... intellect, vision, and performance...

None of which any candidate has had since I don't know how long. That is the problem!

[addendum]

... being able to actually speak a foreign language or two, are considered the bare minimum neccessary qualifications for someone who wants to be president.

That, in my opinion, is absurd. Has no bearing on the job whatsoever.

Just took a break from searching Google for “Hot Amateur Terrorist Dating Girls Gone Wild” and started reading this thread. Here is what I have learned so far:

1. The Justice Department is seeking to determine whether or not Al Gore invented internet pornography.

2. Bill Clinton may have used Acid and was a guest instructor on the VASST tour.

3. Phone calls made during the Spanish American War were expensive.

4. We need more parties to even out the government. I like the idea but I don’t believe the parties should be at taxpayer’s expense. As a side note, if invited, Ted Kennedy should be put on a three drink limit.

5. Coursedesign would like to see a picture of Pumice sans pants and jockeys.

I can’t put my finger on it, but some of these points and others made in this thread don’t make sense to me. For some reason my brain will not let me process this information. I therefore reject your reality and replace it with my own.

ROTFLAO!!!
We've been trying to get Clinton to be a presenter on ANY VASST tour, but he's too busy learning to record his sax for his forthcoming album. (Recorded in Vegas, of course)
I'll vote for any candidate that publically announces they use Vegas software.

LOL...

Boomer's right. It's a waste of time.

Exactly. As much I hate politics and definitely the current administration, American public has to shoulder much of the blame. Voting for someone because they believe in God or fought a war is aiken to high school kids voting for the captain of the football regardless if he can write his own name or voting for the school slut as the prom queen because she puts out.

Chrisitan Coalitions, military coalitions. etc... are ALL to blame for the platforms that these idiots run on. Prayer in schools, abortions, etc... are honestly, senseless reasons to vote. Not because they arent important issues but because most passionate Americans cant divide intellect from emotion.

Porn, obscenity, and idecency will be major issues come the next election. One side will take the moral high road to appeal to the conservatives in elevating their "we're better than you and we know whats best for you" attitude.

At the end of the day, it is America who truly loses. The more rights we lose, the less important our forefathers were. America is no longer the land of freedom and opportunity that is unless you have enough money to lobby votes from those in charge.

One question I had always asked that always seemed ignored is why does the average tax payers tax burden increase while their pay either stays the same or decreases while those that are in charge (politicians) have their salaries increased EVERY year like clockwork? If the entire tax paying public received the pay percentage increases that politicians receive, everyone would be rich and poverty would be considerably less. But thats just not how it works anymore.

Polticians are supposed to be the voice of the people. Instead, they quiet the voice of the people and vote the way they feel or their gain.

Chris Rock once summed up the political parties perfectly. He said that a Republican will walk up on the steps to Congress and encounter a little black boy who is panhandling. He said the Republican will give the boy $5 and then go inside and vote down a bill to help increase wages and programs to help the boy. Whereas a Democrat will ignore the boy and walk on by and then go inside and vote for a bill to help the boy.

With regards to the wire tap, its nothing more than "do as I say and not as I do." The government claims they have Americans best interests at heart ( that has never happened in history) and that the wire taps are "legal" and "necessary." They are the government, who can tell them otherwise. But let a arrogant hacker spy on the government to make sure the public isnt being duped and they would cry outrage in the name of national security.

We have been forcefed for so damn long that America is the land of the free and that countries like Russia, China, Iraq, and Iran control their peoples lives and thoughts. Is America really any different? I mean this is the same country that just ruled that your dream home and land can be taken by anyone who can generate more taxes and money for the government than you could. Is that freedom? Or is it freedom as long as they let you have it?

So for all the people that vote down the party line without regards to issues, I blame them for the cess pool we now have. While Ross Perot may have looked and talked funny, I dont think he would have let our economy ever get this bad. McCain would have handled the Bin Laden (remember him, Bush sure doesnt) and the Iraq war differently. Would it have been better? Who knows, couldnt have been any worse.

