USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

[ralphwiggum 6]

yup. In Federal system, Federal Law is the supreme law. So if a state makes a law that is contradictory to Federal one, than federal law takes it down. Just recently there was a Supreme court decision on that issue. It was about medical marijuana, and the core of it ended up being fed vs. state law. in the end, federal law won.

however, the federal law is very broad and lenient. states can be tougher on same crime.

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]yup. In Federal system, Federal Law is the supreme law. So if a state makes a law that is contradictory to Federal one, than federal law takes it down. Just recently there was a Supreme court decision on that issue. It was about medical marijuana, and the core of it ended up being fed vs. state law. in the end, federal law won.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) was the case whose decision said federal govt. trumps state(s) government.

You know the medical marijuana law in those states are not overturned? It just reaffirmed what was already in place about commerce of marijuana in the federal books already..

[denoir 0]

Won't that result in all law in the end being federal? Is there any way a state can argue that the federation has no jurisdiction?

Basically in the EU the member states have delegated the law making in certain areas to Union level. In those areas Union law supersedes state law. There are however areas, such as for instantance taxes or drug laws where the Union has no legal say.

A fundamental concept in the EU is the subsidiary principle - the fundamental doctrine that policy making decisions should be made at the most decentralized level, in which a centralized governing body would not take action unless it it is more effective than action taken at a lower government level.

So basically, you only bring stuff to the Union level that every member state agrees on, the rest is up to the states and the Union has no say there.

Do you have something similar, preventing federal law from taking over completely?

[Akira 0]

Federal law does "take over completely" for the simple reason that the individual states in the US are not independant countries as in EU.

[denoir 0]

Federal law does "take over completely" for the simple reason that the individual states in the US are not independant countries as in EU.

"Independent" is a point of view. Right now over 50% of the legislation in the EU is Union legislation. In terms of law, the member states are more states within the EU than independent nation states.

Right now the EU is somewhere between a confederation and a federation.

When the US was founded, the colonies had some pretty diverse ideas of the extent of cooperation. You even later had a civil war. My point being that you must have been through this process of trying to find a balance and I'm interested how you solved them in the end. Sure the conditions for the colonies and the conditions for the European countries are very different, but I think there are certain fundamental issues that are the same. So it is interesting to hear how these issues have been solved in other federations (US, Germany, Switzerland..).

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]When the US was founded, the colonies had some pretty diverse ideas of the extent of cooperation. You even later had a civil war. My point being that you must have been through this process of trying to find a balance and I'm interested how you solved them in the end. Sure the conditions for the colonies and the conditions for the European countries are very different, but I think there are certain fundamental issues that are the same. So it is interesting to hear how these issues have been solved in other federations (US, Germany, Switzerland..).

I would say through trial and error the United States found some sort of "balance". For example, the Articles of Confederation was replaced by the Constitution or the failed Bank of the United States.

[ralphwiggum 6]

translation: denoir, your first step in conquering the world is to take advantage of EU's future conflict arising from this discussion we have. thank me later when you are <s>dictator</s>leader of european nations.

[billybob2002 0]

it's time to kill the mood...

online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111810145819652326,00.html?mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Fcommentaries

Quote[/b] ]COMMENTARY

The Great Ground Zero Heist

By DEBRA BURLINGAME

June 7, 2005; Page A14

On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero. The broken pieces of the Twin Towers have long ago been cleared away. There are no faded flags or hand-painted signs of national unity, no simple tokens of remembrance. So why do they come? What do they hope to see?

The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They'll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.

* * *

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom" -- but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere -- anywhere -- else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend -- people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

* * *

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life -- as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded -- as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -- 27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12.

The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

While Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and LMDC are focusing their attention on the economic revival of lower Manhattan, there has been no meaningful oversight with respect to the "cash cow of Ground Zero." Meanwhile, the Freedom Center's organizers are quickly lining up individuals, institutions and university provosts with this arrogant appeal: "The memorial to the victims will be the heart of the site, the IFC will be the brain." Indeed, they have declared the World Trade Center Memorial the perfect "magnet" for the world's "great leaders, thinkers and activists" to participate in lectures and symposiums that examine the "foundations of free and open societies." Put less grandly, these activists and academics are salivating at the prospect of holding forth on the "perfect platform" where the domestic and foreign policy they despise was born.

