Sorting through the noise on the Taylor terrorist surveillance ruling
As the dust settles, there is near unanimity. “Judge” Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling in the ACLU’s latest attempt to cripple America’s anti-terrorism operations is an absolute judicial abortion, which I suppose would make her very proud to hear.
Even those who have serious problems with the TSP surveillance of calls from suspected terrorists overseas into the United States are, while admitting that though they like the result, how we got here is difficult to defend. See the WaPo editorial from Friday.
It would be redundant for me to provide my own analysis at this late date, so my focus is on the Left’s reaction to the ruling. What I have found perfectly sums up how the different sides of the spectrum view today’s world. Both sides believe they are fighting the greatest threat to civilized existence. The difference is, the Bush Administration (like the tactics or not) thinks that “Islamic Fascism” is the greatest threat to America while the Left has chosen Bush as the greatest threat TO ITSELF. If only Bush would approach the protection of our country with all the ferocity (but minus the malfeasance) with which the Left fights to bring him down, we might yet win this war.
The consensus of the Left-os-fear punditry and politicians looks at this as “repudiation of the Bush Administration,” not as a well-reasoned legal opinion that vindicates the “Constitutional rights” of the “aggrieved.” This ought to shine the light on the true motives of the Left — bring Bush down at any cost. The reaction was the same in the wake of the Hamdan decision. “We got him!” (Um, not any terrorist, but Bush) Whether or not you agree with the methods used by the Bush administration, looking at both sides, you can’t help but to conclude that one side, though POSSIBLY misguided and not batting 1.000, truly considers priority numero uno taking down the greatest threat to civilization today. The other side would say they are trying to do the same thing, only the other side sees Bush as the greatest threat, not Islamofascist mass murder, hence it’s most important to sack him. For all the screaming the Left does about Bush “taking his eye off the ball” and ignoring bin Laden after the invasion of Iraq, they seem to have taken their focus off of bin Laden (if they were ever focused on him in the first place) and trained it on Bush.
Allow me to illustrate (these are only a few examples, there are many more):
ACLU:
“[The ruling is] a landmark victory against the abuse of power that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration.”
Ever since President Bush was forced to admit that he was spying on Americans’ telephone calls and e-mail without warrants, his lawyers have fought to keep challenges to the program out of the courts. Yesterday, that plan failed.
In the NSA Case, a Judge Says No to King George
In ruling on Thursday that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional and must be halted, U.S. district Judge Anna Diggs Taylor slammed the White House on several critical fronts.
Ted Kennedy:
[O]nce again, the Bush Administration has been sharply rebuked for making up its own rules this time to carry out warrantless surveillance of Americans.
Nancy Pelosi:
The decision by a federal judge that the President’s electronic surveillance program is unconstitutional is a repudiation of Mr. Bush’s dangerous assertion
Russ Feingold:
Today’s district court ruling is a strong rebuke of this administration’s illegal wiretapping program.
Ed Brayton:
Though I don’t place him in the nut category of the above, I have to include this blogger’s analysis of this decision to illustrate how even sane people who may have good reasons to oppose TSP will sell themselves out. Ed Brayton, who runs a pretty interesting site, frequently criticizes STACLU because he believes that the ACLU is a NEAR-spotless paragon of liberty and we are just a bunch of hair-on-fire loons. Reacting to the TSP ruling, he demands “legal analysis” from others who may oppose this ruling (although his “legal analysis” consists of dropping in a few normally italicized words he’s picked up at Volokh), but jumps in right away (before reading the opinion) to preemptively pillory anyone (he targets STACLU) that may determine this ruling to be the work of a political hack (and as it shakes out, most agree that this is precisely the case), again, before reading the opinion himself. After reading the opinion, realizing that this judge constructed an astoundingly agenda-heavy, sure to be recycled as Cottonelle ruling, he still coos, crows and oozes saying in effect, “so what if it IS comically deficient in legal reasoning, so what if it seems the judge would likely not be able to pick out the First and Fourth Amendments if laid sequentially before her: I love the result!” Hypocrisy at a rolling boil — in the very post that he accuses others of judging court rulings based solely on the result, he giddily does just that EVEN after admitting how atrocious this one is. The ruling was “creative,” “clever” and “fascinating” — code for “its ‘originality’ would make Reinhart blush.” That this judge could not rely on any previously accepted understanding of the law and ignored some vital questions in arriving at this scandalous decision (no Ed, the judge’s “creative” conclusions do not signal “end of story”) illustrates the elemental weakness of the case against the program. I agree with Ed on one thing. This is not an “activist judge.” This is a political activist who happens to wear a robe to work and has a history of abusing the post she’s been entrusted to dignify with professionalism and partiality to the law. On these counts, I’ll rename her Anna Big Failure.
