Laugh at Liberals Archive for April, 2005
ABSOLUTE POWER IS ABSOULTELY WRONG!
by Buck Evinger
Absolute Power, posted by Mz. Flowers in My Hair, is absolutely wrong, Once again demonstrating the average liberal’s total disregard for facts, history and the truth.
Bush did indeed re-nominate 5 judicial candidates, and for good reason. Unfortunately that is where the accuracy of fact in Mz. Flowers argument ends. The people who “examined their record and found them to have”extreme views and impaired objectivity” were partisan democrats. Mz. Flowers either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to awknowledge that all of Bush’s current nominees being blocked from Senate vote have a.) Received the American Bar Associations highest rating. The ABA is not exactly a conservative group, now is it. All of these nominees have been approved by the judiciary committee. The only thing they are just waiting for is what every single judicial nominee has received prior to this 108th Congress. A straight yes, or no vote from the Senate. If any group has extreme views and impaired objectivity, it is Senate Democrats.
It is the Democrats who have gone to the extreme on judicial nominees. Just to set the record straight, here are the facts.
Republicans didn’t coin the phrase, Nuclear Option, that came from the Democrats in an effort to make Republican procedures seem extreme. A more accurate name would be “The Constitutional Option.”
Senate Democrats are the ones going nuclear, by filibustering and requiring a super-majority to approve a judicial nomination. Prior to this congress, that has never happened before. Now you might be under the impression that Democrats filibustring effort is nothing more than the practice of constitutional democracy as planned for by our founding fathers. You’d be wrong.
Cloture, or a 3/5ths majority of 60 votes required to end a filibuster, is not an ideal written into the constitutional by our founding fathers. It is a Senate rule that was created less than 30 years ago. In fact, about 10 years ago SENATE DEMOCRATS changed that very rule, dropping it from a 2/3rds majority vote (66) to the current 3/5ths. That effort was led by none other tha Sen. Robert Byrd (DEM. WV and former KKK member.) So much for tradition.
In the entire history of the United States, filibusters have NEVER been used to block a president’s judicial nominees. Mz. Flowers, do you really think these nominees have extreme views. Why not do some research on who these nominees actually are. Here is one example. Judge Janice Brown from the California Appeals court. The extreme mark against her is that she is supposedly against affirmative action and has a racial bias against blacks.
Here is her picture. 
. Funny, she doesn’t look like a racist.
Republicans and conservatives don’t want judges to do anything but judge. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch of government to make laws by a vote representative of the will of the people. Democrats want an activist judiciary that allows one person in a black robe, responding to a privately funded legal proceeding, to create law. It is the only way liberal ideas, which are not part of the mainstream, can become law. If most ideals held forth by the Democratic party were required to be put to a vote, they would never happen.
LAL - God Bless George Bush!
Absolute Power
Well Friends, again the present government is flexing its muscle just to see how strong it can become.
George Bush talks a lot these days about spreading freedom around the globe, but here at home freedom and democracy seem to be disappearing.
Bush re-nominated five candidates to federal courts who failed to win approval in his first term because those who examined their records found them to have extreme views and impaired objectivity. Now, with a Republican majority, these judges should win quick endorsement. The Senate Democrats could prevent their appointments using a filibuster, but Republicans have a trick in reserve they call “The Nuclear Option.” They would rewrite the rules to eliminate the traditional right to filibuster.
This is only the prelude. Four Supreme Court seats will likely turn over in the next four years. Radical Republicans want complete power to appoint Supreme Court justices that will favor corporate interests. It will be payback time for corporate dollars that financed the last election.
It does not bode well for American democracy if Bush, Republicans and corporations exercise absolute, unchecked power over all three branches of Federal Government.
What is next?
Suzanne
BLOGGERS COMMENT POSTERS…..PLEASE READ THIS
I am writing this for all of the people who regularly post here on this web site, either as a blogger or in the comment section. I am toying with the idea of changing things up a bit and I would like your comments and feedback. You can post your thoughts online or send me an email.
This site was originally designed to focus on humor about the left, but has evolved into a pretty good debate site. That is because of you. Most conservatives and liberals who post on this site are passionate, intelligent and love a good fight! With that being the case, I’d like to keep the humor going, but encourage the debate even more. I think its a good thing and I’d like to see it get even better.
