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just noticed this at an online shopping site
http://www.uncommongoods.com/product/disappearing-civil-liberties-mug
made in China no less
Mr Forbes apparently believes our justice system is faulty because the jurors are incapable of rendering a guilty verdict based on the evidence provided.
This week, Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani was convicted in federal civilian court on only one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. He was acquitted of over 284 other counts, including every murder count related to deaths of twelve Americans and 212 other innocent victims.
The failure of the civilian court to convict him on the most serious terrorism charges is proof that the Administration is wrong when they say foreign terrorists can be adequately tried in civilian courts.
This is why I have introduced legislation to prohibit the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to Virginia and offered a motion to recommit to ensure that no funding allocated in the defense authorization bill be used to transfer, release, or assist in the transfer or release of Guantanamo detainees.
I will continue to work to stop the Department of Justice from putting detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, on trial in civilian courts to ensure both the protection of American citizens and justice for the families who have lost loved ones as a result of 9/11 and acts of terrorism abroad. Please share your thoughts on this important issue by e-mailing me here.
Yours in service,
Randy Forbes
Member of Congress
Here is my original statement on the story of Job.
It Is God’s Will
I have for sometime been concerned with our pre-emptive war strategies. Bush II calls his doctrine preventive wars. You start wars to prevent wars. How is that for brain dead reasoning?
As the death toll mounts from the United States of Mortal Sin’s adventures, I am deeply saddened by our killing of all of God’s children. How can I reconcile my futile attempt through internet evangelization messages with the fact that I have no power to eliminate wars?
I go back and recall my reading of a book by a Jesuit priest who wrote the book that was an autobiography of God. Some people will say how can God have written the book when the priest’s name is on the book? I believe the author’s name on the book was Father Moran. Father Moran uses experiences from the Old Testament and God is given credit. Father Moran did not make up these experiences and so he gives God credit for writing the book. One particular experience is about Job.
Job was a person who some people would say he was a fictional person and other people would say he was a non-fictional person. Whoever he was is a great read. Job was a man of God. He had faith in God and he prayed to God. God was pleased with Job by giving him money, possessions, property, a wife, and children. People believe whether it is the Old Testament or the New Testament that God favors the good person with gifts and he punishes the bad person with problems.
Slowly, God began to take away what he had given to Job. On one day a neighbor came by and he was talking to Job about God’s punishment toward him. He asked Job why does he still have faith in God and why does he still pray to God. Job answered the neighbor by saying. “It is God’s Will because God knows best.”
When it comes to the United States of Mortal Sin’s murderous policies and practices in Iraq and throughout the world, I, too, must say that it is God’s Will because God knows best. I am deeply saddened with this acceptance because the very thought that God permits our murderous policies and practices throughout the world saddens me. I repeat Job’s words because I have no answers for questions about America’s inhumanity toward humanity. I now truly believe that only God can move America toward a better world of love and mercy.
In order to function in my daily life, I need some answers to questions for America’s madness in her treatment of human beings. We accept of God’s Will because God knows best and that may be our answer.
Why does God permit this pain and suffering? I can only say that God is probably permitting pain and suffering because He desires for all of us to help each other as His children. We, as a family and a community, must work together so that all of God’s children can live well and enjoy living in a peaceful world. We are being tested by God and we need to look inside ourselves to answer the question whether or not we deserve to be with God for all eternity. There will be people of many faiths in heaven and many of God’s children will be with Him. If we hate God’s children on earth, how can we want to be in heaven with our hatred for His children?
My Calling Is From God
I truly believe that Divine Providence has inspired me to evangelize the world through the use of the internet. When the truth is heard, the United States of Mortal Sin and the world will be able to move toward love, mercy, forgiveness, and healing.
The focus of my lay ministry will be on love, mercy, forgiveness, and healing.
I commend Thom for avoiding flying unless it is very necessary such as illness in the family, a wedding, a funeral, etc. These are some examples that will require flying.
OBAMA MAKES ME PUKE!!! Did he talk to the head of TSA and ask that child psychiatrists should offer their input into the groping of children and the lasting affects of such groping? So much for our call on family values!!! Hypocrisy is totally rampant in this country called the United States of Mortal Sin.
I have a second cousin who is a TSA agent and she recently married a TSA agent. My opinion of him is that he is a first class a-hole, a cocky, smart ass. He has an ego-centered personality.
As will I. But don't sweat it too much, you helped me draw out my meaning more so, and for that I thank you.
