Taro T

Extra butter please.

No doubt the Sabres have not matched up well vs Florida this year and have not played well vs Florida. That said, modifying the Sabres' pp to emulate the Panthers' pp is an EXTREMELY poor idea.

I may be missing something as well, but I do not see anything in FISA that allows for surveillance PRIOR to the AG certification / approval. I can definitely envision scenarios where there can be a need to tap someone's communication before the AG can authorize the surveillance. Since anything obtained from the surveillance prior to AG authorization would necessarily be thrown out as it was obtained "illegally" (as near as I can tell), I can see where the administration is trying to claim that normal provisions of FISA do not apply due to Congress authorizing use of force / all means necessary / etc., etc.. It seems to me that this is a glaring weakness of FISA and should be corrected. Again, I don't know that any correction that gets enacted wouldn't necessarily be worse that the original. I also have 1 further question. In my reading of 1802(a), it seems to state fairly clearly that the surveillance minus a court order is only applicable to communications that don't include a "US person". That would imply that the AG cannot authorize surveillance of a US person without the FISA court order. You seem to have a completely different opinion on this matter. Could you please refer me to where you see that the surveillance of US persons is allowed without a court order, or explain to me how I am misinterpreting this section of the Statute? I am not a lawyer and readily admit that I may be misinterpreting this.

Getting back to your question about why the FISA procedure is too cumbersome, I think that BiB was on the right track. My understanding of FISA is that the wiretaps can proceed once the AG has filled out the paperwork to the court or after the AG has approved them and then eventually tells the proper congresscritters and tells the court about them. FISA doesn't address (at least in my reading) intercepts that are discovered or required BEFORE the AG has approved them. Such an intercept could be desired if a person who was under surveillance using proper FISA procedures was talking to a previously unknown 3rd party and based upon the conversation w/ the 3rd party the tappers knew that 3rd party was going to speak to someone else in the chain. Again, per my reading of FISA, AFTER the tapper has AG approval he can begin tapping 3rd party and or 4th party's communications; but they are NOT legal until AG has given authority. The time lost in getting AG's approval could be very critical in this scenario. The surveillance could also be desired based upon datamining from the broad cell phone intercepts that are conducted and it might not be possible to get the AG's approval soon enough to get anything useful from the newly discovered source. I've seen a lot of discussion revolving around the AG's 72 hours to get his certification to the FISA court, but haven't seen a discussion of what is / isn't permissible before the AG's certification. I had thought this might be a cause of the Admin's sidestepping FISA, but couldn't understand why it would be an issue to them because they weren't using this for criminal prosecutions (or so I thought). Based on my quick reading of the Time article CTM linked, there have been people prosecuted successfully who 1st came under suspicion based upon info gathered BEFORE the AG had officially approved the taps (I should go back and reread, maybe I misread it). Technically, those convictions / plea bargains probably should be overturned on appeal because the evidence was found legally but was looked for because of information collected outside of FISA (i.e., illegally). I am not comfortable with releasing people that want to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, but also do not like where the potential to abuse this surveillance may lead. I read about a month ago, when this story 1st broke, that the Admin had some concerns about FISA along these lines and planned to get FISA modified to get the gray area of what the status of surveillance before the AG approves it. From what I read, there was not enough support in Congress to modify FISA, but that all parties involved (WH, Congress, AG, intelligence orgs.) would essentially look the other way on the preapproval taps and consider this gray area acceptable under FISA. Sorry, I don't have links to this, as I don't have the time right now to try to regoogle the articles. It seems to me, that this preapproval surveillance needs to be made "legal" to gather, but there also needs to be significant safeguards placed to limit the use of the information gathered from this surveillance. I don't know that our congresscritters are smart enough to come up with a way of modifying FISA that will address both the national security and the personal liberty concerns that this issue raises.

I don't know, maybe he digs short chicks!

There was a guy behind me at the Panther game who not only was getting into the "StP / Shoot" "chant", he also was telling his girlfriend during the Panthers pp that the Sabres needed to keep 2 guys in front of the net like Florida was doing. Last time I checked the Sabres had the 3rd best pp and the Panthers the 24th. Yeah, let's hope Buffalo starts emulating some of these stellar units. What a tool.

