Collins may show RINO tendencies, but....

Yeah, but the big kiss from Salazar before the State of the Unions address just makes us Mainers all wonder just how far she has supported this newly announced Great Maine Forest Initiative, which is only a rewrite of the Northern Forest Alliance Act of 20 yeras ago which we fought together.
Mainers need to keep watch on Susan Collins. She's showing uncomfortable leanings toward the enviro/left agenda lately.

I'd say many taxpayers have been looking for a smackdown delivered by Collins of the establishment? we wait

Collins slams Obama.

I brought this situation to light on 1/25/10 in this post.

Very good speech by Susan Collins. Got to give credit where credit is due.

Read Remarks Transcript

The Republican Response speech delivered this morning by Senator Susan Collins was wonderful and just what the Republicans in Maine need to hear. Good enough, perhaps, to lure me back as a contributor from the wasteland of disaffected conservatives. I am looking across Harpswell Sound, but not quite seeing the "shining city on the hill." Almost!
Good work Susan Collins.

The Harpswell Slicer

Collins is 100% as conservative as she can be AND win re-election in the dystopia that is Maine. Cut some slack.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president-obama-delivers-your-weekly-address/

There is the link to Obama's radio address of 1/24/10 above, you have Susan Collin's response to his radio address in a previous post.

In Obama's address you have him talking about the paradox and promise of government creating new jobs, in Susan's response she talks about terror, not much of a response to Obama's idea of creating more debt and creating jobs. As if government could create anything beyond red tape, stupidity and stiffling job creation, meaning not encouraging the private sector to create actual capital and worth to get out of our present correction.

I'm still waiting, I really have to think that Collins and Obama are tag-team members more concerned about themselves than America's recovery over decades of their incompetent rule.

In fairness, it's rare that the presidential address and the response actually discuss the same things. Both go for what they perceive as their positions of strength, regardless of what the other says.

Perhaps Sen. Collins can explain why she thinks that our Constitution applies only to "American citizens" in our country.

Perhaps you, Gerald, can explain why you think that it applies any other way.

Can someone give the full quote from Senator Collins to place it in context?

EI: Do you believe that the police should be able to stop and search non-citizens who are here legally without meeting the Constitutional standards for such stops? Should the police being able to search the homes of non-citizens with Green cards whenever they would like?

Nope, Dan, I don't. Gerald cast an awfully wide net and I'm just asking him to narrow it down a bit.

If the quote from Senator Collins is true, she also cast a very wide net.

But that doesn't mean the Constitution applies to people captured in Afghanistan and taken to Cuba. It doesn't.

Billings:

Here is a transcript that I made:

But today I want to discuss another failure, a failure that occurred after Abdulmutallab had already been detained by authorities in Detroit, an error that undoubtedly prevented the collection of valuable information about future terrorist threats to our country. This failure occurred when the Obama Justice Department unilaterally decided to treat this foreign terrorist as an ordinary criminal. Abdulmutallab was questioned for less than one hour before the Justice Department advised him that he could remain silent and offered him an attorney at our expense. Once afforded the protection our Constitution guarantees American citizens, this foreign terrorist lawyered up and stopped talking.

I'll give Collins the benefit of the doubt that she did not write this, that it was written by the RNC and given to her to read - it is truly a tour de force in fear-mongering, hitting xenophobic notes with aplomb.

Not only does she forget that the SCOTUS ruled that detainees at Git Mo are entitled to habeas (see Boumediene et. al. v. Bush, President of the United States, et. al.), but one wonders just how she would force Abdulmutallab to talk.

Hopefully by waterboarding him. Or in lieu of that I can locate a lobster tank full of the critters with no bands on their claws.

But that doesn't mean the Constitution applies to people captured in Afghanistan and taken to Cuba. It doesn't.

Nor, if precedent is any indication, does it apply to a foreign national coming into the United States with the express intent of engaging in an act of war.

There is a link to a full transcript of Sen. Collins's remarks under the YouTube video above. Is that what people here are looking for?

skf

Islander:

Waterboarding is torture and so a crime. How easy it is for some to promote it.

Gerald - that waterboarding is torture is a matter of opinion.

You are welcome to your opinion.

eagleisland:

Don't take my opinion for it - take the Reagan Justice Department's opinion, which tried and convicted a Texas sherrif, James Parker, and three of his deputies for it (HERE).

