sheesh-
Let's take your contentions seriatim:
QUOTE
* We don't believe we should be listening in on terrorists? Where do you get this untruth? Just because we dont' believe we should be listening in on Americans without a warrant? Find a quote where any democrat says we shouldn't be listening in on terrorists....
The President's Terorist Surveillance Program is very, very specific in its permissible targets. To be a possible target, your telephone number/email address must have been found in the possession of a KNOWN terrorist and ONE end of the conversation must be located outside of the United States.
It is a fact that every President, when under threat from abroad and since electronic communication was invented, has believed that they had this inherent right under their Commander In Chief authority granted by Article 2 of the Constitution.
For example, Franklin Roosevelt authorized the interception of coded messages from the Japanese to and from the United States as far back as 1937- 4 years before Pearl Harbor. Not only that, but he authorized our cryptographic departmenst of the armed forces to attempt to break the codes. I can find no one in the Republican party, who were in the minority at the time, that objected to either of these programs even though we were not in a formal state of war with Japan at the time.
Democrats oppose this measure because they fail to recognize the fact that both parties in a conversation are NOT in the US and that one or both parties to the conversation are almost certainly NOT American citizens. Actually, they do recognize this fact but choose to ignore it for political gain because it allows them to make the straw man argument that the evil George Bush is listening in on Aunt Claire and Aunt Maude exchanging pumpkin pie recipes.
QUOTE
* We believe in giving terrorists constitutional rights? Where is this proof? What most of us agree upon is a fundamental right to habeaus corpus to everyone in the world which is a fundamental part of democracy since 1066 AD.
The incredibly dunderheaded
Hamdan decision by SCOTUS had led us on a path of granting US constitutional rights to non-citizens of the US who were captured under arms on a foreign battlefiled trying to kill our soldiers. Democrats have wholeheartedly embraced that decision for purely political gain.
Had
Hamdan been in play during World War 2, it is more than conceiveable that it would have forced us to grant habeus corpus to captured German and Japanese troops, giving them taxpayer-funded lawyers who could argue against their confinement as being against "human rights".
Look up a case called
ex parte Milligan. In that decision, SCOTUS ruled that forces opposed to the US and captured while in the commission of efforts to damage the US (in that case, acts of sabotage) could be held indefinitely and subject to military tribunals for their justice.
You're right that habeus corpus is guaranteed by the US Constitution...but the Constitution was never interpreted to apply to foreigners captured while under arms, fighting against the US...until
Hamdan.
QUOTE
* We don't believe in the Patriot Act? In it's current form, this is true, because we don't believe you give up your freedoms AT ANY TIME BECAUSE YOU WON'T GET THEM BACK - unlike you Republicans who find no problem taking our freedoms away at the fearful drop of a hat. (Dare we call Republicans cowards for being so afraid (and creating a climate of fear) and for having so little faith in the power of our constitutional freedoms?)
SCOTUS Justice Brandeis jackson once famouly remarked that 'the Constitution is not a suicide pact'.
Democrats, who advocate giving foreigners at least equal rights to US citizens (and in some cases more rights than they'd give to the US military), would have you believe otherwise.
During time of war, certain rights have been taken away. Abraham Lincoln broadly suspended habeus corpus- and for American citizens!- and also allowed (some say ordered) the manipulation of ballots in the 1864 election, yet Lincoln is held up as one of the two or three greatest Presidents of all time. Once the threat was over and the US reunited, rights were returned and even new ones granted.
During WW1 and WW2, the government ordered rationing of certain key materials deemed crucial to the war effort. Among those were gasoline and rubber, making travel of any extended duration or distance almost impossible. But isn't the right to travel freely within the US a guaranteed right? But if the government takes steps to infringe on that right, aren't they acting unconstitutionally? Well, no...not if it is in the interest of the national security of the United States. At least not until a Republican President orders such infringements, that is.
And please spare me the lectures about Republicans playing the fear card. Democrats are the absolute masters of that infamous tactic. remember how Reagan was going to force old people to choose between pet food and medicine? Remember the election ad that said elect Republicans and black churches will burn? How about when Bush bravely, if futiley, actually floated a plan to not only save Social Security but make it better and was mercilessly attacked by Dems who said that Bush wanted to "end" SS? None of those were true and, fortumately, enough voters saw through their BS to reject such smear campaigns. But that doesn't seem to stop Democrats from ratcheting up the dishonesty every election.
Shameful Lies (again)
Oct 6 2006, 10:06 AM
But I must admit..you guys provide fun reading on America's pulse from both end the spectrum. Peace!!
