Whitehouse: Some Critics 'Serving the Goals of al Qaeda'

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**Frazzled**

Yad... I just like saying Yad..

**Yad**

**Frazzled**

Its the simple things in life..Yaaaad...

**Yad**

**Fateweaver**

Hmm, you mean the "certain inalienable rights" as pertains to people that are citizens of THIS country.

Last time I checked Yemen is not US owned so therefore Yemenese (ha, that's a cool word) and anyone else that is not a US citizen DO NOT have "inalienable rights". I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights pertains ONLY to this country. If it doesn't I was lied to through all 12 years of school.

I'm sorry. Detainees at Gitmo have life a lot nicer than any rapist or serial killer detained in any maximum security prison in the US. Got to love the leftist fabrication of the inhumane torture methods used on criminals.

You want to see inhumane torture watch Hostel or Hostel 2.

But hey, terrorists aren't a threat. It's all just right-wing propaganda. We should open our arms to everyone, even the Yemenese or guys like the underwear bomber who are allowed to purchase a one way ticket to the US who also happens to have NO luggage on him, not even a carry-on. Yeah, Napolitano(sp) is right. Our system DOES work. Yeesh.

**Frazzled**

Yad wrote:

Could Yad be Sad?

**Fateweaver**

Yad-da, Yad-da Ya....

Hehe.

**Frazzled**

Quit it you'll make Yad mad.

Ok I'll stop now. Must...stop...from making...another Yadism....must...stop...

**ShumaGorath**

Frazzled wrote:Quit it you'll make Yad mad.

Ok I'll stop now. Must...stop...from making...another Yadism....must...stop...

Heres a zen koan. What is the sound of one mod spamming?

**Frazzled**

ShumaGorath wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Quit it you'll make Yad mad.

Ok I'll stop now. Must...stop...from making...another Yadism....must...stop...

Heres a zen koan. What is the sound of one mod spamming?

**Mannahnin**

Fateweaver wrote:Hmm, you mean the "certain inalienable rights" as pertains to people that are citizens of THIS country.

Last time I checked Yemen is not US owned so therefore Yemenese (ha, that's a cool word) and anyone else that is not a US citizen DO NOT have "inalienable rights". I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights pertains ONLY to this country. If it doesn't I was lied to through all 12 years of school.

Or you were just a bad student.

http://nlg.org/resources/kyr/kyr_English2004.pdf

Read the Declaration of Independence some time. Or Lincoln's comments on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

The Declaration's relationship to slavery was taken up in 1854 by Abraham Lincoln, a little-known former Congressman who idolized the Founding Fathers.[169] Lincoln thought that the Declaration of Independence expressed the highest principles of the American Revolution, and that the Founding Fathers had tolerated slavery with the expectation that it would ultimately wither away.[4] For the United States to legitimize the expansion of slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, thought Lincoln, was to repudiate the principles of the Revolution. In his October 1854 Peoria speech, Lincoln said:

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government." ... Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. ... Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. ... If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving.[170]

The meaning of the Declaration was a recurring topic in the famed debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858. Douglas argued that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration referred to white men only. The purpose of the Declaration, he said, had simply been to justify the independence of the United States, and not to proclaim the equality of any "inferior or degraded race".[171] Lincoln, however, thought that the language of the Declaration was deliberately universal, setting a high moral standard for which the American republic should aspire. "I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere", he said.[172] According to Pauline Maier, Douglas's interpretation was more historically accurate, but Lincoln's view ultimately prevailed. "In Lincoln's hands", wrote Maier, "the Declaration of Independence became first and foremost a living document" with "a set of goals to be realized over time".[173]

Like Daniel Webster, James Wilson, and Joseph Story before him, Lincoln argued that the Declaration of Independence was a founding document of the United States, and that this had important implications for interpreting the Constitution, which had been ratified more than a decade after the Declaration.[175] Although the Constitution did not use the word "equality", Lincoln believed that the Declaration's "all men are created equal" remained a part of the nation's founding principles.[176] He famously expressed this belief in the opening sentence of his 1863 Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago [i.e. in 1776] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

[T]here is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1858[174]

Black people weren't citizens then. Apparently you would have preferred to vote for Stephen Douglas, and denied them any rights because of that.

Fateweaver wrote:I'm sorry. Detainees at Gitmo have life a lot nicer than any rapist or serial killer detained in any maximum security prison in the US.

