RobBob

Mtngoat, I just read your "red is blue" post, and I do not understand how you get off challenging others to name and defend their religions, saying that you have done so. other than the recent post about how you stand on abortion, I have no idea what your religion and belief system is....it's not a part of this debate. Neither is mine. The issue that I have focused on, since I started posting, is how our Attorney General performs based on what the framers of the constitution had in mind. I think that matters, but you think only the last 15 minutes of history are important when it comes to government. You have, among other things, tried to sully the reputation of Jefferson and others by bringing up slavery. Others may think that you are a keen debater, but verbosity doesn't mean shit if it's not backed up by clear thinking. Cheers, Greg

Goat, you just seem too intelligent to honestly believe this "bend-over" philosophy. You support him, and this is your word-game to defend his appointment. I wish I had the time and energy to do this paragraph-by-paragraph with you. But I must save some time to work, fuck, eat, and live. Let's rest up, and go again over Israel.

Greg, what crawled up your ass? Yesterday I was thinking that you were one of the people on this board that was halfway civil. This morning I was greeted by Now you claim to be pissed off by something I write, and you don't even understand what I'm saying. Kiss my heinie.

Iain, I vote Republican, voted for GWB, but I use my brain in decision-making. You are right-on about Ashcroft. He would be right at home as a fundamentalist Muslim.

trask, I was going to suggest yesterday that Mtngoat find a high school debating club to spar with. That would be a group that would take him up on debating whether the sky is green, and do it with earnest relish. Before, I believed that the Goat was just sparring with us. But now, I think he really believes his crap.

In high school, my standard reply was "you are what you eat."

Can you say "Over the Line?"

Anybody notice that it looks like the folks who are so staunchly defending Ashcroft appear to be the fundamentalists here, and are attempting to do so by telling us the sky is green and the grass is blue? I'd be more inclined to listen to someone who is not staunchly religious use practical logic in defending Ashcroft and his record.

Sargeant Hulka here...all you pukes shut up and give me 20...

Hey Iain, You can have that ole windbag Byrd...wait a minute, I want him. Lookit all the money he has recruited to WVA. It's unbelieveable!

I'm sorry I missed all that horseshit on this thread yesterday. Trask, you've seen both sides of the fence. Don't tell me you really prefer the ups and downs, and the dry spells, of singledom.

I guess the next time we have a worldwide cold-weather cycle, we will subsidize the airline industry to build more planes and fly them. Here's to the next bolide strike...may it hit the middle east.

Mtngoat, you were the one who attacked Iain, who was making a plain, cogent point about Ashcroft. You did it with sarcasm and ridicule. What do you think you deserved in return? Iain's point was the same one I was making. I don't think he, I or anyone else on this board wants to philosophize about the relativity of morality in various religions. The rest of us were debating first the likely practical application of citizen intell collected by our government, and then once again the fitness of Ashcroft in his job, in light of the principles that our nation is supposed to be founded on. Since you brought it up, amending the constitution because of omission versus amending it in direct opposition to the clearly stated intentions of its framers are two wildly different things. Saying they are the same is...silly. Whether they were pilgrims, Amish, Catholics, Buddhists, or whatever, a lot of people came to the colonies/United States because it offered the hope of freedom to the religiously oppressed. Iain's point is valid. We have an individual who is, in light of this, ill-suited for his job. He is a religious fundamentalist, a zealot on the scale of the average US citizen. And either he is using his zealous beliefs as a prism for choosing what to focus his work on, or he ain't too smart. Or both.

Mtngoat, read the Jefferson quote. He is a more eloquent and thoughtful speaker on religion and government in the US than you are, IMO (also less smug and sarcastic). He, Adams, Franklin, Washington, and others were deists, and light-years ahead of the likes of Ashcroft, and, apparently, you.

John Ashcroft's homework tonight should be to memorize: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." - T. Jefferson

The affairs of man are much more predictable, and related to basic natural things like climatic patterns, than most men and women would like to acknowledge to themselves. Periods of violent upheaval, disease periods, 'dark ages' repeat themselves through history. Hell, even mini-cycles like the stock corrections of the late 80s and 90s (Milken & Boesky then, Enron now) will continue.

Iain...ESP!

Dear God, Please deliver me and my freedom-loving brethren from the likes of earnest, not-so-bright, religious zealots like John Ashcroft. Yur Faithful Sheep, Rob

Hey Freeclimb, FOIA ain't what it's cracked up to be anyhow. I made a FOIA request about a federal grant that I believed a competitor was misusing, and after two appeals, I didn't get shit.

So far, the progression of recent technology has been: -develop technology to allow our labor force to compete with lower-cost labor abroad. This lasts a few years or months. -find a way to use lower-cost labor to operate the more-advanced technology (foreign workers here; overseas switchboards; move factories overseas) -back to the drawing board for our labor force

We are leapfrogging forward in the 'technology' department, with probably less and less-grounded operating philosophy. Example: While we in the US debate cloning humans, some Italian claims to already be doing it...to Hell with debate, says he! Italian technology being what it is , he's probably not really doing it, but someone will, long before the balance of the educated world agrees that it's an acceptable thing. What's really sad is that very well-educated scientists can slip into the value-less abyss.

Iain is correct. We have our kids reading at 4 or 5 now, and learning how to design buildings with CADD. But they don't on average know as much theory behind that CADD, because there isn't time to learn it...and they sure don't know how to do the math that engineers did with sliderules 50 years ago.

Good old Sperm Thurmond. Of course he, like several old rascals of his era, turned on a dime when they saw the political climate changing. He hired the first black staffer in SC, I believe. And he personally knows almost everyone in South Carolina.

Dilettante (note spelling )- A dabbler in the arts. Maybe she meant to say she was a Dilbert.

Oh, I forgot to add GregW/ cleaning his guns...