A notable quote from Newt Gingrich this week:
This is … one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration. The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger. And therefore, the better they’ve done at making sure there isn’t an attack, the easier it is to say, ‘Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.’ And it’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.
Orson Scott Card makes the case against legalizing drugs.
Laws against drugs are like stoplights put up at dangerous intersections. They don’t go up until somebody has died. And then people get irritated because they have to stop at the light all the time “even when there’s no cross traffic.” Yeah, well, the light is there because we know what happens when there isn’t a stoplight.
Outcry after French court rules on virginity
Marine removed from duty for evangelism.
With respect to the Newt story, it would be a good idea for everyone to watch the actual video footage from C-SPAN Book TV found here:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Gingrich_Bush_should_have_allowed_attack_0529.html
If you are afraid of “liberal propaganda” or whatever you can avoid reading the article and just watch the video. Basically the above link provides a link to the one I posted.
Anyway, classic double-speak from Mr. Contract with America. He would divide the FBI into two agencies? One that protects American civil liberties and another that is can do whatever it wants? You’ve got to be kidding me. Who falls for this? In theory, you’d have a crime fighting FBI and an anti-terrorism FBI. The problem is that the lines have been blurred, and any criminal these days can be considered a terrorist.
But yeah, the controversial comment is the real kicker. When you watch the video, you realize he could be joking. But who jokes about this sort of thing?
I’m not a huge Newt fan, he looks at some pretty provocative scenarios. I’m sure he’ll take a hit for that careless point. That’s like Huckabee’s Obama joke; you’re not supposed to go there.
His points delve into complicated moral and ethical issues that are difficult to answer. He’s making a case where if we allow additional power in a narrow respect to Terrorism data, then we risk a much larger loss of liberty if the country moves into a state of fear. Of course, I don’t know how you could actually assure that the expanded power is limited to Terrorism and wouldn’t still violate our basic liberties. Once abuse of power is allowed, they might see my ranch as a threat espacially if I have foreighn visitors. Where would it stop. I don’t think I agree wih him, but I really don’t knwo what level of risk we face. What would the American people do if there was a major hit on something that has broad ranging effects, like a water system or even our power grid, with our already vulnerable situation in infrastructure, finance, energy and food. It wouldn’t take much to make things a mess. We just need to keep praying.