Thanks for proving the point. Even the scummiest criminals retain certain rights (though they lose others). Even a person convicted of raping and killing people has rights. Yet people try to claim that a person SUSPECTED of raising arms against us, or planting a bomb, has none? Just because you do something terrible doesn’t mean you have no rights. And if the accusation has not yet been proven, that goes double.

**Frazzled**

Declaration is not the law of the land. The US Constitution is.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Fateweaver wrote:Hmm, you mean the "certain inalienable rights" as pertains to people that are citizens of THIS country.

Last time I checked Yemen is not US owned so therefore Yemenese (ha, that's a cool word) and anyone else that is not a US citizen DO NOT have "inalienable rights". I'm pretty sure the Bill of Rights pertains ONLY to this country. If it doesn't I was lied to through all 12 years of school.

I'm sorry. Detainees at Gitmo have life a lot nicer than any rapist or serial killer detained in any maximum security prison in the US. Got to love the leftist fabrication of the inhumane torture methods used on criminals.

You want to see inhumane torture watch Hostel or Hostel 2.

But hey, terrorists aren't a threat. It's all just right-wing propaganda. We should open our arms to everyone, even the Yemenese or guys like the underwear bomber who are allowed to purchase a one way ticket to the US who also happens to have NO luggage on him, not even a carry-on. Yeah, Napolitano(sp) is right. Our system DOES work. Yeesh.

Chill your boots my right wing friend!

The problem people had with Guantanamo Bay was the status of the detainees. Not PoW, not conventional Prisoners, but the curiously monickered 'Illegal Combatants'. This neatly avoided the Geneva Convention, without straying into standard criminal law. Many of them were held for apparently being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't think anyone but the looniest lefty would ever consider ALL detainees to be innocent, but doubtlessly some would have been held, without charge, for several years when they had done nothing wrong.

As for Terrorists not being a threat, that's not what people are claiming either. What is annoying is when the exact level of threat is magnified and exaggerated just to sell a paper or news programme. Take the UK for example. Although we largely take the threat of Terrorism seriously, by and large we don't let it affect our day to day life. Most Terror plots are well under control by the relevant authorities, but sadly it will always be impossible to stop them all. What is heartening is that as I said earlier, the attacks since 9/11 have mostly been a bit of a joke. Take the 7/7 bombings in London. They attacked the Underground, and cocked it up. If they were anywhere near the threat some might have us believe, the casualty count would have been far, far higher. But it wasn't. Because the bombers were incompetent in the extreme. Clever, but ultimately ill trained, ill equipped and not terribly well organised.

By over egging the pudding when it comes to the Terrorists, you make some people jumpy, and some people crazy. The crazies take it out on whichever poor sod they decide is a threat, giving the real Terrorists ammo to recruit confused young men to their cause. To suggest the problem isn't under control, when it very much seems to be is downright irresponsible.

**Mannahnin**

Frazzled wrote:Declaration is not the law of the land. The US Constitution is.

But the Declaration is where we state that one of the founding principles of our nation is that ALL men are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights.

The Constitution spells out the basic limits of what our government is allowed to do. And the Bill of Rights amends it to protect people's rights. As an exercise for the reader, please note how many times the Bill of Rights uses the word "citizens" to tell us whose rights are being protected, as opposed to "people".

http://nlg.org/resources/kyr/kyr_English2004.pdf

Whether or not you’re a citizen, you have rights under
the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment
gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government
agent. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government’s
power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new
laws have expanded the government’s power to conduct
surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change.
However, if you are a non-citizen and are deportable,
DHS* can target you based on your political activities.

Fourteenth Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The first sentence tells us who is a citizen. The second and third protect not only citizens, but every person within any state's jurisdiction.

**Fateweaver**

Okay so as a non-citizen you have the right to say what you want, right to remain silent and the right to avoid illegal search and seizure.

None of those rights covers blowing gak up or trying to blow gak up.

@MDG: Not saying that every person in the US should look constantly over their shoulder for terrorists or terrorists attacks but there have been far more attempts of terrorism since 9/11 than have been before. Terrorists are getting bolder because ever since the rise of Obamanation the people who should be protecting our country (oh, like the SoD or our CiC, aka President) are too busy trying to kiss everyones ass and making sure we are PC about who we profile and who we don't.

I'm sorry but letting a foreigner (of any nationality) onto a plane who is paying with cash, buying a one way ticket and has no luggage, not even a carry on BUT frisking and patting down an 80yo woman in a walker or a child of about 8 is the most absurd snafu in the entire history of snafu's. I mean seriously, how can our SoD say the system works when it allows stuff like that to happen.

