Figleaf

Two elections ago, but who's counting. In any event, he was right that the Liberals are not willing to allow police input into the Judge selection process. That shows a certain bias towards predators, does it not? No, it does not. Police input into selecting judges is ridiculous. Judges are there to make unbiased findings of law and fact between litigants. Satisfaction of police interests is contrary to that concept. It's horrifying to me how conservatives can't grasp the very simplest notion of how undue influence impairs impartiality. What is it about conservatives that wants to encourage more wrongful convictions? Is it just viciousness?

The Liberals didn't make that up, the media did. So? Many Liberals do believe it. And try to perpuate that myth.... I don't know what strange thing you think Liberals believe about it. It was an observation that noticed Canadians historically gravitate to Liberal governments. What is there to not believe about that observation?

I will tell you that the Liberals are not monsters and don't wish for the deaths of our soldiers to chintz their way into government. There it is, a Conservative can't believe anyone might see a moral difference between money and lives.

!!! How do you figure that?!??

Yeah, I can see a lot of Liberals rubbing their hands in anticipation and hopes of a heavy body count. That's bitter, but very honest. Does anybody doubt that the veracity of Argus' claim? All Aboard! Train to Smearsville now loading! With stops at Falseford, Maliceton, and Slanderia Station. The Liberals didn't make that up, the media did.

Actually they did. Sorry. What did they have in that regard?

Sometimes but not always. Yeah, she's a big disappointment. No, illegal does not equal immoral.

Not a word in Marx about this. What you speak of is doctrinaire Leninism. Are you sure? I've never read Lenin, but I have read Marx. Yes. Please cite a Marx reference for this crap about the dictatorship of the proletariat. How about starting simple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat And consider: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis...u/msg02794.html I know nothing of the vanguard theory and suspect it is different from the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Any idiot knows there's more to Marx than the Manifesto. But the Manifesto does contain substanial distillations of his scholarship.

You have to start a fresh topic and then open the Manage Polls link. Be careful not to confuse the name of the poll field with the poll question field.

I'm not sure what relevance you are suggesting that has to the issue. Speculations on what various Arab states might or night not have done has no logical connection to the rights of the Palestinians. The Arab states were not poised to effect anything much. Israeli military authorities are on record acknowledging that Arab sabre rattling in 1967 was basically empty. As a practical matter, it's hard to find love from someone whose foot you're standing on. Again, the actions of Arab states cannot justly be used to deny the inherent human rights of the Palestinian people. What benefits would you be looking for at the peace table? Not just in hindsight. In negligence. Which matters not a whit.

..and thus, the whole family will soon be on their way to Canada. Yes, and no harm done by that. The father held steady employment for year here before they were deported. Our immigration system has many flaws. We end up with too many family class immigrants. It takes far too long to remove someone even after all their legal avenues have been tried and the order to remove them is in effect, sometimes it seems to take years to make it happen. We don't economic immigrants quickly enough. The refugee determination process is unwieldy and yet arbitrary. Insufficient attention is paid to the integration of immigrants once they have been admitted. All those things are problems and should be fixed, but letting a 9 year old Canadian citizen rot in a Texas jail is not a way to fix them.

is true. Because if if it is, that 13 year old boy has some serious problems ? ?

So tell us, oh great seer, which is the "right" translation? And why? My wisdom will remain restricted here to this one point: any translation that says 'I am that I am' is better than one that says 'I am who I am'.

More slogans. But the truth is fear can be all too well known. The Dutch feared the Nazis when they occupied them, and that fear was relieved when Canadian troops liberated them. It seems like you are trying to argue that there are no just causes for military action. But look, if individual's have the right to defend themselves, then surely the same analysis extends to groups of individuals and thereby to states. It's a free country.

Honestly, id rather kill any one of our politicians than be killed covering for one. Regardless, i don't think Canada needed political cover to not go to iraq, we need not be afraid to tell the americans that we want no part of their imperialism. You are speaking in terms of principles, and I am speaking in terms of outcomes. This is the reason why i do not support a standing army. Eventually their existence is used to justify their deployment. That's not what my argument says. I say that since we do have a standing army, its institutional motivations (not its existence) favor deployment. I offer that not a justification for deployments, but as a remediating consideration when you judge the decision to put them in harm's way. The MI complex is a problem for sure. However, no call-up army is likely to be worth squat in terms of global realpolitik. Hopefully good government confines the former while still serving reasonable military needs. But the current push for recruitments, tied into the ad campaign, is essentially for the indefinite commitment we seem to have made to not only Afghanistan, but wherever else our government, liberal or conservative, wiashes to see us tag along with the americans. The Forces are enjoying a flow of money these days and upgraded advertising and recruitment are bound to be part of that. We simply disagree, I think, that everything Forces is about imperialist agression or Afghanistan. I think we should get out of Afghanistan, but I also think the Forces should recruit effectively. They are not contradictory notions. Damn. I thought I was so clever making that observation -- when you already had. :chagrin:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but implicit in your post appears to be the idea of the Liberal party as an economically 'left' party. I think that's a fundamentally inaccurate view (except under Trudeau maybe). The Liberals have adopted some policy approaches that coincide with left prescriptions, but I ascribe that to situational pragmatics rather than resulting from a leftwing economic analysis.

