So why this post? Mostly because I tried to make a bet, which has been refused, but I want to see if they man up and admit their characterization is false of Glenn Reynolds on at least two counts. It started with this post of Andrew Sullivan’s where it is claimed that Glenn supports:
Those are the policies that Glenn Reynolds, by silence or active support, has enabled.
Go ahead and read the post, as well as the one in which I offered to make the bet, but the question is, can I prove this statement is untrue? Why yes I can. In fact the contention is ridiculous, though many many people referred to it and nodded their agreement. Thus my contention of bad faith. Unfortunately, if I link to a post, try and explain how people such as I and Glenn view these things, I will just be told I am cherry picking, that in reality he doesn’t really care about the issue:
You’d never confront an analysis suggesting that the NYT gives 10x the coverage of one side of a particular argument than it does to the other side and argue that it doesn’t mean the NYT is biased towards that side. Your investment in Instapundit, to my evaluation anyway, has led you to apply inconsistent standards.
I imagine that it would indeed be possible to find Instapundit posts that could be construed as defending civil liberties.
Be possible? The assertion is that it would be difficult, when in fact it is simple. See, we have a problem. The answer is already known, and no argument I make will be decisive. So I picked the easiest point, the drug war and amassed a huge number of links. There is no ambiguity. He has unequivocally, and consistently opposed the drug war. He has denounced it in no uncertain terms. Game, set, match. I doubt it will lead to a retraction by anybody, but I wanted to prove that in fact it wouldn’t make a difference.
However, let us go to a larger point related to the politics of bad faith. The obvious retort is, yeah, but the rest is true. In fact I think it is important in seeing how corrupt our discourse has become, pace Jim Henley, though his blog is actually part of the problem. The Drug War segment is in fact the most important charge Andrew Sullivan makes in arriving at an understanding of what is going on. In the attempt to smear Mr. Reynolds, and a whole slew of others of us who are broadly in line with his views of the world, Andrew has proven he has either intentionally misrepresented Glenn’s views, or he does not even read him closely enough to understand what his views are. Frankly I hope Andrew is guilty of the latter, that his bitterness has caused him to just read Glenn and look for what fits his template rather than purposely, well, lie. We cannot argue with the conclusion one of those two charges is true, because Glenn’s views are so crystal clear on this matter. They cannot in any reasonable way be misinterpreted. Just go peruse the links. So, if on so easy a matter as this Andrew cannot get it right, how can we trust that he has made a good faith effort to understand, or represent accurately Glenn’s views on areas where his views are more nuanced or complicated? Well, we can’t.
Nor can we trust those who spread and endorsed the smear, because either they do not have enough knowledge of Glenn’s views to get even this easy answer correct, or they are lying. Otherwise they might have at minimum qualified their use of the smear on this one issue. Especially when one considers the huge importance Glenn attaches to this issue.
It goes further. The claim is Glenn doesn’t care much about civil liberties at all, and that view I have read repeated over and over.
His view is actually more along these lines, and they approximate mine (and I heartily recommend the link to Stone, who certainly gives some perspective:
WHILE THERE’S ALARMISM ABOUT CIVIL LIBERTIES, I have to say that things have actually gone better than I feared nearly six years ago. So it’s interesting to read this from Geoffrey Stone:
The legislation amending FISA is unwarranted, reckless and possibly unconstitutional. Nonetheless, the overall state of civil liberties in the US, viewed in historical perspective, is surprisingly strong. There are no internment camps for American Muslims, no suspensions of habeas corpus for American citizens, no laws prohibiting criticism of the war in Iraq. This might not seem like much, but in light of past episodes, the intrusions on civil liberties since 9/11 have been relatively modest.
