Reports a new poll for Politico, conducted entirely on Sunday night. Dorothy Rabinowitz and Ann Coulter have both explained why Coakley’s role in the Amirault case–involving the persecution and long-term imprisonment of plainly innocent people, reveal her to be utterly unfit to serve in any public office. That Coakley is now plainly lying about Scott Brown and rape is further proof of a character that appears to be remarkably scurrilous.
Orin Kerr says:
David, did you actually just cite Ann Coulter in a non-ironic way?
January 18, 2010, 5:38 pmanonymous says:
Wow, Advocate Lynching much? Stay classy.
January 18, 2010, 5:39 pmIlya Somin says:
I agree with most of what you say here, but citing Ann Coulter as an authority on anything doesn’t really help the case.
January 18, 2010, 5:43 pmDaniel Chapman says:
Wow… that was awfully snarky for a conspirator.
January 18, 2010, 5:43 pmhippo says:
Orin,
January 18, 2010, 5:44 pmDid you read the cited Coulter column?
ShelbyC says:
aren’t ad-homs (or fems) a comments policy violation?
January 18, 2010, 5:48 pmspo says:
Nice ad hominem, Ilya. Coulter’s a bomb-thrower, no doubt, but dumb she aint.
January 18, 2010, 5:51 pmIlya Somin says:
Coulter’s a bomb-thrower, no doubt, but dumb she aint.
You can say ridiculous and offensive things without being dumb. Such is the case with Coulter. I’m not saying she’s always wrong about everything. But, given her awful record, it’s not a good idea to cite her as an authority.
January 18, 2010, 5:58 pmOrin Kerr says:
Hippo,
Are you familiar with Ann Coulter’s work and general reputation?
January 18, 2010, 5:58 pmNelson Lund says:
Orin and Ilya–
Dave Kopel pointed to a piece by Ann Coulter that contains arguments. Insulting her doesn’t refute her arguments.
January 18, 2010, 5:59 pmOrin Kerr says:
Nelson,
But obviously, we’re not trying to refute her arguments: Indeed, I suspect neither Ilya nor I disagree with her arguments.
If you want to take the position that you find Ann Coulter a generally credible and reliable source, then just say so. But I wouldn’t say so…
January 18, 2010, 6:02 pmArthurKirkland says:
I agree that scurrilous characters should not be senators.
Until Vitter packs up his diaper bag, however, and Ensign departs for bribing the family he wrecked by fornicating with the wife of a “friend” (and for setting up the “friend” as a “lobbyist” specializing in favors from Ensign), it is difficult to accept an argument that Ms. Coakley would depress the senatorial standard.
If the animus toward Ms. Coakley in the precipitating post relates to “fitness” or “scurrilous character” (rather than to politics in general and health care reform in particular), I’m Rush Limbaugh’s
January 18, 2010, 6:04 pmservant in charge of scoring the boss’s unlawful drugs in darkened parking lotsbig bag of contraband boner pills.Nelson Lund says:
Orin wrote:
In that case, insulting her accomplishes exactly what?
January 18, 2010, 6:05 pmTerrivus says:
The Politico poll gave Brown a “61 to 30 percent lead among voters 18 to 29 years old.”
I don’t know… that seems so large as to render the poll facially suspect. Brown leads younger voters — who are historically Democratic, have been trending even more strongly in that direction of late, and are in Massachusetts of all places — by 31 points? That just seems so implausible I wonder whether the sample size leads to reliable results.
January 18, 2010, 6:06 pmBZ says:
Well, you can totally ignore Coulter and still get the gist by reading the Wall Street Journal’s Rabinowitz, as linked.
And you can ignore all the commentaries, and just check the results tomorrow night.
January 18, 2010, 6:07 pmShelbyC says:
So you’re simply trying to insult her? FWIW, I agree about her credibility and reliability.
January 18, 2010, 6:07 pmAnderson says:
In that case, insulting her accomplishes exactly what?
Warns those unfamiliar with her work. I mean, kids aren’t *born* knowing what Coulter’s like. We have to tell them, for the good of the species.
January 18, 2010, 6:08 pmdr says:
Why would you insult Ann Coulter like that?
January 18, 2010, 6:09 pmOrin Kerr says:
Nelson,
It accomplishes sending the message that Coulter’s flagrant abuse and disregard of standards of civility, decency, and fair play are entirely unacceptable.
Of course, that assumes that my fellow conservatives still care about civility, decency, and fair play, and will enforce those beliefs even against a partisan conservative.
