Yeah, the whole idea that an executive could just order something and have it become the law is just absurd and it could never happen in America! Never!

Not answering a subpoena is Contempt of Congress, a criminal offense. Did you not read my post?

The President and the executive branch have a thing called Executive privilege . That privilege exempts the particular information Congress wants from subpoena.

At least that is the argument of the Bush Administration. Whether or not it is a crime is to be decided by the federal courts. Until such time a federal court says that the Administration has to surrender the requested information to Congress and the Administration refuses, they have committed no crime.

So I'm going to have to ask you to try again, fuck boy.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the purpose of THE LAW to make sure that no one goes ABOVE IT?

Circular logic, I know. Thing of beauty.

Contempt of Congress has a long history of being upheld by the courts. Bush's definition of 'Executive Priveledge' has none. So until Bush's views are upheld, a crime has been committed. Try again.

Just subpoena Cheney. He's not part of the executive branch, so he can't claim exec privlege.

Has this joke been made in this thread already?

You have an interesting understanding of the criminal justice system. You see, although LEGALLY SPEAKING a person is innocent until proven guilty this does not in fact literally render them innocent in reality. The public, in their infinite wisdom, is free to judge the crazy man who, though for the moment presumed innocent, is still drenched in blood and intestines and shrieking about Baphomet. "They didn't catch me yet, so that proves I didn't do nothin" is an argument for 7-year olds.

Jesus, your logic is like a pretzel made by 5-time repeaters of the 3rd grade. "If he retroactively decides - by imperial fiat - that what he did wasn't a crime... than it wasn't! Case closed."

And yet this statement does nothing to refute the fact that until a federal court says that the Bush Administration has to surrender the requested information and the Administration subsequently refuses that no crime has been committed.

So let's stop this silly fucking dance, shall we? Show me a crime Bush has committed or please shut the fuck up. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda to do so, but it was worth a shot.

Pang? Drop the track! Goddamnit.

Yes, we all know that you are a Republican, Phoenix, and that you wouldn't necessarily have brought any of these points up had a democratic president been the subject.You are one of the few people on this earth who will still defend the Bush administration blindly, republican or no.

That being said, the judicial system has yet to prove Bush 'guilty' for any behavior unbecoming of a president, true. People break laws all the time, each of varying quality and severity but thats not the focus here.

The focus should be not which law was/wasn't broken, but which laws were taken advantage of, manipulated by the Bush administration for selfish economical reasons, to the detriment of not only the American people's trust but the welfare of the people of Iraq and the rest of the world.

Such laws that protect the president from facing proseution for eavesdropping in on the American people without a court order, possibly need revision. Lying in court is the least of my worries. How about lying to the people in regards Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction" and falsifying information as a reasoning for defending "freedom"? How about sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of "freedom"?

For sure, defending "freedom" shouldn't entail going in and killing tens to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on foreign soil.

Morally speaking, the man's hands are already quite dirty, whether Bush knows it or not is besides the point. He will likely serve the rest of his term and be clean of any wrongdoing because of this 'Executive Privilege'. Perhaps that is a privilege which bestows upon the president, the capacity to play God. To decide who lives, who dies and who gets the shaft without facing any repercussions whatsoever seems like it should be wielded with a little more responsibility and decency.
Who knows, maybe even history will look back upon the man fondly, but I'll be damned if at least a few people won't remember just how shitty this administration is.

So, keep loving you some Republicans and keep defending them blindly.

-Theodore Roosevelt

I don't support Bush blindly at all. Matter of factly, if he were up for re-election, I wouldn't even vote for him. I agree with Bush in principle alone and quite frankly, he is indeed the lesser of two evils.

I can deal with a largely incompetent guy with good ideas, but not a party who advocates everything this country has fought against for the last 70 or so years just so they can buy votes.

Not like it matters anyway. Bush will be gone, the Democrats will win the White House in 2008 and the systematic dismantling of the American superpower will go into full throttle. So stop fucking whining. You guys are gonna get what you want anyway - socialism, America abrogating its sovereignity to the UN, and world 'respect.'

Oh don't be so dramatic. If the Democrats fail to grow a pair of balls and Republicans start talking about ending the war, we could be looking at another Republican majority with a Democratic president.

Not too bad with the Clinton presidency, all things considered.

Funny NP would mention dismantling America as the world's only superpower under a democratic president.

Not blindly loyal to your party indeed.

Night Phoenix: Contempt of Congress is a crime of omission. You don't need to prove he DID anything - his inaction is in and of itself criminal. The court proceeding is largely a formality - "We subpoenaed him to do this. He didn't."

AND YOU KNOW WHAT SOCIALISM BRINGS...

COMMUNISM!

buy war bonds, make victory crops, etc

Love that Cold War thinkin' you got going there, but uh, the USSR has been gone for over a decade, buddy.

Also, christ, my eyes are now lodged looking in the back of my head from rolling them too much at all of this circular logic.

"But what he did was wrong!"
"Ah, but he hasn't been convicted!"
"Yes, but he abused a law into preventing justice from being made."
"No court has said that he did or didn't. He isn't guilty of anything!"
"Listen, can I just shoot you and get this over with? Hell, if I don't get arrested by the police and go through the courts, it's like I never did it at all!"

