yay...another ignorant bushgeek....btw, it's spelled "Bataan"

StonesFanatic wrote on May 12^th, 2009 at 11:12am:




Wow, it really is Feej.

So, let's clear this up - it's not torture if Americans do it, and it's not a crime if the President says it's not, as long as the President's a Republican?

StonesFanatic wrote on May 12^th, 2009 at 12:07pm:


Sorry, Feej, but I don't recall making that equation.  I was just speaking as a Christian. Do unto others and all that jazz.

BUT, if it's no big deal, and all our troops get waterboarded (really? I did not know that), then I guess Sean Hannity has no excuse not to go through with his heartfelt pledge to do it "for the families of the troops".

Here's what a great American war hero, and the man I assume you wish had won the election,  had to say on the subject:

McCain: Waterboarding a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot

October 28, 2007

Former POW takes issue with Giuliani’s stance on interrogation method

Des Moines Register | Oct 25, 2007

by TOM WITOSKY

Sioux Center, Ia. — Waterboarding is a form of torture no matter how it is done and should be a prohibited among U.S. military interrogation practices, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said today, taking issue with GOP rival Rudy Giuliani’s recent remarks.

“Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot and being used on Buddhist monks as we speak,” said McCain after a campaign stop at Dordt College here.

“People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that.”

McCain, who was tortured as prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese military after his plane was shot down 40 years ago Friday, made it clear he disagreed with Giuliani. The former New York mayor did not entirely condemn waterboarding as in interrogation technique when asked about it Wednesday night in Davenport.

“It depends on how it is done; it depends on the circumstances; it depends on who does it,” Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said. “I think the way it has been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. … I would say if that is the description of it, then I can agree that it shouldn’t be done,” he said, adding that he doesn’t necessarily trust the media’s description and has yet to learn “what the real description of it is.”

McCain has been outspoken in his opposition to torture techniques and his belief that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay should be closed. He said Thursday that while fictional character Jack Bauer on the television show “24” “is my hero, that doesn’t exist in the real world.”

“When I was imprisoned, I took heart from the fact that I knew my North Vietnamese captors would never be treated like I was treated by them,” McCain said, who has pointed out that his opposition to torture among Republican presidential candidates is based on military experience not shared by his opponents. “There are much better and more effective ways to get information. You torture someone long enough, he’ll tell whatever he thinks you want to know.”

*******


Any other Dick Cheney-approved talking points you'd like to parrot?

this thread was better with moonie.

Well Stones Fanatic, now you know.

There are a a few of us here that lean to the right.

And a few that lean left.

And not all of those that lean to the right are Nazis, even though some of those that lean to the left will still call us that at times. 

And not all that lean to the left are as intolerant or convinced of their superiority as our resident Vice President in charge of Idiocy- who I see you met already.

Hope you get some fun out of the place!

leonid wrote on May 13^th, 2009 at 4:05am:

HA! The couch is back! couch II, the couch floats.

Sign of the times . . .

Starbuck wrote on May 13^th, 2009 at 12:42pm:


???

By TODD J. ZYWICKI
The rule of law, not of men -- an ideal tracing back to the ancient Greeks and well-known to our Founding Fathers -- is the animating principle of the American experiment. While the rest of the world in 1787 was governed by the whims of kings and dukes, the U.S. Constitution was established to circumscribe arbitrary government power. It would do so by establishing clear rules, equally applied to the powerful and the weak.

Fleecing lenders to pay off politically powerful interests, or governmental threats to reputation and business from a failure to toe a political line? We might expect this behavior from a Hugo Chávez. But it would never happen here, right?

Until Chrysler.

The close relationship between the rule of law and the enforceability of contracts, especially credit contracts, was well understood by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. A primary reason they wanted it was the desire to escape the economic chaos spawned by debtor-friendly state laws during the period of the Articles of Confederation. Hence the Contracts Clause of Article V of the Constitution, which prohibited states from interfering with the obligation to pay debts. Hence also the Bankruptcy Clause of Article I, Section 8, which delegated to the federal government the sole authority to enact "uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies."

The Obama administration's behavior in the Chrysler bankruptcy is a profound challenge to the rule of law. Secured creditors -- entitled to first priority payment under the "absolute priority rule" -- have been browbeaten by an American president into accepting only 30 cents on the dollar of their claims. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers union, holding junior creditor claims, will get about 50 cents on the dollar.