But whenever a government can demand that businesses and the citizens it GOVERNS not CONTROLS, that is a dictatorship. Only difference instead of having one asshole to blame, we have a bunch of assholes to blame.

My only regret is the beautiful children that I have brought into this world and the fear of just what else they will have to deal with after I am dead and gone.

Canada doesnt seem so bad afterall, though I would miss the tropical weather and beaches.

If the Feds have suspicions about somebody, why don't they simply Google them themselves?

A few years ago, the Justice Department was talking about a system called Carnivore, that would sift through EVERYTHING on the internet, including private e-mails, looking for key words like "terrorist," "bomb," etc. (No doubt it also would include words like "peaceful protest," "Bush is dumb," etc. -- oops, probably triggered it with this message) The Administration backed down (at least officially) after people yelled out.

I was trying to get people to simply cc the FBI on EVERY e-mail they sent, just to save the government the trouble. I figure a few thousand people cc'ing Gonzalez and company on everything would gum up the works pretty quickly.

Probably get you arrested, too, these days. Sigh.

Patrick,
don't worry, Canada soon will have tropical beaches.
Bob.

Ironically, according to an item just heard on the radio, the same Google that is "standing up" to the American Government is also kow-towing to the Chinese govt and allowing it's search engine over there to be heavily censored - for instance, a search for Falun Gong will yield no results.

No blogs either

Voting for someone because they believe in God or fought a war is aiken to high school kids voting for the captain of the football regardless if he can write his own name or voting for the school slut as the prom queen because she puts out.

Chrisitan Coalitions, military coalitions. etc... are ALL to blame for the platforms that these idiots run on. Prayer in schools, abortions, etc... are honestly, senseless reasons to vote. Not because they arent important issues but because most passionate Americans cant divide intellect from emotion.
=========
And WHO said that was the reason they voted for Bush? The media said it. Do I believe those types of voters carried him?......NO.
The media assisted our party (R) in convincing the public that all the other issues they were concerned about BEFORE the campaign were SECONDARY and that terrorism was the number ONE concern and that George Bush was making the terrorists run scared and that if you voted for Kerry we "would be hit again". The location of our convention (NYC) was not a coincidence. Despite the fact that the Bush administration could care less about New York City or it's residents it made a perfect BACKDROP for the George Bush War on Terror Hero theme.
Did everyone buy it? Not really. But given the smears and lies against Kerry that went unrefuted by the media particularly the phony "flip-flop" image Kerry supposedly had the people did the CLASSIC voting practice. They voted for who they perceived as "the lesser of two evils". Perceived by media conditioning.

John

"I didn't think I would come to this conclusion — but eventually I came to the conclusion that more information is better, even if it is not as full as we would like to see," Brin told Reuters in an interview in Switzerland.

Interpreted:

"I didn't think I would come to this conclusion — but eventually I came to the conclusion that some money is better, even if it is not as much as we would like to see," Brin told Reuters in an interview in Switzerland.

Google has put into place the infrastructure to do what the NSA people have wanted for a long time. We are doomed.

JJK

These things come and go in waves.

Let's hope the Constitution works again...

Where did all the knee-jerk, reactionaries go?

"The Justice Department went to court last week to try to force Google, by far the world's largest Internet search engine, to turn over an entire week's worth of searches. The move, which Google is fighting, has alarmed its users, enraged privacy advocates, changed some people's Internet search habits and set off a debate about how much privacy one can expect on the Web.

"But the case itself, according to people involved in it and scholars who are following it, has almost nothing to do with privacy. It will turn, instead, on serious but relatively routine questions about trade secrets and civil procedure."




Anyone going to step up and admit they went a bit around the bend on this one?

NYT
============
According to that same article:

"The problem with the subpoena, Mr. Fine said, is more general. "This is another instance of government overreaching," he said."

"The government apparently wants to show that real-world searches will pull up offensive materials that filters will not catch. Why it needs Google to do that is unclear, and Professor Stark declined a request for an interview, citing the pending litigation."

