others. The only way for you to advocate socialism over the free market is if you prefer market control over members of society benefiting, or if you prefer everyone to be equally poor rather than inequally rich.
Wealth is not zero-sum. It's not simply shuffled around from the poor to the rich or vice-versa: all members of a free market can benefit from the freedom of voluntary exchange.
The criticism of monopolies existing is nearly baseless. There are three ways a monopoly can form. The first, which we see in present day, is though government favor such as bailouts and tax credits. The second is in control of a limited natural resource, such as drinking water. The third is that the monopoly provides a service its customers enjoy so thoroughly no other entity can provide that service better for the same price.
The second criticism, the control of a limited natural resource, is a justifiable cause for government intervention. Another justifiable government intervention is when we come across the well-known problem, the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma occures when the greatest good for a group occurs not when they compete for their own self-interest above all others, but cooperate instead. This is closely tied with natural resources, and is best seen in taking care of the environment. It is no company's interest to care for the environment.
In this case, as we trust the government to ensure our lives are protected, and the environment is necessary for life, we can allow regulation of business.
I know that this has not been sufficiently condescending or poetic to be modded up on slashdot, but maybe someone will actually read it.
Wheee, Godwin. (Score:4, Interesting)
Short answer: No, who your external enemies and friend are do not necessarily reflect the economic stance of your own country.
Long answer: Hitler was an economic moderate because National Socialism was a semi-rightist totalitarian system that shared control of the country between government officials and industry leaders. The economy was semi-planned, but much of the planning was done by government recognized monopolies and cartels instead of by the government itself. In addition, property was assumed in general to belong to the citizen instead of to the state. That last distinction is very important between leftist and rightist totalitarian economies and is one of the few places where they don't blur together much.
As for defining them by allies, note that the Nazis and the Communists were initially allies until they turned on each other, and a sizeable portion of the wealthy and of the intelligentsia of America in the late 30s were more sympathetic to Germany than to England. Hilter wrote quite glowingly of Americans in his writing, praising them and considering them as potential fearsome rivals. The clash of powers was more pragmatic than ideological until the war got started and the propoganda started up. History largely writes it as a war against an evil power that massacred Jews, but it got started more out of a fear of the balance of power.
I mean, what kind of nation are we that is allied with both Norway and Saudi Arabia?
Consider the source (Score:2, Interesting)
Kucinich is such a marginal figure that even his democratic colleagues are distancing themselves from his antics:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artiRe:Unwinnable (Score:3, Interesting)
Well it's kind of a bell curve ya know... All US citizens fit in there somewhere. Some on the left, some on the right, some in the middle.
US politics may not fit your country's politics, but you might want to respect the right of others to have their own political beliefs.
I have the opinion that most people in the US came here precisely because they did not want to be in Europe/Mexico/where-ever. So if people in the US have a different political, social, religious beliefs. Perhaps you should be happy that we are practicing our political / social / religious beliefs somewhere across the ocean where it does not affect you.
If we were practicing our political/social/religious beliefs too close to you, it might lead to political/social/religious war.
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:4, Interesting)
I like your summary and hope you get modded up for it. Regardless, I think the events of 1913 deserve some mention -- the passage of the 16th amendment and the creation of the Federal Reserve system.
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
This started a little over 40 years ago. LBJ declared (ca. 1964) that civil rights was a permanent plank of the Democratic Party platform. The Democrats had been an uncomfortable alliance of Northeastern and Midwestern laborers, Western farmers and Southern whites. LBJ's drove a wedge that split off the Southern Whites and other rural Democrats. Nixon welcomed these folks to the Republican side in 1968 with open arms.
It's been a weird ride since then, with the Republican Party becoming the political wing of the Southern Baptist Church. This has made a lot of old-school, pre-Nixon republicans uncomfortable. In Kansas, for example, the Republican party has effectively split in two: a "moderate" and a "conservative" wing. The conservatives accuse the moderates of being not hard-core enough: RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). And the moderates think the conservatives are a bunch of hillbillies. As a result, Kansas has a Democratic governor now, and half of the US Representatives from the state are Democrats.
