tvashtarkatena

Try to spray paint me a second time, motherfucker!

Rodstewasaurus?

Or that episode in Spanaway where they busted that guy for NOT being on meth. OK, THAT was fuckin funny.

It's like I've always said. You give these little bastards a centimeter, and they'll take a kilometer.

Actually, the upper pitch on Lib Ridge looks like 80 ft of wi3 right now.

Bob Bondurant School of Driving. We got slammed around Sears Point Raceway at 130 mph in the back of a suped up Datsun 610. No waivers, either. Not sure that one would fly nowadays.

Oh, I think we've done a pretty good job of fucking this thread every which way but Tuesday.

Fisto....you are hilarious Someday we shall see. If I'm right I've got everything, if your right I'm no better off than you. You must say five Hail Mary's to appease the Great Sycophant.

God loves you. Why do you hate him?

The only person on this forum who has consistently injected 'motives' into this discussion as a tired baiting maneuver is the author of this paragraph, to the detriment of his credibility. The record shows that the Bush administration has fought, ignored, and stonewalled both judicial and congression oversight every step of the way. From congress having to threaten John Ashcroft with a subpoena to finally get him to testify (albeit incompletely) about the uses of new powers granted by the USA PATRIOT Act in 2002 to Gonzolez' laughable public memory lapses, this administration has tried to circumvent the basic priniple of checks and balances every step of the way; their motives are not required to warrant severe criticism of their extra-legal behavior to date. They are certainly not to be admired for pursuing illegal policies that must later be shot down by various courts. Sound policy requires that legality be built in up front...or do you not agree with that? It's also useful to note that a 30% approval rating and political route during the last election has markedly increased the admininstration's willingness to abide by recent court rulings without appeal...at least so far. Even in the face of political disaster, however, this administration continues to pursue torture, retroactive immunity for those who torture, and the elimination of habeus corpus. What is Jay's central point in all of this? That the administration is to be admired? That no one else, particularly the Dems, could possibly do any better? That the rule of law should be extended? Abandoned? Does Jay even know what his point is? Well, that is a matter of conjecture, because he certainly hasn't been forthcoming with anything but the usual remanufactured anti-birkenstock comments. Perhaps the rest of us can speculate about a motive....

My favorite martini recipe: Fill shaker with ice. Let sit for a while. Pour melt water out. Douse ice with 1/2 shot dry vermouth. Pour in 2 shots Bombay Sapphire. Shake. Pour over a large olive in a chilled glass. Dash of lemon.

Einstein defined his religious views in a letter he wrote in response to those who claimed that he worshipped a Judeo-Christian god: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."[37][38] Eistein did not believe in a diety of any kind. You've made up your own stories and selectively misquoted him to define him as such; a common occurance throughout his life against which he repeatedly defended himself. But Einstein was consistently clear regarding is lack of faith in a deity, most particularly a Christian one. He was no more religious, in a Christian sense, than I am, and believe me, no Cosmological Constant is required to measure my absolute zero level of Christian belief. The 'someone more naive' refers to Christians and other diests: i.e., people like you, amigo. I'm pretty sure you didn't quite get that before posting this.

My eyes, ears, nose, tastebuds, and fingertips tell me that the chance that everything around me came about by chance is exactly 1. Not much brain work required, really. There are a few around me that say otherwise, but my brain tells me they're morons.

I realize that I'm wasting my time with Seahawk; evolution has not been kind to the poor lad, but for the sake of having some fun with his neoscientific gobblygook: The genomic match between chimpanzees and man, for example, is somewhere north of 97%: genetically, we are very similar. So similar, in fact, that some believe we could produce hybrid offspring. No, no Seahawk, leave the poor little monkey alone. Patterson, whoever he is, is apparently unaware that it is the sequence of the four possible types of rungs on the DNA helix , which for humans is several billion rungs long, that determines one's genome, not just a single rung. This makes the probability of a 'chance, unrelated match' somewhat lower than 1 in 4 for two different organisms. I realize that something becoming something else over time, you know, like a child becoming an adult, a river becoming a canyon, a larvae becoming a butterfly, a seed becoming a plant, or, over a longer period of time, a lower primate becoming a human is unnatural and difficult to comprehend for some of more orthodox persuasion, but there you have it. The Creator was certainly clever when he built change over time, or 'evolution' into nearly every process in the universe. But if you're omnipotent, why not have a little fun and tell the humans to believe in one system, then surround them with another? It's just that some of us have yet to get in on the joke.

