Law and order are everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy. - Herbert Marcuse

For a clarification of the usage of "everyone", I'm going to define that as "an over-whelming majority"

That's only because the over-whelming majority was told by their president, a man who, under a non-currupt system should be trusted, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Your vice-president had strong ties to a company that stood to make untold billions as long as Americans could be duped into invading a country that posed no threat to the United States. Bush claimed that "God" told him to invade Iraq. It wasn't God, It was Chaney and Haliburton and the arms manufacturers.

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.

Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

The BBC persuaded Mr Shaath to go on the record for the first time for a three-part series on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Elusive Peace, which begins on Monday.

That was from October, 2005

In the book , "Bush Family Fortunes", it was revealed that George Bush (jr) was advised that in order to win the presidency he would have to get the vote of the religious right. Perhaps that explains why at a press conference, President Bush stated that "I read the bible every day" but was unable to say what part he had read that morning. Just like Sarah Palin was unable to state the name of even one newspaper she read when asked by Katie Couric.

Unless you actually believe that Bush was on a mission from God (which should scare the living bejeezuz out of you if think he was being honest) then there has to be an alternative to going to war. U.S. intelligence figures have gone on record stating that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. The head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, met secretly with British intelligence in Jordan in the early days of 2003. In weekly meetings with Michael Shipster, the British director of Iraqi operations, Habbush conveyed that Iraq had no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

So once you discount "voice of God" and WMD, what does that leave? Profit.

By the way, you cry "proof?". In response to your claim

Not interference just unconstitutional. AFAIK there are no such laws left in the USA, they have all been abolushed years and years ago.

I gave you three examples which you have chosen not to respond to. I'd appreciate a response. I also gave some election cost numbers and another example of the guy who got three life sentences. Where is your response to those? Ignoring what you don't like is not a viable debating tactic.

The laws are not written so that they can be legally discriminatory. That would be unconstitutional. They are written so that predominantly poor and/or black people are more likely to be affected. Typically these people vote Democrat. Just because the law was not technically discriminatory that does not mean that wasn't the intention. These voter restriction laws are being passed exclusively by Republican legislators.

As well, electronic voting machines are coming into wider use. Ostensibly, this is to prevent "chad" and other problems that result in spoiled ballots. Unfortunately, the voting machines being put into circulation have already been shown to vulnerable to hacking, resulting in further disenfranchisement. These machines produce no backup. A proper electronic voting machine would allow the voter to select candidates. It would indicate to the voter when a ballot was incorrectly filled out. When the voter pressed "VOTE", a paper ballot would be printed that the voter could then read to determine that it was filled out as requested. Only then would the voter take that ballot and feed it into an electronic counter.

That method produces a backup that can be counted by hand in the event of a dispute. Any method that produces no manual backupp should immediately ring the alarm bells.

Back to "corrupt". Can you explain to me how a non-corrupt system can sentence an Ex-Mortgage CEO to three years prison for a three billion dollar fraud, yet a homeless man who steals $100, then turns himself in to the police after regretting his actions gets fifteen years?

BTW, I agree with you on Romney. Loved his first two ads. Blatant lies then a bullsh!t response to justify them. Although, Santorum provided more than enough fodder as well. I miss Sarah Palin. She was just so easy - like shooting fish in a barrel.

As for the previous post, we hear in Canada have our share of legal travesties. Donald Marshall and Davil Milgard for two. Both spend years in jail for crimes that they did not commit and for which the police knew they were innocent. No money involved but corrupt nonetheless. Same thing with the construction industry in Quebec. Rotten to the core.

You forgot Celine Dion and Justin Bieber. I'm so very sorry.

Of course my condolances go out to the surviviors and the families of the victims of this horrible tragedy. I apologize for not stating that at the very start. But when something like this happens, how long a period is it necessary to wait before discussing what to do to fix the problem? I notice the police didn't waste any time arresting the shooter. This is the most obvious first step to take. The next step is to take action to prevent further tragedies of this sort. You don't honour the memories of the victims by allowing more people to die.

The thread was originally focused on guns and gun laws but, as happens, digressed into government and corruption of same. It seems that as the frequency of these incidents increases, the reaction is to pass laws that relax the gun restrictions even further. This is not a conspiracy theory. The statistics show that you are more likely to be shot in the states that have the least restrictive gun laws.

Here in Canada we have had our own problems with guns and violence. We have had school shootings, and just recently there were several deaths at a block party in Toronto when someone started shooting. We are not immune to the problems you are facing. We are just a little further behind the curve so what happens down south is of great interest to me.

Your collapsing economy and the violence are not unrelated. The economy did not collapse on its own. I am not an economist but it seems clear to me that it did not collapse on its own accord. It collapsed because of the decisions of people who were motivated by their own greed. These decisions were made possible because of the deregulation that has been going on for decades. Your economy collapsed when the housing bubble burst. Ours hasn't. Yet. Again, perhaps we are only behind the curve. At the moment our banks are heavily regulated. That is why our system is stable while yours, and Europe's are in crisis. Our gun deaths are a mere fraction of yours. Again, our guns are heavily regulated while yours are not.

And of course, no amount of debate can possibly ease the suffering in Aurora.

@Ancient_Dragon - Thanks for the link. That's very interesting reading. Hete's one for you on the NRA

To summarize:

The NRA has blocked all attempts to close a loophole that allows guns to be sold at gun shows without background checks despite the fact that 69% of NRA members are in favour of such a law.

People on the US terror watch list can legally purchase guns and explosives. The NRA opposes enacting more restrictive measures even though 82% of NRA members are in favour of such restrictions.

The NRA is opposed to various agencies sharing data which would make it easier for them to get to the bottom of how guns came to be used in a crime even though 69% of NRA members are in fovour of inter-agency sharing.

The NRA is opposed to any law requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to the police even though 78% of NRA members are in favour of such reporting laws.

And why? I suppose the fact that much of the money that the NRA gets is from the people who profit from these loopholes and this money, in turn, is used to fund re-election campaigns. Money talks.

Now let me say something about your system that I like. Here in Winnipeg, the police have arrested what they believe is a serial killer. They are aware of three recent killings and are trying to link him to others. One thing that shocks me in particular is that between 1974 and now he has had 99 convictions for various crimes. Under your system he would have been locked up for good as a career criminal long before he had committed most of those crimes. Here in Canada the attitude of the courts seems to be to apply a slap on the wrist and to really really believe that this time he is really sorry and won't do it again. That offends me. I wish our judges and politicians would "grow a pair", lock up these people and throw away the key.

I live in Illinois -- two of the last three governors are in prison right now for curruption

I wish we could do that to a few of our elected officials. We had one recently (Bev Oda) was caught altering documents. At first she denied this (in front of Parliament), but then admitted what she had done. Surprisingly (or not if you know Stephen Harper) she did not lose her cabinet post. Nor was she asked to resign. It was only after sticking the taxpayer for a few thousand in charges ($16 orange juice, limo, ultra-posh hotel) while attending a conference on child poverty that her leader cried "enough".

Cretien walked after being at the centre of a sponsorship scandal. Mulroney skirted on the Air-Bus scandal.

Most likely because most of Canada is frozen wasteland

We actually do have some parts that are quite nice. At least at times ;-) It just seems colder because we are on Celcius.