Stone has certainly warned about dangers to civil liberties — but warning about potential dangers is different from proclaiming that the Constitution has already been abandoned and that we’re living in a police state now. And I think the over-the-top rhetoric that we often see on this topic does more harm than good. In that, I think I do disagree with Stone, who thinks that alarmism has actually helped. Perhaps, but there’s a major “crying wolf” problem, too. (Via Jonathan Adler). Meanwhile, a point I made a while back: “I’ll add this comment, which is only somewhat on-topic: Not so much nuanced discussants like Posner and Stone, but press coverage and political rhetoric generally, tend to suggest that there’s a ‘trade-off’ between national security and freedom. But that’s misleading. You don’t buy national security by getting rid of freedom; you may, in fact, wind up less secure. (This is a point I was making back on September 13, 2001). Nor is it necessarily the case that improvements in national security burden freedom. They may, in fact, have no impact at all, or even result in more freedom in some ways. It just depends. Programs have to be judged on their merits.” Trade-offs sometimes exist, but the notion that they necessarily exist and that less freedom necessarily produces more security or vice versa, is a lazy journalistic cliche, not a fact.
Of course, just by typing in “drug war” in the search engine I came up with all these posts, which touch repeatedly on issues of abuse of police power, stringent criticism of the administrations policies on civil liberties, abuse of prosecutorial power, attacks on the Patriot Act (including an endorsement of a scathing Russ Feingold speech on it) and on and on. To read these posts and then read the portrayal of him in this and a plethora of other posts is to see bad faith in action. Nor is this large list exhaustive. I could have found hundreds of posts on these issues had I searched and only taken a few on each of the claims made above.
I also left in a few posts which popped up in the search which I think also show aspects of Glenn’s outlook on life and issues which address other smears made against him, just for the hell of it. I suggest reading them all and taking a trip down memory lane. Many of the posts are quite good, and make points that we may not have thought about recently. I will start off with a link of Glenn’s referencing where he breaks one of the first stories about Human Rights abuses in Iraq by our soldiers based on the writings of Zeyad in Healing Iraq, who at that point was almost completely unknown.
WRONG-HOUSE DRUG RAIDS ARE BAD ENOUGH, but here’s a wrong-house annoyance-call raid: For a 67-year-old homeowner and his wife, wrongly subjected to a shattering pornography search, saying, “Oops, wrong number” is not enough. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich apologized Tuesday……
RADLEY BALKO’S REASON ARTICLE ON CORY MAYE is now available on line and you should read the whole thing. But here’s a bit on how no-knock wrong-house raids go wrong and the double standard in prosecuting innocent citizens who respond……
CORY MAYE UPDATE: Radley Balko has been pursuing this story indefatigably, and he’s now identified the informant whose call led to the wrong-house no-knock raid: After the guy realized the investigator was working for the defense team, he clammed up…….
WHAT’S WRONG WITH NO-KNOCK RAIDS: Radley Balko and Joel Berger have a piece in the Wall Street Journal today: Criminologist Peter Kraska estimates that the number of SWAT team “call-outs” soared past 40,000 in 2001 (the latest year for which……
JACKIE DANICKI: “In what bizarre universe is this guy ‘liberal’ while someone like me – who is strongly pro-gay marriage, pro-easy availability of pornography, against the stupid drug war, and stridently anti-authoritarian – is often described as ‘conservative’? If he’s……
DETENTION FOR A BLOG ENTRY? I don’t think that high schools have any business punishing students for things they do when they’re out of school, whether or not they blog about them. Plus, the weasel-phrase “illegal or inappropriate behavior” sets….
ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING IT — Drezner, McArdle, even Bainbridge — so I’ll take the Atrios/Drum “are you a liberal” test, too. The questions (in bold) and my answers appear below: 1) Repeal the estate tax repeal: I’ve……
MUCKRAKED REPORTS: The interim head of the Department of the Interior, Patricia “Lynn” Scarlett, once endorsed the legalization of drugs. Back in 1989, she reportedly wrote “Give up the drug war: legalize drugs instead.” And Muckraked gives lots of other……
A SECRET DOCKET IN D.C. COURTS? A prominent news media group is reporting that about 18 percent of the federal criminal docket in the District of Columbia is shielded from the public through a dual or “secret” docketing system. The…..
