Bill O'Reilly... another gutless neocon

[Dutch Nick]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety," observed Benjamin Franklin, "deserve neither liberty nor safety." That sentiment, which animated our Founding Fathers, is almost never expressed today. Just the opposite in fact. Consider the words of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who on his O'Reilly Factor broadcast of August 10 repeatedly cited the apparently successful efforts of British police to foil a massive terror plot as proof that America should chuck the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

“No question, Great Britain gives its police more room to contain terrorism than we do here,” O’Reilly noted. “In Britain it is ‘reasonable suspicion,’ here it’s ‘probable cause’ — huge difference.” Then he asked his guest, Larry Walters, an attorney and civil libertarian, “Why shouldn’t we have reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause,” like the British do?

When Mr. Walters tried to explain the importance of our constitutional protections against warrantless searches without probable cause, the Fox commentator retorted: “You can argue theory and constitutional rights all day long, but as you know, laws can be changed, the Constitution can be changed, and sometimes they have to be.”

The Fourth Amendment of our Bill of Rights states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

That is all well and good, according to Mr. O’Reilly, but the fact that we have terrorism in the “real world,” he says, is a clincher argument against the “theoretical” importance of constitutional restrictions on police powers. He scoffed at concerns that sweeping aside constitutional barriers might lead America toward a police state. “I’m not a terrorist!” he exclaimed, inferring that only terrorists need fear an omnipotent, unrestricted government. When Mr. Walters asked whatever happened to the Patrick Henry spirit of “give me liberty or give me death,” O’Reilly responded: “I’m free! I don’t want to die!”

[DaveyDug]

Can you post a link to this?

[BlenderWizard]

Yeah, we really should just go ahead and wipe our asses with the BOR, and throw it out the window.

Nice sig line, BTW

[Boogyman]

Well, hello there Blender! How ya been?

So whaddya think of our new little nuthouse here? :lol:

Ol' Dutch here is quite a character, ain't he? Even scares me a little... :o :rolleyes:

Welcome back... Oh, and congrats on the new li'l one! ;)

[BlenderWizard]

Well, hello there Blender! How ya been?

So whaddya think of our new little nuthouse here? :lol:

Ol' Dutch here is quite a character, ain't he? Even scares me a little... :o :rolleyes:

Welcome back... Oh, and congrats on the new li'l one! ;)


Oh, this is not a nuthouse. Overly moderated, maybe, but not a nuthouse.

This, is a nuthouse, and where I've spent the past several months getting down and dirty with it:
http://sksboards.com/forum/index.php?c=4

About 95% of the threads over there would be locked down and/or deleted if they were over here.

Thanks for the congrats!

[freesw]

The fourth amendment may be the part of the Bill of Rights under the most pressure now, in no small part due to asset forfeiture:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/forfeiture/
http://www.cato.org/ccs/4th-amendment.html
http://www.drugpolicy.org/law/searchandsei/

I don't have any problem with drug dealers having their assets confiscated, per se, but I've read enough about this to know that it happens to more or less innocent people all too often. Why? For the obvious reason that the the motive is so enticing -- it's easy to confiscate money, cars, motorcycles, planes .. guns, anything, in fact, that a government agency chartered to enforce laws related to ill-gotten loot and the means of obtaining it, can "reasonably" claim was thereby obtained. And it's the forfeitee that has to prove it's really legitimate, how's that for topsy turvy constitutionality.

These abuses have nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with governmental agencies' greed -- or more precisely, the tendancy of some agencies to expand their budgets through the means legislation has provided and mandated for them to self-fund.


And the fifth is tending towards getting blown all out of proportion to the original intent:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/06/supreme-court-says-city-can.php

That's a whole 'nuther story, having to do with municipalities' perceived need to raise property values and thereby taxes.

There's also a race to the bottom in this country as well as globally, as each town vies to see who can lower their standards sufficiently to attract companies to relocate in them. Zoning, environmental, and tax revenues are the losers everywhere in all of this, which is what I guess necessitates the need to do things like the above to make more tax revenue off property owned by ordinary folks rather than the coveted "major employers" who can't possibly be required to pay taxes at the same rate as everyone else, lest they threaten to move to the next town over.

[Mannlicher]

Sometimes its hard to seperate the libertarian whack jobs from the anarchists here. :lol:

[freesw]

Here's an example of what I mean, just from today.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14913851/
Corporations get break on tariffs
Suspensions cost U.S. Treasury millions
For three generations, the Dungey family of Auburn, N.Y., has produced handmade dog collars and leashes for pet stores around the country. The family's six-person shop has staved off competition from cheaper foreign labor by offering a range of products, from affordable "Sparky's Choice" leashes to a $100 beveled-brass collar known as the "Gatsby."

One day this spring, the company president, Anita Dungey, happened across a few words on a Web site, leading her to a startling discovery: One of her small advantages over imports was about to disappear, thanks to a little-noticed proposal in the Senate. The plan, it turned out, had been promoted by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

In Connecticut, chemical company executive Kenneth Kelly got a similar jolt when a business associate called to warn that a bill tailored to benefit a German-owned competitor was working its way through Congress.