N
This talk of groping has me flashing back to when I travelled to Europe with my mom, when I was a very immature and overly shy teenager. We were getting on a TWA plane from Rome to NYC. This was when hijacking was the terrorism of choice. I was taken by a female, non English speaking security agent into a curtained off booth, as were all the passengers, and felt up. I can't remember which body parts specifically were touched, but I remember feeling totally humiliated. As someone who has already had skin cancer, and as a physician who knows the risk of low level radiation, I will refuse scanning, but not looking forward to the possibility of groping. Unfortunately my usual destinations do not have any other methods of transportation feasible other than flying.
Maxrot: OK. I'll work on being more precise.
I didn't think you were trying to express that... however one could get such an impression. I suppose that is the danger when generalizing. Which is why I fleshed out my take on the meaning of slavery. To lump things into broad categories instead of specifics, opens up the interpretation to all sorts of pitfalls.
N
Hey Thom--the dialogue is fascinating, but your mike is still hot.
Maxrot: My comments are analysis, not advocacy and not surrender or an expresson of hopelessness.
So Gene what your saying is life for the common man has been completely flat lined from the beginning of history, never getting better, never able to be less than zero. At no time was life for the average been acceptable or tolerable, so there is no need to worry about it and no need to fight for something better?
I just don't see it that way, I think there were times in which the average man could have a secure life and provide the necessities of life while still being allowed to enjoy ample leisure time. Perhaps that is still slavery to you, but in my mind slavery is spending every waking moment in involuntary subservience to another. A slave doesn't get to voice their opinion, or question their existence out loud. The rise of the Unions in the 20th century was a repudiation of the bosses and brought about a small amount of freedom for the average American. Sure it wasn't a workers paradise, or utopia, but is wasn't an endless existence of demeaning acceptance either. Things such as welfare, unemployment insurance, workers compensation and Social Security didn't exist in the guilded age, if you couldn't work you were cast out to die in the wilderness. If having such social safety nets still just amounts to being a slave, then we are all slaves and doomed to be nothing but slaves since by merely existing you are a slave.
My original point was calling out that we are devolving back to an age where an individual had no redress against the corporate monolith. Where monopolies were as common and legal as dirt. A time when society cared not a wit for the helpless, and routinely ground them under its iron heel.
If you think no progress had been made against that system, that aberration of civil society. Why believe anything can be done to wrest the power from the few, why hope for a better life if life can't get better? I believe slavery is the ultimate expression of repression, and frankly I don't think we have always been at that level, are at the level or will always be at that level. I also don't think its practical to believe that some day we'll all live in small tribal/family communities in which we all have equal say. Though even in that situation, I'm sure those who are not getting their tribe to move in the direction they want it to go will feel like slaves to the majority.
N
I actually just got out of an airport meeting where they discussed the new congressional transportation committee members desire to privatize the TSA. I kid you not, they want this out of the hands of federal employees. Not only will we be groped but it will be from Halliburton or one of their subsidiaries and we will probably have no legal ability to sue if abused.
Why do we fight???
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/christina-patterson/christina-patterson-just-what-is-the-army-for-exactly-2135930.html
GOP Andy Harris wants his free government health care NOW!!! Is he the same Andy Harris who opposes health care for average Americans???
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/11/16/gop_congressman_healthcare?source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%2520Newsletter%2520%2528Not%2520Premium%2529_7_30_110
Maxrot: The measure of slavery, exploitation, etc. is the amount of work extracted from people that allows others to benefit without doing any work themselves. The more imbalance, the more society suffers.
At the UN in 1965, Pope Paul VI declared:
"No more war. War never again."
The abolition of slavery never seemed possible...but we did it.
The abolition of war doesn't seem possible...but we must do it.
My wife says the next time she flies, she's wearing a burka!
"The more you tighten your grip, the more Star systems will slip through your fingers."
Sure its a Sci-Fi movie quote, but it applies to the tightening security policies. Face it this is an over reach... people are already taking a stand, even if its to do nothing more then to not travel or travel in an optional manner.
N
**Reflection of the Week** "Sensitivity to the immense needs of humanity brings with it a spontaneous rejection of the arms race, which is incompatible with the all out struggle against hunger, sickness, under-development and illiteracy.
-- Pope John Paul II
Has anyone considered the danger of these scanners to pregnant women? Does that mean that every pregnant woman who wants to fly in this country has to automatically be patted down? And what about women who are pregnant, but don't know it?
Are airport scanners in collaboration with our federal government to kill off as many human beings as it can with skin cancer? Project for a New American Century has said that the planet can only sustain 500 million people.
Time to have Naomi Wolf back.
Gene if all forms of economic existence are boiled down to always being a form slavery, then the word loses all meaning. That's all I'm saying in response to your nullification of my original use of the term.
So how about this, life will get even more miserable for the common man... can we agree to that? Perhaps you have a word that suits the situation better... I'm no walking dictionary. Perhaps I can just pull a Palin and make up a word that I thought already existed though?
N