Green Eggs and Hamdi, or, There Must Be 50 Ways To Stroke My Ego
(I don’t know what that post title means, either)…
Jeff Goldstein, who has posted about 4,218 times on the NSA controversy (and, remarkably, found something interesting to say in all of them), wades in again to grapple with what we might as well call “Greenwald’s Dewine Postulate”, in honor of its earliest proponent (please do visit Jeff, because he also has an interesting look ahead at what Specter intends to cover in the NSA hearing). So does Orin Kerr, but he’s a little noncommital at this point…
The man himself promises to counter the conservatives tomorrow, and has this to say:
…I can’t help but note that, with rare exception, the usually vocal and responsive pro-Bush contingent in the blogosphere has been deathly quiet regarding this issue. There have been several screeching responses consisting exclusively of foul, childish name-calling, but very, very few substantive responses.
One of the few is this post from the always civil and thoughtful Mark Coffey at Decision ’08. Although I intend to post a reply to all of the pro-Bush responses collectively, I posted an initial response in Mark’s Comments section. Additionally, the generally pro-Bush blogger Marc Schulman of American Future has, to his credit, acknowledged that, at least preliminarily, there seem to be serious questions raised by the Administration’s reaction to the proposed DeWine legislation.
I think that engaging pro-Bush advocates on the NSA scandal is important and constructive (and thus encourage anyone so inclined to engage Mark in his Comments section, as well as any other pro-Bush blogger who may awaken from their slumber and address the issue), both because that sort of interaction fleshes out the real issues more effectively than having two parallel, unconnected monologues, and because debates of that type bring greater attention to the NSA law-breaking issue, which I believe is a desirable goal.
Well, aside from the kind words (and if I’m usually civil, it’s also the case for my great regulars – I can’t tell you guys how much I appreciate having a comments section that requires very little ‘policing’ and offers a lot of great stuff pretty regularly) for yours truly, I completely endorse that sentiment…
More dialogue and less monologue…there’s a novel idea in the age of blogging…
It’s a time of war. Presidents have always had discretion in the time of war to battle the enemy.
Of note is that many presidents in the past (especially democratic presidents) have done far worse than spy on enemies here in the US. Why this is even an issue explains the silence on the right. The left can’t seem to grasp anything that hasn’t already been overlooked on the left except that it is now done on the right. The right is reacting as much as if the left were hysterical over American ships flying the American flag – bewilderment.
This silliness over spying on enemies within the states simply illustrates that the democrats want nothing less than this whole “war myth” (in their minds) to just disappear so they can get on with hating Bush. Take particular note that not a single leftist blog memorialized the tragic loss on the anniversary of 9/11 and all of them were strangely silent about the outrage over the memorial to Islam (flight 93).
Anyone who has followed my posts on this site know that I am not “pro-Bush.”
[...] More news on a topic we’ve been covering at length; that of “Greenwald’s Dewine Postulate”. The always-resourceful Minuteman weighs in here and here and says maybe the administration didn’t want to support the Dewine legislation because they feared it would be found unconstitutional and taint many cases both present and past (a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislative strategy). (Tom also points out, quite reasonably, that at some point administration critics are going to have to answer the questions as to why so many people would so willing engage in an illegal national security practice – with the obvious answer being they didn’t see it as illegal). [...]