[QUOTE=Kieran Horn]"There was an incident where people died because they were not informed their tires were faulty. So, in response to the public out cry a law was made where people had to give their basic contact information so if a model of tires is faulty they can contact you to let you know. But they may use that information to invade my privacy!" Uh....jump in logic?[/quote]

The principle's pretty simple. If they can build a database of the tires people are buying, they can build a databse of other things people are buying too. An example of what's wrong with this: Suppose Government Bureaucrat A finds out through this database that his neighbor, Average Citizen B purchased the aptly named Embarassing But Legal Item X. Suddenly, the overworked and underpaid Government Bureaucrat A is in a position to blackmail Average Citizen B with information he never should have had.



The original quote uses the term "essential liberty" in place of "freedom." Freedom is nonspecific and could be read as including freedom to rape, slaughterr and steal, while essential liberty denotes only basic rights. The properly understood quote makes a lot more sense than the paraphrase people often throw out.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]This isn't so much true. It's just that the people who support Bush can vote--those who supported Kerry either couldn't vote, or were too lazy to (college kids).[/QUOTE]

I'm in college myself, and the only people I knew who were too lazy to vote were those who honestly didn't care who won. The Kerry supporters I knew went to the polls, as did the Bush supporters, and I would guess that it was more or less the same across the country.

Also, who were these Kerry supporters who couldn't vote?

The CIA, the FBI, Clinton, the British, and the French were all telling Bush 'This guy's got them!'. If Bush hadn't acted on that information, and Sadam used a WOMD, we would be condeming Bush for incompetence for that, and we would be right. The mistake Bush made was not exposing the faulty intelligence to the public after the fact.


I'm not a psychopath. I'm part of that 'silent majority' that got Bush elected again. And I certainly won't be supporting Clinton in 2008. I find it rather funny that you people argue over this issue while there are so much bigger ones looming all around you. Things like secularization. Now, really, do we want a country where narcotics are legal? Debauchery and Pornography are staples of everyday life? You get kicked out of society for mentioning the word 'God' in public? You can kill babies just because they happen to have not been born yet? I sure don't. That's what got Bush re-elected; my vote fell to a single issue: Abortion. I suspect a lot of us 'silent majority' came down on the same way; security never came into the argument because I knew niether candidate would make the first step for fear of being labelled a racist by the media; closing the damn border.

The way I analyzed the election was this:
Bush - America is good and we need to kick terrorist ***! Also, I voted against abortion, and can't talk. I'm as stupid as the unwashed masses, so they can relate to me!
Kerry - Terrorists are bad but I don't actually have any solutions. Also, though I am certainly not an idiot like Bush, I have about as much charisma as a runny terd. Also I am catholic but voted in favor of abortion.

Yes, it is moronic to believe that the Bush administration isn't smart enough to set up a legal cascading effect (if not only for PR reasons). They also wouldn't be the first to do it...

No it wouldn't. That's terribly unrealistic and very much just unsupported speculation. At the heart of the government, the politicians have thier families and material world to protect. They'll give up their position before they sacrifice those two things. What you're describing was the basis behind the MAD program. The two situations are not the same as the threat is slightly different. In a "Revolution" senario, the government knows it has the potential to subdue the uprising. Besides, all of the nuclear systems behind MAD use computer systems. Kind of hard to use them if those computers arn't functioning.

And, oh yes, there are ways of "convincing" politicians to step down non-violently. Unfortunately, they are too over confident in their assumed "power." With percise strategic planning, it won't take much to take them down the several notches needed to make them realize that they really have no power at all.

Really, "I think you under estimate our chances."

If you really want to believe this idiotic "theory" that the detention of illegal enemy combatants--a government power established in Ex Parte Quirin six decades ago--was influenced by a completely unrelated piece of legislation, well...feel free to continue being a dumbass.

The real issue--that the statement "The Patriot Act grants that right to the government, go read it for yourself" is completely false--has already been resolved.

I wouldn't think so. The best and most often used 'evidence' they had turned out to be some piece of a graduation paper from a student that had been written years and years ago. Do you really believe the intelligence agencies AND the government are really so stupid not to see where that info came from? I think they knew damn well!

And besides, it wasn't Blair and France telling Bush he got them... it was France and Blair telling Europe that Bush knew for sure he had them! You're getting things mixed up.

On the contrary, I never made that statement at all. They used the events of 9-11 and subsequently the Patriot Act to make illegally detaining so-called "enemy combatants" more acceptable (and less likely to be contested) by the American people.

