penniless

You dismiss the words of the commanding general quoted in Stars and Stripes as "Man bites Dog"? You are losing touch with reality.

Oh puleeeze. You would have to be a complete idiot to believe that. They duped themselves into believing it.

Why would the govt. be interested in spying on me? I pose no threat to National Security. I know you will find it hard to believe, but the IRS has been spying on all of us for years. They pose a greater risk than the NSA to you and me. Why never a word about their spying from you? Could it be that you accept the spying because you understand why they do it? I guess that's the good spying. Or could it be you just enjoy the incessant Bush bashing? I'm guessing the later. At least the IRS is honest about it, unlike Bush, who denied phonetapping without a warrant.

Principia doesn't claim infallibility, nor does it condemn those who don't believe in the inverse square law to eternal damnation.

Gravitymaster, Just out of curiosity, which organization(s) or individual researchers do you find more credible scientifically than the National Academy of Sciences? Even GWB seems to have taken notice of their report which, IIRC, supports the data indicating warming in the 20th Cy and the increase in greenhouse gases and the contribution of human activity.

So there we have it from the BBC. Did someone tell us the Chemical weapons from 20 or so years ago weren't dangerous? How can both be true? I think history has shown that old obsolete munitions are as dangerous to those who try to use them as weapons as to those who are the intended targets. Just because something is potentially dangerous does not make it a viable weapon.

I didn't say I couldn't do it. I said there's no point, since you appear to be permanently attached to the NRA web site and post its propaganda here in seconds. NRA is propaganda John? oooh please do tell how you have determined that, using the scientific method of analysis. Where did he say NRA IS propaganda? He said JR reports NRA propaganda on DZ.com (which is true, he does).

But should "World's Policeman" selectively choose his duty based on the severity of the crime, or self interest? There are far worst situations in the world then Iraq. Why not settle North Korea first? After all, the United States, the World's Policeman, and North Korea, the Axis of Evil, are still at a state of war. How about the Rwanda genocide? Libera? Should the World's Policemam be able to defy the will of the UN? I don't think the United States deserves to be The World's Policeman. Vigilante maybe. Eugene Ever been fishing? You don't always catch the biggest fish, but that doesn't mean you stop going. You will never catch the biggest fish if you only fish in the pond where the small fish live.

From The Economist: www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6916012

Who is "The Scientist"?

TA = Territorial Army, rather like our NG. Good job they've got the Lords to keep some common sense in politics.

Stalin said that too. Criminalizing the trivial is one hallmark of a police state.

I agree!!! My favorite way to pay down a debt is to spend less than what I'm taking in (something the US government isn't doing all that well with lately) and to take the difference and apply it towards my debts. Sure one can add to the government coffers by taxing their citizens more. But what ever happened to spending less? Agreed! Add to that more tax revenue by taxing people less and it works even faster! That's an idea, but can you historically establish that it has successfully worked? Exeamples of long-tern, sustained viability. Reagans tax cuts caused the single largest growing economy in history. Clinton inherited that. He made no economic policy chages that he can be given credit for until he raised taxes and caused the down turn that Bush inherited......... At the time, Reagan also had the highest deficit in history (only GWB has beaten it), and GWHB inherited a recession from Reagan. You appear to have forgotten that GWHB came between Reagan and Clinton. Republicans create the illusion of prosperity by borrow borrow borrow.

