Jim

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html I never said that every member of this class (i.e. the mainstream mass media) are left of center. That, my friend, is a strawman. I said there is a general tendency and that this incident is one piece of evidence. I won't go through past incidents which make me believe this to be the case because if I did this would become the ultimate off topic thread. I won't rehash all of these incidents but will point out bias as we have these discussions and when it arises. I will say that I had a case in which the ACLU was involved and which received national attention by gay rights groups. The facts were woefully distorted and in some articles invented without any real attempt to get at the truth. The case fit the mass media's view of reality and that was enough. I had one film producer call me and I told him the facts and law of the case in detail but he would not print any of my statements unless I consented to an on camera interview. Because I could tell the reporter was biased and that it would not come out well, I declined to let him film me on camera but offered to answer any question he raised and point him to specific references in the record. None of the facts I referenced made it into the film. That was the only contact I had from any reporter about the case. The rest only interviewed the other side of the controversy. I'll admit that this episode hardened my opinions about the tendency of the mass media in this country. This NSA episode reminds me of my case where the reporting is sloppy because they already have a preconception as to who is in the wrong and do not want to be bothered with understanding the other perspective..

This is a great way to never listen to anything said by the administration which is inconsistent with your world view. Gonzales is the Attorney General of the United States and' date=' possibly, you might learn something about the administration’s legal position if you listen with an open mind. Rather than assume that I'm engaging in some dishonest debating "tactic" of which you must take your leave (just as you appear to assume that Gonzales is not sincere in his statements), why not give me the benefit of the doubt? You said, “And ‘Duh’ is an equally valid response to someone who works for the "agree or else" administration, who is acting as a public spokesperson, trying to sway public opinion.” Frankly, I didn’t know what you meant by this sentence and wanted to draw you out. Notice how my sentence ends with a question mark? I used the question mark because I wanted you to explain your position, as I did not understand it. I actually thought it would be obvious I didn't think you meant that every one was stupid in the administration and thought you would explain yourself. If I were determined to think the worst of my adversary in this argument (as you are with both me and Gonzales), I would think that you were engaged in a tactic to duck the substantive issues I raised about FISA (the cumbersome requirements for applications, the requirement that there be proof the recipient of the foreign communication be an agent of the foreign power, the ability of spam to overwhelm FISA procedure, the requirement of a genuine “emergency” for the 72 hour notice to apply) with feigned indignation. I’ll resist that temptation and, instead, extend my apology for not being clearer in asking you what you meant in my opening sentence

I enjoyed Greene's books more than I can say even though I still do not understand the concept of "space" let alone "spacetime." I finished these books with a sense of awe and envy. Awe for the concepts discussed and envy that people actually get to spend their lives working in the area of theoretical physics. All in all, I'd still have a hard time turning down Roger Ebert's job...

http://www.csbaonline.org/cgi-local/pubfind.cgi?PubType=All+Publication+Types&PubFY=Any&PublicationDate=Any&Author=Andrew+Krepinevich&PubCategory=Any+Category Krepinevich quotes President Clinton as follows: It is to the administration's credit that they fund diverse think tanks. However, it is just another think tank like American Enterprise Institute, Rand, Brookings and many others: http://www.militaryreporters.org/thinktank.html

Finally the Bush administration has gone on the offensive and started arguing it received implied authority when authorized to conduct a war. It kind of makes you want to say "well, yeah, duh" when you hear Atty. Gen. Gonzales say that the power to fight a war includes the power to detain and/or seek intelligence from the enemy. "Duh" is an equally valid response to the notion that Congressional limitations on the executive gathering intelligence might not apply in war. As I expected, Gonzales argued that the FISA procedure was cumbersome and did not give the NSA the necessary agility to deal with modern communications. He also said, as I also expected, that he was frustrated in not being able to explain this fully because to do so would apprise terrorists of our capabilities. The administration is being put into a Catch 22 situation of having to reveal national security information to justify this program. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0601250130jan25,1,6840973.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed None of this is to suggest I was prescient in the arguments made in other threads. To the contrary, these are obvious arguments which any open minded journalist should have known were the basis of the administration's action. If I could think of these arguments, then why couldn't the media have located some way to report the defense? Why does it take an airwave offensive by Gonzales to get the other side into the public debate? Instead, the issue was allowed to simmer and percolate as if there were not two sides to the issue. The issue has been consistently mischaracterized as being about "domestic spying" instead of about the monitoring of communications by suspected terrorists into this country. Do you still wonder why conservatives think the "mainstream" media is biased?

Socialism fails because it does not harness greed.

Incidentally, I heard on Stephanopoulos' program this morning that the FISA court has approved something like 15,000 warrents. Sounds like a lot, right? Not to me. If the intent is to track emails which can be buried in spam, 15,000 is a drop in a bucket. Also, Stephanopoulos said he was hearing from intelligence officials that the procedure was too cumbersome. Rep. Jane Harmon (a member of the so called "gang of eight"), didn't argue with this point; her only point was that the president should have come to the full committee and requested broader authority. Jim PS: Let's all bookmark the phrase "gang of eight" for future reference when we are arguing about media bias and spin.

I doubt Osama is in a position to offer terms.