BTW, arn't you in violation of the forum rules?



Just thought I'd give you a warning. Next time I'll just report it. Insults are really quite unneccessary and makes your post far less effective from a logical/objective stance. You may wish to brush up on your reasoning fallacy knowledge to ensure that this doesn't continue to happen.

Original position: "The Patriot Act gives the government [the right to detain enemy combatants], go read it for yourself."

Current position: "They used ... the Patriot Act to make illegally detaining so-called 'enemy combatants' more acceptable."

"This law gives the government that power" and "Another law gives the government that power, but this law makes using that power more acceptable to the public" are rather incongruous.

It's always semantics with you.

Sure, it's inconguous if you take to one deffinition of the word 'Right.' It was only after the Patriot Act passed that the government had the [PR supported] right to detain so-called 'enemy combatants.' This is evident by your own documentation that the first detainment didn't occur until one month after the Patriot Act was passed. I beleive the connection is obvious...

The Bush Administration has to be the most manipulative (by use of PR) administration to ever hold office on capital hill. They really know how to spin PR support and utililize the Propaganda "Freedom/Patriot" train to their advanatage. The founding fathers never intended for the government to be the way it is now. It's time for a change...

I see. When someone asks, "What law allows the goverment to indefinitely detain American citizens?" the proper response is not an explanation of the Supreme Court case that legalized the practice, or of Congress' authorization to use the power against terrorists, or of the multiple presidential orders that explicitly say, "Illegal enemy combatants are to be arrested and held indefinitely in Camp X-Ray".

In fact, you should simply say, "Go read the Patriot Act," even though the Patriot Act contains zero references to enemy combatants, places time limits on detention, and only applies to non-citizens arrested within the United States. Naturally, any reasonable person would easily divine that "Go read the Patriot Act" really means "The Patriot Act is completely unrelated to enemy combatant detentions, but the government uses it to make those detentions more publicly acceptable".

...or you should simply ask the person to better explain their position if you don't understand how the implied connection between two (seamingly) unrelated statements exists before you attack their position.

Not exactly, your last sentence contridicts itself. It starts by saying they're not related and ends with it saying that (basically) they were used in conjunction with each other. A more accurate statement might read: "While the Patriot Act was not directly related to enemy combatant detentions, the government used it to make that type of detention more publicly acceptable."

You should have asked me to better explain my position before attacking it!!

But seriously, I know that you don't really believe any of this crap. There's not a person on the planet stupid enough to honestly argue that "The Patriot Act" is an appropriate answer to the question, "Mind pointing me to the law that says that [the government can indefinitely detain American citizens]?" Even if we assume that your stupid theory is true, it still isn't an accurate or complete answer; the question clearly asks for the law that explicitly says, "American citizens can be detained indefinitely."

In any case, I would think that a concession would be preferable to intentionally portraying yourself as an incompetent moron who's incapable of correctly answering a simple, straightforward question. You have a serious problem with dishonesty.

That doesn't matter.

Are you saying it's ok if human rights are violated as long as those humans aren't american citizens?

1. I did answer it. Ignore the role that the Patriot Act has played in all this would be unethical in portraying the truth.

2. I have a problem with dishonesty? Please indicate where I have been dishonest in this thread. You, however, do have a serious problem with not accepting the truth of the larger picture and instead would prefer to play a semantics game until the original focus of the thread is lost (which is also known as the Red Herring type reasoning fallacy).

ORJ_JoS is right, let's get back to the issue that is really important and stop wagging a pointless semantics war.

To claim that the Patriot Act allows the government to detain enemy combatants isn't a matter of "semantics", it's just wrong.

The only correct answer to the question, "What law allows the government to do this?" is--and this will blow your mind, man--a reference to the actual law that grants the government that power! Only a complete moron would mention a law that "played a role" in the government's decision to use a power, yet say nothing about the one which explicitly granted that power.

The obvious conclusion is that you're either unbelievably stupid and too incompetent to effectively answer a simple question, or simply lying to avoid admitting an error.

I'm guessing it's mostly the latter.

Wow... what are you guys debating about?

Padilla v. Rumsfeld --- Joseph Padilla is an American citizen detained with the suspicion of using a dirty bomb against the US. He was declared an enemy combatant by president Bush. This was challenged by his attorney, but in this Supreme Court case a narrow majority ruled that his writ of habeas corpus was filed to the wrong court. In other words, they avoided making a ruling on whether Bush can or cannot declare citizens enemy combatants. THis means that for now, Bush has the authority to do so, thereby detaining without charge.