Less welcome to the Freedom Center are the actual beneficiaries of that policy. According to the New York Times, early renderings of the center's exhibit area created by its Norwegian architectural firm depicted a large mural of an Iraqi voter. That image was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs were made public. What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did.

* * *

The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hanger at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million dollar insult.

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

*no comment*, it speaks for itself...

[ralphwiggum 6]

so how do you like that? TBA and necons tried to use 911 as a basis for war on terror, which extended to Iraq. now that the table is (supposedly) turning, they are fretting about the memorial not being "about 911"?

maybe the cons need to acknowledge that the memorial should be apolitical and should not be used for their political agenda as much as they worry about it going the other way.

oh, by the way, it's an opinion piece.

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]so how do you like that? TBA and necons tried to use 911 as a basis for war on terror, which extended to Iraq. now that the table is (supposedly) turning, they are fretting about the memorial not being "about 911"?

maybe the cons need to acknowledge that the memorial should be apolitical and should not be used for their political agenda as much as they worry about it going the other way.

oh, by the way, it's an opinion piece.

Quote[/b] ]Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Quote[/b] ]The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

sigh...Why do cons need to acknowledge that 9/11 memorial should be apolitical have to deal with the official memorial of 9/11? They have no say in the process by the looks of it. Furthermore, if they did have a say, some of that "tolerance" stuff would not be in the plans and other "stuff" that don't deal with 9/11.

She hit it right on the head:

Quote[/b] ]This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

[General Barron 0]

@Akira

Quote[/b] ]I'm not going to deny that my moral outrage is not somewhat diminished by the fact that the Democrats won...

Look, you are trying to call me a hypocrite, but in fact it is YOU that is being the hypocrite. Don't lump me in with your personal view of what a "conservative" is like. I am not a Republican. I did not vote for Dino Rossi. I told you that I had no opinion on the 2000 Florida mess. In the 2004 election, when Sen. Boxer was screaming about possible election problems in Ohio, I grinded my teeth, because I KNEW she would NEVER do the same thing for the people here--because the results suited her.

Quote[/b] ]Elections should be a non-partisan issue.

What I mean is that FAIR and ACCURATE elections should be a non-partisan issue. It is almost the only issue that Americans on all sides SHOULD be able to agree on.

I would hope that everyone could take off their partisan blinders for ONE GOD DAMN SECOND, and even just PRETEND to have a sense of impartiality. Two wrongs don't make a right, for Christ's sake. Nor do the ends justify the means.

@Denior

Quote[/b] ]My point being that you must have been through this process of trying to find a balance and I'm interested how you solved them in the end.

LOL!!!   I hate to break the news to you, but "States Rights vs Federal Rights" is a debate that rages on to this day. Some examples:

Drug laws (said above); Roe v Wade (prior to this it was up to the individual states to determine abortion law); Gay marriage (again, up to the individual states, but there are people who would like the Feds to rule in on this one way or the other); gun control; interstate commerce? (especially relating to the internet I think); and on and on.

If you like things bastardized into the typical "Republicans vs Democrats" package: Reps traditionally support giving more power to the individual States; Dems traditionally want more power for the Feds.

[Akira 0]

Quote[/b] ]Look, you are trying to call me a hypocrite, but in fact it is YOU that is being the hypocrite. Don't lump me in with your personal view of what a "conservative" is like. I am not a Republican. I did not vote for Dino Rossi. I told you that I had no opinion on the 2000 Florida mess. In the 2004 election, when Sen. Boxer was screaming about possible election problems in Ohio, I grinded my teeth, because I KNEW she would NEVER do the same thing for the people here--because the results suited her.

And I'm the hypocrite? At least I admit that its no skin off my ass, but that I still fear for voters...GOP and Dem. But you have "no opinion" about Florida in 2000 but you expect others to care about Washington now?

