JUGGS weekly SPIN

[JUGGERNAUT]

My circle of life reamed me today.

She stated that I am spending too much time on my hobbies (SOXTALK) & not enough on family matters. It's hard for me to debate against her or that point so a compromise has been struck. She recognizes my love of baseball stats so she's afforded me the time to do that & discuss a little SOX baseball.

But she says political discussions are like a vortex that consume me so she's limited me to one post a week. I'm on the honor system so I'm going to do my best to respect it. Again I can't argue with her when she's right. Any fact based political discussion requires an extensive amount of time doing nothing but fact checking. Since I don't get paid to spend that time I need to budget it.

 

As such here's my one post for the week & I will try to keep all of my political discussions in one thread.

In the news:

War in Iraq: exit strategy

War at home.

The Wall in 1995

Drivers Licenses for Immigrants

Laws for citizens vs non-citizens

Obscenity Laws

Bush's first 280 days

 

War in Iraq:

Since Kennedy made the comparison to Vietnam I will use it.

Fact checking indicates Northern Iraq is secure. This is the region in Iraq where the Kurds are the majority. Exit strategy: Use diplomacy to convince the Suuni's, Shiites, & Bath to join the party. Tell them if Iraq is not secure in 8 months, the US will withdraw it's forces to Northern Iraq & invite the Kurds to police Southern Iraq. Splitting Iraq in 2 is not a bad strategy. Over time it's worked in Vietnam & Korea. Democracy & capitalism in the south is becoming infectious in the north.

We can invite the Saudi's & Jordan to help police the South as well. Essentially the American presence would remain only in the North.

 

War at home:

It amazes me how America's heart falls when someone is kidnapped/killed in Iraq & yet I turn on the local news & hear that someone is kidnapped/killed in IL.

That seems highly hyprocritical to me to suggest that Iraq should be safer than IL.

 

The Wall in 1995:

Gorelick was afraid that surveillance on terrorists from the WTC bombing would make it more difficult to prosecute them. So she wrote a memo to Reno suggesting more stringent guidelines that essentially added to the administrative time to pass information from the FBI to CIA.

She either neglected or weighed the importance of using surveillance to prevent an attack vs using surveillance to prosecute an attack. What she should have done is drawn a distinction between the 2 & indicate in her memo that it was up to the FBI or the CIA to weigh the cost of the surveillance in these terms. Her memo didn't do that. Reno instructed the FBI & CIA to follow the procedures

identified in the memo.

 

It is the general opinion of both the CIA & FBI that the procedures defined in 1995 made the sharing of information more complex & more cumbersome. Based on testimony many in both agencies where confused by the legalities of the procedures & therefore always deferred the decisions to their superiors.

We all know from Dilbert comics how effective that can be.

 

I'm not going to blame Gorelick though because I think this is just another symptom of a much bigger issue that needs to be addressed soon: citizen vs non-citizen rights. I will discuss more about this near the end of this post.

 

Obscenity Laws:

I'm what I call a techno-conservative. I uphold issues of free speech, privacy, & civil liberties above all else but I recognize that for society to acheive harmony a balance must be reached between majority & individual rights. Thus I am for safeguarding all individual rights as long as they do not encurr on majority rights.

 

Janet Jackson's titty exposure has led to Stern being the #1 target today for Obscenity laws. I agree with the general premise that Stern's show is rated PG15 at best & therefore should not be publicly accessible during hours in which those under 15 are most likely to listen.

It's ridiculous to suggest that a parent regulate the stations a child can listen to given

that the wide distribution of listing devices. But I also believe Stern has a right to

reach a TV15 audience in that time. So in my opinion technology should be used to provide Stern access to that audience. Stern's broadcasters should be told to use techology to clean up Stern's show so that it can be considered PG13 or heavily fine & revoke the license. In the mean time Congress should be guiding the FCC to require broadcast ratings to apply to all forms of media. If PG13 or PG is considered the rating acceptable during those hours then other broadcasts should be available via encryption only.

 

The FCC would then allow stations to apply for encryption licenses to broadcast obscene media entertainment. A person can buy either a standard radio & be assured it will receive only NC or PG13 broadcasts (whatever the majority opinion is on that) or they can buy a radio that can decrypt PG15, R, X, or XXX.

