You never heard of Bill the Ripper, eh?
No, it's true. Really. Karl Rove told me.
Jim
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Thats the first time Ive seen Snopes put out a pro-Clinton opinon piece. Apologetic, spun as much as the original document.
Snopes just dropped a notch or two in my opinion, on presentation alone.
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
Man, they'll be crushed when they hear that.
It looked like frustration to me. It looked like they were a little fed up. I remember when most of the b.s. was coming from the left, back in the days of the underground press and so on. You could count on them coming up with screamers on a regular basis. In college, I used to write editorials about how the country's youth was floating on a sea of left-wing bullshit.
Now it seems to be 90% right-wing bullshit. Seriously, there's hardly enough left-wing dissembly here to maintain my reputation as an antagonist of both extremes. Am I off-base, or aren't almost all of the bogus quotes, rigged numbers, and re-arranged history coming from the right? It certainly seems so. They seem to have jumped on the idea that their own puerile ideas will carry more weight if they lie and claim that someone more reputable said them.
Has anyone ever checked Snopes to see what percentage of the bogus political stuff is right-wing in origin, versus left-wing? It would be interesting to check it out.
The Bush counties do have a lower homicide rate than the Algor counties etc etc. That sort of minutia.
So that part is true also then?
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
On the other hand, the Bush counties have a much higher rate of self-inflicted wounds.
That's minutia, all right. How about the townships? Boroughs?
What part? That isn't what the idiot said.
Ed Huntress
This bogus quote from Tytler has been around for about 30 years or so (perhaps longer, but the earliest mention of it appears to be in the
1970's). Bill O'Reilly even uses it on p.68 of "Who's Looking Out for You?" Of course he also uses the long-ago-discredited quote from James Madison about staking "the whole future of our political institutions...on the Ten Commandments" (p. 117, as I recall), so perhaps he's not all that concerned with accuracy.Anyway, if you're interested about the Tytler quote, there's a little more info at the University of Edinburgh FAQ:
I'll just add that it should be stressed the difference in the "real" numbers (i.e., Gore = 6.5 and Bush = 4.1) should NOT be taken to imply anything about Gore voters being more murder-prone than Bush voters, which is how it seems many people interpret these statistics (both the bogus ones and the real ones).
If we compare the high-population-density areas won by Bush to similar areas won by Gore, there is very little difference in murder rates (i.e., about 7.0 for Bush and 7.5 for Gore). So this difference is largely due to the fact Gore won more urban counties and Bush won more rural counties.
But regardless of the magnitude of the difference, it is an abuse of statistics to jump from average county-level murder rates to the idea that Gore voters are more murder-prone than Bush voters (or vice versa). The only way to make that determination is to interview murderers to find out who they voted for. My guess would be the murder rates among the *voters* would be small and similar between the two groups (exit-poll demographics imply similar distribution of income, education, etc. for Bush and Gore voters).
The fact that murder rates in the Gore counties are, on average, higher than those in the Bush counties, says *nothing* about the relative murder rates among Bush and Gore voters. This is a somewhat subtle point that many people seem to miss, I think.
-Mike P.
The United States is not a true democracy - it was never intended to be and never has been. It's an oligarchy and quite a few oligarchies have lasted longer than 200 years.
Got any idea of the ratio between Democrats and Republicans in prison for violent crimes?
Think hard.
The cites are available.
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
Kinda like, the ratio between true believers and atheists, in a foxhole.
Jim
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I thought you were going to ask if they were Democrats before they went to prison, or if prison converted them.
It reminds me of the line old newspapermen tell, in reference to conservative versus liberal reporters. A liberal reporter, they say, is a former conservative who's had to work six months on the city desk.
Ed Huntress
It was Bill the Zipper.............
Erich
Big snip===
Sorry, folks. Got it and spaced it by not checking the credibility. I found it so interesting that I completely spaced it. I owe you one!
Harold
Technically it is a republic. The prototype republic was ancient Rome, which lasted as a republic for some 400 years before succumbing to a military coup.
Gary
Nah...bottom feeding
In addition to providing the magic bullet to elect their candidates in November, this issue reprises all the sour-grapes whining by the Democrats about Bush winning Florida in 2000. The Democrats know that if felons had been allowed to vote in Florida, Al Gore would have won Florida and be president today.
The laws of forty-eight states place restrictions on the ability of convicted felons to vote. State laws vary widely in imposing restrictions.
State laws may distinguish between those who are now behind bars and those who have been released, or whether they are repeat offenders, or whether they are violent or nonviolent offenders, or whether they are parolees or probationers. Maine and Vermont allow convicts to vote even if they are still in prison.
Allowing felons to vote is highly unpopular with the American people, but the laws are amended from time to time. Since 1996, nine states have repealed a few of their voting barriers for convicted felons, while three states made their laws tougher.
