Windy City Attorney

Bill Clinton did not run on a family values platform. Bill Clinton has not (to my knowledge) ever said that extending marriage to same-sex couples would destroy "traditional" marriage. So comparing Bill Clinton to Sanford, Vitter, Ensign, Craig, etc. is inapposite. They all held themselves out as arbiters of "traditional family values." Clinton did not. And the bigger issue with Sanford is not the adultery, but the fact that his adultery took him out of state incommunicado for nearly a week. He's not a private citizen. He is (for the moment) the chief executive of a state. What if something had happened while he had been gone? His adultery is a private matter up to the point it affects his official duties. At that point, it is public business. So far as anyone can determine, Bill Clinton's private conduct had no impact whatsoever on his performance as President until his adversaries, having failed to convince the voters that it was a problem, decided to try and make it an issue through the courts and impeachment process. (Indeed, p. 63 of the Starr report describes an incident that speaks well of Clinton's powers of concentration.) Clinton is an adulterer and a scoundrel, but Sanford, Vitter, Ensign, Craig, Gingrich, et. al. are hypocrites. That's the difference.

You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. The "story" in the OP is utterly bogus. The only place it appears is on blogs and message boards populated by people whose worldview absolutely cannot tolerate the idea that someone other than a white male is President. And Paul doesn't seem to have any problem posting what he thinks under his own name.

I know that facts aren't generally your strong suit, but had you done even five seconds of research, you would have found that this story is utter bull. An April Fool's joke that is well past its sell-by date.

Incestuous? Perhaps rape? Do you even know what those words mean? Clinton and Lewinsky were not related, and their relationship was never alleged to be anything but consensual. And they were both of legal age, so no statutory rape. Are Newt Gingrich, Rudy Guiliani, John McCain, Henry Hyde, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Ronald Reagan and Larry Craig all Democrats now?

Yeah, and? Bill Clinton did not run on as a family values candidate. He never said that his moral superiority gave him the right to judge the morality of others, or was the reason why voters should choose him over the other guy. He never claimed to be the defender of traditional marriage. Neither did Edwards. McCain may not be either, but he is running as the candidate of the party that relies on bogus claims of moral and religious superiority. It is a bigger deal when Republicans are caught with their pants down, since there is such a large chunk of their party that believes that they have the right to dictate what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes, and to deny basic human rights and dignity to those who don't fit within their narrow paradigm of an "acceptable" relationship. Colmes' question was totally legitimate - if Republicans believe that Edwards' adultery makes him unfit for the Presidency, then what about McCain's? Hannity's lame "he was a POW" excuse just doesn't cut it - McCain began his affair with his now-wife years after he returned. It's particularly lame for a conservative to argue that past trauma excuses present immorality, since they are particularly aggressive about rejecting that claim when the person accused is non-white and poor, instead of the privileged son of admirals.

Then it's a good thing that we know that everyone in Guantanamo is a confirmed terrorist and that the U.S. government never makes any mistakes when it decides who is and isn't a terrorist. Well, except for Sami al-Haj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman who was detained at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border while crossing with a fellow Al Jazeera journalist. He was kept in an Afghan prison for six months, and then sent to Guantanamo, where he has spent the last six years. He has never been interrogated about terrorists or Al Quaeda, simply about the operations of Al Jazeera. He has never been charged with any crime. Oh, and then there is Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. He was legally in the U.S. on a student visa when he was arrested in Peoria, Illinois for credit card fraud. President Bush canceled his trial, declared him an enemy combatant, and sent him to Guantanamo. He has been there for four years, has been tortured, and never charged with any crime. And how about Maher Ahar? He's a Canadian citizen who was detained at JFK airport while in transit between the U.S. and Canada. He was then shipped to Syria, where he was tortured for ten months. Turns out, he wasn't the right guy. Ooops! Let's not forget Khaled el-Masri. He's a German citizen, arrested while on vacation in Macedonia, bounced around prisons around the world, and tortured by the CIA. Another case of mistaken identity. What are the odds? And the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, Lakhdar Boumediene, was a Bosnian citizen living in Bosnia who was arrested at the request of the U.S. government on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. The Bosnian Supreme Court found him innocent and ordered his release. He was promptly picked up by U.S. forces in Bosnia and sent to Guantanamo. He has not been charged with a crime. I think the point is made - mistakes happen. This is why the burden is always on the government to justify detaining someone, not the detained's burden to show why they should be let go. That's what habeas corpus is about, and is all that the Supreme Court's decision allows. What the Bush administration is claiming is the right to detain anyone, anywhere, for any length of time, without charging them, and without the accused having the right to challenge his or her detention. That is profoundly un-American, and to claim otherwise is unpatriotic.

And yet, you're the one answering a question with an insult. Even 10th grade "C" students know that it's not good behavior to do that. Those that don't figure it out become Republican water-carriers, I guess.

Please explain how the Program on International Policy of the University of Maryland (which conducted the survey) is a "Loony Left" organization. Is it just that it's got "University" in the name without the words "Patrick Henry," "Bob Jones," "Regent," "Oral Roberts," or "Liberty"? Or is it the "Program on International Policy" that proves it? I can see how someone who thinks that we've made all the right moves in foreign policy over the last seven years might think that - after all, the Bush/Cheney/neocon approach to foreign policy has two aspects- threaten war and wage war. If you're part of the 28% and falling that still thinks this group is doing a great job, I could see how you might not understand the need for actually studying international policy. Or anything else for that matter - you probably think that the President should be chosen based on whether you'd want to have a beer with him, not whether he or she actually knows anything relevant to the job of President. It's a study. Just because you don't like the conclusions doesn't mean it's propaganda.

That's not an position one usually hears from Bush supporters. Usually they're all about "strict construction." There is actually a process for "tweaking" the Constitution if there is a perception that it needs to be tweaked. It is not "tweaking" the Constitution to do something that it actually forbids. It's simply illegal. Much like a President saying that he can pick and choose which provisions of a statute he will follow. But then, this President hasn't been much for respecting limitations on his power, has he?

No, what's really scary is knowing that there are people out there willing to enable a public school teacher's flagrant abuse of his authority and violation of the Constitution, and who denigrate and even threaten those who bring such violations to light.

This was originally reported here: http://www.ocregister.com/news/corbett-cap...7-teacher-court And there's been another incident in North Dakota: http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=13949 Now, someone who actually understands and cares about the Constitution would view both of these incidents AND Paskiewicz's in-class ramblings as equally violative even though (wait for it) the California incident involved a teacher criticizing Christianity. And all those "atheistic secular-humanist terrorist-loving America-destroying gay-marrying libruls" at groups like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State would agree. It is only the theocrats who would find some way that the Constitution prohibits what the California teacher did and allows what Paskiewicz and the North Dakota teacher did.

The "agenda" is called the Constitution.