Russ Feingold: Obama Super PAC Reversal Will Lead To 'A Legalized Abramoff System'

[FedUp_Queer]

82. Actually...no.

You may want to come down off that high horse there, sport. I'm not criticizing or denigrating or calling anyone simplistic there for holding their beliefs. In that regard, I will overlook your high-minded and apparently condescending remarks about someone, whoever, who has something for which she or he draws a line in the sand and says they are inviolate.

The government killing people, who happen to be citizens, absent a trial, absent a presentation of charges, is always wrong, particularly when that person is riding in a jeep in the desert unarmed. Otherwise, why have trial? Why have due process? The executive (king?) can unilaterally determine they're a bad person, they don't "deserve" a trial and "off" them. This is not as if this was a person standing in front of a building with explosives strapped to his person ready to blow up a building. If the executive can so blithely throw out due process (and then say he doesn't have to tell us the reasons for his logic), then he's a king, plain and simple.

Regarding the Jewel case, nobody ever made the argument that a government should not wiretap for law enforcement purposes. The plaintiffs brought the case in Jewel because the government in violation of the fourth amendment wiretapped them (that's why I said "warrantless&quot . The Bush administration argued the state secrets privilege precluded even proceeding with the case to discovery...even letting the judge examine the documents in camera (because, you know, you can't trust judges). The Obama administration went even further and said the government was completely immune from citizen lawsuit (you know that part of the first amendment where these citizens were seeking to redress their grievances?).

As for community development block grants, I wonder if you even know how they work. They are monies given to localities. In fact, they are small amounts given to localities, but they are, nevertheless, extremely important serving to bridge the gap between demand and supply of services to the very poor. The point is that Obama proposed a rather sizable cut to a small program. Imagine if he had proposed a 7.5% absolute cut (not from the baseline) of the military.

In addition, I have personal experience of the CDBG and know how necessary the money from that is and the oversight and regulations that recipients must follow to make sure the money is spent properly.

If a person is comfortable with the President cutting such small, but vital, program all out of proportion to its impact on the federal budget, fine, have at it.

But, on a macro level, to accuse a person of parochialism for having a few views and beliefs that are inviolable, is pretty sad in my book. It begs the question: if everything IS negotiable, what DOES a person believe?

Due process, free speech among others are inviolable to me. That is why I will not "flag" someone's comments on here no matter how much I think they may go against the community standards.