Where are the Libertarians?

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 07:10
VIEWED: 17715
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JAYTEE

Saturday, December 24, 2005 5:01 PM

I think several postings here have touched on a major truth but I didn't see any that mentioned an effective strategy. The truth is that neither the Republican party or the Democrat party really represent the majority in this country anymore. The Repuplican far right with Bush has hijacked the party and racked up massive deficits when the Repuplican party used to stand for smaller government and fiscal responsibility. The Democrats have gone overboard with pushing new entitlement programs while not doing anything to fix the rampant fraud in the ones that we really need to keep in order to promote opportunity and the chance of prosperity for ALL Americans like Social Security, Medicaid and the Student Loan Program.
It's time for a new party that really represents the concerns of the "silent" majority in this country and Libertarians aren't going to appeal to most of us and they can't get their message straight either. We need to form a new party that has as it's basic priorities first and
foremost education, fiscal responsibilty (balanced budget amendment) and strict protection of civil liberties. We should call it the Eagle Party since Eagles make a much cooler symbol than either an ass or an elephant. Then come election time we just vote out all the incumbents, Democrat or Republican. NO ONE GETS REELECTED. Voter enforced term limits can work. Break the back of the old boy network and then you'll see some true change for the better.

Jaytee

SERGEANTX

Saturday, December 24, 2005 5:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JayTee:
It's time for a new party that really represents the concerns of the "silent" majority in this country and Libertarians aren't going to appeal to most of us and they can't get their message straight either.

I agree that it isn't going to appeal to most of you, but the Libertarian message couldn't be much clearer. I honestly can't think of a political party that has anything like the clear, concise philosophy the Libertarians espouse. You might not like it, but it't plenty straight.

Quote:
NO ONE GETS REELECTED. Voter enforced term limits can work. Break the back of the old boy network and then you'll see some true change for the better.

Term limits might work for bit, but if you have the political will to pass term limits, why not just vote the bums out of office? Or change the voting systems that give incumbants such an advantage in the first place?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

JAYTEE

Saturday, December 24, 2005 7:04 PM

What I said was that voters had to vote the incumbents out thereby creating a "term limit" since there is no way Congress will vote for term limits on their own. It's not in their best interests and that seems to be all that concerns them in the first place.

Jaytee

SIGNYM

Saturday, December 24, 2005 8:05 PM

I'm going to hijack my own thread and come back to the original topic:

Quote:
NEW YORK (AP) -- The National Security Agency has conducted much broader surveillance of e-mails and phone calls -- without court orders -- than the Bush administration has acknowledged, The New York Times reported. The NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained access to streams of domestic and international communications, said the Times, citing unidentified current and former government officials.

Since the Times disclosed the domestic spying program last week, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al Qaeda. {Yeah. Right. This Prez is a pathological liar. AJ? Geezer? Hero? Finn? Any defense of this would surely be appreciated. SignyM} But the Times said that NSA technicians have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might lead to terrorists. The volume of information harvested from telecommunications data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged.

www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/24/domestic.spying.ap/index.html Naturally DoJ head Gonzales thinks this is all legal. Now, one wonders- does one not?- why Bush was SOOO anxious to get Harriet Miers or another Klansman into the Supreme Court so quickly! Then they could rubber-stamp his coup.

I hope the Senate takes an indefinitely long, hard look at Alito, who probably doesn't think that Americans have a right to privacy. Abortion is just a red herring.

---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.

RUE

Saturday, December 24, 2005 8:15 PM

I love Big Brother.

SERGEANTX

Saturday, December 24, 2005 9:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JayTee:
What I said was that voters had to vote the incumbents out thereby creating a "term limit" since there is no way Congress will vote for term limits on their own. It's not in their best interests and that seems to be all that concerns them in the first place.

Ahh.. I misread. In that case I couldn't agree more. Have you looked at Approval Voting? It's something that, I think, could be adopted at a grassroots level and could really change the way elections are approached by candidates.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

DREAMTROVE

Sunday, December 25, 2005 5:14 AM

Merry Christmas

I just want to take a stand to oppose term limits. Strongly oppose them. Vehemently oppose them.

Okay, here are my points

1. Experience is important, freshman lawmakers are very close to useless and easily swindled into bad policy by suave long term washington lobbyists.

2. A party can and does get corrupted. If there were term limits then the party constituency would always reflect the party leadership, which would be bad, and not just a little bad but appallingly nazi bad.

3. Lifelong lawmakers can come in from any period in history, and become a sort of freezeframe of their parties position at that point. McCain is a Nixon Republican, because that's when he came in. This sort of thing forces a party to be consistant to its own values throughout history.

If I were to look at my party and its elected officials, there are a few new ones I like who have promise, but I have an overwhelming tendency to prefer the ones who have been there a while. I think there's a fair chance if we have better GOP leadership in the future, well it would be hard to fathom worse, then some people like George Allen and Norm Coleman who went off half cocked might make very good long term GOP members. If they don't, we can vote them out.

