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Politics : Bush Bashers & Wingnuts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Red Heeler who wrote (350)	1/9/2004 6:40:29 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1347

And the American People's vote counted for nothing. The electoral college elects the President. It's in the Constitution. Read it. For a change. It was simply a judicial coup d'‚tat It was? The Supreme Court now rules the nation? News to me. Then why do you keep complaining about Bush? It must have been the USSC that ordered the invasion of Iraq. Without the consent of Congress, of course, since that would not be necessary. They should have stayed out of it and let the people decide. See the first part of this response on who actually elects the President. Here: supct.law.cornell.edu or, to summarize, the USSC said some canvassing boards in FL did NOT have the right to interpret ballots as they saw fit. For purposes of resolving the equal protection challenge, it is not necessary to decide whether the Florida Supreme Court had the authority under the legislative scheme for resolving election disputes to define what a legal vote is and to mandate a manual recount implementing that definition. The recount mechanisms implemented in response to the decisions of the Florida Supreme Court do not satisfy the minimum requirement for non-arbitrary treatment of voters necessary to secure the fundamental right. Florida’s basic command for the count of legally cast votes is to consider the “intent of the voter.” Gore v. Harris, ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op., at 39). This is unobjectionable as an abstract proposition and a starting principle. The problem inheres in the absence of specific standards to ensure its equal application. The formulation of uniform rules to determine intent based on these recurring circumstances is practicable and, we conclude, necessary. The law does not refrain from searching for the intent of the actor in a multitude of circumstances; and in some cases the general command to ascertain intent is not susceptible to much further refinement. In this instance, however, the question is not whether to believe a witness but how to interpret the marks or holes or scratches on an inanimate object, a piece of cardboard or paper which, it is said, might not have registered as a vote during the machine count. The factfinder confronts a thing, not a person. The search for intent can be confined by specific rules designed to ensure uniform treatment. The want of those rules here has led to unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects. See Gore v. Harris, ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op., at 51) (Wells, J., dissenting) (“Should a county canvassing board count or not count a ‘dimpled chad’ where the voter is able to successfully dislodge the chad in every other contest on that ballot? Here, the county canvassing boards disagree”). As seems to have been acknowledged at oral argument, the standards for accepting or rejecting contested ballots might vary not only from county to county but indeed within a single county from one recount team to another. The record provides some examples. A monitor in Miami-Dade County testified at trial that he observed that three members of the county canvassing board applied different standards in defining a legal vote. 3 Tr. 497, 499 (Dec. 3, 2000). And testimony at trial also revealed that at least one county changed its evaluative standards during the counting process. Palm Beach County, for example, began the process with a 1990 guideline which precluded counting completely attached chads, switched to a rule that considered a vote to be legal if any light could be seen through a chad, changed back to the 1990 rule, and then abandoned any pretense of a per se rule, only to have a court order that the county consider dimpled chads legal. This is not a process with sufficient guarantees of equal treatment. An early case in our one person, one vote jurisprudence arose when a State accorded arbitrary and disparate treatment to voters in its different counties. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963). The Court found a constitutional violation. And whether YOU like it or not, a 5-4 USSC decision always has been a legal decision. Back later.

To: Red Heeler who wrote (350)	1/9/2004 7:00:45 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 1347

The title of Article 33 is MEDICAL PERSONNEL AND CHAPLAINS RETAINED TO ASSIST PRISONERS OF WAR BUT Article 4 A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy: 1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces. 2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions: (a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) That of carrying arms openly; (d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. 3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power. 4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model. 5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law. 6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war. B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention: 1. Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment. 2. The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties. C. This Article shall in no way affect the status of medical personnel and chaplains as provided for in Article 33 of the present Convention. unhchr.ch Now who is it you are claiming are POWs? Or are you claiming those are all chaplains in Gitmo? Now who is it you are claiming is a POW?

To: Red Heeler who wrote (350)	1/9/2004 7:15:14 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1347

Article 51 of the UN Charter. Article 39 of the UN Charter. Rwanda and Yugoslavia fit under those exactly how? Frankly I was unaware that the US had ceding its warmaking authority to the UN. Or ever intended to. But let's see. If the US is guilty, so is China Russia Britain Vietnam India and a whole slew of other nations, although I'm pretty sure the Canadians get a pass on this one. Frankly, there seems to a whole lot of unbelief on the part of UN members that they must ask "Mother, may I?" of Kofi before they start shooting. In fact, those articles are so often and so badly breeched as to be meaningless. Better brush up on your Chinese in case it happens. I think not. Tell them to fire at will if they wish to die. UN Resolution 1441 Interesting. That's EXACTLY the one the US claimed was not being enforced by the UN against Iraq and said it would enforce on its own.