Man, do you have that right. I pray for gridlock to stop the encroachment of our rights by government, but corporate interests always find a "bi-partisan" way to come shining through.
Re:Lower taxes (good luck) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Unwinnable (Score:4, Interesting)
And as to deporation, no, that didn't happen. You should know more about your own ancestor: he never deported anyone under the Alien Acts.
His supporters, yes, were worse than what Jefferson did in some ways, although as bad as the Sedition Act was, I still find what Jefferson did more offensive. Not because it was actually worse, but because politicians still do it today -- that is, sacrifice national security for politics, attacking policies for justice peace that you agree with, merely in order to get political advantage -- whereas there are no more Sedition Acts. At least we've learned from the mistakes of the Federalists.
I wrote my congressman, did you? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please support H Res 333, the articles of impeachment of Vice President R. Cheney submitted by Congressman D. Kucinich, in the most vigorous terms possible. The invasion of Iraq was an international crime, and I do not need to describe to you the colossal human, economic, and social costs that have already accrued, and that will increase in the future with the inevitable multi-faceted blowback that will result.
Please make this your top priority and do everything in your power to recruit your colleagues in its support, and to ensure the successful impeachment of Mr Cheney.
Thank you very much!
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't even know if people are moving left, or it's just they artifically got pulled to the right for a while, and so are heading back left.
Like with gay marriage. 'Not that there's anything wrong with it' was in Seinfeld in 1993. Gay people got ignored for quite a while, were made fun of for a bit, got demonized until maybe 1990, and then, well, people didn't like them but were willing to leave them be. Without the right constantly making an issue out of gay marriage, no one would give a damn and there'd be some sort of legal recognization of gay unions everywhere.
Thank God, the right has essentially painted itself into a corner on certain positions, and cannot move, at least not quickly. As they keep fooling less and less of the country, they will constantly lose support on everything as they appear more and more irrational.
This was going to take a few more decades, and, given long enough lead time, they would 'lose' those positions, and bow out of the contest, 'defeated'. Like the segregationists in the 50s, they'd go down fighting, some of them modifying their views enough they still fit in, and the next generation magically getter new beliefs. As the country stopped falling for the right-wing rhetoric about gays, the right-wing would leave the rhetoric behind. Within two decades they'd somehow have no problems with gay marriage, but would have a problem with cloning or something else.
It's a great political trick. Constantly lag a decade or so behind the country, and you have the full support of whatever idiots you can currently convince the country is going the wrong way. Yammer about it a lot, and then, when people start seeing through you, well, stop talking about it, instead talking about some new threat.
But then they picked their newest two positions, George W. Bush and the Iraq War, and threw their full support behind them, which is, quite possibly literally, the stupidest political move ever. They don't have time to get the new guard in position before the old guard goes down in flames. Many of them are living in a delusional universe and still supporting those things.
People predicted this cycle would speed up, thanks to the internet and various things, but I don't quite think anyone imagined it would go this fast.
Re:There's no crime here, more's the pity (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea that there was a better case against Clinton is ludicrous. The Clinton impeachment was a setup funded and run entirely by dedicated professional political operatives. After 10 years of hounding the Clinton's, the best they could get was a married man lying about cheating on his wife? Whitewater, nothing, Sock's the cat's Christmas list, nothing, Travelgate, nothing, sexual harassment, nothing. The GOP congress issued over 1100 subpoenas during the Clinton administration and Clinton respected Congress' role, even allowing for a Special Prosecutor. The Bush administrations comical claims of executive privilege and the fact that Karl Rove is a walking Hatch Act violation who had a hand in leaking classified intelligence information for political purposes are grounds enough.
You are right that Kucinich won't get the job done though. This is par for the course for Kucinich, that's why I've got my bets on Waxman and Conyers in the House and Leahy in the Senate. Their investigations should provide all the proof needed for both political and criminal prosecution.
Re:Next up in the news ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you. I've been saying this for about 15 years now. It will be difficult to convince congress of such things though.
