It depends on where you think the hijack occurred.
If the hijack is ElivsL1ves’ misquoting, or the attention on the Padilla detention, I didn’t invite those, nor do I welcome them.
If the hijack, in your mind, is the focus on the legality of Rep. Sensenbrenner’s actions as opposed to the “morality” or “ethicality” of them, then I suppose it WAS my goal… but I don’t agree it was a hijack.
Actually, in thinking about it a bit, I guess that’s not true. It is a bit of a hijack; the OP was clearly more focused on the WRONG than THE RULES.
To that extent, OK, it was a hijack. But it was the kind of hijack that was worth pointing out. There is such a rush to join the crowd, condemning the evil Republicans in All That They Do, that I do think it was fair to point out that the rules were not being flagrantly violated.
It isn’t that I don’t see where you are coming from, it’s just that I think our priorities are fundamentally different. To me, this action violates (flagrantly) the spirit of the rules. The fact that it may be technically in compliance or even technically violate them is of secondary concern to me.
It seemed to me then that the responses you were getting were that the spirit of the rules was indeed being flagrantly violated, even if the precise letter was not. Your continued insistence that the rules themselves were adhered to came across as dismissing the violation of the spirit as no big deal. Even after you stated that you condemned Sensenbrenner’s high-handedness you came across as defending his actions because you believed the technicalities were (more or less) observed, and that adherence to rules trumps the ethical fair play considerations involved.
You suggested at one point that, had the OPer phrased the OP as, “He was technically correct but his actions stunk up the joint” or some such, you’d have agreed rather than arguing. May I flip that around on you, Bricker, and suggest that if you’d weighed in along the lines of, “Well, if you want to nitpick on the rules, Sensenbrenner was able to do that, but I agree it sucked,” the subsequent hijack argument might have been avoided, or at least more useful in clarifying what you intended.
And I’m not even focused on that… because “Politican does something crappy” is really not a shocker to me. But it bugs me that on this board, if the politican is a Republican, there is little effort to think critically about the accusation. Everyone stumbles over each other in their eagerness to agree that Pubbies suck.
It seems to me that if you are making a case, and you want to be persuasive, you should be bending over backwards to be fair-minded, to acknowledge anything that the other side may have. Of course, you should also be convincing, either distinguishing it or showing why it’s not important to the point you’re making… but simply not acknowledging it at all stinks.
So I find myself in the uncomfortable role of defending a rude, boorish putz, who was outmanuevered into presiding over a bash-fest and should have either accepted it with grace or risen to the occasion by smoothly derailing the opposition. Instead, he reacted like a spoiled child.
But the OP doesn’t hint at the other side. Reading it, someone walks away with the impression that legitimate, relevant testimony was being suppressed for no reason… and that’s not true either.
Bricker, allow me to second EddyTeddyFreddy’s comments. You could have simply pointed out the nature of the Democratic testimony. You could have argued that Sensenbrenner’s motions were technically within the rules.
But instead you decided to impugn the “intellectual honesty” of the other posters in the thread at the same time. If you had applied this standard to your first post in the thread:
Now that we’ve got annoying Python quotes out of our system, elucidator, a quick question.
You say we know that the saboteurs in '42 were guilty. I can as easily say the current crop of enemy combatants we have in Gitmo are equally guilty, can’t I? Why would you treat this statement as false while asking us to assume that your observation on the guilt of the '42 saboteurs in ex parte Quirin is correct?
I’m not asking to be cute here. Obviously, there was some sort of formal procedure used in 1942 to determine the guilt of the saboteurs prior to their execution. That would be the military tribunal, which you’re supposedly against today.
Why is the tribunal good for Germans and not for al-Qaida members?
Because a whole bundle of legal instruments were drafted after 1942 to arrange a systematic method for dealing with these sorts of circumstances. Driven in large part by the US, to her credit.
It’s not quite as simple as you’re making it out to be, Sevastopol.
Prisoners must meet the conditions set forth by Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions to be considered ligitimate prisoners of war. If they do not, they are considered illegal enemy combatants at best, common criminals or murderers at worst.
So tell me, Luc, in what way is an elephant unlike a platypus?
Yep. Got the pictures and the diagrams, with arrows and stuff written on the back to explain what everything means. Landed by submarine, supplied with explosives and other paraphenalia. Trained sabotuers…confessed sabotuers…agents of a hostile nation in a formal state of war. Yeah, I’m pretty confident on that one.
Sure! You’d be talking out of your ass, but you certainly can say that. Can’t get within a mile of proving it, but don’t let that slow you down.
Waddles. Quacks. Floats. Feathers. Waterproof asshole. * ergo *duck. Am I going too fast for you?
I have no idea why you posed this question to me. Not the slightest.
Nor are you relieved of answering mine if you are so inclined. Have you viewed the full hearing yet or do you still want to change the subject the the Nazis again?
This is a recording.
(And I wouldn’t dream of relying on a transcript of this one!)
I haven’t seen the hearing. That would be a terrible sin were I defending Sensenbrenner’s behavior, but I have not done so in this thread.
And I haven’t changed any subjects, as ex parte Quirin was one of the issues raised in this thread (and not by me, I might add). That decision establishes the legal precedent upon which detention in Guantanamo and processing by military tribunal is based.
As such, it has a far more direct application to the issue of the detainees in Gitmo than the actual Patriot Act has.
Let’s be direct here. Should current detainees at Gitme be found guilty of terrorist acts by a properly constituted military tribunal, per existing law, would you accept the verdicts and the process used to obtain them?
I’m not luc (whew!), but I have no problem with a military trial for enemy combatants, if it is in accordance with the due process outlined in Quirin. The big problem is, they aren’t. The defendants in Quirin landed on June 12, 1942, were arrested on June 17, 1942. President Roosevelt, with full authority of a Congressionally declared war, appointed a military tribunal on July 2, 1942, and proscribed regulations regarding the due process of those tribunals. On July 3, 1942, the defendants were charged. The trial started July 8, 1942, and finished evidence sometime in late July, 1942. The defendant’s appealled to the District Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Now, point out the factual similarities between those men and the prisoners at Guantanamo.
This whole scenario would be completely different if Bush had followed the law, acted within the Constitution, and done the right thing. But the fact is he didn’t. He fought tooth and nail against any kind of due process for the prisoners. He has yet to complete a trial of a single fucking prisoner, and were what? 4 years later? He’s held indefinitely all these people, and, not until the Courts start saying he’s acting unconstitutionally, does he start to release them, or start to try them. It’s absolutely appalling the way he has acted in regards to Guantanamo, both from a Constitutional and from a moral point of view. I’m embarrassed by his actions.