Politics & Government - 26 July 2007

2007-07-26 09:09:17 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said Thursday the government's terrorist surveillance program was the topic of a 2004 hospital room dispute between top Bush administration officials, contradicting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sworn Senate testimony.

2007-07-26 09:09:11 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

2007-07-26 09:08:26 · 6 answers · asked by Silly BaBy505 1 in Law & Ethics

If Hillary is elected and steals oil companies profits, like she said she plans on doing, would this cause the gas prices to rise even more for the oil companies to recover their profits?

2007-07-26 09:08:11 · 13 answers · asked by Abu#2 4 in Politics

According to Giving USA Americans donated close to $300 billions to charity 2006, with around 83% of those donations being from individuals. My questions are: does anybody have any data on how much money the government puts toward welfare in a year, and if we did away with the welfare system, would Americans, businesses and individuals, still be inclined to donate to charity if there were no tax write offs?

2007-07-26 09:07:41 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Government

if you have had multiple DUI convictions and went to prison and when you where released got caught driving on a revoked licence what is the most likely consequence?

2007-07-26 09:07:23 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law Enforcement & Police

or even notification?

2007-07-26 09:07:16 · 7 answers · asked by Silly BaBy505 1 in Law Enforcement & Police

I think there is no better Senator than Bill Nelson of Florida and I'm not a Floridian, just own some property there. He, I have discovered, is truly a man for the people.

2007-07-26 09:06:55 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Politics & Government

I am speaking from experience. My deceased husband served two tours in Vietnam and Korea. He came home and suffered years later with alcoholism and PTSD. Sure he was awarded VA benefits. But his disability rating was only 10%. He was diagnosed with heart problems. Than he died of three types of cancer. What I mean here is they are serving our country. They take the challenge of lesser pay and their families suffer lesser income. Why can't the government reward them better and pay them better for their service. I have an friend who was an Navy part-time duty for almost 30 years. She will only get half a pay check. What gratitude do we give our honorable veterans when they return ?

2007-07-26 09:05:45 · 9 answers · asked by angelikabertrand64 5 in Military

2007-07-26 09:04:19 · 15 answers · asked by Garland Red Neck 1 in Politics

2007-07-26 09:03:44 · 7 answers · asked by Scott K 7 in Law & Ethics

1. u can only donate to people u can vote for

2. no pac's, corporate, lobbist, or foreign donations

3. must be us citizen to vote

4. unlimited donations but public list of the donors and how mutch they have given

5. 6 month campaign cycle

6. no donations to political parties, the polititions can give a part of there raised funds to their own parties ( cause you cant vote for parties, but for people.)

2007-07-26 09:03:26 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

What do you think about the Food police's latest victim; Soda?

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070724144424.aspx

2007-07-26 09:01:44 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Politics & Government

2007-07-26 09:00:58 · 4 answers · asked by Silly BaBy505 1 in Law & Ethics

which one is cool job to work at ?
which one is very dangerous to do ?
daydream to be in CIA or FBI becasue of seires of movies or tv shows always use FBI or CIA show up !!!!

2007-07-26 09:00:38 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law Enforcement & Police

This is less of a question and more of something which I hope will start a conversation. Republican or not, is anyone else fed up with how even though almost all media cooperations are biased towards the left, people still flip out when they hear something from Fox News because it's majority is Conservative? Everyone else can have their Democratic bias, but as soon as it's a Republican bias, well that's just wrong!! Why is this? You don't typically hear Republicans flipping out over a Liberal comment someone made at ABC. But as soon as Bill O'reilly opens his mouth, it just makes Fox seem even more despicable in many Liberals' minds.

I thought Liberals were supposed to be full of understanding and open mindedness, and that we were the ones creating stereotypes. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that lately many left wingers have begun to stray away from what makes Liberals unique (and attractive, in my opinion).

Discuss!!!!

2007-07-26 09:00:18 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

hi friends ...please let me knw to whom v can make a request to increase the salary of indian army officers as m a gal from canada and m in lov with a captain of indian army but due to his unreasonable earnings mah family will allow me to marry him.
please do me a favour and tell me is it possible to have mah dad's free consent for this marraige or i hav to request smone to increase the sallray ???

