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There's US troops across Africa, with fresh deployments to Uganda and Chad, and all told drone strikes are being committed in three nations (besides Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq which are obvious for obvious reasons) Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

The administration's saber rattling to "do something" about the Syrian situation with SecDef going as far as saying that "they don't need congressional approval" to do something if they want to isn't a good sign either.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
There's US troops across Africa, with fresh deployments to Uganda and Chad, and all told drone strikes are being committed in three nations (besides Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq which are obvious for obvious reasons) Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

The administration's saber rattling to "do something" about the Syrian situation with SecDef going as far as saying that "they don't need congressional approval" to do something if they want to isn't a good sign either.

eh... Obama's admin ain't doing anything different than what the other Prez did though.

There are quite a few areas where voting for Obama gave us 4 (and counting) more years of Bush.

 d-usa wrote:
There are quite a few areas where voting for Obama gave us 4 (and counting) more years of Bush.

Yup... that's what I was referring too...

Comes to mind:
-Patriot Act
-Guantanamo (I find that hilarious)
-NDAA
-Drones
-not war excercise (Libya, Africa, etc...)

I think once you get in the Execute Branch, you'd loathe to relinquish any powah that your predecessor acquired (even if you campaigned against them... in O's case).

*shrugs* That's the way it has always happens.

Thank God for term limits.

I don't suppose anyone has stopped to consider that as much as we loathe Bush, that just maybe (maybe) some of his policies were actually beneficial in some regard? Beneficial enough that a successor might just continue them?

No that would be silly.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
There's US troops across Africa, with fresh deployments to Uganda and Chad, and all told drone strikes are being committed in three nations (besides Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq which are obvious for obvious reasons) Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

There have been US troops across Africa for quite some time, well before Obama took office. The recent deployment (all 50 soldiers) to Chad is intended to aid in the evacuation of US citizens, and the deployment to Uganda (all 100 soldiers) is intended to aid in combating the LRA. Neither deployment represents a marked change in foreign policy.

As to the drone strikes: the strikes in Yemen and Pakistan began under Bush.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

The administration's saber rattling to "do something" about the Syrian situation with SecDef going as far as saying that "they don't need congressional approval" to do something if they want to isn't a good sign either.

He is correct. They don't need to seek Congressional approval in order to institute a no-fly zone, that principle has been well established by precedent.

 LordofHats wrote:
I don't suppose anyone has stopped to consider that as much as we loathe Bush, that just maybe (maybe) some of his policies were actually beneficial in some regard? Beneficial enough that a successor might just continue them?

No that would be silly.

QUIT MAKING SENSE!

Here... have an internet brewski with me...

 LordofHats wrote:
I don't suppose anyone has stopped to consider that as much as we loathe Bush, that just maybe (maybe) some of his policies were actually beneficial in some regard? Beneficial enough that a successor might just continue them?

No that would be silly.

Very, very silly.

So if there are benefits to canceling out the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, any of them...then it's cool and should be continued?

The whole point of the constitution is to protect the people by making it hard on the government to infringe upon our liberties and rights.

 d-usa wrote:
So if there are benefits to canceling out the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, any of them...then it's cool and should be continued?

The government has numerous ways to deny someone their civil rights and always has. That a policy allows the administration to deny civil rights is nothing new and isn't necessarily harmful to the public at large. Almost sort of like social policy is this complicated thing where we shouldn't just dismiss something on a base notion of badness.

I'm not even saying Obama is continuing these policies is good. Just that I find it odd that people dismiss them outright for just basic reasons without any consideration that they might just serve a useful purpose.

Because the end doesn't justify the means.

 d-usa wrote:
Because the end doesn't justify the means.

Can't determine that if its just idly dismissed outright as 'Orwellian' or 'Bush Bad.' And the means is a very complicated issue to determine in respect to drone strikes into foreign nations or secret wire taps and questionable intelligence gathering. You circumvent any meaningful discussion by throwing out the same old tired statements.

Assassinating US citizens because it is too hard to catch them and put them on trial is not right just because it is easy.

 d-usa wrote:
Assassinating US citizens because it is too hard to catch them and put them on trial is not right just because it is easy.

Now we're getting somewhere. What would you propose to solve the problem then? The US government can't really just led US citizens conspire with its enemies on foreign soil beyond its judicial reach (Hypothetically, we're going to pretend for a moment that he was guilty and posed an eminent threat). In a world where citizenship means little in terms of loyalty, allegiance, and trust, what would you do? If the mastermind behind a successful terrorist attack turned out to be a US citizen, would you deny the right of the government to just summarily execute him/her if no other option existed? What if the government knew that the person in question was planning an attack, that they couldn't be apprehended, and that killing them protected the rest of the citizenry?

