Eric Holder gets burned by Texas senator.

Post Reply New Topic

You guys vote, too. The difference with me is that I know there isn't diddly I can do about it here and whining about it won't change anything at all.

So you're saying that all of your posts are civil and that you never take potshots at the right? So if I tried to I couldn't go back and find anything where you fired the first shot or said something extremely partisan or even sarcastic?


Put in time and effort as in posting links to polls, studies, and articles? I don't have an issue with them doing that but for me it seems like a waste of time. Post a study and one side will generally agree with it and other other will call it BS because it opposes their stand or values.


You must love abuse.


Dead wrong only because I don't agree with you and yours I guess......


The left on this forum tends to be the ones that get out of hand with the childishness and incivility. I'll admit to being naughty a few times but on average I've seen a helluva lot more of it from the left. I do tend take it lightly because, as I've said before to YOU, this is a discussion forum not congress or the UN. We're not deciding the fate of nations so why get so wrapped around the axle, especally when there are those that get a kick out of you getting wrapped around the axle. If I come off as being clownish or sarcastic it's because I refuse to take such a partisan discussion forum so seriously.


No kidding? So am I or I wouldn't be on WP.

You keep on slugging and we repugnicans will keep being amused by it.....

I had a fully fisked out response to the entirety of this post mostly written, when it occurred to me that everything but this was window dressing.

Allow me to turn this one around; do you think that ranting, personal insults, potshots, cheap point scoring, etc, all the things that you and the other partisans regularly fling at each other, make you look in any way good, to say nothing of strong?

Barring real (as opposed to perceived) personal insults, I don't think they make me look "bad" or "weak" in the minds of people that matter to me. I don't think all ideologies, political parties, beliefs, or arguments automatically deserve respect. Let me ask you this, if I respond to a genuine self-professing Nazi or racist in a less than mild and respectful manner does that make me a "partisan" in your mind? I'm not trying to compare American conservatives to Nazi's or racists to be insulting here. I'm simply saying that not all ideas can be effectively debated through facts and logic. I don't think ridicule and conversational intolerance is always necessarily a bad thing when it comes to ideologies and beliefs. I don't care if people want to ridicule my ideas and beliefs either. I don't have a problem with Raptor personally but I don't think I have to respect his opinions. I'm more bothered by the fact that you act as though you're some kind of moderating authority figure and I don't know if you do it to deliberately get under my skin by selectively taking issue with me while ignoring others or what.

Ummm... chill out. I already stated that I do not in any way approve of what happened and believe whoever is responsible should be held accountable. Assume what you want of me, I don't blindly support this administration. You know Eric Holder has already pissed off liberals as well by failing to prosecute banks.

Last I checked, the mods handled rule infractions, not rhetorical technique and logical soundness, and those are exactly the sorts of things we debate here in PPR. Since I don't carry any authority here, the only weight my words have is given to them by you, and if they weren't hitting close to home you'd just be shrugging them off. If you think I'm wrong, ignore me, it's that simple.

As far as singling you out goes, a quick look at my posting record would have shown that I've had a number of clashes lately with a number of people, many of them not you. You like to make it personal, so you get more of my attention than the others, i.e. you reap what you sow.

Wait, so you are the critical authority on debate technique? That sounds like an enormous waste of time, though I can empathize.

Why is it get the feeling that you're the one making things personal? I feel almost like I can't effectively respond to you without worrying that you're going to get butt-hurt by something I say and get on my case in retaliation? It's happened twice now in other threads. You have a passive aggressive streak a mile wide and that gets under my skin way more than any silly insult raptor can throw at a "sniveling liberal" like myself.

I'm also annoyed by the fact that you don't seem to understand the concept of blowing off steam and that I'm not always in the mood for serious debate with all people. I'll admit I take it too far sometimes and probably did early on in this thread, but you're the one that seems to take things too seriously.

Well, maybe not the authority, but I probably pay more attention to it than most. It's like a semi-special interest for me, most definitely AS related. Because of the way I don't instinctively pick up on certain levels of communication and have to actually think about them, I notice patterns and nuances that I think most people just pass on by. It's what makes me so sensitive to spin, nuance, word choice, rhetoric and framework, etc. I tried to get a discussion going about it in another forum, but it eventually ran out of steam.

As to it being a waste of time; well, maybe in here, but in the real world the ability to see through spin, even "friendly" spin, is a very useful thing indeed.

That's a mystery to me too, how you could feel that way. Go back and look, I attack your positions and you attack me, the pattern couldn't be clearer.