January 18, 2010, 6:11 pmJ. Aldridge says:
I thought Coakley was utterly unfit when she tried to suggest Curt Schilling was a Yankee’s fan.
January 18, 2010, 6:11 pmShelbyC says:
To make clear where my objection is coming from.
January 18, 2010, 6:12 pmAllan Walstad says:
(Hope I’m not guilty of hijacking the thread by ignoring the Coulter issue.) I wonder: are the Dem bigwigs in DC now huddled on the question of whether to try to push through the final vote on the health takeover bill (speaking of hijacking…) before Brown can get there to claim his seat?
January 18, 2010, 6:16 pmneurodoc says:
It was a short enough piece consisting mostly of straightforward factual assertions. Why not read what Coulter wrote and engage with what is there? If what is there isn’t false or misrepresentative, then does it matter much, if at all, that Coulter authored it? Linking to the Coulter piece as David Kopel did for a statement of the case why Coakley may be seen as unfit for office is not exactly “citing her for authority” of moral, scholarly, or other nature, is it?
If you knew nothing of the Amirault matter, would the Coulter piece give you pause and make you want to know more before you rejected or accepted the notion that Coakley may be unfit? If it would, then what’s wrong with the piece, other than that Coulter’s name attaches to it?
January 18, 2010, 6:17 pmAnderson says:
… The Rabinowitz link, by contrast, is pretty good, and one could also cite Radley Balko on the Amirault topic.
Seems like everyone’s much better off with her out of the prosecutor’s chair and into the Senate!
… It’s interesting to ponder at what point the character flaws of candidate A justify the election of candidate B, who will work for policies one thinks wrongheaded or wicked and will likewise oppose good policies.
January 18, 2010, 6:18 pmPhatty says:
The ad about Brown and rape will backfire horribly. If an ad is so incredibly outrageous that almost every reader will instantly recognize that it can’t be true, the readers will just become angry with the sponsor of the ad for making such a nasty allegation against the opponent.
January 18, 2010, 6:18 pmAnderson says:
If you knew nothing of the Amirault matter, would the Coulter piece give you pause and make you want to know more before you rejected or accepted the notion that Coakley may be unfit?
No, it wouldn’t. I would tend to suspect that Coulter was leaving something out, twisting the facts, or otherwise writing dishonestly. That is the point.
January 18, 2010, 6:19 pmShelbyC says:
:-). Not an ad-hom if it’s not an attempt to undermine the argument or put them down.
For Example:
A: Janet Reno said XYZ
B: Yeah, well Janet Reno’s ugly (Ad Hom)
C: Look, I think she’s ugly too, but it’s not polite to bring it up in that context (not ad-hom)
January 18, 2010, 6:20 pmDon de Drain says:
I am thoroughly unimpressed with both candidates. Lieberman and the conservative Democrats have to be rooting for Coakley, given that a Brown victory will take away some of their ability to influence the Democratic majority in the Senate. My feelings about this election are the same as my feelings when USC and UCLA play each other in football: I hope they both lose.
January 18, 2010, 6:21 pmAnderson says:
The ad about Brown and rape will backfire horribly. If an ad is so incredibly outrageous that almost every reader will instantly recognize that it can’t be true, the readers will just become angry with the sponsor of the ad for making such a nasty allegation against the opponent.
Yeah, dumb move.
January 18, 2010, 6:23 pmIlya Somin says:
It’s worth noting that Coulter managed to say some stupid and ridiculous things even on this simple issue:
She called the Amirault case “the most outrageous miscarriage of justice since the Salem witch trials.” I think millions of Gulag inmates would disagree with that. Even confining our attention to the US, there have been plenty worse miscarriages of justice over the last 300 years, such as the Emmett Till case, or the Scottsboro boys. The Amirault case was a grave injustice. But Coulter manages to overblow it even so.
Then she says that “Anyone with the smallest sense of justice cannot vote to put this woman in any office.” I wouldn’t vote for her myself. But a pivotal senate election doesn’t come down to any one issue. If you are a liberal who believes that the passage of Obamacare will provide vast benefits to millions of people and that the election of Coakley is crucial to ensuring that passage, you might reasonably support her election despite her egregious misconduct as a prosecutor. Elections aren’t just about the candidates and their personal virtues. They are also about public policy results.
January 18, 2010, 6:24 pmdr says:
Shelby, I’m just yanking your chain. I asked to withdraw my comment because, well, I’m just chain-yanking. Obviously that doesn’t happen instantaneously.