Lets pretend maybe that the practice itself isn't inherently wrong, but that the process by which it was achieved might be flawed? Of course we don't know what the process is what with 'national security' and all and that's its own problem but lets stop with the pointless political posturing of 'ends' and 'means' and maybe consider that in the world options to solved problems sometimes come down to very limited choices with a beneficial outcomes (for the rest of us, dying usually doesn't benefit the dead).

If in the end we decide that this practice really isn't worth it that's fine by me. I'm just don't like the idealistic self-righteousness where someone automatically dismisses something based on slogan phrases without ever considering the benefits and limitations.

How about street cameras? People always decry it as a violation of civil rights but what civil right? There is no right to walk down the street without other people noticing your there, and I find it odd we'd deny the government the ability to do something we all do on a daily basis (its really just equivalent to looking out the window). Especially when the benefits of confirming and disproving alibi, finding witnesses, and even having video evidence of a crime is so readily there (the process of quickly confirming alibi itself would save hundreds of thousands of man hours in districts where police are already over worked and under funded).

 LordofHats wrote:
If in the end we decide that this practice really isn't worth it that's fine by me. I'm just don't like the idealistic self-righteousness where someone automatically dismisses something based on slogan phrases without ever considering the benefits and limitations.

You're making the false assumption that the issue's never been considered simply because someone uses shorthand for the argument. These aren't new issues, and I've been hashing them over with various people since I first started talking about this crap in college in 2001. There's only so many times you can say the same thing to the same type of person.

 Seaward wrote:
You're making the false assumption that the issue's never been considered simply because someone uses shorthand for the argument.

I'm making the assumption that there are people who jump to the shorthand and have never looked at the issue, issues that are not clear cut at all and continue to be debated today for that very reason, beyond a shallow level, which as far as I can tell is true of nearly all political issues when it comes to the general public.

 Ouze wrote:
Well, I think it's likely a lot of people started reading it, decided it was too dry, and called it a day. 1984 was definitely slow moving, along with Fahrenheit 451. One of those books they beat you with in high school, like The Crucible or Johnny Tremain.

I was surprised how short it was, and also a very easy read in that it flowed along well. Took me no time at all to finish it. Probably says something about modern fiction being overwritten, he didn't need to write something with 500 pages. Same with Animal Farm.

 LordofHats wrote:
(Hypothetically, we're going to pretend for a moment that he was guilty and posed an eminent threat)

No, we're not. If you want me to agree that someone was guilty, I expect you to prove it. The reason Obama's policies are bad is because they attack the means by which we may distinguish the wrongfully accused innocent from the guilty. A warrant is supposed to be required for a wiretap because the police are morally and legally obligated to make a convincing argument for why they should be allowed to spy on an individual. A trial is supposed to be required before we may imprison or execute someone because the government is morally and legally obligated to make a convincing argument that the accused has actually done something illegal.

If you know someone is guilty, it is because you have evidence. If you have evidence, you don't need warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention without trial or extrajudicial assassinations, because you can use that evidence to push through the gauntlet of safeguards designed to weed out the innocent. Destroying these safeguards only hurts the people who should be saved by them - the falsely accused, the political opponents, the oppressed minorities.

 AlexHolker wrote:
No, we're not. If you want me to agree that someone was guilty, I expect you to prove it.

For all we know they did. Secret procedures and all that (so secret we don't even know what the procedure is). But I only threw that in there because I'm not trying to debate the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, but the situation in general. I doubt al-Awlaki himself posed a credible threat but lets assume there was a US citizen who did? Police will shoot a violent US citizen about to harm others within our own borders with NO judicial process before the fact. The only difference here is that we're using an expensive toy to kill a US citizen on the Presidents order rather than some police official in New York or LA or somewhere.

The real problem with al-Awlaki's case is that no precedent exists for it. No one knows how to handle it and what kind of oversight should be put into it (presumably there is some kind of oversight involved but damned if I know what it is).

 AlexHolker wrote:
If you know someone is guilty, it is because you have evidence. If you have evidence, you don't need warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention without trial or extrajudicial assassinations, because you can use that evidence to push through the gauntlet of safeguards designed to weed out the innocent. Destroying these safeguards only hurts the people who should be saved by them - the falsely accused, the political opponents, the oppressed minorities.

