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host · 03-28-2008, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Can't find the post... but I remember something about you claiming to be a moderate....

A moderate is someone who says reasonable things...reasonable, because the things said, can be substantiated:

Republicans have spent us into insolvency:

Quote:

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPD...application=np

............. Total outstanding public debt=
03/27/2008 $9,412,362,408,343.83

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo5.htm
09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06 ... 1st GW Bush budget year begins

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86 ... Annual Debt increase only $18 biln
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo4.htm
09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43

09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38... 1st Clinton budget year begins

09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32... 1st GHW Bush budget year begins

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00... 1st Reagan budget year begins

09/30/1977 $698,840,000,000.00... 1st Carter budget year begins

6/30/1973 $458,141,605,312.09

Republicans have obstructed the business of the US Senate, when they are the minority party...to counter the fact that they are the minority party:

Quote:

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/p...3/1108/OPINION
By DANIEL W. PRITCHETT • February 27, 2008

Over the past seven years, this country has witnessed an unprecedented assault on constitutional government. The Bush-Cheney administration's assertions of executive power have made a travesty of the principles of openness, accountability and separation of powers.
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The Constitution has been put through a shredding machine. For example, a pre-emptive war was started under false pretenses and with disastrous consequences. There have been wiretaps without warrants, abandonment of habeas corpus, torture during imprisonment, obsessive secrecy, and contempt for negotiated treaties.

Since the Democratic takeover of Congress a year ago, however, another perversion has arisen. The Republican minority has hijacked the U.S. Senate. The Senate no longer really deliberates; it merely obstructs.

What formerly was the exception has now become the rule. The Senate might now be described as the world's greatest filbustering body.

Once filibusters -- and the cloture rule to stop them -- were rare. They were reserved for exceptional issues of conscience, deep concern for minority viewpoints, or disgraceful efforts by Southern racists to block civil rights legislation.

This began to unravel during the first two years of President Bill Clinton's administration, when Republicans began a political strategy of deliberate obstruction by filibuster. In the spring of 1993, the Senate was involved in at least three filibusters at once.

This was a harbinger of things to come. The obstruction strategy worked well for the Republican Party. Its attacks on the "do-nothing Democratic Congress" helped it win smashing election victories in 1994.

Bill and Hillary Clinton's failure on health care reform in 1994 was not just because of their own errors. It was the result of a Republican plan to refuse any compromise in order to deprive the Clinton administration of a significant legislative and political victory before the mid-term elections.

With Republicans in control of the Senate for most of the next 12 years, the use of the filibuster resumed its normal pattern. Ironically, the exception was when Republicans threatened to ban filibuster against President George W. Bush's judicial appointees -- an effort that was settled by a compromise.

Then came the election of 2006, and the narrow capture of Senate control by the Democrats. Operating procedures changed. In the past year, 60 votes -- the number required to invoke cloture and stop a filibuster -- have been required for virtually all legislation.

This has turned the Senate upside down. Now the minority rules. A vote of 58-41, as recently happened on the economic stimulus package, is now not enough to pass a bill.

This is largely responsible for Democrats' inability to pass all of their program. The Republican Party seems set to paint Democrats as ineffective do-nothings, just as they did in 1994.

The reality is that we have seen a coup in the U.S. Senate that is another assault on

Shortly after Clinton became president in 1993, republicans launched an "Op" to replace the special prosecutor who republicans insisted must "investigate" the Clintons on hyped republican charges that were found, even by the "replacement", highly partisan special prosecutor, Ken Starr, to be unproveable:

Quote:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...entelle&st=nyt
Judge in Whitewater Dispute Rewards Faith of His Patron

By PETER APPLEBOME,
Published: August 17, 1994

When David B. Sentelle was nominated to be a Federal judge in 1985, his patron, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, said that he had decided when he first met Mr. Sentelle, "I would do whatever I could to make sure that this young man's integrity and talent, principles and courage, would be used by this country."

Now as he is embroiled in the controversy over the replacement of Robert B. Fiske Jr. by Kenneth W. Starr as the Whitewater independent counsel, Judge Sentelle has already had an influence on the country that may exceed the Republican Senator's fondest expectations.

He was a member of the three-judge panels that overturned the Iran-contra convictions of Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter, and he is regarded as the driving force behind the appointment of Mr. Starr, whose conservative credentials have riled Democrats.

Friends and critics alike here recall Judge Sentelle, 51, as a first-rate lawyer; an affable, folksy personality; and a politically savvy, ideologically committed leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and a supporter of Mr. Helms.

"I used to see David on a number of issues, everything from Confederate monuments to minority set-asides," said Harvey Gantt, who dealt with Mr. Sentelle often in the late 1970's when <h3>Mr. Sentelle headed the local Republican Party and Mr. Gantt, a Democrat, sat on the City Council. "I can't remember David being on on my side about anything, but he was a very affable fellow, a friendly assassin, cowboy boots and all."

In the current dispute, Democrats say the judge acted improperly by having lunch with Senators Helms and Lauch Faircloth, North Carolina's other conservative Republican Senator, while the Federal appeals panel he headed was still considering the future of the special prosecutor. Mr. Faircloth was a leader of the effort to oust Mr. Fiske because he thought Mr. Fiske had not been tough enough in his investigation.

On Aug. 5, three weeks after the lunch, the three-judge panel, which oversees matters involving special counsels, replaced Mr. Fiske, whose work on Whitewater had generally pleased the White House. It chose Mr. Starr, a former Solicitor General in the Bush Administration, to replace him. Many Democrats were outraged by the appointment of Mr. Starr, a strong conservative who had been highly critical of President Clinton's claim of immunity in a sexual harassment suit.</h3> Removal Is Sought

Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, said today that Mr. Starr should either step down or be removed and that Judge Sentelle should either step down or be removed from the judicial panel before he "has another chance to taint the appearance of another appointment."