For what it’s worth, I think Ann Coulter has worked very hard for very long to solidify a reputation as one not to be trusted. Like Andersen says, nothing she says can persuade me, because my assumption is always that she’s leaving out key details, and twisting other key details. She’s hardly alone in this.
January 18, 2010, 6:25 pmzuch says:
“Ann Coulter” and “explain” in the same sentence is almost invariably an oxymoron.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 6:26 pmMark Buehner says:
Is anybody willing to stand behind that ad? Is anybody even willing to justify it? Its some of the worst sort of calumny imaginable in my mind- should we excuse because of health care?
Is there anything out of bounds to get this atrocious health care bill that nobody really likes passed? Once you start down that road of the greater good argument…
January 18, 2010, 6:27 pmShelbyC says:
I understood and given my simultanious criticism of and endorsement of the criticisims, it’s a well deserved chain yanking. But given the fact that she wrote a reasonable column and David cited other folks as well, I thought the attack was a little much.
January 18, 2010, 6:32 pmkdackson says:
Ilya:
When it comes to a person’s vote, it usually is a single issue for that person.
Now, would I trust anyone with the authority to make laws I have to abide by who can not admit she was wrong on something as egregous as the Amirault case?
Not on your life.
January 18, 2010, 6:33 pmneurodoc says:
So you would proscribe links to anything authored by Coulter in the absence of suitable disclaimers?
Personally, I see Coulter in the same light as I see a Bill Maher, only of different political polarity. Maher is decidedly more offensive to me than Coulter, but they’re of a kind. I do understand why some would recoil at the very mention of Coulter’s name, in the same way I recoil at the mention of Maher’s, but I see no reason to object to a link to a piece by either of these partisans if the piece contributes something of value, like a reliable summary that can be fact checked and doesn’t require that we rely on the credibility of the author.
January 18, 2010, 6:33 pmPhatty says:
How the hell did Martha Coakley emerge as the Democrat’s choice for senator in Massachusetts? The other candidates she beat out must have been Jack the Ripper, the Devil and Derek Jeter.
January 18, 2010, 6:35 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Orin, Coulter’s shtick has always been that she argues like a Liberal. Some of us can deprecate the tactics but still appreciate Coulter as a performance artist who doses Libs with what they dose the rest of us with.
Besides, IIRC, ‘appeal to authority’ is the First Logical Fallacy. So what does it matter if Coulter is or isn’t a credible authority?
January 18, 2010, 6:36 pmFrank Drackman says:
Agree with J Aldridge, Campaign was over when she called Curt Schilling a Yankee… Where I come from that’s like sayin Dale Earnhardt drove a Toyota…
Or havin to ask who “Junior” is. Too Bad its not “Huntin Season” so she could go get herself a “Huntin License” with Senator Helmet Hair…
Love her or hate her, Ann Coulter’s pretty hot.
Frank
January 18, 2010, 6:36 pmzuch says:
I am curious about something: Listening to Sean InsHannity on RW radio, I understood his big complaint about Coakley to be that she’d let a policeman accused of sexual abuse out without bail (nevermind that bail is set not by prosecutors but by the judge). Yet the Rabinowitz complaint is that she came down too hard on a convicted (albeit the justice of that conviction may be in serious doubt) sex offender.
What’s the story? Is she too easy on sex offenders? Or too tough?
I’d note that those working on sexual abuse cases are likely to catch flack on both sides; in such cases, emotions tend to work their way upward and people feel very passionate about the cases, and each side feels that horrible injustices have occurred if things don’t go they way they want.
Is it true that Coakley was a bad prosecutor in these trying circumstances? Did she do an adequate (and necessary) job under difficult circumstances?
Or is all the recent hair-rending and lamentations about Coakley due to something else?
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 6:38 pmkdackson says:
You forgot Bucky Dent.
January 18, 2010, 6:38 pmOrin Kerr says:
PersonfromPorlock,
It sounds to me like you think the other side always gets away with trickery and deceit.
January 18, 2010, 6:39 pmzuch says:
This alone is enough to distrust her intellectual capabilities.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 6:42 pmArthurKirkland says:
What does Coulter’s conduct when choosing a location at which to vote have to do with any of this?
As someone else observed, this seems a remarkably weak pair of senatorial candidates from a state such as Massachusetts.
January 18, 2010, 6:43 pmMark Buehner says:
Err, how about being correct?
One was an innocent man with a whole lot of exculpatory evidence, one was a very guilty man with solid evidence of an incredibly horrific crime. Look into the details.
Or is it too much to ask a DA to exercise the most basic level of good judgment , and instead we should insist on the lowest common denominator of mindless consistency? We could train a chimp to push papers, we expect a little bit of judgment from an officer of the court, especially one running for the US Senate.
January 18, 2010, 6:44 pmneurodoc says:
So if you knew nothing of the Amirault matter before, would Dorothy Rabinowitz’s writings give you pause and make you want to know more before you rejected or accepted the notion that Coakley may be unfit? If not, then perhaps you are not much interested in the facts however you might learn of them, and Coulter isn’t really an issue here.
January 18, 2010, 6:44 pmHans Bader says:
Interestingly, Ann Coulter, a former federal appeals court clerk, is one of the smartest people I have ever met. She can certainly be bombastic on TV.
But when she takes the time to sit down and analyze a legal issue carefully, she does it very well.
I especially liked her debunking in Human Events of the Supreme Court’s (il)logic in its 5-to-4 decision in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999), a case that illustrated the maxim that bad facts result in bad law.
Her book on impeachment, while admittedly quite slanted, is extremely valuable for illustrating both the broadest possible reasonable interpretation of Congress’s impeachment power, and for documenting the broad basis for impeaching judges in Anglo-American tradition.
I totally disagree with her about some things. But to call her “dumb” is ridiculously inaccurate and idiotic.
January 18, 2010, 6:48 pmAnderson says:
One was an innocent man with a whole lot of exculpatory evidence
Which the jury was forbidden to hear?
The other candidates she beat out must have been Jack the Ripper, the Devil and Derek Jeter.
The Devil is on record as claiming American citizenship, but I’m not sure about whether he resides in Massachusetts.
January 18, 2010, 6:49 pmfrankcross says:
Many people and major news outlets have spoken on Coakley’s role in the Amirault case. The question is, out of these many, why would you choose to highlight Ann Coulter’s comments? It is a suggestion that the author considers her a particularly reliable source (as opposed to the many unlinked commentaries). Whatever the accuracy of the comments, it is fair to question why she, out of many, was linked as a source.
January 18, 2010, 6:49 pmneurodoc says:
Yeah, but for that “albeit”…
January 18, 2010, 6:49 pmAnderson says:
So if you knew nothing of the Amirault matter before, would Dorothy Rabinowitz’s writings give you pause and make you want to know more before you rejected or accepted the notion that Coakley may be unfit?
Yes, b/c AFAIK, Rabinowitz has no notoreity for dishonesty.
January 18, 2010, 6:50 pmShelbyC says:
From what I understand, she’s easy on the guilty ones whose fathers contribute to her campain, and tough on the innocent ones who don’t. IMHO, anybody who argues for the continued incarceration of an ’80′s MVMO conviction should be presumptively disqualified from public office.
January 18, 2010, 6:52 pmLe Messurier says:
I don’t read Coulter, nor do I read Krugman. Such extreme partisanship is both off-putting, not believable and uninformative.
January 18, 2010, 6:52 pmOrin Kerr says:
Hans Bader:
I’m curious, can you pinpoint who you think is calling Coulter “dumb”?
January 18, 2010, 6:55 pmNelson Lund says:
Orin wrote:
I care enough about civility, decency, and fair play to object when they are denied to Ann Coulter, even by fellow conservatives.
January 18, 2010, 6:55 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
Apparently this was a grand jury trial and Coakley did not appear to claim that the accused was dangerous, so he was released on his own recognizance. (Then again, IANAL and all I know about bail comes from Law and Order.)
What’s the story? Is she too easy on sex offenders? Or too tough?
Well, what we presumably want is for her to be “tough” on people who actually are sex offenders, and not on those who aren’t. Which is evidently not her documented track record.
January 18, 2010, 7:00 pmdr says:
Very chivalrous. But not very persuasive. Ann Coulter has earned our mistrust. She’s never demonstrated any inclination toward fairness in her arguments — her entire schtick, as someone already pointed out, is to throw bombs.
Fine for what it is. She’s great for riling up the people who already agree with her. But she’s not likely to persuade anyone, and citing her is not likely to help anyone’s cause if the cause is persuasion. If Orin or Ilya point this out, that hardly qualifies as denying her civility or decency.
January 18, 2010, 7:01 pmneurodoc says:
“Dishonest” meaning Coulter will say/write that which she surely must know is factually untrue, not that as part of her conservative shtick she tries to shock, inflame, agitate, etc. and manipulates through various means, even appealing to bigotry? Based on my relatively limited exposure to her, I certainly accept the latter, but can you offer proof of the former with notable examples of lies she has told? I’m open to persuasion if the evidence is there.
January 18, 2010, 7:08 pmwlpeak says:
Hmmm, I thought this was going to be an interesting thread until someone decided to focus on the messenger and not the message. Blech.
January 18, 2010, 7:09 pmzuch says:
Which was which? ;-)
AFAIK, the Amiraults were convicted (and FWIW, Coakley played no role in those convictions). What happened to the policeman?
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:10 pmMike McDougal says:
Can we stop talking about Coulter?
January 18, 2010, 7:12 pmHans Bader says:
Orin, Zuch questions Coulter’s “intellectual capacities.” To me, that sounds a lot like dumb.
By the way, you speak of “my fellow conservatives,” which is ironic.
You are a very thoughtful person, so I don’t mean this as a criticism at all — but you are a moderate, not a “conservative,” so it makes no sense to speak of “my fellow conservatives.” (Among lawyers, who are very liberal lot, you may be viewed as a conservative. But among laypeople, you qualify as a moderate).
(In the prior thread, you suggested only a “libertarian” would agree with my argument that the individual-mandate exceeds Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. But I am not really a Libertarian, since I would flunk many Libertarian litmus tests — and many conservative ones, too, since I don’t oppose gay marriage, and don’t want to ban abortion in general. Moreover, as I explained in an earlier thread, 39 of the 40 Republican senators voted to raise a constitutional objection against the healthcare bill, regarding the individual mandate being unconstitutional — including such moderates as Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Conservative Senator Orrin Hatch, not a libertarian, made the argument that ObamaCare’s “individual mandate” violates the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Lopez (1995), in the Wall Street Journal).
January 18, 2010, 7:13 pmzuch says:
Oh. Raising the bet, eh? This is a new accusation now. Any cites for this?
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:14 pmfrankcross says:
Nelson Lund, you are assuming your conclusion. The only reason that the comments could be construed as denying civility, decency and fair play to Coulter would be if her comments did not display incivility, indecency and a lack of fair play. Do you believe that she has not so displayed?
For example, she referred to swing voters as idiots with the IQ of a toaster. Would that be civil and decent and fair?
She said it was her fantasy that the vote would be taken from women. What do you make of that?
January 18, 2010, 7:14 pmzuch says:
It is if she’s claiming to be “argu[ing] like a Liberal”. Of course, the lack of intellectual rigour might be dishonesty (such as “straw man” argumentation) rather than incompetence.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:16 pmOrin Kerr says:
Nelson Lund:
I am pleased to hear that, but how does that apply to this thread? I wrote, “David, did you actually just cite Ann Coulter in a non-ironic way?” How is that uncivil, indecent, or contrary to the norms of fair play?
If you think it was any of these, can you give me some ideas as to how you think I should express my view that Coulter is out of bounds because of her flagrant violations of civility and standards of decency without in turn rendering my objections uncivil? I hope we agree that it is not uncivil just to point out that others are uncivil.
January 18, 2010, 7:17 pmzuch says:
A “grand jury trial“?!?!?
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:18 pmneurodoc says:
Quite right about the message rather than the messenger, if Ann Coulter qualifies as a messenger here when she is a primary or principle source for nothing. So, what about the “message,” that being Coakley’s fitness? Do those rape ads say something important about her personal integrity?
Most of the focus on this particular race seems to be on account of the health care reform legislation that hangs in the balance. How about Coakley on other matters, like issues of national security?
January 18, 2010, 7:21 pmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ry3yG84pUE
zuch says:
The Amiraults, FWIW, were convicted sex offenders. I don’t know the merits of bail in the policeman case, but at that point he was simply accused of such.
I’d advert to my point in a previous VC post: The sudden concern for those wrongly convicted by overzealous prosecutors amongst my conservative brethren and sistren is heartening. One can only hope it lasts past Wednesday.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:23 pmOrin Kerr says:
Hans,
I’m certain you’re a member of the People’s Front of Judea, actually.
January 18, 2010, 7:23 pmShelbyC says:
just this. That’s why I qualified my comment with “from what I understand”. My main problem with her is with the Fells Acres case.
January 18, 2010, 7:25 pmDavid Kopel says:
The argument on the case you mention was that she was soft on the perpetrator because of political connections. As you say, bail is set by the judge, but it is rare for judges to require greater bail than is requested by the prosecutor.
January 18, 2010, 7:31 pmzuch says:
So the evidence for this is the belief of a political opponent, eh?
