Oops, should probably mention that I hope this is still a friendly debate because I enjoy these sorts of things! Internet intentions are hard to read, but Exceller et al, please don't take my comments as personal attacks. Just political banter. :) Must go to bed now, so good night, all!

Exceller,
Two questions and a demand for an apology.

1) Why the continuous insults for voicing my views?
2) Is this you?

http://forums.espn.go.com/espn/messa...ageID=23502724

I haven't insulted your opinions.
I haven't attempted to "put you in a box".

If you think you can stay on the topic of this discussion (not ME!!!!!), I'll continue to dialogue.
If not, you need to take a course at Bowling Green about freshman debating.
Answers and apology expected.

DTS

I am not aligned with a political party.

I am just stating that CONGRESS is waisting this country's time on such drivel. Its just stupid. Take care of real business. This stupid posturing is for clowns. I think we have just a few more important issues than Flag burning.

Oh yes, I was just thinking about it the other day. Was worried to death that someone might come out and burn the flag on my garage.

LOL Pat,
I still haven't gotten the apology I demanded, nor an explanation for why Exceller kept going off topic to attack me and not address the issue.
He kept going after me rather than discuss the issue you presented.
Since Oracle (Mike), the prime focus of their study, wasn't arround today, seems like Kingofturfway found a way on to this board to deal with me.
He's been posting like crazy on the old espn board. He even bragged that Resolution and Timely Writer would be back after July 4th.
My guess is that they got the funding to continue their "study".
You can bet they won't use their same names here.
The tactics are EXACTLY the same as before.
For sure, their names won't be.
They must think we're very stupid.
Different board, same methods.
DUHH!

Exceller's silence is deafening.

If you read this Exceller (Kingofturfway), apologize first. Answer the questions next.

Everyone else, we already know more than we did before...flush the rest of them out....FLUSH!
Same tactics, different board.

Insults gain no favor.

DTS

This entire thing is ridiculous. How often are flags burned anyway? I blame the politicians, but the media throws gasoline on the fire. This is the type of government you get when people don't vote.

I wanted to be Kingofturfway. I thought me and ArlJim were fighting it out for that title. I see DTS is off his meds again. Kidding DTS, although I can hear the next conspiracy theory coming.

You know it's an election year when they trot out this old chesnut. Like Pgrdn implied we should all be so thrilled that they're working on the important issues of the day! lol How much flag burning is going on anyway? What about other forms of flag disrespect? If burning is banned what about soiling the flag with excrement. That would also be repugnant to Americans. Would we need another ammendment to handle that?

Personally I'd rather live in a country were such things are allowed even though the act is deemed repugnant and disresptful by most everyone.

On the political spectrum I'm rather hawkish on security/defense issues, conservative on financial issues, and tolerant to liberal on social issues.
Generally have been aligned much more with Republicans over the years but they have just lost their way since they took over congress.

Is there a NY Times thread related to the leak? This one has my blood boiling and I'm ready for a million man march on NY to protest outside of the NY times building. I want to see zealous prosecution of this offense like they did when they went after the leaker in the Valerie Plame case.

The amendment vote failed by a single vote.

An apology you demanded? That is the funniest thing I ever heard. My silence is deafening? Maybe I should have skipped the auction yesterday and wasted my time talking to some complete simple minded guy who plays with cheap claiming horses in NY. Not all of us have 24 hrs a day to screw around talking about horses. Get a life.

My politics are similar to yours but I am more of a conservative democrat. I don't like big business running everything.

Off his meds, LOL. I don't think he ever remembered to take them to begin with. This is a political thread but he likes to cry like a baby and demand apologies. Typical liberal.

"Old Glory lost today," said Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who scheduled the debate and vote in the week before Congress broke for its Fourth of July recess.

Bill Frist now enters my list of bovine residue senators.
Give me a break. What a pile of crap.

Military folks correct me if I am wrong: You guys do not pledge allegiance to a flag, you pledge allegiance to the constitution, a set of ideas... correct?

The flag burning issue is not a big deal with members of the service, primarily because you never really see it. There are a lot though that feel that if you are going to make it illegal to burn a cross or paint a swastika then you should make it illegal to burn a flag. I am not in that camp, but I understand it. Flag burning is a lot less about Republicans playing poltics though than most people think. Senators get a ton of mail from constituents wanting the amendment so they push it.

