BHS

All of those places mentioned are cities or towns in their own right that are close to Toronto on or near the busiest section of the 401 highway (which is the biggest and busiest highway in Canada, if not North America - look out, LA freeway!). Driving through the entire area, you wouldn't be aware that you were passing from one municipality to the other, because it all just looks like city. People who live in those places say they're from Toronto when travelling abroad because it's easier than explaining you live in a satellite city that people have never heard of. Hell, I told people I was from Toronto when I honeymooned in Jamaica, and I live 10 minutes from Niagara Falls on the Niagara Penninsula (well outside of the GTA).

American soldiers who murder civilians during the course of their duties face execution. That's the way it actually is, and not a hypothetical. No. The Taliban was never recognized as the government of Afghanistan. There was no government in the country while they held control over most of the territory. For comparison's sake, look at present-day Somalia. No. Geneva Convention rules extend to uniformed soldiers representing a national government, who themselves recognize and live by the Geneva conventions. Taliban fighters were none of these things. No. That's like asking if the Republicans are making periodic guerilla raids on Washington. Saddam loyalists, the Sunni minority upper class, and their friends in the international terrorist community didn't have any reason to blow things up, because they ran the place. The USSR, under Stalin, saw as many as twenty million people starved and executed by government proclamation. There was no international retribution. China under Mao, ditto. The massacres of Rwanda occurred with tacit government support and encouragement, without international interference. In fact, our soldiers were there before the massacre started and pulled out rather than do anything. Presently the government of Sudan is encouraging homegrown militias to commit genocide against an inconvenient portion of the black African population. For you to say America is worse, because it prevents would-be illegal combatants from rejoing the war by housing them under extremely humane conditions away from the battlefield is absolutely ridiculous, and even indecent.

They would be a thousand times happier with an Afghani or Iraqi Gitmo than they would be with the existing, real-world alternative that they currently face, which is that their soldiers most likely will play the starring role in an internet beheading video. But you've qualified your question with "before their army fell", so I'll throw this question back to you: have you seen any of the videos of how Saddam treated his political prisoners? Tying them to chairs and throwing them off of buildings, cutting off their hands and beating them to within inches of their lives with switches? Do you honestly believe that internment at Gitmo qualifies as the equivalent of that?

You're right. That would be comparing apples to oranges. But I'm comparing apples to apples, so what are you on about? There is nothing hot-headed about my opinions on this matter. These are things I've had years to consider, as has everyone who supports the American administration's decision to use Gitmo as a detention facility for illegal combatants. You find my support for this distressing. I find it equally distressing when members of a free society are so naive as to think that the freedom and security and principled system of justice they enjoy are natural to the course of human relations and not something bought with blood and constant vigilence and determination. I'm all for democracy and freedom and justice, but I also recognize that these principles don't necessarily extend beyond our borders an into the rest of the world. You would extend all of our civil protections to everyone we fight against on foreign soil, regardless of their actions. Which is completely contrary to the rules of war, such as they are. The Geneva Conventions exist for the very reason that domestic legal protections do not extend beyond our sovereign jurisdictions. But to extend even the Geneva protections to combatants who do not themselves recognize the Conventions is defeating the purpose of having the Conventions in the first place.

You're funny, using the Swift Boat Veterans as a metaphor for railroading (which, I know, is itself a metaphor) political opponents. Except that the Swifties were responding to John Kerry's implication, by using Democrat-voting veterans as a backdrop, that his version of the events surrounding his service in Vietnam was unassailable and that he had the full support of the men he served with. Which he did not. Coming forward and publicly stating that you refuse to sit silently by while a politician uses you like that is hardly railroading, is it? It's more like dissent. Which the Dems claim to consider the ne plus ultra of patriotism, when it goes in their favour or against their opponents.

You mean, "expose a covert CIA operative". Which Valerie Plame was not, by her husband's own indirect admission in his book. And Fitz is no friend of Karl Rove. He just has more sense than that nimrod in the Duke rape case. Speaking of which, do we have a thread going about that? And also, Scooter Libby isn't going to take a fall. He's going to get out of the charges without penalty, and the Republican party will quietly foot all of his legal bills and set him up with a nice retirement. Sheesh. I thought you anti-Bush guys were fully up on all of this stuff.

For those of you crying a river for the terrorists held in Gitmo, a double standard. Where's your care and concern now?