I think it was smart for him to say that he didn't support the sign confiscation. There were a lot of people that had this confused with a 1st Am. issue that were upset about it, whether they would have brought signs in or not. One of the 1st rules of business is to not tick off nor condescend (at least blatently/overtly) to your customers. It appears that when this PC was called for yesterday, that the status of the 3 M's would be addressed as well. Their issues were not fully resolved, so rather than just say "Tom's out", tell a joke (?), and walk away; he used the forum to tell the fans (all of the fans, not just the handful you think are jackholes) that he does appreciate their business.

But that would explain why Modrak will "assume more of the GM's duties" (paraphrased). It sounds like Modrak will now effectively be the GM, but Marv gets the title so he can veto anything he doesn't like.

That's good, but my favorite of that one was: 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! 8! 9! 10! 11! 12! 13! 14! WE WANT 15!

Back in the '70's and '80's, I really liked that chant. But ever since the string of 10 years between 1st round victories whenever I hear "Ooh, aah, Sabres on the" I immediately hear in my head (and not too infrequently from the people around me) "golf course". Let's stick with "let's go Buf-fa-lo" or the lesser "here we go Sabres, here we go, (clap, clap)".

Deal.

I'm thinking 2' - 2-1/2'. It'll limit both teams' mobility while not completely eliminating their strengths.

I wouldn't mind seeing a dolphin vs. a buffalo, but how come you guys get the home field advantage?

That begs the question though, if you are sober enough at night to remember to drink water and take 2 Advil would you have had the hangover to begin with?

If either or both lines are improved 9-7 isn't unreasonable.

Kelly, you have some interesting thoughts. We do appear to disagree though. You are correct that the low number of goals scored relative to basketball is used as a justification for going to a shootout. However, if football only played a 5 minute OT there would still be games that end in a tie. As stated, I would much prefer to see the league go to one full OT session in the regular season rather than go to an abreviated OT followed by a shootout. This would only add ~1 hour to the length of a hockey game. The average hockey game used to run ~2:40. I'm not positive but it seems like they are running closer to 2:20 with the new rules, but I may be mistaken on that. Either way that would put a full 80 minute game in the 3:20-3:40 time frame in a worst case. Football and baseball games both run over 3 hours very often. Having an occasional hockey game run over 3 hours would not be a horrendous burden on the players or fans. The entity that it would be a burden on is the TV station broadcasting the game. Currently, the TV station does not sell advertising for OT nor can it easily modify its post game schedule. If the game runs an hour over, then some other show that advertising was sold for does not get shown. If the TV stations sold contigent advertising for OT it would allieviate some of the TV problems but it would not eliminate the preemption of the next show. I expect that if teams had to play up to 80 minutes during the regular season there would be far fewer ties than there currently are, especially with the tighter enforcement of obstruction type penalties. I actually would expect most teams to have 4 or fewer ties over the course of a full season which is less than 5% of all games. I personally can live with that. As to your point about the NHL being the only sport using points instead of winning percentage, I do not agree with it because they are both the exact same thing. They are just expressed differently. A hockey team that has a 5-5 record has 10 points and a 0.500 winning percentage. A team with a 5-4-1 record has 11 points and a 0.550 winning percentage. If an NFL team played a full 5th quarter and still was tied, if their record were 5-4-1 their winning percentage would be the exact same as the NHL team with the 5-4-1 record (0.550) and they would be 1/2 game ahead of a team with a 5-5 record and 1/2 game behind a team with a 6-4 record. Finally, I don't consider going to 5-4 a change of the rules. It is simply a way to penalize infractions of the rules. I see it as being extremely similar to basketball's free throw. It gives the infringed team an advantage to make up for the penalized action. There are special rules for a free throw but they are consistant between the regular season and the post season. The NHL uses 2 completely separate and distinct set of rules to settle a tie in regular season vs. post season. I absolutely love playoff OT. I see going to the shootout a precursor to eliminating the 2 OT game, which will stink. (Also, technically on a technical foul isn't the only person on the court during the technical free throw the player taking the shot?)

many good points in your post,but one could argue that NFL overtimes haven't become "de-facto" field goal contests, except you juts have to make one to win. Its really just a coin flipping contest for the most part. Better idea would be a college style OT. 545559[/snapback] One thing the NFL could do to keep the current OT format and leave its rules essentially unchanged is move the kickoff in OT to the 35 yard line. Before they moved the kickoff to the 30, IIRC the kicking team won in OT slightly more than 50% of the time. Since, its more like the receiving team winning ~75% of the time.

