Informed Speculation

…goes, naturally enough, to Duncan Black (a.k.a. Atrios), who inexplicably gets tens of thousands of visitors a day for running ‘open threads’ (i.e., declining to actually blog about anything) and for garbage like this:

2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative.

The issue is simple: Bush has declared that one man has the right to make the law whenever, in his determination, national security warrants it. While even I can understand the necessity of broad executive powers in emergency situations, we aren’t anywhere close to being in one of those. If Bush decides that personally shooting dissident bloggers or pesky journalists in the head is in fact necessary for national security, then no one can object. The fact that he has not, as far as we know, done any such thing does not matter in the slightest. By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn’t (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability.

Please…pure, unadulterated crap.

If George W. Bush were a dictator, you can bet Duncan couldn’t write that he was with impunity; that he wouldn’t soon be the subject of hearings regarding the NSA eavesdropping; that he wouldn’t have to labor so hard to get his Supreme Court nominees confirmed; and the list goes on and on.

“Personally shooting dissident bloggers or pesky journalists in the head?” My God, the gall; that’s a very, very serious thing to say about the President of your country, and it shows blogging at its absolutely worst – humorless, wild-eyed accusations of the most vile sort, while the sycophantic progressive hordes applaud with abandon (just look at his comments).

It should be noted that Mr. Black is an employee of Media Matters for America, “a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Yet it is the liberal bloggers such as Mr. Black and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga who crow about the right-wing noise machine and accuse conservative bloggers of being on the dole, while they take money directly from their Democratic patrons and pretend to be independent voices.

It’s worth repeating that a Democratic party serious about recapturing the White House will throw these ‘progressive’ types overboard at the earliest opportunity. They are poison to any serious discussion of national importance…