Shoplifting is illegal. It doesn't matter if the culprit is apprehended and convicted. The act itself is condemnable under United States law. A person who steals is a thief, regardless of their police record.

Saying that Bush is innocent of obstruction and contempt of Congress is only a technicality, in that he hasn't actually been convicted. But this does not cancel the act itself. He is still prosecutable.

I remember when Bill Clinton was being interrogated. The Republicans bitched and moaned for weeks when Bill said "Define "Is.""

Nearly a decade later, Republicans are saying "Define "Guilty.""

Oh, sweet irony.

They're also saying "define 'executive branch'" which could be one of the scariest things I've ever heard considering they're saying it after 6 and a half years.

It has nothing to do with the Soviets. Yeah, they lost the Cold War, but the strange irony is that the economic philosophy they advocated is slowly, but surely starting to creep up on America. And it's not just the Democrats, it's some of these Republicans, too. It's part of the reason I've become so disillusioned with American politics and I don't even bother to vote anymore.

But the thing that is in question is whether or not the Bush Administration, under the guise of executive privledge, has to give Congress the documents they've requested. That is why I say that until a federal court rules that the Bush Administration cannot invoke executive privledge in this instance that no crime has been committed.

No wonder America's headed down the drain so quickly...

And by the way, no, we don't need Cold War era Russia to have Communism. That's the first time I've ever heard someone try to make that argument. It was interesting for those 1.5 seconds until it met total failure.

lol "try" to "make" that "argument"

If you'd like to believe I'm trying to do anything, go right on ahead.

The only total failure I see here is you.

And?

Exactly what is the problem with socialist values sneaking in? Before you start pointing fingers at the catastrophic fall of the USSR, bear in mind that their ideas about communism were pretty heavily tainted by the functional dictatorship they were running at the same time. Sharing of economic resources tends to be at cross-purposes with consolidating all power into the hands of a few, and all that, not to mention the toll their forced industrialization and Stalin's purges took on the nation.

It's all good and well to toss around socialism like a scary word as though it were an understood fact, but those of us not in the choir need a little more explanation.

Socialism means more government control, less economic prosperity, even less of an incentive to be prosperous because an ever-increasing amount of your prosperity will be seized to subsidize everyone else's lifestyle. It is a recipe for widespread mediocrity.

It is my firm belief that the creation of a social welfare system in the United States will be the one thing that really does us in.

See how successful Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are? All three systems are in a state of insolvency for the long-term barring break-backing taxes. The public education system - an exercise in being habitually fucked up.

Those of you who advocate socialism know good and well everytime the government touches something, it gets turned into absolute shit. You just have such a hatred for capitalism and the profit motive that you'd rather subject all of us to bullshit.

It could be because socialist systems are woefully inefficient and lack the ability to generate significant capital because they encourage people to underperform. I mean, this is why the French elected Sarkozy. At some point there's going to be a generation that's fed up with fronting the bill for the previous one's excesses.

It's essentially the same argument behind Court interpretation of the Constitution. Something isn't technically unconstitutional until the Supreme Court declares it to be so. I mean, US courts didn't even start interpreting the 2nd Ammendment as a collective right until the 1930's. It doesn't matter how stupid the decision is, it sets precedent.

This is essentially the same argument that Night Phoenix and the White House is making. It doesn't matter how much you don't like it, it isn't technically incorrect.

What's so bad about mediocrity? No, seriously. I could live with a lot of government control if it's done right. I don't think the government we have now is controlling things appropriately (not that I claim the ability to fully wrap my mind around the absurdity that is our current political landscape), anyway.

Also, isn't it the desire for personal prosperity that causes a majority of the injustice in society? Correct me if I'm wrong. It's not so bad to give to other people, by the way. In high school, at least where I live, kids are required to perform community service. I think it's healthy.

Could you elaborate about how you see social welfare as the US's downfall? I won't necessarily disagree and call you a fucktard. I'm just curious.

Capitalism does suck when it's licking consumerism's ass all day and night.

The fact that someone could seriously ask that question is actually a great example of what's so bad about mediocrity.

I fail to see how, exactly. Requiring someone to perform community service to graduate doesn't do anything towards making someone a better citizen or person. The kind of people who would enjoy doing community service aren't the ones who would need to be better people, and those who could stand to be better would be more likely to resent having to do it and learn to avoid it.

All of which says nothing about trying to fit this community service in among school, extracirricular activities, work and sleep.

Ah, there's the rub. How can you determine whether or not something is being done "right" in an instance where you have a state-run monopoly? The only way to do so is to judge by comparing to other nations. So by comparison, Cuba and Zimbabwe are shit poor, China is transitioning into a market economy, and the Soviet Union, oh that's right, fucking collapsed.

Now Western Europe is facing serious economic reform because their massive welfare states are economically insoluble, and they're falling behind significantly in productivity compared to Americans and the Chinese.

Well you might as well get into the territory that there's no selfless act. Injustices occur because certain actors act to benefit themselves at the expense of someone else. A government monopoly doesn't make this situation any better, in a lot of ways it makes it worse. The only thing which could be worse than state monopolies are state-backed cartels, which is basically how our healthcare industry operates.