MORE ON THE WHOLE NSA STORY: I don’t have much to add on the legal analysis linked to earlier, though I still wonder why, exactly, the Administration didn’t just go through FISA. Noah Schachtman continues to pursue the technological theory……
RUSS FEINGOLD is offering some pretty compelling reasons to oppose the Patriot Act renewal legislation. Read the whole thing, but this excerpt is telling: Let me make one final point about sneak and peek warrants. Don’t be fooled for a……
IN THE MAIL: Joel Miller’s Size Matters : How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom. My blurb says it should be a political call to arms. I hope that it will be, as it’s a……
MORE DRUG WAR STUFF being slipped into the Patriot Act renewal…….
A REASON TO VOTE AGAINST THE PATRIOT ACT EXTENSION: Mission creep. A conference report by Senate and House negotiators to extend for four years provisions of the USA Patriot Act includes a comprehensive anti-methamphetamine package restricting the sale of products……
IF A COP BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE UNNANOUNCED, and you shoot him thinking he’s a burglar, it’s self-defense. But Radley Balko reports on a case of a wrong-house no-knock raid that has led to what sounds like a total miscarriage……
RUSTY SHACKLEFORD says everyone is wrong about the drug war…….
JACOB SULLUM: “[I]t’s remarkable that the organizers of a major conservative conference apparently could not find a single person who was willing to publicly defend the war on drugs.”……
HERE’S A PAPER by Dave Kopel and Michael Krause on the Drug War’s negative impact on freedom and human rights…….
A WHILE BACK, I MENTIONED Joel Miller’s book, Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America. Now there’s an interview with Miller in Reason…….
PATRIOT ACT QUESTION: Bush: I don’t think your rights are being watered down. We’re giving antiterrorist forces the same powers drug warriors have had. This argument doesn’t impress me! He does better on the intelligence-sharing bit and the Lackawanna 6…….
A BUNCH OF PEOPLE ARE EMAILING ME about this article on political bloggers in today’s New York Times magazine. Yeah, it calls me a “conservative,” but I’ve just about given up fighting that since to so many people “conservative” is……
RACINE RAVE UPDATE: I’ve been writing about the botched drug raid in Racine, Wisconsin for quite a while. Most of the resulting lawsuits were settled quite some time ago, but Progressive Racine reports that one is still going forward…….
I DON’T SUPPORT THE DRUG WAR, especially when we’re busy with terrorists, and one of my complaints with the Bush Administration is that they’re wasting too much time chasing pot when we should be concentrating on dangerous people. So this……
NEURO-COPS PATROLLING YOUR BRAIN? The report ends with the following paragraph: Sixty years ago the United States Supreme Court opined, “Freedom to think is absolute of its own nature; the most tyrannical government is powerless to control the inward workings……
VARIOUS PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW what I think about Andrew Sullivan’s announcement that he won’t support Bush, and the hostile reactions it’s gotten. I don’t have much to say about it, really. If you read a lot of lefty blogs,……
OPPOSITION TO THE WAR ON DRUGS from the right continues to grow. The latest manifestation is Joel Miller’s book, Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs Is Destroying America. I had hoped that the war on terror would bring a……
A MISERABLE FAILURE IN PRIORITY-SETTING by the Bush Administration: At a time when federal officials should focus obsessively on crushing terrorists, they are expanding the disastrous war on drugs into an even more pointless war on substances. From old bogeymen……
ANOTHER REASON TO HATE THE DRUG WAR, as if we needed one…….
