Balta1701

The LA Angels are disappointed that he will remain in the American League, but happy that he will on average be roughly 2 time zones and 2000 miles away from them.

Our pitching staff just got a lot better for the next 3 years.

Small update:

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 07:17 AM) Washington D.C. should receive the most per person. Because it doesn't have a state apparatus, most of its budget is controlled by the Federal Government. Plus I'm sure that 6 dollar figure also accounts for maintenance of all the special needs that having a capital has. You know, somehow I doubt that, Washington D.C.'s unique in that it doesn't really have a representative in Congress, so it has no one who can really "Bring home" all those federal dollars that other cities get. They're often quite pissed about it. Don't have any numbers to present on this one though.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Dec 19, 2005 -> 08:46 AM) So would that mean, if targeted assasinations of leaders were considered necessary in the President's mind, it would be legal? So what Gonzalez is saying is that those five words absolve the President of every blame possible? This is sounding worse, not better. Targeted assassinations are only banned for this country by executive order, as far as I know. There is no law against them. So, if the President chose to have our armed forces launch a targeted assassination of the leader of another nation, for it to be legal, all he would have to do is issue another executive order first. That is something he can overturn through his power - the President can issue executive orders as long as there is no conflicting law (as there clearly is in this case).

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 09:51 PM) Not saying that it is OK because some Dems knew it was going on, but wondering why they didn't say anything if they thought this was so bad? To get all indignant like they didn't know this was happening is simply pure politics. Sure, Pelosi SAYS she had reservations at the time. You know that is a lie, because if she did, her pure hatred for Bush would have sent her running to the NY Times, or leaking a memo somewhere. Why did they not insist on hearings for this? They insisited for hearings over Iraq, this certainly seems just as important. Well, we haven't heard from every single possible Democrat in the Senate who they might have told yet...but Harry Reid, the guy who was the #2 Democrat in the Senate when this started (2002) and who is now the #1 Democrat in the Senate said on Fox News Sunday that he was only breifed within the last couple months...basically the NYT knew about it more than half a year before Harry Reid did. Feingold is on the Judiciary committee, he didn't know. Biden says he didn't know. Levin says he didn't know. Basically, as far as I can tell from the talk show circuit yesterday...the only real ranking Democrats who haven't said anything are Kennedy, Leahy, and Daschle, and Given that Leahy brought it up while giving the Democrats radio address response to BWB on Saturday, it doesn't seem like he knew (could be wrong in that supposition). Leahy is important, btw, because he's the current Democratic leader on the Senate Judiciary committee...so if anyone was told when the program started, it would have been him or Daschle, and Daschle's long gone. Edit: Jay Rockefeller (WV) is the Dem Chairman on the Intelligence Committee, the one Bush says was briefed. According to the NYT, it seems he has mainly gone about protesting the thing through normal channels...both he and Pelosi have sent protest letters to the President about the program. Edit the second: At the time the program started (2002) the chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee was now-retired Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham (Fl). On Nightline last Friday night, he made it very clear he had no idea the program was going on.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 05:25 PM) Stop Edge, stop the Colts. Stop Edge and pressure Manning...stop the Colts offense. (At least for now). Peyton was shredding the Bolts without Edge...until the Chargers started dropping him. He made some absolutely jaw dropping throws in that 2nd half, but the thing that really killed them was that last sack when the score was 19-17 that took the Colts out of field goal range. Without that sack, and the pressure on that drive, stopping Edge wouldn't have done anything but make it a close game. And none of that talks about the Colts Defense...which has to be beat by power IMO. The Chargers ran LT up the middle to win that game. It set up the pass, and Brees was good enough to take advantage. Then again, I still think the Colts in their hearts were torn about whether they really cared about this game, and that cost them too.

For those who haven't yet seen it...Time Magazine has chosen 3 people for their "Persons of the year" award (dammit, it should be people!) Sounds like a pretty good choice to me...continues to try to focus the world's attention on an issue that just can't get enough traction to save the lives which could be easily saved.

QUOTE(Confederate_48 @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 04:57 PM) So whats the deal, if the Bears win do they clinch the North yet or what ?? Since the Bears still have a game with the Vikings, I think the tiebreakers aren't all set yet, and the Vikes might still be able to take the division if they win out and the Bears lose out, even if the Bears win tonight (That'd make 10 wins for the Bears, the Vikes have 8, the Vikes could tie with 2 wins).