These changes don't appear to have anything to do with partisanship or geography. The states easing their bans were Alabama, Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming, while the states that toughened their policies were Massachusetts (by constitutional amendment), Utah and Kansas.
The Democrats haven't a chance for wholesale repeal of these laws. So the Democrats are doing what liberals always do: they line up the American Civil Liberties Union and other left-wing lawyers and then seek out activist judges to issue rulings that elected legislators will not make.
The Democrats are using a study made by two sociologists, one at the University of Minnesota and the other at Northwestern University, who suggest that, since 1978, seven U.S. Senate races plus the 2000 presidential election would have turned out differently if felons had been allowed to vote. The professors estimate that Florida felons would have given Al Gore an additional 60,000 votes, more than enough to wipe out Bush's narrow margin of victory.
To try to give convicted felons the franchise, the Democrats are playing the race card, asserting that state laws have a "disparate impact" on blacks and Hispanics and therefore violate equal-protection guarantees. The laws of course are color-blind, and furthermore, it is no more discriminatory to deny felons their franchise than to deny them certain categories of employment, child custody, or gun ownership.
Lawsuits have been filed to overturn the laws that bar felons from voting in Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Washington State.
Florida's law permits felons to regain their voting rights by executive clemency, and Florida's department of corrections has agreed to assist felons navigate the restoration process. Officials estimate that 130,000 Florida felons will soon be empowered to vote, but the Democrats are still going forward with their lawsuit.
The Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta by 2-1 reversed a District Court ruling in December and ordered a trial on the race allegations in Florida even though the plaintiffs presented no evidence of any racial animus. The Circuit Court decision was written by one of Clinton's most controversial nominees, Judge Rosemary Barkett.
The dissenting opinion in the Eleventh Circuit case pointed out that the 14th Amendment, Section 2, "explicitly allows states to disenfranchise convicted felons." Furthermore, the dissent explained, in the time period when Florida adopted the rule against voting by felons, no "disparate impact" on minorities existed, so there could not have been any bias in the adoption of the rule.
A U.S. District Court in Spokane dismissed a case brought by prison inmates, but the liberal Ninth Circuit sent Farrakhan v. State of Washington back for a trial. The felons want the law overturned because blacks are 37 percent of the felons denied the franchise.
New Jersey allows felons to vote after they complete their incarceration, parole or probation, but that doesn't please the Democrats. Ten ex-convicts (including a convicted killer) are suing to void the state law, because 81 percent of the prison population, 75 percent of parolees, and 52 percent of probationers are blacks or Hispanics.
These plaintiffs are backed by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School, the ACLU, the New Jersey State NAACP, and the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey.
The U.S. Constitution reserves the matter of voting regulations to state legislatures and specifically authorizes the disenfranchisement of felons. We should not permit activist judges to change the laws.
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
Heh. Just when you think you have a snappy line, somebody comes along and trumps it all to hell.
Jim
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Republican slogan: "The Party of More Bars and More Walls!"
Vote for us. Yep.
Jim
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As you note, technically, the US is a republic; even more technically, the US is an oligarchic republic.
Ah, I usually stay out of the "democracy/republic" debates, but this one is too blatant. A republic and an oligarchy are exact opposites.
A republic is a government run for the benefit of the people. The common definition used today, that it's a representative government with elected representatives, actually is a subspecies of "republic," and, even so, it may not function as a republic. That's because the determining factor of a republic is whether it serves the interest of the people. That's what Franklin meant when he said the Constitutional Convention gave us "a republic, if [we] can keep it."
An oligarchy, by definition, is government by a small group that governs for selfish purposes. It doesn't govern for the interest of the people.
Ed Huntress
and never has been. It's an oligarchy and quite a few oligarchies
too blatant. A republic and an oligarchy are exact opposites.
Nossir.
Technically, a republic is a government that has a head of state that is not a monarch. A oligarchy is a government that may or may not have a head of state, in which power resides in a small group. "Benefit of the people" is not now, nor has it ever been, a part of either definition.
If you really think the "interest of the people" is now, or ever has been, a part of US government, you might want to check on the criteria for electing officials in the US, both theoretical and pragmatic, then and now. You might also want to check on whether the actions of these elected officials, ostensibly elected in the public interest, have actually been in the public interest.
selfish purposes...
I rest my case.
Politicians govern in favor of the money that got them elected. For example, it is not in the "interest of the people" to send both light and heavy industry and the associated jobs offshore, outsource service jobs overseas, then try to convince folks that replacing those jobs with McJobs is somehow beneficial to the American public. In reality, multinational corporations and special interests are dictating what is in the "interest of the people" not the folks elected under that pretense.
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