THIS MORNING I NOTED THE UNSAVORY HISTORY of gun control, as described by two law professors, Bob Cottrol and Ray Diamond.. Now a reader sends this unsavory history of drug prohibition, by law professor Charles Whitebread. I’m against both, of……
RICHARD CLARKE will be working for ABC News. This has left some people unimpressed. I’d say that Clarke moved just in time, as his credibility is facing new challenges: Disputing Clarke’s claim, Rice testified customs agents “weren’t actually on alert.”……
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK (FOR THEMSELVES): The law requires everyone to follow the speed limit and other traffic regulations, but in Suffolk County, exceptions should be made for cops and their families, police union officials say. Police Benevolent Association……
JONAH GOLDBERG WARNS PEOPLE not to get too carried away with the whole “South Park Republican” thing. Plus, he makes an offer that, er, can be refused: If conservatives have such a lock on the culture these days, as Al……
COLBY COSH is right to condemn this latest bit of drug-war stupidity…….
SOMETHING SMELLS in the retracted Ecstasy study that I mentioned here earlier. Mark Kleiman has more: The experiment was purportedly intended to represent in an animal model the consequences of human “recreational” MDMA use, and perhaps of therapeutic use of……
BIDEN LIED, FREEDOM DIED: A study relied on by proponents of Joe Biden’s dumb “RAVE Act” has been retracted under circumstances that look a bit dodgy to me: A leading scientific journal yesterday retracted a paper it published last year……
ASHCROFT IS PUSHING THE “VICTORY ACT” NOW. Some of it sounds uncontroversial, or at least mostly so: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is expected to introduce the Victory Act next month. If passed, the feds would be allowed……
HERE’S MORE ON THE RAVE ACT from the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism. Excerpt: The RAVE Act has no valid law enforcement purpose. The initiative to pass this legislation came after federal prosecutors in Louisiana failed in their efforts……
THE RAVE ACT is being used to shut down benefit concerts for drug legalization groups. I blame Joe Biden — for sneaking through this abomination — and Ashcroft’s Justice Department, for applying it this way. This legislation has always been……
WHITE HOUSE LIES AIMED AT WAR WITH IRAQ: The Clinton administration is preparing a cowardly attack on the people of Iraq in which countless innocent lives will be sacrificed to further the interests of American big business. This is the……
JOE BIDEN WANTS TO KILL YOUR CHILD! For years volunteer groups like DanceSafe have been passing out fliers at raves and night clubs with advice on how to avoid dangerous overheating — drink water, take frequent breaks, abstain from alcohol……
STILL MORE REASONS why “no-knock” raids are not only un-American, but criminally dangerous: “We must do a better job of no-knock search warrants,” lawyer Norman Siegel said during an October press conference. “Otherwise, someone might wind up dead as a……
ANOTHER DRUG-RELATED DEATH: SAN ANTONIO — A teenage girl, shot and killed by federal drug agents, was a victim of excessive force from law officers who were investigating her father, relatives and friends say. Ashley Villarreal, 14, died on Tuesday……
THE U.S. MARIJUANA PARTY has formed. There’s even a branch in Tennessee. I was tempted to make the usual Stoner joke, but, actually, I wish them success. The “War on Drugs” is a horrible disaster that will, I think, be……
GORDON LIDDY WOULD BE PLEASED: Baltimore prosecutors today dropped attempted murder and first-degree assault charges against a man who shot four police detectives during a November drug raid, saying they believe Lewis S. Cauthorne acted in self-defense when he wounded……
FOXHOLE CONVERSION IN THE DRUG WAR: Reason interviews three drug warriors who now think the war on drugs is a mistake. Vietnam comparisons are made — and rightly so. Excerpt: Reason: From the perspective of the working police officer, how……
UNDER THE RADAR: Radley Balko reports that “longtime drug warrior Dan Burton made some stunning comments. In a hearing entitled ‘America’s Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia,’ Burton stopped just a hair short of advocating……
BLOGGERS ARE EVERYWHERE: Tom Maguire has a mole in the drug-war advertising establishment and he reports on the stupidity, er, plans…….