Think again, BhS, gitmo is a quagmire in and of itself with or without Iraq. With all the international pressure that is on the administration, they can't just quietly release the bulk of prisoners without looking like they are giving in. There are even some who suggest that a Supreme Court ruling against the Gitmo detainee camp would be GOOD for the administration because it would give them an out that DOESN'T look like a cave in. As for laws, I guess you've avoided the articles revealing the many laws that President Bush has decided his administration doesn't have to follow without ever telling the judiciary as he should by law and the treaties that the U.S. has ignored but then later acknowledged when the heat is on (Treaties have the force of law, it's in the Constitution). Seems to me that YOU have problems that go WAY BEYOND 'idiot talking points' - it's not just your talking points that are idiotic. What part of what Treaty has the administration ignored?

It is the quality, not the quantity, that matters (the motto of my wiener, Mr. Wiggleby). And so it is, that a thread about the evil of KKKarl Rove has decended into dick jokes. Somehow that seems appropriate.

Well done. Welcome to the exclusive club of "People Who Won't Shut Up". (just kidding, as I'm higher than you in that club!) "Thank you, thank you all. I'd like to give a shout out to God, 'cause he's like, my biggest supporter. And I'd like to thank my mom for having me, 'cause without her I wouldn't be here. And I'd like to thank The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Sloan, and Aretha Franklin, Mitsou..." Hey, I gotta pad my posting numbers somehow, if I expect to make it to 2000.

My two cents: the flags flown during World Cup shouldn't be taken as symbols of national identity, but rather as symbols of competing sports franchises. That's how they appear to be treated, at least to me. In that sense, the flying of these flags is less than offensive, because it reduces other nations to nothing more than empty vessels for pointless group identity boosterism, akin to wearing an AI jersey at the Y to goad your Raptor-loving buddies. Which is more pathetic for those countries than it is problematic as regards our own uncongealed-national-identity issues. If you really want to get pissy, why not take issue with those little oval Euro bumper stickers? Nothing says, "I'd rather be in Luxembourg than this stupid, culturally backward, quasi-American wasteland" better than LUX on the back of your car.

Ah yes, another example of the conventional wisdom that dictates Democrats ned to become more like Republicans to enjoy success (a bit usually peddled by Republicans or their sympathizers). Lieberman was the poster child for that philosophy. And now that his regressive, G.O.P carbon copy nonsense isn't washing wih voters he's gonna take his bal and go home, showing the same kind of self-serving contempt for the party that earned him the enimity of its vase in the first place. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Look at it this way, BD. The Conservative Party in Canada faced a similar situation - unelectable do to a perceived policy preference gap with the general public. And do you know what they did? They took all of their most radical policies off the table (against the wishes of their more radical elements) and got themselves elected. At some point down the road, as they solidify and expand their base support, you can expect that some of these radical policy preferences will be reintroduced, one at a time, as trial balloons most likely. And probably, most of them will be squashed in that trial balloon phase, and that will be that. But the ice has been broken and their time in the wilderness is over. They are electable again. The Republicans have made an absolute dog's breakfast of their base support in the past year. Liam has contended that Republican gerrymandering will see them through anyway, but I disagree. I think that if the Dems were to unhook themselves from the netroots long enough to present a common, bland front for this election they could make some serious gains. And then they could work on new legislation to rid the country of gerrymandered districts once and for all, which I personally think is a great idea. Even if it involves proposing a Constitutional amendment to do it. Do I think that any of this will happen? No. I think the Republicans are in serious jeopardy of loosing either or both chambers, but only for the short term. I think the Dems are going to be serial second place finishers in the long run, for as long as it is their unwritten policy to turn every judicial hearing into a debate on abortion and every military action into another Vietnam quagmire and every political scandal into another Watergate. These events were all progressive "victories" but they have also have caused a lot of pain for the American people. Ripping open old scars to remind everyone of you glory days in the late 60's and early 70's was never a long term winner of a strategy, and it's getting staler and uglier as time marches forward.

Makes sense to me. I can't imagine radicals of any sort hijacking either the Democratic or Republican Parties in Connecticut. The place is small-c conservative. You're both ignoring that recent poll numbers have put Lieberman at 46% and his Kos-backed challenger at 40% and closing. That's not a walk. Those numbers are the driving point behind the speculation about him running as an independant. August: if Lieberman does run in the general election as an independant, do you hold that he'll win against a Republican and a radical-left backed Dem?

I just did a quick calculation, and post #26 on this thread was my 1000th post, and none of you noticed. Yay me.

Thanks but the real credit goes to Rep. William Jefferson for stashing $90,000 in marked FBI bills warpped in Tin Foil in his freezer.. I read this and rushed to check my own freezer. Sure enough, I had some tinfoil parcels in there too, but unfortunately no cash. Does anyone want to give me $90000 for some slightly freezer burned ground beef? Lol. But seriously, this Jefferson guy sounds a little fishy to me. Maybe the press should look into this. Maybe Congress should have a go at it too.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Bubber's take on taxes is like a suicide bomber's take on death - he's for it, no matter what shape it takes. You can't make an effective economics argument against someone with zero self-interest, any more than you can physically threaten a guy who's already got the C4 strapped to his chest and the button in his hand.

