[Mike4Freedom]

Presidency of George W. Bush -- the first 36 months

Let me add some things to your list:
Signed the Medicare drug benefit which will probably cost over $ one trillion before it collapses Medicare.
Signed the Campaign Reform act limiting everyone's first amendment rights.
Signed the Patriot act, limiting everyone's Fourth and Fifth amendment rights.
Invented the status of "enemy combatant" making all US citizens subject to arrest and indefinite detention without judicial intervention, charge or trial. This eliminates everyone's due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Promised to sign a renewal of the Assault Weapons ban, thus limiting everyone's Second Amendment rights.
Imposed Federal rules further into education with "No Child Left Behind" in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

Is this enough to give you second thoughts about rating Bush 2 as a conservative? Maybe you need more! Or maybe you don't think that obeying the Bill of Rights is an important aspect of conservative thought.

[Southack]

"Signed the Patriot act, limiting everyone's Fourth and Fifth amendment rights."

Nonsense. The Patriot Act is demagoged by people who have never read it. I've read it, and it is harmless. Show me one sentence or paragraph in the entire legal text of the Patriot Act that limits "everyone's Fourth and Fifth amendment rights."

[Southack]

"Invented the status of "enemy combatant" making all US citizens subject to arrest and indefinite detention without judicial intervention, charge or trial. This eliminates everyone's due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment."

Patently untrue. You should be ashamed for saying such things.

Enemy combatants are routinely rounded up during wars and held without trials, without attorneys, and without the protection of POWs. The Geneva Convention states that enemy combatants are those spies and/or sabotuers who are caught on the battlefield without internationally recognized military uniforms or military ID tags. Such people can, per the 1947 Geneva Convention, be SHOT ON SIGHT or given any other battlefield justice deemed appropriate by their captors.

That's hardly Bush "inventing" anything.

During WW2, FDR faced a similar problem to what Bush faces today. In 1940, Adolph Hitler had sent letters and placed ads worldwide calling on all true Aryans to return to the Reich to fight for the Fatherland. More than 1,000 U.S. citizens answered Hitler's call to arms, all of whom were killed or captured on the battlefield during WW2 after the U.S. entered the war. None of those enemy combatants were given attorneys or trials, either, save for 8 of them who were caught on U.S. soil (they were brought back here by German U-Boats) wearing civilian clothes with no military ID's.

Those 8 were given military tribunals, and at least 5 of them were executed without appeal.

Again, this is hardly something that Bush has invented. See Taliban Johnny fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan or dirty bomber Jose Padilla getting caught here on U.S. soil.

[Southack]

"Promised to sign a renewal of the Assault Weapons ban, thus [alledgedly] limiting everyone's Second Amendment rights."

Indeed. Bush promised not to sign any new gun control during his 2000 campaign, though he also said that he would consider signing renewals of old measures providing that they didn't have new anti-gun restrictions in them. The AWB falls into that latter catagory.

But the AWB is hardly more than symbolism. I can still buy my high capacity clips, and so can you. That's hardly the stuff of great restrictions.

And a *promise* to renew that one existing law is hardly worthy of bashing the same man who has given us numerous pro-gun victories in the last few years.

For instance, Bush:

Signed TWO bills into law that arm our pilots with handguns in the cockpit

Is currently pushing for full immunity from lawsuits for our national gun manufacturers

Ordered Attorney-General Ashcroft to formally notify the Supreme Court that the OFFICIAL U.S. government position on the 2nd Amendment is that it supports INDIVIDUAL rights to own firearms, NOT a leftist-imagined *collective* right

Told the United Nations we weren't interested in their plans for gun control (i.e. the International Ban on Small Arms Trafficking Treaty)

And he also signed the 2004 Omnibus Budget 1/26/2004 that now MANDATES that gun buyers' background check information be fully and permanently destroyed within 24 hours of the completion of the check, no matter what.

[jstolarczyk]

Specify where has Bush violated the Bill of Rights. I am a gun owner, but just as there is no "separation of church and state" in the constitution, there is no right to fully automatic weapons. If you want one, you can still get one, legally. Where in the Bill of Rights are you entitled to a free education? As long as the government provides free education, they have a right to impose their standards. I agree on the Medicare drug bill, no argument there. The Patriot Act was a reaction to 9-11, but since I am not involved in crime or terrorism, it has yet to effect me. What would you do, cannot kill the terrorist, nobody wants them, we cannot interrogate them, unless they are held outside the US. Israel is darn near a police state and they cannot stop terrorist, imagine the difficulties in our open society. How would you feel about a Patriot Act if you lost family members to say a suicide bomber while at the mall? But, do you really think Kerry will be a better advocate for your point of view.

[CMClay]

"Since taking office in 2001, Bush has allowed domestic discretionary outlays to soar by an annual average of 8.2 percent. That compared with 2.5 percent a year under Clinton, 4.0 percent of Bush the Elder, 2.0 percent of Carter, and 6.8 percent under Nixon. By any measure, Bush the Younger is the biggest-spending president in memory."
- Jeff Jacoby