THREE PAKISTANI MEN HAVE BEEN ARRESTED for trying to buy Stinger missiles on behalf of Al Qaeda. UPDATE: Here’s more. Ashcroft is wrong, though — this isn’t a reason to join the war on terrorists to the war on drugs…….
YEAH, ME TOO: Stephen Green writes: I’m a Falwell-tweaking, gay-marriage supporting, drug legalizing, pro-abortion, pro-immigration, anti-trade barrier, wary-of-organized-religion kind of conservative. You know, one of those conservatives. UPDATE: SKBubba, meanwhile, is one of those liberals. Maybe we do need a……
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IS SHIFTING RESOURCES from supporting the War on Drugs to supporting, you know, the real war. Good…….
RADLEY BALKO WRITES ON FOXNEWS that the DEA’s new campaign to link terrorism and drug use is lame and dishonest. Yes, it is. It also undermines respect for Homeland Security and the war on terrorism in general. If Daschle wanted……
I’M SURPRISED TO SAY that this piece by Susan Sontag isn’t entirely stupid. In fact, it could be read as expressing the same kind of concern about a “war on” (as in the “war on drugs” or the “war on……
A BOND MOVIE WITHOUT BOND: Joe Katzman has an interesting post on the future of terrorism, warfare, and organized crime. My take: We should emulate beacon-of-light Holland — a tough stance against international thuggery, and legalized drugs that deprive the……
JUST ABOUT A YEAR AGO, I reported Department of Justice figures showing that one American in 32 was under supervision by the criminal justice system, and remarked: How many people have to be under direct supervision of law enforcement before……
DON’T MISS THE WAR ON DRUGS CLOCK. Your tax dollars at work. (Via The Daily Dose)…….
READER CHUCK HERRICK accuses me of “conditional patriotism” in light of my various posts criticizing homeland security. He says if I were a real patriot, I’d be happy to surrender my civil liberties in the name of war, and that……
CHARLES DODGSON agrees that the War On Drugs raises serious doubts about homeland security…….
DON’T FORGET TO WATCH John Stossel’s program tonight on why the Drug War is a miserable failure that threatens us all…….
RAVING LUNACY: My FoxNews column is officially up. Follow the link in it for more background, or go here to read a brief by the ACLU and the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund that I contributed to. We won…….
HEY, FBI — DON’T YOU KNOW THERE’S A WAR ON? Apparently not: Editor — Al Qaeda has the upper hand in the war against terror because the security agencies responsible for protecting us act like a bunch of sissies. Case……
IN LIGHT OF MY EARLIER POST ON THE POSSE COMITATUS ACT and the use of the military for law enforcement, you might want to check out this book chapter by Dave Kopel on the deadly fruit of military participation in……
HERE’S A WASHINGTON POST article on the dumb anti-rave legislation I mentioned last week. Here’s an earlier piece that Dave Kopel and I wrote on this topic in NRO. The thuggish idiocy, corruption, and pathetic lack of contact with reality……
KATHY KINSLEY reflects on the “war on terrorism” and concludes that she’s all in favor of war, so long as it doesn’t look like the “war on drugs” or the “war on poverty.” Question is, does the creation of a……
JIM HENLEY WRITES that he’d rather see the occasional American city nuked than give up on freedom and establish a police state. I agree with this, actually: if you’re willing to make sacrifices for freedom, then it follows logically once……
RADLEY BALKO identifies the Drug War’s true victims — and perpetrators…….
WOBBLY WATCH UPDATE: Reader Craig Schamp says that I’ve ruined his day: You say that “gun rights supporters should be very unhappy with Bush.” Of course, you’re right, but why did you have to go and say that? Bush’s gun……
WAR ON TERROR DISTORTED BY WAR ON DRUGS: And note the parallels with what Jack Goldsmith was saying about government officials’ fear of investigation…….
