How can a committee be BOTH independent AND bipartisan? I think you confused bipartisan with nonpartisan. The Commission on Presidential Debates, for example, is bipartisan, which is why independents and third parties have such a bitch of a time being included in the debates. Congress is bipartisan, which is why independents and third parties have to jump through hoops of fire just to get on ballots.
This is from the report itself:
"independent, bipartisan agency established by Congress in 1957”.
You mean besides the fact that this ‘report’ was prepared by the commission staff (as it says at the top of every page in the damned thing)? How the hell is this a ‘bipartisan’ screed if the ‘bipartisan’ committee didn’t vote or provide input on it? You need to unfuck your twisted view of ‘bipartisanship’. It does not mean ‘every single document the gov’t puts out’. I provided the definition above, and the ‘report’ that you so desperately felt the need to type out in no way fits that definition. It would be like me quoting a press release from Sen.Santorum as gospel truth and claiming it was ‘bipartisan’ just because their are lots of Dems and Republicans in the Senate. Ludicrous, just like your insistance that this was a ‘bipartisan’ matter.
So in other words, your comment is not backed up by facts. You have zero proof who produced this report. 'Nuff said there.
No, you smarmy little shit that tried to pass off a staff draft as a bipartisan ‘report’, I have backed my claims with cites and facts. It is you that based your OP on BS. The honorable thing to do would have been to admit the fault with the document, but I doubt you know the meaning of that word as well. Besides, you’re just all hurt and insulted because like some nujob, you typed out so much of the thing, right?
When a committee composed of Republicans and Democrats (count them, that’s two parties represented) hires a staff and adopts policies authorizing that staff to circulate a draft of a report for public review, and the draft report conforms to the criteria under which the committee was established, that makes it a report for, and potentially of, a bipartisan committee.
The fact that it might just criticize and injure somebody you approve of – well, that’s too damn bad.
Now get your head out of your ass and apologize to stpauler.
Oh and by the way, while they may be useful information, a news story from the New York Times, a news story from Fox News, and Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word “bipartisan” strike me as very slender ground on which to start calling names. Although your record here proves that you need very little motivation to start acting like a jerk.
Liberal: *How can a committee be BOTH independent AND bipartisan? I think you confused bipartisan with nonpartisan. *
No, I think you may be confusing “independent” with “nongovernmental”. But “independent bipartisan” is a technical term referring to a certain type of government entity. An “independent” commission is one that is “created by an act of Congress and is independent of the executive departments”. Cite:
So “independent” in this context just means “not merely handpicked tools of whatever administration currently happens to be running things.”
“Bipartisan” is a constraint spelled out in the legislation establishing the commission: requiring equal numbers of members representing the majority and minority parties, for example. (The membership of a “bipartisan” commission may also be specified to include a number of people from nonpartisan organizations, who are jointly selected by majority- and minority-party Congresscritters, for example.) The composition of the USCCR mandates that
Ah, so the report was prepared for the ‘bipartisan’ committee, not by said committee. You are making progress! Of course, the report will not be ‘of’ the committee until they meet to discuss and go over it. Then we will see how much ‘bipartisan’ support the report gets; as of right now, it has none, despite attempts by some to claim otherwise.
Oh, for Christ’s sake! Who gives a shit who wrote it? The assertions therein are the important part, and if they are incorrect, let’s talk about that rather than attack the authors.
Gawd-damn! I must have had too much wine. I actually agree with Bricker. :eek:
I have always felt that affirmative action was the exact opposite of creating a level playing field. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 said discrimination on the basis of race was wrong. AA came along and insisted that it was mandatory. It’s impossible to follow both. As much as I detest this president for other reasons, to the extent he hampers Affermative Action I think he’s doing the right thing. My answer has always been to enforce the Civil Rights Act aggresively. Making non-abusing workers/students pay for abuses that happened before their time is just wrong.
It struck me as odd that the first paragraph you quoted from your cite had no topic sentence, and so I checked it out. What you deleted was this:
Emphasis mine.
Having a commission comprised of Democrats and Republicans and calling it independent as though it represented nonpartisan views is like having a commission of straights and gays, and saying it represents the views of everyone — including bisexuals and celibates. Or having a commission comprised of people from New York and California and saying that it represents the views of America from coast to coast.
Liberal: * What you deleted was this: “The U.S. Constitution does not address independent commissions anywhere, including its amendments. Congress claims that commissions are independent agencies not under any U.S. Government branch.” Emphasis mine.