Quote[/b] ]What I mean is that FAIR and ACCURATE elections should be a non-partisan issue. It is almost the only issue that Americans on all sides SHOULD be able to agree on.

I would hope that everyone could take off their partisan blinders for ONE GOD DAMN SECOND, and even just PRETEND to have a sense of impartiality. Two wrongs don't make a right, for Christ's sake. Nor do the ends justify the means.

In an ideal world they would be, but when you are dealing with power, especially in this day and age, it is going to be extremely partisan.

It has nothing to do with partisan "blinders". It has to do with reality. Lemme try it this way:

1-Florida fuck up-National Election-Nothing is changed

2-Ohio discrepencies-National Election-Nothin is changed

3-Washington discrepencies-National/Local Election

How do you think its going to turn out? You can try and label me a political partisan if you want, but its not going to change a thing. How do you think Ohio and Florida felt? Well now you are finding out.

[ralphwiggum 6]

sigh...Why do cons need to acknowledge that 9/11 memorial should be apolitical have to deal with the official memorial of 9/11? They have no say in the process by the looks of it. Furthermore, if they did have a say, some of that "tolerance" stuff would not be in the plans and other "stuff" that don't deal with 9/11.

She hit it right on the head:

Quote[/b] ]This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

ok, so what does Iraq war has to do with 9-11? Why were the Marines injured in Iraq at WTC?

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]ok, so what does Iraq war has to do with 9-11? Why were the Marines injured in Iraq at WTC?

Quote[/b] ]On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero.

Just because three Marines who were wounded in Iraq got to be apart of a wreath-laying ceremony does not mean 9/11=Iraq.

Let me ask you this question. What does MLK, Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond has to do with 9/11?

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]ok, so what does Iraq war has to do with 9-11? Why were the Marines injured in Iraq at WTC?

Quote[/b] ]On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero.

Just because three Marines who were wounded in Iraq got to be apart of a wreath-laying ceremony does not mean 9/11=Iraq.

question you have to ask is why were they attending in the first place? Iraq!=911 so why were they attending?

Quote[/b] ]Let me ask you this question. What does MLK, Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond has to do with 9/11?

this is the same question that i've been asking you with 3 marines up there. seems like you are covering your ears.

[Sophion-Black 0]

ok, so what does Iraq war has to do with 9-11?

9/11 just kick-started the WOT, and Iraq is a battlefield of the WOT.

Quote[/b] ]Let me ask you this question. What does MLK, Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond has to do with 9/11?

they all happened on Earth

[SFWanabe 0]

Quote[/b] ]9/11 just kick-started the WOT, and Iraq is a battlefield of the WOT.

Thats where your wrong kid. Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. If it did people would be supporting all around like they did afganistan. Bush invaded Iraq because he held a grudge on saddam for trying to kill his dad,he wanted to finish what his dad should have finished,and for oil.

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]question you have to ask is why were they attending in the first place? Iraq!=911 so why were they attending?

That's like asking why do boy scouts put flowers on the graves of soldiers that they never knew. They are feakin honoring the victims.

Quote[/b] ]this is the same question that i've been asking you with 3 marines up there. seems like you are covering your ears.

The difference between what those 300 service members did and those exhibits that those people want to do is the service members were honoring the 9/11 victims. The service members are like the boy scouts in this reguard.

[Sophion-Black 0]

Quote[/b] ]9/11 just kick-started the WOT, and Iraq is a battlefield of the WOT.

Thats where your wrong kid. Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. If it did people would be supporting all around like they did afganistan. Bush invaded Iraq because he held a grudge on saddam for trying to kill his dad,he wanted to finish what his dad should have finished,and for oil.

You really don't read much do you?

agreed, we invaded Iraq to show Suidi Arabia that we still can kick some ace (due from the Vietnam and Korean War loss). They'er probably still founding Terrorist even though we did try to show them up.

