As a lawyer I second (or is it "third"? Hounskull.

I would also not be surprised if the bureaucratic hassles of accepting a gift in lieu of the bidding process and other government-contracting regulations make keeping the existing contracts in place easier.

Actually, in International law, there's a long history of ignoring treaty obligations in time of war or other national emergency.

Obviously its arguable, for some anyway, whether this memo authorizes "torture" or whether it was ever used -- since many seem to believe terrorists over our own folks.

You pay your rent until you can't afford food, then you buy food and pay as much rent as you can when times get tough. Consequences will follow. The main deterrence in anti-torture treaties is that our own folks will be tortured if we don't follow it. Seeing as we are the only ones who have ever followed Geneva in its history and our people have been beheaded, paraded, kidnapped, and had their bodies desecrated I'd say the deterrence factor is nil.

Congress -- the Democratic Congress could outlaw any version of torture it wanted to. They haven't. Why? Two things: most don't really think some of these things are really torture and 2 -- they work. Real torture doesn't work, but intense questioning is good for almost a day before info becomes stale. At least ask the questions before succumbing to Bushitler McChimpy Derangement Syndrome.

This guy is lucky the kids' father didn't do what he should've done. I agree with him -- the sign is a useless punishment -- though a good tag for the rest of us. The proper punishment would not be considered legal today -- and I don't mean death or dismemberment.

The problem is that the States are on the federal money tit. If we had a saner taxing structure where states could keep more money and fix their own highways, etc. things like Real ID wouldn't get shoved down our throats. Should the Fed give the money without strings? Undoubtedly, but that's not the way the world works.

The funny thing is is that most of you guys in here are probably liberals -- the party of really big government. The fact that Bush is the one doing it is ironic for other reasons. Bush is for sort of big government. Enjoy your real ID when you vote for Hill or Barry O because they will fast track this stuff in areas much wider than Nat'l security. Theirs will be "for the children".

I find it ironic that Pat Schroeder -- of the worldview that gave us animal rights and group identity politics is shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that people are more concerned for silverback gorillas than about Tutsis being macheted. What to expect from a Democrat Prez, a Democrat Congress and the United Nations? I'm not saying we should or should not have gone in because to go in would raise cries of occupation and colonialism from some of the same folks in here who are part of the McChimpyBushHitler lunacy. and hindsight is as the saying goes....

What is more important than marching to vote? How about ambulances taking critical patients to hospital? How about delivering mothers trying to get to hospital? Cops chasing criminals? knw mny rnd hr s cps s fscsts -- bsds n dtc sttmnt nd thght -- thy d ctlly s th hghwys t gt t crm scns.

Early election places are LWYS inconvenient. I would bet your life that the Prairie View A&M election day polling place was on campus or across the street. This is a STNT.

Gerrymandering. I find it mildly ironic that black students blame Republicans for gerrymandering, when Democrats perfected the concept to keep Blacks from voting.

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