MORE ON MORPHINE: “Although opium was one of the chief exports of British India and the country still produces more for the legal morphine industry than any other country, few Indians benefit. They end up like millions of the world’s……
A LEGACY OF THE DUKE CASE: Concerns about prosecutors: “Some observers see a potential sea change in US attitudes over prosecutorial power.” I’d say it’s time. UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry! MORE: Reader Rob Ives thinks I’m……
ADVICE ON FEDERALISM for Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani: “Giuliani and Thompson claim they want to reinvigorate discussion of the virtues of federalism. Terrific. But you can’t argue that states should be free to make their own policies without federal……
A TERROR ARREST IN WISCONSIN: “Chief Severude says Hassan Mohamed Abdiaziz was stopped for speeding around 11:30 Tuesday morning. When officers ran his Minnesota driver’s license, they found the man was wanted on several outstanding felony warrants. Severude says Abdiaziz……
IT’S A QUAGMIRE: Dispatches from the war on drugs…….
THE WAR ON DRUGS VS. the war on terror…….
ARE THE DRUG WARRIORS helping the enemy in Afghanistan?……
RADLEY BALKO ON “The government’s morally dubious use of drug informants:” Late last month, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the death of the Kathryn Johnston, the 92-year-old Atlanta woman killed by police during a November 2006 drug raid……
THOUGHTS ON FEDERALISM FROM FRED THOMPSON: And I certainly agree with this bit: Law enforcement in general is a matter on which Congress has been very active in recent years, not always to good effect and usually at the expense……
MORE ON COLOMBIA: FARC is shifting tactics to terrorism and Information War, in response to its inability to deal with the army and police on the ground. Fueled by cocaine profits, FARC believes it can survive the military superiority of……
GETTING THE WAR ON DRUGS out of the way of the war on terror. About time. Let’s hope this represents a trend…….
STUART BUCK: “The way that our country treats chronic pain sufferers who use too much pain medication seems insane to me. I can’t find any evidence that Oxycontin, say, is anywhere near as dangerous as alcohol — i.e., tens of……
HOW TO DO GUN CONTROL: “Special squads of police. No notice searches. Fines. Imprisonment.” UPDATE: Eugene Volokh observes: “It does seem to me that a War on Guns, with unannounced random searches on streets and in homes, should be highly……
PATTERICO HAS MORE on the Atlanta cops charged in the Kathryn Johnston no-knock raid gone wrong. Following up on a comment, I’d also like to know more about the judge who signed the warrant in this case. UPDATE: Here’s more……
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House. While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting……
MICKEY KAUS ON AFGHANISTAN AND OPIUM: “A simpler, more promising solution to the poppy harvest would seem to be Christopher Hitchens’: legalize it and tax it. And, presumably, let the Afghans sell it to whomever they want. The price of……
RECONSIDERING NO-KNOCK RAIDS, IN GEORGIA: A group of lawmakers wants to make it harder for police to use “no-knock” warrants in the wake of a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes officers stormed her home unannounced in……
ANDREW STUTTAFORD: “Who is losing Afghanistan? George W. Bush, that’s who. His watch. His administration. His incompetence. His arrogance. His failure to learn from failure.” He’s referring to the Bush Administration’s prioritization of drug-war concerns there. More on that here…….