Being a hockey "purist", I am morally opposed to the shootout. I'm not thrilled with going to 4-on-4 for OT either. There are several reasons for my opposition. 1. A shootout takes a team game and reduces it to an individual skills competition. I understand the reason they went to a shootout, TV doesn't sell advertising for OT. I would prefer the advertising model were changed - sell contingent advertising for OT rather than shorten the time OT takes to reach a winner. No other major professional team sport in NA changes the rules to settle a tie game. The NFL doesn't resort to a field goal contest, MLB doesn't resort to a home run contest, and the NBA doesn't resort to a 3 point shot contest, why should the NHL be the only one to decide ties by a skills contest? 2. With the current system where a team is guaranteed a single point for making it to OT, there is an incentive for a team to lay back and not try for the win in regulation. Now that the league is calling obstruction penalties more frequently, this is a more dangerous strategy than in the past, but it still occurs on occasion. 3. It is foolish, IMHO, to have some games worth 3 points and others worth only 2. None of the other major team sports allows this and they are correct in not giving partial points for getting to OT. 4. The biggest reason I am opposed to the shootout. It is stupid to have one set of rules for the regular season and another for the post season. There is NOTHING as exciting in ALL of sports as playoff OT hockey. Eventually, I see the NHL abandoning unlimited playoff OT and going to a shootout (probably after 1 - 20 minute OT period) due to pressure from advertisers and TV networks. I would much rather see the NHL go to a system where all games are worth 3 points. If you win in regulation, you get 3 points. You then play a 10 or 20 minute OT (length of OT depends on whether you scrape the ice before OT or do a full resurfacing). If someone wins in OT, they get 2 points and the loser gets 1. If at the end of 80 minutes no one has scored, then each team gets 1.5 points. The NFL allows for ties after a 5th quarter, I don't see where you would have an abundance of ties at the end of 80 minutes of hockey (especially with the new obstruction penalty enforcement). If you have to keep the ridiculous OT/shootout format, at least make the games worth 3 points across the board. A regulation win or an OT win is worth 3 points to the victor and 0 to the loser. If you go to a shootout, the winner gets 2 and the loser gets 1.

No suspension. Apparently Collie Campbell thought that Darcy grabbed the guy's helmet and started hitting him with it accidentally. Since he clearly has never intentionally injured an opponent (yeah right), Bettman's lap collie gave Darcy the benefit of the doubt. He was fined $2,500.

Their website is www.bobandtom.com Darin is right, they are typically very funny and are constantly bringing standup comics on the show as guests.

Last time I saw him in anything was a Jenga commercial about 10 years back.

Uh, perhaps to get them out of the temple?

No data on the radio broadcast, but you can't pick and choose games out of the CI package. I have always found the CI package to be worth the money but know money can definitely get tight. Typically they offer a reduced price package starting in late January / February for CI. If you do get CI you won't get the Sabres postgame show (the Shootout) except on rare occasions when the CI feed continues past the end of the game even if you have the regional sports package because it isn't on any regular regional networks (it's only on the backfeed of MSG available in WNY).

Close. The peak had to be the greatest (spoof of a) game show ever made - Remote Control. The greatest episode had to be the one where the 3 contestants had 1 correctly answered question at the 1st commercial break. Ken punted all 3 and finished the show with 3 people from the audience as contestants.

I haven't heard the CD yet, so this is just speculation, but my guess is they don't do a DVD because according to Roby some yahoo from the Sabres pitched / taped over most of the 70's game videos.