Re:Winnable is not the whole point (Score:3, Interesting)
So moving the election to Sunday wouldn't really solve the problem, and may in fact skew the election more away from the "working class" because most off-shift jobs are working class.
A better solution would be to make election day a national holiday. Even then, some manufacturing wouldn't shut down, but provisions could be written into the law to make sure that everyone is free to leave work to vote.
Hear, hear! (Score:3, Interesting)
Hear, hear! It was also plainly and obviously stupid before it was done, but too late now.
I do take issue with the current conventional wisdom that "the region descend into utter chaos and barbarism" if we leave. That claim represents a shallow view of history. Much more likely is that the Shiites will unabashedly exterminate any remnant of Al Qaeda in Iraq, arguably a desirable outcome, and viciously repress the Sunnis, arguably a recipe for prolonged conflict. The Saudis and other Gulf states will support both the Sunnis and Al Qaeda, as they apparently have been doing for quite a while. Iran will support the Shiites by supporting instability within Saudi Arabia and the other authoritarian Gulf states, which these days is probably not a difficult thing to do. These forces will test each other and back down if the heat gets too high, and trust me, it will. The region will cool off to a simmering conflict among the local players, and the usual supects there and here in the US will take advantage of the situation to cry out impending doom to ensure high oil prices, as they have been doing all along.
Suckers the world over will believe the bullshit, and spend their lives in fear of chaos and imminent massive terrorist attacks, which will rarely occur. The US energy and "defense" industries, the Saudis, and the Gulf states will continue to be controlled by wealthy oil-industry players who will enjoy an even greater windfall than they already have, and will use part of that wealth to 1) ensure that the windfall continues by supporting the conflict and public sense of emergency, 2) viciously repress anyone or anything that threatens them, and 3) support terrorists attacks in the region and occasionally in the west, so that "world public opinion" stays in line.
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Unwinnable (Score:3, Interesting)
If we assume that 75% of those people truly despise Cheney, that gives you a whopping 8% of the public calling for impeachment. The other 92% are against it or apathetic. If you really think that the MSM's reporting (reaching a whopping 20% of the population) is going to change that, you're wildly mistaken.
It seems to me (and this is my opinion) that you're suffering from what I call "echo-chamber syndrome." I'm willing to bet you spend a lot of time on left-leaning blog sites like DailyKOS and Democratic Underground. Since that's your main source of news, you think of Cheney as a raving mad-man with a huge amount of vitriol spewed in his direction. The people I know who barely know who he is remember him best from the VP debate in 2004, where he and Edwards faced off and Edwards looked like a raving lunatic, and Cheney looked like a calm, patient, fatherly debater who addressed each point one by one with calm and logic, and looked almost like he felt sorry for Edward's poor debating skills.
Trust me, 8% does not an impeachment make. Besides, most of the people will basically be of the opinion, "Why bother? He's only got one year left in office. By the time the trial is over he'll be out anyway."
Re:Unwinnable (Score:1, Interesting)
And BUSH?
The Clinton debacle should have never happened. The Bush debacle, which far overshadows even Nixon, screams for impeachment at a minimum.
The Bush Whitehouse must be neutralized for not only the sake of the country, but the sake of the world.
The impeachment of Clinton was petty. This is anything but.
Will impeachments become the political standard for generations to come? I would hope not but only if we elect better leaders, honest men of integrity with respect for the institutions. One looks at the current crop of 2008 candidates and wonders if this is even possible.
Where is the win here? It's enough to make Jimmy Carter look not simply good, but outstanding.
Not a joking matter. (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to help each other educate ourselves about the corruption. Here is my summary of U.S. government corruption [futurepower.org]. Where's yours?
Re:Next up in the news ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The strongest argument I've heard against term limits is quite simple: staff members don't have term limits, and are willing to stonewall. A near-permanent staff member wins over an elected official with term limits.