Dungey and Kelly had stumbled upon a largely unknown congressional apparatus that allows companies to erase tariffs -- taxes levied on products and materials shipped to the United States from overseas -- for years at a time.

Each legislative season, corporate executives and lobbyists quietly draft hundreds of bills to suspend tariffs. Over time, the changes cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, a Washington Post analysis of U.S. trade data found.
...

"It's become sort of a lobbyists' dream," said Jim Schollaert, a former State Department trade specialist who now represents domestic manufacturers. "It's a gravy train, and there's little work to it."

The bills in Congress generally give no hint of whom the suspensions have been designed to benefit and sometimes refer to the products only by strings of numbers linked to phone-book-size tariff tables. But many corporate names can be found in reports on the legislation produced for Congress by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Lawmakers usually introduce the provisions at the behest of companies in their districts. Many of those companies and their executives have given federal campaign contributions totaling millions of dollars.
...

The practice of not naming companies in the legislation obscures a fact revealed by The Post's analysis: The biggest beneficiaries of the rising tide of tariff-suspension bills are domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations. Of the 10 companies that stand to benefit from the greatest number of bills examined in the study, eight are owned by or affiliated with German and Swiss chemical companies.
...

Lobbyists and lawmakers said many tariff suspensions aid small businesses. The savings "can be especially meaningful for a small company, or one struggling to stay afloat in the United States," Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement.

But The Post's analysis of data from nearly 600 trade commission reports from this session of Congress found that the biggest winners are not small U.S. firms but rather domestic subsidiaries of European corporations.
...

Since 2000, Bayer's political committee has made campaign contributions totaling $951,000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. In 2005 alone, Bayer and its U.S. affiliates spent $3.2 million on lobbying.
...

[Boogyman]

Oh, this is not a nuthouse. Overly moderated, maybe, but not a nuthouse.
Yeah, I'd say the mods here can be a little too zealous once in a while, but on the whole they do a pretty dang good job keeping the place from turning into a pile of ignorant noise.
This, is a nuthouse, and where I've spent the past several months getting down and dirty with it:
http://sksboards.com/forum/index.php?c=4
Now that's what I mean. Too much "macho posturing", if ya ask me. What could you get out of hanging out there?

I suppose it has a lot of tech info for SKS's but the "rant" forums are just full of a bunch of trash-talking, crap-slinging keyboard-commandos. The kind of B.S. that wouldn't be tolerated here, you're right about that.

Oh well, each to their own... :rolleyes:

By the way, Blender, boy or girl? :)

[BlenderWizard]

Boy.

Honestly, the level of moderation found here is a big part of the reason I left for so long.

I am a member of many, many boards, none of which have the level of moderation seen here. I find sksboards good for not being so moderated. I'm always afraid, here, that if I call someone out on something it's gonna get deleted, locked, or I'm gonna get warned, or some combination thereof.

Like Old Fool's thread in the SKS section here. I would have preferred that the "sks club" unload on him for that which he hath wrought, but instead it got locked. I cannot stand it when ignorant morons make comments about things that they are, obviously, clueless about.

I hate it when morons get the last word on something.

LOTS of members here are also members over there.

This board doesn't seem nearly as active as I remember it, what happened?

All that being said, sometimes it is much nicer over here, as peaceful as it is.

[Boogyman]

Honestly, the level of moderation found here is a big part of the reason I left for so long..
I know what you mean, but being a moderator isn't easy. I left for awhile because I didn't feel as if the mods did enough to punish some disrespectful kids who were getting away with some extremely slanderous accusations. Then when I'd fight back, I'd get reamed for it. It's a judgement call, I guess.
I'm always afraid, here, that if I call someone out on something it's gonna get deleted, locked, or I'm gonna get warned, or some combination thereof..
He he... doesn't stop me. I speak my mind. If I get whacked for it, I take my punishment and move on. :lol:
Like Old Fool's thread in the SKS section here. I would have preferred that the "sks club" unload on him for that which he hath wrought, but instead it got locked. I cannot stand it when ignorant morons make comments about things that they are, obviously, clueless about..
Yeah, I would have liked to see him get hammered awhile longer, but what the hell, I think he got the point. No use piling on.
I hate it when morons get the last word on something.
Don't we all... :rolleyes:
All that being said, sometimes it is much nicer over here, as peaceful as it is.
Now there's the thing... it's tough to keep the peace. Bill and the mods do a pretty good job of it, though. The downside is that censorship can get a little over-zealous, sometimes I think it's better to let folks "scrap it out", but everybody has a different idea of where to draw the line.

I try to keep in mind that these guys aren't getting paid a dime for their efforts, and in return we have a lot of information-sharing going on here. I know I've learned a lot, not only about guns and politics, but about how to control my temper and get the most out of a debate. (still learning tho!) :lol:

Most other boards it's pretty pointless to post anything if it just gets buried under a bunch of idiotic cursing and name-calling. At least here you have a oppurtunity to speak your mind and share your views with the knowledge that at least a few people will get something out of it, and vice-versa.