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Will they charge high ranking members of the Bush administration for repeating what everyone already knew?

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After all she admitted she told her husband her status when they married, which was illegal

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She also let it be known to numerous neighbors, who were recalled this week to give last minute testimony about what they knew and when they knew it

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Or they could just dump the whole thing since her status as a covert operative was terminated some years before she was unmasked (in the press that is, she unmasked herself long before she returned to a job at Lnagley

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Some people ignore the facts. Others... well, they just let Rush or Hannity of O'Reilly make them up for them!

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Originally posted by Hero:
On the upside, Miers is out. Now there will be an ultra-conservative woman appointed who will lead the charge to overturn Rowe. And if the Democrats balk, then obviously a woman can't get a fair hearing. Democrats should have seen this one coming, I called it the day Roberts was confirmed. Feint to the center then hard right, both women or minorities so they can't oppose the running back without offending damn near everyone. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (For the record I support the Rowe reasoning, but feel the case needs to be revisited periodically to account for changes in the scientific foundation, ie the determinations about sustainable life are based on thirty-year old science and need modernization. Such periodical review will maintain Rowe until science develops enough to allow Rowe to die a natural death by shortening the abortion window rather then overturning sound legal and scientific reasoning.)

H

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Originally posted by KJW:
I assume you mean Roe v. Wade. Which was revisited in the 90s in Casey v. Planned Parenthood in exactly the way you want. You really need to keep up on your case law, but kudos for foreseeing a change in the law a decade after in happened. :)

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...post-Roe neonatal care developments have advanced viability to a point somewhat earlier, these facts go only to the scheme of time limits on the realization of competing interests...The soundness or unsoundness of that constitutional judgment in no sense turns on when viability occurs. Whenever it may occur, its attainment will continue to serve as the critical fact.

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Well, Rove has been informed he won't be indicted today (10/28). Investigation not complete. Check any news source for details.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Well, Rove has been informed he won't be indicted today (10/28). Investigation not complete. Check any news source for details.

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I heard that Fitzgerald is looking into the issue of who made that CLUMSY forgery of a uranium document. So Rove gets to dangle over he abyss for a while.

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Originally posted by Hero:

They'll never indict Rove. I'm as sure of that as I am that Mr. Sulu craves the loving embrace of a good woman.

What? DAMN IT!!!!

H

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The grand jury indictment charged Libby with one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury and two false statement counts. If convicted on all five, he could face as much as 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines.

In each of the counts, the basic allegation against Libby is that he lied to investigators or Fitzgerald's grand jury about his conversations with reporters. He is not accused of purposely revealing the identity of a covert officer, the potential charge that Fitzgerald was initially appointed to investigate.

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Originally posted by Hero:
Turns out the Republicans have a bigger tent when it comes to reproductive issues.

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So we still have no one charged with outing Ms. Plame. I thought that was the whole purpose of the excercise...or was it?

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Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States...

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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So we still have no one charged with outing Ms. Plame. I thought that was the whole purpose of the excercise...or was it?

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Actually, Special Prosecutors (like Independent Prosecutors) get to roam wherever the trail leads. Indicting anyone under the 1982 law is difficult because you have to prove "intent".

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Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States...

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From you question I assume that you think it's okay that the VPs' Chief Aide deliberately lied to a Grand Jury about matters of national intelligence. However, the investigation is ongoing and we'll see what turns up.

Please don't think they give a shit.

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Originally posted by XanderHarris:
sorry off topic.....

"the party that preaches abstinence-only programs scientifically proven to not work."


are you trying to suggest that abstinence doesn't work? that somehow you can have babies and get STDs from not having sex?