The second issue prompting the redesign is internet fraud. You probably notice that if you post a comment, it can take quite a while for it to appear online. That is becasue I, or the webmaster, have to manually approve each comment. The reason for that is because of “spam postings”. These fake comments are actually an effort on the part of dishonest people to enhance links their websites, generate click through traffic and make money. There are software systems that automatically search out comment sections on sites and post. We routinely delete those.
With all that being said, what I would like to do is divide our main page into two sections, left and right. Yes, liberals would post on the left and conservatives on the right. This would then become a true blog site, in that only those people pre-approved to post, could post. Eveything would look more like the center page articles, instead of just the comments section.
That would eliminate the spam blogging problem and give the people truly interested in debating topics an opportunity to post more prominently.
Anyway, it’s pointless unless you want to participate. You can let me know via email or post your comment on the comment section.
Thanks for all that you’ve done to improve this site. I look forward to making it even better.
Buck Evinger
LAL
Liberal Experts
Liberal Experts
The things most Liberal’s
Think they’re experts on,
Are usually the things,
They’ve never done.
While their rhetoric’s raucous,
Their record is poor
In suiting up for the game,
Or volunteering for war.
It’s so easy to think
You’re calling it right,
When you’re not on the field,
Or involved in the fight;
To piously protest
The spilling of blood,
While not one drop of yours
Lies mixed with the mud.
Oh yes it’s so easy
To be scolding and bold,
When you’ve not felt the fear
Makes the blood run ice cold.
Standing safe on the sidelines,
Do you never feel shame,
When you’re bawling at us
That we’re blowing the game?
Till you’ve carried the rifle,
Till you’ve handled the ball,
Just sit down and shut up
And let us make the call.
To you few Liberal warriors,
Who truly give us your best,
We wish your hearts and cojones
Were shared by the rest.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
The USA Patriot Act - “My Oh My”
Hi everyone . . .
well, I have been working on this for quite a while, now that it is finish where else to put it? Only on my very favorite Political Site -
Laugh at Liberals.
Surveillance Under the USA PATRIOT Act
What is the USA PATRIOT Act?
Just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed the “USA/Patriot Act,” an overnight revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.
Why Congress passed the Patriot Act
Most of the changes to surveillance law made by the Patriot Act were part of a longstanding law enforcement wish list that had been previously rejected by Congress, in some cases repeatedly. Congress reversed course because it was bullied into it by the Bush Administration in the frightening weeks after the September 11 attack.
The Senate version of the Patriot Act, which closely resembled the legislation requested by Attorney General John Ashcroft, was sent straight to the floor with no discussion, debate, or hearings. Many Senators complained that they had little chance to read it, much less analyze it, before having to vote. In the House, hearings were held, and a carefully constructed compromise bill emerged from the Judiciary Committee. But then, with no debate or consultation with rank-and-file members, the House leadership threw out the compromise bill and replaced it with legislation that mirrored the Senate version. Neither discussion nor amendments were permitted, and once again members barely had time to read the thick bill before they were forced to cast an up-or-down vote on it. The Bush Administration implied that members who voted against it would be blamed for any further attacks - a powerful threat at a time when the nation was expecting a second attack to come any moment and when reports of new anthrax letters were appearing daily.
Congress and the Administration acted without any careful or systematic effort to determine whether weaknesses in our surveillance laws had contributed to the attacks, or whether the changes they were making would help prevent further attacks. Indeed, many of the act’s provisions have nothing at all to do with terrorism.
The Patriot Act increases the governments’ surveillance powers in four areas:
Records searches. It expands the government’s ability to look at records on an individual’s activity being held by a third party. (Section 215)
Secret searches. It expands the government’s ability to search private property without notice to the owner. (Section 213)
Intelligence searches. It expands a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that had been created for the collection of foreign intelligence information (Section 218).
“Trap and trace” searches. It expands another Fourth Amendment exception for spying that collects “addressing” information about the origin and destination of communications, as opposed to the content (Section 214).
1. Expanded access to personal records held by third parties
One of the most significant provisions of the Patriot Act makes it far easier for the authorities to gain access to records of citizens’ activities being held by a third party. At a time when computerization is leading to the creation of more and more such records, Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FBI to force anyone at all - including doctors, libraries, bookstores, universities, and Internet service providers - to turn over records on their clients or customers.