Saudia Aribia has been funding terrorists since the First Gulf War, and obviously they haven't quit funding because some of them are still coming over to Iraq. Since we cant directly wage war on them because of there oil supply, we just have to put fear in their eyes and make the Suadi goverment surpress the terrorists. The people dont give the war the support because they don't follow it and recognize that it playes a tremendous role in the war. Just because people feel a a certian way doesn't mean its the truth. Hell we have jihadist fighting the Americans because they feel that America (christains) is unholy, now does it mean America is evil!?

Don't call me kid

[General Barron 0]

At least I admit that its no skin off my ass, but that I still fear for voters...GOP and Dem. But you have "no opinion" about Florida in 2000 but you expect others to care about Washington now?    

*Sigh*

I know this may come as a tremendous shock to you, but SOME people try not to profess an opinion on subjects they know nothing about.

I admit, it does seem pretty weird that I wouldn't just regurgitate whatever is said by people on "my side of the aisle". If you really want, I can find some talking points and have them give me an opinion on that particular issue.

----------------------

And just to pre-empt your comeback, no, just because one is uninformed about something like this doesn't mean that they don't care if wrongdoing has occured. I don't know much about the specifics of Stalin's murderous USSR for example, but it doesn't mean I don't care.

[Akira 0]

I'm not sure what your fancy is in continuing to make this a "partisan" thing, but much to your distress I am sure, I won't bite.

You can try to continue to label people as blind partisans if you wish, and if it helps you sleep at night, but the sad fact is it won't change anything. You got screwed, Ohio got screwed, and Florida got screwed. Thats the simple truth. The fact you only cared when it effected you should say plenty. Take it as a lesson, and learn more about what is going on in the world, not just in your city/state. Eventually it will come and bite you in the ass as you have found out.

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]question you have to ask is why were they attending in the first place? Iraq!=911 so why were they attending?

That's like asking why do boy scouts put flowers on the graves of soldiers that they never knew. They are feakin honoring the victims.

Quote[/b] ]this is the same question that i've been asking you with 3 marines up there. seems like you are covering your ears.

The difference between what those 300 service members did and those exhibits that those people want to do is the service members were honoring the 9/11 victims. The service members are like the boy scouts in this reguard.

Marines = emploee of US gov't

boy scouts = private organization

furthermore, there are other members who could have been sent to the memorial. but why those 3 who were in Iraq? How about those who were not deployed oversees?

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]Marines = emploee of US gov't

boy scouts = private organization

furthermore, there are other members who could have been sent to the memorial. but why those 3 who were in Iraq? How about those who were not deployed oversees?

Maybe because it was a Fleet Week "event"...

Quote[/b] ]

Marines at Fleet Week lay wreath at WTC site

Friday, May 27, 2005 Posted: 11:00 PM EDT (0300 GMT)

After a three mile run to the World Trade Center site, marines laid a wreath at Ground Zero.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hundreds of troops here for Fleet Week took time off Friday to attend two events to commemorate the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- one a very public show of strength, the other quiet and private.

Almost 300 members of the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard took part in the first event, a three-mile run around lower Manhattan followed by a wreath-laying ceremony beside the former World Trade Center site.

As they stood under a cloudless sky at the site of the terrorist strikes, the group let out a shout that reverberated across the 16-acre gap where the towers once stood.

"The Marine Corps like to be loud when they do this, it's a pride thing," explained Sgt. John Hoellwarth, 24, of Antioch, California. "They want New York City to hear them."

The other event was held inside the gates of the site, where new buildings will soon rise. A small group, including a woman who lost her sister in the attacks and an Army reservist who helped with the recovery effort, gathered inside the footprint of one of the towers to pray and thank members of the military for their sacrifices.

Cedith Michael of Lebanon, Ohio, came to New York to see her only child, Lance Cpl. Mark Ryan Smith, 20, who recently returned from an eight-month stint in Iraq.

Smith, in town for Fleet Week, took part in the run around lower Manhattan.

"I didn't want to miss him," she said. "In the military, that's one thing you learn -- to wait."

Both events highlighted the connection between the civilians killed in the terrorist attacks and the men and women now in uniform.