As for the Military Oath of Allegiance, it is not techically a pledge to the constitution, but a pledge to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. There are a few annoying elitist liberals out there that take exception to the last line of the oath, but you don't find them signing up anyway, so nobody ever raises an objection to the "So Help Me God" line.

Yes. Thats it. Makes much more sense to pledge to uphold a set of ideas, rather than a symbol. And part of our set of ideas is a little self expression. It really does not bother me that Americans burn flags. I happen to love our set of ideas, so let them express away. Its a hypocritical act, makes flag burners look a bit foolish IMO. But it really does not bother me personally as it is a symbol. Now you start screwing around with our democratic ideals, I have problems with that. (Basic liberties, rule of law, majority rules but not to the exclusion and persecution of minorities, etc...) This is really what sets us apart. Even though it is quite clearly not perfect.

Yes, the problem with burning flags is simply that is makes no sense. If they don't like politicians they should burn pictures of them. Burning the flag is the act of a coward, but cowards should have that right. Flag burners are usually just self-centered attention seekers. They know that nothing good comes out of burning a flag, but is easier for them to do that than to actually work to change things for the better.

LOL!!!
Only one thing is FLAMING on this thread.
I know who he is. Can't find the topic, can't find the logic or valid arguements.
Can find the insults, can find the bottle, can find the names.
Zero credibility.
FLAMING!
And down goes the Repubs nice try...more FLAMES!

Cry babies...out of office you go!

... And you know the Bush administration is sweating when they try to turn something that has been in Public Domain knowledge since 2002 into a "Traitorous New York Times!" issue. ArtJim, the following is from Salon.com. What I can't figure out is how the rest of the media continues to let the Bush Administration get away with turning this BS into major stories, distracting from what SHOULD be major stories. Anyway... here you go:

<<Is it a leak if it wasn't a secret in the first place?

George W. Bush has said that it was "disgraceful" for the media to report that the United States is monitoring bank transactions. Republican Rep. Peter King has called for a criminal prosecution of the reporters involved, and the National Review has demanded that the White House revoke the New York Times' press credentials.

There's just one little problem here. The transaction-monitoring program described by the Times and other media outlets wasn't much of a secret anyway. As the Boston Globe reports today, "public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001."

Among those records is a public report prepared for the United Nations Security Council in 2002, a report that specifically acknowledged that the U.S. government was monitoring transactions through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication, or SWIFT. "The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions," the report said, and it recommended that other countries begin to do the same.

One of the report's authors, a former U.S. diplomat named Victor Comras, tells the Globe that the United States has "spent the last four years bragging [about] how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing." Unless terrorists were "pretty dumb" Comras says, they had to have known all along that the U.S. government was watching their financial transactions.

So is the reaction from the right a little overblown? Roger Cressey, who worked as a senior counterterrorism official at the White House until 2003, seems to think so. "There have been public references to SWIFT before," Cressey tells the Globe. "The White House is overreaching when they say [the New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before." >>

I here ya, and I'm sympathetic but I just don't find many people I admire on the Democratic side or who hold consistent views. I think big business has infected both sides of the isle.

Pander, Pander, Pander

Even so, the program was bearing fruit. If you had the time to follow every public statement and document you could maybe have drawn inferences that such activity was going on. I certainly assumed that we were doing creative things like this. It was still basically a secret program, you can't say it was common public knowledge like it is now. The Times put it on the front page and described what was going on and how it worked and that it was aimed at tracking terrorists. The funny part is that they'll still continue doing it and will probably still catch people.

My problem with the Times is that were begged by the government to keep quiet and despite there being no real problems with the program, they thought the best thing to do would be to expose it. It would almost appear that they want us to lose. These are some of the only ways we can get information about what these people are doing.

Why did they publish this story? What was the public good for the US? And a blatantly political question, if the Times had come to know about the same program during a Clinton administration (Bill or Hillary) and President Clinton pleaded with them to not run the story, does anyone believe the story would have run. Not a chance in hell! So what that means is that they didn't do it for any noble right of the public to know all that goes on. It's our national security at stake, lives are at stake, yet they play politics.