DREAMTROVE

Sunday, December 25, 2005 5:28 AM

JT,

You're sounding like the Reform Party USA.

I don't think this is a workable solution. A third party would have the opposition of both major parties, and during its early life would tend to force the group it hates more to win perpetually.

Here's what I think may be a better idea:

We should take over the two parties. At the moment 30-40 mil people vote for a candidate in a primary every 4 years, totalling both sides. That's just over 10% of the population, and under 20% of registered voters. Everyone else votes for a party in a general election. This means the parties come with 40 million free votes apiece, or 80 million total votes for free, if you can organize the others. It's very doable. It's not easy, but it's far from impossible.

On either side it would take 10 million votes to win.

By contrast, it would take a 3rd party candidate at least 40 million to win, assuming an excellent 3-way split.

So by going the third party way, even if you discount the whole legal battle of having both major parties against you, you've still automatically made your task 4 times harder.

Since I think it's very important that absolutely no one who opposes Bush and Co. go and help them stay in power, I have to list off the democrats who will be most likely to continue the Bush policies, again, of course, I'm referring tot he democrat half of team evil:

Ben Nelson, aka the Benator
Diane Feinstein aka Difi
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Joe Lieberman aka Joementum
John Forbes Kerry
Wesley Clarke

Don't go to work for these people. If you're a democrat, a progressive and care about your party and are not happy with Bush policies, pick someone from outside and don't just vote, work for them in the primary campaign. But only if they work to get definite members rather than through pure advertising, which never works.

If I were a democrat, my pick would be Russ Feingold if he will run, but whoever it is, make sure that you know they are who they say they are and who you're sure has at least a snowflakes chance in hell, ie. they haven't already done something chappaquiddickish.

My current choice for GOP runner to volunteer for will probably be Chuck Hagel. I like McCain okay, but if both run I'll probably still work for Hagel, even if I think he'll lose to McCain to at least earn VP.

And organize, organize, organize.

FLETCH2

Sunday, December 25, 2005 6:07 AM

Third party isn't going to work. I don't know about the US but in the UK new parties only tend to make breakthroughs when old parties are either completely discredited or if they split over policy. I don't know that we are in a position where either of those two events is likely. Even if you accept the Dreamtrove idea that Bush et al are a rebel gang currently in charge of the Republicans it would be hard for traditionalist Republicans to shake them off. Why? because such events do not happen in isolation, the parties that exist today are a reflection of the political, economic and social standards of our time while those ideas persist we will have more of the same.

DUTCH508

Monday, December 26, 2005 4:17 AM

you didn't look very hard.

'Warrantless' searches not unprecedented
By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 22, 2005

Previous administrations, as well as the court that oversees national security cases, agreed with President Bush's position that a president legally may authorize searches without warrants in pursuit of foreign intelligence.
"The Department of Justice believes -- and the case law supports -- that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney general," Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick said in 1994 testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
That same authority, she added, pertains to electronic surveillance such as wiretaps.
More recently, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- the secretive judicial system that handles classified intelligence cases -- wrote in a declassified opinion that the court has long held "that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information."
Such warrantless searches have been at the center of a political fight in Washington after the New York Times reported Friday that the Bush administration had a program to intercept communications between al Qaeda suspects and persons in this country, a story whose publication coincided with the congressional debate over reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act.
In a 2002 opinion about the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the USA Patriot Act, the court wrote: "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
Indeed, previous administrations have used that same authority.
One of the most famous examples of warrantless searches in recent years was the investigation of CIA official Aldrich H. Ames, who ultimately pleaded guilty to spying for the former Soviet Union. That case was largely built upon secret searches of Ames' home and office in 1993, conducted without federal warrants.
In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrantless searches in highly violent public housing projects.
Previous administrations also asserted the authority of the president to conduct searches in the interest of national security.
In 1978, for instance, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell testified before a federal judge about warrantless searches he and President Carter had authorized against two men suspected of spying on behalf of the Vietnam government.
That same year, Congress approved and Mr. Carter signed FISA, which created the secret court and required federal agents to get approval to conduct electronic surveillance in most foreign intelligence cases.

and:

'Warrantless' searches not unprecedented
By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 22, 2005

A Washington Post report at the time said the new FISA law permits "the government (primarily NSA with the occasional help of an FBI 'black bag job' or break-in) to continue electronic spying without a court order if it is directed solely at the premises or communications of 'official' powers, such as governments, factions or entities openly known to be directed and controlled by foreign governments."
The year after FISA became law, a columnist in The Washington Post described what could still happen to any person or group determined to be "an agent of a foreign power."
"Once the attorney general has made that finding about someone, then the FBI can spy on them or burglarize their offices," wrote William Greider in a May 1979 column.
The Bush administration

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