Re: a little something worth noting . . .

begin  Roberto H. Alsina's  quote:

| Bollocks. Arrest without trial, based on suspicion is bad. In Cuba,
| and in the US.

where is it that people are tried and then arrested? and in any case, 
while incarceration of people before charges are filed is not the 
best of all things, there are things that are much, much worse. which 
is why there are clear and present danger exemptions even to the 
first amendment.

| Having handled money and expressed an opinion is not basis for
| arrest, it is not really even basis for investigation, unless you
| accept the government has the right to observe everyone's
| activities as much as they please. Else, free speech is not free,
| because it makes you a target.

that depends. if the opinion i expressed is that you should be killed, 
and if it is known that there is someone who will kill you for an 
amount of money, and an amount of money entrusted to me disappears, 
nothing in the world connected with free speech is involved. we 
learned on september 11, 2001, that we had if anything been far too 
permissive, had bent over backwards too far both as to not paying 
attention as to what people were up to and as to who we allowed in 
the country. i realize that there are people from foreign lands, and 
their tinfoil chapeaued allies, who propose that the events of 
september 11, 2001, were done by the the united states government or 
the trilateral commission or the knights templar. the best that could 
be said about such persons is that they are utterly blitheringly 
crazy. there are worse things to be said about them also.

| I did. It's one of the easy ways the government has to see if they
| can nail someone against who they failed to collect proper
| evidence. Capone, for instance.

so, then, your argument is that al capone should not have been jailed? 
fact is, use of tax law to prosecute someone who can't be nailed on 
other charges is exceedingly rare -- nowhere near as common as the 
use of "civil rights violations" as a means of circumventing the 
proscription on double jeopardy. which *is* a problem.

| So what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Even if that was wrong, of
| course.

nonsense. the sentence that two wrongs do not make a right is one of 
the most vapid things that anyone ever said. example: it is wrong to 
cut off somebody's leg. it is also wrong to die of gangrene. if by 
the former the latter is prevented, two wrongs have if not made a 
right at least prevented a larger wrong. a far more sensible caution 
is that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

| Not yet. Of course some have been arrested without any charges at
| all, so maybe they will be. Or maybe they won't bother.

treason is a very specific crime, and it has very specific 
requirements if it is to be asserted. it is unlikely that it will be.

| You can't accuse someone of thought crimes. YOu need to wait for
| him to at least plan to do some action.

what i can or cannot accuse anyone of makes no difference. the 
previously mentioned clear and present danger exemption, particularly 
when the nation has been attacked, is not something that any thinking 
person has a problem with. you must remember that during the civil 
war lincoln flat-out suspended habeas corpus with impunity. when your 
house is on fire, you are less inclined to be upset when a big truck 
pulls up and the men aboard it begin breaking out the windows and 
filling it with thousands of gallons of water than you would be if 
your house were not on fire.

| Dude, read. I didn't say that. Benjamin Franklin did.

and you took his part. it was a silly thing for him to have said.

| Hail Caesar! And completely unrelated to what it pretends to
| answer. Fact: citizens arrested without trial in the US.
| Fact: citizens arrested without trial in Cuba.
| Fact: citizens arrested without trial in Iraq.

fact: people in all three breathe air. your moral equivalence argument 
is simply uncomposted fertilizer. 

| I am not, since in any case, Argentina is exepmt from them.
| I am speaking about agropecuary subsidies.

i agree that the payment of subsidies at all is economically unsound, 
for everyone. as are other forms of government largesse.
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within
the envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.

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