Unchecked power
The result is unchecked government power to rifle through individuals’ financial records, medical histories, Internet usage, bookstore purchases, library usage, travel patterns, or any other activity that leaves a record. Making matters worse:
The government no longer has to show evidence that the subjects of search orders are an “agent of a foreign power,” a requirement that previously protected Americans against abuse of this authority.
The FBI does not even have to show a reasonable suspicion that the records are related to criminal activity, much less the requirement for “probable cause” that is listed in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. All the government needs to do is make the broad assertion that the request is related to an ongoing terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation.
Judicial oversight of these new powers is essentially non-existent. The government must only certify to a judge - with no need for evidence or proof - that such a search meets the statute’s broad criteria, and the judge does not even have the authority to reject the application.
Surveillance orders can be based in part on a person’s First Amendment activities, such as the books they read, the Web sites they visit, or a letter to the editor they have written.
A person or organization forced to turn over records is prohibited from disclosing the search to anyone. As a result of this gag order, the subjects of surveillance never even find out that their personal records have been examined by the government. That undercuts an important check and balance on this power: the ability of individuals to challenge illegitimate searches.
Why the Patriot Act’s expansion of records searches is unconstitutional
Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Constitution in several ways. It:
Violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing probable cause to believe that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
Violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech by prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy.
Violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercising their freedom of speech.
Violates the Fourth Amendment by failing to provide notice - even after the fact - to persons whose privacy has been compromised. Notice is also a key element of due process, which is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
2. More secret searches
For centuries, common law has required that the government cannot go into your property without telling you, and must therefore give you notice before it executes a search. That “knock and announce” principle has long been recognized as a part of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
The Patriot Act, however, unconstitutionally amends the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow the government to conduct searches without notifying the subjects, at least until long after the search has been executed. This means that the government can enter a house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupants are away, search through their property, take photographs, and in some cases even seize property - and not tell them until later.
Notice is a crucial check on the government’s power because it forces the authorities to operate in the open, and allows the subject of searches to protect their Fourth Amendment rights. For example, it allows them to point out irregularities in a warrant, such as the fact that the police are at the wrong address, or that the scope of the warrant is being exceeded (for example, by rifling through dresser drawers in a search for a stolen car). Search warrants often contain limits on what may be searched, but when the searching officers have complete and unsupervised discretion over a search, a property owner cannot defend his or her rights.
Finally, this new “sneak and peek” power can be applied as part of normal criminal investigations; it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or collecting foreign intelligence.
3. Expansion of the intelligence exception in wiretap law
Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can secretly conduct a physical search or wiretap on American citizens to obtain evidence of crime without proving probable cause, as the Fourth Amendment explicitly requires.
A 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause when the purpose of a wiretap or search was to gather foreign intelligence. The rationale was that since the search was not conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence to put someone on trial, the standards could be loosened. In a stark demonstration of why it can be dangerous to create exceptions to fundamental rights, however, the Patriot Act expanded this once-narrow exception to cover wiretaps and searches that DO collect evidence for regular domestic criminal cases. FISA previously allowed searches only if the primary purpose was to gather foreign intelligence. But the Patriot Act changes the law to allow searches when “a significant purpose” is intelligence. That lets the government circumvent the Constitution’s probable cause requirement even when its main goal is ordinary law enforcement.
The eagerness of many in law enforcement to dispense with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment was revealed in August 2002 by the secret court that oversees domestic intelligence spying (the “FISA Court”). Making public one of its opinions for the first time in history, the court revealed that it had rejected an attempt by the Bush Administration to allow criminal prosecutors to use intelligence warrants to evade the Fourth Amendment entirely. The court also noted that agents applying for warrants had regularly filed false and misleading information. That opinion is now on appeal.
4. Expansion of the “pen register” exception in wiretap law
Another exception to the normal requirement for probable cause in wiretap law is also expanded by the Patriot Act. Years ago, when the law governing telephone wiretaps was written, a distinction was created between two types of surveillance. The first allows surveillance of the content or meaning of a communication, and the second only allows monitoring of the transactional or addressing information attached to a communication. It is like the difference between reading the address printed on the outside of a letter, and reading the letter inside, or listening to a phone conversation and merely recording the phone numbers dialed and received.
