Wasting Money on Torture?

I believe that what the CIA is doing to these people is not okay. These people are not innocent and obviously shouldn’t be treated like kings and queens but they are still people. Everyone in the world is still a human-being and I don’t believe that anyone should be treated like a dog. It is not fair that this body guard for Osama Bin Laden is being terrorized in this sort of manner. If President Obama’s bodyguard had been taken and tortured the way that we are torturing this guy from Afghanistan, our country would blow up! When you take away a person’s toilet privileges, hang a guy for 17 days, or drag him across a floor with no clothes on like he is nothing, there is obviously something wrong with you and a line has been crossed.

                First of all, we are in debt by SEVENTEEN TRILLION dollars and we are paying people eighty million dollars to think of torture tactics?????  How is that even logical? These people are making working individuals pay tax dollars on finding new ways to torture people! I think that this is absolutely wrong and unthinkable. People need to get their priorities straight and think about the stuff that really matters and things that we need to be spending our countries money on.

                Our highest government officials, including President Bush, broke international and U.S. laws by torture, cruel, and degrading treatment. But the worst part about all of it is that they made their employees in the military and civilian services break those laws for them. They tortured people who may have been guilty of terrorism-related crimes, but they ruined any chance of prosecuting them because of how bad they tortured them.  They tortured based on false information they had extracted from others through torture; they tortured to hide their mistakes and to get confessions and they tortured sometimes just to break people, pure and simple.

 

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/04/george_w_bush_and_torture_america_s_highest_officials_are_responsible_for_the_enhanced_interrogation_of_prisoners_.html

Same Sex Marriage

The amendment that I would like to add to the constitution is the same sex marriage amendment. I think that it should be legal for a man and man or woman and woman to get married. If these people are happy with that person, then why can’t they get married? Twenty nine states have already made this legal, so why can’t our country just make it legal? I believe that these people deserve to be happy, just like us. Yes, it is a little deceiving if you see them in the street PDAing but if that is what makes them happy then it shouldn’t be any different than seeing a guy and a girl PDAing. If I was to write this amendment it would say “Any two individuals can get married” and it would be the 28^th amendment of the constitution. Sixteen other countries (and parts of Mexico) also have laws allowing same sex marriage. It is time for change.

Bowling for Columbine

After watching Michael Moore’s documentation on Columbine, it made me realize how gun loving our country really is. Michael opened my mind up to so many things that I had no idea about and he also made me realize things about the United States.  He showed us a lot of different examples of gun control, school shootings, .

I believe that the media plays a huge role in gun control and why people are the way they are in the United States.  I believe that our news tries to scare people. After I saw “Bowling for Columbine” in class I watched the news that night to see if it was actually as negative just like Moore said and it really was! I’ve never realized how negative reporters on the news are!

I believe that people kill people; guns do not kill people.  If someone wanted to kill someone, he or she is going to find a way to do it with or without a gun. In the movie, Michael helped the kids that were shot in Columbine go to KMART to try to plead with them not sell bullets anymore. I feel that was a pointless thing to do because Eric Horns and Dylan Klebo that invaded and shot the kids at Columbine could have gotten the bullets from anywhere. Bullets are sold in thousands of other places other than KMART picking out KMART and asking them to not sell bullets isn’t going to help the issue that they want to solve.  

The 2^nd amendment says that we have the right to bear arms. I believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing because we need to protect ourselves, but it can also be a bad thing because some people can get really carried away. So where do we draw the line? How do we draw the line?  I believe that the people of the United States need to have more gun control to some extent. I don’t believe that we need banana clips or magazines. I don’t think our forefathers saw this coming when they passed this law, I can only imagine what they are thinking right now.  There is no reason for random people to have these big and powerful guns. One of the most shocking facts to me in the movie was that in a matter of two years, there was only been 2 gun murders. Canada has just as many guns or maybe even more than we do. Why is our gun violence so high and Canada’s is not? Even though the United States has more people than Canada I really believe that our country has an issue with guns. What do we in the United States do differently than Canada to make our gun violence country such an issue?

Barack Obama does not want assault weapons; I totally agree with him. I don’t believe that people need guns with more than 4 or 5 shots. He passed 23 executive orders to restrict weapons. He also is having background checks on all gun sales.  A lot of states have laws on how long your gun can be or how many clips. I agree with Obama. People shouldn’t be able to just go out and buy a gun.  There are more than 100,000 people shot in the USA every year; it’s time to change things.

 

 http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/summary-president-obama-gun-proposals.aspx

NFL Drama

In the past month there has been several NFL players charged with physical/domestic abuse towards women and children. I believe that any kind of abuse is wrong on so many levels. But what about the physical abuse that other people endure every day?  You would never hear on FOX News that someone from Langford, SD beat up there kid and left a scar. But the real question is how do you know when the line has been crossed from child abuse to child discipline?

I believe that the NFL doesn’t have the right to publicly humiliate these players on social media and the news. Just because these players are social icons, shouldn’t mean that they should be subject to humiliation to the entire country and world. 

I also believe that it is ridiculous that their stories which happened months ago. I understand that what they are doing is wrong, but why didn’t this come up when it happened instead of four months later? Are people just coming out with this because it’s such a hot topic in the news? I don’t like how they make it such a big deal and you have to read, hear, and see it everywhere you go. Child abuse happens every day and I believe that it is an issue that needs to be dealt with differently.

My homie Abe

The movie “Lincoln” was one of my favorite movies that we have watched in government class. I didn’t know too much about the 13^th amendment and this movie really helped me understand what the whole effort was about and how President Lincoln worked to abolish slavery.  There are so many questions that I would ask President Lincoln but one of them would be how did he have the bravery to be different? When everyone had slavery in their homes and plantations and were adapted to living with it and he had the nerve to say no and try to change all of it is so amazing to me. It’s so hard to be the one person in a group of people to lead such a massive effort against an established institution.

I don’t believe that Lincoln abused his powers when he was in the White House. I believe that he did the right thing and should be remembered as a great man who freed the slaves. Obviously, I don’t know everything that he did when he was president but from what I learned I believe that he was a good man and tried to do the right thing. A lot of people say that President Obama abuses his powers as president. The only reason that I would believe that he abuses his powers is because of the fact that he passed legislation that force Obama Care on the people. I don’t believe that you can force someone to have a particular kind of insurance. People should have the choice of that for themselves. I don’t believe that Obama and Lincoln are very similar. Lincoln was in office when we were going through a Civil War within our country. He had to make drastic changes because he was going through a drastic time. Obama is not going through a tough time while he is in office.  So I’ve always wondered how President Obama would handle being in the position of what Abraham Lincoln was in.