"Google objected, Mr. Ramani said, because the fit between what the government seeks and what it seeks to prove is poor. He also said that collecting and providing the information was burdensome and that the government could find it elsewhere. "

IN terms of the "trade secrets" issue, the article went on to say:

"Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group that has frequently been critical of Google, said the trade-secrets argument was a serious one."

"Google and other Internet companies say they are serious about protecting privacy. But their privacy policies acknowledge that they will comply with valid requests from the government and private litigants."
"Ms. Wong said Google tried to notify users so they could object in court before the company turned over information about them. But the law forbids such notification in some criminal cases."

"Even notification can be small comfort. It means a user must quickly and often at considerable expense find a lawyer and try to persuade a court to quash the subpoena. But the law often offers very limited protection for personal information held by third parties."

That approach no longer makes sense, said Daniel J. Solove, a law professor at George Washington University. "In the information age," he said, "so much of our information is in the hands of third parties."

"Mr. Rotenberg said Internet search records, if collected and linked to individuals, could give rise to a particularly profound invasion of privacy. "

Still, the current subpoena to Google, legal experts said, has given rise to an important debate, whether the facts of the case are apt or not.

"It allows us to have a national dialogue about whether current privacy protections are adequate," said Susan P. Crawford, a specialist in Internet law at the Cardozo Law School. Even if the Justice Department is not seeking private information now, she said, "the next subpoena could ask for that kind of data."

Great article Matt

I am happy that Google is taking a stand for the benefit of the public instead of cow towing like the sheep Yahoo and the others are. The title of the article is a little misleading which is why you have to read the rest of it.

John

"But the case itself, according to people involved in it and scholars who are following it, has almost nothing to do with privacy. It will turn, instead, on serious but relatively routine questions about trade secrets and civil procedure."

Legal scholars are famous for seeing only what's a maximum distance of 25.4 millimeters in front of their noses. This makes some sense for what they do, but it should not be used as a prediction that the situation will not evolve into something much bigger. Like feeding a pit bull pup, then being surprised to see it grow.

This is another case of the government overreaching.

Where is the Republican party when we need them?

OH! Uh, never mind. My bad.

This was a Justice Department -- NOT "White House" or "Bush Administration" -- request ON BEHEST of the Supreme Court, which was looking into fact-finding done by a lower court pertinent to the case at bar.

The request included NO NAMES OR ACCOUNT INFORMATION, just a snapshot of general activity.

This is neither UNUSUAL, nor is it EARTH-SHATTERING. Nor did ANYONE but GOOGLE have a problem complying with it (MSN, Yahoo, other search engines). It had NOTHING to do with terrorism, and was a fairly mundane, routine request.

Google decided to stage some kind of "principled protest" over it . . . yet they had no problem complying the Chinese government's request to filter Chinese users' search requests so as not to bring up results the Chinese government found "inappropriate."

Stop panicking and overreacting.

Type your name into the Google search engine then tell me not to panic.

JJK

look, i didn't read everyone's post, but hey, this is sorta the same attitude america had pre 9-11. osama new this. this is why he chose to attack us in such a way, through civilians. he knew that he could use our laws, policies, politics against us.

bush bash all you want, but when 9-11 happened, things had to change. do you want to be safe from getting your head blown off from playing at the park with your kids (that sorta just happens already tho in some neighborhoods... eeek!)

it would truley suck to be held for no reason, but are there any solutions? what can we do to safeguard ourselves from another attack? there's so many critics on how 'bush is wrong on this' and 'bush is wrong on that', instead of complaining, SOLVE THE ISSUE. how can u stop the terror threat?

civil liberties are a must, but what good are they if we arent around to enjoy them?

if bush is supposedly bad for my country, then why was he re-elected? damn, we got some sore losers here. u try running the free nation for a year, let's see how u deal with terror attacks.... (oh wait, none after 9-11), okay, worry about other matters...

coursedesign, if this is so bad, then what do u suppose would be the fix? anyone can disagree with the government, but what steps are you taking to correct them? after all, the government belongs to US... period. 'we the people' right?

