Taro T

I don't either, but if they still had Begin on the roster, they COULD move one and still have a veteran to fill the Mair role. Watching Habs games this year, it actually seems that Begin is better at being Mair than Mair is.

Jacobs also had a lot to do with keeping the Sabres in Buffalo as his concessions contract is basically worthless without an NHL team in that rink. That said, for whatever reason Bettman did work to keep the team in town. I'm not as concerned about his reasons for finding religion, I'm just happy he did. As for the CBA, you had essentially the same group of fractious owners in 2004-'05 that you had in 1994 and in the prior labor negotiation. The difference between the 3 negotiations is that Bettman had been in office for more than a few months this last time and put together a set of goals for the negotiation and a plan to achieve those goals. He managed to have ALL the owners publicly support him, even though the big market owners had to hate the fact that the lockout began. In '95 he caved to Goodenow because the owners weren't united in what they wanted. (Also, conventional wisdom at the time was that the owners won the negotiations, it wasn't until about a year later that everyone knew how badly Goodenow had screwed them.) I give Bettman kudos for coming out of the negotiations with essentially everything he said he was going to try to get. Right now it looks like a good agreement for the owners and I believe, long term, it will end up good for the players as well.

VA, little of the information in the articles you cite are applicable to the current discussion. The "warrant" you refer to is a standard search warrant which must be issued PRIOR to initiating the surveillance of a subject (start reading on page 14, the case in question was prior to FISA's enactment). We are discussing the FISA warrant not a standard criminal search warrant. FISA is very specific with regards to the circumstances that the 72 hour warrant is not required. The AG stated in his press conference that the Administration believes these requirements were met when Congress authorized the President to use force against Afghanistan and Al Queda. Several members of Congress have stated they don't agree with that assessment and my reading of FISA (not my reading of someone else's interpretation of FISA) lead me to believe that the Congress critters are correct on this one. Are the wire taps w/out the 72 hour warrants legal due to some other gray area of the law? I honestly don't know that. I do know that the adminsitration has stated that all calls in question involved persons physically outside the US and those inside the US. As others have stated, depending upon where and how the calls were intercepted, the intercepts MAY have been legal. Also, as Mickey has stated, there may be an expediancy aspect to this issue which would make this legal and which the AG did allude to in his press conference. I don't know if one or more of these other issues will provide justification that the taps were legal. I do not see how the "we are at war" justification causes them to be legal. Personally, I hope that they are legal because I don't want to lose what appears to be an effective tool against Al Queda.

European claims that there is no need for a death penalty because of the ability to lock someone away for life would be stronger if not for cases such as this.

KRC, please let me take a stab at it if you will. VA, you are correct that Congress did authorize the use of force. Do you agree though that they did not "declare war"? This is the key concept on whether paragraph 1811 of FISA is applicable. If war was declared, then 1811 is applicable. 1811 is the only part of FISA that allows wire taps without the "72 hour" warrant. If war was not declared, then 1811 is not invoked. The applicable portions of FISA are from 1802 and 1803 which DO require the AG to request a warrant from the FISA court justice pool w/in 72 hours of approving the wire tap. This all still may go to one of the gray areas brought up by other posters on the board. But Gonzales appears to have been saying the taps were legal under FISA because the US is at war (perhaps his justification will change as time goes on). That does not appear to be correct because technically the US is not at war because Congress never issued a Declaration of War.

Not exactly. KRC found a more legitimate hole in the 1811 reasoning.

Interesting point. The bad guys declared war on the US and the US responded back by declaring authorization to use military force. So although we are at war and everyone knows we are at war, we technically aren't at war because although Congress said we'd fight a war they never actually said we are at war. It appears you are correct KRC that 1811 is not applicable, but it also appears that 1811 is what Gonzales is using as justification.