2007-07-26 08:56:43 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law & Ethics

2007-07-26 08:56:40 · 10 answers · asked by Keith M 1 in Military

Ok last political question...but I really want to understand this...because Canada isn't much different than the USA but nobody really sues one another here. I don't know if it's because we have insurance which covers us for a lot of things (ie Workman's Comp for injuries, private insurance, long term disability, auto insurance, etc. etc.) or what.

But in the USA it seems you can't open your mouth without fear of being sued. Someone slips on your driveway and you're being sued. One child hits another, and parents sue....this is insane.

Don't you think that somehow this has to change? That courts and judges need to make a point of dismissing ridiculous claims and banishing these money hungry lawyers who just profit off of people's miseries?

I mean am I missing something here? Why is America like this?

I mean if I would have sued for a kid slandering my daughter all over the internet the judge would have taken a strip off me for wasting his time with that nonsense.

2007-07-26 08:55:13 · 29 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

This notion was actually brought up by a liberal local radio personality when trying to have a discussion with his more moderate co-host. The one guy was trying to explain something the city was doing, which seemed to be perfectly sensible and was met with very little opposition, but the lib could just not get it. He told the other guy he couldn't even hear words, just like the teacher on Peanuts. I just wondered if a lot more libs had this unfortunate affliction as well. Also, when you read, do you just see little scatches like Woodstock made? That sure would explain a lot of things.

2007-07-26 08:53:55 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

Did you know that if someone makes a direct threat to hunt you down and kill you, it is not illegal- it is considered Free Speech.. the only time it is illegal is if they actually attempt it- by then I would think it would be a little bit late. Do you think threatening to kill somebody should be covered under Freedom of Speech?

2007-07-26 08:51:44 · 13 answers · asked by katjha2005 5 in Law & Ethics

I truly trust the Pentagon military leaders to do their job, but our Senators have disappointed me at times. Have we ever not trusted our military to be the best? I haven't. Of course I'm talking about pulling out troops, adding troops and maintaining troops in Iraq. Have you ever thought our military would not know how to pull out troops?

2007-07-26 08:50:29 · 5 answers · asked by Jeancommunicates 7 in Military

2007-07-26 08:48:48 · 6 answers · asked by D_KLEE 1 in Law & Ethics

How to Get Out of Iraq
Rapprochement with Iran, hands off Iraqi politics, and let the chips fall where they may
by Justin Raimondo
The debate over how – or whether – to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq is stuck in a quagmire, bogged down on the question of what happens when we leave. What happens to those we supported in their quest to bring democracy and liberalism to a region that has known neither? What happens to the Kurds, long oppressed under Saddam Hussein, and to the minority Sunnis, who were initially described by U.S. officials as "dead-enders" and hard-core Ba'athists, and are now the objects of American affection? What happens to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, which is propped up only by the presence of U.S. troops? What, indeed, happens to Iraq, as a nation – does it dissolve into its constituent parts?

This is the big argument offered by proponents of continuing the war: whatever lies were told to goad us into attacking Iraq in the first place are now irrelevant, they say. We're there, and we must stay there, or else a humanitarian catastrophe will take place that we'll be responsible for, and our interests in the region will be fatally damaged. This can only be avoided if our soldiers stay. It may be true, as war critics aver, that Saddam's links to al-Qaeda were overblown, or even totally nonexistent, but "the terrorists" are there now. We cannot abandon Iraq to their not-so-tender mercies, or else we risk creating a terrorist state, one that will provide al-Qaeda with a base from which to attack U.S. interests in the region, or even the American homeland itself.

This is, quite simply, nonsense, yet many otherwise well-meaning people have fallen for it. It would, they claim, be "irresponsible" to just pack up and leave: the consequences, they say, would be horrific. But would they?

