Would Democrats have supported extrajudicial killings under Ashcroft?

I plan on vacationing with various Yemeni Jihadist paramilitary groups this summer - this drone strike has caused me to seriously rethink my plans.

Thanks Obama.

 

It isn't like Obama and Holder think they need to justify to a court the difference. They reviewed his case. Due process done.

That's the logic. The Constitution doesn't guarantee you "judicial" due process.

 

I can't speak for Democrats, and I don't know what I would have really said about drone attacks on citizens under Ashcroft. But, I find the warrantless wiretaps and the indefinite detentions under Obama to be a lot more problematic than the drone strikes. So, the kinds of stuff I used to criticisize Ashcroft for was worse than this.

 

No it's not just one issue. Ezra Klein was talking about one issue. Same principle as before. It comes with weighing the upsides and downsides from abandoning the party over a single issue or a handful of issues, and it comes from understanding the unsavory political reality that requires that Democrats to give up certain political and moral ground simply because electoral politics demands it. To add to this, many of these issues you cite to that you do not agree with were not originally undertaken under the Obama Administration, they came under Bush. Institutional inertia is a real thing. Perhaps if you vote and others like you vote for him, he'll be able to slowly change these issues you seem to care so much about. Romney certainly won't because his base won't allow him to. If not, I guess you'll just be sitting 2012 out, right?

You seem to live in some fantasy dictatorship where the president would be able to ignore electoral politics, give no quarter on all the issues all his supporters care about, and make the country do an about-face turn any time he wants.

Since you seem to consume a large amount of your political media in either picture or video form, here is some woman's non-exhaustive list of why she still supports Obama:

 

2 is complete BS. Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan and never intended to end the war in Iraq. We left Iraq the under the status of forces agreement signed under Bush. Obama tried to keep us there longer but the Iraqis said no...

 

Ok, you are slipping again. If you want to try you hand at dethroning Basso, then continue to not respond in a substantive manner. If you care to add something insightful to the conversation, then do you care to elaborate on what exactly you find is garbage? What parts of my post do you disagree with and what parts of the random lady's sign to you think are not garbage? And why?

 

i dont see what my travel habits have to do w/ obama's tsa sexually molesting people, but if you must know i have not flown since august 2010. however from january 2009 - august 2010 i flew 4 times including a trip to guatemala.

and thank you for making my point for me samuel.

 

The travel habits thing is everythign to do with it.

You somehow are operating under the presumption that having to go through a scanner rather than a metal detector represents some sort of paradigm shift in either conceptual or practical terms that vastly impacts your quality of life.

It really isn't, I remember going through them for the first time at Heathrow back in the early to mid 00's and thinking nothing of it. Qualitatively it's a pretty similar experience. ANd it doesn't appear, from your relatively low flight numbers, that there's a quantititative difference either.

I'm just basically trying to understand why a body scanner vs. a metal detector is such a huge sticking point when it makes little to no difference in most people's travel experience, particularly with low-frequency travel Paulistas.

 

Screw the molestation stuff. I know some very smart scientists who will NOT submit to the new scanners.

The high-intensity brief pulse of X-rays has a few issues they worry about. So they always opt for the pat down frisking thing. Maybe they are just phreaky that way.

Anyway, just saying...

 

super smart science guys?

I'm guessing you're right.....

Spoiler

 

I pointed this out in another thread but Obama did campaign on leaving Iraq and we did. As far as the status of forces agreement keep in mind that many believed there were loopholes that could've been exploited that would allow US troops to remain in Iraq and even Robert Gates, while in the GW Bush Admin. didn't think that US troops would leave Iraq in 2011. At the same time John McCain was openly campaigning about remaining in Iraq indefinitely. While the Obama Admin. considered staying longer the fact is that Obama kept his promise about leaving Iraq even when many said that we legally could stay longer and criticized the withdrawl.

 

I thought the evidence of body scanners being worse than metal detectors was negligible or else infinitesimally small (e.g. makes your .0000001 risk a .00000015 risk)...but then am not plugged in like you are:

 

As far as the OP I am not happy with extra-judicial killings under Ashcroft or Obama, although the killing of Awlaki isn't exactly illegal. Since we have an authorization of force against Al Qaeda even US citizens that are members or allied with Al Qaeda are considered enemies just like US citizens that took arms for Germany in WWII.

Just to be clear ideally I would've liked to see Awlaki captured and brought to trial and I think there is a dangerous slippery slope her but in the particular case of Awlaki I don't think it was illegal.

 

By the way where were all these conservatives and Republicans up in arms about civil liberties when Ashcroft actually was AG?

 

The problem is this, as I understand it.

A. They calculate safe dosage based on your whole body mass, but these particular X-rays (as you can tell from the images) deposit almost all of their energy in your skin. So your skin dosage, and subsequent cancer risk, would be much much higher than they are reporting, since their calculation assume distribution throughout your entire body volume.)

B. Intensity is different for starting cancer than just total exposure. Like, you can say "oh one scan is only like taking a flight and getting high-atmosphere radiation," but no, apparently it's worse, in some cases, to get one incredibly heavy dose in a fraction of a second.

C. This is funny. The X-rays are so intense that if there was some mechanical glitch and the scanner stopped in place, it would only take a fraction of a second to burn a hole clean through you. That's how high the intensity is, according to these guys.

Do I still walk through the new scanners? Heck yes. I want to show off all my private piercings, stunning for a man my age.

 

I think they were breaking into song.

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