The ACLU’s opposition to most counter-terror measures is absurd and dangerous. The ACLU and its allies have not been able to produce one example of someone’s “rights” being violated by this, or any other surveillance program, so I agree with Ed Brayton’s standing argument. For a laugh, check out the ACLU’s “Faces of Surveillance,” propaganda page. There’s something striking about it that exposes the ACLU…can you tell me what that might be? (Psst. Over here. I’ll give you a hint Mack: Most of these “ordinary Americans” whose “free speech rights have been chilled” can’t point to any government action against them (and those that claim to have encountered the government provide no facts about why the government may have been curious about their activities)…and are soooooo intimidated by the fascist Bush administration that they have their photos, places of residence and employment and group affiliations up on the website of one of the prominent organizations in the country.)
After all this, I feel the need to provide links to some worthy analysis:
National Review
More from National Review
WSJ
Volokh
Powerline
Captain’s Quarters
Patterico
Email This
Posted by G. Fortunato on August 20, 2006 10:36 am
» Filed Under ACLU, Border Control/Homeland Security, News, War On Terror
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Comments
19 Responses to “Sorting through the noise on the Taylor terrorist surveillance ruling”
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Syndicate Me
“After reading the opinion, realizing that this judge constructed an astoundingly agenda-heavy, sure to be recycled as Cottonelle ruling, he still coos, crows and oozes saying in effect, ““so what if it IS comically deficient in legal reasoning, so what if it seems the judge would likely not be able to pick out the First and Fourth Amendments if laid sequentially before her: I love the result!”“
Glib provides no evidence for this claim. As usual, he invents a viewpoint and attributes it to his opponent. A more textbook example of the straw man fallacy would be difficult to find.
Meaty–
If you read Brayton’s two posts, he openly admits the deficiencies in the opinion, yet still states that it should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer. As I state in my post, the entirety of which makes a broader point you chose not to confront (I can tell you failed that section of the 4th grade IQ test that asks, “What is the main point of this passage?”), Brayton employs some interesting terms of subterfuge in order to justify his support for the indefensible. Along the way, he gets caught in a “do as I say, not as I do” moment. But EVEN THAT is not the overall point of my post, merely an illustration.
I have little faith in your ability to shake the scales of myopia from your eye sockets because I’ve come to know that if you disagree with an argument, it becomes by default a “straw man,” even if what you describe (“invent[ing] a viewpoint and
attribut[ing] it to his opponent”) does not fit the definition of a “straw man.” You say “texbook,” I say “dictionary.” Get one.
She is obviously a judge who believes in violating the U.S. Constitution by legislating from the bench. She should have said the NSA wiretaps violated the regulation passed by Congress regulating the conduct of the administrative branch. She could also mention it is the Attorney General’s job to prosecute such law breaking. Bush can pardon anyone found guilty. The administration should have went to Congress and asked them for permission before proceeding in such a way. I can see why they support lawbreakers crossing over our border. The U.S. Constitution does not cover anything that occurs outside of the jurisdiction of the United States and non citizens are not protected by the U.S. Constitution.
“Ed Brayton, who runs a pretty interesting site, frequently criticizes STACLU because he believes that the ACLU is a NEAR-spotless paragon of liberty and we are just a bunch of hair-on-fire loons.”
