Senate report concludes: no proof of contact between

[Lissa]

To reply to your points from my POV as a libertarian;Yes, but if Europe asked us to jump off a bridge... The point is that he (as well as most other presidents) are using the Armed Forces for purposes that are not in our security interests without our (peoples) permission. The point is that Europe was incapable of securing Europe.

And how do you know that by not going into Bosnia it wasn't going to effect our security? If Europe had destabilized due to what was going on in the former Yugoslavia and it spread to other nearby countries, that could easily affect US security interests. You and I do not have all the information, so arguing whether there was a clear security interest for the US to be involved or not, neither of us can truly answer.

Occhi answered it well. If our soldiers commit war crimes, then they should be held accountable to the uniform code of military justice. If our civilians commit any crimes they are answerable to appropriate US courts. The ICC is a political court, used for political purposes. Like the UN.

And, as I posed to Occhi, what happens when you have someone in a position where they can stone wall justice from our court systems, be it civilian or military? Who's to enact justice then?

Yup, but we won't let them. Right? ... of the people for the people...

If you believe that that is the way the government has worked for the last 100+ years, you're being naive. Ever since the late 19th century, our government has basically been for the money by the money (look back to TR when he was a state senator in New York). While there has been a fight to deal with corruption, it's never gone away and it never will, not until the people in power cannot receive any kind of perks from any special interest group.

Well, primarily because the 2nd amendment does not say that I have the right to hunt. It says I have the right to bear arms against tyranny. So, I should be able to choose the best weapon for that. If you don't agree with the 2nd amendment, how about we change the Constitution?

Again, look to my comment to Occhi about this along with what Pete said below. The language of the 2nd Amendment leaves a lot of room for different interpurtations.

And as I noted to Occhi, I see no issue with people owning hand guns and hunting rifles, what I see as an issue is giving people access to military grade hardware. There is no reasonable excuse for John Q. Citizen to have military grade hardware.

And, it would take the NSA about 15 seconds to break it. Maybe 1500 times less. The point is that it is the government trying to make privacy unavailable to the citizens by making encryption illegal.

No, they haven't made encryption illegal. Otherwise things like PGP and other forms of encryption would not exist. Does the government allow all levels encryption be available to everyone in the US and the world at large, no. What you don't understand about encryption and breaking it is the amount of time it takes. While the NSA has some very powerful systems, breaking encryption isn't a quick process.

Someone I use to work with decided to play around with the government (he was former Border Patrol) and knew some people in Sweden. He convinced them to give him an email account on some University system there. He encrypted a file using PGP that basically said, why are you decrypting this and sent it from that Swedish email address with some kind of Russian exercise and sent it to his email in the US. The message took 12 hours to reach his US mail account when previous emails were near instant (about a minute at most). So for something as stupid as PGP, if the email was intercepted, and it probably was, it took NSA several hours to break PGP. Someone at NSA probably got their ass chewed for wasting that much computer time on a stupid PGP message like that.

Using EO to limit states rights removes Congress, and therefore the "People" from the debate. It is legislation by decree.

And this is a never ending aspect that has been going on since the inception of the US Government. Just about every President since Washington onward has used them (very few Presidents, and mostly the early ones, never used an EO). State's rights have eroded for a very long time, saying that Clinton or any recent President has been the originator of it shows a lack of history on the Executive Branch. As I mentioned, every branch has done it's utmost to get a leg up on the other branches, this is nothing new and each has their little things they can do.

My opinion is that EO should be limited to Executive emergency powers (e.g. 9/11 shut down of air commerce).Again, EO's used in the right way are done as emergency powers, and I still think the Congress should have the opportunity to address them to make them law, or strike them down. I feel Clinton abused this power more than other presidents.

How much have you looked at EOs by various Presidents? Did you realize that Bush, the present President, has issued 600 EOs since taking office, twice the total EOs of all prior Presidents from Washington to Clinton? If you want to talk about someone who has abused the power of the EO, look no further than our sitting President, all prior ones are meer schoolboys compared to him on the use of EOs.

Sure. To regulate commerce, which is a federal mandate. Clinton wanted to regulate free speech. I'm not a big fan of the trash on the internet either, but the internet users need to find a way to "live with it" rather than have government police it. There are ways to create safe zones to protect kids from the bad stuff without having speech police.

Again, you're being naive if you think it's only Clinton that did/does this. I suggest you sit down and take a good long look at the history of the Presidents and the things that they have done "for the common good". And if you really want to see how much the Constitution has eroded, ask some Constitutional Scholars about when the erosion began and when it's eroded the most. You will get a lot of interesting comments then.