If the Sabres had been able to make the deal Warrener for Drury it would have been a good trade for Buffalo. But as you mentioned, Calgary wanted Reinprecht. In order for Calgary to get him, Sabres had to give up Ballard. By getting Reinprecht into the mix, Buffalo also got Begin in the deal. They subsequently lost him in the now defunct waiver draft, but he is a solid player and would have been an asset on the current team. When Begin is added into the mix, it was a very fair trade IMHO. I'm not sure who would still be in Rochester (probably Pominville) right now, but the Sabres would have one more 2nd / 3rd line quality forward to include with a goalie for a potential D-man upgrade at the very least. A trade consisting of say Biron, Max, and Mair / Begin would probably bring back a useful D-man. One adding one of the Sabres lower tier D-men would probably also bring an AHL quality forward back to help ease the pain in Rachacha due to their never seeing Pominville again after the trade.

I took a look at the FISA. It appears that the reason Gonzales referred to Congressional authorization for the war in Afghanistan and against Al Queda is it would kick the surveillance taps over to paragraph 1811 "Authorization During Time of War". This states: "Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress." 1811 doesn't mention anything about the 72 hour time limit for the AG to certify / send the certification to the FISA court and also limits the time period for the tapping to 15 days down from 1 year. I may be misreading this, I'm sure Mickey can help clarify; but it sounds to me that as long as the correspondence originated/terminated outside the US and was expected to be directly related to the war w/ Taliban / Al Queda (which is my understanding based on Yahoo's version of the NYT story) that Gonzales and Bush are correct in stating no FISA court warrant was required. Taking a look at the Statute, I'm starting to understand why Condi was stating she isn't a lawyer when asked for clarifications. It seems a bit more convoluted than the typical environmental / labor regulation that I have more experience deciphering.

Well, compared to Pittsburgh's D, Buffalo's IS very fast and mobile. That's not saying too much. Pittsburgh has the worst defense in the league. Buffalo's is middle of the pack (9th penalty kill unit, 11th most shots against / game, 15th goals against / game, 25th in 5 on 5 goals for / goals against). Buffalo definitely needs to upgrade the defense to be considered a legitimate Stanley Cup threat. It's not as bad as Allan makes it out to be, but it isn't top 5 (or IMHO top 10) either.

The rule as it now stands is that you CAN be in the crease but you can't initiate contact with the goalie and you can't impede his movements to try to make a save. As long as you don't interfere with the goalie it's basically "no harm, no foul".

Here's my take on why people in Buffalo hate Bettman. Before I start, let me note that I don't "hate" him but I'm not thrilled with him. (I used to "hate" him but I am now fairly neutral to a slight supporter of him.) I also will state that some of these reasons in and of themselves would not be reasons to hate him, but they all contribute to the general sense of dislike. The biggest reason people don't like him is because of "No goal". There are people that will probably never forgive him for that. It wasn't a conspiracy to screw the Sabres, but was a series of mistakes and misjudgements that ended up causing the Stanley Cup to be "awarded" to a team rather than won. He was the top man and was in the building, he could have done the right thing (call the media off the ice and continue the game) but chose instead to do the easy thing (just give it to them). Additional reasons he isn't liked. He comes across as a smug arrogant prick. Buffalo tends to be a blue collar town and he doesn't come across well. For 3 consecutive seasons, in the round the Sabres were eliminated from the playoffs there was a game that had a HORRIBLE or multiple horrible reffing / linesmanning / replay reviewing that cost the Sabres a game. In each of those 3 seasons, the rules pertaining to how replay works was modified because of the massive screwup. In only 1 of those 3 seasons did Bettman even come close to saying the league screwed up. That didn't sit well with fans. Also, and I don't think this is a reason most Buffalonians but it is a reason I wasn't happy with him, he was the guy that negotiated the horrible 1995 CBA that nearly bankrupted the league and led to the Sabres hemorraging money for about a decade. My personal opinion of the guy has improved over the past 2 or so years, because he did work to keep the Sabres in Buffalo and he negotiated a new CBA that gives the Sabres a fighting chance to compete and quite possibly thrive.

