Using the troops to advance abortion.

[CONSERVATIVE HERO]

First amnesty (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?t=59462), now this (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzE3ZTA1ZTAxOTFhMGFmZjA1MDQ4YTM4YTYyMGQyMTE=&CFID=84655226&CFTOKEN=81478287):
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has a funny way of expressing his appreciation for our troops this Memorial Day. Rather than honoring our soldiers with the funding they need, the Senate is stuffing the war supplemental bill with pro-abortion paybacks for groups like Planned Parenthood.Democrats are attempting to use the war-funding bill as a Trojan Horse to introduce measures that will cripple the administration’s ability to conduct military operations. Among the items under consideration are new restrictions that would prevent the U.S. from building bases in Iraq, place unrealistic 210-day limits on Marine deployments (and 12-month limits on other troops), force the CIA to adhere to Army Field Manual rules for interrogations, and undermine an important troop-retention program.The goal seems rather clear. Adding these earmarks makes a win-win for the left. If it passes they win (abortion gets more funding). If it's vetoed they win (as this serves to undermine our war effort).

[Trevelyan]

This is terrible, however, earmarks attached to bills involving the troops is something the right has done as well. The earmarks need to stop all together on both sides.

[DesertFox]

But some earmarks are pretty innocuous while others are downright evil. Do you draw no distinctions at all, ever, Trevelyan? Or is this "a pox on both your houses!" your only response to anything critical of the Left? Is the world in your eyes really that Manichean, that every time someone rightly pounds the Left, that you have to jump out of bed, rub the sleep from your eyes and sound off loudly with yet more moral equivalence?

[Trevelyan]

Ah, so the earmarks are fine then as long as they are Republican. That way they are always "innocuous" I guess....

I said this was wrong. What else do you want from me? What, I shouldn't point out my opinion that earmarks are wrong no matter who is doing them? Or do you want me to construct a list from most evil to most innocuous earmarks? If it makes you feel any better, this is the most evil of the earmarks I have heard of, but that doesn't excuse the other more innocuous ones.

You used to be a more reasonable member here, but lately you have increasingly become more of a partisan hack. I don't know what has happened.

[DesertFox]

You used to make sense, but you no longer condemn wrong matters without dredging up other wrong matters on the other side of the political spectrum. You can't simply agree that so-and-so is wrong; you have to hasten to point out that somebody else also does it. Why you started doing that is a mystery to me, but you act like you're one of those MSM moderators who feels it's safe to let liberals say anything they please, but any time a conservative is on he must be balanced by a team of liberals.

Quit pretending this isn't so, Trevelyan. Your slide into the Lefty camp has been ongoing for quite awhile. It's been pointed out to you before yet you continue. And as long as you keep it up, I'll be calling you on it.

[Trevelyan]

My slide into the Lefty camp? I've only become more conservative since my start here. I love to know how I have become somehow more liberal. But again, you do not seem to read all my posts closely anyway I guess, because you did take it upon yourself to state I was in favor of abortion, which is one of the examples of how of have become more conservative since I started here.

And it would be one thing if I brought up wrong on the other side and then excuse the other wrong simply because the other side did it. But that is not what I am doing. I said this was wrong. If I wee someone who was "sliding more into the Lefty camp," not only would I first have to be fine with abortion in the first, I would also then likely see no problem with the earmark.

Lastly, it would be kind of boring if everyone was just like, "Yeah, evil lefties... blah, blah blah.....lefties this and that," one after the other in this thread. I would hope others could just condemn earmarks all together.

[DoctorDoom]

Reid is a brazen, shameless traitor. He should be arrested, tried, convicted and dealt with in a manner appropriate for traitors.

As for the practice of attaching utterly irrelevant riders to bills, the RATs do it for one reason only: to force a veto of the bill that they can point to without ever mentioning the rider(s) that necessitated it. "See? Bush doesn't support our troops. He vetoed funding for them."

There will never be a line-item veto for that reason. Those scurrilous bastards in Congress want to retain the all-or-nothing veto so that they can attach pork to vital bills.

Unfortunately, as long as the US electorate consists largely of ignorant, DBM-indoctrinated arschlochs, this will continue.

[DesertFox]

Trev, you can't deny that you didn't condemn just what was reported. You brought in stuff that was NOT reported so you could eke out a moral equivalence message between Left and Right.

You may be fooling yourself about going more conservative since arriving here, but you're the only one you're fooling.

[Trevelyan]

So changing my opinion on abortion and some other stuff actually made me more liberal? Amazing.... I guess I'm apparently just not ready to be conservative enough to the point I am alright with earmarks....well...considering they are earmarks snuck in by conservative for conservative causes of course.

[DoctorDoom]

Riders to critical bills that have exactly zero to do with the purpose of the bills should be abolished, period. It's shameless and despicable. Is a rider cannot be passed as a separate bill, let it die.

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

How did earmarks and political pork become legal in the first place? I don't see how anyone could have ever sat back the first time and let it happen, especially without thinking how out of control it could get, not to mention just how plain wrong it is.

[Beowulf]

Hey, if you can't get a straight up bill to pass, hide it in another one. They did it with Amnesty. Now they're doing it with abortion.