KK, no one is arguing with you about whether or not the civil war was a rebellion. We only said that stever's statement that americans have lost more civil liberties in the last seven years than they ever did in the previous US history is incorrect.

I looked up those cases you posted, stlhead. Arar's story is disturbing. After hearing it, I think some more controls need to be added to the Patriot act to keep things like this from happening.

However, the Patriot act has also been credited with breaking up several Al Quaeda cells in the US that would not have been discovered otherwise. Here's a link to some old info if you're interested: http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/pdf/patriot_report_from_the_field0704.pdf

If enough American lives are saved by exposing and catching terrorists, in my mind that outweighs wrongful mistreatment of some other Americans. Your opinion may differ, but we all like catching fish

I probably shouldn't admit this here, but here goes.

My best friend in high school was a state champion wrestler, good, clean kid. Fastest pin in state history at the time from Forks, Wa. After school (once he was over his scholarship), he got into a bad crowd, with some bad habits. When it all caught up with him, he was arrested by the FBI for drug felonies. They offered him a bargain;

Plea guilty and get 5 years in the Federal Pen

Fight it in court (feds told him they had a 97% conviction rate) and they would prosecute him under the Patriot Act and give him 30 years.

Their case for prosecuting him under the PA was that he had a record in high school for assault for breaking another guy's nose. Made him a violent offender, he had no other violent offenses to that date, and was not being charged for any violent crimes when they arrested him, only drugs.

Before I go, I do not support letting these drug offenses go, if you're a criminal, and you're caught, go do your time. I don't agree with labeling you as a terrorist because they want to add a few more years to your sentence on a drug conviction.

He's still in prison, so I can't get you in touch with him currently, but he'll be out in about six months, if anyone's interested in talking to him about this, I'll be sure to let him know. (I'll let you explain to him that the PA is never used against American citizens, only terrorists)

BootJay and Hankster...would your heads explode if you had to talk about politics without mentioning the Clintons every other sentence? You guys are so brainwashed by the jackasses at FoxNews that you just can't help it, can you?

BootJay...Saddam did use WMD's on his own people...and unlike the current imaginary WMD's, we KNOW those existed and that he used them, because we're the ones who gave them to him.

Under current BushCorp policies, that would make us terrorists for supporting a terrorist regime, and we should invade ourselves.

Clinton! Clinton! Clinton!

Fish on...

Todd

Until you're one of the Americans wrongly mistreated. Or your wife is. Or your brother. Or mother. Or one of your children, etc.

But hey, if it's not happening to you, it's not your problem right?

LoweDown, I already said I think some more controls need to be instituted to eliminate the more aggregious mistreatments. With that said, if I did something or had associations with someone that raised suspicions about me, I would be fine with being seized and questioned. I probably would be pissed at the time, but I know that similar actions could catch real terrorists and save American lives.

Some of the racial profiling issues are unfair and wrong, but it was the radical Muslims that started this war. Any war has casualties, so people of Middle Eastern origins only have their fundamentalist brethren to thank for any wrongful arrests or questioning.

Like eating at the wrong restaurant?

Now THAT"S hilarious!!!

Boy are you naiive...

Hmmm, ...the Muslims started the War on Terror!?!

Or checking out the wrong book at the library?
Or taking pictures of the Ballard Locks?
Or purchasing gasoline and lawn fertilizer in the same day?

We need to take your freedoms away to save you from people who hate you for your freedoms, painful logic there.

Man it's scary at the number of people who are OK with this loss of freedom and civil rights. Nice to know who not to count on to have my back. Or teach the secret handshake for the Sons of Liberty.

Americans against freedom. I can barely believe it. Where do you get these ideas?

No kidding.

Painful.

OK, you guys convinced me and I think a warrant should be required to make arrests. I still think the other parts of the Patriot act increasing communication between different government agencies and allowing phone surveillance are good.

blue water pro, did you even read what I said? I said that mistreatment of middle easterners was WRONG. It is an unfortunate situation caused by radical islamists crashing airliners into the trade towers.

IF we only caught one bad guy for tens of thousands harrassed, then of course it wouldn't be worth it. Let me pull some numbers out of my ass like you did and show you how your logic failed. If we caught one bad guy for every ten harrassed, and that bad guy would have killed ten Americans, then we would have ten harrassed citizens instead of ten dead ones. Would you rather be annoyed or dead? Unless you have some real data, don't use numbers as evidence for your point of view.

Peace out, dudes

fishpinner - I agree with you on the interagency communication for sure. We should have the most technologically advanced law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and anti-terrorism agencies on the planet. all bound by the rules and rights granted our citizens in our consitution. i for one love the idea of maintaining the freedoms that they hate us for having.

thanks for the interesting debate.

Salmo G, You're one smart, thoughtful, wise, dude. So much of what you say is 100% dead-on.

our precious free press has been soft balling Bouche for eight years and they lean left??

The media and the administrations are mutual co-dependents, they spar just enough to make it look like they're doing their respective jobs.

Claiming our media has a "liberal bias" is one of the largest pieces of unadulterated bullchit ever propounded by the right wing whack jobs...the most ironic part of that total farce is that the lie was spread and given life by...the right wing media machine.

What's more funny, just like all the other 'fair and balanced' coverage given by the right wing media machine, it was bought...hook, line, and sinker...by the dittoheads that listen to it.

Don't any of you guys ever read the studies that show that if you listen to FoxNews that you actually know less at the end of the show than you did before? And just to let you know, I'm not making that up to make a point, it's a true study, one that talks about the repetition of lies (catapult the propoganda!) and willingness to believe on the part of the FoxNews patrons...

Fish on...

Todd

Or dating a girl who attended an anti-war rally once in College, al la The McCarthy Era.

It might be true that journalists tend to vote for more progressive candidates, but they are keenly aware of the loss of civil liberties that come with conservative ideologies...plus, studies show that people all across the country vote along educational lines...educated people tend to vote for progressives, and unededucated prefer to have their ideology spoon fed to them, something the conservatives excell at.

Journalists tend to have educations, too...and I think that your observation that conservatives are easy to bash is on target...just look at how they've behaved the past seven years.

Fish on...

Todd

So where do you all get your news from these days?

I find that ESPECIALLY television news has just become a race to the bottom. CNN at least seemed reputable 10 years ago, now it's Anderson Cooper trying to be hip (heard him say "Bling Bling" last week, painful), celebutards, fearmongering, and gossip.

I'd love to have a ranking of major news outlets by the INVERSE of their coverage of (anna nicole smith + britney + paris hilton). CNN and FoxNews would both BOMB on that scale.

Even online it's hard to find good authoritative news -- it's all press releases and borderline blog posts (or reposting things reported in other news outlets).