Let's just say, for sake of making this a little easier to speak on -- the entire Patriot Act was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and tossed out the window, okay?

Would I be against all of the authors being punished? No. It's our representatives job to read the bills and not pass unconstitutional material.

People try, all the time, to abolish our civil rights. Right wingers, left wingers, communists, socialists, terrorists, columbians, cubans, mexicans, canadians, the ACLU, whites, blacks, etc. etc. etc., every single group has people in it that do things against our constitution or attempt to pass laws that disobey it -- it's the job of our representatives to ensure they don't pass.

To put it simply, I'd demand and expect the rest of the country would demand that we not re-elect any official that voted to allow the unconstitutional document into power -- assuming he should have reasonably known it was unconstitutional.

I say that last line because you know, there could have been an item or two that was based on previous case-law, and by that standard it may have been legal and constitutional -- if the case-law since changed then I wouldn't expect the representative who voted to allow that responsible, for that SINGLE item.

Bottom line, people are allowed to attempt to make illegal and unconstitutional laws -- it's our representatives job to ensure they don't come into power. If they do, then they did not do their job satisfactorly and should be removed. Put in jail? Depends, but in this instance -- likely not, removed from power? You damn right.

 

OK now we are getting somewhere because for as much as you may think I am far left and as much as I think you are far right we agree on this point.

Problem is though that the people have been trained to stop looking at the issues and instead move to party line politics. They will vote for a rep or a pres simply because he or she is of the same party but leave the political stance on issues completely by the wayside.

Personally I could give a shit less which party a person belongs to and instead would rather have a moderate from either party making the decisions. I would like corporate interests completely removed from politics. I would like religious interests completely removed from politics.

My earlier comment about Bush was a stab at him as I find him to be a dangerous man of power with many of the things he has done and tried to do. I know he is "supposed" to protect the country from harm and invasion and promote the countries products to others, but from what I have seen him do in all honesty has not been necessarily fr the best interest of the country but rather for his paycheck supporters.

It's ok that we disagree on this matter but I think his entie\re cabinet has been pretty shady in more than a few areas and it has had a negative impact on the US, it's allies, and in general has done more damage than good in many areas.

Yes the war on terrorism needed to be fought and I have said this many times, but I have also said many times over that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism and was more of a vendetta. This is ifor all intense purposes a treasonous act because it puts my friends and yours as well who took an oath to protect the US and its society unecessarily into harms way, which is something he took oath not to do.

Now I am going to catch hell for stating what I have and that is fine I expect it, but try to look at it from as close to legal description and see what I am trying to point out.

The longer the voting population sits idly by and lets these things happen the more we move towards a totalitarian state...and once it happens it will be nearly impossible to reverse it and its concequences.

 

Anyways...

I say Social Security and Tax Reform are our biggest concerns on the poll list. I would include Medicare with those as well. These issues have the greatest weight in the eventual collapse of the economy if not handled soon. If anyone understands how much influence the US has in the global economy it is easy to see that a US economic collapse will severely cripple the global economy. We need to get our act together because alot more is riding on this than most realize.

 

Good =].

That's true, but who's fault is that? It's not our governments fault. I see nothing but ads from my local and state government, and even the federal government, urging and pleading for us to get out and vote, vote vote vote!!!

While I do agree with "the power is with the party," I think if people aren't willing to re-evaluate their own party, or what that party is voting on and allowing then it doesn't work. Nonetheless, we can't blame the politicians for that, afterall -- we have the power to place them there -- or remove them. If the general public refuses to do so, that's their fault.

I'll just have to agree to disagree with you there. I do see Iraq as part of the war on terrorism, I have before the WMD "threat," and I have after.

I see what you're saying, both from the legal and emotional aspect of things. I disagree with you on some parts of it, and agree with you on others.

The last line about the voting populating sitting idly by is completely correct.

Again though, who's fault is that? It certainly isn't George W. Bush, John F. Kennedy, Senator McCain, Howard Dean, or any of the even more corrupt leaders in our political system.

We only have one person to blame for that.

 

Correct it is not any single person or group to blame. The blame lies in the waylaying of the checks and balance systems put into place many years before our time. It has been shuffeled under the carpet as being archaic, but you know what? It fucking worked and would continue to work if in place now. But again it is gone and once something is gone and mostly forgotten it is hard to reinstate it.

Our political parties and elected representatives need to be put in check and need to have it put in their face that they work for us (the people) and for no one else..not special interest, corporations, the south, the north, east or west, but for the people as a whole and the people need to stand up and force this back into practice and common knowledge.

Until then we will continue our descent and we will watch the fall of our nation as any sort of real world leadership position.

 

can we add dubya and the far right wing christian coalition as an option?

 

If that is the case why not instead just add any extremist group either far right or far left instead and skip the naming of names

 

There's nothing wrong with social security.

 

Newsflash: The most conservative estimates of oil reserves estimates 100 years. That's assuming our oil consumption rate doesn't increase, and ignores the rise other industrial nations like China. Furthermore, it only requires the perception of a scarcity of oil to cause an economic collapse.

This isn't a matter of infrastructure or economics; it's basic thermodynamics. There is not enough energy content in the oil shale to replace oil after you factor the amount of energy you need to process it. Like I said before, crude oil, after processing, contains nearly 20 times more energy than oil shale. That means we will need to produce 20 times more oil from oil shale to maintain our current consumption, and oil shale is many times harder to process than crude.

This is the same problem that hydrogen has, it takes more energy to create the hydrogen than the hydrogen contains. If we switch to hydrogen, we will operate at a thermodynamic loss. The problem with nuclear power (besides getting it past the Greenpeace hippies) is running out of nuclear material, especially if we expand our nuclear energy production.

Without energy, our society and economy collapses. Like I said before, we need to find a replacement for oil in the next 50 years, or we're toast.

 

That is the most uninformed statement in this thread. That program will be bankrupt before you ever see a penny from it. If nothing is done about it, in the foreseeable future there will be old forlks starving to death and freezing in the streets, perhaps a bit of a melodramatic picture, but not inaccurate.

Wow, this thread went pretty far afield there, but it did make for some lively discussion. There was a question about going after the author of a law if it were found unconstitutional, that would never be a good idea, and I can give you an example where it sounds pretty good to me.

In California, the citizens voted, about 2:1 against giving illegal aliens drivers licenses. The guy who was originally promoting the idea wrote a Senate Bill, which passed on party lines through the Senate. I think it would be a good idea to go after this guy, because of his obvious disregard for what 70% of the people here think. This is just clear example of one of the local selected officials, I could give you a lot more. You can't punish them for making a bad law by prosecution, or there would be very few laws passed. Sort of like you can sue the person who files a frivolous lawsuit against you, but you can't sue their lawyer.

The only way to deal with elected officials who are not doing as you wish is to recall them, or if that is not an option, vote them out next chance you get. The left is pointing fingers at the current administration, not unlike how the right was pointing fingers at the last administration, and talking about how shady they are. They are all shady and have an agenda, you just have to be able to pick one out with an agenda close to your own.

Of all you people who bitch about what is going on here, how many have written to your representatives, or written to an elected official that is doing shit you don't like. You really should be writing them instead of crying about it here.