Wiretaps limited to transactional or addressing information are known as “Pen register/trap and trace” searches (for the devices that were used on telephones to collect telephone numbers). The requirements for getting a PR/TT warrant are essentially non-existent: the FBI need not show probable cause or even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. It must only certify to a judge - without having to prove it - that such a warrant would be “relevant” to an ongoing criminal investigation. And the judge does not even have the authority to reject the application.
The Patriot Act broadens the pen register exception in two ways:
“Nationwide” pen register warrants
Under the Patriot Act PR/TT orders issued by a judge are no longer valid only in that judge’s jurisdiction, but can be made valid anywhere in the United States. This “nationwide service” further marginalizes the role of the judiciary, because a judge cannot meaningfully monitor the extent to which his or her order is being used. In addition, this provision authorizes the equivalent of a blank warrant: the court issues the order, and the law enforcement agent fills in the places to be searched. That is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment’s explicit requirement that warrants be written “particularly describing the place to be searched.”
Pen register searches applied to the Internet
The Patriot Act applies the distinction between transactional and content-oriented wiretaps to the Internet. The problem is that it takes the weak standards for access to transactional data and applies them to communications that are far more than addresses. On an e-mail message, for example, law enforcement has interpreted the “header” of a message to be transactional information accessible with a PR/TT warrant. But in addition to routing information, e-mail headers include the subject line, which is part of the substance of a communication - on a letter; for example, it would clearly be inside the envelope.
The government also argues that the transactional data for Web surfing is a list of the URLs or Web site addresses that a person visits. For example, it might record the fact that they visited “www.aclu.org” at 1:15 in the afternoon, and then skipped over to “www.fbi.gov” at 1:30. This claim that URLs are just addressing data breaks down in two different ways:
Web addresses are rich and revealing content. The URLs or “addresses” of the Web pages we read are not really addresses; they are the titles of documents that we download from the Internet. When we “visit” a Web page what we are really doing is downloading that page from the Internet onto our computer, where it is displayed. Therefore, the list of URLs that we visit during a Web session is really a list of the documents we have downloaded - no different from a list of electronic books we might have purchased online. That is much richer information than a simple list of the people we have communicated with; it is intimate information that reveals who we are and what we are thinking about - much more like the content of a phone call than the number dialed. After all, it is often said that reading is a “conversation” with the author.
Web addresses contain communications sent by a surfer. URLs themselves often have content embedded within them. A search on the Google search engine, for example, creates a page with a custom-generated URL that contains material that is clearly private content, such as: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=sexual+orientation
Similarly, if I fill out an online form - to purchase goods or register my preferences, for example - those products and preferences will often be identified in the resulting URL.
The erosion of accountability
Attempts to find out how the new surveillance powers created by the Patriot Act were implemented during their first year were in vain. In June 2002 the House Judiciary Committee demanded that the Department of Justice answer questions about how it was using its new authority. The Bush/Ashcroft Justice Department essentially refused to describe how it was implementing the law; it left numerous substantial questions unanswered, and classified others without justification. In short, not only has the Bush Administration undermined judicial oversight of government spying on citizens by pushing the Patriot Act into law, but it is also undermining another crucial check and balance on surveillance powers: accountability to Congress and the public.
Non-surveillance provisions
Although this fact sheet focuses on the direct surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act, citizens should be aware that the act also contains a number of other provisions. The Act:
Puts CIA back in business of spying on Americans. The Patriot Act gives the Director of Central Intelligence the power to identify domestic intelligence requirements. That opens the door to the same abuses that took place in the 1970s and before, when the CIA engaged in widespread spying on protest groups and other Americans.
Creates a new crime of “domestic terrorism.” The Patriot Act transforms protesters into terrorists if they engage in conduct that “involves acts dangerous to human life” to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” How long will it be before an ambitious or politically motivated prosecutor uses the statute to charge members of controversial activist groups like Operation Rescue or Greenpeace with terrorism? Under the Patriot Act, providing lodging or assistance to such “terrorists” exposes a person to surveillance or prosecution. Furthermore, the law gives the attorney general and the secretary of state the power to detain or deport any non-citizen who belongs to or donates money to one of these broadly defined “domestic terrorist” groups.