i don't agree in being held for months based upon a suspicion, but i disagree more to being killed in a war started from a madman (osama, just to clarify) simply by just living my life. i don't know politics, i just see results. under this president, we haven't been attacked EVER AGAIN. we've actively seeked and destroyed terrorists and their allies. strategically placed troops in regions where serious terror threats emminate, and we're taking steps to prevent, and that includes rethinking our lifestyles. that's how osama was so successful in his efforts. he knew our laws and routines.

if it takes our government to scrub every email, scan every phone call, read every letter to ensure our safety from an enemy who don't give a rat's a... about life, then HALLELUJIAH! our govn't is doing something right.

God bless BUSH, and the men and women who FIGHT and DEFEND our freedom.

Bigsole, Bush was elected because of fear. He and his team have convinced people that biggest terrorism attack on US soil, didn't happen on his watch. That it was Cliton's fault. He claims everyone else had a "pre-9/11" mindset, however, if you look at the actions of Bush and his national security team, it's clear they focused on Iraq from day one and were not focused on terrorism. They counter-terrorism czar was no longer invited to come to Cabinet meetings. They spent far more time and had way more meetings on energy policy than on Al-Qaeda.

It's ludicrous to suggest an individual citizen has as much power as the president, particularly when that president's party holds all three branches of government. It's ludicrous to think an individual citizen can actually implement policy. However, even given that, I'm willing to bet that some folks on this board could run the government better than Bush. They probably wouldn't have spent the early part of the year trying to gut Social Security. They probably would have thought all those warnings about a powerful hurricane headed towards New Orleans was a good reason to get back to work.

The Google subpoena has nothing to do with terrorism according to the government. It has to do with children viewing porn. I use Google all the time, so now my searches are part of an government investigation, even though the government has no possible reason to think I have committed a crime. If you use Google they have your searches too.

continued

If Bush was truly trying to fight terror, he would not have had his government roll out a year-long campaign to convince us Iraq was part of the terror threat. According to US intelligence, there was no evidence of Iraq being a part of any anti-US terrorism since 1994. That was the year we bombed their intelligence headquarters to the ground. If Bush was truly concerned about terror, he would have committed the full force of US against the terrorists. He would not have held back troops from the invasion of Afghanistan. The worst terror attack ever occurs and we put less troops in Afghanistan than there are cops in Manhattan. Bush was saving troops because invading Iraq was always his plan, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted to invade Iraq BEFORE Afhanistan. The first actions the two of them litrally took "post-9/11" was to argue about invading Iraq before Afghanistan. They did this on September 12th. Bush would have kept going after the terrorists who committed 9/11 full force. He would not have pulled out our only special forces troops who spoke Arabic and Pashto out of Iraq before we caught Osama and shipped them to Iraq in early 2002. Imagine if all of 2002 was actually dedicated to fighting the terrorist, rather that manipulation us about Iraq. Imagine if all the goodwill and support we have after 9/11 was intact and we used to eliminate Al Qaeda and created international alliance to do so. Imagine if in 2002 we honored our partners in NATO who were fighting with us in Afghanistan, created a worldwide organization against Al Qaeda and like minded groups, like NATO and the Marshall Plan were used to fight Communism. Damn, Syria and Iran were giving us help on Al Qaeda after 9/11.

One example of using fear to get re-elected, remember all those "Orange-level" terror warnings that used to happen. A lot of them suspiciously timed to when Bush needs some help, such as the day John Kerry accepted the Democratic Nomination. Remember when a week or so later, we fought the "intelligence" they used was old intelligence. Remember after Tom Ridge quit Homeland Security, that he confessed most times we went to Orange, the evidence was flimsy at best and Homeland Security did not want to raise the threat level, but was overuled.

Notice how in the 15 months after reelection, we have had no raised threat levels. As Bush's approval numbers have gone down all year, we have had no terrorism warnings. If you go the Homeland Security's website, we are threat level yellow right now. Even though Osama Bin Ladin has just made explicit threats against the US and the CIA has CONFIRMED, it's his voice on the tape.