wow, very effective argument. You've sold me, on whatever it is you're trying to say.

I'm not trying to argue or say anything, I'm laughing at what a moron you are.

And I'm sitting back and shaking my head sadly at how blind you are. The proof is in the facts.

And you, sir, are a Uniter, not a Divider. I'm not sure anyone else could make Jon`C and me agree on anything.

holy **** you are dense

I think people should be kinder to Sarn. He posted his opinion knowing it would be received poorly. If nothing else he is demonstrating openly why there are issues with the way people are perceiving the President's religion. As I've stated earlier, the President's actions and words are fueling this uncertainty and this is unsettling to those who already have trust issues with the President. The recent poll showed that most people that think he's a Muslim, think so because, they believe, they saw it on TV. On the surface that wouldn't seem to make sense because there hasn't been any prominent televised effort to portray him as a Muslim. But the President himself is on TV all the time and Sarn posted 12 minutes of video that he believes suggests he is a Muslim.

All this really boils down to is a PR problem for the President. Many here have suggested that you need to be overtly Christian to be elected. I think he is not, or certainly no longer, "overtly Christian" and regardless of your opinion of religion in general, that may be a problem for him in 2012.

I think people should be kinder to Sarn. He posted his opinion knowing it would be received poorly. If nothing else he is demonstrating openly why there are issues with the way people are perceiving the President's religion. As I've stated earlier, the President's actions and words are fueling this uncertainty and this is unsettling to those who already have trust issues with the President. The recent poll showed that most people that think he's a Muslim, think so because, they believe, they saw it on TV. On the surface that wouldn't seem to make sense because there hasn't been any prominent televised effort to portray him as a Muslim. But the President himself is on TV all the time and Sarn posted 12 minutes of video that he believes suggests he is a Muslim.

All this really boils down to is a PR problem for the President. Many here have suggested that you need to be overtly Christian to be elected. I think he is not, or certainly no longer, "overtly Christian" and regardless of your opinion of religion in general, that may be a problem for him in 2012.

Haha look at you - you're mad at some imaginary injustice and you call other people blind.

You are loud, agressive and full of violence towards these loud, agressive and violent religions, nations and people. You're not one bit less self-interested than they are - neither is your retarded America, neither is your ultraviolent Christianity.

You're not one bit better - at least have the common decency to admit it.

Good god this thread is a huge pile of ****

Yeah, that might be a convincing argument if I were utterly unaware of the history and general structure of the Constitution.

1. Honestly, take a look at the Bill of Rights. The phrase "Congress shall make no law" appears only once, at the beginning of the First Amendment. Are we supposed to conclude that of all the rights contained in the Bill of Rights, the framers picked out the rights in the First Amendment and said "Let's make sure those only apply to the federal government, even though they're probably the most important for maintaining a free society." That they thought it was more important to enforce the right to a jury trial in all civil suits over twenty dollars against the states (Seventh Amendment: "the right of trial by jury shall be preserved" with no mention of Congress or the federal courts) than to enforce the right of free speech against the same?

2. No one believed that any part of the Bill of Rights (other than, naturally, the Tenth Amendment) applied to the states at the time it was adopted. Amendments that explicitly would have applied to the states were rejected.

3. Provisions that explicitly apply to the states can be found in Article IV of the Constitution. They are very clear about their applicability to the states; they don't rest on tenuous inferences made from the fact that one provision says "Congress shall make no law" and the rest don't.

4. If, as BTM suggests, "shall not be infringed" means "by anyone, ever," why stop at states? Why not private actors too? Say, a restaurant or theater that won't let you bring a gun in? (The answer is in the next paragraph.)

5. Above all, the Constitution is the charter of a federal government. There's no good reason to believe it's talking about the states when it doesn't say anything about the states.

So is this why are mosques and places of worship are continued to be suicide-bombed in Iraq? But they are Muslims in those mosques! And nothing makes us more Muslim-friendly than driving airplanes into buildings!

I need to research this Muslim "hive-mind" that you may have inadvertently discovered. I'll remember to ask a Muslim at a local convenience store or food vending stand if he is planning a cultural takeover (with tasty treats, I must add!)



Because America is still a relatively good place to be a Muslim? Amazing, I know. Even in NYC where the stupid new mosque controversy is taking place, they were other mosques that have been in for years. They even pray the streets and they continue to do so post-9/11! It may be shocking to you but America is a country of shifting demographics that has been going for decades. More Mexicans, more Chinese, more Pakistanis, etc. You can find graphs of increased <insert cultural background> population because that what immigration is all about. I don't know how long you have been in a boat in the middle of nowhere, but this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who lives a life that doesn't involve sitting in a secluded environment and feeding on regurgitated media.



Why do conspiracy-theorists almost always love to use ocular-related sayings? That and "my EYES now are WIDE OPEN" too. It's like some kind of mental autofellatio where, when they reach some warped climax of higher enlightenment, they take a moment to bask in the glory (and fluids) of discovering a new form of release from sanity.

This is one of the most annoying things about our current judicial system; the judges can pick and choose which state laws the federal government can overrule. For example, CA's prop 8. I don't care one way or the other on the issue, but it should be a state issue, not a federal one.

[Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm certainly no expert in this area (in fact, I know very little). This is just how it appears to me based on what I have heard and read.]

I just gotta say that's a damn awesome paragraph.

There are some state laws that the federal courts can overturn and some that they can't, but that's not the judges picking and choosing. It's just the consequence of having a federal government that can do some things but not others.