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 01:18 PM) I was telling people I was getting nervous that it could happen this week. But you know what? Oh f***ing well. If you've looked at my posts, I wasn't all that excited about the undefeated season. I want the Super Bowl; hopefully people can stop talking about all that other stuff now. You know what? I don't think we'll see an undefeated team in football until there's a season where the best team goes undefeated for the first 10 games or so but then has a team breathing right down its neck for homefield advantage. If you had a 1 loss Denver team right now, I just feel like the Colts would have shown up far more in the first half. The Colts had no pressure on them today, and they played like it. I bet you there were a few people on that offensive line who were more focused on trying to avoid being hurt than they were on stopping Merriman. Without someone breathing down their neck, there's just no reason for a team to push themselves so hard and stay focused on winning every single game. We've seen it enough times where just a little bit of missing focus (New England versus Miami last year anyone?) lets a very bad team beat a very good team just because the good team was either looking into the future or didn't have much to play for. The Colts just got caught with exactly that today. It's going to take a 14-2 or a 15-1 team in the same conference for a team to go 16-0. Maybe 13-3 if some of those losses come late in the season & the undefeated team has an easy schedule those weeks.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 04:22 PM) Dbaho...be very very quiet, the Boys got CLOBBERED. Wow what a whooping. Now its time to get ready for the Bears game WOOT. You think that those 2 years or so as Drew Bledsoe's coach up in Buffalo taught Greg Williams how to beat a team with Bledsoe as its QB? (Blitz blitz blitz blitz a few more people).

QUOTE(bschmaranz @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 08:04 AM) Isn't Izturis slated to miss half the season? And what purpose would he serve on the current White Sox? I could see Garland being moved to LA, just don't know why Izturis should be involved. The reason why a team would want Izturis is that he'll almost certainly be the 1st or 2nd best defensive SS in the NL when he returns next year at the AS break, no matter which team he's playing on. Of course, given that we already have the best defensive SS in the AL on our team (and he'll win that damn award instead of Jeter next year now that people have noticed him and he's adapted to the position) I have no idea why we'd want him. The Dodgers should, IMO, try to find someone to take Izturis immediately. If I needed a SS (North Side?) and had a backup plan to get me through the first half, he'd be an excellent addition.

f***ing DirecTV even has the goddamned replays blacked out! f*** YOU DIRECTV!!! It's not a live game, you're not carrying it on any of your "MLB" channels either (I subscribe to those too) but you're still f***ing blacking the game out! The YES network replayed a Yankees/Braves world series game from 96 yesterday, why the f*** didn't you black that out. You can tell I'm mad.

QUOTE(Steve Bartman's my idol @ Dec 18, 2005 -> 05:48 AM) I guess the only argument (to play Devil's advocate) is...if you have nothing to hide, why worry about your phone being tapped? :banghead Again, I still don't think that's even the issue yet. Aside from my credit card number/personal info, I really don't have anything to hide. I'm not sure I'd be happy if my phone was tapped, but that's beside the point. The point is this...the law is very clear on the procedures that were needed to be followed to obtain those taps legally. If the President felt there was a problem with those procedures, there are obvious things he could have done - i.e. heading to Congress and asking them to change the law. If Congress was willing to give him the ability to enlist librarians in the fight, and invade the wrong country, given his political capitol in 2002, he could easily have gotten changes passed in that law if he chose to. He deliberately chose to defy the law. The President could very easily have asked to have the law changed if he truly felt it was necessary for national security (by every single rational explanation, it wouldn't have been). But he instead chose to break it. That decision has nothing at all to do with protecting Americans, fighting Al Qaeda, or anything else. It has everything to do with either establishing a precedent of the President being able to use the authorization to fight Al Qaeda to nullify whatever law the President chooses or even more simply a general disrespect for the law of the nation itself. This was not a move against Al Qaeda. Using wiretaps against Al Qaeda is not the issue. The issue is the President's move to violate U.S. law and his attempt to justify that. Whichever reason they have for it...whether they're attempting to actually set a precedent, or they just don't respect the law...they're both terrible. I really don't have anything to hide as far as I know. But if the President wanted to tap my phone, all I'd ask is that they follow the law. That's all. (Btw, Hillary Clinton is a Cubs fan right?...do we want risk her having that power a few years down the road?)

And just think...when Grossman gets hurt...people could start calling for Twaan to start at QB instead of Orton!

QUOTE(ChWRoCk2 @ Dec 17, 2005 -> 10:31 PM) one thing i think of if this trade "somehow" happened, is wilkerson is used to a rold as leadoff man, he might benefit with pods on base, this would give him a chance to drive more runs in and get to hit with runners on, also it gives us two lefties leadilng off. That is only if it were to happen, personally I dont see any trades happening, and if so not till late december Ok, wait, if we were using Wilkerson as a leadoff man, how would Pods be on base? Would you have Pods batting 9th? Or would Wilkerson be batting 2nd, which makes more sense based on everything else you said?

