Crap Throwing Monkey

I just saw the previews for that. I like Burton and Depp too...but this looks awful. Depp seems to play Willy Wonka like Michael Jackson. Plus...frankly, Gene Wilder was perfect as Willy Wonka. I can't see anyone else playing that part, even Depp.

Does anyone have any advice on how to download movies from the internet?

Me and my sister/cousin resent the implication...

Yes, they probably have. Unfortunately, not enough...by it's nature, the issue is one that should be considered through all of society, and not just by the elected leadership. But if I had to guess at what most people would think on the subject...*ding*! Never mind...HotPockets are done! Time for American Idol!

Probably because he doesn't want to give up too much of what makes our society what it is in order to combat those who would kill us. It doesn't make a WHOLE lot of sense to restrict the foundation of this country (i.e. civil rights and freedoms) in the interest of protecting it, after all. At the same time, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to embrace such civil rights and freedoms...and thus leave them open to attack. Like I've been saying for a LONG while, there's a balance between security and freedom that needs to be struck, and we have to decide what that balance should be...and I haven't yet seen anyone give it any thought. The problem I have with Campy's opinions (and others, but we're talking about him...) aren't the opinions themselves...it's the total lack of acknowledgement of any sort of grey area in the issue; he seems to see it as a purely black or white issue, where it's actually VERY ambiguous...

I don't how "non-lethal" a dog is from a gull's point of view...

As I recall, either Angie Harmon's character or the ADA before her was from Texas, too.

We know. Especialy when they're nice to you...

Actually, it all boils down to the fact that no one on the road understands the meaning of "alternate merge". Using both lanes and letting one from each lane at a time keeps the traffic moving well (if slowly) and keeps backups from getting excessive. Having either idiots that either don't allow a car to merge (or stop and let six or eight people merge, which I've seen happen) or fly down the closing lane and then try to cut people off is what makes construction zones a mess.

Actually, I disagree. I think the complete phrase "gulag of our times" indicates precisely what the author meant by it...and it's not the objective definition. The entire phrase is intended to carry the specific connotation of the brutality of the Stalinist Russian system.

Of course, some of us believe success comes from hard work, not a rich upbringing. For every story of a George W. Bush who squanders his opportunities and is virtually handed everything in life anyway, there's someone else who's dragged himself from the depths of poverty to the heights of success. If it's discriminatory to say you have to work to earn what you want...then count me as discriminatory as well.

Because...?

I'm reading it right now. I just finished the chapter where Solzhenitsyn describes a gentleman being given ten years for saying Pushkin was a better poet than Mayakovsky. Kind of made me laugh at that "Gulag of our time" crap. I don't recall anyone being in Gitmo for unfavorably comparing poets...

According to the sources I'm seeing, he was a Navy Lieutenant in support of the invasion...who on his own initiative went forward into the landing zone and saved "dozens" (between 40 and 80, depending on the source) of Marines. And got a well-deserved Bronze Star with a 'V'. http://vfw8896.net/eddiealbert.htm

Thank you, Eddie Albert, for pioneering the medium that turned your average American into a drooling idiot who can't concentrate on a single idea for more than ten minutes.

Uh...yeah...whatever...friggin' lunatic. Get over yourself already, Delay.

A formal declaration of war requires a party (nation-state, really) to declare it against. So what you're essentially saying is that the rules of war do NOT apply, and all these detainees should be treated as pure criminal cases, because they don't represent a nation-state despite the fact that they're at war AGAINST a nation-state and wouldn't recognize the legitimacy of the criminal justice system anyway? Or are you saying that we should treat them as POWs...even though we're not at war because Congress hasn't and can't declare war against a group of transnational terrorists not represented by a true nation-state? Do you see the thorns of the issue? It's simply a basic fact that there's no international legal code that adequately addresses the issue of trans-national terrorism. I agree with your idealism more than you'll actually know...but fundamentally it IS idealism, and while shouting it from the rooftops contributes importantly to discussing the issues involved, in itself it isn't a solution, as the world rarely (and particularly in this case) lends itself to such black-and-white solutions.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be treated according to the GC. I'm saying "We're violating the GC!" isn't a valid complaint, as it doesn't apply. Technically, if we subjected them to drumhead courts martial in the field and summary execution, we still wouldn't be violating the GC. And technically, when they skin a Navy SEAL alive and torture him to death, they're not violating the GC either, since they never agreed to it anyway. Now, neither am I saying that we SHOULD subject them to summary execution...just that if we do, and you cloak your completely justifiable moral outrage at it in the Geneva Convention, you're being inaccurate at best. There's also the sad fact that the Geneva Convention was never written with this kind of war in mind. It hails back to a period where war was fought between nation-states with identifiable soldiers in standing armies. While it has been modified with the times (the inclusion within reasonable bounds of milita forces in the definition of "standing army"), the international community never created it with the idea of insurgent warfare, partly for the reasons I stated in a previous post (i.e. the very blurry line between military and criminal conduct on the part of most insurgencies), and partly because the very concept of independent trans-national terrorist organizations is a very new one (nearest precedent I can think of is the Barbary Coast pirates, which was really FAR more a nation-state than al Qaeda is - or even the Taleban, for that matter). Like it or not, it IS a war we're fighting...but it is NOT a war that lends itself to the traditional black-and-white definitions of "war" and "peace" (again, for the reasons I discussed above), and thus doesn't lend itself well to the GC or any other international agreement governing warfare. And rather than constantly complaining about it or supporting it in some blind, black-and-white, partisan manner, we'd all be much better off if we all simply admitted that it's an unprecedented situation we find ourselves in that the rules of warfare have never fully considered, and then though hard on the rules by which such conflict SHOULD be conducted, rather than trying to pigeonhole an unprecedented conflict into the rules governing inapplicable precedents.