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Thus, when the president suggests that abstinence is 100% effective, he is implicitly citing its perfect-use rate—and indeed, abstinence is 100% effective if "used" with perfect consistency. But common sense suggests that in the real world, abstinence as a contraceptive method can and does fail. People who intend to remain abstinent may "slip" and have sex unexpectedly. Research is beginning to suggest how difficult abstinence can be to use consistently over time. For example, a recent study presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Psychological Society (APS) found that over 60% of college students who had pledged virginity during their middle or high school years had broken their vow to remain abstinent until marriage. What is not known is how many of these broken vows represent people consciously choosing to abandon abstinence and initiate sexual activity, and how many are simply typical-use abstinence failures.

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Originally posted by XanderHarris:
first of all let me start of by saying,
sorry i didn't mean to sound snippy! i am usually a decent debater who doesnt disolve into sarcasm and name calling, but you were right, it was like 8:30am when i read that i did infact misread the sentence.

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i just get all bent out of shape when libs say 'forget about abstinence, just teach them safe sex' because the safest sex of all is NO sex. i'm not in a position to argue if the programs themsevles work, but i think it should be STRESSED in the health classes.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
7%, no he's not joking. Democrats these days are 100% pro-choice,

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ie. a group that stands up and supports creationism over evolution loses a lot of scientific credibility. But eventually RTL won me over.

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It's really an individual issue, sure, but the question depends on who you view as the individual. Certainly no individual right to kill is ever supported by law, so if you view the [potential] child as an individual, then you are right to life, if you don't you're probably pro choice.

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But even in the Bush (W) administration, which I consider to be way way way outside the mainstream of the republican party,

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several people have varying opinions on this. Miers and Gonzalez are both known to have a history of being pro-choice. Even VP Cheney supports gay rights. The GOP is a lot less lockstep than some of the spinsters make it look.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Oh dear.

I don't want to get into "THE argument" over Roe v. Wade,

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on the left seem to think is valid, which is "right to die."

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Okay, take it this way: rape/incest babies are group A and other babies are group B. If aborting A is okay, aborting B is okay, if aborting B is not okay, aborting group A is not okay. Any other logical conclusion would be a fallacy, so the argument makes no sense.

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I would argue in favor of the currently living person. The cost to society of educating replacement humans is extreme, so better to keep old people.

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BTW, I think if rape and incest cost people money in addition to criminal prosecution, crime rates would go way down.

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The problem with Christians doesn't really come from the Christians, it comes from the opposition to them, which basically says "No, you can't live like that, everyone has to live the same way." To which they respond "okay, everyone will live our way, because they're are more of us." And then we get this theocratic take-over.

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I'm still hopeful we can jail them all.

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What I'd like to see is for the Democrats to bicker more. I think they fall too much in like behind Reid and Hillary and Kerry ... like a pack of rabid wolves, they'll find themselves with president Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the panel of advisors will be the same people who are advising Bush right now, because they are the same people who were advising Bill Clinton.

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7% said
You appear to be rational, so I don;t think there's going to be a blow-up. It's the lunatics on both sides that turn it into a verbal shouting match of nuclear proportions.
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Yeah, agreed, this is what I meant. I didn't think we would lose it, but there's the danger of less cool heads weighing in.

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right to die

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I'm too much of a cynic for this one. I don't believe, and so I can't make an argument. I would just like "right-to-die" to team up with "emotional trauma and mental anguish" and together they could fly off to the discard pile. Do these issues exist? Maybe. Should they be in legislation. No. These are not major issues of our day, and since we are not solving the major issues of our day, we don't have time to waste on this irrelevant stuff we are wasting our time on.

I feel pretty succinctly, the issues of the day are:

1. First and foremost, a bunch of idiots are destroying the planet. Much of this is going on in Brazil, Africa and SE Asia in deforestation, (also some here) and the rest is the slow but increaing water and air poisoning. This is being done by a handful of self serving profiteers who are doing it for truly minor amounts of profit. I think killing them wouldn't be a terrible idea, but I'd be content to build a colony on the moon and send them there.

2. We are caught in a perpetual global war because some people still believe socialism is good, and if it were all the world were in a big top down structure of govt., there would be an end to suffering. In reality the suffering would then be doled out unilaterally from that one world govt. onto it's people if they didn't do exactly what it said all of the time. And they wouldn't, because they're people.