A war can be indicted on several grounds such as the absense of a compelling national interest or the inability or unwillingness to win. However, to get upset at our leaders just because Osama's #1 happened to skip a dinner is not an indictment of policy. It is an indication that this war, like all others, is bloody and unpredictable. With respect to your question, I do not see how blowing up schools would indict the policy of fighting this war. Of course, if this is done intentionally there should be action taken against those responsible. If it happened unintentionally several times, our military would need to find out the cause and make sure it doesn't happen again. To answer your second question, as to when does bloodshed get to be too much, I do not know. I do believe that once the U.S. engages its military, we need to make sure we prevail even if the cost is more than we've paid in this war thus far.

As an aside, I do not feel vindicated that we may have actually killed some top operatives of the enemy. We've gotten to the point where we view a failed military operation as an indictment of the decision to apply force. For example, I do not think Carter should have been held responsible just because dust got in some helecopter engines and destroyed his bid to free the hostages in Iran. If Carter was advised that the effort had a certain chance of success, then he made the right decision even if it did blow up in his face. Gulf War I and the beginning of this war may have given us an unrealistic expectation of what it means to fight a war. Sen. Kerry kept talking about a "plan" as if any plan survives the first engagement. The phrases SNAFU and FUBAR are military terms for a reason. We will have friendly fire. We will kill women and children. We will even have situations which devolve into a Lord of the Flies situation where seemingly good soldiers abuse those under their charge. This is nothing new in war and if the war is worth fighting we have to accept this will happen even as we do all that we can do minimize needless suffering and abuse. History pivots on a dime and no military operation is guaranteed to succeed or fail. One of my favorite chapters of any history book starts as follows: One of many morals to the story: Even the worst planned military action using completely untrained "soliders" can succeed. Conversely, even the best planned military action using the best intelligence and the most well trained soldiers in the world can fail. This war thus far has been fought with remarkable success, and in this case we were fortunate to have killed some of the bad guys. However, it wouldn't be an indictment of the policy if it had entirely failed.

Legislatures have tried to nibble at the edges of Roe for quite a while but it would be fruitless to challenge Roe directly. I agree with your main point, however. I know some Republican legislators who are praying Roe is never overturned. The last thing they want is to have to deal with this issue.

I honestly do not understand this mindset. Why is this one topic off limits for some people? I don't say this to be confrontational and I certainly understand that there are some issues that may not be resolvable given the current state of human intelligence. At the same time, I don't understand why this is the one topic where you think opinions don't count. Could you explain?

Work was consuming me during most of this debate which now looks like is pretty much over. Darn. In any event, I have a lot to digest. My basic take on animal rights is that I respect things which are (i) harmless, (ii) elevate our standards of decency and (iii) about which people are passionate. These doctrines do elevate our standards of decency. It's hard to imagine a global culture which will do all that it can to minimize suffering to animals which also will not treat people decently. I tend to defer to passionately held harmless positions, even those which I don't instinctively share, mostly out of a sense of humility. The animal rights position is mostly harmless except, potentially if it would impact human diet adversely and as it pertains to drug testing. Therefore, I listen receptively but, I admit, can't get over the engrained notion that there is a qualitative difference between human beings and less evolved species. Maybe this has to do with the hope that humans are on the cusp of the next step of evolution, this time of their own making (or something cataclysmic). Maybe it is just my emotional belief that the Cosmos is driving to some unforseeable objective and that humans are the species on this planet which will play the primary role in this process. (I don't mean this to prejudge the issue of ID but instead just mean objectively you can see that a process is in play which led to life and which, at least on earth, has brought that life to the point where it is asking fundamental questions and getting some answers.) I boggle a bit at the notion that there is some kind of calculation of interests which should be used to decide these questions. OTOH, I have some humility here too because I understand that this is a topic on which human intelligence has specialized and it would be arrogant to think that I can duplicate this kind of learning with my gut reaction. At the same time, I don't have 4 years right now to devote to studying such a process. With work, family, coaching a basketball team and now keeping up with SFN, my plate is pretty much full. I'm not trying here to restart the debate but just throwing in my two cents at the conclusion.

You are equating the the obliteration of Israel with the use of nukes by Truman to end WWII?

Here's the conclusion of one author: R. Turner, The War on Terrorism and the Modern Relevance of the Congressional Power to "Declare War," 25 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 519, 536-37 ********** "Where does all of this leave us? What, if anything, is left of the power of Congress to "declare War?" I submit that it is largely an anachronism, because the kind of aggressive uses of force historically associated with formal declarations of war, which the Framers seemed most concerned about checking with a congressional veto, have now been outlawed. Because this exception to the President's power in foreign affairs was intended to be construed strictly, it would properly only apply if a president wished to launch an aggressive "war" in flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter.. . ." ******* http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2782/is_200203/ai_n6797127

The alternative is that every soldier who killed a persion from the Korean War to Gulf War II is guilty of murder. I've never researched the question of what difference formal declaration makes to this kind of question; however, I do not believe it makes a real difference.

One word of caution: I read that he'll probably have to sit for the bar again if you want him to practice outside of Arkansas.

Well, just one more day and you can hire him as a lawyer in Arkansas!

http://courts.state.ar.us/attylist/new/bynum.cgi?num=++73019