Liam

Here's a 2003 article from the UK's Guardian for the Bush apologists among us... http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...,952196,00.html

I find it funny that once the Bush supporters are confronted with, "OK, Clinton screwed up ten years ago, but now this is Bush's issue to tackle" an atomic North Korea suddenly becomes a problem only for China, South Korea and Japan, not Bush.

You can't blame Clinton when Bush has had six years to address North Korea. Five years after labeling them part of the Axis of Evil, Bush did nothing to stop their nuclear ambitions. But to answer the question posed by the O.P., how will the Bush Admin. respond?, I expect their response will be fully political, fully geared towards the November elections, fully aimed at the Clinton policy's failure, and then fully scrubbed from the administration's memory by the time the last polls close on election day.

Actually it's called Trillian. http://www.download.com/Trillian/3000-2150-10047473.html Bubber -- a typo on my part, thanks for correcting!

Why, wasn't Lewinski's case a classic example of the ultimate abuse of power and authority? No less than the President himself! Compounded by the fact that he not only abused his power...but sullied the oval office as well?... 1. Thos who are most critical of Foley want the age of consent lowered to 14?! Where on earth did you pull this little nugget? Here in the US, as far as I know, there is absolutely no movement to lower the age of consent to 14 and the ones who are being most critical about the Foley issue are fellow Republicans. (OK, since they're Republicans, I'll concede that you are right -- most of them do want to get their hands on the 14 year olds.) 2. No, Lewinsky was not the ultimate case of abuse of power. Contemporary interviews of Monica showed a young woman who completely didn't get "it" that there was an enormous imbalance. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who once worked for LBJ was *shocked* that Lewinsky failed to understand that this-is-the-president and that Lewinsky was so blase about the sanctity of the office (not the Oval Office, but the executive office). She was not coerced or manipulated into having the affair. If anything, she was the predator with flashing her thong and making advances. I'm not excusing Clinton, but a May-August affair is considerably less coercive than a February-August affair.

Which Dems are going after him? They're all sitting on their hands over this. It's the GOP that is fighting and screaming out loud about this. And the scandal isn't just about Foley, but also about how the GOP leadership tried to hush it up or did nothing to investigate if the guy was a danger to the kids who work on the Hill. Dem involvement or not, the GOP is 100% at fault here and trying to claim that this is some political play by Foley's enemies doesn't exhonorate the willful negligence of the GOP leadership in this case.

I stand by my post 100% with one edit: it wasn't a Democrat on the Ethics Committee who was kept in the dark it was the sole Democrat on the Page Committee (Dale Kildee from Michigan) who was not told of Foley's inappropriate contacts with the page. Why would the Republicans know about it, but the one Democrat on the committee not be told? For some reason, shortly before the most hotly contested election in years, the GOP leadership decided to keep this one in the closet (so to speak) rather than allow the one Democrat on the committee to learn of this problem. I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

Yeah. This is all a Democrat conspiracy. Yeah. Whatever. For the record, most IM-ing is done through a program called Trillium, which allows IM'ers using different systems (AOL, Yahoo IM, etc.) to speak to one another. Another feature of Trillium is that it automatically archives all IMs. No one has to consciously save them, the service automatically keeps a memory of these messages. For those of you who think this is all some political dirty trick, if this was a set up, why did Foley jump in and respond to such provocative messages like he did? And if the whole chain of IM's is false, if they were so false why did Foley fold like a house of cards? Regarding the outing of Foley, gay publications (and even some mainstream newspapers in Florida) have published stories about Foley's being gay. One prominent Republican even said it was the worst kept secret in Washington. joe Scarborough, himself a Republican from Florida who, like Foley first went to Washington after the '94 election, said he knew all along that Foley was gay.

It's really sad to witness someone as smart as Stein descend to Ann Coulter's level. Democrats have been mostly sitting on the sidelines vis a vis Foley. There have been some calls for investigations into the House leadership, but it's mostly Republicans who are slashing at one another over the matter. Of course, Stein can't admit that the biggest hypocrite in all this is Foley himself. The man who was supposed to be protecting kids from online predators was, himself, an online predator. If Foley was a Democrat, the likes of Stein and Ann Coulter would have soiled their pants with glee. But when it's a Republican who is a hypocrite, the Republican response is how can we tar the Democrats with this(?). As a gay man, all I can say about Barney Frank's silence on this is why does he need to come to Foley's defense? I do not personally know one single gay man who would defend Foley. Not because he's a Republican, but because he's clearly sickly obsessed with boys. That's just gross. That's not a gay thing, that's more like a near-pedophilic thing. Sadly, Stein is demonstrably off his rocker.

