[hyteckit]

Finally someone writes about how Republicans hate the constitution.

SPIN METER: Republicans hot, cold on Constitution - Yahoo! News


In the current congress:

Republicans have proposed 42 Constitutional amendments
Democrats have proposed 27 Constitutional amendments


While Democrats tend to amend the Constitution to give citizens more rights, Republicans like to amend the Constitution to take away rights.


For example:

1. Banning abortion
2. Banning gay marriages
3. Banning birthright citizenship
4. Banning parts of the civil rights act
5. Banning stem cell research

So Republicans like big government and want government to tell us what we can't do.

[BadKosh]

Show me in the Constitution where it actually says killing the unborn is a right. Screw your activist judges making up stuff! How about reading the laws and making sure they are enforced to the letter?

[Dork.]

You could make the argument that Republicans have more respect for the Constitution, and understand that the legislature can't just do whatever it wants all the time. Constitutional amendments are actually the proper way to implement certain things such as banning abortion or banning birthright citizenship. (Or banning flag burning, another amendment proposed by a Republican), because the legislature has no power to do it given our current Constitutional framework.

By this line of thinking, Liberals are much more likely to ignore constraints on government imposed by the Constitution, and simply legislate their agenda, and let the Courts sort it out.

Not that I agree with this line of reasoning. (IMHO Bush and Cheney, in particular, used the Constitution as either a blanket or as toilet paper, depending on whatever was more politically expedient at the time.) But the simple fact that Republicans propose more amendments does not mean they love or hate the Constitution any more than a Democrat.

[BadKosh]

Factually, They only banned gov't funds for Stem cell research.

[sek929]

...and even then isn't it only embryonic stem cell research?

[ort888]

...and even then isn't it only for embryos that look funny?

[The Final Dakar]

...or are immigrants?

[hyteckit]

... or look like illegal immigrants?

[BadKosh]

or are making posts without content?

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by Dork. 

You could make the argument that Republicans have more respect for the Constitution, and understand that the legislature can't just do whatever it wants all the time. Constitutional amendments are actually the proper way to implement certain things such as banning abortion or banning birthright citizenship. (Or banning flag burning, another amendment proposed by a Republican), because the legislature has no power to do it given our current Constitutional framework.

By this line of thinking, Liberals are much more likely to ignore constraints on government imposed by the Constitution, and simply legislate their agenda, and let the Courts sort it out.

Not that I agree with this line of reasoning. (IMHO Bush and Cheney, in particular, used the Constitution as either a blanket or as toilet paper, depending on whatever was more politically expedient at the time.) But the simple fact that Republicans propose more amendments does not mean they love or hate the Constitution any more than a Democrat.

That would mean Republicans are for big government and less about state rights.

So, not only do they hate the Constitution, they are for big government.

[Doofy]

Wake me up when you guys have figured out that you'd be having a better time if you shot all your politicians and had Caitlin Upton running the place instead.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

or are making posts without content?

Echoing whatever talking points you heard on Fox News this morning isn't "content."

[smacintush]

While I think that what the Republicans SPEAK of is closer to how this country is supposed to work, their actual actions are antithetical to their message.

They speak of personal freedom, then they propose the banning of flag burning, abortions, gay marriage, etc.

They speak of the merits of free market capitalism, then they propose or support myriad new regulations just like the Democrats. It is in this that they are actually doing MORE damage to this country than the Democrats. By continually talking up capitalism, while at the same time creating situations that damage the economy, they have essentially created a huge PR problem for free markets, which of course the liberals and their ignorant followers pounce upon.

[BadKosh]

As the Lefty Nooze outlets continue to spin lies about the success of the Obama admin....The facts say otherwise.


Little-known fact: Obama's failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war

Little-known fact: Obama's failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war | Washington Examiner

Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.

The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out, that's the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation's Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.

The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict.



But there is much more to be said of this data and Hoven does an admirable job of summarizing the highlights of such an analysis:

* Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.

* Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

* Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.

* Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.

* Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.

* The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).

* During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

[sek929]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

As the Lefty Nooze outlets.....blah blah blah)

I guess you can look at it that way, if you are silly enough to believe the true cost of war is what we 'spent' on it. What about repairing all those wrecked vehicles and caring for the wounded and families of the dead? Those costs will be felt for decades.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I guess you can look at it that way, if you are silly enough to believe the true cost of war is what we 'spent' on it. What about repairing all those wrecked vehicles and caring for the wounded and families of the dead? Those costs will be felt for decades.

The only real cost of war is the human cost and the money you bribe the enemy with. Everything else keeps people in jobs and makes its way back into your economy.

[SpaceMonkey]

The stimulus was designed to put money back into the economy, too, so along those lines it would be difficult to contrast the true economic impact of each.

[BadKosh]

The Jobs stim package didn't do anything. 785 Billion wasted.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally Posted by Dork. 

