Posted on 09/24/2001 9:18:38 PM PDT by Fury
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:03:33 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
What a difference 10 months make. Last November I broke the unwritten rule that requires journalists to be neutral political observers when I got embroiled in the controversy over the presidential election and publicly supported Al Gore.
It was not just with friends that I passionately argued the election had been stolen and that Mr. Gore would be the better president. I was one of the signatories to the pompously titled "Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens 2000," which took full-page ads in the New York Times demanding a revote in Palm Beach County, Fla. I wrote op-eds for Salon.com and the New York Daily News. On television talk shows from MSNBC to Fox News's popular "The O'Reilly Factor," I made the case for Mr. Gore. In thousands of e-mails, I urged voters to deluge Clay Roberts, director of Florida's Division of Elections, with appeals for a recount.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Yeah! When someone is man enough to admit his mistake and appologize, we should be man/woman enough to be gracious!
5.56mm
perhaps some grilled crow would be apropos?
And add to that: It's OK to forget what your enemy says, but don't forget the silence of your friends. - Tom
You're absolutely correct. I didn't mean that the way I wrote it. I should have said that most conservatives don't want a law that's on the books to be ignored for political gain. I agree with you that the law itself on term limits is a bad one.
First, I didn't really specifically identify YOU as a HHMS, but you seem to have taken a fancy to the acronym, so let's go with it. If someone at Sam's Club rejects my entre' to their business without a membership card, there's an armed government entity known as the local police who'll gladly arrest me if I push the issue. If I can't produce a ticket to get into Lambeau Field, and I enter anyway, guys with guns will soon be on the scene.
I've witnessed a lot of dire predictions here regarding proposals for the additional tools to identify bad guys within our borders. "Like the War on Drugs, this is another opening for feds to break down doors." Well, I don't believe Feds breaking down the doors of the homes of innocent citizens in the exercise of the War on Drugs is any issue at all. It happens so rarely as to be a non-entity. This image of Federal police randomly storming the private property of law abiding citizens looking for drugs, or soon to be terrorists, is a paranoid delusion.
I guess I don't see the great Constitutional peril in having a way to identify yourself as a legitimate citizen of the United States of America. We have passports, employee badges, driver's licenses, Social Security cards, etc. that are used EVERY DAY to verify that we are who we say we are and to demonstrate our legal status. If I need to show and ID for a legitimate security priority, I don't feel like I'm in Cold War Bulgaria. We need to show identification to secure employment, verify our status to drive a car, pass through customs, get on an airplane, cash a check, prove our age, obtain a rack of billiard balls, borrow a library reference book and any number of scenarios where it is to the benefit of some entity, public or private, to verify that we are who we say we are.
Under what circumstances do you envision, in a country of 270 million people, any government entity tracking your activities? Because you own a gun? You and 50 million other people. Because you post to Free Republic? Too late. Because you don't pay your taxes or have an outstanding warrant? Well, that might be a problem.
We have a problem with illegal immigration, I'm sure that you've heard. We need to have some means to identify those individuals that are operating within our borders illegally. We need to somehow account for, and track all these foreign nationals who are flitting around this country without any documentation or verification that they're conducting the activities for which they've been authorized. You can't get away with this kind of stuff anywhere else in the world.
I have a vision of using a swipeable identifying card to demonstrate eligibility for public entitlements. Not to mention as the vehicle to disburse and track cash entitlement benefits from ATM type units and as a method to account for, and attack the fraud, in Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps but .... that's for another rant.
Who's Lon Huiriuchi? A new Seattle Mariner?
I should have said that most conservatives don't want a law that's on the books to be ignored for political gain.Interesting tangent.
If they were to push for a repeal of this law (so that Guiliani could run again), what would be the problem?
Yes, and since this President believes in acting instead of setting up photo-ops, perhaps we'll learn of the action at the appropriate time -- after it's done and not before of during.
Professional, W is not BJ Clinton, so don't look for him to come on tv to say, "Look what we're doing, folks. Aren't I great?"
It is necessary to: Set up the internment camps.
It is necessary to: Print the Government ID cards.
It is necessary to: Put the picture recognition software on every street in America.
It is necessary to: Make it easier to wiretap everyone.
It is necessary to: Get Carnivore up and running at 110 percent.
It is necessary to: To know and control everything about everyone to keep everyone safe from "THE ENIMEY"
Don't be fools and give away our God given rights as proclaimed by the Constitution
Remember, it's as true now as it was then.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- William Pitt
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