Trivia -- The US has the fastest growing population in the developed world and our population is expected to cross 300 million people sometime next week (on or about October 11, I think I read somewhere). http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html Only China and India are more populous.

I'm gay and have two kids (biological). I was lucky enough to have once been married to my best friend (a woman). We had two kids together.

1. Gerry Studds. The Democrat-controlled Congress censured Studds (Speaker Tip O'Neill wanted him ousted, but couldn't get that done). Studds rejected his censure and took his case to the voters. They continued to re-elect him. 2. Barney Frank. Frank claimed lack of knowledge of Gobie's activities and, whether or not that's believable, he was punished by the Democrat-controlled House. Like Studds, Frank took his case to the voters who continue to re-elect him. 3. Mel Reynolds. Reynolds served four years in prison for the scandal surrounding him and the 16 year old; Clinton commuted his sentence for unrelated financial charges and Reynolds served out the remainder of his prison term in a half-way house. In each of the cases you cite, the Democrat was fined, censured, reprimanded or imprisoned. What is it about those punitive acts which indicates to you that fellow Democrats were not equally horrified by the criminal and/or unsavory acts of their colleagues? It is pure supposition on your part. Why is the Foley scandal just as bad as any of these if not worse? 1. By IM'ing his perversion, he left evidence of his depravity. In the other cases, we are left in the dark as to the degree of communication, but here we have Foley's words laid out in black and white. 2. He is a hypocrite. He authoried the law which is designed to protect kids against the very things he was doing to them. 3. The House leadership knew there was something fishy going on with him and the pages and yet decided to not take action against him. Not only that, but the head of the House Ethics Committee learned of this and the only person he did not tell was the one Democrat on the Committee. Clearly, those within the GOP knew this was explosive and decided to make it a political thing by not exposing and punishing the guy. Rather, they decided to protect one of their own Republicans rather than protect the kids upon whom Foley routinely preyed. In none of the Democrat scandals you cite did the Democrat leadership move to protect or hush-up the scandals. HUGE difference.

They obviously didn't travel far enough.....there are places in London that are worse than the suburbs of Winnipeg.......Liverpool.....Birmingham.... Glasgow is also one of the major stops on the european cultural tours.....art and theatre I've never been to Glasgow so i can't say. I am just reporting what they told me. Yes, they traveled extensively, even to industrial cities off the typical tourist-beaten path to visit family, old school friends, etc. (Sheffield, Birmingham, Belfast, Manchester). Of course there are places that are more dangerous within enormous cities but, like I said, I am only reporting that they told me -- for them -- Glasgow stood out as feeling the most dangerous.

Perhaps the Dems have taken a chapter from the GOP's "All Monica All The Time" playbook from the 1998 mid-terms? Frankly, a discussion of this issues is exactly what the GOP cannot afford and you should be somewhat relieved that the public has yet to nail the GOP for their mismanagement over the past six years. Or do you think Congressional Republicans have winning, rational arguments about Iraq, Katrina, port security, the government's inability to capture Osama bin Laden, illegal immigration, social security reform, bridges to nowhere, the ballooning deficit, stem cell research, poor body armor for soldiers in the field, budget earmarks, the Geneva Convention, lack of energy policy, lack of oversight of the Bush administration, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and failure to act as a check on executive power?

Don't get your knickers in a twist. There's nothing in the article which says it was an honour killing. We don't know. Honour killings are despicable, but who knows if this was one (three?) of them or if it was a domestic dispute or if the guy wasn't just off his rocker. I'll withhold judgment insofar as the motive is concerned but condemn the acts as shameful regardless.