I really hope the underwear bomber suffered excruciating pain from starting his own package on fire and I'm sure it took considerable restraint from most of the passengers to not have beaten him dead and tossed his corpse onto the tarmac after the plane landed.

**Frazzled**

Mannahnin wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Declaration is not the law of the land. The US Constitution is.

But the Declaration is where we state that one of the founding principles of our nation is that ALL men are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights.

The Constitution spells out the basic limits of what our government is allowed to do. And the Bill of Rights amends it to protect people's rights. As an exercise for the reader, please note how many times the Bill of Rights uses the word "citizens" to tell us whose rights are being protected, as opposed to "people".

http://nlg.org/resources/kyr/kyr_English2004.pdf

Whether or not you’re a citizen, you have rights under
the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment
gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government
agent. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government’s
power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new
laws have expanded the government’s power to conduct
surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change.
However, if you are a non-citizen and are deportable,
DHS* can target you based on your political activities.

Fourteenth Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The first sentence tells us who is a citizen. The second and third protect not only citizens, but every person within any state's jurisdiction.

THATS WHY YOU DON"T FRIGGING BRING THE TERRORISTS INTO THE US.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

*hand up*

Foreign type here. Bit confused with people mentioning the Bill, Constitution and Declaration? Please let me know which each is, how they differ etc and which takes precedence.

@Fateweaver. Not going to enter into this one with you skip. Don't know enough about the situation, so just going to hold my tongue.

**Mannahnin**

MDG- Wikipedia is your friend.

Frazzled wrote:THATS WHY YOU DON"T FRIGGING BRING THE TERRORISTS INTO THE US.

Either we believe in justice, freedom, the rule of law and inalienable human rights or we don’t. Limiting it to people within our geographic borders while taking and holding prisoners on foreign soil (Gitmo, foreign prisons) is just a legalistic dodge for people trying to get away with ignoring our country’s founding principles.

It’s un-American. It’s dishonorable and a stain on our principles. It makes me sick.

Fateweaver wrote:Okay so as a non-citizen you have the right to say what you want, right to remain silent and the right to avoid illegal search and seizure.

None of those rights covers blowing gak up or trying to blow gak up.

But they certainly cover not being stuffed in a secret prison and denied your right to a trial and to due process of law. Habeus GODDAM Corpus. Ever heard of it? If you think it's "some foreign stuff", then I suggest that your opinion is a waste of the air you're breathing, and I ask you to refrain from sharing it with us.

**Fateweaver**

Frazz, I think you missed the memo about Gitmo being so horrible that our Overlord is shutting it down and either releasing it's prisoners back into the fold (to repeat their crime again of course) or sending them to be tried in a criminal court (where we all know short of rape and molestation you walk free majority of the time or get a hand slap and a stern lecture) to which you can bet the ACLU will be all over the jury like flies all over gak to let that person free because to find a minority guilty of a crime is profiling and racist and anything else the nut job ACLU'ers can think of.

Tis the reason the Pres. is doing that in the first place. He feels empathy and wants Muslims to understand that we, as a country, want them to feel welcome and safe even if the nut jobs that practice Islam don't make the people of the US feel safe. You see, it's not on them (the non-violent ones) to help us understand. It is somehow on the shoulders of our country to try to convince Muslims that even if the nut jobs amongst them kill Americans and want to destroy our country that it's okay, that we can be friends and hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

**Wrexasaur**

Frazzled wrote:THATS WHY YOU DON"T FRIGGING BRING THE TERRORISTS INTO THE US.

**Mannahnin**

Hey Fateweaver, if you think being locked up in a foreign country away from your family for a few years is no big deal, especially with treatment as nice as what we give people in Gitmo, how about you go get yourself locked up there?

**gorgon**

Mannahnin wrote:Either we believe in justice, freedom, the rule of law and inalienable human rights or we don’t. Limiting it to people within our geographic borders while taking and holding prisoners on foreign soil (Gitmo, foreign prisons) is just a legalistic dodge for people trying to get away with ignoring our country’s founding principles.

It’s un-American. It’s dishonorable and a stain on our principles. It makes me sick.

*shrug* I dunno. Wasn't there a whole verse about torturing people in that Lee Greenwood song?

**Wrexasaur**

Mannahnin wrote:Hey Fateweaver, if you think being locked up in a foreign country away from your family for a few years is no big deal, especially with treatment as nice as what we give people in Gitmo, how about you go get yourself locked up there?

Your missing the point entirely Mannahnin.

These are not people, they are gray blobs, that want to destroy us. They come from the planet Zardon, and they want to drain our precious bodily fluids.