By "butthurt" I assume you mean I'm going to note the personal attack, and then coolly take your post apart; this differs from the usual meaning of that term.
Passive Aggressive? When I'm aggressive there's nothing passive about it, I just refrain from the overwrought antics that are so unfortunately common on the internet. Your reaction is a validation of my approach in a way, I mean if the purpose of an insult is to get under someone's skin, and you've just admitted that my way is far superior in this regard, doesn't that sorta prove my point about which is more effective? None of that is to say that my purpose is to be insulting, merely that when I do decide to "push back" on someone it has more impact than an insult laden rant, which has been a longstanding position of mine.
You should also note that I came to PPR under a different mod regime that was much less tolerant of open personal conflict than the subsequent ones, and consequently developed an arguing style that takes great pains to follow the letter, if not the spirit, of the TOS. That this soft power approach would actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise is just a coincidence.



Here's the thing. When you "blow off steam", you hurl generalizations and insults around fairly gratuitously, and some of those generalizations happen to cover groups of which I'm a member. You want to get mad about people throwing around "sniveling liberal", "limousine liberal", or any other permutation, yet don't hesitate to trot out "Randroid" and "repugnican" (so clever!) and lump libertarians into your generalizing attacks on conservatives. I'm a libertarian, I'm annoyed by these statements, and I respond. Again, you reap what you sow, and it's just your bad luck that the forum where you like to b***h about straw men libertarians happens to be inhabited by a libertarian who is also pretty good at this net-fu stuff; me. Why would you assume that the same thing that motivates you to get into it with Raptor and company would not also affect me when you do the exact same thing with different targets?

I'm going to point out the key facts that liberals here are trying to ignore.

1. We have 2 dead US border patrol agents.

2. We have a letter that the DoJ sent to congress that was factually inaccurate putting it mildly... -- translation DoJ lied to Congress.

3. We have 2000 missing firearms, and what normally gets missed is that there is also quite a few hand grenades that these cartel managed to obtain in Fast & Furious (I don't think gun dealerships sell grenades).

4. DoJ has only turned over a fraction of the documents. I think they turned over 7,600 documents out of the 80,000 relevante documents.

5. DoJ has taken retaliatory action against the people that testified to congress about Fast & Furious in defiance of a warning issued by congress.

6. The supervisors involved have actually been promoted or given other cushy jobs.


Sorry, but the Republicans have legitimate grounds to investigate this, and it shows that many Democrats care more about politics than the lives of our US Border Patrol Agents.

No, I said your opinions are too black-and-white for me and you took that as an insult. In another post I tried to clarify what I meant by "black-and-white" and that it wasn't a personal insult but I'm not sure that went anywhere as you didn't reply. In another post I pointed out where an argument you posted was fallacious and you acted bitter towards me again.


No, see above.

It's not that. It's the fact that you're obviously have a longstanding grudge against me.


You don't get it. I don't get mad at people for throwing out names. I could care less that raptor calls me a "sniveling liberal". It's the views themselves that I find irksome, not the antics. I just get annoyed when you criticize my antics and ignore his, thus why I mentioned it. It makes it appear you have a personal grudge specifically against liberals. Not that I even like the label "liberal" but it seems that's the default for any American that's neither a far-right social conservative nor a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism.

On a separate note, your ideological beliefs are a choice, not a trait you are born with. I don't see how disrespecting the beliefs and ideological views of Objectivists and extreme libertarians is a personal insult. I find the coldness and callousness of such ideologies themselves insulting towards the less fortunate. I also don't see why you'd be so sensitive to the "straw men" I attack when there are several members here who's views are pretty much congruent with those I attack. If your views are far less extreme then you're not in the group I'm attacking. The problem is plenty run-of-the-mill libertarians are quite extreme in their thinking.

Okay, I tried to be diplomatic, and this is how you choose to respond. What more can I do? If you can't respond to a metaphorical offer of a handshake without spitting on it, then so be it.



You are confusing the act of voting--which is, of course, perfectly legal--with the substantive effect of the result of of the vote.

So I pose this question: Are the electorate empowered to act unconstitutionally? Is the result of a referendum of any force or effect if it is offensive to the Constitution?

This isn't an idle question--it is the issue that the Supreme Court will be grappling with, yet again. To my way of thinking, you have to amend the Constitution, first--then proceed to the substantive issue that you seek to establish. If you repeal the Equal Protection clause, then I do not doubt for a second that voters in any state can outlaw same-sex marriage. But until they do, I remain of the view that their effort is of no force or effect.



Yes, but there are two issues that you fail to speak to:

1) Where do those limits lie? It is not enough to call for limited government control if your don't speak to the question of where those limits lie, and speak to the consequences of government vacating the areas where it currently acts. That would make for an interesting conversation, were we to wander down that particular path, methinks.