You could make the argument that Republicans have more respect for the Constitution, and understand that the legislature can't just do whatever it wants all the time. Constitutional amendments are actually the proper way to implement certain things such as banning abortion or banning birthright citizenship. (Or banning flag burning, another amendment proposed by a Republican), because the legislature has no power to do it given our current Constitutional framework.

By this line of thinking, Liberals are much more likely to ignore constraints on government imposed by the Constitution, and simply legislate their agenda, and let the Courts sort it out.

Not that I agree with this line of reasoning. (IMHO Bush and Cheney, in particular, used the Constitution as either a blanket or as toilet paper, depending on whatever was more politically expedient at the time.) But the simple fact that Republicans propose more amendments does not mean they love or hate the Constitution any more than a Democrat.

Wow. An actual thought-driven argument that makes sense, not just more peanut-gallery wanking. A RARE occurrence around here. Thanks.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

The only real cost of war is the human cost and the money you bribe the enemy with. Everything else keeps people in jobs and makes its way back into your economy.

Actually, it went to Iraq economy and feeding the big cats behinds the wars.

How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish | World news | The Guardian

The Case of the Missing $21 Billion

Defense Department Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds — $2.3 Trillion

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

The Jobs stim package didn't do anything. 785 Billion wasted.

That's a pretty specific claim. Do you have a citation for that?

[sek929]

I know of, at least, a dozen people put to work on road crews and public works projects under the stimulus plan that were unemployed before. Seeing the state of our roads here makes me glad that this sort of thing is being done.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by sek929 

I know of, at least, a dozen people put to work on road crews and public works projects under the stimulus plan that were unemployed before. Seeing the state of our roads here makes me glad that this sort of thing is being done.

At $500+k per job, you should be happy with the work they're doing. Hopefully, they'll still be plugging away on those street projects in 2030 to ensure a legitimate ROI. The unemployment numbers remain stagnant while existing home sales hit a 15-year low. People aren't working, they aren't buying and remember, it's the idea that at some point we're going to have to pay this bill that has created the uncertainty among job creators. Until you fix that, you'll be throwing money at temp jobs and their street projects.

[ebuddy]

It's hard to take a thread seriously when its purveyors would readily piss gasoline on the constitution to shut you up and throw a match in to ensure you never speak again.

[BadKosh]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

That's a pretty specific claim. Do you have a citation for that?

See the recent unemployment data? Notice a trend for the last several months? See any jobs being created, other than the bubble when the FedGov was hiring census collectors?

[BadKosh]

The recoveries in teh past were driven by the housing market, but with THAT not happening because of the stupid tax-n-spend nonsense forced on the general population by the Democrats, it's their policies and handling of a mild recession that turned it into the cluster it is now. The spending didn't help the other times the Dems screwed around (1993 and that retro tax increase) or even back to Carter. What is it about the past results that they can't get? Why do they continue to try what didn't work before?

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

See the recent unemployment data? Notice a trend for the last several months? See any jobs being created, other than the bubble when the FedGov was hiring census collectors?

It's going to get worse. In the offshore world, flags have recently been going up left, right and centre... ...flags saying "Americans, get you and your money out of the US right now". I agree with them, and if I agree with them, you can be sure that there's a large amount of job providers who're also in agreement and taking notes, possibly making plans.

It's going to get bumpy, kiddies.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

See the recent unemployment data? Notice a trend for the last several months? See any jobs being created, other than the bubble when the FedGov was hiring census collectors?

Here is a different take:
Political Economy - CBO says stimulus may have added 3.3 million jobs

[BadKosh]

And as far as your privacy................ I guess they can spy on you to verify you have been taxed into bankruptcy?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant. (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

[The Final Dakar]

I don't say this often, but that might be worth its own thread.

[Laminar]

I'm coating the inside of my car with Dynamat and a Faraday cage.

[SpaceMonkey]

BadKosh is worried that if he includes the link to the article the government will track him down.

[The Final Dakar]

Its yahoo, I believe.

[BadKosh]

Yes it is. Fixed the origPost by adding the linky.

[smacintush]

That's what you get when you hold that the "greater good" or "public safety" trumps individual rights.

[BadKosh]

Senator Leahy, the liberal hack from VT is getting ready to really piss off the Tea Party folks....And right before elections. What is he thinking?


“Firearms in Commerce: Assessing the Need for Reform in the Federal Regulatory Process”
Senate Judiciary Committee
Full Committee
View a webcast of this hearing
DATE: September 14, 2010
TIME: 10:00 AM
ROOM: Dirksen-226
OFFICIAL HEARING NOTICE / WITNESS LIST:

September 7, 2010

NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARING
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing entitled "Firearms in Commerce: Assessing the Need for Reform in the Federal Regulatory Process" for Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

By order of the Chairman.

[OldManMac]

There are apparently some Republicans who understand at least part of the Constitution.

Judge Rules DADT Unconstitutional | News | Advocate.com