Go find me a case where the US government has issued a wire tap on a US citizen or resident, or searched their home without a warrant and not suffered a consequence for it (like the case being thrown out). EDIT: I'm sure there are plenty to be honest, but that's not exactly new. There will always be cases where authority has circumvented the law, but the real issue is that it's not legal despite what people seem to pretend. The issue with a lot of the Bush policies Obama has continued isn't that they are warrantless or circumventing protections, it's that the process is kept secret and the PATRIOT act has been used to investigate non-Terrorist related activities. When something is secret people automatically assume something shifty must be going on and maybe something shifty is going on, but the nature of beast puts us and the US government in a catch 22 position of awkwardly staring at one another.

This is what I'm talking about. You hear 'warrantless wiretap' and you cry fowl even though the legislation isn't direct at you or any other US citizen (baring accusations of treason/spying).

The warrantless wiretapping conducted by the US isn't directed as US citizens. The whole point of that section of the PATRIOT act was to remove what was believed a legal wall that blocked the US government from doing otherwise legal surveillance that people have exploded into something it isn't. The US government still needs a warrant to search and seize or wire tap a US citizen. The only case where they don't is when they go through a difference process to prove a US citizen is engaged in treason or is a spy which has its own legal process (also secret). EDIT: Ill also point out that the policy of warrantless wiretapping foreign communications has already ended (Bush did it).

Most of the major problems with the PATRIOT act happened in the first few years of its execution which honestly should be expected of new legislation. Its been hammered out since over its various reauthorizations.

 d-usa wrote:

The whole point of the constitution is to protect the people by making it hard on the government to infringe upon our liberties and rights.

Well, maybe the whole point of the Bill of Rights after it was extrapolated.

 dogma wrote:
Well, maybe the whole point of the Bill of Rights after it was extrapolated.

Not "maybe."

I think he was saying "maybe" in the sense of "maybe if what you mean is...", given that the Constitution isn't really focused on spelling out rights. Whereas the BoR is.

Yes, that was my intention.

I think that was one of the concerns that the writers of the constitution had about the Bill of Rights and the reason they didn't want to include one.


The anti-BoR crowd figured that the government should only be able to do things that were specifically laid out in the constitution. There was no point in saying "you can't do stuff" if nothing in the constitution says "you can do stuff". So their argument was "we don't have to say that people have freedom of speech" because nothing in the constitution says "government can prohibit speech".

With the constitution as is (or as it was) people would have all the rights and freedoms from the government except the few things that were specifically included and given to the government. Whereas the bill of rights includes specific righits to people, and the concern was that some people would look at the BoR and conclude that those are our only rights.

Constitution: You have all rights, except "x,y,z"
BoR: You have no rights, except "x,y,z"

 d-usa wrote:
I think that was one of the concerns that the writers of the constitution had about the Bill of Rights and the reason they didn't want to include one.


The anti-BoR crowd figured that the government should only be able to do things that were specifically laid out in the constitution. There was no point in saying "you can't do stuff" if nothing in the constitution says "you can do stuff". So their argument was "we don't have to say that people have freedom of speech" because nothing in the constitution says "government can prohibit speech".

With the constitution as is (or as it was) people would have all the rights and freedoms from the government except the few things that were specifically included and given to the government. Whereas the bill of rights includes specific righits to people, and the concern was that some people would look at the BoR and conclude that those are our only rights.

Constitution: You have all rights, except "x,y,z"
BoR: You have no rights, except "x,y,z"

Gonna agree with this when it comes to the founding fathers. They all clearly had at times very different ideas about what these documents were doing, how they'd be interpreted, and how the future government and citizenry would interact. My problem however is that 200+ years ago, the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated the modern world. They couldn't have even anticipated the post-Antebellum world imo. How on earth can we expect men who needed months to communicate with friends in France to understand Globalism, where the president can call up the French President in less than a second, ask if he wants to go golfing and be on the green in less than 24 hours?

The Constitution and BoR are good documents. They've stood as effective bases for law a lot longer than most documents like them, but imo the time where they are both inadequate to solve our ills is approaching.

See I fail to see their failure. As a basic enumeration of the rights of citizens and restrictions on Government there's nothing wrong with them. Sure no quartering of soldiers is a little outdated, but past that I'd say we're still spot on. You have a right to a trial, the right to speak and worship as you please, the right to weapons if you so chose to have them. The right to be secure in you property and your person. These aren't outdated by any extent I'd say.