Marine Capt. Dan McSweeney, of Manhattan, who attended the wreath-laying ceremony, said visiting ground zero "forces you to remember that our world changed on September 11, and that service members' lives continue to be directly impacted by the events of the day."

So, they should of had been denied attending the ceremony because they were wounded in Iraq.

[ralphwiggum 6]

Quote[/b] ]Marines = emploee of US gov't

boy scouts = private organization

furthermore, there are other members who could have been sent to the memorial. but why those 3 who were in Iraq? How about those who were not deployed oversees?

Maybe because it was a Fleet Week "event"...

Quote[/b] ]

Marines at Fleet Week lay wreath at WTC site

Friday, May 27, 2005 Posted: 11:00 PM EDT (0300 GMT)

After a three mile run to the World Trade Center site, marines laid a wreath at Ground Zero.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hundreds of troops here for Fleet Week took time off Friday to attend two events to commemorate the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- one a very public show of strength, the other quiet and private.

Almost 300 members of the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard took part in the first event, a three-mile run around lower Manhattan followed by a wreath-laying ceremony beside the former World Trade Center site.

As they stood under a cloudless sky at the site of the terrorist strikes, the group let out a shout that reverberated across the 16-acre gap where the towers once stood.

"The Marine Corps like to be loud when they do this, it's a pride thing," explained Sgt. John Hoellwarth, 24, of Antioch, California. "They want New York City to hear them."

The other event was held inside the gates of the site, where new buildings will soon rise. A small group, including a woman who lost her sister in the attacks and an Army reservist who helped with the recovery effort, gathered inside the footprint of one of the towers to pray and thank members of the military for their sacrifices.

Cedith Michael of Lebanon, Ohio, came to New York to see her only child, Lance Cpl. Mark Ryan Smith, 20, who recently returned from an eight-month stint in Iraq.

Smith, in town for Fleet Week, took part in the run around lower Manhattan.

"I didn't want to miss him," she said. "In the military, that's one thing you learn -- to wait."

Both events highlighted the connection between the civilians killed in the terrorist attacks and the men and women now in uniform.

Marine Capt. Dan McSweeney, of Manhattan, who attended the wreath-laying ceremony, said visiting ground zero "forces you to remember that our world changed on September 11, and that service members' lives continue to be directly impacted by the events of the day."

So, they should of had been denied attending the ceremony because they were wounded in Iraq.

ooohh...now look who is trying to put words in to my mouth.

If it was not a gov't directed, i.e. the Marines were there on their own time, then no one can stop them. but at this point you would have to recheck the writer and his mindset. how come he knows that the 3 marines were wounded in Iraq? by mentioning such info, he is trying to equate WOT with Iraq war. And is that a reasonable? not really. Iraq war started not because of 911. Yet the writer of the article wants to talk about 911 memorial, but had to shove in the Iraq veterans in it.

this should come as a troubling news since the reason has been thrown out in favor of collective flag waving.

on the other news

http://www.cnn.com/2005....ex.html

Quote[/b] ]WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A White House official, who previously worked for the American Petroleum Institute, has repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, made changes to descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists and their supervisors, the newspaper said, citing internal documents.

The White House declined comment on the report.

The report said the documents were obtained by the newspaper from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that provides legal help to government whistleblowers.

The group is representing Rick Piltz, who resigned in March from the office that coordinates government research and issued the documents that Cooney edited, the Times said.

The newspaper said Cooney made handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, removing or adjusting language on climate research.

White House officials told the newspaper the changes were part of a normal interagency review of all documents related to global environmental change.

"All comments are reviewed, and some are accepted and some are rejected," Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told the the newspaper.

In a memo sent last week to top officials dealing with climate change at a dozen agencies, Piltz charged that "politicization by the White House" was undermining the credibility and integrity of the science program.

[SFWanabe 0]

Quote[/b] ]You really don't read much do you?

I read alot more than you do if you beileve that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a victory in the WoT. Bin Laden never had an camps in Iraqi before we invaded but now they do thanks to Bush's greed.

Quote[/b] ]Don't call me kid

You are kid,because your under 21 and beileve everything you hear.