posted
Getting back to the main subject, with Global Warming an increasing threat, I am afraid that the US can not afford to give up millions of acres of what will soon be prized farmland.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Russia doesn't even need or want it. They have way more than enough land for their people, and Siberia is closer with far more natural resources remaining than Alaska has. Besides, we paid for it fair and square, just like we bought the Louisiana Purchase, which also wasn't really someone else's to sell us, but that was how Western Powers used to operate when it came to divying up land.
Actually, the Louisiana Purchase was kind of illegal, because the government hadn't been empowered to do it.
No kind of about it, it was totally illegal. But as I remember it, not because the 'government' couldn't do it, specifically because the Executive Branch didn't have the power to do it unilaterally. Jefferson did it without approval from the Congress. The Congress was allowed, and they did so with the Gadsden Purchase a couple decades later.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I don't know if that would count as an impeachable offense or not, you'd have to ask Dag. These days it would probably be legal, as the Executive Brance has access to a lot more discretionary funding than they did back then, when lean really meant lean when it came to government. The rise of the "imperial presidency" changed all that at the onset of the 20th century.
I'm not sure what the legal definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" is, but theoretically, Congress should have been able to stop the funds from going to Napoleon.
quote:I don't know if that would count as an impeachable offense or not, you'd have to ask Dag.
Anything the House says is an impeachable offense is an impeachable offense. Although there are many hypothetical impeachments that I think would violate the Constitution, there's no remedy for such a bad decision by the House.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Actually I have the military Channel and from what I can tell developing stealth technology had nothing to do with Russian emmigres there was so much that needed to be devveloped and heck so much stuff that needed to be INVENTED that I highly doubt one russian scientest is the cause of it. I think were passed the stage of human progress where 1 man makes a difference in anything except anything abstractely math related.
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Hamilton didn't fire at Burr in the duel. And he really didn't think Burr would either. That's what I read in a biography on him. I call it murder.
Dag - Really? What would hypothetically be protected by the constitution? I had no idea they had such broad powers of impeachment.
Blayne - The military channel notwithstanding (which I also have, and love), the foundations of stealth technology were born of a single man (and really, I think you can trace a LOT of technologies back a single person). He was a Russian, who was forced to leave the country for a reason I can't remember, political differences I think. He fled to America, where he helped with early stealth designs that led to the development of the F-117. Pyotr Ufimstsev was his name, I just looked it up. He wrote a paper on angles being used on the surface of a jet to break up the radar signal as it passes over the ship, which is where you get all the jagged edges on the surface of the Nighthawk. A guy at Lockheed read his paper and stealth was revolutionized from the Blackbird.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Or at least AFAIK my post is mostly inregards to the B-2 bomber, although its a pitiful failure shot down by Iraqi flak of all things.
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Stealth was around for two generations of aircraft before the B-2 Blayne. The SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk were forerunners.
Last I checked a B-2 has never been shot down before. And no one I can recall has ever called it a failure.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
It has been shot down in the Iraq war, several times in fact, by Iraqis macguivering microwave radar and shooting it down with FLAK, something understandably the Pentagon would not officially advertise since these things cost how many billions again?
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posted
If that many of them had been shot down during the Iraq War (which one are we talking about? Gulf War I or II?), there wouldn't be any of them left.
quote:It has been shot down in the Iraq war, several times in fact, by Iraqis macguivering microwave radar and shooting it down with FLAK, something understandably the Pentagon would not officially advertise since these things cost how many billions again?
If the Pentagon has not advertised it, how on Earth do you know about it?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Oh I forgot to add, a B-2, if one were built today, would probably cost $150 million or so to build.
The reason the 20 that were built cost $2 billion per unit is because you have to spread the $40 billion R&D bill over the price of the unit, that's how the military looks at the price of a unit. If the 135 that were originally planned had been built, each unit would have been considerably cheaper.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Because there are other souces aside from the Pentagon, im seeing if i can google up a link though my cat is sleeping on me.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: He did not. It was a duel.
Pfft. After the mid-1700s, duels were illegal -- even back in good ol' England. The "winner" of a duel usually had to flee the country to avoid being jailed for murder.
I'm with Lyr on this one.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Hamilton didn't fire at Burr in the duel. And he really didn't think Burr would either. That's what I read in a biography on him. I call it murder.
That's cute. All Hamilton had to do was not show up. You show up at a duel, legal or not, with you and another person holding guns, you can't complain if you get dead.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: Because there are other souces [sic] aside from the Pentagon,[sic] im [sic] seeing if i [sic] can google up a link[sic] though my cat is sleeping on me.