That the Bush administration chose to ignore this (based on the now famous 'torture memos' of Jay Bybee and John Yoo) does nothing to change the fact that waterboarding is a crime.

Or, you are entitled to hold onto your incorrect opinion.

As I said, you are welcome to yours. You can cite all the other opinions you wish. There are opinions to the contrary.

Waterboarding, by any account, is extremely unpleasant. Whether it rises to the level of torture is another question. Personally, I would wish that it was unnecessary, or that equally effective, less disturbing mechanisms for quickly extracting vital information were available. Nor am I suggesting that the underpants bomber should have been waterboarded. The point is that turning an enemy combatant over to civilian authorities was a mistake. Turning him over so quickly was mind bogglingly stupid and may have serious long-term consequences for the nation.

That's really what we're talking about here.

eagleisland:

Describing him as an "enemy combatant" is no different than calling him a "soldier," and thus provides him credibility which he does not deserve. Terrorist acts are despicable, and criminal. They are not the acts of a military group.

Let me ask you: do you think that a terrorist group could conquer the United States?

Conquer? No.

Do terrible damage? Yes.

You miss something, Gerald. We did not declare war on them. They declared war on US. Get your head out of your butt - they are no less at war with us than Germany and Japan were in the 1940s. Sadly, the only way to stop that war is the same way it was back then: defeating them. You are parsing words here. He may not be a member of an organized military force. He IS a member of a loose organization that would be every bit as happy to kill YOU as he would to kill me, and for the same reason: we live in the United States. Nothing more than that.

I sincerely hope that you grow up some day and realize what's really going on here.

eagleisland:

Really? al Queda is the equivalent of Nazi Germany or the Japanese in 1941?

Let's see - at the time that Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Japanese had conquered Korea, parts of China, Vietnam, Thailand, parts of Malasia, and soon The Philippines. Nazi Germany, at that time, ruled over France, the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Poland, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, what became Yugoslavia, much of North Africa, and had other puppet regimes.

My guess is that terrorist groups are less at war with us than the Nazi's and Imperial Japan.

Terrorists are criminals, not pledged to any nation, race or state, but to a twisted idea. Our nation is not in danger of being overrun by these fanatics; our way of life is not in danger of ending. You are a frightened person, frightened by something that has been blown way out of context by our own government and media. You are hundreds of times more likely to die in an vehicle crash than in a terrorist act, and yet I don't hear you call for more safeguards on our roads - I'll bet you hate seat belt laws. Hell, you are more likely to die in a random shooting than you are in a terrorist, and I don't need to ask your position on gun control.

You live in the Culture of Fear described by Barry Glassner. The terrorists have won against you.

And you want me to grow up?

In any case, we have strayed far from the question at hand, and that is that Sen. Susan Collins is absolutely wrong when she states that our Constitution only guarantees the rights of American citizens.

Kudos to Senator Collins...Good job...I love the fact it has got Gerry's panties in a bunch...That means it was spot on...LOL...

Really? al Queda is the equivalent of Nazi Germany or the Japanese in 1941?

Nope. At this stage, more the equivalent of Nazi Germany in 1923 - the Beer Hall Putsch. It was Hitler's first major foray and it failed. But he came back, and we know the consequences of his subsequent rise.

This is what you don't understand, Gerald. Destructively fanatical ideas, unless they're nipped in the bud, can spread and grow. So no, I do not personally fear for my own safety as a result of radical Islam. But I absolutely fear for the safety of this nation if it fails to recognize the threat that radical Islam presents, long term. And I also fear, short term, for those who would live under the heel of the more immediate threat of jihadis - who have proven time and again to be quite happy to kill people who, at least in theory, share their religion.

My guess is that terrorist groups are less at war with us than the Nazi's and Imperial Japan.

You're obviously not listening to them. They have said so, time and again.

Terrorists are criminals, not pledged to any nation, race or state, but to a twisted idea.

So using your own argument, Pol Pot was a simple criminal? Mussolini? Stalin?

You live in the Culture of Fear described by Barry Glassner. The terrorists have won against you.

They haven't beaten me, bub. But they sure have managed to pull the wool over YOUR eyes.

And you want me to grow up?

Try it. Life's actually pretty good once you pass adolescence.

Oh, believe me eagleisland, I'm so grown up that I post using my own name, not some alias.

Well now... aren't YOU special?