I’d note that article says that:
How’d he do that? Was he state’s attorney?
And where’s the evidence she acted here because the Amiraults weren’t contributing to her campaign?
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:36 pmneurodoc says:
She may lack in civility, decency and fairness, but I don’t see an over the top statement like that one about swing voters being idiots as a very impressive example of such, especially since it is not at all exceptional in this increasingly partisan times. It is more offputting, less amusing, when the attacks get more personalized whether by Coulter or others.
January 18, 2010, 7:36 pmzuch says:
I think you mean “allegation”.
And while we’re at it, Obama has no say as to whether C-SPAN televises the HCR reconciliation proceedings.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 7:38 pmShelbyC says:
If somebody wrote “did you actually just cite Orin Kerr in a non-ironic way?” I’ll bet you’d find that uncivil, even if that person believed citing you was out of bounds for some reason.
January 18, 2010, 7:39 pmManju says:
This is just the absolute worst tendency of the left: an authoritarian mindset justified by evidence lacking pseudo science deployed in the name of combating victimization.
Aware they are on the cusp of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, they double down with racially divisive charges against Brown (Birthterism) mixed with some gendered politics (turn away all rape victims).
To make matters worse, they’re not even effective. The most progressive state in the union appears ready to deliver Obama a spectacular failure, one that could transform his presidency.
January 18, 2010, 7:40 pmleo marvin says:
There are two issues: One is civility, as Orin explained, and the other is strategy. If you’re blogging to persuade, you should care how those who can be persuaded will react to everything you present. Burdening an argument they might otherwise be open to with the toxic reputation of a Coulter or a Maher is counter-productive. It may be cathartic, but it’s not persuasive.
Look at it this way. Civility notwithstanding, as a liberal I’m thrilled when Coulter’s name comes up, and I cringe, as Orin and Ilya figuratively do here, when Maher or Michael Moore is cited for something I’m trying to argue.
January 18, 2010, 7:43 pmepluribus says:
Kudos to Orin and Ilya. I gave up on Coulter, totally and finally, when she urged Jed Bush to call out the Florida National Guard to resist the court rulings in the Terry Schiavo case. If I recall correctly, the SCUS declined to intervene in that case, but Coulter said the military should. I found this particularly offensive because Coulter is a lawyer and should have more respect for the rule of law, but apparently doesn’t. If this is “uncivil,” I apologize. But I really don’t think it is.
January 18, 2010, 7:45 pmdevoman says:
On the messenger: Why is this hard to understand? To many of us, Coulter is dishonest, caustic, and intentionally inflammatory. She doesn’t advance arguments to persuade but rather to rile up those that already agree with her. We have learned to tune her out. It makes no difference if her argument is honest this time; once you have developed a reputation for dishonesty, no one believes you when you’re actually honest. That’s the price you pay for dishonesty. But let’s face it: she’s cryin’ all the way to the bank.
On the message: I will be holding my nose when voting for Coakley tomorrow. Why? For exactly the reason Ilya mentioned: public policy. Although the comment about Curt Schilling alone ought to disqualify her for any public position in the state of Massachusetts.
January 18, 2010, 7:46 pmShelbyC says:
Wait, it’s only bad to keep innocents in jail and guilty folks out if you do it for political reasons?
Leone? Clearly.
January 18, 2010, 7:47 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Yeah, when I’m citing something I look for it on cnn.com, or nyt.com, or something that has, if not a reputation for perfect objectivity, at least a slight bias the other way. I may read sites that lean my way, but I probably won’t cite them. I just don’t think I’d have as much credibility if I did.
Also, I skip over anything with Ann Coulter’s name on it b/c I do not care for her style.
January 18, 2010, 7:48 pmOrin Kerr says:
Shelby,
I don’t think that example works, as it seems to presuppose a view as to whether the person is themselves properly within the bounds of civil discourse. For example, imagine David had written this:
I trust we recognize it would not be uncivil to point out the difficulties with citing an insane murderer for authority, whether you happen to agree with this section of the Unabomber Manifesto or not.
January 18, 2010, 7:49 pmepluribus says:
ShelbyC says:
You should be able to tell the difference between Ann Coulter and Orin Kerr–and it goes to a lot more than gender. To my knowledge, Orin has never engaged in the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that is Coulter’s stock in trade.
January 18, 2010, 7:50 pmdevoman says:
Manju says:
This is just the absolute worst tendency of the left: an authoritarian mindset justified by evidence lacking pseudo science deployed in the name of combating victimization.
