Rand Paul blathering for hours on Senate floor

The other comical aspect in all this, is the idea that we can't trust the executive but for some reason can trust the judiciary. Bunch of fucking idiots who fell asleep during high school civics.

Lon Horiuchi didn't. And he was accused at both Ruby Ridge and Waco. Wow, you really do worship the government and all their agents, don't you? They can just do no wrong in your fantasy world.

So you never saw film of protests in the 1960s? Cops and the military gassing and wailing on war protesters? Southern cops and their dogs going after civil rights protesters?

That scrape in Seattle was nothing new. It's just the first time it's happened in quite a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

There was a recent trial of a police officer who kicked a woman in the head - a woman who was hand cuffed and seated on a curb.

The officer was not convicted, and is now back on the force.

Compared to shooting someone in time of "emergency", that was cut and dry.

You're going to tell me that you trust the government to do the right thing in that situation when they can't even convict a police officer of assault when he kicks a woman in the head who is handcuffed and seated on a curb?!

RE: Dayton's post, the corollary to "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is "some people believe history began the day they were born."

I'm not seeing your point here. I for trust the judiciary over the executive. One of the benefits of having an independent judiciary is that they AREN'T one and the same.

As to Al Awlaki, you can either believe me or not but it is my belief that we really didn't have the assets there at the time to go in and get the guy. Considering he was actively engaged in attacks against the US, I have no problem with stopping that.

On the larger point, I love drone strikes. Combined with SOCOM it means that we can do a lot of good things with a very small footprint. They make the world safer. Give every foreign terrorist a Hellfire enema for all I care, hell make it two just to be safe. For Americans I would not be opposed to something similar to a FISA Court so there would be some oversight, but the executive still has the ability to act quickly and decisively.

My point is that the "can't trust the government" meme is selective. We have an imperfect system, there is no denying that, but for it to function at all, we need to accept certain base line premises, one of which is that the executive on balance acts on our behalf, and another is that the judiciary on balance will reign in the excesses of the executive. I don't understand why somebody will accept the latter premise but not the first, but that's exactly what they are doing when they say that the executive can never act without an initial judicial approval.

Is there a specific incident you have in mind? Not sure, but in the theoretical sense, you're point here is exactly the same one that I've been repeating throughout this thread.

Well to be fair to the government in this case it wasn't government that let him off. It was the citizens.

Citizens who apparently saw something in the evidence that we did not and they made the decision to not convict.

I'm not saying they were right in their decision just that to blame government in this case is a little more then unfair. There are far better examples of government cock-ups then this one that you could use.

Amazing how quickly that mess was forgotten.

By whom?

Well I sure don't remember anything that happened before that!

Must not have seen the Billy Jack movies
Or listened to CSN.

It's amusing how certain elements of the Right have co-opted what used to be the radical left's talking points about the po-lice.

It's even more amusing how the elements of the right doing so are also busy fighting with one another for the right to be down on their knees fellating Joe Arpaio.

Hey. I'm all for calling out the National Guard to kill hippies, but the problem is that once you let the genie out of the bottle...

You start shooting hippies and suddenly everyones a hippie.

But seriously, the Kent State shootings show to me the perfect example of what happens when you militarize the police or assign the miilitary to carry out clear law enforcement duties.

Lots of people seem to actually think that police and military are just about the same thing because they both wear uniforms and carry weapons. But that can't be further from the truth.

Your thesis ignores instances like Fast and Furious which includes participation by the DoJ, and the contempt shown against Holder, who heads the DoJ.

No it doesn't.

You thesis doesn't explicitly ignore the fact that Captain X is too inebriated and brain damaged to understand the word "selective," but it does fail to take pity on him by taking that matter into account.

Yes, it does. Much in the same way you seem to confuse libertarians with anarchists.

Oh that's easy. The difference is that anarchists can grow proper facial hair and don't wear fedoras.