liz cheney's shameful message
- Thread starter christiefan915
- Start date
Annie
Not So Junior Member
You are failing, try addressing the issue.
The history of our nation is as a liberal republic. The Constitution even guarantees that each state will have a republican form of government. Not a democratic form, but a republican form. The fourteenth ensures that the states must abide by liberal principles and are not allowed to be democracies.
Our founders understood democracy to mean that the majority has absolute power. Some will argue that it means everyone votes on everything. But that has never existed, is not possible and is not advocated by those who claim we are a democracy. Someone has to carry out administrative functions and make rulings on disputes.
In our system the majority does not enjoy absolute power and should not. I have not even seen you argue for that.
Republican vs Democracy here is a distinction between limited majority rule and absolute majority rule. Our Federal government was/is clearly republican as the Constitution clearly limits the federal majority with individual rights, state powers and limits on the power of the people's representative.
In every sense of the word, we are a republic as opposed to a democracy.
christiefan915
Catalyst
Lawyers were defending these suspects during the bush years. According to this article, more than 500 lawyers.
Where was liz cheney's big mouth then?
When British soldiers shot into a taunting Boston crowd in 1770, killing five, John Adams, later the nation's second president, represented the soldiers at their trials. When an American Nazi group sought to march in a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago in 1977, an ACLU lawyer represented the group to uphold the guarantee of freedom of speech. In recent years, more than 500 lawyers have kept that tradition alive by defending terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010...terrorists-should-have-access-to-lawyers.html
Because, there is obvious and reasonable concerns that the individuals would subjected to intimidation. The ad only proves that point.
The issue of habeas corpus is primarily about secrecy. You guys are arguing the absurd point that the state deserves complete secrecy in its dealings with suspected terrorist, but that those arguing against that notion should be publicly paraded through the town square for condemnation.
Some confidentiality is appropriate with such a delicate issue, for the state and its representatives as well as for the defendant and his/her representatives.
cawacko
Well-known member
You state this Desh but you haven't responded to RStringfields definition of our government and you claim people falsely believe we aren't a democracy.
Then why would you object to calling it a republic?
You could say that a republic is a type of democracy, but when juxtaposing the two the distinction is obvious and republic is the more precise term. You could also say that a lion is a type of cat, but when juxtaposing the two the distinction is obvious and calling a lion a cat might confuse your audience.
The limits placed on majority rule are crucial to our form of government and distinguish it from other governments more so than voting. That is, many, if not most, other nations use some form of voting but few have taken such care to limit the powers of the majority with individual rights.
Annie
Not So Junior Member
She gets caught up in words such as 'vote.' That in democracy each man's vote was based on his own belief, while in a republic one votes for a representative who will then 'represent' those who voted for him, as much as his conscience allows.
Now back to OP, on those 'serving' in Justice, who volunteered to work pro bono for detainees. I wonder how some defending the now Justice attorneys would have felt if Ashford had appointed attorneys that had given similar pro bono services to white supremacist defendants? Somehow I don't think we'd be hearing about the 'defending of our legal system' argument.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704131404575117611125872740.html
There is little doubt that from the outset these lawyers were donating time and money to political outcomes they wanted, not on 'our system of justice.'
Legion Fag
I'm Gay
Last edited:
christiefan915
Catalyst
That's your opinion. Maybe the lawyers are like Stephen Abraham, who realized that some of those "trials" were held in a kangaroo court.
"An officer working on Al Odah’s case reported that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were often pressured into delivering verdicts favorable to the government, according to an affidavit filed in June 2007.[21] Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham worked as a liaison between the CSRT’s and intelligence services, and stated that intelligence services regularly and arbitrarily denied both the defense and prosecution access to case-related information."
Stephen Abraham - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia