When a word has multiple meanings, you’re supposed to use context to pick the one that fits.

“Betrayal” fits the speech better than the “war” meaning.

“get involved in the political process and get rid of all of these rotten politicians that we have in Washington D.C.” is advocating voting them out — not execution, for high treason.

“Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies”

That sir, is treason

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19701777/

“BALCO leaker invokes Libby in plea for leniency….. Attorney had leaked confidential grand jury testimony involving Bonds”

WASHINGTON – The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday.

ADVERTISEMENTRecords about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency’s data-mining practices.

In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.

The chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Justice Department said the database was “ripe for abuse.” The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided the quality of the information that could be used to score someone as a terror threat.

The report, sent to Congress this week, marked the department’s first public detailing of six of its data-mining tools, which look for patterns to catch criminals. The disclosure was required by lawmakers when they renewed the USA Patriot Act in 2005. It comes as the Justice Department faces sharp criticism from Congress and civil liberties advocates for violating peoples’ privacy rights in terror and spy investigations.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the databases are strictly regulated to protect privacy rights and civil liberties.

“Each of these initiatives is extremely valuable for investigators, allowing them to analyze and process lawfully acquired information more effectively in order to detect potential criminal activity and focus resources appropriately,” Boyd said in a statement.

All but one of the databases — the one to track terrorists — have been up and running for several years, the report showed. The lone exception is the System to Assess Risk, or STAR, program to rate the threat posed by people already identified as suspected terrorists or named on terror watch lists.

The system, still under construction, is designed to help counterterror investigators save time by narrowing the field of people who pose the greatest potential threat and will not label anyone a terrorist, Boyd said.

But it could be based, in part at least, on commercial or public information that might not be accurate — potentially ranking an innocent person as a terror threat. Watch lists, for example, have mistakenly identified people as suspects based on their similar names or birthdates to terrorists.

The Justice report also leaves open the possibility that the STAR program might draw up lists of terror suspects based on information from other sources, including from Data Mart. The report described Data Mart as a collector of government information, but also travel data from the Airlines Reporting Corp. and other information from private data-aggregators like Choicepoint. Private data aggregators often sell commercial credit records as well as other databases, like voter and vehicle registration.

“When you put bad information into a system and you don’t have any mechanism of ensuring the information is of high quality, you’re certain to get bad information spit out on the back end,” said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. “And that has profoundly negative consequences for the individuals who are wrongly identified as potential terrorists.”

The five other databases detailed in the report include:

_An identity theft intelligence program, used since 2003, to examine and analyze consumer complaints to identify major identity theft rings in a given geographic area.

_A health care fraud system that looks at billing records in government and private insurance claims databases to identify fraud or over-billing by health care providers. It also has been running since 2003.

_A database created in 2005 that looks at consumer complaints to the Food and Drug Administration to identify larger trends about fraud by Internet pharmacies.

_A housing fraud program that analyzes public data on real estate transactions to identify fraudulent housing purchases, including so-called property flipping. The database was built in 1999.

_A system that compares National Insurance Crime Bureau information against other data to crack down on fake car accident insurance claims and identify major offenders.

The 38-page report was four months late in being sent to Congress for required oversight. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said it “raises more questions than it answers.”

“Unfortunately, the Congress and the American public know very little about these and other data mining programs, making them ripe for abuse,” said Leahy, D-Vt.Just what does most of these programs have to do with the supposedly anti-terrorist Patriot Act?

“cosmos, no one cares about your old posts or my old posts.”

I just wanted to let any new readers to the WE Blog know that Republican, claiming to = Kansas “values”, is a LIAR, and hypocrite.

I’ll do it once and a while, just to help keep them informed.

Republican believes in personal responsibility, so it wont bother him :)

Does it not embarrass you people to use this tactic when you people are the ones who kneel at the altar of daily kos? (Tell me how to think) Just who is it who links to the Libs sites?

Big Ears – Cavernous Nostril Waxman is a joke for a Congressman. No one can ever believe a thing that comes out of that man’s mouth. He’s a “Type A” personality heart attack waiting to happen.

You don’t deserve a response, but here it is anyway, because I’m just that kind of a guy.

I am defining “hate speech” as public speech that foments violence against minorites who have traditionally been victims of mob and vigilante violence.

It has nothing to do with Nazi fascism, which is the very antithesis of protecting people FROM violence.