Wrong. Ed Brayton has been critical of the ACLU himself at various times. Brayton criticizes you simply because virtually all of the rants posing as arguments here are full of holes a 12-year-old could spot. Your crippled ideology blinds each one of you, although one cannot rule out basic stupidity and, yes, looniness as contributors to the worthlessness of this place.
“If you read Brayton’s two posts, he openly admits the deficiencies in the opinion, yet still states that it should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer.”
Glib is unable to cite any passage in which Brayton states that the ruling should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer. This is another fallacious straw man argument — and also an outright lie.
“…what you describe (“invent[ing] a viewpoint and attribut[ing] it to his opponent”) does not fit the definition of a “straw man.”"
False. That is, in fact, the definition of the straw man fallacy:
“The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.”
This is exactly what Glib has done here.
WG–
I guess you have no eye for nuance and intentional hyperbole. Notice the word “NEAR” preceded “-spotless.” I am well aware that Mr. Brayton will criticize the ACLU at times. As a matter of fact, he does so in a very recent post regarding a Ten Commandmemts case that I reported on here. It so happens that this ACLU case provided clear evidence that Mr. Brayton isn’t the “Mr. Principle” he purports himself to be and I enjoy a good-natured nudge here and there. Unwind a little — your tight-assedness can cause significant GI issues.
The short emotional rant you have deposited in the comment section here offers no credit to your ideology. If this is the best you’ve got — “you’re stupid, that’s my argument” — well, get out your mirror.
Meaty–
You sure do like to make yourself look foolish, now don’t you. From Ed Brayton:
“It is pointless and absurd to scream about how wonderful a ruling is because you like the outcome if the result is that its weak reasoning gets it easily overturned on appeal, which is exactly what I predict will happen. We can certainly make the case that the result reached is a good result, and I’ve done so.”
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/greenwald_misses_the_point.php#more
“Will the ruling stand up? Frankly, I doubt it. I think it should, but I don’t think it will.”
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/08/federal_judge_grants_injunctio_1.php#more
Funny you went to some obscure web page to try to make your defintion of “straw man” fit. More traditionally-defined:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/straw%20man
Anyway, this is a minor quibble and on second reading of how you’ve described a “straw man,” I will concede that it may be applied in that way. However, it cannot be applied to what I’ve written.
Neither of Glib’s quotes support his claim: that Ed Brayton “states that [the ruling] should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer.” Brayton does not say this, and Glib continues to misrepresent Brayton’s argument.
Glib’s own chosen definition fits what he has done:
“An argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated”
Glib deliberately misrepresented Brayton’s arguments so as to defeat those invented arguments. He is unwilling and/or unable to refute the arguments that Brayton actually made.
There is, of course, a more serious problem with Glib’s argument, and that is the premise underlying it: that the suit brought by the ACLU on which Judge Taylor ruled will “cripple America’s anti-terrorism operations”. Glib never explains how the suit, or Judge Taylor’s ruling, would cripple any “anti-terrorism operations”.
“the ACLU’s latest attempt to cripple America’s anti-terrorism operations”
Notice the word LATEST. I didn’t say ONLY.
There seems to be this same serious problem with most of your arguments meaty. You either don’t read or you don’t understand. Or something worse. Being that you strategically cut out an important piece of my argument when you challenged it, I’d say it’s something worse.
Thanks for conceding the earlier point. There may still be hope for you.
To clarify: You conceded my point by setting up a straw man of your own. I did not address Brayton’s arguments at all. All I addressed was the fact that he has berated others for doing exactly what he perceives others to be guilty of.
“Notice the word LATEST. I didn’t say ONLY.”
Nor did I make any claim that Glib did say “only”. In fact, I said: “Glib never explains how the suit, or Judge Taylor’s ruling, would cripple any “anti-terrorism operations” (emphasis added).
And Glib still has not offered any such explanation.
“Thanks for conceding the earlier point.”
Nothing has been conceded. Glib continues to misrepresent what others have said.
“All I addressed was the fact that he has berated others for doing exactly what he perceives others to be guilty of.”
