Once again, conservatives are addressing the wrong issue.....

[mattomjoe]

I have a habit (whether it is a bad habit, I suppose, is debatable) of periodically listening to conservative talk stations to find out what the other side is talking about. And what I've been hearing as a whole is an outrage (of course) that the left would be against wiretapping. They're not discussing the lack of warrants, which is what this whole issue boils down to. Just wiretapping itself. I know this is intentional, but it goes to show just how deep inside the pockets of the BFEE these quacks are.

[sellitman]

1. I can't stomach listening.

I don't last long even if I try. It's the same with *. I cannot even tolerate his voice let alone the lies he spews. I don't know how you do it?

[mattomjoe]

4. For me, I do get at least 2 positives from listening to them:

1) As I mentioned, I learn what their positions are, and 2) by knowing what their positions are, and the foolish arguments they use to defend them, it reinforces my own belief that I'm right in opposing them. They do drive me nuts though, and it's often best to "hear" them as they're being dissected by someone like Al Franken.

[BushOut06]

2. One of the right-winger favorite arguments...

Sometimes I do the same thing, listen to right-winger radio (Bud Hedinger in Orlando is one of the most fascist out there, worse than Hannity & Limbaugh combined). The one thing they always say is that America is a majority rule country, and if the liberals don't like it, they can just lump it.

If this country were simply a majority rule nation w/o any constitutional rights, we would still have slavery, African-Americans and women would have never been given the right to vote. We'd still have Blue Laws on the books.

Hell, Adolf Hitler was supported by a majority of Germans.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. I think it's interesting that so many hollar about "majority rule"

and at the same time declare that this is not a democracy but a republic.

They can't get their stories straight.

As a constitutional democracy, we have a constitution that delineates and limits the powers of the government, and we have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people". IOW, the constitution is there to protect many of the people from most of the people. The downfall of all previous democracies has been the devolution from democracy to mob rule, at which point a leader, whether a dictator or king or emperor, siezed control to restore order to the mob. Our constitution is designed to prevent that from happening this time around.

That's why our oaths of office are to the constitution, not to the country, the flag, or the leader. They'd do well to remember that.

[bammertheblue]

12. Didn't they ever take 9th grade civics?

That's what I want to know. Have they never heard of "majority rule with minority rights"?

[madokie]

3. Bro' Keep up the good fight, Its for the folks like yourself

who can stomach the other side and not get sick to keep us informed, we are fighting the same battle after all. I personally, well when I hear limpbals voice for instance I become violently ill, has made me :puke: before. Keep right on listening and telling. I'll keep right on reading. thanks
Just within the last year have I been able to watch or listen to anything bush* does or says.

[mattomjoe]

5. Thanks madokie

I still get riled up from listening from them at times, but more often than not now, they just make me laugh -- and I mean OUT LOUD. Am I concerned that they have a national voice and that people are actually taking them seriously? Yes. But I keep hoping that as scandal after scandal comes out on these guys, people will slowly begin to see these shills for who they are.

[4dsc]

6. Here's rightie's justification

I regularly discuss with rightie the issues of the day. Here's their reasons that they believe justify AWOlbush's actions.. Debunk at will..

No problem. I'll start with the editorial(http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512210142dec21,0,3553632.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed)
written by a Clinton administration assistant attorney general:

In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.

That establishes legality. Now to deal with the other president's use of this authority. It has been documented that Carter, Reagan, and Clinton all did the same thing. I can't anything on Bush senior, but I would presume he followed suit as well. He continues:

Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms. Under President Clinton, deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick testified that "the Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

Now let's work in reverse. Here is a copy of the executive order that Clinton signed (emphasis mine):

Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) of the Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section.

Reagan issued this executive order, which said essentially the same thing as Clinton's. Carter issued a similar order in 1979.

[mattomjoe]

7. This was debunked within the first few days of the story coming out.

I belive Daily Kos had the detailed counter-argument posted

[Toots]

9. Or as that rightwing Senator Inhofe from OK said when torture picts came o

"I am more outraged at the outrage" Samo Samo here on this...

[journalist3072]

10. They are incapable of discussing the real issues at hand...

I see this all the time from the freepers on my blog.

They never discuss whatever the issue at hand is. Either they don't WANT to discuss the real issue, or they are just intellectually incapable of doing so.

A good example of this is what happened on my blog last night.

Last night, I posted the story of a 6-year old Iraqi boy who was killed by U.S. gunfire. He was preparing to visit Syria with his father, and before they could even leave, he was killed by U.S. forces.

His mother, bless her heart, says she doesn't know who or what the U.S. forces were trying to shoot at, when they shot her son.

So anyway I was talking about this on my blog last night, and also talked about how in his interview with Jim Lehrer, Idiot Son said he never really took into consideration the human cost of the war.

One of the freepers on my blog commented and said that I didn't care anything about that 6 year old boy. He basically said I was just using this to get at Idiot Son, and that if I was truly for the children, then I would "finally explain what abortions" I am against.

I responded that he was incapable of discussing the real issue at hand, and I was not going to allow him to divert the conversation away from the real issue.

Here's the exchange here:

http://progressiveminds.bloghi.com/2005/12/27/culture-of-life-shoot-now-ask-questions-never.html

[mattomjoe]

11. I've come to the conclusion that the anti-abortion folk are so deeply

entrenched in that issue that anti-abortion political leaders are automatically absolved of all wrong doings. After all, how can an advocate of the unborn be guilty of other wrongful deeds? It must be a set-up by the loony left. There is no other explanation.