Jim

You are referring to territory "taken" by Israel after they were attacked in the 1960s? Correct me if I'm wrong because I don't purport to be an expert on the history of Israel. However, with respect to land "taken" after they were attacked, I have little sympathy for the attackers. If you attack a country and lose be prepared to part with something.

I don't want to jump to conclusions. You are saying that there is a reason for what? For the jewish persecution, including the holocaust?

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Marbury v. Madison' date=' 5 US 137, 177 (1803). http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/9.htm However, as my first post in this thread noted, in this area, the Courts might not act on the grounds that this is fundamentally a political clash between the other two branches. We'll see. Bush is being hurt primarily because of the way this is being presented in the mainstream media. In a campaign when all of this gets more balanced treatment, the issue is a loser for the democrats. The Nov. 2006 elections will be determined by what is happening on the ground in Iraq.

Lol. You are kidding right? Please read my posts, starting with the first one in this thread, then ask me something that is halfway responsive to the position I've been expressing. Please note that I'm not arguing Bush is correct legally, only that there is on its face a good faith basis for the argument. You are the one contending Bush doesn't have a good faith argument.

Here's an interesting article in the National Review. What's remarkable is not the argument that is being made here but that you have to go to the National Review to glean even basic truisms about what is at stake in this debate: http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200601031523.asp **** "Is it written somewhere that the Constitution can be violated only by the president? One would think so, given the debate over the secret National Security Agency program to monitor, without court approval, calls between suspected al Qaeda operatives overseas and people in the United States. Opponents of the program say President Bush has trashed the Constitution, in particular the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches. The Constitution, however, doesn't exist solely to constrain the executive, as those braying about the NSA wiretaps seem to suggest. It confers powers on the executive as well as limiting them. If those powers are abridged by another branch of the government, the Constitution is being violated — and not, obviously, by the president."

Yes. You just keep repeating that FISA is the law if it is constitutional' date=' ignoring my argument that that the President is asserting his constitutional power during a time of war to monitor individuals in contact with suspected enemies. And round and round we go without your ever having addressed my point that Bush has a CONSTITUTIONAL argument. You blow past that and just assume he broke the law... which he didn't if he had the constitutional power to act as he did. I don't see why you can't use exact words in this discussion. The FBI put some names in domestic terrorist files; they did not classify them as terrorists. You ignore my argument that there could be a variety of reasons to put names in files. It's kind of telling that you have to use loose language to make your arguement. I've addressed legality at least fifteen times with you - the President argues his actions were authorized by the Constitution and a legislative act may not be able to impinge on those powers. Re oversight' date=' that's a more substnative issue but we don't even know at this point how common this program was used or what level of information was given to Congress. I think that the fact that he was going to the leading intelligence committemembers every 45 days kept this thing from running too wild. All of this said, I now welcome the hearings. I don't think Bush could fare less favorably than he has in the press. You can far more easily spam email than you can a telephone call. YOu can also set up forwarding systems so that a terrorist could route voice mail or email through what looks to be a united states account. It may have been very burdensome to go to court with such spamming and forwarding techniques. If you stop thinking defensively and start thinking offensively, i.e. how as a terrorist would you exploit the technologies that have proliferated post 1978, I think you'll easily conclude there is a world of difference.

Honestly' date=' I don't understand what you are saying here. You analogized Bush to Nixon but admit Bush acted for his perception of national security not his political self interest. YOu think Nixon was acting in the national security interest? Come on, admit it: You threw out the Nixon analogy because it was easy and you hate Bush. This kind of silliness is all to common on the left and it does the country damage by making a rational discourse all but impossible. Ergh. Now you shift to yet a THIRD issue. You trot out the FBI files, then shift to NSA and now you go to the issue of the detainees. Each one of these issues raises different legal issues that would require hours of in depth research. I'd give it some thought if I weren't already in the office working today and didn't think you'd shift to a fourth issue if I gave you the good faith argument for the Bush position on this issue. You really can't imagine why the advent of e-mail, cell phones and the like might create for a need for a quicker and broader response than telegrams?

