Degs: Jefferson could not, indeed, refrain from arrogating powers to himself as though he was a king. Which is why the living document vision of the constitution is pernicious -- it allows the limits to be lifted and the powers to expand no matter which branch is involved.

You owe me a reply over on our discussion of GitMO.

Pernicious? Perhaps.

But neurobiologically impossible to avoid.

I'm postponing the Gitmo answer because the effect it has on MBTU. You can take a look though at my recent Supreme Court dispatches top-post to see where I'm going with this.

Degs -- I simply don't have the problems with MBTU that you have. I do await your response with enthusiasm.

When I respond to the CONTEXT thread, all my other ongoing threads dissappear from the More By This User list. How do you get around that?

I simply see a display that is a long list of my posts, but I never change the display. I think you're choosing to view it threaded (or flat, whichever is not the default), and that makes a difference.

aeschylus:

I love how you and others are upset that measures first taken up to combat terrorism are being used more broadly to put away other criminals. Not round up innocents in the dead of night ala Stalin. What's the problem?

What are your thoughts on the 14th Amendment? That was written to articulate the rights of freed slaves. Since then it's been cited in defense of abortion and other privacy rights. How does that distortion sit with you?

1. Why should I trust that any information that is put in the hands of government will be used only for beneficent purposes? You only have to go back five days (<link>) to find the last time this trust was violated, and you only have to read the Constitution to know our country was founded on a precisely opposite and correct distrust. Your implied "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" argument rears its ugly head every so often only to be soundly debunked. Do you have a daughter? How about if I peek at her school records to see when and where she gets off the bus in the afternoon. Are you married? Mind if I watch you give it to your wife? I might be able to give you some pointers. Running for office in Texas? Let me pull your bank records and see if you've ever given to the ACLU. Get a grip. You live in a country that was built on the notion of a limited government with individual rights, that became the greatest nation on earth as a limited government with individual rights, and you think you have a better idea? Not in my country you don't.

2. The 14th Amendment wasn't just the "former slave rights amendment." You'll notice that its wording is somewhat broader than that. As for abortion and similar privacy rights, let me give you an analogy. When it was suggested that the Constitution was flawed because it did not include a listing of individual rights such as freedom of the press, one of the Federalists -- I believe it was Hamilton -- said that the suggestion was silly because the Constitution plainly did not give the government the right to regulate the press in the first place. I suspect that Hamilton would spin in his grave at the suggestion that the Constitution gave government the right to regulate medical procedures or pregnancy. The problem is that government -- and particularly the federal government -- has grown monstrously large in terms of the areas of life into which it intrudes. Because of the realms of power now occupied by the federal government, it would surely be unrecognizable to the drafters of the Constitution. That's on the side of government power. But when it comes to delineating the individual rights of citizens and other victims of government, we get proclamations from people who pretend to be conservative Republicans that the individual rights must be "strictly construed" as the original drafters interpreted the words written and nothing but. (All in all, an odd, pro-government-power position for the party that thinks government sucks at everything.) Tell me exactly why that's less like cheating than my being able to field 24 players in the football game but you still only get 11?

I would like to point out that when either one of you posts to the Context thread, my MBTU gets crowded out with it, too.

Ron and Degs: Do a search by subject -- like "context" or "Jefferson." That takes the MBTU issue out of the equation.

That requires my limited brain to remember all the topics I posted in.

Modern technology has blessed us with something known as a "notebook." This device is accessed via a somewhat advanced technology known as a "pen" or a less technologically enhanced item called a "pencil." Using these items, one may make a list of topics they have posted, making such searches easy -- and one can then damn well respond to the "context" thread as I asked.

Pen and paper AND having to switch out of Threaded mode??? What a hassle :-)

But I'll make myself do this :-) Seriously its not that I'm avoiding the conversation its that the mechnics have become a hassle