Re: "smoked salmon socialists"

Rubystars wrote:
<snip>
> > I'm not convinced yet that this constituted an abuse. I'm also not
> > convinced that using Patriot Act provisions to gather information on
> > anti-war protestors constitutes an abuse, but I'm of the opinion that
> > Congress should never have repealed the Sedition Act of 1918.
>
> I think they were using the Patriot Act as a shortcut, a convenience. Those
> people weren't terrorists. This is just one example.
>
> "The administration presented the Patriot Act to the Congress two years ago
> as a carefully tailored and limited piece of legislation specific to
> targeting terrorism. And now they're using it for purposes that are
> obviously and completely unrelated to terrorism," Barr told Foxnews.com."

That's a matter than can be remedied via the Act's oversight provisions. 
I respect Bob Barr. He's a former federal prosecutor, and he was part of 
the process in passing the Patriot Act while he was in Congress (he was 
on the Judiciary Committee!), so all his concerns now are very puzzling. 
Where was he during the debate over the Act?

> The Sedition Act was a bad thing because it prevented people from having
> free speech. 

I think provisions regarding the efforts of certain persons "to promote 
the success of its enemies" and to "incite insubordination, disloyalty, 
mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the 
United States" should be against the law. Treason is noted in the 
Constitution; I don't think it's protected under the First Amendment.

> How can we criticize a bad move if our government does make
> one, if we can't speak out against it without facing being treated as
> criminals?

Read the Act yourself. It was specific about what acts were seditious.
http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918/usspy.html

> Do you think that we should still be hunting down the commies in this
> country too?

I don't think there are enough left to hunt. I favor, though, branding 
socialists with that name publicly rather than letting them call 
themselves Democrats, progressives, etc.

> <snip>
>
> > Every law has that potential. Even the absence of law has that potential
> > -- just look at how the Supreme Court interprets matters these days. The
> > Tenth Amendment is meaningless thanks to majorities of robed rogues.
>
> State's Rights have been eroded to almost nothing. But what would you
> propose if they did have more power? 

I'd propose just what the founders did: a central government with very 
limited powers deferring to the states with powers suited to the wills 
of their citizens.

> There were times I joked about seceding
> again when Clinton was in office.

Secession is a separate issue. I shared your views in the '90s.

> One thing that I noticed that gets on my nerves quite a bit is that there
> are no national science standards. If there were, we might be able to stifle
> a lot of the creationists who go state to state, trying to wedge in ID.

I think states should be allowed to set their own educational standards. 
If they want to teach evolution, creationism, or both, why should the 
federal government care? There's a lot more to science than competing 
theories of origins.