KATHRYN JOHNSTON SHOOTING UPDATE: The Fulton County district attorney will seek felony murder charges against at least one of the Atlanta police officers involved in a botched drug raid that resulted in the shooting death of an elderly woman, said……
ANNE APPLEBAUM OFFERS SOME SENSIBLE THOUGHTS on Afghanistan and the opium trade. UPDATE: Ilya Somin comments: “I’m not sure I agree with all the specifics of the Applebaum’s proposed program, and I don’t know enough to evaluate some of the……
MORE ON THAT ATLANTA NO-KNOCK SHOOTING: An Atlanta police narcotics officer has told federal investigators at least one member of his unit lied about making a drug buy at the home of an elderly woman killed in a subsequent raid,……
MORE ON POLICE MILITARIZATION, in today’s Wall Street Journal: Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on “officer safety” and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops……
PATTERICO ACCUSES ME OF FAIR-WEATHER FEDERALISM for supporting Congressional legislation to rein in no-knock drug raids. That’s silly. Congress clearly has the power to pass laws, under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, to prevent states depriving citizens of life,……
ATLANTA SHOOTING UPDATE: Officials say the FBI will lead an investigation into the fatal shooting of an elderly Atlanta woman during a drug raid last week. The announcement was made by Police Chief Richard Pennington at a news conference Monday……
ATLANTA SHOOTING UPDATE: The story just got a lot worse: The confidential informant on whose word Atlanta police raided the house of an 88-year-old woman is now saying he never purchased drugs from her house and was told by police……
YOUTUBE joins the drug war…….
RADLEY BALKO HAS MORE on the Atlanta no-knock raid that resulted in the death of a 92-year-old woman. Plus this useful observation: If the police storm in and you — not being a drug dealer and consequently having no reason……
POLICE IN ATLANTA have shot and killed a 92-year-old woman in what appears to be another wrong-house no-knock raid. As I’ve said before, these raids should only occur when there’s reason to believe that lives are in immediate jeopardy. And……
MILTON FRIEDMAN HAS DIED. It’s hard to say that someone has been plucked untimely at the age of 94, but it feels that way. His Free to Choose won over many people to the cause of liberty — as did……
THE ECONOMIST: Libertarians emerge as a force. “Libertarians are a generally Republican-leaning constituency, but over the last few years, their discontent has grown plain. It isn’t just the war, which some libertarians supported, but the corruption and insider dealing, and……
Sphere: Related Content
I am starting the comments by adding in a post on civil liberties. I could add more, because civil liberties related to gun control are not considered civil liberties by many of his critics. So, from today we get this:
I would include this:
And from yesterday:
THE UNITED NATIONS: Grabbing for the Internet, in Rio, according to Claudia Rosett.
And since the weaselly answer is that he cares only if it is about the UN (despite the extensive evidence above demonstrating that isn’t true) I also give this little link about Dick Cheney from yesterday. Glenn is hardly kind, if civil, to the weird legal theories espoused by him or on his behalf. Tasking a trimmer to executive power? He would never!
Lots more on the front page, but heck, these will do for now.
Hey, that reminds me…
I made a bet with you regarding some blogger’s misinformation that you posted.
I called him on it and said it would be a cold day in Hell before that blogger issued a correction.
You stated he would.
We bet on it.
You said you’d email him regarding the matter.
I hope you remember what it was ’cause I don’t. But if you remember, you should follow up on it. I already spent the ten bucks I was planning on winning from you.
Cheers.
I remember it, but I don’t remember what it was about. Frankly I just forgot. I’ll send you the ten dollars and cal it even. I don;t feel like going through the archives looking for Pogue comments. It isn’t worth it when I might lose anyway. E-mail me your address again.
By the way Pogue, it is really good honey. We have relatives who actually ask for “Pogue honey.” In fact, we gave as a gift a honeycomb to my mother in law, and she wanted to know why she couldn’t have the “Pogue honeycomb.” I just ignored her.
Hey, let us add another civil liberty post:
Criminalize drugs, criminalize gambling, either way it is the same kind of thing. Same stupid result.
Don’t worry ‘bout the tenner, Lance. I’ve had more than ten dollars worth of entertainment here at ASHC. But if only I had ten bones for every time I’ve been right, I’d have at least thirty or forty big ones.
And I’ll pass along your compliments about the honey to the bees. Oh, and I’m planning on setting up a products page on my company website where you can order all the Pogue Honey you want. And I may even name a product line in your blog’s honor…
How about,
Second Hand Nectar
I like it.
Cheers.
Cool. I wasn’t aware you had a company website. Post the URL. Heck, I’ll put it on our blogroll in place of your blog.
sounds kinky!