Your information sources about what has been monitored in the warrantless wiretapping program are apparently too limited to make any further discussion useful. You're simply not aware enough of the extent of the program, who has been monitored, or of the nature of the lawsuits that have been filed against the NSA to end it (successfully, I might add) to make any further discussion useful. If you were, you probably would resort to spouting the party line and punctuating with your standard 'dumb hippy' comment, which has become about as original as the snaffle bobblehead. Now, regarding the Taliban: Congress authorized the executive to wage war against them (legally), which makes the rest of your paragraph on the subject ridiculous. The conduct of war, as any one who has been in the military can tell you (and you'd do well to find at least one to consult if you're going to argue the subject) is governed by a body of international law. Nothing in this body of law prevents the U.S. or it's allies from gathering intelligence and attacking military targets, which of course include combatants, based on that intelligence. Rather than remain within the confines of time tested convention, however, the U.S. has consistently violated in its program of torture and detention without bothering to determine a prisoner's status. Under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the military still has no time limit on determining whether a detainee is an enemy combatant, much less an unlawful one, or not. In addition, evidence gained by torture, even by third party nations, is admissable. All of this violates not only U.S. Constitutional Law but international law governing the conduct of warfare. The courts have yet to weigh in on this new law, but I expect that it, like it's predecessor Military Tribunal system, will be found to be illegal on a number of grounds. This is not to mention the international cooperation the U.S. has squandered through its human rights abuses and go it alone approach, nor the enormous international backlash which has resulted in a step function increase in terrorist attacks against western targets around the world. You seem to be arguing against a nation of laws for expediency's sake. Not exactly a new idea. Quite the opposite: it's a rather common argument in every sense of the word. And, like most tired, poorly thought out ideas, the results are predictably unfortunate. We all should know; we're experiencing them.

...or learn how to track mitochondrial and Y chromosomal mutations to determine lineage. Wish we'd figure that stuff out. Too much cell phone usage.

$95. Price reduced, baby.

Price reduced to $60, baby.

Actually, our current legal system handled all the situations you mentioned. Congress authorized the use of military force, and we used it. The executive branch and congress also have the constitutional authority to formulate foreign policy, which includes the use of military force and cooperating with other nations in anti-terrorism efforts. Surveillance, military attack, capture, and prosecution are all enabled under our existing legal system and its extension: our international agreements. The admininstration has stumbled primarily in its illegal activities: kidnapping, secret prisons, warrantless wiretapping, torture, indefinite detention without habeus corpus. The administration has had to back away from every one of these policies on the weight of legal challenges. Domestic support for its policies has dwindled as a result. I need not mention international support, which is nonexistent at this point. Finding and dealing with suspected terrorists would have arguably been much more successful had the administration taken the higher, legal road to start with.

All we need is a way to 'package' the idea for the general public....

I hear this argument (that our current legal system is 'inadequate' to deal with the threat at hand) alot, but its proponents never explain in detail just what is lacking. WHen they try to, invariably it is a fundamental principle that defines our legal system in general (habeus corpus being the most common victim). Upon historical inspection, our current legal system is well equipped to deal with the threat of international terrorism. FISA and it's follow on amendments provides an efficient way to perform surveillance. Material Witness status, extadition agreements, and a battery of new terrorism related offenses provide more than enough legal (and Constitutional) means to arrest, prosecute and punish terrorists. All the hiccups that have come about in this effort have come out of the jury rigged (no pun intended), kangaroo court that is this administration's military tribunal system. Why? Because court challenges have shown that much of this system violates a broad array of existing law, not the least of which is basic Constitutional law. It's fundamentally illegal. It should be abandoned immediately in favor of traditional law enforcement that has already passed Constitutional muster. The administration has tried unsuccessfully to obfuscate the situation by classifying suspected terrorists as if they were unlawful enemy combatants; a designation meant for uniformed soldiers of a state army operating illegally (i.e., hiding weapons, out of uniform) etc, under the international laws of war. They are not 'soldiers' in any sense of the word: they are suspected members of an international criminal organization, and should be treated as such. As the so called War on Drugs has already proven, we have plenty of laws already on the books to handle this situation.

See what I mean? I swear I didn't cue that. My groupies come up with that shit on their own.

There's a closure sign in the parking lot, but you have to be able to read.

We het yourda fdddreedom. We het yourda watermelons. We love yourda fddried cheeken, though. Extara chreespy. I got a bucket rdddight now een my BMW.