Prop. 8 specifically is a federal issue because it relates to the equal protection guarantee in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment makes this guarantee applicable to the states ("nor shall any State" etc.) and gives the federal government the power to enforce it.

Ah, I am always pleased to see our resident legal mind lay down the law. considering that you seem to have a fairly common sense approach to interpretation, not nitpicking language unnecessarily, do you support incorporation of all of the rights outlined in the bill of rights as the intended effect of whatever clause of the 14th amendment pertained to it? (I forget which, the 2nd?) or maybe the other thread is more appropriate

I don't think it is as easy as that, Mike. In the recent Massachusetts case the judge ruled based upon both States' rights and equal protection. I'm sure you'll agree (and I'm nearly equally certain you've already said) that this is an issue that's going to need to be reconciled at the Supreme Court.

That makes sense. The reason I brought up Prop. 8 is because that's the one everyone is making a stink about right now, and information is unclear, as both sides of the issue are up in arms and very sensitive about the issue.

Thanks Mike Mac.

To avoid sidetracking this thread too much, I'll try to be brief:

As a result of the Due Process Clause? I'm not really a big fan. It's a pretty strained interpretation compared to what I think the Supreme Court should have done (that is, use the Privileges or Immunities Clause). I put up with it, though, because I think it's produced pretty much the same results, and no incorporation at all would be a worse interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment than doing incorporation "wrong" is.

No, you are absolutely wrong. The Civil Rights Act sparked social progress, thereby making it progressive by definition. It didn't spark "American". If other countries pass a similar civil rights bill, then they are American?

This is like having an argument where one person is using the definition for gay of "happy" and the other is using the meaning of "homosexual".

The California case is very definitely as easy as that. I haven't read the Massachusetts cases yet, but I do know that the "states' rights" issue there is different: Whether the Constitution gives Congress the authority to pass the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

1) I'm not mad. I'm worried.

2) I'm hardly loud, agressive, or violent. You act as if you know me, but you have no idea who I am or how I act.

3) What do you know about my beliefs to label them as "ultraviolent Christianity"? You probably have no basis to make any claims about my religious beliefs. Besides which, it's irrelevant, as I'm quite confident I never made a link between my personal religious beliefs and my concerns about Muslim culture infultrating ours.

4) I'm not one bit better than the terrorists? Your right, I guess posting unpopular opinions about current events topics on an internet forum is as bad as running into a shopping center with C4 strapped to my chest.

1) I'm not on a boat in the middle of nowhere. I'm in San Diego.

2) I don't disagree with anything you're saying about the nature of American immigration, but that's not the issue. The issue is how in a very short time, the US Muslim population has gone from relatively insignificant to something other than that. IIRC, it's currently the fastest growing religion in America (I'll research to confirm that later if someone doesn't beat me to it).

Yea but why is it an issue that the Muslim population is growing? Why are you afraid of all Muslims?

Islam is the second largest religion in the world; What's wrong with it being the fastest growing in one country?

And is the fact that it's the fastest growing even significant? Something's gotta to be fastest if you're comparing rates. Single stats like that don't mean **** without context.

I'm not saying it's necessarily an issue, strictly from a political viewpoint. I'm using that fact to support my postulation that Islamic groups are successfully infiltrating our American culture.

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Also, look. Islamic extremists are not stupid. They know to play against our weaknesses. And, as Americans, our weakness is that we pride ourselves on being tolerant, politically correct people.

There's a shipmate of mine who used to work gate security at a US Navy base in Bahrain. Through random searches, he has caught middle eastern individuals trying to carry weapons on base on more than one occasion. He told me that nearly every time, the middle eastern individual would resist being searched by claiming that the guard was racially profiling, and only searching because the individual was middle eastern. When the guard searched Americans coming on the base, they would shrug and open their bags, maybe a bit annoyed, but not claiming that discrimination was taking place.

I tell that story to demonstrate how Islamic terrorists are trying to use our fear of political incorrectness to our disadvantage. They would try to make the guard feel uncomfortable about searching them *because* they were middle eastern, even though the searches were performed at random (usually they'd pick a number (for example, choose to search every 8th person through the gate).

You can't really infiltrate a culture. You can exist alongside one, integrate into one, but a culture cannot be penetrated and subverted in the way you're thinking.

hahaha wow just stop typing

oh ok. you win. Dang, I should have used the "wow just stop typing" argument... shoot.

I'm not trying to make a point or argue with you, just asking you to stop typing

Also re: above - there's no shame in racial profiling in the above example. In fact, it'd be NUTS not to.

(a) In Bahrain, the population is predominantly arabic.
(b) The sort of people you are looking for (terrorists that are trying to subvert your military base defences) are more likely to be arabic in appearance than not.
(c) Therefore you should direct your searches to include more arabic looking people.

It's not racist, it's sensible.

oh I completely agree. But the PC camp doesn't.

Sure they do; however, American soil is not a naval base in Bahrain, therein lies where the disagreement would occur.

I'm pretty sure the constitution says we have to be Muslim friendly.

It's not that they're moving here, it's that they're infiltrating

I've said "Jesus ****ing Christ", "oh my ****ing god" & "my church" (referring to the church of my parents) on several occasions & I can assure you that I'm an anti-theist. It's fine that you want to use these "slips" to justify your belief that Obama is lying about his religion but I just wanted to point out that it doesn't actually or always mean what you seem to think it does.

Does that mean that they tip-toe off the plane?

What about the Mac camp?



had to be done