TomAiello

Um, wait...that wasn't a video game about taking over the world? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Things I learned from my patients. Just remember that when you go to the doctor, it could end up on the internet... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You don't need to. You've got a signed statement from the Justice Department saying that it is. How's that for confusing? On one hand, it is. Otoh, federal laws (including any international laws that have been ratified by the US Senate) trump executive orders and memos (DOJ/John Yoo's interpretation) every time. Yes, but remember that the laws were thought unclear, which is why clarification was necessary. So, you've got no clear law, and a statement from the Justice Department. I'd be pretty confused. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You don't need to. You've got a signed statement from the Justice Department saying that it is. How's that for confusing? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Do you rally believe that? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

And there would have been even more if those people had not been armed to defend themselves. John, you missed his fallacy. Remember that he counts the people defending themselves as committing homicide, and the criminals they kill as "homicide victims." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Dude, you've totally got to do a sarcasm check every now and then. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I can definitely see that. Obama is trying to push through (and quickly) an agenda that's so far off-center, he can't help but polarize the public. What's amazing to me is that he's not _more_ polarizing, and I think that's a credit to his rhetorical skills. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's my understanding that they all had to be subjected to the techniques they used as part of their training. Same idea as making police get sprayed in the face with pepper spray before they start carrying it. So Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, et al, got waterboarded? I kinda doubt it. No. I meant the guys who actually performed the interrogations---the ones who people are discussing prosecuting or not. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

How many Royal Marines are over there? I've got a friend--former BASE student of mine--who's a marine assigned to Afghanistan. I think he just got back, too. He and another student kept calling each other "Reg" and "Royal" which are apparently terms of endearment used in your military. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's my understanding that they all had to be subjected to the techniques they used as part of their training. Same idea as making police get sprayed in the face with pepper spray before they start carrying it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Honestly, I'm a fan of the South African model. You hold a big forum for "truth and reconciliation" or something, and move on. It does appear that most of those who currently hold power view the last administration as something akin to Apartheid era South Africa. Makes me wonder, will we need another "truth and reconciliation" forum when the democrats leave the white house in another 8 years? Maybe it ought to just become a fixture of the inaugural process--sort of a monument to the bitterness and division that seem to have come to dominate the American political process. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Honestly, I think it should be. I think that the problem with "borrow and spend" is that people don't have to face the real pain of their spending. If a war is truly worth fighting, it's worth paying for. If the public supports it, they ought to feel how much it costs when they make that decision. Same goes for all spending, really. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

A new gun rule that makes sense. I cannot believe they passed this. Way to go Colorado! Wow. I'm surprised that Colorado wasn't already like that. It's common practice in most reasonably pro-gun states to skip background checks on CCW holders. Even that left-wing icon, Paul Quade, appears to accept it as reasonable practice. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Essentially, they're dealing with a change in law, and we're talking about retroactive prosecution based on the new law. An equivalent situation would be if the Supreme Court ruled tomorrow that abortion was, in fact, legally murder, and then doctors who'd performed abortions over the past 40 years were suddenly liable to prosecution for their (then-legal) actions. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Honestly, I think the thing that the Republicans are mostly angry about is that Obama has adopted a time honored (or at least honored since the early 1980's) republican tactic of "borrow and spend." And he's done it in a huge way, far outdoing them at their own game. In the choice between "tax and spend" and "borrow and spend", I'd like to go with "don't spend" please. Also, I think that anyone who thinks these protests were just about current taxes wasn't paying attention. In my local newspaper there were several photos of protest signs, and _every_ one of them referred to debt, not taxes. There was one shot of 3 children holding signs indicating their ages and the amount that they owed. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

If that's the case, I think there's a pretty solid criminal case there. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I think the best way to determine if something is "torture" is to take an American soldier who has been tortured as a POW, let him see what's going on, and ask him what he thinks. If I recall correctly, when that happened, Senator McCain was pretty clear in his opinion that it was torture and needed to stop. Note that I still think the guys relying on official DOJ interpretation should not be the scapegoats here. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Several field officers objected to the interrogation techniques and requested clarification. The Justice Department (same folks who would now prosecute them) issued a written opinion which those officers relied on. It would be the height of hypocrisy for the Justice Department to now change it's official position (which it issued to basically tell the doubters to get back in line) and start prosecuting the very same people who had questioned it's wisdom previously. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I can go with that. If he had violated a restraining order I can see restricting some rights until that issue was resolved, at the very least. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Nope. But damn, the first time it happened talk about a stink. In fact, what if he sent in a hit order on that zodiac full of armed men--who turned out to be French commandos on an anti-piracy mission? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Actually, that wasn't what I was thinking. It was more along the lines of "what did we know about this particular criminal before the act that would have told us he shouldn't have weapons?" The nazi thing can't be used to confiscate weapons. Nazi sympathies are legal, same as communist sympathies and a whole host of other oddball beliefs. For example, I'm a Ron Paul sympathizer, and that's pretty far out there. In order to confiscate his weapons before the crime, you need something pretty solid to hang a removal of constitutional rights on. Weird political views certainly aren't enough--in fact they're constitutionally protected. Weird behavior? You need a real psychiatric evaluation, or you're going to catch a lot of BASE jumpers in there--if most skydivers think we're nuts, what are most non-jumpers thinking? Unless we're talking about real criminal or psychiatric records (and if memory serves that guy had neither) it's going to be real hard to find a narrowly tailored test that would have caught him and wouldn't catch (for example) me. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

+1 -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Not really. These guys are willing to pay at any time and place and in any manner. There's a huge difference in being particular abut repayment and totally not accepting it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Yes, but it was there when you took the money. The conditions on these loans were added after the loan was made, which would obviously be an illegal attempt to modify the contract if anyone aside from the government didi it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com