Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Iraq War And Beyond -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Calladine who wrote (8288)	3/3/2005 6:40:25 PM
From: Ed Huang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9018

If you are a supporter of the powerhouse for the key issues like Iraq war, Israel-Palestine conflicts, then you may have some "freedom of speech" in the Senate and your career would be OK. If not, watch out the severe attacks and punishments. Many reports have shown that.

To: James Calladine who wrote (8288)	3/3/2005 10:41:30 PM
From: AuBug	Respond to of 9018

<excerpt> It seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissible the rule. Employing the "nuclear option", engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals, risks violating our nation's core democratic values and poisoning the Senate's deliberative process. For the temporary gain of a hand-full of "out of the mainstream" judges, some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate each Senator's right of extended debate. Note that I said each Senator. For the damage will devastate not just the minority party. It will cripple the ability of each member to do what each was sent here to do -- represent the people of his or her state. Without the filibuster or the threat of extended debate, there exists no leverage with which to bargain for the offering of an amendment. All force to effect compromise between the two political parties is lost. Demands for hearings can languish. The President can simply rule, almost by Executive Order if his party controls both houses of Congress, and Majority Rule reins supreme. In such a world, the Minority is crushed; the power of dissenting views diminished; and freedom of speech attenuated. The uniquely American concept of the independent individual, asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will, forever, have been blighted. And the American spirit, that stubborn, feisty, contrarian, and glorious urge to loudly disagree, and proclaim, despite all opposition, what is honest and true, will be sorely manacled. Yes, we believe in Majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and question. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control. Generations of men and women have lived, fought and died for the right to map their own destiny, think their own thoughts, and speak their minds. If we start, here, in this Senate, to chip away at that essential mark of freedom -- here of all places, in a body designed to guarantee the power of even a single individual through the device of extended debate -- we are on the road to refuting the Preamble to our own Constitution and the very principles upon which it rests. In the eloquent, homespun words of that illustrious, obstructionist, Senator Smith, " Liberty is too precious to get buried in books. Men ought to hold it up in front of them every day of their lives, and say, 'I am free -- to think -- to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. My children will." Senator made an outstanding speech. He has the spirit of the founding fathers, as opposed to the bush regime.