Posts Made By: Steven Lynn

A few little points on the general issue (not this incident, so far! Well, the last point...) of possible criminal charges against a sitting President and Vice-President.
1. one poster mentioned that if Cheney were to be charged with a crime, Bush would pardon him. I would think a Presidential Pardon only affects Federal Crimes, not crimes under state jurisdiction. Am I right? wrong?

2. Executive Priviledge: in the area of criminal law I think the issue is not fully settled. Can a President be charged with a crime or must he be impeached first? The tendancy has been in favor of impeachment first, but there are still some ifs. What about charges by other jurisdictions? Does the Vice-President have the same status as the President? President Clinton was not able to stop a civil lawsuit.

3. Vice-President Agnew

4. The tension of the issue is of course between the practicality of the President being free, the need for him or her to focus on the job at hand, etc., versus the interests of Justice: no one is "above the law" (except, maybe, athletes ), the passage of time may erode memories, witnesses may die, statute of limitations may expire, etc.

5. Who's on list to replace Cheney, should that occur? Powell? Rice? Just wondering out loud.

I've noticed that music is one thing us humans can really disagree on. What is wonderful to one person can be torture to another person.

For example, I like to blast modern classical music (you know, the fingernails against the blackboard type screeching stuff) in my car whenever some dude with baggy pants or a baseball hat on backwards pulls up next to me playing some rap or bling-bling music. Drives 'em nuts. 8)

Ah, nice globular! I also like that yuo left some star field around it. I like both 'portrait' shots of astro items, and 'landscape' shots showing some surrounding sky. (Then there are 'action' shots, limited to comets hitting Jupiter or being broken up and they pass the sun, or space probes smashing into them.. or, this getting silly, sorry).

Anyway, there tends to be more closeup shots in our field; I like both styles.

Nice resolution of the stars in the core.
Steven

Based on a 'dog year' = year human years, as-in my 9 year old dog is 63 in human years.

And a 'car year' is 10 years.

What? Okay, sorry...

Hey Jess. Did you see a post I put somewhere, maybe even here.

Evolution versus intelligent design?

Dinosaurs>> score one for evolution!

The eyeball, how did that develop all at once? Score one for ID!

The Three Stooges>>> anyone what to claim them to support their side?

Thanks for all your answers. And thanks esp. to Ed for his great in-depth reviews over on CN. The one thing I couldn't find over there was a comparison of UA and Oberwerk surveyor tripods.

Based on what the responses here and other ideas I've read, I'm leaning to a top-of-the line surveryor tripod from UA or Oberwerk. Or--to change midstream (sorry) a heavy duty Bogen with a geared center column. I know, I got you all looking in one direction and now I've changed the "subject." Sorry!

I tried the 25x100's on a Majestic tripod. It worked but it made me very nervous that it would tip over. Not secure at all! One clumsy move and it's over. I also did not like squeezing into the center of the tripod.

The Majestic is a camera tripod for use with large format cameras; it has a geared center column. They go on "that" auction site for around $100-125. I would say it's a nice tripod for up to the 70 or 80 mm binoculars size.

Any feedback on the Bogen/Manfrotto alternative?

Wait a minute! I thought the mainstream media has a liberal bias. This must mean that the reality was much worse than this mini-series portrays, and they are only covering up the really bad things that happened in the Clinton administration!

Okay, calm down, Steven. Take a deep breath, say it slowly, Pee-you-em-pee. Not Bee-o-em-be. Pump.

A few slings I heard about the Bush administation. Janet Reno approved every request for the secret national security wiretaps that came acrosss her desk. (The legal ones that used the special courts). John Ashcroft (who was even creepier than Janet Reno, if you can believe that), appoved none before 9/11.

Remember the Al Qaida plot to hijack a bunch of planes over the Pacific and smash them into building in America? During the Clinton administration, there was a program involving military fighter jets patrolling the coastal regions. This was stopped when Bush came into office. Had those planes been in the air, they would have had a much better chance to intercept the last 3 hijacked planes on 9/11 that the jets that scrambled from the ground.

I read those two little facts above only once or twice since 9/11. I think that the political establishment, which includes both Republicans and Democrats, realized that there is enough blame to go around if you wish to engage in it, and so far has kept the blame game out of the spotlight. Also, it was not very 'tactful' to go in that direction soon after 9/11.

I would not be surprised, though, if the Dems fight back hard on this one.

WWI Victory-Democratic Pres.
WWII Victory-Democratic Pres.
Korean War Stalemate-Republican Pres.
Vietnam Defeat-Republican Pres.
Grenada HA!
Gulf War I Victory, for a while, Republican Pres.
Afghanistan Victory?? Republican Pres.
Iraq Victory becoming a total mess Republican Pres.

Conclusion: if you want to win a war, Democratic Presidents have a better track record!

It showed up on Cloudynights with much better pics.

I think Rod has a point. Once a wild area had burned there are some people and businesses who want to advantage of the situation. You might say they want a fire sale. (Sorry, too good to pass up).

Republicans and Conservatives are more likely than Liberals and Democrats to be in favor of post fire sales of land and resources. Or just more in favor of moving an area from a proteced to can be developed status.

An example: after a wildfire in a forest there is the question of what to do with damaged or fallen trees. An enviornmental viewpoint is that the leftover trees, even dead, are part of the ecology. You cannot remove them without having other effects. A fallen tree supports more living mass than a standing tree as it decays and fetilized the ground around. Another viewpoint is that a dead, rotting tree is a freebie, a resource that we should jump on to sell. There is often then tension that an area can't be logged, but after an area has fire damage, it should be opened up to 'salvage.' This view ignores the enviornmental facts that forests can recover, but cleaning out damaged trees can limit or even make recovery impossible.
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Even though the area is largely conservative, bigger, out of state or out of area forces I'm betting will be pressuring to loosen up the area to more development.

As an example of scale, I used to belong to the local Chamber of Commerce. I am a small businessman. The local Chambers will help the small businesses in local political issues. But, if a big business moves into town, The Chambers know their marching orders, and will support the Big business over the small business almost everytime.

I'm betting Big Republican/ Conservative will put a lot of pressure to quash the 'little' tree hugging locals, no matter what side their on.

Thanks for your replies. Maybe in a couple of hundred years Virgin spaceways will be offering 'ring eclipse' tours.

SL