Having a commission comprised of Democrats and Republicans and calling it independent as though it represented nonpartisan views is like having a commission of straights and gays, and saying it represents the views of everyone — including bisexuals and celibates.*
:rolleyes: Lib, my point was simply that the OP was correctly using a recognized technical term for a certain type of government entity. stpauler used the term “independent bipartisan agency” in its accepted sense as it applies to commissions such as the USCCR. Not due to any confusion between the words “bipartisan” and “nonpartisan”, as you erroneously suggested.
Yes, I understand your point. I can read. And my point is that the term is a stupid one. Hence: how can something be BOTH independent AND bipartisan? Did you think that a term coined by Congress cannot be stupid?
Reasonable, Lib. But what I am getting from your posting here is that the only thing worth fighting for is your vision of what the ideal Libertaria might be, and that it’s not worthwhile to take a stance for the lesser of two evils with which one can live while feeling the greater of the two is destructive to all one’s ideals, because the only thing worth standing for is the complete whole-hog package of the ideal society.
There’s an old line about “politics is the art of the possible.” Kerry has flaws; I’ll be the first to admit it. But I still find him a whole lot more palatable than Bush.
“Independent” means “not controlled by” – with reference, in this context, to the current Administration. It may in other contexts reference a number of other ideas – like “separated from the British Empire” in the Declaration, or “not affiliated with a political party” in terms of voter registration. “Independent bipartisan commission” has a specific meaning in this context – the fact that it does not include representatives of the Bundesrepublik Social Democrats or the Australian Labour Party is almost as on-point as the objections you are raising.
Liberal: * And my point is that the term is a stupid one. Hence: how can something be BOTH independent AND bipartisan? Did you think that a term coined by Congress cannot be stupid?*
Of course not. But I do think that if Congress coined a stupid term several decades ago which has become a generally accepted technical term for a particular type of governmental entity, you shouldn’t be picking on stpauler about it now:
Your objection that the term is stupid should be addressed to the people who coined it, not to stpauler who is using it correctly in its generally recognized sense.
Which is why I’m voting for Kerry. Some other time, perhaps when you and I are together again, we can discuss the difference between metaphysical and epistemic possibility, and why I cling to the ideal not yet implemented and oppose the one that is. Politics is the art of the powerful. Political clout always wins.
You are no doubt equally distraught that your cite did not lodge with Congress its complaint that the “U.S. Constitution does not address independent commissions anywhere, including its amendments”. Perhaps it is the case that we may all state our opinions to whomever we please.
Liberal: Perhaps it is the case that we may all state our opinions to whomever we please.
Certainly. Just try to be a little less unclear about what the opinion is that you’re stating. You certainly gave the impression—to stpauler as well as myself, judging from his/her response to you—that you were correcting stpauler’s use of the term “independent bipartisan”, believing that s/he was using it in ignorance of the distinction between “bipartisan” and “nonpartisan”.
You now seem to be saying that you were just indulging in a minor terminological hijack to voice a general complaint about the misleadingness of the technical term “independent bipartisan”. Fine, but it wasn’t clear that that’s what you were doing. It came across as though you just didn’t understand what the recognized meaning of “independent bipartisan” was.
Which is why stpauler wasted our time pointing out to you that the term appears in the linked report, and I wasted our time explaining to you what its standard meaning is, as well as taking three subsequent posts to clear up the misunderstanding. If you would please try in the future to be a little more clear about just what it is you’re criticizing, you’ll be less likely to be misunderstood.
Oh, that’s rich. You are still climbing this molehill, and you accuse me of hijacking. 
I still don’t understand that there is any “recognized meaning” beyond the sheer sense of the general formulation, not unlike any other, such as “instant classic”. I’m certainly not the only person to recognize the inherent abuse of such a term.
Liberal: Oh, that’s rich. You are still climbing this molehill, and you accuse me of hijacking.
Well, Lib, if your complaint about “independent bipartisan” being a stupid term wasn’t a hijack, then what was it? If you’d made it clear that was a hijack, and that you were just griping that it was a stupid term instead of telling stpauler that s/he was using it wrong, I wouldn’t have followed you up this molehill. Now you seem to be arguing that I shouldn’t say you were hijacking. Why not?
Liberal: I still don’t understand that there is any “recognized meaning” beyond the sheer sense of the general formulation
Well, the “independent” part, as my linked article explains, means that the entity is created by Congressional legislation delegating to it some part of legislative responsibility or charging it with some advisory or regulatory functions—as opposed to the entities that the President is empowered to create by executive order, for example.
The “bipartisan” part means that the legislation creating the entity includes mandates about bipartisan representation in the entity’s membership.
I can understand why you might think that either or both of these words would be to some extent inadequate, misleading, contradictory, or stupid in the context of the term “independent bipartisan agencies”. But I don’t understand why you’d think that the term has no “recognized meaning”, nor do I understand why you seemed to think that stpauler was using the term incorrectly