 

The new devices would be a boom to the marketplace & the ability to receive R,X,& XXX would actually provide Stern more freedom to express himself than he could ever dream of.

 

In my opinion this is the very definition of what a techno-conservative means.

Insuring freedom for all the different segmented markets in America but protecting the rights of the majority as well.

 

Citizen vs Non-Citizen Laws:

In my opinion this is the biggest problem facing America today as it permeates so many areas. Geb Bush is proposing to offer drivers licenses to illegals & some are outraged but he says your not being realistic. It's hard to argue with him. Illegals are involved in a large # of traffic accidents in FL. They are undocumented & the numbers of illegals are so large that the INS doesn't know what to do with them. Do illegals go to state prisons or federal prisons? With an estimated 15 million illegals from S of the border alone there are clearly not enough seats in all of the prisons to incarcerate them. Mexico & Cuba do not make it easy to expel them either. So nobody knows what to do with them. Geb is arguing that by giving them drivers licenses he's at least able to document them & prosecute them if they

are uninsured.

 

This applies to the The Wall, the Patriot Act, immigration, etc. We continue to try to

legislate the country such that all laws that apply to citizens apply to non-citizens.

This might have been fine when non-citizens represented less than 2% of the population. But now with immigration, illegals, & foreign diplomats that number is closer to 15%.

 

America needs to define laws that apply to non-citizens. These laws should be designed to both keep track & control the actions of non-citizens. Passing of information between the FBI & the CIA & local law enforcement should be unrestricted when it's dealing with non-citizens.

Prosecution of non-citizens should be less cumbersome than citizens. The loop holes that Gorelick was worried about should not be available for defending non-citizens.

 

Let's remember the basic premise of a non-citizen. The person is a guest of the United States. We did not invite them nor did we encourage their visit. They came of their own free will. If they come here illegally they should have no legal basis for defense. If they come here via a visa then the procedures in application should clearly spell out the procedures & rights for non-citizens in the US.

 

This is how you effectively control immigration, illegals, terrorists, & others that

are entering your country with criminal intentions. Use technology to track & control them as best you can & restrict their freedoms. A national ID card that is based on secure id technology as opposed to genetic scanners is an example of how you can use technology to effectively track & control them.

 

With respect to privacy here's how insure the civil liberties:

For non-citizens, historical data provided by the national ID card can be used in any manner. For citizens, no government agency can access or make use of the data in any way unless either the citizen or a court appointed grand jury of no less than 9 members grants the priviledge.

The citizen must be given first right of refusal before a grand jury can be assembled.

This is very important in the fight against drugs as well because the citizen must either grant the right to access or deny the right to access in writing within 3 days of notification. This could be used to effectively scare those involved in the drug trade to curtail their activity just through the notification process alone. If the citizen does not reply to the notification within 3 days, access is assumed w/out need of a grand jury. Hence all the citizen has to do is reply through certified mail to insure their rights. This is a very important statute as well. If the agency decides to ignore the certified request & pursues the search prior to seeking grand jury approval all of the evidence generated from the historical data will be deemed inadmisable. So certified mail is the last word. In other words grand jury approval can only be sought if the citizen rejects the request within 3 days

or the agency can prove that the citizen failed to reply within the 3 days.

 

There are ways to both insure the freedoms we believe so strongly in & yet both track & control those with criminal intentions. We just have to be dutifully clever about it.

 

Bush's first 280 days:

What amazes me in this debate of 9/11 is that all of the Dem's keep referring that Bush could have changed things like the Wall in his time leading up to 9/11. Did they forget that Bush's first 280 days were considered illegitimate by 1/2 the populace?

Did they forget that until 9/11 the media waged war against Bush over the fiercely contested election? Did they forget that the computer system for Bush had to be completely revamped because the Clinton administration left the White House in a state of dissarray?

 

Needless to say the battled waged against Bush's presidency at home in the first 6 months caused considerable dissarray to the functioning of government. As does the fact that several of Bush's recommendations for positions have YET to be approved by the SENATE! Hello? His first term is NEARLY over! Those positions were never filled! But of course if Bush wanted to change something in the first 280 days all he had to do was say so. Yeah right! If you believe that, then you'll believe that I'm the President.