We can only hope.

I had just put my kids to bed ~20 minutes earlier and let the 8 year old come out to see the "save". Even though it was a goal (and if you look closely, the webbing of the glove in the net does appear to move, but I didn't notice it until the replays after the game), it was an incredible effort by Marty. I still think Marty will be traded before the season is over, but hope he gets the league record for consecutive start wins (17) before it happens.

I stand corrected. Thanks.

Reminds me of a better Kinks song.

Didn't Mike (fax machine) Zigomanis get sent down to the minors this week? I know Barrett (I'm too good for the Sabres measly contract offer) Heisten just got suspended for doing something stupid in the ECHL. (Yeah, the league below the AHL, which is the league below the NHL.) It's a darn shame Darcy didn't sign either guy to a big $ contract.

So it's not your fault your post has no basis in reality, it's google's fault? I never thought I'd see the day when this board didn't do "Bush bad", but did "google bad".

Is it legal to put "flair" on seal meat?

No. Unless you're a polar bear, you don't want him for a meal.

Speaking of which, does anybody else know the "seal song"? The chorus goes something like this: "You don't bludgeon a seal 'cause you want him for a meal. You do it 'cause you want to hear that litter f***er squeal. You club him in the head, and you do it just for kicks. Then you poke out his eyes with your eye pokin' sticks." Sorry for the interruption.

The problem wasn't that they came out flat. They came out too pumped up. The 1st 5 minutes they were absolutely flying around the Stars, but darn near every shot they took either hit a leg or the stick broke as they took the shot. After Dallas weathered the initial burst, then the Sabres looked flat or exhausted or something. Buffalo did end up with only something like 12 shots, but Dallas blocked something like 20 shots, and in the only game I can ever remember seeing it, the Sabres broke at least 3 sticks in the 1st period, 2 on 1 powerplay IIRC. (Talk about being too pumped and also about gripping the stick too tight!)

You are correct that the little guy is taking it up the keister on this one. I would expect though that a Marxist or socialist that believes in communalism would be willing to sacrifice his proletariat brethren in this instance in order to further the overall socialistic "good" of expanding the legal justification for eminent domain takings. I did not read the Cato Institute's brief in this matter but would expect that, as a matter of principle, they would be opposed to the property confiscation of the homesteader or the corporation.

It's not that the corporation takes precedence over the state. (The politicians don't really give a rat's butt who is getting the property, all they care about is tax $'s.) It's that the politicians "know" how better to use your property. In this case the "better" usage is the one that brings in much more tax money. Who knows what obscene justification the state will use the next time it thinks it knows better how to use someone's property than that person. "Good socialists" tend to believe the "collective good" trumps individual rights. The increased tax revenue is the "collective good". This is why the left wing of the SC was fully behind this decision. Individuals having the ability to develop and make use of their own property without fear of confiscation by the government or others are the people that enabled our capitalist system to grow and prosper. This decision says essentially that eminent domain can be invoked any time a government wants to as long as the government had a "plan". What socialist worth his h&s wouldn't love that? The fear of government confiscation of property (land, factories, whatever) and the lack of property rights are large factors limiting growth in the developing countries. A good capitalist does not want to see this country follow down that path.

That isn't an admission that capital trumps the weak, it's an admission that the GOVERNMENT trumps the weak. A good capitalist says that that decision is horrible because the government has significantly weakened property rights and stepped in where it had no legitimate grounds to be. When land gets eminent domained, especially in a case like this, it is very doubtful that the rightful owner gets full value for his property. The developer could have built his development, all he needed to do was pay the property owners what the property was worth or alter the plans and build around the properties in question. This absolutely is leftist (socialist) thinking. The state (government) knows better how to use your property, or in this case who will use your property, than you do. I don't know if Wall Street applauded the decision, but the WSJ sure did hate it, as well they should have. I suppose Rehnquist and Scalia are also liberals? They joined Thomas and O'Connor in dissent.