Maybe Pogue will have an adult section on his website. Chocolate works, why not honey?
Heh…
Have you ever seen the film “Bolero” with Bo Derek??? It’s the main reason I became a honey producer.
Cheers.
Well, you’ve convinced me that Andrew Sullivan is not correct in suggesting that Glenn Reynolds doesn’t want to expand the drug war.
I don’t think you’ve convinced me that Glenn Reynolds doesn’t spend five times as much time mocking people worried about defending our civil liberties from encroachment, as he does defending said encroachments. Do you think you’ve demonstrated that? It’s nice that he linked approvingly to Russ Feingold, and all. If I found fifty links mocking civil-liberty advocates to the four or five patriot-act posts, what would you then say? Do you think I couldn’t win that bet?
I don’t really have time to follow through, but I’m curious.
It’s nice that he posted that story from Zeyad. You’ll notice he posted about fifteen responses suggesting it wasn’t true, and it turned out to be true. It’s admirable that he brought it up again when the military charged some people, but if the military had decided not to charge anyone, it would have disappeared. I don’t like journalism that relies upon the institution being investigated to be its own judge. I think you can understand that. It’s a bad system even if it occasionally works. It violates every institutional law of gravity.
I’m not focused on the drug war. I’m focused on retroactive legal immunity for the telecommunications companies that violated FISA. If you can find me a post from Glenn supporting that, you’d have the beginnings of an argument. If you can find five posts, you’ll convince me. I’ll officially concede.
But I strongly suspect he’s nowhere to be found. Democratic Senators are being heavily pressured: Republican Senators are getting a free ride. Glenn could change this singlehandedly. Where is he? Where is a genuine defender of civil liberties on this?
Or do you think that “retroactive legal immunity” is a concept that is anything other than fundamentally and completely reprehensible?
It makes me absolutely fuc*ing sick.
Huh? Reynolds broke the story. It was Reynolds who got the story the attention it needed to get investigated. He repeatedly gave the story credence. Does it bother you that in a single post he allowed other opinions space? That he admitted he didn’t know if it was true. No grandstanding, no conviction before the facts were in, just dogged coverage and networking to help get to the bottom of it. That is what we should do instead of just taking fabulists like Beauchamp as truth. You question the account. Had TNR done so they wouldn’t be sitting around with egg on their face.
No, you obviously don’t read Glenn, or not at the time, or followed all the links just in those posts. Glenn posted on it repeatedly. he fretted about a coverup, he worked to get it investigated. He helped get Chief Wiggles to investigate. Your charge is just not only false, it is completely the opposite of how Glenn approached it.
You would need more than that, since almost every post up there touches on aspects of civil liberties which are quite important. It also should be noted that mocking civil liberties advocates is fair game. It certainly does not justify the charge leveled, which is now shown to be false in this one exercise in several important ways. As the post points out, it isn’t an issue of disproving every charge of Sullivan’s, it is enough to show that on the easiest aspect Sullivan either doesn’t know what he is talking about, or was lying. In your case, you had to have it demonstrated. Obviously you do not understand Glenn’s thought, and thus have no business asserting what he does or does not care about based on obviously limited readings, mostly from other people’s characterizations, and links where he has been interpreted by dishonest hacks like Instaputz or Greenwald.
Nobody should have taken that critique seriously, that they did means either they were dishonest, or uninformed. I don’t mind people being uninformed, but then saying that you get to hold to a view over people who are informed, based on the evidence of liars and the uninformed is just a bit much for me to listen to.
As for the second comment, even if Glenn were on the other side of this issue, it wouldn’t change the falseness of all the other attacks. One doesn’t justify another, though that is exactly the kind of bootstrapping is done with Glenn all the time. I don’t agree on one issue, or he isn’t active enough, crusading as vigorously, so he is really Cheney in disguise (and of course Cheney isn’t what people think he is either.)
Time for luch. I’ll respond to the rest later.