>> But in 1798 the United States entered into a treaty with England that infuriated the French.

No. You are referring to the Jay Treaty, which was signed in 1794 and went into effect in early 1796. The main reason it infuriated the French is that the Directory was hoping for war between the US and Britain, which the treaty averted. And the treaty infuriated the anti-British, pro-French Republicans almost as much as the French.

I realize it is just a blog post, but you massively over-simplified the causes of the Quasi-war with France. The Jay Treaty was only one element that contributed to the growing suspicion and hostility on both sides. The Citizen Genet incident, the XYZ affair, and, above all, French attacks on US merchant ships that were trading with the British were the more prominent factors.

Hopefully most people reading this have lived through this very environment just going through High School. Can you imagine what would happen to anyone in High School who openly rooted against their own school teams(I can see them using liberal rhetoric, Im a real school pride person because I speak against our school weeeeeee! what a loser!…how long would they last, before being beaten mercilessly by every athlete, and joined in by every person in the school who wore school colors for one event or another. Its called Team/School spirit. You would never hear them say Down with our school, we suck…but this is the every day mantra of the liberals..every single day. And they claim thats patriotism…what a bunch of losers.

I have a prediction, one day all these seditious bastard liberals will go too far, and they will meet with a messy end. Its the liberals who want to take company profits, Its the liberals who want to redistribute wealth, Its the liberals who want to take your constitution right to bear arms away..the very amendment put in place so We The People could keep our elected officials in check…Dont forget our founders fought with the country they fled from…they spilled blood to get these rights…and libs want to take them all away…they are nothing more than socialists…by definition. No Socicialist nation has ever come close to the succusses of free enterprise and the United States of Americas capaitalist society..ever!
People who know who our founders were, brave warrior soldiers, not afraid to fight a WAR (unlike my pussy liberal friends, who live in an alternate reality in which no war should ever exist)…Hint: Not a single nation on the planet came into being without WAR. it is the nature of things, and liberals are able to be ignorant of that..the FACTS.

“OK, correction to my previous correction of Meghan: the Patriot Act was Passed in late October. That means Congress had the ability to debate it for a month and a half, not two months. Since Congress is in charge of its own schedule, I’m sure that debate lasted for a while. Bush’s comments were meant to keep campaigning congressmen on their toes. Yes, the election was a year away, but some campaigning was going on.”

Youll need to understand that unless the act was already drawn up BEFORE 9/11 that they needed some time to write it as well. Parts of it obviously seem to come from acts that have been attempted to be passed over the last 20 years that were deemed ‘unconstitutional’ but if you were to say that none of it came from outside sources, then you are telling me that they managed to put together a hundred peoples minds on a singular purpose, and wrote 342 pages of lawyer speak ammending a list of atricles as long as my arm, as well as adding a few extra powers to the president. Then got it passed in only 43 days?

It’s also clear that much of the Patriot Act and its implementation has little to do with terrorism, but is aimed at other issues, like economic protectionism — Indian computer science grad students and Mexican day laborers seem unusal groups to target in an attempt to decrease terrorism.

Actually, Jefferson’s party was the “Democratic Republican” party. It evolved into the Democratic Party. The Federalist Party crashed after the 1800 election, but its remnants became the Whigs and then rather indirectly the Republicans. Thus, Jefferson’s party ultimately became the Democratic Party of Stephen Douglas, and the party of Adams and Hamilton ultimately became the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. Sort of.

Geof Stone