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Dec 17, 2005 -> 01:04 PM) God forbid if right after 9/11 a few phones were tapped with calls going outside the us. Now the liberals want him investigated. Good grief. Dude, that is not the problem in any way, shape, or form. The U.S. government, by the law above, has the full legal right to tap phones of people remotely suspected of any sort of activity. All they have to do is follow procedure. They just have to follow the law, and in virtually every case, the request of the DOJ is accepted without question. They have every ability to do these wiretaps legally. They deliberately chose not to. The problem is not the spying. The problem is the ignoring of the law.

QUOTE(premo @ Dec 17, 2005 -> 12:29 PM) Those Yankees ones are the funniest to me, since living in NY, I hear crap like that all the time. I had Yankees fans telling me the Rowand, Marte and Garland for Gary Sheffield was a good trade. Honestly...if Sheffield wasn't adamant that he wouldn't play anywhere else, and there was enough money heading our way...I might have been able to tolerate that. It'd have to have been a good deal of cash.

QUOTE(Dam8610 @ Dec 17, 2005 -> 08:54 PM) Well, the going rate for Garland at the moment is supposedly two pitching prospects. If those two pitching prospects have produced and are talented, why not do it? I'd rather see a big name offensive player coming to the Sox, but the team was built on pitching and defense, so improving the pitching and/or defense further can only help. I think that makes good sense to me also...right now, it seems to me that offensive talent is expensive, but manageably expensive. PK at $12 million for example...he'll probably win more games altogether for our team than Buehrle next year, but if Buehrle hit the FA Market, he'd probably pull in even more money than PK. Right now, Pitching seems to be the thing to buy. When we have it, we should try to use it to get cheaper pitching. I don't like the idea of trading Jon, but if he won't sign with us, and the prospects are right, then I won't resist too much.

A few interesting notes from Think Progress...basically, if you believe the President's attempted defense from yesterday, his speech today jeopardized national security. (Of course it didn't, just as the NYT's disclosure didn't.)

Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr (Ga) on CNN:

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Dec 17, 2005 -> 07:54 PM) When will the investigation on who leaked this info begin? You know, given that this action seems to be clearly against the law, I'm betting there would be some sort of whistleblower protection which would apply to whoever did this leaking.

Ok, so I didn't post any specific thread on the NYT's "big scoop" yesterday...that the Bush Administration had repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on U.S. citizens repeatedly over the last 4 years. After today, I think this deserves it's own thread, just because I think it's clearly one of the biggest abuses of power I've seen by the executive branch in my admittedly short lifetime, and moreso, the President proudly admits it. During his radio address this morning, Mr. Bush admitted that every single element of that story was true . Now, bear with me, we're going to go a bit into the actual law in question here, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ). Section 1809a of that law makes it a crime to "engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." In other words, until another law is passed, it is illegal to engage in domestic surveillance without a warrant. Now, the natural response to this is going to be "what if we need an emergency wiretap, and we don't have time to go through the courts?" Say you know an Al Qaeda operative will be making a phone call in 10 minutes, you don't have time to get a warrant. Remarkably, the FISA allows for that as well. In the event of an emergency, a wiretap can be obtained without a warrant, as long as the Attorney General applies for a FISA warrant within 72 hours of the tap. So, there is absolutely no logical reason why violating the FISA is important to our national security. Furthermore, the FISA court is also a secret court. We have no idea what goes on there, and therefore, anything which is presented to that court is probably even more secure than information in the hands of Karl Rove. From the information we do have, it is notoriously easy to obtain warrants for wiretaps through that court, including ones obtained after the fact, as is outlined in the law. There is no rational or logical reason why the President cannot follow this law. It gives the Attorney General incredibly wide latitude, including the ability to obtain wiretaps without immediately seeking a warrant in emergency situations. The time taken up by the courts is no excuse. The only justification for this sort of behavior is that the President has decided that he does not need to follow the law. On that note, it is also worth remembering that article 2 of the Constitution says that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." On a couple final, cleanup notes...in the NYT article cited above, the NYT admits that they held onto this story for at least 1 year at the request of the executive branch, despite the fact that they had multiple sources corroborating it. Let's just remember 1 thing that happened 13 months ago..that's right, the NYT had this story either just before or just after the election. If they had this story before the election, and did not run it, then they may very well have assisted George W. Bush in staying in office. The fact that the President is openly violating the law may have not sat well with enough voters to swing that election. It's also worth noting that Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter also finds it inappropriate that the President has decided he is the law, and is promising hearings. Finally, I'll leave that topic with this quote from Russ Feingold, which I believe sums up the facts very well... Based on what the President himself has admitted...he gave an executive order to violate the law, with no rational justification other than "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges".

Yeah...because the thing that hurt Boston last year was that they had too much pitching and not enough offense out of their outfield. I could see this happening...if Boston was willing to include enough cash to cover Clement's deal.

Let's put it this way...I wish Garland's agent was out there saying exactly the same thing. If he was, I don't think we'd have traded for Vazquez.