Re:South Carolina and states' rights (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd really have to dig to find the reference, but Bill Clinton had an interview once where he stated that he believed that the Constitution required logical consistency. That belief in logical consistency is found throughout our nations legal framework and the rationalization for the Revolution, which was moral rebellion. This is why your Xth Amendment argument falls flat. The Constitution would have no power if states had a right to secede. If the Constitution contained a provision designed for the survival of the nation that disproportionately affected a single state and that state could secede from the Union for such an provision, then how many states would be left today?
Why wouldn't Texas or Alaska just have taken their oil and told the rest of us to piss off? Don't Federal revenues for oil extraction unfairly benefit the citizens of other states for resources found in that state? It is logically impossible to have a Union with centralized authority and then allow people to leave that union because they don't like the way it's going. To put it in perspective, the Founding Fathers viewed the Constitution as a compact with the significance and weight of the compact God made with Abraham. Just as there was no force on earth capable of breaking that compact, the Founding Fathers did not believe there was any justification, outside of the framework that justified the Revolution, to break this compact.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that this country's founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, built the new government with the hopes that it would succeed, but also with the hope that a corrupt government would be overthrown by the people.
Again, such an overthrow would require the same efforts put forth by the Founding Fathers to reconcile with George III before declaring Independence. South Carolina did not meet such requirements, the Civil War was not a failed Revolution pt II. The rationale for secession was inconsistent with the logic of the Constitution. The SC Articles of Secession lays out this legal history, from the Declaration of Independence through the Constitution. It's claim is that the other states are violating it's rights by not returning escaped slaves and agitating through entirely legal and Constitutional means to make slavery illegal. It's like Texas seceding because California passed a clean air law that disallowed cars that Texans liked in California and then tried to pass such legislation nationally through normal legal means.
Go read the Articles [yale.edu] for yourself, those that supported and designed the secession from the Union made it clear that they believed in the institution of slavery over the Constitution. That the North had legitimately gained the political power within the legal framework of the Constitution to dismantle slavery was not justification for rebellion within the belief system that the South claimed it was upholding. There is no integrity to the argument for secession.
If South Carolina wasn't following both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, I've yet to see a state that has come any closer!
Uh, the ones that didn't secede. There is no spirit of rebellion within the Constitution, don't you think a bunch of rebels would have put it in if they had believed such a thing? I mean really, why would people who had just finished rebelling not think to put in a clause regarding rebellion if they thought it was a right? I really think this line of thought comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose behind the 2nd Amendment combined with a bad case of "Red Dawn/Rambo" syndrome. The 2nd Amendment is not a license for armed rebellion, and neither is the 10th.
Re:Partisan politics isn't getting worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, having a Hierarchical government structure is superior to a flat federal government in many areas. If you think that the same educational policies would work just as well as in Hawaii and Alaska as in South Carolina (and I've worked with a lot of districts in South Carolina), you're grossly mistaken.
On a more fundamental level, power tends to aggregate and become corrupt in a single source of government. Hence we have three branches of government, which are antagonistic to each other. And hence we have state and local governments.
The current system actually works as well as any government of such a large country could work.
>>South Carolina agreed and ratified the Constitution, there was no justification for secession or the violence that followed, they committed immoral rebellion.
Actually, they could secede. There was nothing in the Constitution that said they couldn't, so they could, by Amendment X. So it was legal, though Lincoln wouldn't admit it. "Immoral Rebellion" is meaningless claptrap, as is the rest of your post.
Re:Next up in the news ... (Score:3, Interesting)
We already induce burn sensation through microwaves and nausea through infra-sound. Is it so far fetched to imagine that one could create some conditions, thanks to some combinations of strident sounds, that prevents a large crowd from thinking rationally, making it easier to make it panic or flee ? We already know that some frequencies are labeled by our unconsciousness as an indication of danger. Couldn't we call that mind control ?
Re:Next up in the news ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kinda related: IIRC, if a Presidential election goes to the HOR, the VP counts the votes; in 1960, Nixon counted votes in his own election.
Re:What's wrong with Loose Change? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh,.. and here is your rebuttal:
http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr/ [lolloosechange.co.nr]
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_ch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgjWGVHxW8 [youtube.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_(video) [wikipedia.org]
And here is a pre-emptive one: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html [badastronomy.com]