I think the Harper government is making the right decision to help this boy. He's a Canadian citizen. He's not a second class Canadian citizen. He's not a Canadian-citizen-but... . We don't have those categories of citizen, and until dangerous meanies get their act together to pass legislation creating such categories, the government's duty is to defend all Canadian citizens equally. For example by not letting them rot in jails for no crime.

Yikes. Our soldiers are being killed partly for political cover and an institutional desire to be deployed. That is rather pathetic. But your first point about treaty and alliance obligations is legit. Sometimes I am only explaining, not justifying. In this case I will justify. I think the ethics of 2 and 3 are not as bad as you suggest. Political cover may not be glorious, but if it was needed to keep us out of Iraq, then its better that it was there than not. The military's institutional desire to be deployed is shared by all the ranks including the regular soldiers. Deployments pay better, create opportunities to prove oneself for promotions, and allow them to discharge the sense of purpose that motivated their enlistment. I agree. And to bring it back to the topic, i hate to see ads promoting this futility. But the ads are promoting the Forces, not the mission. Specific missions, good or ill, are selected politically. The overall purpose of the Forces, and the principle(s) on which they aspire to be judged, are fairly represented in the advertisement. Don't get me wrong. We can both abhor the extent of violence that drives countries to spend resources on raw power. I'm just an advocate of careful distinctions and fine lines being held to protect our pragmatic ability to make correct choices under real conditions.

Like, how recently?? Like, the day before?? Might this: United States Conference of Catholic Bishopsjust be a coincidence? I had not seen that article. Since I had thought about this long ago, I should have said it has recently RETURNED to my attention (I was leafing thru a parallel bible).

But not unique among altar boys? I was in a training accident that killed 6 cadets and wounded a few dozen. Well, that makes my attempt at humor pretty badly timed. Sorry.

Sounds like he's got a good plan for Ann. I wonder if she'll take him up on it. I wonder when people will lose the personal attacks on Ann and deal with what she's saying instead. Geoffrey, you're just hilarious lately! Annie's stock in trade is personal attacks. :lol: Which of her critics has called the 9/11 widows 'witches' who are glad their husbands died? Face facts, Coulter long ago stepped out of the 'claim to civility' part of society. Human rights she has, but no entitlement to any respect.

But not unique among altar boys?

Frankly, I'm shocked and saddened by the apparent lack of theological erudition on the board (at least based on the few replies here so far). Aren't they teaching a decent survey of theology in public schools these days? What gives? You're intriguing me, but I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. Well, I'm being facetious about theology in public schools, but I'm getting at what I said in the post immediatly above yours, with the colored text. Certain English translations use I am That..., which means something, while others use I am Who..., which means nothing.

Very simple. Where would you then put Israel? I'm not sure I totally grasp your question, but I think we've discussed some of this before. If I had been in charge of the matter at the end of WWII, I would have tried to either (a} find a territory for a Jewish state somewhere where the neighbors would better appreciate the value of having it there (frankly not a hard sell -- under less conflicted circumstances most developing states would be happy to have a neighbor like Israel), or (b} to make a stronger pitch/a better deal for the affected Palestinian population. And if I had been the postwar western powers, I wouldn't have let it decend into a free for all in 1948. The abdication of responsibility with the job half done was a grave error. If you mean today, where would I put Israel, I know we've discussed this. It is not in my or anyone's power to 'put' Israel anywhere. Israel is a sovereign state with a population entitled to self-determination. There is no way to remove or eradicate Israel now that would not involve crimes in international law. I believe what must happen now is that Israel should withdraw to it's border at the Green Line, the Palestinian state should come into existence in their assigned territory (with no pretentious and humiliating supervision clauses), substantial reparations should be paid to the Palestinians (from the Western powers for the defaults of 1947-49), Israel should buy out the rights of return on an individual basis, and Jerusalem should be made an international city under UN heritage protection and assigned to Israel as trustee for the forseeable future. At first, probably there should be a robust, impartial international buffer force deployed to prevent disruptions of the peace. Your need to speak falsely of me is pathetic. See the portion of the post of yours I quoted above, for starters. Given the Jews' trajectory in pre-WW II Europe, and the lack of a welcome elsewhere in the world, being anti-Israel is being anti-Jewish. No escaping that. I utterly reject the whole of that comment. Nothing I have said can sensibly be construed to oppose western freedoms. It's simply an absurd suggestion -- the flailings of a sputtering lunatic. An it is also totally wrong to suggest that opinion about the rights or wrongs of the conduct of Israel equates with any sort of opinion at all about Jewish people. And further, FYI, I am not 'anti-Israel'. I wish Israel well, actually, and I think it's policies for many years have been counter-productive to that feeling.

Oh, now it's a typing error? What exactly is this typing error? Is the word 'not' missing at the end? It IS an opinion forum, y'know. It's your rhetorical methods that are dirty.