Replies

woodpusher: "No, I did not say the Indemnity Bill had the word in its title until removed by Senator Trumbull.
You keep saying the word was removed from the bill by Senator Trumbull.
I have challenged you to show, from the transcript, where Senator Trumbull made any such change to the bill. "

I take it now to be that you have full access to various transcripts, but not to the exact language of different versions of HR-591.
So you don't know what the original bill said, as submitted by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens on December 5, 1862, or if it was modified by the House judiciary committee before approval by the full House on December 8, vote: 90-45, or what amendments were added in the Senate before their vote on January 28, 1863, vote: 33-7, or how it was further changed by the joint conference committee before the House's final approval vote March 2, 99-44 and the Senate's voice vote late that night -- you don't know any of that.
And yet you wish to debate endlessly and pointlessly with me about such technicalities.

Both the original bill and final Habeas Corpus Suspension Act were approved overwhelmingly in both houses, singed the next day by President Lincoln, and therefore I conclude that pro-Lincoln Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens were fully satisfied that the final bill provided all the legal protections both Federal authorities and Lincoln himself needed.

woodpusher: "I challenged you to show where the word indemnity was ever in the bill, or ever taken out of the bill.
The bill was introduced and passed in the same session day with no amendments.
Your claim that anything was removed is false. "

I am astonished that, seemingly, you don't grasp the fact that every bill must first pass one house, then the other where it often is amended, then goes to joint conference committee where it may be further changed and finally is voted on again by both houses.
The end result is often quite different from the original.
But in this specific example of HR-591 we know that the bill's originator, Thaddeus Stevens, himself sat on the joint conference committee and so we must presume he was reasonably satisfied with the end result -- even if it didn't say exactly what he originally proposed.

So I am astonished and at a loss to explain why, exactly, you can't grasp all that.

woodpusher: "It is the precise logic of your nonsensical argument.
It yields a nonsensical result because you used juvenile logic. "

No, you are simply fantasizing and projecting your own ideas onto me.

woodpusher: "And yet, the Great Tricky Dick Defense is the precise logic of your Lincoln defense: "

Rubbish, you are just making endless false accusations which are not good for your soul.
You need to stop doing that.

woodpusher: "If the President authorizes or orders an unlawful, unconstitutional act to be carried out, those who carry it out violate no law.
They were only following orders. Jawohl!"

Nonsense, you deliberately misrepresent the 1863 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act (12 Stat. 755) and then claim it has something to do with Watergate.
It doesn't.

woodpusher: "When you have no argument, fling poo."

Those words politely describe your own behavior here.

woodpusher: "Modern International Humanitarian Law (IHL) directly addresses the issue."

And which of these laws applied to the US in 1861?

woodpusher: "An American case, directly on point, was the William Calley case. "

And Calley was an officer in which army of 1861?
</scarasm>

woodpusher: "As a result, Calley’s appeal was rejected. "

I note first that Calley had powerful defenders, including Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and several other state governors.
So he ended up serving only a few years of his life sentence.

Second, even Calley himself never claimed he was ordered to kill civilians.
Instead, he assumed his orders to "kill the enemy" included unarmed civilians.
But his commanding officer denied that and was acquitted of all charges.

Third, Calley himself recognized he had done wrong and is quoted in 2009 as saying:

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai...
I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.
I am very sorry."

Finally, and most important, none of this has anything to do with the 1863 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

Just ran across this quote. When drafting the Constitution a proposal was made to allow the Federal Government to suppress a seceding state, but the proposal was rejected after James Madison said…

"A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

And this one too.

""Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all thers, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act . In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.”

I take it now to be that you have full access to various transcripts, but not to the exact language of different versions of HR-591.

Except apparently for you, the entire world has access to the Congressional Globe, which is the official record of Congress from 1833 to 1873. The proceedings in Congress were taken down in shorthand and reported contemporaneously. The official records are verbatim transcripts and available to all who take the initiative the get off their butt and look at them. They are the official record of what happened in Congress. They include the text and reading of bills and resolutions, and amendments, and all votes.

Every word of every bill read on the floor of either chamber is presented verbatim.

So you don't know what the original bill said, as submitted by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens on December 5, 1862, or if it was modified by the House judiciary committee before approval by the full House on December 8, vote: 90-45, or what amendments were added in the Senate before their vote on January 28, 1863, vote: 33-7, or how it was further changed by the joint conference committee before the House's final approval vote March 2, 99-44 and the Senate's voice vote late that night -- you don't know any of that.

As another example of my use of English, let me introduce you to the term negative pregnant.

NEGATIVE PREGNANT refers to a denial which implies an affirmation of a substantial fact and hence is beneficial to opponent. Thus, when only a qualification or modification is denied while the fact itself remains undenied, the denial is pregnant with the affirmation. See 115 S.W. 2d 330.
Negatives pregnant come in two varieties. One is the literal denial. If the complaint alleges that the defendant was driving his car at 75 miles an hour and the defendant denies that he was driving his car at 75 miles an hour, this would be an admission that he may have been driving it at any other speed, i.e., 74 or 76 miles per hour. The other type of negative pregnant is the CONJUNCTIVE DENIAL. If the complaint alleges that the defendant was careless and negligent and reckless and the defendant denies that he was careless and negligent and reckless this would constitute an admission that he was guilty of any combination less than all three. To avoid this the defendant should have denied the facts in the disjunctive, i.e., denied that he was careless or negligent or reckless.” Green, Civil Procedure 122 (2d ed. 1979).

Thank you for your negatives pregnant affirming that your babbling bullshit does not appear in the Official Record verbatim transcripts of the Congress.