2) What is the evidentiary basis for the motivation for limitation? You claim to experience government screwing up every day--and I don't doubt your experience. But it is anecdotal, nonetheless. How often are you able to look behind these screw-ups to understand their genesis. Is it possible that government is screwing up precisely because it has already been limited? You have complained of agencies working at cross-purposes--but how often is this because legislation has prevented agencies from sharing information and working together?

I don't for a moment deny your experience. But I do wonder whether your experience paints a complete picture, and whether the remedy might be worse than the disease.

You just don't get out of your right-wing information bubble enough to know that "the left" doesn't unconditionally love and defend Democrats 100%. "the left" != "The Democratic Party". Unlike the reactionary right, the real left doesn't have a mainstream political party or movement that actually stands behind it's values. Why? Most likely because unlike the Dems, the real left doesn't have any moneyed interests spending extravagant sums on glossy propaganda.

Holder needs to go and there needs to be a full investigation into Fast and Furious.

For Obama to invoke executive privileged, there must be something really bad.

I didn’t notice the proverbial olive branch being extended but then again I didn't expect you to extend it. No matter, in a few days we would have been back at it……


I s'pose we’re still talking about voting.
At the polls they are empowered to do whatever they want within the bounds of the ballot before them. They could vote to re-enslave the blacks, run everyone with a Hispanic name back across the border, and exterminate the gays but that does not empower anyone to carry that out since the rights of the three groups of American citizens affected under the proposed legislation are protected by the constitution.
It doesn’t matter what anyone wants it’s a matter of what’s legal and just under constitutional law.
This is why we need the constitution as it was intended and not to be changed on a whim by mob rule or the flavor of the month.
This is why we need to stock the Supreme Court with justices that rule with their legal minds and not ones that rule with their hearts.


You’d have to start by assembling a team of wise and knowledgeable people. They build a model scenario of NO government then slowly and painstakingly adding the basics by vote, one at a time, after lengthy discussion and arguments on the virtues and pitfalls of government. You continue to add from there, one side fighting the other for each step of the way.
I’d say it’s a given that in addition to traditional roles of government being re-established that there would be a social safety net. In a country this size I not only except that but desire it just out of practicality. My argument is and always will be the limits and fiscal priority of that safety net.
My stance on government will still be that the less government it takes to do the above the better.

By the screw-ups I was talking about I meant every day operational issues in addition to the bigger scheme of things. The genesis of all to many of these screw-ups are self-serving agendas under the guise of actual service.
I can’t see where it’s legislation limiting co-operation between agencies or even locations within an agency but the little dictators, kings, and queens that bureaucracy breeds. Everyone wants their own little kingdom with more budget, more staff, and more assets and they could care less about efficiency between one department and the next within a location, let alone interagency efficiency.
Half of my day every day is spent untangling messes caused by cumbersome self centered bureaucracy and I am not by any means unique in this, trust me.
Worse thing is that no one cares beyond paying lip service to ethics and efficiency.


It stands to reason that all of them, by their nature, are corrupted to some extent. I’m not about to sample each one when I’m 99.99999999% right and I've already sampled two.

Well that concludes about all I have to say on my views on the role of government and the constitution for this thread.

I am content to leave it at that. And perhaps in a few days we can both moderate our repective tones.



We're not so very far apart here. You see the limitation in the execution of a law that offends the Constitution, I see the limitation as the Constitution invalidating a law that offends it. Part of that comes from my own environment, where the Canadian constitution is crystal clear that it invalidates any law to the extent that it offends the constitution.

The difference may be one of theory--what's the difference between a void law and an unenforced law? But it's good to understand where our thinking diverges.



That is an extraordinarily elegant approach.



It would not be my place to deny your observations. But I will note that in my public service experience this is not what I encounter.

We certainly have our shortcomings: successful managers and executives do so by "managing up," but at the end of the day that does mean that the first virtue of the successful bureaucrat is giving your boss what your boss wants--and that trail leads directly from me to the Minister in a handful of steps. Now my counterparts in other ministries are dealing with a different set of bosses, but ultimately their Minister and my Minister answer to the Prime Minister and are accountable to Parliament. The opportunity to build empires in our public service is near-as-damnit impossible unless your Minister wants that empire built and the Prime Minister gives the nod.

Not all public services are created the same, of course. My country's public service has a strong international reputation for professionalism, impartiality and generally high quality of services to government and to the public. The same cannot be said for all, and that will necessarily colour people's perceptions of government.