Our efforts in Iraq have aimed at propping up the Maliki government, while sidelining – or seeking to sideline – the only authentically nationalist movement in the country with any degree of strength and legitimacy, and those are the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, fourth son of a famous Shi'ite cleric and the leader of a movement that opposes both the U.S. occupation and efforts to divide the country into its sectarian-ethnic constituent parts. Yet Maliki and his supporters are weak: they have no chance of defeating the Sadrists or the Sunni-led insurgency. The Maliki government has neither legitimacy nor the armed forces required to establish control over the whole country. This is the conundrum faced by U.S. policymakers, who have responded to the prospect of defeat by employing the same failed strategy that brought them to this point in the first place.

This piece by William Lind in The American Conservative gives a good indication of what is wrong with our present strategy, and how to correct it. The idea of "victory," in the terms presented by the Bush administration, is here completely redefined to mean not the creation of an American client state in the middle of Mesopotamia, but the recreation of a viable Iraqi state that will deny al-Qaeda in Iraq a safe haven. Lind writes: "A restored Iraqi state that is allied with Iran will quickly roll up al-Qaeda and other non-state forces in Iraq, which is the victory we most require."

The key, however, is a rapprochement with Iran, and as unlikely as that seems, perhaps it's not completely unrealistic. The U.S.-Iranian negotiations over the situation in Iraq are a hopeful sign, as is the establishment of a joint body set up to monitor security in Iraq: this could be the framework of a more comprehensive agreement that will permit the Iranians to exert their natural influence without subverting Iraqi independence.

It is absurd for the Americans to insist that there be no Iranian influence in Iraq: it is as if Vladimir Putin insisted on ending American influence in, say, Mexico or Canada. Geography, economics, and culture militate against it. Aside from these objective factors, the elected government in Baghdad is very close to Tehran, as the leaders of the Shi'ite resistance to Saddam were headquartered in Iran and given support by the Iranians prior to the U.S. invasion. Iraq's Shi'ite spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Sistani, was born in Iran, and there is no way Tehran's gravitational pull will be neutralized by U.S. actions.

However, we can use Iranian influence to eradicate our real enemies in Iraq, by encouraging the Iranians and their Iraqi supporters to take on al-Qaeda. Bin Laden's Iraqi franchise recently issued a warning to the Iranians to stay out of Iraq: might we not use what amounts to a veritable declaration of war on Tehran by Osama's Iraqi minions to our advantage – or is that too subtle for our Washington policymakers?

The Shi'ites, unleashed, would make short work of al-Qaeda. And once that occurs, our problems are essentially over. After all, Bush keeps telling us that our enemy in Iraq is the very same enemy that took down the World Trade Center and bombed the Pentagon. With those snakes crushed underfoot, the way is cleared to getting out.

Sure, there will be a bloody interregnum, innocents will die, and it could well be that the regime emerging from the chaos will hardly resemble a Jeffersonian republic. Yet these results will be better than the alternative – the present chaos made possible by a weak Iraqi central government, with U.S. troops caught in the middle of the Mad Max movie that is the Iraqi civil war.

If the U.S. left Iraq tomorrow, the Kurds would have nothing to worry about, since they have one of the biggest and most well-trained-and-armed military forces in the region. Nor would the southern, Shi'ite part of the country be in any danger from enemies at home or abroad: the Shi'ite militias are pretty firmly in control of the south, and this is not likely to change in the absence of U.S. forces. The Sunni triangle is another matter altogether, but, then again, this area has never been controllable, and the conflict there isn't likely to end unless there is some kind of political solution or an Iraqi strongman arises – someone like Sadr – who will take the sort of measures Americans would prefer not to engage in so openly.

Supporters of continuing the war would say, at this point, that this is precisely what we have a moral obligation to prevent. Yet it is not preventable, under any circumstances, whether we stay or leave – and the risks of staying include the likelihood of war with Iran, a conflict that would result in many more deaths and would soon make the horrors of the Iraq war pale in comparison.

