9/04/2008

Speeches

Watched Lieberman's and Palin's speeches over lunch today. I don't quite understand the hubub about Lieberman's speech. It didn't seem particularly brutal, or anything. And Sarah Palin's speech was nothing special to my ear. A few rah, rah America moments, a few snide stabs at Obama - nothing out of the ordinary for a convention. But I’m quite a bit disturbed by one line in particular from Sarah Palin’s speech the other night. She was talking about how al Qaeda was waiting for an opportunity to harm Americans and snidely commented:
"and [Barak Obama]’s worried that someone won't read 'em their rights"

Oh my god. Yeah, that’s right, Palin. Guilty because you say so… that’s what makes America great. Gov. Palin, have you ever heard of civil liberties? No, didn’t think so. How about “guilty until proven innocent”? No? Well, it’s official. Bush’s brain has been put into the body of a woman. At least now we know his plans for staying in power.

PS: Time magazine reports that, as Mayor, Palin tried to get some books removed from the library, and threatened to fire the librarian when she refused. Nice.

4 comments:

Nemo said...

In your view, does the constitution grant civil liberties to aliens (the 'I am not a US citizen' kind, not the abduct 'em, probe 'em kind)?

TheFishmonger said...

Wow, this reply is getting longer than expected. I'll switch it over to a post.
-TheFishmonger

TheFishmonger said...

OK, response is going to be fairly short again (yes, believe it or not, this is a shorter version of my response). My reading is that the constitution grants most civil liberties to citizens, and legal aliens (remember that most of the 9-11 terrorists were here legally). It also, in the 14th Ammendment, specifically prohibits the states from abridging "due process" for "any person" - which I guess would even include illegals. I suppose the feds themselves could abridge the due process of anyone they wanted. I'd hope they wouldn't do that, just as I'd hope they'd only use their power to control interstate commerce or suspend habeas corpus when absolutely necessary. I guess I'm just doomed to be disappointed... and angry.

PS: OTOH, I don't see anything in the constitution that guarantees welfare, free public schools, or anonymous medical care to illegal aliens (or, since some seem to object to describng people as "illegal", I'd behappy to use the term "crimnal aliens" if they prefer.

Nemo said...

We are all doomed, but on the "Scale of Doom", this should be ranked rather low. Just above anthropomorphic global warming (0.00, a cult of luddites) but well below Federal deficit spending (9.95, 400+ B this year!) and insane energy policies (9.80, ethanol in drinks smart*, in tanks dumb). As usual, the "Scale of Doom" is a number between 0 and 3.18pi with the larger numbers being more doomish and smaller numbers indicating less peril.

*always drink responsibility, unless doom is imminent (then go nuts: chug! chug! chug!).

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