As I clearly explained above, but not clearly enough for the dense skull like yours and Jonas’s apparently, I believe that all speech is protected by the first amendment EXCEPT for speech which encourages violence against someone or some group.

For instance, take Tom Metzger–former member of the John Birch Society, Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity Minister, and founder of a fascist terror organization The White Aryan Resistance (WAR).

“In 1990, when an Oregon jury rendered a $12.5 million judgment against him and his son, John, for inciting the murder of an Ethiopian immigrant by skinheads.”

Demanding that illegal immigrants be KILLED like Sgt. Slaughter did the other day is probably illegal. It is most certainly in violation of the Blog rules that prohibit “threatening” posts.

That’s why I asked The Eagle to do its flipping job and pull posts like that one.

I’m not asking it to pull any other posts, even if they are really, really stupid and vile, like yours.

Hope that clears things up.

Who gave them the weapons to kill those Iranians and the Kurds?.

Former Bush surgeon general says he was muzzled

Tue Jul 10, 2007 4:25PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation’s top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

“The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party,” Carmona added.

Carmona said Bush administration political appointees censored his speeches and kept him from talking out publicly about certain issues, including the science on embryonic stem cell research, contraceptives and his misgivings about the administration’s embrace of “abstinence-only” sex education.

Carmona’s comments came two days before a Senate committee is due to hold a hearing on Bush’s nomination of Dr. James Holsinger as his successor. The administration allowed Carmona to finish his term as surgeon general last year without a replacement in place.

Gay rights activists and several leading Democrats have criticized Holsinger for what they see as “anti-gay” writings, but the White House has defended him as well qualified.

U.S. surgeons general in the past have issued influential reports on subjects including smoking, AIDS and mental health.

“Political interference with the work of the surgeon general appears to have reached a new level in this administration,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to which Carmona testified.

“The public expects that a surgeon general will be immune from political pressure and be allowed to express his or her professional views based on the best available science,” he said. Continued…

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1034212120070710?feedType=RSS

cosmo– Who cares. I get this feeling you are on the young side of things. Not too smart, yet. Grasping at things you don’t understand, yet.

I mean all the libs in my state are:

Wealth re-distribution? OF COURSE.

13 year olds having abortions, without parent knowledge or permission? OF COURSE.

Global Warming being man made with NO counter arguement allowed? OF COURSE.

Blacks be allowed to use the defense that he was afraid the cops would kill him, thats why he gave permission to let them search his car and find his dope and have this defense backed up by the 9th circuit court?OF COURSE.

That there should be NO federal ID so that illegal aliens have an easier time to do MORE crimes? OF COURSE.

No war ever, for ANY reason.OF COURSE.

Fix Darfur, Somalia, Iran, Syria, N. Korea and all their problems without ANY military intervention? OF COURSE.

Sit back while these countrys dictate OUR foreign policy?OF COURSE.

Place gay rights OVER the wishes of the voters? OF COURSE.

Bad mouth the U.S. Military and the country because underwear was put on the head of a muslim but strangely silent when thousands of muslims are killed by other muslims? OF COURSE.

Saddam and his sons killed more Iraqis and Kuwaitis and Iranians, then will be killed the entire time the U.S. will be in Iraq, but thats okay, the U.S. shouldn’t have gone in?OF COURSE.

Saddam’s rape and torture rooms, okay? OF COURSE.

Capturing or killing Osama will be the end of ALL TERRORISM against the U.S.? OF COURSE.

Again, liberalism is a DANGEROUS mental disorder.

I’ll post a link to one of his posts.http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/06/sicko-offers-gl.html#comment-74563392

Readers can note that it, and his next post (just after my post below it), both link to another of HIS posts.

And that post that HE made, has links to two other posts that HE made.

btw: Because my reply was re Republican’s post (below) re Iraq and France, I didn’t include the U.S. age distribution.

“Maybe Michael Moore should make a movie about Iraq and figure out what they are doing to have over 3 deaths per thousand population LESS THAN FRANCE!”

Shouldn’t you be out crafting “hate” speech laws? Shouldn’t you be out burning books and literature? Maybe you can start with Huck Finn.

Don’t make me call Larned, Gene. It’s a toll call.

“Treason is punishable by death, as it should be.”

So a “betrayal of trust or confidence” is “punishable by death”?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/treasonhttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/traitor