Private Panic Still Here But Only Just!

@Young:

Been wanting to change his name for some time now, and I finally came up with one that feels right for him…

“PANZER”

You have my blessings! Panzer is awesome!

Since the rule has been made noone has flipped the table… Yet.

It was flipped once after turn 3 of are second game of global.

I was Italy and taking over a poorly played Japan from a friend who had to go. The Allies were going really hard on the Pacific and after my turn 3 which was extremely good especially with dice rolls. They took there turns and flipped the table as they saw the writing on the wall. That is why the rule was in place.

@Smacktard:

Clinton was corrupted long before he became president. The guy was/is a habitual liar and womanizer. But murderer? That’s a bit of a stretch.

This.  Gotta find an excuse to dispel any guilt from simply hating someone…

Hey, matters not to me.

The point is that other folks (me, you, Jen to name a few) have all reached the same conclussion regarding Wiki…
A great place to start, a bad place to stop.

I would simply say that, in almost all cases, it is just “bad form” to post PM’s or e-mails.

Unless of course you are on Witch Wars… then anythign you send by e-mail or PM is CERTAIN to be posted in public :-D

This news sotry shows just how close the United States is to becoming just like Germany of the 1930’s.

We have always been a nation of the rule of law, and have prided ourselves on our Constitution to the point where we expected EVERYONE else to accept, adopt, and follow it.

Not anymore.  Now, 42% of Americans think that the Constitution is irrelevant and should be discarded in order to keep them “safe” from outside agression.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060108/ap_on_go_pr_wh/eavesdropping_ap_poll

WASHINGTON - A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows.

Over the past three weeks,
President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al-Qaida and its affiliates.

Yet 56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

Agreeing with the White House, some 42 percent of those surveyed do not believe the court approval is necessary.

“We’re at war,” Bush said during a New Year’s Day visit to San Antonio. “And as commander in chief, I’ve got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people. … It’s a vital, necessary program.”

According to the poll, age matters in how people view the monitoring. Nearly two-thirds of those between age 18 to 29 believe warrants should be required, while people 65 and older are evenly divided.

Party affiliation is a factor, too. Almost three-fourths of Democrats and one-third of Republicans want to require court warrants.

Cynthia Ice-Bones, 32, a Republican from Sacramento, Calif., said knowing about the program made her feel a bit safer. “I think our security is so important that we don’t need warrants. If you’re doing something we shouldn’t be doing, then you ought to be caught,” she said.

But Peter Ahr of Caldwell, N.J., a religious studies professor at Seton Hall University, said he could not find a justification for skipping judicial approvals. Nor did he believe the administration’s argument that such a step would impair terrorism investigations.

“We’re a nation of laws. … That means that everybody has to live by the law, including the administration,” said Ahr, 64, a Democrat who argues for checks and balances. “For the administration to simply go after wiretaps on their own without anyone else’s say-so is a violation of that principle.”

The eavesdropping is run by the secretive National Security Agency, the government’s code-makers and code-breakers.

Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said most people think that the eavesdropping is aimed at foreign terrorists, even when the surveillance is conducted inside the country.

“They are willing to give the president quite a lot of leeway on this when it comes to the war on terror,” said Franklin, who closely follows public opinion.

Some members of Congress have raised concerns about the president’s actions, but none of those lawmakers who have been briefed on the program has called for its immediate halt.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, has promised hearings this year. Five members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, have called for immediate inquiries.

On top of that, a memorandum circulated Friday from two legal analysts at the Congressional Research Service concluded that the justification for the monitoring may not be as strong as the administration has argued.

The NSA’s activity “may present an exercise of presidential power at its lowest ebb,” the 44-page memo said.

Bush based his eavesdropping orders on his presidential powers under the Constitution and a September 2001 congressional resolution authorizing him to use military force in the fight against terrorism.

The administration says the program is reviewed every 45 days and that Bush personally reauthorizes it. His top legal advisers argue its justification is sound.

The issue is full of grays for some people interviewed for the poll, including homebuilder Harlon Bennett, 21, a political independent from Wellston, Okla. He does not think the government should need warrants for suspected terrorists.

“Of course,” he added, “we all could be suspected terrorists.”

The thing is - this isn’t news. I’ve read about similar circumstances - innocent people fingered by mean neighbours and sent to be tortured and die in US prison camps. Even in medical journals.

Sadly this also undoubtably happened under Saddam as well - the only difference is that the US is now the criminal here. This is not to say that the US is as bad as Saddam was (this is more difficult to judge but IMO most US forces refrain from these practices). But no question in my mind that the US has not been acting with clean hands. The questions I have is exactly how widespread is the US misbehaving with regards to the big picture? Atrocities happen in all wars by all sides - war is hell. The clear difference now is that it gets reported more often. Maybe it happens (with US forces) more often than before, but again who knows for certain?

The other point is that sometimes, rarely, it may be necessary to resort to these sorts of tactics to prevent a worse disaster. When/if this is ever the case, I am glad I will never have to be the person to make this call (what if you are wrong :cry: ). But clearly in the case of Lyndie England, et al, this was a case of some evil miscreants who have not been punished sufficiently, IMO for their crimes.

to me … the whole issue about “free market” and “capitalism” and “communism” … is quite an interesting thing.
In my view, neither of those “systems” is the right. Unfortunately i can’t name another or even a better one. So one has to look at each system, seeing, what it was meant for, what intends it has and in this context one might see that each of them has advantages along with disadvantages.
The main fault in my opinion is, that a lot of people just see advantages in the system they favor and disadvantages in other systems.
Getting to far from the point now and to get back to the topic i agree, that this “free” market doesn’t exist.
There allways need to be rules of course, since as F_Alk ( i guess it was him) stated the best way to get an advantage in this system is to “eliminate” competitors, allthough the whole system is about competition. When those competitors are “gone” the remaining one might control this market (monopol)
So rules have to be made just to make sure, the system as it is intendes, does not destroy itself.
CC is right as well, that there might be a point, where those regulations might become an interference. But again in my opinion whether it is an interference or if it is just an interference in the eyes of one competitor is the thing one has to consider, when speaking about those regulations.
To ensure, those regulations do not become an interference for the general system, the one controlling this regulations mustn’t be involved in the whole competition.
That is exactly one of the weak points and disadvantages of the whole system, since it has to be controlled to prevent it from destroying itself, but the ones who are in control are of course biased in their own favor.
So the government making those regulations has the ability to change them to their advantage or to the advantage of competitors who might stand behind this actual government, whether they are known or not.