In light of stopping every other post on the G.W. Bush thread from feeling the need to reiterate that impeachment only means a trial, not a conviction, I would like to propose a vote.
All in favor of the use of "impeachment" to refer to trial AND conviction, vote aye.
All in favor of having us actually type out "impeachment and conviction" every time a conviction is being referenced, vote nay.

Whether or not people realize that impeachment only means a trial doesn't have to be an issue, all that should matter is that you understand what they mean. Words are just a means for conveying ideas, and if you get the idea, does it matter that the word isn't completely correct for what they meant?

talk about a pointless thread...

nobody is going to listen to your demands on a thread...

What's the point of a definition for a word if you're just going to make up your own?

The word impeachment means a trial. It always has, and it will for the foreseeable future.

Aye. A trial in democracies isn't just a farce for the public to watch on tv. As far as the theory goes, there is no trial with the result already known beforehand. Otherwise, there would be no trial. So, like CM said, impeachment can't refer to both trial and conviction, no matter how much you want. Maybe in North Korea the situation would be different.

voted 1

Voted aye, cause communication trumps pedantry

An impeachment isn't a trial. It's the process to determine if a president should be put on trial.

I pointed my mouse to the least popular vote, because I felt sorry for it.

As long as you don't confuse "impeachment" with "vote of no confidence," I will not be too offended.

I'm not saying change the meaning of the word :p
I'm just saying it's kind of annoying to see every other post reiterating the fact that impeachment doesn't mean conviction when we all know what they really meant.

Ex) "if GW's impeached then Cheny'll be the new dictator"
"Dude, you're stupid, impeachment doesn't mean he's taken out of office, it only means a trial"
"Who cares man, you know I meant impeached and kicked out, it's kinda obvious what I meant from the rest of my sentence..."

All I'm saying is that when you know what someone means, do you HAVE to correct them for the 30th time in a thread? Once or twice, sure, enlighten the world. every other post? give it a rest.

Yeah. He didn't mean that with his post.

You need to learn how to read better.

Words mean what they mean, not what you think it'd be convenient for them to mean. Denied.

Couldn't have said better.



And oh yeah,


BURN.

While I don't think there necessarily should be such an extreme "correction" attitude (i.e. every other post), I DO think people should try to not be so lazy and just use "impeach" in its correct context, for clarity's sake (and to ensure that ignorant people learn the correct definition)

After this one, can we vote that the meaning of "Speed Limit 65" is changed from "Speed Limit 65" to "Drive however the hell fast you want?"

Can we also agree to not use the word "government" when you mean "state?" Or "nation" when you mean "country?" You can correct people of their language but if you do know what they mean, then argue their actual point.

Actually, the Nation/State issue makes sense.

In the US, we have these 50 "states". Therefore, we call other countries "nations" or "countries."

However, in other parts of the world, the word "state" refers to a "nation" as we in the US call it, that is, a body of government, and "nation" refers to the people who make up the demographic of the state and/or region.

I realize that the examples I give are different than impeach/remove from office. It is fair of you to point out how those terms are validly used in different ways.

That said, this is unnecessary:



I'm sure Rob's actually trying to further his argument that impeachment is a waste of time because it won't lead to a conviction and will just cost money. In that case, he could have just said that. Instead, his real argument is lost and we have threads like this. That is why flaming is not an effective way to discuss an issue.

Actually, I'm pretty sure what I meant to say was "PAY ATTENTION IN HIGHSCHOOL." That post had nothing to do with my opinion.

Some people seriously make me want to BURN my diploma. It doesn't mean anything anymore, and thats sad.

Nope. His argument is that people don't know what the correct term to describe something is, and as a result, an incorrect term is used to mean something it shouldn't because be are lazy and stupid.

Some people do argue that we should impeach---and convict---President Bush because they do not like him. One possible way to answer these people is to point out that impeachment is not only not a vote of no confidence, it also operates differently than a vote of no confidence. A vote of no confidence in a parliamentary system replaces the whole cabinet (government) and not just the Prime Minister (head of government).

Alan's post directed the discussion towards the consequence of removing Bush from office---Cheney would take his place. This is actually a logical place to move the discussion to since we can't evaluate whether or not we should remove Bush from office without considering the consequences of doing so.

If remembering definitions from a civics class is your definition of the importance of a high school diploma, then maybe you should burn it.

Which "he" are you referring to, cause I'm sure several of them meant having Bush convicted too... Ok, so maybe they didn't realize that impeachment only meant a trial, but after correcting them the first couple times just give it a rest. Since you (generic 'you', the person doing the correcting...) corrected them, you clearly knew what they were meaning. I'm just saying that it's annoying to keep reading corrections instead of the actual topic.

As a note since some of you seem to think I'm for changing the meaning of the word (which I think I was at the time cause I was annoyed by the posts) and never correcting people when they're wrong, I DO support correcting them the first couple times. I'm all for enlightening the world, but I'm not a fan of the overzealous reaction from every other forum user... That's all, nothing more, nothing less :p

Rob, maybe you need to learn to read better too...

Though I will admit that I did not do a good job at conveying my position in my first post, actually I'd call it a terrible job since my poll actually said changing the word... I've backed down on that point, since I don't really know why I said it in the first place. But I'm still in support of dropping things after a few times for the sake of not killing a thread all for definition-nazism :p

Triple negative?

He meaning Annovis, the original poster.

Who, admitedly, isn't as retarded as you're trying to make him sound.

Alan's post was proof he didn't pay attention in highschool.

This isn't just about remembering things about civics class. THIS IS ABOUT REMEMBERING AND LEARNING HOW YOUR GOVERNMENT, THE STATE, FUNCTIONS. YOU KNOW, THE BODY OF PEOPLE THAT MAKE ALL THE RULES.

Jeez.

Now you've lost me... I'm not trying to make anyone sound retarted. And from reading that thread, Anovis understood the difference between impeachment and conviction. I think we both lost each other somewhere along the way in this thread. I'm not even sure we're arguing against each other anymore...

I think you're definately misrepresenting the man's intelligence. You should appologize.

If you can't spell the word "retarded" correctly, perhaps you shouldn't be arguing to change a word's definition.

Words have a meaning for a reason.

This thread is stupid. It is a terrible thread and a terrible premise and the thread was created for terrible reasons. It's like a semantics debate only instead of a debate between linguists it's just a couple of illiterates trying to grapple with the immense mental puzzle of where 'impeach' is located in the dictionary.

It's in the fruit section, amirite?

That's like the definition of hardcore!

It's high school, what did you think? Its a certificate of not a being a looser of the highest order. If you want academic prestige get a collage diploma. Of course, many of those mean little more than "I partied for four years."

The point is it's something you should know from high school. You shouldn't need a college degree to understand moderate level vocabulary.

:p that was just a typo. And if you'd bothered to read more than the first post you'd see that I'm actually against change the word (I was mostly ranting in the first post, and I'm sure everyone here knows the effects of ranting on common sense)

And I think the thread's fairly well beaten this dead horse.