Manju, I admit you have me laughing at this one. I consider myself “of the left” so I assume you are speaking about me, or at least people like me. But I can’t figure out what this means. At the minimum, I would assume “evidence lacking pseudo science” would be a good thing.
January 18, 2010, 7:59 pmShelbyC says:
@Orin, nice one :-). But I don’t think you can analogize directly from an insane murderer to a bombastic pundit. FWIW, I found the comment a little off-putting even thought I agreed with it’s substance and had the same reaction when I read the article. But hey, what do I know. I’m sure many of my comments are off putting as well.
January 18, 2010, 7:59 pmChrisIowa says:
The Devil’s known for being a carpetbagger.
January 18, 2010, 8:05 pmChrisIowa says:
I leave work a smidgen early, shop at two store to find supper on the way home, fix same. And then a short time later find a Food fight at the VC.
Gotta work harder to keep up.
January 18, 2010, 8:10 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
The Amiraults, FWIW, were convicted sex offenders. I don’t know the merits of bail in the policeman case, but at that point he was simply accused of such.
Winfield, zuch. Not “the policeman.” If the Amiraults are going to get continuing press as convicted sex offenders, despite near-universal opinion that they are innocent, the least you could do is mention the name of the man who everyone seems confident actually did commit a horrific child rape.
I’d advert to my point in a previous VC post: The sudden concern for those wrongly convicted by overzealous prosecutors amongst my conservative brethren and sistren is heartening. One can only hope it lasts past Wednesday.
But it’s not new, zuch. Certainly conservative anger at the ritual-child-abuse hysteria is about as old as the charges themselves. And I recall a certain amount of indignation about one Nifong hereabouts. Whilst people of your political persuasion were, IIRC, cheering him on.
January 18, 2010, 8:11 pmNelson Lund says:
Orin wrote:
Criticizing someone for specific statements that are uncivil, indecent, or unfair is not uncivil, indecent, or unfair. That’s not what happened here, either to Ann Coulter or to Dave Kopel.
January 18, 2010, 8:14 pmBruce Hayden says:
The problem here is that they were convicted based on junk science and non-credible evidence. Despite this being well known, and the women having been paroled, she pushed as hard as she could to keep the father in prison. And she succeeded.
The convictions were suspect from the beginning, with absolutely no physical evidence to support the recovered memories. You would think that using a knife to rape a kid would have left at least some evidence in the form of wounds, etc. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Ditto for the rest of the recovered (aka coached) memories.
You seem to be saying that the fact that they had been convicted was sufficient. But it isn’t. The job of a prosecutor is not to get convictions, but to do justice. And she didn’t. Most of those involved eventually realized their mistakes here. She didn’t.
If she loses at least partially because of her actions with the Amiraults, I will think that justice has prevailed there, at least a tiny bit. Not enough to overcome her gross prosecutorial misconduct. But a little.
January 18, 2010, 8:16 pmPotpouri « Pittsburgh Legal Back Talk says:
[...] In more Coakley news, a poll by Politico purportedly shows her in free-fall, not because of health care, say the pundits, but because of [...]
January 18, 2010, 8:21 pmzuch says:
You implied she did it for monetary/political reasons. I asked for documentation. I guess you’ve abandoned this claim/insinuation/slur….
No. Larry Frisoli. Who also alleged that his political opponent had let the guy off easy. Which got turned by the RW foamer network (i.e., InsHannity) into Coakley letting him off without bail (when that’s the province of a judge). Just to put things into perspective.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 8:23 pmThe Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk says:
Professor Kerr may not qualify as a conservative (by Hans Bader’s unspecified definition), but others whose conservatism surely is not questionable have found Coulter’s conduct to exhibit “a total lack of professionalism.” And what precipitated Coulter’s falling out with National Review? Only a column in which she advocated that the U.S. forcibly convert muslims and indiscriminately make war on civilians (viz., “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” and “We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”). Professor Kerr’s comments are apt and well within the bounds of civility. Conservatives who wish to persuade should shun Coulter.
January 18, 2010, 8:23 pmjcm says:
http://www.bitterlawyer.com/index.php/interviews/eugene_volokh_the_un_american_legal_conspirator/?entry_id=1560
January 18, 2010, 8:33 pmPatrick says:
Andrew Sullivan says it’s all over. For the United States of America.
January 18, 2010, 8:37 pm(He’s also pessimistic about Coakley’s chances tomorrow.)
zuch says:
OK. But at that point he was just a suspect/defendant. (I used “policeman” just to identify the specific case).
