WilliamK

What do you mean? The UpTighties are always constrictive.

Or as Anne Richards once said of his daddy, "he was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

He certainly wasn't forced. Did I suggest force? It's just a matter of weighing the positive provisions against the negative. I don't agree with his decision on this. I do not think that the good outweighed the bad. It is, in fact, the single biggest disappointment from him as far as I'm concerned. It is also a break of his earlier promise to filibuster any bill that included telecom immunity. But that doesn't change the fact that there's a difference between a compromise and a flip-flop. Agree with it or not, this was a compromise, not a reversal of position.

Liar. Obama's energy plan is broad based, and includes low-emissions coal, biofuels, solar, wind, and nuclear.

A fascinating response. (For the sake of brevity, I've only quoted the intelligent portion.)

Especially since he's still opposed to telecom immunity and has vowed to try to strip that provision. This highlights a fundamental problem with flip-flop accusations, especially as they pertain to a lawmaker's voting history. The problem is riders. Many pork-barrel or special interest provisions that would never survive a vote on their own are pushed through Congress by attaching them to more sensible legislation, thus effectively holding the main bill hostage with the ransom being the passage of the unwanted provision. A side effect of this is that it makes it easy to prove accusations of the "Senator X said he opposes Y then voted in favor of it." form, insinuating that Senator X either lied or changed position, when in reality, Senator X never changed position, but voted as he did only because he believed the other provision(s) of the bill outweighed Y. Had he voted the other way, he might have been accused of flip-flopping on some other aspect of the bill. And riders aren't the only source of a false appearance of flip flopping. For example, let's say a particular bill gets voted down. A few months later, it reappears with some modifications to the parts that were objected to the first time. It passes. Those who voted against the first version and for the second may have that used by an opponent as the basis of a flip-flop accusation when they're running for re-election. But even though it's undeniably true that they changed their vote, it may not be true at all that they changed or lied about their position. Because it's so easy to "prove" and virtually impossible to avoid, flip-flopping is the fall-back mud when you can't find any real mud to sling at your opponent. Unless you like being manipulated, all flip-flopping accusations should be considered immediately suspect and held to a very high standard of proof. ESPECIALLY those accusations that agree with your preconceptions and that you want to be true. Those aren't necessarily any more likely to be false, but if any of them are, they're the ones most likely to deceive you. The most insidious lies are the ones that ring true.

An excellent point, S&O. Making assumptions about people's views based on the books they read is a very bad idea. People can and do read or keep for reference texts that they don't agree with. Many capitalists have read The Communist Manifesto, for example. And it is very common for atheists to own copies of The Holy Bible and other religious texts. Willful ignorance is not a virtue. Same applies for magazines, movies, TV, radio, web sites, etc.

Whoa, dude. Guest highlighted the sentence to indicate what part of your post he was talking about. KOTW didn't do it. And no one's accusing you of doing it. Guest did accuse you of bigotry, but did not suggest that anyone but himself did the highlighting.

Yeah, Bryan! NEENER NEENER! I know you are, but what am I? Etc. Good grief, Guest. Are you trying to compete with 2smart4u for childish and stupid retorts?

The amazing thing about Bush's 25% approval rating is not that it has sunk so low, but that it remains so high. It's just stunning that a full quarter of the US population is possessed of such profound stupidity. So tell us, 2smart, Patriot, Bushbacker, SKR, etc.; what's it like to represent the bottom half of the bottom half?

Congratulations, Autonomous! Everyone, please don't reply to the negative posts on this thread. In this case, the best justice is to just let their own repugnance distinguish them. Better a few isolated turds in the pool than to fill the whole pool with turds.

Coming from a "Yale Law Professor", it seems a bit odd that the quote makes no substantive statements of any kind. It mentions not a single action of the ACLU that he finds objectionable, but is only engaging in a generalized and emotional bashing. No information content whatsoever, and not the slightest hint of reasoned argument. Could that be why this particular quote appealed to you so much that you felt compelled to share it? I suspect that this professor (granting you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he actually exists and that he is what you claim he is) would have had more substantive things to say in support of those remarks in the context from which you pulled that quote. But far be it from you to be drawn to anything that might contain, or demand, actual thought.

Post a thoughtful response, and you'll have your thoughtful discussion. How is it that you blame the poor level of discourse on the poster of the one and only thoughtful and level-headed post on this thread, while you and all other detractors have produced not a single post above the level of personal bashing?

