The basic fact is that this administration has been clear on one thing, they hate freedom and have a total disregard for the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The president has stated this word for word, "just a piece of paper" and "don't bother me with it".
When they pass bills they place addendums onto them so they are not applicable to themselves.
No Libertarian supports this regime, and it is a regime and a regime alone.

Rkzen, come to your senses -- I know they are there, for I read your posts.

Your civil rights and liberties have not been infringed by Bush & Neocons, Inc. & (TM). Their political instincts run against that. You still raise hell on any website you like, without a political minder. You still buy the pistol you like. Nobody's searched and seized your property. Et cetera.

Clearly, his actions show he is indeed bothering about and with the Constitution in a way his immediate predecessor never did. That corrupt possum-headed son of a bitch was beholden to illegal foreign campaign contributors, vulnerable to scandal, and tried to hammer Smith & Wesson right out of business, and treated the Constitution not as a guide to his behavior but as a stumbling block to his ambitions. GWB does not have those particular ambitions, I should point out to certain people who can't see straight for prejudices I do not share and regard as very stupid.

There's been a helluva lot of yelling by people of no evident depth of thought about how those awful Republicans are putting everybody in shackles, but the evidence on the ground never supported the contention and never shall. Which is why I am sick unto doing the Linda Blair of it. You heard it here first: the guy who tells you "they hate freedom and have a total disregard for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights" is a lying untrustworthy bastard example of a chimp brain in a human body. Or he's a Fascist trying to lie his way into power. Either way, the back of our collective hand to him, either for subnormal intelligence or doubledyed villainy featuring wannabe oppressor-ness. You know -- the sort of thing I perennially score the Left about.

You can't get freedom when you have less-than-democracy. A Libertarian knows that already. The Bush Administration has done more to eliminate less-than-democracy from troubled foreign parts than ANY Democratic Administration after FDR's. Repeat, any. All the progress made in that direction was made by Republicans. Repeat, all of it.

On consideration, maybe somebody can convince me some progress was made in that direction in the Balkans -- but it's been so quiet I'd hardly know where to look, and at best there the Clinton Administration only began the task. It has had to be continued, insofar as our government is doing anything in the Balkans, by Republicans. The record tells me the Republicans, when they actually get the chance to do something about it, are the ones to trust. The Democrats spend the same times belying their party's name, under the undue influence of the socialist wing of their party and of the Left generally.

There is much to agree with in your post. I am, however, offended by the sheepdog mentality when it assumes that the people are unable to defend themselves. I think we too often minimize the capacity of citizens. That assumption lead to a standing army and eventually to this offensive war. That is the part the devout leftist doesn't get. Disarming the populace requires an escalation of armaments for the police and army. Weapons good enough for self-defense spread over a vast population are vastly superior at maintaining the Republic to offensive weapons prepositioned all over the globe.

I think it's less an assumption that "the people are unable to defend themselves," than a skewering of those anti-self-defense loudmouths who have done so much to screw up gun rights and grease the ways for a genocide. Otherwise, yes, quite.

I agree that Clinton did a lot of fucked-up stuff and most never heard about it. He was one of the worst Republican presidents we ever had.
But that does not have squat to do with the two anti patriot acts, data mining, wire tapping, finance tracking, etc, without warrants. Finally, the final, illegal/immoral war with Iraq.
Illegal and wrong is just wrong and what he did was as bad as Wilson, post-stroke/influenza any day.
Clinton may have seen it as a stumbling block, however Bush treats it with total disregard, and has said so on more than one occasion.

Whaaaaaaaa????????????

rkzenrage - Do you disregard laws that you feel unjust or do not apply to you? You seem to be very critical of everyone and everything that does not conform to your opinion. I know I'm relatively new around here, but it seems very hypocritical of you to attack, challenge, blame - whatever you want to call it - every politician, poster and human if/when they don't agree with you.

A simple disagreement is none of the things you listed sock.

define unjust

Rkzen, Bill Clinton would be purely astonished at your description.

I cannot fit the Iraq campaign or the Afghan campaign into a definition of illegal or immoral that actually does not do violence to the concepts of both, simultaneously.

The breaking of nondemocracy is necessary and in the end beautiful. It puts away nondemocracy's anti-prosperity effects and allows human beings en masse to quit living like cattle. It did that for us as far back as the late eighteenth century, and it will work for any set of human beings anywhere. Who cares how many fascists die in the process? You're not that solicitous of fascists' health yourself, Rkzen. I am merely explicit about it.