...

WAKE UP! The aliens are here, they aren't people, they have no rights that I recognize. Nuke the planet from orbit, all of these aliens look incredibly similar.

/sarcasm.

**ShumaGorath**

@MDG: Not saying that every person in the US should look constantly over their shoulder for terrorists or terrorists attacks but there have been far more attempts of terrorism since 9/11 than have been before. Terrorists are getting bolder because ever since the rise of Obamanation the people who should be protecting our country (oh, like the SoD or our CiC, aka President) are too busy trying to kiss everyones ass and making sure we are PC about who we profile and who we don't.

September 11th happened in 2001. Obama took office in 2009. I wasn't sure if you knew those dates.

**JohnHwangDD**

Mannahnin wrote:I think it’s an unnecessary and sensationalistic line. That said, if terrorists want to instill terror, than people who capitalize on and help spread disproportionate fear would indeed seem to be playing into the hands of terrorists.

So Obama is a terrorist?

**ShumaGorath**

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Mannahnin wrote:I think it’s an unnecessary and sensationalistic line. That said, if terrorists want to instill terror, than people who capitalize on and help spread disproportionate fear would indeed seem to be playing into the hands of terrorists.

So Obama is a terrorist?

less so than bush was, but then the term terrorist is utterly meaningless in modern parlance anyway, so sure.

**Fateweaver**

Mannahnin wrote:Hey Fateweaver, if you think being locked up in a foreign country away from your family for a few years is no big deal, especially with treatment as nice as what we give people in Gitmo, how about you go get yourself locked up there?

Mann, if you think it's okay to attempt to blow up buildings and commit other acts of terrorism that the detainees at Gitmo did or attempted to do, or had ties to people attempting to do those things is okay than I don't recognize you as a US citizen and I'll tell you not to let the door hit you in the ass on the way out of this country.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ShumaGorath wrote:
@MDG: Not saying that every person in the US should look constantly over their shoulder for terrorists or terrorists attacks but there have been far more attempts of terrorism since 9/11 than have been before. Terrorists are getting bolder because ever since the rise of Obamanation the people who should be protecting our country (oh, like the SoD or our CiC, aka President) are too busy trying to kiss everyones ass and making sure we are PC about who we profile and who we don't.

September 11th happened in 2001. Obama took office in 2009. I wasn't sure if you knew those dates.

I know the dates, TYVM kind sir. I'm reminded because A) it's a date to NOT forget and B) My dads bday is 9/11/52.

My point about Obama is that since January of last year he's done more apologizing to terrorist countries and organizations known to harbor terrorists than he has kicking ass and taking names and treating them like what they are....scum.

A child molester is scum but a child molester ranks above a terrorist in my book (which is just one step above gak pile).

**Wrexasaur**

FW wrote:My point about Obama is that since January of last year he's done more apologizing to terrorist countries and organizations known to harbor terrorists than he has kicking ass and taking names and treating them like what they are....scum.

None of this is new coming from you, so I will take it with a grain of salt.

You are not America, and we live in the U.S., along side many types of people. The fact that you are too narrow-minded to see that stepping on the face of entire countries, because you want us to be macho-man Ameri-cuh, doesn't help other people understand you. I doubt that you care if people understand you, being as your pattern is one of etc... fill in the blank, we all know your shtick.

I do not want an administration that acts like Rambo. I have absolutely no problem with our current administration, attempting to address the subtle underlying issues involved with foreign policy. Good on them for having some freaking humility, we have ran our campaign of 8 years of stupid, brutish foreign policy. I don't want anymore of that, it is a generic recipe for the entire planet hating us as a nation. You can call it guilt, it doesn't matter, I do not want a bull-headed moron running our foreign policy.

You can jab President Obama, for bowing too low or whatever. Limiting his actions to one of a pompous douche, incapable of respecting the authority of other nations in general, solves no problems. It in fact causes many problems.

**ShumaGorath**

My point about Obama is that since January of last year he's done more apologizing to terrorist countries and organizations known to harbor terrorists than he has kicking ass and taking names and treating them like what they are....scum.

What countries are terrorist countries that he's apologized too again?

A child molester is scum but a child molester ranks above a terrorist in my book (which is just one step above gak pile).

No one cares about your pokemon.

**Wrexasaur**

Shuma wrote:What countries are terrorist countries that he's apologized too again?

I am going to go for Saudi Arabia, for 1000$. Just a guess really.

Every other nation, who has received any form of apology, no matter how small, is a potential terrorist nation in FW's mind.