Sigh... this issue rearing its ill-informed head again... Yes, Republicans (i.e., Licoln) freed the slaves but that was 150 years ago when the GOP was the northern, progressive party. Yes, many Democrats supported segregation and voted against the Voting Rights Act, but most Democrats voted for it. And the myth that it was Republicans who delivered the Voting Rights Act for Johnson (a Democrat), is a stretch: Senate and House votes on the compromise bill (Voting Rights Act of 1964): Senate Democrats: 49 Y, 17 N* Senate Republicans: 30 Y. 1 N House Democrats: 217 Y, 54 N* House Republicans: 111 Y, 20 N http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act *Those Southern Democrats who voted against civil equality soon migrated away from the Democrats and became Republicans. Hence the split between Blue (northern, progressive, liberal) states and Red (conservative, former members of the Confederacy, southern) states. In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was up for renewal. Who opposed its renewal? Southern Republicans. Eventually, the smear of racism and the smell of fear of the 2006 mid-term elections cowed the GOP into supporting its renewal which Bush signed in 2006. As for Clarence Thomas, Reagan did not nominate Clarence Thomas, Bush I did. Democrats mostly opposed him for two reasons: 1. he was a conservative nominated to take the seat of a solid liberal (Thurgood Marshall); 2. there were rumors that while he worked for the EEOC he routinely harassed one of his aides, Anita Hill. What Reagan did do, however, was announce his candidacy for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in a speech chock full of code words to his white audience (state's rights, etc.) recalling the Confederate States' rallying cry. Philadelphia, MS is more famously, or more infamously, known for being the location where members of the Klan, including the local police, killed some civil rights workers who came down to help poor, rural blacks to register to vote. Their story was portrayed in the film "Mississippi Burning". Yeah, I wonder why the GOP doesn't attract more African-American votes.

Friends of mine traveled all over the British Isles recently and came home to say that of all the places they visited, Glasgow was the only city where they felt unsafe.

BMG usually entertains the locals for all of about three months. Once the locals have seen it, the show thrives on tourists. Perhaps Toronto doesn't present as much a tourism draw as those cities where BMG still runs?

That is a COMPLETE misrepresentation of the "law enforcement" approach. Bush is treating the GWOT *only* as a military exercise, but he's doing NOTHING, NO THING, to do basic police work which can help target terrorists and stop acts of terror prior to their commission. The (questionable) plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives was foiled SOLELY by law enforcement means.

Bingo, we have a winner. Bush sees the GWOT only in military terms. He fails to recognize the diplomatic, socio-economic and law enforcement tools at his disposal to combat terror. And he'll doom us all as a result.

That was 140 years ago when the GOP was the Northern liberal party. The South always was the more conservative part of the country. In the 20th century, the two parties gradually shifted to the opposite ends of the spectrum with Democrats championing civil rights and a strong central government and the GOP pushing states' rights and conservative principals. The final nail in the coffin for Democrats in the south (Dixiecrats) was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1968, the Nixon and the GOP harvested that white anger (the "Southern Strategy") and pushed the Democrats to the margins of politics across the old Confederacy. Democrats are "also rans" in almost every state in the South (i.e. Red America).

It's not the "country" that said this, it is one person in an out of control administration that is part of an enormous government who made this statement. Or would you rather we attribute to an entire country the statements of one government official? Isn't this what Canadians rejected during the entire Carolyn Parrish debacle? Why not condemn all of Zimbabwe for the often ridiculous statements of Robert Mugabe's?

I think there ought to be a distinction made between a legitimate and direct public good (someone mentioned the taking of properties for the extension of a light rail system) and an indirect public benefit (the New Haven case). The New Haven case was appalling -- the city sought to evict homeowners in a down-at-heels neighborhood so that a private developer could build a shopping center (or something). The city argued that the increased tax revenue the developed land would generate was a public good allowing them to use the eminent domain process. I remember after the New Haven decision several critics launched a campaign to take Justice Souter's home in New Hampshire arguing that they wanted to build a hotel on the land which would generate more income to the town than his existing residence.

I don't think it's all about the failings of multi-culturism. Frankly, I think multi-culturalism is a good thing. I have two grammar school aged kids and they know more about China, Hinduism and Central America than I did at their age. I think multi-culturalism teaches them to recognize the larger world around them (or would you rather have the US raise another generation of navel-gazing "U-S-A"-chanting yahoos?). I think the problem you are pointing two has two elements (neither of which has to do with multi-culturalism): 1. Because of the Holocaust, there is a sensitivity about comments directed at and scapegoating of Jews by white people. That's just a fact of life we have to live with. This sensitivity, though, does not extend to quashing legitimate political discourse about Israel. 2. Since Israel and the Islamic world are locked in a perpetual political struggle, people often give a "pass" to critics of Israel if they are Muslims. I don't excuse hateful language (likening Jews to pigs and dogs) and think it is both unfair to Jews and hypocritical of the PC police to make excuses for hate speech just because it comes from someone with darker skin.

The US gave Taliban-ruled Afghanistan over $200 million in foreign aid between 2000 and 2001. So much for not "talking to" terrorists. (I suppose they didn't say a word when they were driving up the Brinks trucks filled with money.)