Ah, and so you know things we don't because you have random website links.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Hamilton didn't fire at Burr in the duel. And he really didn't think Burr would either. That's what I read in a biography on him. I call it murder.
That's cute. All Hamilton had to do was not show up. You show up at a duel, legal or not, with you and another person holding guns, you can't complain if you get dead.
Perhaps. But it's still murder.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
alot of know things from random website links but unfortunately this is not something i read off the internet but elsewhere and I cant seem to find a reputable website link to back it up *shrug*.
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"But you know the real reason they're giving it to me. They don't want me to come back as a ghost and haunt them. And trust me, I wouldn't be like Casper. Oh, no! I'd have the furniture moving, I'd have walls bleeding, I'd show up in their family photos. Ooo-wooo-hooo! I'm scaring myself!"
-- Murphy Brown, From Here to JerusalemPosts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:alot of know things from random website links but unfortunately this is not something i read off the internet but elsewhere and I cant seem to find a reputable website link to back it up *shrug*.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Hamilton didn't fire at Burr in the duel. And he really didn't think Burr would either. That's what I read in a biography on him. I call it murder.
That's cute. All Hamilton had to do was not show up. You show up at a duel, legal or not, with you and another person holding guns, you can't complain if you get dead.
Perhaps. But it's still murder.
For once, I agree with Lisa. Though I think what we're really quibbling over is the definition of "murder."
From a dictionary standpoint, you're right: any premeditated illegal killing is murder. All that matters is whether the government finds it acceptable or not. If duels are legal, it's not murder; if they aren't, it is.
At least in my mind, this is an unsatisfactory, arbitrary distinction. In my mind, a better criterion would be whether the person killed assented to the circumstances and accepted the risk involved. Under that definition, a duel, Russian roulette, and killing on the battlefield wouldn't be murder, while poisoning your annoying coworker, bombing civilians, and most capital punishment would be.
...granted, I think all of the above are about equally immoral, but that's not the semantic issue at hand here.
(I'll also grant that arguing with the dictionary and popular and historical usage is silly and that I'm wrong. I find that I'm okay with that.)
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Even were I to agree, Lyr's point about Hamilton's expectations still make it murder. He did not expect to actually be risking death. And that was not uncommon among duelists of the time. Actually shooting to kill was at the very least poor form.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I just reread the end of Alexander Hamilton, American. by Richard Brookhiser, which is the book I was referencing before.
Hamilton met Burr at the same place, and using the same pistols that had killed Hamilton's eldest son in a duel a couple years prior. Hamilton had told his son that the honorable thing to do in a duel was to fire his shot into the air, as killing in a duel was considered exceptionally bad form, especially in New England, the one place in America at the time where dueling was despised.
Hamilton had made it known publicly before the duel that he had no intention of shooting Burr, and wasn't entirely sure what Burr was going to do, though it seems Burr told many that his intention was to shoot to kill. He intended to follow the same advice he had given his son, which in the words of Brookhiser were: "He would follow the advice he had given his son Phillip. If it were innocent advice then it would be innocent still; if guilty, it would be doubly so, though he would pay the penalty."
There's a myriad array of explanations as to why Hamilton would go to a duel that he thought he might die in, and from the actions he took beforehand in setting up his will, it's clear he knew it was a distinct possibility, and I won't go into them, but no matter how you slice it, I think it was murder. Just because he probably knew the outcome and chose to go anyway in no way excuses the fact that Burr still pulled the trigger, knowing he was about to kill a man who had no intention of fighting back.
Apologies for saying that Hamilton didn't think Burr would fire. He knew it was possible, maybe even likely, but it was public knowledge that Hamilton would not shoot back. He got off because of a legal loophole regarding dueling, which at that time and place was apparently not illegal, but intent, and action, I think show this act to not only be murder, but pre-meditated murder.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Hey! No mocking me, I do give sources when they are availiable thats one thing about me you cannot deny.
I think conceivably you might find several people around here to deny it. Anyway, when a source is requested, "I give them when available" is not a good answer. If they are not available, that casts considerable doubt on the accuracy of the information; that's why a source was requested in the first place.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Being a new resident of Alaska, I must say. I'd kinda like to be Russian. I already have the Soviet military "Holy crap it's cold out here" hat.
<He said, then realized that his screen name is Boris, which added just a little more humor to the above statement>
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