3. We have overzealous ideologues and corrupt crookaticians rapidly dismantling America and other forward thinking states, and making the world hate them in the process. Rather than leadership by good example, we've entered into a time of, F^&k you world, go grab you guns and let's see who has the biggest dictatorship.

If we get that settled I'll take the Roe vs. Wade issue more seriously.

The rape story doesn't hold up though.

1. The rape is the rape and you can't blame it's mental trauma whatever that's worth on the abortion or lack there of.

2. The child will be sure, motherless, but so what. Many motherless babies become useful members of society. Julius Caesar for example.

3. But also, the reason this doesn't hold up as an argument is that if we assume she has the baby first, and then can't take care of it, your argument could still be made, only it would come across as her saying to the police "Well, I figured the baby'd be unhappy anyway so I chucked it in the trashcan."

If that sounds morally reprehensible, which I hope it does, then you have to figure to everyone who thinks the foetus is alive, that's what it sounds like.


Okay, here's something I have a big problem with.

People, including people related to me, are adopting babies from third world countries because the demand for babies is so great here. In and of itself that might be okay. The parents to be often have a white man's burden feeling about it "Oh I'm helping some unfortunate" but they're not, they're helping themselves. They subtracted one Whereveristan'er and added one American. But the reprocussions don't end there. Many of these countries have an illegal baby market. People are kidnapping children to sell, and even killing pregnant women and cutting them open to take their babies to sell. All in all, this is less than ideal.

So, to look at it from a practical capitalist point of view. Why throw away a perfectly good cash crop? I mean, pregnant teen can't afford to hire people to look after her baby? Well, maybe she needs some extra cash. Babies are going for $30,000 these days. There's a nice little send you through college.

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Actually, teachers don't make shit for salary, the cost of drugs for the elderly probably costs more. JUST KIDDING!

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Nowhere near. The cost of education is extreme as I said, in NYC $17,000 pre child per year, and about $10,000 more than that for college. so that's minimum 17 years. Plus a total of 22 years of wait until you have a replacement usful member of society which is opportunity cost (22 *salary $39K) and then there's the cost of supporting the person (another $10K*22) And this is for an average citizen like a phone company employee or GM factory worker.

That's $1.4 Million for your replacement human. Drugs for the elderly in the us can run up to $100K for their remaining life typically. but in many countries that don't have state sponsor monopolies on healthcare, that is more like $10K.

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I think forced sterilization would do it too. And I'm not sure I'm kidding on this one.

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Get sure. I don't mean to be hostile on this point. I enjoy the civil discussion, and I think you've raised a lot of good points. Forced sterilization is a socialist idea at it's core.

The way I understand it, Socialism is the idea that the perfect society can be orchestrated from the top down, usually through legislation, and often enforcing that legislation through the application of force.

There's something else about it, and one of the things that the left alienates me and a lot of other people with. They don't seem to shake support for this idea, in spite of overwhelming evidence that it's a disaster.

I like to rant about socialism, so let me :) Bitch at me when I'm done. This isn't directed at you, just I enjoy ranting because there are still people who haven't made the connection yet.

Bush btw is clearly a socialist, not just in that all of his advisors were members of institutions that had either "communist" "socialist" or "social-[as a prefix, meanign socialist]" in the name. He is also a socialist because all of his policies have serious socialist signatures in their design. The Patriot Act is one of the most solidly socialist documents ever written.

It's unfair to say Bush is a socialist, because Bush is a cokehead chimpanzee. But because he does whatever his "handlers" tell him too, he is an acting socialist.

But I want to take a look at socialist experiments in the past.

Soviet Union. 40 million killed in two bloody wars, 13 million in a civil war, and 33 million executed by their own govt. And that's just in russia itself. We could move to central asia and eastern europe and kick those number up a bit. Add to that, everything that anyone said to anyone, was recorded monitored and censored, and freedom of movement was so restricted that you had to get a govt. pass just to leave your own city, normal citizenry was roughly equivalent to being on probation in this country. And this is THEIR side fo the story.