Just so long as nobody touched the frickin' mace.

LOL. You are mincing words in your favour. By that logic, no one who does anything is 'guilty' before they get caught, so why would they ever be arrested? You are trying to substitute legal declarations for fact by implication . 'Not being found guilty' doesn't mean you didn't do it. Just ask Orenthal. Let me go the other way: when one hasn't committed a crime, it's very difficult to be found guilty of it. Just to save time, if your response to this that Rove committed the crime but hasn't been charged yet, then I suggest you've committed murder and haven't been charged yet. There. Now you and Rove are in similar circumstances. Enjoy.

In a modern American university, I can believe it. Say, did you go to Yale? They actually still offer a degree in pure rhetoric? Who says classical education is dead! For those of you at home keeping score of literary devices, this is a fairly decent example of litotes.

Meltdown? Is that the best you can do? Come ON, you can do better than that. Where are your spoon fed talking points? Where is your I enjoy sharpening my teeth with folks like you: I'm schooled in philosophy and logic, so dealing with your kind of BS doesn't come natural. You're a freaking posterboy for dogmatic ignorance, lies, and irrationality. Too bad I have to go to a leftist blog to practice on your mirror images amongst lefties. Oh, and do keep your head in a dark place. Heaven forbid you use your own eyes, or your own brain. You wouldn't be of any use to me at all if you did that. Because there's just so much philosophy, so much logic, in your ad hominem screed. You're practically Noam Chomsky here. (I'm assuming you'll take that as a compliment.) I'm getting goosebumps.

This is too funny. The "Bush could have got Zarkman years ago" meme meets the "Iraq is a huge waste of time because Bin Laden is still alive" meme. Not mentioned: the "Bin Laden wouldn't be in hiding if Clinton had taken him off the Sudanese governments' hands years before any of this mess started" meme. Guess you forgot about that one. I hear the White House is pretty solidly fortified as well. The man's quite clearly a bloody coward. Clearly not the sort of party that celebrates a election "non win". And if things had gone the other way, and Rove had been indicted, it would have been the greatest day of your life and we never would have heard the end of it. We're just rubbing it in that THAT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. HA HA! The difference is, a week from now we'll never speak of this again. You think that Hillary is on the extreme left? And you're also assuming that the media is so anti-Democrat that they'll keep this defeat in the headlines long enough to turn off voters over GOP gloating? And you're questioning our analysis on this issue? Which by the way has been CORRECT ALL ALONG. I tried, very quickly, to come up with a snappy comeback for this, but there's nothing funnier I could think of than that you go by the name Darth Buddha. Which, by the way, is tres unique. ...on charges not related to the material facts of the underlying case... Yeah, Libby's going to make up stuff about Rove (in essense, perjure himself) to get himself out of a perjury charge that boils down to his word against the word of reporters about if and when particular conversations took place. That's likely. "He" in this sentence could be referring to either Libby or Rove. Who are you talking about (not that it really matters)? Abramov, Nancy Pelosi would have us believe, is the epitome of the Republican corruption machine. That you would take him at his word as a means of feeding your scandal fantasies is pretty pathetic. And yet, your reading comprehension sucks. Shady was clearly stating his opinion, and not citing a legal finding. And no, we don't study American civics in grade 10. We barely touch on Canadian civics. (See, 'cause Shady's from London, Ontario, as his margin profile makes clear.)

I hardly think so. He's gotten off 'scot-free' (or is that 'Scooter-free?), and the whole thing will be a wash. Libbey will likely be found innocent due to 'lack of evidence', and the whole thing will be swept under the rug. It must be pretty filthy under there. What with all of Teddy Kennedy's empty bourbon bottles and all. Or is he a scotch man? I can never remember.

Yeah, the heart weeps. And the world's tiniest orchestra plays a soul crushing rendition of Barber's Adagio for Strings. NEXT.

Dare to dream, BD. I say, go bigger, biggest, best. Here's a luscious fantasy scenario for you: Maybe Plame, Haditha, and an as yet to be announce scandal of equally provable pResidential responsibilty will combine in a perfect political storm to see Chimpy McHitlerburton arrested and tossed into the hellish gulag of his own making aka Gitmo! Oh, glorious day!

How is "Turd Blossom" clever? I guess I don't read enough lefty stuff afterall, because I've never seen this particular scatalogical masterpiece adequately explained.