[PassedOut]

blackshoe, on Dec 1 2008, 11:15 PM, said:

You neglect the case where a nation is attacked without notice and without provocation.

Every nation that starts a war claims that its opponent provoked it.

[PassedOut]

A government needs to keep some secrets. Revealing the name of a covert agent, for example, can get that agent killed and can get that agent's sources killed also. Clearly anyone involved in the leak of such information is a traitor to his or her country and should be punished to the full extent of the law.

On the other hand, many documents are classified as secret because they reveal governmental stupidity, incompetence, or corruption. In my opinion, citizens have a patriotic duty to make such documents public whenever they can do so.

According to an article in today's NYT, the "terrorism" case against MP Damian Green is a reaction to his success in revealing incompetence in the Labor government that the Conservatives seek to replace: Arrest of Parliament Member Brews British Tempest

Quote

Nobody at Scotland Yard has suggested that Mr. Green is a terrorist.

Rather, his offense, if any, seems to have centered on his relationship with a civil servant in the Home Office, Britain’s Interior Ministry, who is said to have offered himself to the Conservatives last year as a whistle-blower on immigration and other politically sensitive issues, passing on documents and letters from the office of the home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

The civil servant, Christopher Galley, a 26-year-old assistant private secretary in Ms. Smith’s office, who was also arrested on Thursday, helped Mr. Green become a trenchant critic of the Labor government’s immigration policies, one of Britain’s most volatile issues. The Conservatives, leading Labor in opinion polls, say they will make an issue of Labor’s failure to stem the tide of illegal immigrants arriving in Britain every year — and the strains on health, education and other public services — in a general election Mr. Brown must call before June 2010.

It's heartening to see that many British people see Mr. Green as the hero in this episode. And it's interesting to note how conveniently people sacrifice their principles to expediency.

Quote

Mr. Brown thinks a wider public inquiry may be necessary into civil servants’ leaks to politicians. Mr. Green’s arrest has prompted Conservatives to recall Mr. Brown’s habit of boasting, as a rising opposition figure before Labor’s election victory in 1997, that he had “a mole” in the civil service who gave him much of the information he used to embarrass the Conservative government in the Commons.

If it was good then, it is good now.

[Winstonm]

Quote

FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary

Could you point out where this exception is made? I cannot seem to find the "Sneak Attack" amendment anywhere.

[Al_U_Card]

FDR's "backers" wouldn't let him declare war on Germany (too many were making money from both sides in the war) without provocation and the Nazis knew that they wanted to keep the US out as long as possible.
FDR just kept egging the Japanese on and laid the "trap" at Pearl Harbor to entice them to attack in a "Day of infamy".

[mike777]

Winstonm, on Dec 2 2008, 11:02 AM, said:

Quote

FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary

Could you point out where this exception is made? I cannot seem to find the "Sneak Attack" amendment anywhere.

In 1863 the Supreme Court ruled that a state of war can exist without a formal declaration. Btw this was by a 5-4 vote and after Lincoln had appointed three of the 5 justices in the majority.

"The president has a duty to resist force with force; therefore the blockade and related war powers exercised by Lincoln were within his authority as commander in chief." (Prize Cases, 67, US. 635)

This got me thinking of the Cuban Missile Crises. I remember the blockade and how we were a heartbeat away from war. I do not remember why blockading Cuba was legal. After all the USSR can have nukes in the ocean just a few miles away from the USA and in fact Russia itself is only a few miles away from parts of the USA.

I only bring this up because I think people forgot how often a government, many governments, use their power in the name of national defense as in the OP.

[Winstonm]

mike777, on Dec 2 2008, 03:24 PM, said:

Winstonm, on Dec 2 2008, 11:02 AM, said:

Quote

FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary

Could you point out where this exception is made? I cannot seem to find the "Sneak Attack" amendment anywhere.

In 1863 the Supreme Court ruled that a state of war can exist without a formal declaration. Btw this was by a 5-4 vote and after Lincoln had appointed three of the 5 justices in the majority.

"The president has a duty to resist force with force; therefore the blockade and related war powers exercised by Lincoln were within his authority as commander in chief." (Prize Cases, 67, US. 635)

This got me thinking of the Cuban Missile Crises. I remember the blockade and how we were a heartbeat away from war. I do not remember why blockading Cuba was legal. After all the USSR can have nukes in the ocean just a few miles away from the USA and in fact Russia itself is only a few miles away from parts of the USA.

I only bring this up because I think people forgot how often a government, many governments, use their power in the name of national defense as in the OP.

Good stuff, Mike.

Of course, we all know the Constitution was written before it was possible to go to war with the push of a button, so the strict interpretation of legal war was stretched - and was stretched to the extreme with the Bush Doctrine of invasive war as preemption.

[Winstonm]

On subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/world/eu...&pagewanted=all

[PassedOut]

Thanks for the link, Winston: Britain’s Parliament Opens With Uproar Over Police Raid

Quote

“Let me make it absolutely clear that I believe that members of Parliament are not above the law,” Mr. Green said, before adding, “and that those who have the real power in this country, ministers, senior civil servants and the police, are also not beyond the law.”

To cries of “Hear, hear!” from almost every corner of the Commons, he said, “An M.P. endangering national security would be a disgrace; an M.P. exposing facts about Home Office policy which ministers are hiding is doing his job in the public interest.”

The Commons speaker, Michael Martin, knew that MP Green's arrest was completely wrong:

Quote

His response, in a nervous statement that he delivered flush-faced, was to lay much of the blame for the raid on an assistant, Jill Pay, whom he had named this year to the post of Commons sergeant-at-arms, in charge of parliamentary security.

So politicians are the same everywhere.

[Winstonm]

Quote

The Commons speaker, Michael Martin, knew that MP Green's arrest was completely wrong:

To me the entire process appears to have been the utilization of the "anti-terror" laws for the purpose of political intimidation.

More polarization, more "with us or against us" mentality that diminishes debate or counter-arguments by marginalizing the opposition.

Intolerance as the defense to intolerance. What a sad state of affairs.

[Al_U_Card]

The natural escalation of availability.

If you have it, you will tend to use it.