Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.
>"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". > [T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuste…
CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
71–80 of 138 posts
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.
>"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". > [T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuste…
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.
>"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". > [T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuste…
There's a reason we're a constitutional republic and not a pure democracy. Pure democracy would inevitably lead to a tyranny of the majority. Nine US states have over half the US population. Would it be fair for those few states to able to completely over-ride the interests of the other 41 states in the union?
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Italians can go pound sand. They had no problem allowing the lead Achille Lauro hijacker safe passage to Egypt. And in 2008 they release another Achille hijacker -- a murderer and PLO terrorist. I don't really care if the Italians had their sensibilities offended by rendition. Rendition never resulted in an Italian citizen's death, but the Achille Lauro incident certainly resulted in an American's death. I am not…
Nobody's clean, everybody got that. Can we move on, and aim for the best solution ?
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps they are not using the word "agent" as a CIA job title, but rather in the actual meaning of the word: An agent is one who acts for, or in the place of, another, by authority from him; one entrusted with the business of another.
The media uses the word "agent" to refer only to those who work in intelligence and defense agencies, so your explanation doesn't seem sufficient. And even if you are right - the word "agent" has a clear and different meaning in the context of intelligence, so at best this is a really bad choice of words.
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The prestige hit and vulnerability to "letting down the troops" criticisms will ensure this doesn't happen.
The real reason is that they were carrying out the official policy of the US government. Just calling it CIA torture is minimizing how far up this went. Bush ordered it. DOD knew. DOJ not only knew, it crafted the governments tortured definition of torture. Congress knew. This isn't some off the books CIA wet team opp. It was planned and signed off at the highest levels. John Yoo, who wrote the torture memos, is a pr…
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#77Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#78It would actually be in the U.S.'s own interests to prosecute these CIA agents and their superiors. First, this would show support for international laws against torture and help put the lid back on Pandora's box. This would directly reduce the probability of captured U.S. citizens being tortured. No, that probably does not include those captured by ISIL, but are rogue terrorist organizations all U.S. citizens will n…
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real reason is that they were carrying out the official policy of the US government. Just calling it CIA torture is minimizing how far up this went. Bush ordered it. DOD knew. DOJ not only knew, it crafted the governments tortured definition of torture. Congress knew. This isn't some off the books CIA wet team opp. It was planned and signed off at the highest levels. John Yoo, who wrote the torture memos, is a pr…
> "Just following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg because we were trying the people who gave the orders too. The only reason the Nuremberg trails happened at all, was that Germany lost. No-one was indited over fire-bombing Dresden, or nuking Hiroshima. People didn't go to prison over atrocities committed in Vietnam. While there should be prosecution over this, it seems unlikely to happen in the current US system. I'…
Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country
#80One huge peave of mine reflects a general level of ignorance about CIA by both media and commentators; they aren't CIA 'Agents' they are CIA 'officers.' It might sound like a nitpick, but if the news media repeatedly gets such a fundamental detail wrong, how can they be even remotely viewed as credible in the bigger issues? It would be like a reporter referring to RAM as ROM; hard to to have any faith that they even…
Well you probably have noticed that news articles tend to sound believable when they're about any subject matter except the one you have first-hand experience with. Hacker News is a good illustration of this phenomenon, since it seems that for every other article there's a person here who is, or knows someone who is involved in the situation described, and comments to correct many misconceptions in said article.
So no, it doesn't seem like a nitpick - it seems only rational to assume that most of the time news sites have no fucking clue what they're writing about. That, or they're deliberately lying to spin something.