Thoughts & Commentary on the Obama Administration

[Fixiwee]

It has everything to do with the discussion. You don't need a Muslim majority for Muslim influence or Islamic law.

You are comparing a minority court with the discussion if the majority will have the sharia.
No offsense, but that's not an argument.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

You are comparing a minority court with the discussion if the majority will have the sharia.
No offsense, but that's not an argument.

Sure it is. It may be a minority court, but it is still legally binding. The fact there is Sharia law at all is disturbing, whether it is applied the minority and majority. I doubt I am the only one who believes that this will escalate the larger and more influential the population in question becomes.

[Fixiwee]

Sure it is. It may be a minority court, but it is still legally binding. The fact there is Sharia law at all is disturbing, whether it is applied the minority and majority. I doubt I am the only one who believes that this will escalate the larger and more influential the population in question becomes.

It seems we cannot agree on this issue here.

Have you read the post by Major Robert Dump? It says alot about "how" disturbing the Sharia is.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Obama wants SCOTUS to overturn a pretty fundamental right of defendants in our legal system; to have the police stop questioning them when they request a lawyer.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule long-standing law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant's lawyer is present, another stark example of the White House seeking to limit rather than expand rights.

The administration's action _ and several others _ have disappointed civil rights and civil liberties groups that expected President Barack Obama to reverse the policies of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, after the Democrat's call for change during the 2008 campaign.

Since taking office, Obama has drawn criticism for backing the continued imprisonment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan without trial, invoking the "state secrets" privilege to avoid releasing information in lawsuits and limiting the rights of prisoners to test genetic evidence used to convict them.

The case at issue is Michigan v. Jackson, in which the Supreme Court said in 1986 that police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one, unless the attorney is present. The decision applies even to defendants who agree to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.

Anything police learn through such questioning cannot be used against the defendant at trial. The opinion was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the only current justice who was on the court at the time.
...
The administration's position assumes a level playing field, with equally savvy police and criminal suspects, lawyers on the other side of the case said. But the protection offered by the court in Stevens' 1986 opinion is especially important for vulnerable defendants, including the mentally and developmentally disabled, addicts, juveniles and the poor, the lawyers said.

"Your right to assistance of counsel can be undermined if somebody on the other side who is much more sophisticated than you are comes and talks to you and asks for information," said Sidney Rosdeitcher, a New York lawyer who advises the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

A real shame. It should be obvious that a suspect interrogated for hours, perhaps poor and ignorant of the law, is not on equal terms with a professional interrogator.

CR

[Spino]

Obama wants SCOTUS to overturn a pretty fundamental right of defendants in our legal system; to have the police stop questioning them when they request a lawyer.



A real shame. It should be obvious that a suspect interrogated for hours, perhaps poor and ignorant of the law, is not on equal terms with a professional interrogator.

CR

Linkage man, LINKAGE!

[Xiahou]

Linkage man, LINKAGE!

Here it is. From the AP.

Also from the AP is an astonishingly blunt fack check of Obama's 100 day speech:
FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape

"That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Additionally, the article took issue with Obama's claims that spending more on preventative medicine would yield huge long-term savings...

THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching." It said that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."

And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."

----

Biden:
Open mouth, insert foot.

It's good to hear from Biden again, I was wondering where he's been. I'm sure Nepolitano was glad that she got to correct someone else's statements for a change.

[rvg]

It's good to hear from Biden again, I was wondering where he's been. I'm sure Nepolitano was glad that she got to correct someone else's statements for a change.

Not quite the unforgettable Dan Quayle yet, but Joe is getting there.

[Lemur]

This should be in News of the Weird, but it's just a smidgen too political.

Looks as though the Mormon Church posthumously baptized Obama's mother, without his permission (and obviously without hers). No harm, obviously, but it's still weird.

Details.

A reader contacted me last week, saying that last year, in the heat of the presidential campaign, the Mormons had posthumously baptized Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Baptizing the dead of other faith's, secretly and without the consent of their families, is a common Mormon practice. For the past fifteen years the Mormons have caused quite a stir by forcibly baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims - in other words, converting them to Mormonism - despite strong objections from the Jewish community.

Thus, it's hardly a stretch to imagine the Mormons' doing this to Obama's mother. Still, I had no proof. Then yesterday, I received a document. It's allegedly a screen capture of the registration-only section of the Mormon-run Web site, FamilySearch.org. In that screen capture, excerpted above, is clearly the name and correct date of birth and death of Barack Obama's mother (Stanley Ann Dunham, born 29 Nov 1942 in Kansas, died 07 Nov 1995) and the date of her alleged post-death baptism by the Mormons. You can see the entire document here:

-edit-

To their credit, the Mormon Church is taking this seriously.

"The offering of baptism to our deceased ancestors is a sacred practice to us and it is counter to Church policy for a Church member to submit names for baptism for persons to whom they are not related," said spokeswoman Kim Farah in an emailed statement. "The Church is looking into the circumstances of how this happened and does not yet have all the facts. However, this is a serious matter and we are treating it as such."