National Socialism in Germany 1933-1945. Need I say more about this one? Well, two things not generally posted about it, about 1/3 of the country died, 60 million people worldwide were killed, and about 12 million in camps, about 1/2 of whom were jewish. Freedom was of course non-existant.

Chinese communism. I don't have accurate death tolls here, but it's in the neighborhood of five million. Then you can add another several mil for all of the auxillary domino states:

Korea: 2m
Vietnam: 3m
Cambodia: 1m

and on it goes, more recently

At least a million for Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party.

Another million for Saddam Hussein's Baathist [Socialist] Party

Anyway, the list goes on. I'm sure that the balance of the remainder unnamed here would show the balance of the not yet named destruction to also be at socialist instigation.

So okay, some nominally 'socialist' politicians have done okay in places like Sweden, but let's be real here, Sweden is a capitalist democracy, and if someone is elected under a party with the name 'socialist' in it and then proceeds to implement capitalist democratic policies, they are really a capitalist democrat.

There are some socialists I respect, particularly as individuals, but these people should be encouraged to reform before they leave power because their relatively benign rule could be replaced with rampant tyranny if the socialist system remains in place. Particularly I'm thinking of Castro here. Hugo Chavez I also respect. I think the Bushwacked administration is all reaver and no brain, and is handling this one from a 'hey let's take their oil while we're at it' point of view.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
People, including people related to me, are adopting babies from third world countries because the demand for babies is so great here. In and of itself that might be okay. The parents to be often have a white man's burden feeling about it "Oh I'm helping some unfortunate" but they're not, they're helping themselves. They subtracted one Whereveristan'er and added one American. But the reprocussions don't end there. Many of these countries have an illegal baby market. People are kidnapping children to sell, and even killing pregnant women and cutting them open to take their babies to sell. All in all, this is less than ideal.

So, to look at it from a practical capitalist point of view. Why throw away a perfectly good cash crop? I mean, pregnant teen can't afford to hire people to look after her baby? Well, maybe she needs some extra cash. Babies are going for $30,000 these days. There's a nice little send you through college.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I feel pretty succinctly, the issues of the day are:

1. First and foremost, a bunch of idiots are destroying the planet. Much of this is going on in Brazil, Africa and SE Asia in deforestation, (also some here) and the rest is the slow but increaing water and air poisoning. This is being done by a handful of self serving profiteers who are doing it for truly minor amounts of profit.

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2. We are caught in a perpetual global war because some people still believe socialism is good, and if it were all the world were in a big top down structure of govt., there would be an end to suffering. In reality the suffering would then be doled out unilaterally from that one world govt. onto it's people if they didn't do exactly what it said all of the time. And they wouldn't, because they're people.

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3. We have overzealous ideologues and corrupt crookaticians rapidly dismantling America and other forward thinking states, and making the world hate them in the process. Rather than leadership by good example, we've entered into a time of, F^&k you world, go grab you guns and let's see who has the biggest dictatorship.

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If we get that settled I'll take the Roe vs. Wade issue more seriously.

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Okay, here's something I have a big problem with.

People, including people related to me, are adopting babies from third world countries because the demand for babies is so great here.

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Actually, teachers don't make shit for salary, the cost of drugs for the elderly probably costs more. JUST KIDDING!

Nowhere near. The cost of education is extreme
That's $1.4 Million for your replacement human. Drugs for the elderly in the us can run up to $100K for their remaining life typically. but in many countries that don't have state sponsor monopolies on healthcare, that is more like $10K.

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in spite of overwhelming evidence that it's a disaster.

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I like to rant about socialism, so let me :) Bitch at me when I'm done. So okay, some nominally 'socialist' politicians have done okay in places like Sweden, but let's be real here, Sweden is a capitalist democracy

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I think the Bushwacked administration is all reaver and no brain, and is handling this one from a 'hey let's take their oil while we're at it' point of view.

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