False. Glib specifically claimed that Ed Brayton “states that [Judge Taylor's ruling] should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer”. Yet Brayton says no such thing. Glib deliberately misrepresented Brayton’s argument.
“Yet Brayton says no such thing.”
How pathetic are you meaty? I have copied his exact words from his own post, yet you still deny what is right in front of your face. You discredit yourself every time you make the mistake of sitting down in front of a key board. This time is no different.
I love the people who claim their free-speech rights are being violated and they are spied on at protests. If you are in a public street protesting everyone can see you and so can the police or other government officials. You are in plain view of police to watch you.
Now if the Bush Admin. is so dangerous to free-speech why haven’t they rounded these folks up and thrown them in jail. If you can post your claim on the ACLU website, where are your civil rights violations?
“I have copied his exact words from his own post, yet you still deny what is right in front of your face.”
Glib specifically claimed that Ed Brayton “states that [Judge Taylor’s ruling] should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer” (emphasis added). Notice that none of the quotes Glib has produced include that phrase, nor anything like it.
Glib is again misrepresenting Brayton’s arguments. It seems he is incapable of conducting an honest debate.
Glib,
If it is nuance and “good-natured nudges” with which you have aimed to imbue your essays, you have failed, and this is not the result of my comprehension deficits. Like as not, you come across as a bona fide zealot. I don’t care how critical you are of Ed Brayton or anyone else, but be assured that you do not strike anyone as being “good-natured” when raging against the left.
But as for hyperbole — now there is something you have down pat.
meatbrain–
One more time for guys like you whose upper limit aptitude for processing intellectual complexity is somewhere between fart joke and The Cat in the Hat:
Ed Brayton:
“We can certainly make the case that the result reached is a good result, and I’ve done so.”
“Will the ruling stand up? Frankly, I doubt it. I think it should, but I don’t think it will.”
This follows his acknowledgment that there are serious problems with the judge’s analysis. Case closed. For you to have argued against a point so clearly made and well-supported just because you cannot shed the ego lest you be forced to admit error is, I can assure you, not a sign of strength but of pathological weakness.
Not only that, I made some other points that should have “offended” you even more as a “man” of the Left than the facts I related about Brayton’s inconsistencies. I can only take that to mean that you are only up to the type of “no he didn’t, yes he did” debate more fit for a nursery. My time was wasted.
You have proven yourself once again to be beneath the task.
“One more time for guys like you whose upper limit aptitude for processing intellectual complexity is somewhere between fart joke and The Cat in the Hat:”
One more time for Glib, who apparently believes that a gratuitous ad hominem attack is an effective substitute for reason: Glib claims that Ed Brayton “states that [Judge Taylor's ruling] should stand because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer” (emphasis mine). What evidence does Glib offer for this claim?
He cites the following quote from Brayton’s post:
“We can certainly make the case that the result reached is a good result, and I’ve done so.”
Nothing in that quote indicates that Brayton believes that the ruling should stand merely because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer. Glib ignores the reasons that Brayton gives for his evaluation of the ruling, and substitutes instead something that Brayton never said nor implied.
Glib also cites the following quote from Brayton’s post:
“Will the ruling stand up? Frankly, I doubt it. I think it should, but I don’t think it will.”
Again: Nothing in that quote indicates that Brayton believes that the ruling should stand merely because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer. Why does Brayton indicate that he thinks the ruling should stand up? Hint: It is not “because the outcome is the one he happens to prefer”. You cannot learn this from Glib’s analysis of Brayton’s arguments, of course, because Glib does not do any analysis. Glib ignores all of Brayton’s arguments, preferring instead to substitute something Brayton neither said nor implied.
It is difficult at this point to avoid the conclusion that Glib does not understand what Brayton said. It seems more likely that Glib’s fabrications regarding the meaning of Brayton’s words are the result of blatant dishonesty.
Correction to my last paragraph:
It is difficult at this point to accept the conclusion that Glib does not understand what Brayton said. It seems more likely that Glib’s fabrications regarding the meaning of Brayton’s words are the result of blatant dishonesty.