The calculus of mass death yields this inevitable equation: as long as we stay, the killing continues, but U.S. withdrawal will not halt the current orgy of murder and mayhem, which may even accelerate, if only for a brief period. At some point, however, one side – the majority Shi'ite side – will win, and the upsurge of violence will peter out, like a geyser that's out of steam.

This scenario could work, but it lacks one essential ingredient: an administration that has given up its original project of regional "regime change." The Iraq war was never intended as a stand-alone experiment in "nation-building," but as the first in a series of wars launched to "liberate" the entire Middle East and implant our version of "democracy." The only use this administration has for Iraq is as a launching pad for the next war – the one against Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The U.S. isn't massing its naval might in the Persian Gulf for nothing, nor are the daily rhetorical broadsides aimed at Iran just boilerplate. Tehran has been the target from the beginning.

The clock is ticking. It is just a matter of time before an incident on the Iran-Iraq border ignites the coming conflict. That's why the administration is desperately trying to buy time and put off congressional demands that we start withdrawing from Iraq. Meanwhile, they're busy ramping up the war of words with the Iranians.

What's ominous about all this is the lack of opposition coming from the "antiwar" Democrats, who have yet to make any unified, definitive statement on the prospect of war with Iran. Indeed, all the major Democratic presidential candidates are eager to prove their hawkishness by averring that nothing is "off the table" when dealing with Iranian aspirations to join the nuclear club. On the other side of the aisle, only Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul sees the danger – while the rest of the GOP presidential wannabes eagerly anticipate nuking Iran.

Once we're stuck in the Iranian quagmire, one can easily imagine the objections to a U.S. withdrawal: just re-run the arguments made by this administration and its supporters in regard to Iraq. At that point the American people may wake up and realize that we're on an endless treadmill of "regime change" and occupation. Unfortunately, it will be too late to do any good.

2007-07-26 08:48:47 · 8 answers · asked by MIkE ALEGRIA 1 in Other - Politics & Government

My dad lives in spain and rents out the apartment under his house out. There are a family living in the apartment but they have started moving out, they have refused to pay bills etc and have damaged the walls, stuck chewing gum on the floor, drawn on the ornaments and have stolen the fridge and cutlery and bedding my dad provided. My dads been to report the damage and theft to police in spain but they repeatidy tell him that because the tenants didnt have a contract they cant do anything about it? the tenants are now threating my dad and sister with violence and the police are not doing a thing? what should we do? surely this isnt right? Theft is theft and damage is damage in any country.

2007-07-26 08:48:33 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law Enforcement & Police

Do you know why islam proclaims Jerusalem one of *their* holy sites?
Do you know why Sunnis and Shi'a fight each other?
Did you know that at one time Christians and Jews were considered lesser allies to islam and their early rulers?
Are you aware that 'infidel' cannot be applied to a Christian according to the Koran?
How rooted in history is islamic atrocities?

In my article, "The Holy City of Jerusalem and the Ummayyad Caliphate," I address the history of atrocities as well as how the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem became a 'sacred' site.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-DfkctJU7dK5B7LcNROoyVQ--;_ylt=AiNXZokI1G6zowgYXNnJS9m0AOJ3?cq=1

No politics. Only the objective groundtruth from a combat veteran that has been to both fronts of our War on Terror, backed up by independent research and historical study.

Know your enemy!

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

2007-07-26 08:45:19 · 9 answers · asked by John T 6 in Military

I thought they didn't have access?

2007-07-26 08:45:15 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

Is Alberto Gonzales going to be the first domino to fall in a whole stack of liars leading up to the "Liar in Chief" George Bush?

Can anyone in this administration EVER tell the truth about anything?

So what else are they hiding?

2007-07-26 08:44:07 · 7 answers · asked by Perry L 5 in Law & Ethics

story before Congress? ( about the hospital visit)

2007-07-26 08:43:44 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law & Ethics

I already have dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico, it would be nice to get a European passport or citizenship since I plan on studying and working in Spain or somewhere in Europe in the near future.

How would I go about doing this? How much about my ancestors do I need to know?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2007-07-26 08:43:07 · 8 answers · asked by stunnaramirez 2 in Immigration