The absolute priority rule is a linchpin of bankruptcy law. By preserving the substantive property and contract rights of creditors, it ensures that bankruptcy is used primarily as a procedural mechanism for the efficient resolution of financial distress. Chapter 11 promotes economic efficiency by reorganizing viable but financially distressed firms, i.e., firms that are worth more alive than dead.

Violating absolute priority undermines this commitment by introducing questions of redistribution into the process. It enables the rights of senior creditors to be plundered in order to benefit the rights of junior creditors.

The U.S. government also wants to rush through what amounts to a sham sale of all of Chrysler's assets to Fiat. While speedy bankruptcy sales are not unheard of, they are usually reserved for situations involving a wasting or perishable asset (think of a truck of oranges) where delay might be fatal to the asset's, or in this case the company's, value. That's hardly the case with Chrysler. But in a Chapter 11 reorganization, creditors have the right to vote to approve or reject the plan. The Obama administration's asset-sale plan implements a de facto reorganization but denies to creditors the opportunity to vote on it.

By stepping over the bright line between the rule of law and the arbitrary behavior of men, President Obama may have created a thousand new failing businesses. That is, businesses that might have received financing before but that now will not, since lenders face the potential of future government confiscation. In other words, Mr. Obama may have helped save the jobs of thousands of union workers whose dues, in part, engineered his election. But what about the untold number of job losses in the future caused by trampling the sanctity of contracts today?

The value of the rule of law is not merely a matter of economic efficiency. It also provides a bulwark against arbitrary governmental action taken at the behest of politically influential interests at the expense of the politically unpopular. The government's threats and bare-knuckle tactics set an ominous precedent for the treatment of those considered insufficiently responsive to its desires. Certainly, holdout Chrysler creditors report that they felt little confidence that the White House would stop at informal strong-arming.

Chrysler -- or more accurately, its unionized workers -- may be helped in the short run. But we need to ask how eager lenders will be to offer new credit to General Motors knowing that the value of their investment could be diminished or destroyed by government to enrich a politically favored union. We also need to ask how eager hedge funds will be to participate in the government's Public-Private Investment Program to purchase banks' troubled assets.

And what if the next time it is a politically unpopular business -- such as a pharmaceutical company -- that's on the brink? Might the government force it to surrender a patent to get the White House's agreement to get financing for the bankruptcy plan?

No, I think that "when the President does it, it is okay" strawman was one that you made up for this thread, Brainy.
I get that you might not understand the difference, being a Harvard-trained lawyer and all.
And try to get over that whole Bush hiccup thing sometime eh?

As for the substance of the article, you don't see a problem with the President of the United States interfering with private contracts between a corporation and a labor union?

Sorry Jesus, but you don't know shit!

As you probably know, when you make an argument that no one has made, only to knock it down, it IS a strawman.
When you do so by taking an argument to the extreme, as you have, it is not only a strawman, but a pathetic one at that.

The problem is, in your hatred for Bush, you put the cart before the horse logically.
You assume that whatever was done was legally torture, and then you make the argument that Bush said it was okay to torture because he was the President.
But the issue is that the harsh interrogation practices were deemed by Justice Department lawyers to not be "torture" under the prevailing laws at issue.  As you probably learned at Harvard, that is what lawyers do -- they look at the legal landscape, they apply that landscape to the facts at hand, and they come to a legal conclusion.  There can be debate as to the validity of that legal analysis, but the fact remains that they lawyers that looked at the issue determined that the tactics used were not legally "torture" as that term is defined.  So when the Administration acted upon that legal advice, as all Administrations do, it was not an argument of "it is okay because I am the President" as your strawman argument suggests.

I am quite certain that Obama did not make the moves he made in the Chrysler and banking cases without similar advice from his lawyers.

Who knows, maybe after he is out of office, we will get a look at those memos to see what his lawyers said about the constitutionality (or not) of his actions.  

You say that he hasn't broken any laws -- we'll see if you are right.  

On the merits, I gotta say that reading Jesus's writing here is more impressive than anything I've heard those who speak FOR him say. This isn't a comment on the thread posters here, but rather the Falwells and Robertsons of the world.

Putting aside any of Jesus's snipes, the points have all been valid.

Thank you Jesus, thank you lord . . . .