cinnamonape @ 195

. . . . Rove would rather have goopers waste a vote on a non-viable candidate than switch party affiliation to Independent or Dem. It’s all about the numbers and how the public perceives them. Rove knows that the bandwagon technique is an effective marketing tool. Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight. Comments welcome.

Brilliant. Nice analysis/conjecture. I never would have thought of it.

My theory on Ron Paul is that he is running for pres at the request of Rove. Paul gives the disenfranchised republicans that are anti-war and anti-chimp a reason to stay in the party. Rove would rather have goopers waste a vote on a non-viable candidate than switch party affiliation to Independent or Dem. It’s all about the numbers and how the public perceives them. Rove knows that the bandwagon technique is an effective marketing tool. Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight. Comments welcome.

Interesting. Paul ran as an Independent (or was it Libertarian) for President back in 1992, I believe. So maybe there is something to your theory. It would keep registration up in the party, rather than reveal a massive abandonment of the Party. This is already happening according to most surveys, but if Paul is in the primaries then people may be holding off on jumping ship.

I also suspect a lot of people who support Paul are anti-immigration (”nativist”) Tancredo types who don’t see any way that Tancredo can win. So it isn’t the war so much as the anti-Immigration stance he professes. I think he strongly supports the “Minutemen” and other “defensive militias” for example. Talk about “V for Vendetta”…wasn’t that precisely how Norsefire and Adam Sutler came to power…anti-immigrant fear after a terrorist attack?

Paul is not anti-military. He supports the use of the military to defend the borders and country from “invasion”. The “Brown Tide”.

Pau opposes most other government institutions and funding for everything from health to schools. Anything with “Public” in it…he’s agin’ it! Imagine a society of a handful of private universities, trade schools, and toll roads. He is also anti-abortion so you have almost everything an old-style isolationist of the Father Charles “The First Right Wing Radio Host” Coughlin would love.

I really wonder what people think will occur once the war in Iraq ends? What will Paul do to the USA then? Will he veto every spending bill except that to the military?

casual observer @ 177

Drum is wrong. Century-old blogs won’t be commonly read (any more than century-old newpaper articles are today), but they will be read, studied, and written about, if they are appropriately stored and cared for. Blogs–and perhaps more importantly their comment sections–will be studied for what they are: primary historical documents.

This is something that bloggers may not appreciate fully. These discussions at FDL and elsewhere are historically important, and unique. I hope that bloggers will understand and appreciate this, and take steps to permanently preserve their archives.

i have no doubt these blog posts are all being permanently preserved.

and may even come up at our future trials.

)sorry = grim thought(

I think that some blogs may actually be looked at as the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers of our day. They are the modern versions of the pamphleteers, carrying incisive political essays with real thought, at the time when the mainstream media is more concerned with Info-tainment and mindless sloganeering.

Mind you, any assessment of Revolutionary era (or subsequent historical periods) newspapers and broadsheets will find a goodly number that were the days equivalent of the NY Sun and National Enquirer. There were also British Whig “royalist” papers as well.
After all, it’s estimated that at the start of the American Revolution about 10% were Committed to Independance, with another 20% being mainly for autonomy of some sort within the Empire (a return to the old ways of Colonial legislatures rather than Royal Governors). About 20% were actually devoted loyalists, though some were in favor of more representation within Parliament. Half the people were muddle-headed apolitical “no opinion” folks.

That shifted as the events transformed things so that all those for autonomy realized that they had no option other than Independance. And slowly more of the middle-ground shifted as a consequence of the actions of the British Army, Parliament, and the King.

Don’t know how that Paul link crept in

Federalist Papers #69

The Ron Paul link was about his fundraising $3.5 million in 20 hours based on 22,000 on-line supporters.

Which means that Ron Paul is not receiving a majority of small $5, $10, $20 donations from people unless there are some really big money backers.

Do the math!

It’s about $160/person. Which most likely means that there are many big cash supporters of Paul’s Campaign since for every $10-20 donation you’d need another at almost $400.

My theory on Ron Paul is that he is running for pres at the request of Rove. Paul gives the disenfranchised republicans that are anti-war and anti-chimp a reason to stay in the party. Rove would rather have goopers waste a vote on a non-viable candidate than switch party affiliation to Independent or Dem. It’s all about the numbers and how the public perceives them. Rove knows that the bandwagon technique is an effective marketing tool. Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight. Comments welcome.

Federalist Papers #69

The Ron Paul link was about his fundraising $3.5 million in 20 hours based on 22,000 on-line supporters.

Which means that Ron Paul is not receiving a majority of small $5, $10, $20 donations from people unless there are some really big money backers.

Do the math!

It’s about $160/person. Which most likely means that there are many big cash supporters of Paul’s Campaign since for every $10-20 donation you’d need another at almost $400.