I"m pretty liberal for a fiscal conservative but I don't agree that health care is a Constitutional or, currently, any kind of statutory right. However, I think this is an issue that conservatives are going to have to address. The high cost of health insurance currently is hurting this country. The hidden cost is the number of small businesses that are never started because people simply can not risk their family's health while they hang out a shingle. I wanted to go on my own five years ago but I waited until last year because I would have had to pay around $10k a year for coverage for a family of six. I probably wouldn't have ever taken this leap except my wife wanted to go back to teaching and we got "cheap" (i.e. about $8k/year) insurance from the local schools. I'd like to see an estimate of the number of small businesses that are never begun because of the high cost of insurance. There are many others, such as my own, that are deferred for several years until a spouse can start a job that provides coverage. Small businesses are what drive this economy and a guy wanting to start a carpet cleaning company, for example, has no way of affording insurance. In addition to all of the human costs, the high cost of insurance ties entreprenuers to large corporate jobs. I don't have the energy to figure out what has to be done. I do know that when my son blew out his knee last year insurance probably paid over $70k for the two surgeries, yet not once did I make ANY decision on the basis of cost. Some measure of tort reform is probably required and, maybe, we are going to have to have increased regulation in this area primarily to bring competition into this sphere. None of this is a question of "rights." It's a question of what makes sense.

Then I would never have to do more than one minute of work a year, earning one penny, for everything that I need to live, which would cost one penny. What if the printing press had been been invented a thousand years earlier? (Heh, Civilization IV for Christmas)

Can't happen: Anything my kids get me is always great and my wife and I have learned to communicate on this topic. Actually, it was me that had to learn here...... What if there really is a Santa Claus?

Happy holidays to one and all. We had a great Christmas. This is probably the last Christmas that I expect any of my kiddos will believe in the big guy. There's nothing quite like having a true believer in the house. I'm going to miss it!

Umm... The article says their names were put in FBI domestic-terrorism files. not that these people were classified as domestic terrorists. Why puff the facts here? I agree that this is concerning and worthy of investigation; however, we do not know why this was done. It could be that there is at least one individual in the group who does cause the agency concern. It could be that the FBI has other information that causes them to believe there is a possibility of concern about the groups activities. ALthough neither of us are knowledgable about these matters, I suspect that Tim McVeigh has a lot to do with how the FBI approaches potential extremist groups from both the right and the left. After the OKC bombing, I suspect that many more groups with agendas are watched. Part of this process may be sweeping in more information directly relevant to a pending case so that later connections can be made when needed. Again, I'm speculating and I agree that the issue deserves scrutiny but why jump to conclusions and puff the facts? For that matter, why make the Nixon analogy? It's not particuarly apt. There's no evidence this was approved by Bush and certainly no evidence that this is anything equivalent to breaking into private property for political purposes.

Who are you directing this comment towards? I certainly would not operate and blind trust and I think it is a good thing to have hearings to get to the bottom of the controversy. My only point is that we can't yet assume there was a violation of law. As my initial post indicated, the President does have executive powers and no one is contending that this program expanded beyond monitoring US based persons, not necessarily citizens, who communicate with suspected terrorists. As to why (or if) the 72 hour grace period was burdensome, I would reserve judgment on this point although I presume without evidence that Bush would not act irrationally - bypassing a process which was perfectly workable for no reason.

Ahhh... The solid feel of common ground. We agree that if a President lies in a war with "'national security' at heart." We also agree that it is far too early to know whether what he did furthered national security.

Just to be clear here: Clinton was impeached for lying UNDER OATH in the midst of a serious sexual harassment lawsuit which Clinton ultimately paid $850,000 to settle. He followed this up with deception to a grand jury. Clinton's perjury ultimately caused the Federal Judge in the sexual harassment case to sanction him $90,000 and to refer the case for possible disciplinary action with the state bar. At the time, I still would not have impeached. The Republicans let their principles get in the way of common sense on this one.

Well that's my question, what if there really was a need here. Truthfully, neither of us know what motivated this program. This was not something lightly done - there were legal opinions obtained, twelve reports to congress and it was put on a 45 day review ticker (I think that's right, anwyay). I have a hard time believing this would have been done just for grins. The problem for Bush may be that to explain the need for this would require him to explain how they are going about monitoring terrorist's emails/telephone calls. What if, for example, they are using a US hotmail account to forward email. They put it in a long chain of email accounts, 20 of them, some of them that look like they are from US citizens and others that don't. What if they buy US cell phones and then use them abroad? Might terrorists send out a flood of emails and bury the one important email in that barrage? I'm sure I can't come close to imagining all of the ways that a terrorist might make it extremely difficult and burdensome to go to court everytime an email hits what appears to be the email account of a US citizen. If there's is no need to do any of this, then this is an uninteresting discussion - of course Bush shouldn't have launched this program for no reason. OTOH, if there was a need, and if you really view this as a war, I'm not sure why my hypothetical is off base. So, you would say that FDR did break the law and should go to jail under my hypothetical?