Lieberman Grilled at SCSU Campus Stop

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Heating up the conversation in a post-speech Q & A, student Rich Neagle (at center in back) asked if Lieberman's avowed support of the middle class and higher ed didn't run "cross-purpose with your support, on the other hand, of some extraordinarily expensive overseas adventures, such as the war in Iraq."
....."The truth is, we are an enormously wealthy country, and we could do both if we wanted to." Lieberman said his education initiatives could be funded by repealing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

Student Kevin Miner, who said he'd voted for Lieberman twice in 2000, said one question had been eating him up for a long time: "I want to know what the moral reasoning is from a man who went from being a freedom rider to a torture apologist. I want to know what happened."

The crowd — dozens of students joined by a lot of faculty and staff — applauded the question.

"I'm not a torture apologist," said Lieberman, citing "outrage" at absence of due process for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Then he went on to explain why he was one of only 12 Democratic senators to support a recent detainee bill. The bill prohibits some of the worst abuses of detainees, but many Democrats say it gives the president too much room to decide which other interrogation techniques are permissible and allow inhumane treatment of suspects.

Echoing Republican arguments, Lieberman told the student: "We're at war. It's hard for a lot of people to understand this, because it's a different kind of war.....I know it's fasionable to say what you're saying," Lieberman told the student. But "these are people who people working for us suspect of wanting to kill us. All of us! Any one of us! And it doesn't mean that they aren't human beings ... But they don't deserve the same rights that citizens of the United States do." The comment garnered a smattering of applause.

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2006/10/lieberman_at_sc.php

Here's a brief clip of the torture question
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_6zCk-yrI&eurl=

That, that....SENATOR implied that that engaged, inquisitive student, who showed UP and voiced a sincere concern, of holding his opinion only because it's STYLISH. ASS! And pardon my nasty partisan rancor all to hell, but if Joe's so "outraged" about a lack of due process, just how addle-minded is he to have voted down habeas corpus?

[Erika]

1. So Joe thinks his God discriminates as to who will be treated

humanely? Take out the trash Joe, and stay there with it.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. Your comment doesn't make any sense.

He said nothing of the sort.

[LisaM]

4. What war has been declared, other than a vague declaration against terror?

Why not just declare a war against weather?

If these people want the country to be at war (which I believe Lieberman does) they need to 1) stop giving a blank check to contractors like Halliburton and spend the money responsibly; and 2) declare a real war, with all that that implies, including sacrifices by its citizenry. I don't want anyone in the government to declare "we're at war" unless they really want to suffer the hardship that entails.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. Was that reply meant for me?

[hollowdweller]

2. People are making me proud these days. Speaking up. No shit taken

[Dora]

5. "They don't deserve the same rights."

"But they don't deserve the same rights that citizens of the United States do."

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security....

(more at the link: http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html)

[Rose Siding]

8. I don't think these smarmy pols even hear what they say anymore

Joe sounds JUST like George. It's the *people* who don't understand. WHO do they think is in charge???

[Crunchy Frog]

12. Why does Joe hate the founding documents of our country?

He needs to be pressed on this question.

[leesa]

6. This vile lying fear-mongering POS. Iraqis wat to kill ALL OF US

Do you hear ALL OF US. IRANIANS WANT TO KILL ALL OF US!!! ALL OF US!!!

Joe is nothing but a bigot.

[Ms. Clio]

9. They are "suspects" ! Guilty of nothing until proven in a court of law

now matter what country they are from. And even then, the Constitution expressly forbids "cruel and unusual punishment" no matter how guilty someone turns out to be.

My god, I can't believe what I just read.

I am simply stunned.

[Clarkie1]

10. They are SUSPECTS, jackass. Not PROVEN guilty and they

do DESERVE the same rights as any other...INNOCENT until proven guilty!

[Rose Siding]

13. Look how he phrases the way the determination of their guilt is made

It's not The Decider's handiwork, but "these are people who people working for us suspect of wanting to kill us"

I wonder if he's talking about the Afghani or Pakistani warlords who sold some of them to us. Have we "outsourced" the presumption of innocence?

[Crunchy Frog]

11. There are plenty of citizens of the United States who want to kill us.

Like those sickos in the recent school shootings. You're far more likely to be murdered by a good old red blooded American than by a foreign terrorist. Given these facts, why does Lieberman believe that Americans who want to kill other Americans deserve to have rights that foreign killers don't have. He really thinks that Ted Bundy deserved rights, but that it's okay to torture some poor slob who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got swept up in the hunt for terrorists.

Why does Joe Lieberman love people like Ted Bundy, Timothy McViegh, and the Amish school shooter so much? I'd like to see those questions get put to him.

[Toots]

14. But they don't deserve the same rights that citizens of the United States

Thou shalt not judge...Holy Joe...What gives you the right to say what other human beings deserve unless there is sufficient proof that they have done things that make them unworthy. Remember these are suspects not convicts. We are treating people as convicts instead of suspects and that in and of itself is not American. Supposedly we are innocent until proven guilty. Remember these people are suspects not convicts and they are human beings and should be treated with the same dignity as you would wish to be treated. You know kind of like that old Golden Rule thingy. Do onto others what you would want done onto you

[Vidar]

15. Great question by Kevin Miner.