Tom Delay Indicted

Yeah, between this and the Twenty Second Amendment I'm just not sure Bush will be re-elected.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Yeah, between this and the Twenty Second Amendment I'm just not sure Bush will be re-elected.
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Hehehehehe... onoes! :p I guess some other republican guy will have to run. ;)
 
Yeah, we got that pesky little thing called a constitution that enumerates our rights, and lays out what the guv'ment powers are. Not that anyone really pays attention to it anymore.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't get too worked up about this...at its worst it'll be a distraction. It's funny that you should even mention the Karl Rove/Valerie Plame situation...no news agency has in at least a month. The attention span of the American people is shorter than a one inch haircut (ok...I couldn't think of a good funny analogy there). I seriously doubt the Karl Rove situation will even bother the Bush Administration again. The only person the Tom Delay case will bother is...Tom Delay. Nobody else was really all that affected when Trent Lott was forced to step down a few years ago and I seriously doubt anyone will be all that affected by Tom Delay. If he did it, fine...he's one of many politicians that do and he was just unlucky enough to be caught. If he didn't, no one will really care, there will be some sabre rattling in Congress and everyone will forget about it. Just like the Democratic party wasn't affected when Ted Kennedy got his DUIs, neither will the Republican party be affected by this. It's a neat news story that they'll run all the angles on but it won't be that much fun in a few weeks.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Yeah, we got that pesky little thing called a constitution that enumerates our rights, and lays out what the guv'ment powers are. Not that anyone really pays attention to it anymore.
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Erm, I kinda got THAT part... We have one of them constituminations here too... :)

I was just curious about the 22nd ammendment Loaf mentioned.
 
Edfilho said:
I was just curious about the 22nd ammendment Loaf mentioned.
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Ed, it prevents the US President from being elected to more than two terms of office. Loaf was pointing out that our President's political future (and that of his administration) was pretty much established on November 2, 2004, regardless of what happens with Tom DeLay.
 
Yup. There's a reason all our scandals are about people who *aren't* the president in 2005 -- Mr. Bush can't run for re-election, so ranting about weapons of mass destruction and so forth doesn't do anyone any political good anymore. Rather, the two sides will target likely future candidates - like DeLay - and go after them for a while (a politically neutral one, I'd say, though, as both sides will be horrible jerks about things this over the next two or three years).
 
OOOOOOOh, I knew about the "only two terms" thing. Didn't know it was the 22nd ammendment. Thanks for the info.

And it makes a lot of sense. Considering how Bush will obviously try to help the GOP candidate, the opposition will target those guys a lot.
 
Tom Delay is innocent until proven guilty. If he is found guilty, he must serve his due. The 22nd Amendment allows presidents to run for only two terms. It was after President Roosevelt ran for four terms. George Washington believed that presidents should run only for two terms and he made it a custom for presidents to follow until Roosevelt.
 
Paddybhoy said:
I wish we had something like the two term rule over here in the U.K.
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You do. It's called the voters. Unless you're talking about the Royalty. Then you need a little thing called a Declaration of Independence, enforced by arms, if necessary. Oh, wait, y'all don't have arms any more, too bad. Guess that choice is permanantly taken away. Oh well. I guess if y'all cared about that y'all would have done something about it.

As for the 22nd Ammendment, I would prefer it to be left up to the voters, but I guess we need a kind of fail-safe against the droves of voters that don't pay attention, not to mention the dead ones from Chicago.
 
You do. It's called the voters. Unless you're talking about the Royalty.
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Are you implying that the monarchy actually rules over the commonwealth? If ya get rid of 'em then who's gonna send out snobbish little christmas messages to us poor colonials? :p
 
Aplha 1-1 said:
Are you implying that the monarchy actually rules over the commonwealth? If ya get rid of 'em then who's gonna send out snobbish little christmas messages to us poor colonials? :p
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Y'all can't get rid of them, anymore anyway. Sorry.:(
 
Leaping the median between idiotic tangent and thread topic, I'd like to say I agree with LOAF completely.

In all likelihood, DeLay has done nothing wrong, or even unusual, but the increasingly frantic and unhinged opposition is really pulling out all the stops lately, when it comes to exploiting annoying legal technicalities and warped public perceptions. This, like every other prefab "scandal" in the past five years, is going to fizzle out once it stops being fun.

If you say something enough, even if it's a complete lie, it becomes functionally true. People will believe it, spread it, and embellish it until the truth, and even the very language we speak slip into meaninglessness. Nevertheless, it seems to work less well each successive time.

My theory is that eventually people will just stop giving a shit, and cease listening. I know I'm already there.
 
Ridgerunner said:
You do. It's called the voters. Unless you're talking about the Royalty. Then you need a little thing called a Declaration of Independence.
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Willing to agree with you about all sorts of things, but now you're just being stupid. Let's for a moment ignore the fact that the UK is a republic (what does the Queen do exactly? Send Christmas messages!), and pretend that it is actually a monarchy. So now, the big question - why would anyone want to overthrow it? Are you actually seriously suggesting that if you're ruled by a monarchy, your country is not independent? That's crazy talk.

Does it make a difference if you're ruled by a king/queen or a president? Well, sure it does, but not the way you think (...it goes the other way - if you could have the same person ruling the country as a president or a king, he'd always do a better job as a king than a president, because his actions wouldn't be limited by the need to spend the first four years sucking up to the people to get re-elected).

Remember, the US did not revolt against the monarchy. They revolted against taxation without representation. They didn't want freedom - they wanted to have representatives in the British Parliament (in other words, they wanted even less than what Canada and Australia eventually got!). Things spun out of control and they ended up declaring independence, but don't confuse cause and effect here - in a manner of speaking, your independence was an unwanted accident (even after the war had started, the Continental Congress was still faithful to the Crown).
 
You're confusing some of the members pressing for one final attempt at reconciliation for the general tone of the congress being loyalist, which is certainly wasn't. The war and subsequent split could have easily been avoided if the king hadn't been a chump. However once the actual war began, the goal was never to simply reduce taxes.
 
Well, obviously the congress wasn't loyalist... but the fact that, even after the war begun, they expressed their willingness to remain loyal to the Crown if their grievances were addressed does indicate that they were in general more concerned with actual problems like taxation rather than with mere ideology.
 
You do. It's called the voters.
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No, they don't.

Not every country in the world has our particular brand of popularity contest; many elect a party/platform rather than an individual, so removing John Smith from office could be as difficult as deciding you're a Liberal instead of a Conservative.
 
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