Yeah! And that's not the half of it. He eats babies! With a pitchfork! And he pretends to help little old ladies cross the street only to abandon them in the middle just as the light changes! And he KICKS PUPPIES!!!!!!!!! I swear it's all true. My mother's neighbor's gardener's friend's nephew's youth pastor read it somewhere. p.s. I also heard that his barber is a PHILATELIST! And he's not even Mormon! Pretty scary to think that someone running for president would be associated with one of THEM.

Bush has decried "legislating from the bench", but here he encourages and lauds exactly that. The Supreme Court's job is not to make decisions "based upon their serious concerns about U.S. national security", or about anything else. Their job is to put their concerns and biases aside and interpret the Constitution as faithfully as they can. If that leads to a decision that has undesirable consequences, then it's the legislative branch's job to fix the law, not the court's job to twist it to their liking. Prominent republicans often claim to want "strict constitutionalists" on the SC. They lie. What they clearly want is judges who will toe the right wing line in preference to what the Constitution says. John McCain is a decent enough fellow. But he's made clear his intent to appoint right-leaning judges should the opportunity arise, and it likely will. That's a very good reason to vote for Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. Republicans will continue tossing the phrase "strict constitutionalist" around, but you're not going to get a genuine one appointed by John McCain.

Good suggestion. Have you read them?

Mr. Barry's help is appreciated, but O'Reilly is quite capable of soiling his image all by himself, as can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oNAagbLuXQ&hl=en In this clip, O'Reilly claims that Moyers has accused him of threatening dissenters. This is true, in a sense. But it was pretty clear that what Moyers meant by dissent being "risky" was the risk of being publicly painted as unpatriotic or worse. The much more sinister sounding phrase, "threatening dissenters", is O'Reilly's words, not Moyers', and carries connotations well outside the bounds of what Moyers pretty obviously meant. O'Reilly then shows a clip in which Moyers uses a short clip from O'Reilly, in which O'Reilly is doing exactly that, equating dissent with being unpatriotic. O'Reilly then accuses Moyers of having taken him out of context, and in a stunningly disingenuous attempt to convince us of this, O'Reilly shows a longer clip in which the surrounding context not only doesn't change the meaning of the part Moyers had quoted, but actually reinforces it. Then he makes a second attempt at the same thing, again showing a clip where Moyers quotes him, followed by a longer clip with context that again doesn't change the meaning of the part Moyers quoted (though at least it doesn't reinforce it this time). After this despicable performance, this sack of garbage, O'Reilly, goes on to call Moyers a "charlatan", and "not honest", and displays some impressive belligerence towards one of his guests, obviously losing his temper a bit and raising his voice. Did Bill O'Reilly actually think he was helping his case with that performance? Are there people out there who are so devoid of reason that it could actually work? How dare that sack of garbage call Bill Moyers a charlatan. O'Reilly isn't worthy to lick the mud off the bottoms of Bill Moyers' shoes.

Which? The complete absence of substantiation for both the story and the insinuated accusation, or the dishonor of the one posting it?

This is a moderated forum. Posts only appear after the moderator reads and posts them. This usually happens 1 to 3 times a day at unpredictable times.

Nonsense. For the argument to work, the premise must have at least some indication of being actually true, not merely in the realm of possibility.

It must have been one of those "had to be there" things. In the retelling, it just sounds moronic.

Why would it raise that question? Are dangerous things necessarily addictive?

Cat got your tongue?

Too bad he can't express them any better than the fuzzy-headed writings of the likes of Joseph Smith and the apostles. Hey, that would be a great band name. "Joe Smith and the Apostles".

The relevance of that depends on how much of that comes from imported petroleum vs. coal, hydro, nuclear, methane, etc. I don't think it's much. I'm not aware of any diesel or gasoline power plants beyond the scale of backup generators for hospitals and such. For the near term, electric cars will mostly be powered by coal, as that is already the dominant fuel for electric power generation. It's not perfect by any means, but we don't have to import it from countries who want to kill us, and it still may be less pollution per mile traveled than burning gasoline in an automobile engine at less than 15% efficiency and no ability to carry around the massive emission reduction measures that are possible for a stationary power plant. It's all about the vehicles. Other than that, we're mostly energy independent already.