Decius wrote:
] Apparently my political views score most closely to that of
] the natural law party. The natural law party sounds like a
] bunch of lunatic spiritualists to me. Talk about coming at a
] solution from a different angle...

I voted for the Natural Law candidate in one of the Presidential elections once. :) They do have some rather, um, unconventional ideas, but some of them I agree with. For example, they state that if all felons were required by law to learn transcendental meditation, that the crime rate would decrease. And I think that's probably true. :)

RE: United States Natural Law Party - Wikipedia

] It's no surprise that Iraq should have come up at Mr. Bush's
] first national security meetings -- after all, the United States
] was patrolling the skies above Iraq to enforce "no-fly" zones.
] Nor is it surprising that the Bush team should have contemplated
] regime change: That was the declared policy of the United States,
] supported by the Clinton administration and Congress.
 . . .
] The wisdom of waging war in Iraq is a legitimate and important
] topic of political debate. But the Democratic candidates do no
] favors to their positions when they accept, uncritically, a
] half-unsurprising and half-dubious account, for no better reason
] than that it fits their prejudices.

Amen. It infuriates me to hear political candidates accuse the President of "misleading" people, when those candidates are doing their level best to do misleading of their own! Hypocrites. To accuse someone of "deliberately lying" is a serious charge, and I have no intention of voting for anyone who tosses that kind of language around for no other reason than political posturing.

If a candidate wants to disagree with the Administration, fine. If they say they have an idea for a better and wiser plan, I'm all for hearing it. But this mudslinging crap does nothing for them except to lose my vote.

Mr. O'Neill and Iraq

Transcripts of every Presidential "State of the Union" address, going back to 1946.

And of course, the next one is coming up in two weeks, on January 20th, 2004.

State of the Union Transcripts

] OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- An Oslo appeal court cleared a
] 20-year-old Norwegian man of DVD piracy charges on Monday
] in a new setback for Hollywood studios which say
] unauthorized copying costs them billions of dollars a
] year.
 . . .
] The lower Oslo court also said in January prosecutors had failed
] to prove that Johansen's program -- called DeCSS -- had been used
] for illegal copying.

Good news. :)

DeCSS Developer Cleared of DVD Piracy Charges in Norway

] There are friendly nations, but no friendly intelligence services.

Interesting reading from one of the former CIA Counterintelligence Chiefs. This is the agency whose job it is to protect "us" from *their* spies.

The Ten Commandments of Counterintelligence - by Jim Olson

] In the spirit of fairness, and of completeness, let me go
] down the list and tell you what I hate about each major
] branch of political thinking.

] Conservatives don't actually bother to spend time with people
] who are not conservative, and thus become confused and irritable
] when people disagree with them; fundamentally can't see how
] that's even possible

Liberals:
] Defensive and peevish even when they're right.

Libertarians:
] Unusually smug for a political philosophy that's never
] gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board.

A thorough slam of liberal, conservative, and libertarian views. Equal-time. ;)

John Scalzi: 'I Hate Your Politics'