Regardless of whether it's a war or not, the GC doesn't apply. They're not represented by a signatory to it. Hell, even national terrorist organizations aren't covered by the GC, never mind extra-national or trans-national ones.

The one thing no one has pointed out yet is that there's two ways of looking at this: from a criminal perspective, and from the perspective of fighting a war. If it were purely a criminal issue of incarceration of dangerous criminals...you'd be right, as would Friedman. However, it's not. There's a definite aspect of military requirements involved, in that these are enemy combattants and not criminal detainees, thus arguably not subject to the US laws and rules that dictate the criminal justice system. But at the same time, terrorism by design crosses over from the military sphere into areas of traditional law enforcement...so technically they're not POWs either, and not subject to any of the international agreements or rules that dictate the treatment of POWs (as the Geneva Convention itself points out). So are they criminal detainees or POWs? Well...both. And neither. It's a neat little conundrum terrorists organizations put Western governments in, which can either treat them as POWs (in which case the terrorists claim that the abandonment of the criminal justice code demonstrates the government's oppression), or treat them as criminals (in which case the terrorists claim invalid application of the criminal code as they're criminals but soldiers fighting against the government's oppression). It's one of the strengths of asymmetric warfare that they can play both sides of the coin in this way and effectively put governments over a barrel. So what do you do? Personally, I'd say anyone arrested in the US on terrorism-related charges is handled through the criminal system, and anyone outside is an "enemy detainee" (not necessarily a POW) subject to as much of the Geneva Convention can be sensibly applied (for example, I have NO problem limiting their communication with the outside world, as that defeats the purpose of disrupting their organizations). In other words...I pretty much agree with what the administration is doing (save any Americans detained at Gitmo, of which I know no cases). But Friedman's opinion, despite his being dead-on as usual in qualifying the effects of the policy, is over-simplified in that these are NOT simple criminal cases we're talking about, and can't simply be put on trial as you would the Mafia.

Aaaah...he hates interracial marriage. He's a mulatto. I'm sure Der Reichsfuehrer won't mind too much, Kurt. Himmler had some Jewish ancestors, after all, and Ernst Roehm was even a closet homosexual, so they'll probably keep you on the rolls. Might hurt your chances for advancement in the brownshirts, though...

So first you spelled it right...then you quoted numerous sources to prove you spelled it right...and now that three people have called you out on it, you say "well, I spelled it wrong, even though everyone else who spelled it that way spelled it right, and you three who caught me spelling it wrong are homosexuals." What the !@#$? First thing in the morning, when you wake up, do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer or something? Did someone cause you major head trauma when the activist courts' program of marital genocide forced them to shoot you steal your Adidas? It's the only possible ways I can imagine anyone being so totally and irrevocably clueless as you are.

You'd think their being called the American Civil Liberties Union would be the first clue...

This is getting boring. I point out - repeatedly - where your beliefs are straight out of Nazi racial theory, right down to the "respect for racial difference by insuring the purity of the species through segregation". Your only response: "You're a liar." If I'm such a liar, then why are your friggin' beliefs STILL straight out of Nazi racial theory? They are demonstrably so. Why should I apologizing for pointing out a self-evident fact: that YOU are a NAZI. If it walks like a goose, honks like a goose, and goose-steps... Of course, you're also a total idiot...something I've pointed out repeatedly as well, and gotten no response other than "You're a liar." It seems to be the only response you have when the self-evident is pointed out to you: "It's not true, it's all lies, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."

They are wrong. It's Goedel. As a member of MENSA, I would have thought you'd know that the umlaut over a vowel translates into English as that vowel followed by an 'e'. But hey, we can yet AGAIN chalk that up as yet ANOTHER thing you're completely ignorant about.