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=asA0TA0A1PGA&refer=us

From the Chicago Tribune (a paper that endorsed Bush in 2000 and 2004) A nation of suspects in land of the free Bush White House has invaded your personal zone with total disregard Published May 14, 2006 The Bush administration has managed to cross George Orwell with Sting. Every step you take, every move you make, Big Brother will be watching you. No one is exempt from the National Security Agency's program to amass a record of every phone call ever made, with the help of major telecommunications providers. As one insider told USA Today, "It's the largest database ever assembled in the world." And have no doubt: You're in it. President Bush insisted, "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." In fact, that's exactly what his administration is doing--24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is no longer possible (unless you're a customer of Qwest, which has refused to cooperate) to make a telephone call without the government knowing about it and keeping a record of it. We are all suspects now. An administration official told The New York Times the average person shouldn't worry. The records, he said, were used only to keep tabs on "known bad guys." But the government can easily get a court order to find out who a particular bad guy is talking to--or even to listen in. To target only known bad guys, it doesn't need a record of every call ever made. Why should law-abiding citizens care about this surveillance? To begin with, even the best of us sometimes make calls we wouldn't want everyone to know about. Another reason is that we could be implicated in terrorism through no fault of our own. Suppose you call your friend Bob, who later calls his friend Rashid, who later calls his cousin in Kabul. The government may conclude you're consorting with associates of Al Qaeda. It's not just the NSA that will know whom you call. According to USA Today, the NSA told Qwest that "other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database." What's next? The IRS? The Office of Child Support Enforcement? Your local police? But privacy is valuable even if you have nothing to hide. Each of us benefits from having a zone in which we can do as we please without fear of exposure. Thanks to this program, there is no longer an impermeable barrier around your personal zone. It's more like a screen door on a submarine. Investigative powers often have been used by unscrupulous people in government to intimidate, coerce or embarrass their enemies. Even if the administration has the noblest intentions, this database is vulnerable to abuse. And not everyone is convinced the administration has the noblest intentions. Valerie Plame, for one. Law enforcement officers have ample experience with gadgets that monitor who's calling whom. But those require police to convince a judge they will yield information relevant to an investigation. In this program, here's what the government has to show: nothing. His latest extralegal initiative furnishes more evidence that George W. Bush regards himself as an elected dictator, free to do anything he wants in the name of national security. Never mind what the U.S. Supreme Court said two years ago: "A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." In December, it emerged that the NSA was eavesdropping on the contents of phone calls and e-mail messages between Americans on U.S. soil and people abroad. That program was of doubtful legality, and so is this one. As a rule, federal law forbids phone companies from turning over calling records to anyone, and it forbids the government from getting call records without a court order or a national security letter. So it's cold comfort to hear Bush say that "the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful." He said the same thing about the other NSA program. But when the Justice Department undertook an investigation, the White House refused to grant its attorneys the security clearances they needed to proceed. The Bush administration doesn't trust even Bush administration lawyers to agree the program is kosher. Even if you don't care about the privacy of your phone records, you might care that we have a president who feels no obligation to obey the law. You might care that if the government was secretly doing this, it may be doing other things that are even more worrisome. And you might care that one day, we may find that the free society we claim to cherish has become a police state.

Yes, the percentage of recruits with the lowest score on the Army test has increased by 100% over the last 3 years.

The National Enquirer is more fun and just as accurate.

Why would anyone believe Bush? He made a speech condemning torture, while condoning torture of terrorism suspects, and then he essentially exempted himself from the provisions of McCain anti-torture act. He claimed the US does not wiretap without a warrant, all the while knowing he had issued orders to the NSA to wiretap without warrants. He promised a small deficit, while enacting policies to run up the largest debt in the history of the world. He gave bogus data to Congress on the cost of the Medicare drug program, threatening to fire anyone that provided the correct numbers. He runs the most secretive administration in history, so God knows what else is going on that hasn't yet leaked out.

Nope, not nuff said. 40% and rising. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm President Bush Job Approval RasmussenReports.com - You might want to reconsider bragging about those (skewed) numbers. They are nothing at all to hang your hat on. LOL Zipp0 Only skewed because they refute your claims. Do some research on Rasmussen before you bash them. They have a very long history of being right when The usual suspects CNNMSNBCABC etc have been way off. - Who defines "Way off"? Newsmax? www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-11-voa39.cfm

Well, my point is simply that it doesn't seem that it's discrete records of discrete calls. It appears, at least on the face of it, that the NSA is attempting to assemble a database of every single telephone call not just to and from the US, but also within the US, regardless of from whom or to whom. Look, this is a political gotch type story as it not new. They are not listening only collecting number to number records. Read here http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/11/105237.shtml?s=ic Newsmax - BWAAA Ha Ha.

Another one taken in by the White House propaganda machine. Read the speeches made by Bush, Powell, Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003 and you will see that liberating the Iraqi people and giving them the opportunity to make choices about their future. was way down the list of reasons. Do you REALLY think the American people would have supported the war if liberating the Iraqi people and giving them the opportunity to make choices about their future. was the sales pitch?

Please tell me what the Dems have done. Not waht they conspired to do or wanted to do, but fiscally, what have they done and what is the outcome? Too tired and too late to get into it right now, but why don't you read a little about how they have stood in the way of Social Security reform, which we cannot afford to support any longer. - Oh dear, and the poor powerless Republicans who only have control of the Congress and the White House, are rendered impotent.

But we don't have an Offense Department, or an Offense Budget. It is ALL defined as defense.

Define "essential". The US already spends 25 times as much on defense as Russia, and spends more than the next 8 nations combined. What exactly costs so much to DEFEND. Seems to me, based on our recent history and spending, we should call it an OFFENSE budget.

Ha ha. Even Colin Powell admits being embarrassed by the speech he gave to the UN. No-one in the administration claims any longer that Iraq had WMDs, that is just left to Newsmax. Even Bush isn't stupid enough to persist in claiming that!