Well, one of the things thats outdated is that mail is protected, but some argue that email isn't really mail.

Giving specific rights that cover specific things that apply in spirit to modern ways of doing old things, but aren't covered by the letter of the law because nobody would have imagined them, is probably one of the short comings.

 d-usa wrote:
Well, one of the things thats outdated is that mail is protected, but some argue that email isn't really mail.

Giving specific rights that cover specific things that apply in spirit to modern ways of doing old things, but aren't covered by the letter of the law because nobody would have imagined them, is probably one of the short comings.

True... we've been so averse to changing it. Which is ironic since we do have a mechanism in place to make changes.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
See I fail to see their failure. As a basic enumeration of the rights of citizens and restrictions on Government there's nothing wrong with them. Sure no quartering of soldiers is a little outdated, but past that I'd say we're still spot on. You have a right to a trial, the right to speak and worship as you please, the right to weapons if you so chose to have them. The right to be secure in you property and your person. These aren't outdated by any extent I'd say.

It's abstract. Look at how different the world is now compared to 1913. What do you think it will look like in 50 years? 100? Collecting DNA from everyone at birth is currently widely considered unconstitutional, but the usefulness of the practice is insanely huge. Rape as a crime goes from being one of the hardest crimes to prosecute to one of the easiest for straightforward cases. Any situation where DNA is left at a crime scene (blood/hair) becomes a much more precise means of gathering suspects and witnesses. But we can't do it, because it violates the right to privacy and people are afraid that the government will abuse the system (the former is a valid argument I consider the later to be pointless fear mongering).

A more real example is the PATRIOT act. One of the most controversial aspects was that it freed the NSA from FISA courts when it came to foreign communications surveillance. The problem was that the NSA had to jump through a lot of hoops to get a wire tap onto communications originating in foreign soil if they might ever end up in US territory. So say someone in Russia makes a call to some gun runners in Saudi Arabia and the NSA wants to track their communications. Well they couldn't because that Russian also calls his sister in New York once a week. The PATRIOT act removed this limitation which is where the story of the NSA wiretapping US citizens without a warrant comes from. This is a real big problem in a global age of telecommunication and the BoR is currently inadequate to solve it. Bush ended this program in 2007 and resubjected the NSA to FISA courts due to all the public outcry. But now once again foreign intelligence gathering is hamstringed (though current laws give the NSA more freedom than in the pre-9/11 world).

I can only see issues like this increasing as time goes on and technology keeps advancing.

 LordofHats wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
See I fail to see their failure. As a basic enumeration of the rights of citizens and restrictions on Government there's nothing wrong with them. Sure no quartering of soldiers is a little outdated, but past that I'd say we're still spot on. You have a right to a trial, the right to speak and worship as you please, the right to weapons if you so chose to have them. The right to be secure in you property and your person. These aren't outdated by any extent I'd say.

It's abstract. Look at how different the world is now compared to 1913. What do you think it will look like in 50 years? 100? Collecting DNA from everyone at birth is currently widely considered unconstitutional, but the usefulness of the practice is insanely huge. Rape as a crime goes from being one of the hardest crimes to prosecute to one of the easiest for straightforward cases. Any situation where DNA is left at a crime scene (blood/hair) becomes a much more precise means of gathering suspects and witnesses. But we can't do it, because it violates the right to privacy and people are afraid that the government will abuse the system (the former is a valid argument I consider the later to be pointless fear mongering).

It's a great example of wrong thinking. Because we could have already done this is way back in the day if that was something they were interested in doing.

We could have painted all newborn babies, or get a portrait of all people once they became adults so that they could have mugshuts and lineups. That could have been done even back when we wrote the constitution.

It has nothing to do with fear mongering. It's the law, and just because it would be easier to break the law so that you can catch law breakers is no reason to change that.

Then we could have updated it to switch to photographs, and keep an updated database of every american for crime fighting purposes.

Then we could finger print everybody as technology changed, and keep a database of every single US fingerprint.

And now we could update that for DNA databases.

Or you could just see that the constitution plainly states that the government has to have a reason for searching us and a reason for obtaining information. It's spelled out pretty clearly, and nothing about technology changes that. The government has to have a reason to search us. Just because it would be easier to search everybody and then link them to crimes later doesn't mean that it is right.

The constitution protects innocent people. It was not written to make it easier to catch bad people.