Asked tonight for comment, Judge Sentelle said, "I don't talk to reporters."

The judge has issued a single written statement saying that the lunch was a routine social event and "to the best of my recollection nothing in these discussions concerned independent counsel matters."

People here who know Judge Sentelle generally describe him as a first-rate judge and lawyer. And even North Carolina Democrats are less likely to see an improper use of judicial power than further evidence of Mr. Helms's genius at finding like-minded conservatives and putting them in positions of power.....

Quote:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...gewanted=print
November 20, 1998
TESTING OF A PRESIDENT: THE PROSECUTOR; Democrats Challenge Starr on Delayed Exoneration
By DON VAN NATTA JR.

Kenneth W. Starr today provided the public with a wide-ranging portrait of his four-year, $40 million investigation, announcing that he had not found any evidence of impeachable wrongdoing by President Clinton in Whitewater, the travel office and the personnel files of hundreds of employees.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee immediately seized on the disclosure, repeatedly challenging Mr. Starr, the independent counsel, and wondering, as Representative Barney Frank did, why Mr. Starr did not share the good news until after the Nov. 3 election....

Quote:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...+scaife&st=nyt
Judge Urges Investigation Of Whitewater Prosecutor

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: August 19, 1997

A senior Federal trial judge in Little Rock, Ark., has written in a confidential opinion that he believes that Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater prosecutor, may have a conflict of interest in investigating President and Mrs. Clinton.

The judge, G. Thomas Eisele of Federal District Court, wrote his opinion in response to an ethics complaint brought against Mr. Starr. In the opinion, Judge Eisele said he believed that the court should assign a lawyer to investigate Mr. Starr's plan to take an academic position at Pepperdine University that is partially subsidized by an avid opponent of Mr. Clinton.

.....Judge Eisele, a longtime Republican who was appointed to the bench in 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon, now works part time.

The unusual debate among the judges in the Eastern District of Arkansas will probably turn out to be little more than a legal sidelight in the long investigation of the Clintons' affairs by an independent counsel. But it shows how deeply the lives of the Clintons are intertwined with Arkansas's political and social life.

The episode began with the frequent filing of complaints about Mr. Starr's behavior by a Democratic lawyer in Connecticut. The lawyer, Francis T. Mandanici, had been rebuffed in most of his efforts to demonstrate that Mr. Starr was not an independent counsel but someone with a conservative political agenda determined to smear the Clintons.

Judge Eisele agreed with Mr. Mandanici's most recent legal filing, which contended that <h3>Mr. Starr had violated conflict of interest rules by agreeing to become dean of the law and public affairs schools at Pepperdine, in Malibu, Calif., when he finished his inquiry.</h3>

In a proceeding that was initially sealed from public view, Judge Eisele wrote that <h3>Mr. Starr had created an appearance of a conflict because the public affairs school at Pepperdine was subsidized by Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative philanthropist and enemy of Mr. Clinton.</h3>

''Mr. Scaife, said to be a bitter opponent of President and Mrs. Clinton, especially with respect to Whitewater-related issues, has apparently helped to arrange and make possible the very career opportunities that Mr. Starr wants to pursue as soon as as he completes his work as independent counsel,'' Judge Eisele wrote in the opinion, which was circulated to his judicial colleages.

Judge Wilson, whose opinion was issued two weeks ago, said that while he could not participate in the ethics case, the public should have the benefit of Judge Eisele's opinion.

Judge Wilson's opinion noted that three of the judges who sit in Little Rock disagreed with Judge Eisele and concluded that no investigation of Mr. Starr was necessary. Three others, including Judge Wilson, recused themselves because they knew the Clintons and the seventh, Judge James M. Moody, because he married Mr. Foster's widow. .......

<h3>Finally, Ken Starr received his delayed, but not denied reward for pursuing his 6 year, $40 million witch hunt intended to ruin the Clinton presidency:</h3>

Quote:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...erdine+&st=nyt
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 4-18-04: QUESTIONS FOR KENNETH STARR; Life After the Report

By DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: April 18, 2004

Q: I hear you have just accepted a new job as the dean of the law school at Pepperdine University. You don't strike me as a Malibu kind of guy.

I enjoy the ocean, but I don't surf.

Why have you decided to leave Washington after all these years?

You may be aware that seven years ago I made the decision to go to Pepperdine, and I was not able to complete my duties. So this is a kind of renewal of the opportunity.

Would you still like to become a justice of the Supreme Court?

I am told I was one of a handful of persons who were under consideration by President George Bush the 41st, but I no longer harbor the slightest sense that it is within the realm of possibility.

Why is that?

Because of the recent unpleasantness, as we refer to it.

You mean your investigation into Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky? Do you feel your work as an independent counsel helped the country in any way or just added to cynicism about government?

I am so ill-equipped to say. What I do know is it was a very unhappy reminder that all persons are subject to the law and the legal process, no matter how lofty their station in life. I regret it for the country, but it needed to be done. ....

Would you like more, Seaver, we can compare the "postage stamp scandal" that brought down democratic house of rep. leader, Dan Rostenkowski, to the Iran Contra investigation, that revealed the disregard for the law, the deceit, and the cluelessness of President Reagan, and the contempt for the law exhibited by VP GHW Bush.

...Or shall it be the "felons voters purge list Ops", of GW Bush's brother, Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush in 2000, and in 2004? The 2000 voter caging "Op" cost democrat Al Gore the presidency.

What, in your opinion, Seaver, should an informed moderate think of the republican party and it's leadership, since the era of Nixon in 1969? Are republicans the party of sound fiscal policy, small government, open government, high ethical standards, respect for the rule of law?