It seems to me that in the past week, perhaps it was the Mukasey hearings, the national dialog on the left has shifted. Nobody talks of impeachment any more. Now they talk of “prosecution,” “holding accountable,” “bringing to justice,” even “perpetrators.” I love these concepts and want to seet = themt occur, but I don’t see how it’s going to happen:

Screw impeachment. We need prosecution. The war criminals among us must be brought to justice, either in the U.S. or by an international tribunal. But there are some obstacles:

– Presidential pardons, including possible self-pardons, even John Dean
says tha a president can probably pardon himself.

– The American Service-members’ Protection Act (aka, The Hague
Invasion Act) http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/othr/misc/23425.htm Sigh Read it and weep.

– immunity deals. Per Scott Horton: “The CIA personnel and private contractors involved in this process likewise faced no prosecution risk under the WCA because of a memorandum of agreement between the Department of Justice, Department of Defense and CIA done by Michael Chertoff when he headed the Criminal Division. Chertoff undertook that as long as a set of scheduled techniques were used, which are described on an appended memorandum he prepared with Alice Fisher, no prosecutions would be undertaken for death, dismemberment or assaults.”

– Statutes of limitations.

– Presidential triangulation: Let by-gones be by-gones. We have to move forward. etc.

Wigwam~ You’re making me despondant. I’d agree that if the President can pardon himself (and all his cronies) all of this would be fruitless. We may as well jump off the cliff. I have an acquaintance who is a big fan of the Unitary Executive and he says that Bush can’t be touched.

Frankly I think John Dean is full of crap on this point. There is no basis in Western law that an Executive can pardon themselves. Even in the most vociferous of the defenses of the Presidential right to pardon, Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Paper #69 it’s clear that Hamilton did not think that a President could escape prosecution after impeachment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..LsF_ayFz4D

f three years for a corresponding office in a single State.

The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. In this delicate and important circumstance of personal responsibility, the President of Confederated America would stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware.

…He is to have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment;…The power of the President, in respect to pardons, would extend to all cases, except those of impeachment. The governor of New York may pardon in all cases, even in those of impeachment, except for treason and murder. Is not the power of the governor, in this article, on a calculation of political consequences, greater than that of the President? All conspiracies and plots against the government, which have not been matured into actual treason, may be screened from punishment of every kind, by the interposition of the prerogative of pardoning. If a governor of New York, therefore, should be at the head of any such conspiracy, until the design had been ripened into actual hostility he could insure his accomplices and adherents an entire impunity. A President of the Union, on the other hand, though he may even pardon treason, when prosecuted in the ordinary course of law, could shelter no offender, in any degree, from the effects of impeachment and conviction. Would not the prospect of a total indemnity for all the preliminary steps be a greater temptation to undertake and persevere in an enterprise against the public liberty, than the mere prospect of an exemption from death and confiscation, if the final execution of the design, upon an actual appeal to arms, should miscarry? Would this last expectation have any influence at all, when the probability was computed, that the person who was to afford that exemption might himself be involved in the consequences of the measure, and might be incapacitated by his agency in it from affording the desired impunity? The better to judge of this matter, it will be necessary to recollect, that, by the proposed Constitution, the offense of treason is limited “to levying war upon the United States, and adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort”; and that by the laws of New York it is confined within similar bounds.

Fourth. The President can only adjourn the national legislature in the single case of disagreement about the time of adjournment. The British monarch may prorogue or even dissolve the Parliament. The governor of New York may also prorogue the legislature of this State for a limited time; a power which, in certain situations, may be employed to very important purposes.”

The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and hereditary prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable…What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.

Hundreds of Islamic militants seized a town in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday after outnumbered security forces laid down their arms, militants and police said.

About two dozen police officers and several troops offered no resistance to militants who seized three police stations and a military post in and around Matta, a town in the Swat valley.

“We didn’t harm the police and soldiers and allowed them to go to their homes as they didn’t fight our mujahideen,” said Sirajuddin, a spokesman for Maulana Fazlullah, a firebrand cleric whose armed followers are battling security forces.

He said the militants had hoisted their black and white flags over the captured posts.

egregious @ 189

Just back from voting. Several people handing out literature outside, include a most helpful Democratic sample ballot. Poll workers said there had been a steady stream of people all morning, which is a very good sign for an off year election with no national contests.

Let’s see…should I vote for Tom Davis’ wife? Or the reasonable, responsible Democrat? Hm…..

One woman was trying to get me to help sign the petition for Giuliani, of course one *can* sign a petition for the other party but why would I?? Sorry my dear.

Mood among the workers and volunteers seemed upbeat despite gray weather. The actual voters were a little more grumpy, probably because most of them looked like they were on their way to work, via the usual disastrous morning DC traffic.

And that’s the report this morning from Vienna Virginia.