Allows for the indefinite detention of non-citizens. The Patriot Act gives the attorney general unprecedented new power to determine the fate of immigrants. The attorney general can order detention based on a certification that he or she has “reasonable grounds to believe” a non-citizen endangers national security. Worse, if the foreigner does not have a country that will accept them, they can be detained indefinitely without trial.
SCHIAVO IS DEAD, THE POPE IS GONE AND I AIN’T FEELING TO GOOD MYSELF
I have been extremely busy in my regular business lately, so posting here on the web site has been put on the back burner for a while. I intend on getting it up to full form in the next few months. I am also in the process of rethinking how we present the commentary that appears here. I’ll ask our regulars for some input on that in the coming weeks. But onto the news.
HOW THE SCHIAVO STORY SHOULD READ
Terri Schiavo was murdered this week. Her killer is George Greer, a professional hit-man, still on the loose and considered armed and dangerous. He was last seen wearing a black robe and posing as a member of the weakest branch of government. Greer was hired by the victims husband and also received assistance from the Democratic Party and liberal pundits. Anyone with sick relatives are warned to be on the look out.
Okay, maybe that’s a little over the top, but not by much. I’ve held back on commenting on this story for a couple of reasons. First, I didnt’ really know the facts and second, I’ve had personal experience with the same thing. If more people knew the real facts they would be scared to death by what has happened. First my personal experience.
In 1990, after years of poor and declining health, including the need to breath through trach-tube, my father had an accident which caused his breathing tube to stop functioning. He was without oxygen for at least 30 minutes, maybe more, and even though he was revived the lack of oxygen damaged his brain severely. He lay in a hospital bed for several days and doctors ran all the tests and scans they needed to assure us, his family, that he would not come out of his vegitative state and would require constant life support to survive.
Because we knew that he did not want to live in that condition, we did not hesitate when the doctor offered the option of removing life support and letting him die. We stepped out of the room while the nurses removed the breathing tubes and turned off the machines. When we returned, the kids gathered around his bed and held him as he died. It took less than 30 minutes.
I miss him. I miss my father every day and I would be lying if I said I’ve never had doubts about what we did. Were we being selfish so as to avoid the possiblity of years of daily care and medical expenses? Did we do the right thing? My heart and my head says, yes.
Terri Schiavo’s death was not the right thing. Where my father could not have lived without tubes and machines breathing for him and pumping his heart, all Terri needed was care and nourishment.Part of her family wanted to give it to her. Had my father only been in a coma and only needed somebody to feed him and care for him, that is exactly what we would have done.
Terri was actually no different than a little baby. She needed constant care.
She couldn’t feed herself, but with the help of loving parents, she could have lived a fulfilling life. How is that different from your average 2 year old? So shouldn’t it be legal to kill a baby you didn’t want? OH WAIT, I FORGOT, IT IS!
That is really what this boils down to. How you view the sanctity and preciousness of life. Some people, like Terri’s husband, Judge Greer, all liberals and most Democrats, view human existence in degrees. Life, in certain stages, is more worthy. That is scary, because it means somebody else can have the right to choose if the degree or stage of life you are in is worth allowing to continue. Terri was killed for only one reason, she couldn’t’ speak for herself.
What if a little baby is born with a severe handicap. It’s mother dies and there is no other family. Shouldnt’ we just kill it? Put it out of its misery? Nobody will want to adopt a handicapped baby, right? Why waste all that time and money on a baby that may never be able to walk or talk or even care for itself.
What if an old man in a nursing home is unresponsive. Nobody knows if he has any family and his bank account is empty? Why not kill him? He’s just gonna be a burden on the rest of us and how long will he live anyway?
And what about prisoners? You know, the really bad ones who have killed people and got out of prison and killed again? They’re never gonna change, are they? Let’s just kill them and be done with it.
Think about those scenarios. Think about Terri Schiavo. Now think about the incomprehensible position of most liberals on the sanctity and preciousnous of life.
It’s okay to kill the unborn, for any reason. It’s the mother choice and we have to respect that.
It’s okay to kill people in comas, even if their family doesnt’ want them to die.
It is wrong to take the life of a murderer because all life is precious.
Wait a minute…my head won’t stop spinning….there, I’m okay now.
I applaud the Republican party for being willing to take a stand for life. It is consisten with who we Republicans are and what we believe.
Terri Schiavo was murdered because her husband didn’t want to deal with her any more and he found a willing judge and public to back him up. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will.