I was also appalled by the McMaster case and others, and well aware of the work of Ofshe on the so-called “repressed memory syndrome”.
But what about other cases of actual innocence? It would seem to me that DNA exculpatory evidence is far more convincing than is scientific testimony about the unreliability of “repressed memory” or the leading nature of child interrogations/play-acting. Where’s the conservatives on getting those actually innocent (or having such claims) new trials?
You’d do better in countering my arguments if you restricted yourself to those things that I have said, rather than that which my alleged comrades have said.
And isn’t it interesting the the defendants in the Nifong case were also … <*hmmmm*gt; An interesting choice of cases you find compelling.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 8:38 pmNelson Lund says:
Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk wrote:
(1) The word “forcibly” does not occur in the quote from Ann Coulter. (2) President Obama seems to be killing a lot of civilians with his drone attacks, which seems to go beyond Ann Coulter’s unrebutted statements about the nature of war.
January 18, 2010, 8:39 pmFub says:
Convicted, but not on Coakley’s watch.
January 18, 2010, 8:39 pmChris Travers says:
Personally, I think Kenneth Anderson’s post, supra, says it all.
January 18, 2010, 8:41 pmMark Field says:
This strikes me as a pretty weak defense, given the rest of her quote.
January 18, 2010, 8:42 pmOrin Kerr says:
Nelson Lund:
Unfortunately, saying what you think would not be uncivil leaves me a little uncertain as to what you think was uncivil. To the extent you think it’s uncivil to say Coulter is uncivil, I suppose I will have to respectfully disagree: Her writings are well-known, and I don’t see the point in rehashing them here or in saying that it was her comments, and not the author of them, that were uncivil.
As for what was uncivil to Dave Kopel, I’m not sure I know what you have in mind. If you think it is uncivil to question someone as to why they cited someone who you think is uncivil, again, I think we will just have to disagree.
January 18, 2010, 8:44 pmzuch says:
Legally, it is. I’m no fan of such convictions; I’m just pointing out that they were convicted. Strangely enough, in many parts of the country, this is enough reason to deny them another trial or clemency.
As I said in a previous thread, I find the new-found RW concern for those unjustly convicted touching, and hope it will persist beyond Wednesday (and not be limited to ‘upstanding’, relatively well-to-do whites). Really, I do.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 8:45 pmfrankcross says:
Nelson Lund, how is that not what happened here? I assume Orin characterized her generally based on her uncivil and unfair statements. If you were to challenge his characterization and ask for examples, then he might be expected to defend that. Really, every time one speaks ill of Stalin, or Al Sharpton, or whomever, must they preemptively cite all the evidence on which they rely?
January 18, 2010, 8:45 pmjccamp says:
“David, did you actually just cite Ann Coulter in a non-ironic way?”
Well, just me, but I thought it was funny. Apt, too, which, I guess, is why it’s humorous.
Coulter is like the Howard Stern of political commentary. They both make me cringe on those rare occasions I accidentally hear them. Another poster drew a parallel to that boob Maher; I don’t wince around his words. I just get irritated, and I probably get that white cartoon balloon-thing over my head “Moron.” You know, him, not me…
It should be interesting to see tomorrow how Coakley actually does with the voters. I’m not sure that rumors of her pending dismemberment are not slightly premature.
One can only hope, of course, but that’s more about my own partisan politics and the Senate than it is about her.
January 18, 2010, 8:47 pmThe Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk says:
Really Professor Lund, your rebuttable is that Coulter in fact was advocating peaceful, voluntary conversion by missionaries and that targeted Predator drone attacks are equivalent to the carpet bombing of civilian population centers that Coulter invoked?
January 18, 2010, 8:49 pmThe Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk says:
In my last comment, “rebuttable” should have been rebuttal, of course.
January 18, 2010, 8:56 pmleo marvin says:
I’m hopeful the broader implications aren’t as dire as Sullivan makes them out to be, but I can’t find much to disagree with in his political analysis.
January 18, 2010, 8:57 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
(I used “policeman” just to identify the specific case).
Mmm-hmm. Like you used “day-care providers” to identify the other specific case?
It would seem to me that DNA exculpatory evidence is far more convincing than is scientific testimony about the unreliability of “repressed memory” or the leading nature of child interrogations/play-acting.
It doesn’t seem so to me. What you are calling “DNA exculpatory evidence” is the presence of DNA other than the accused’s at the crime scene, plus no finding of the accused’s. That certainly suggests (to me) that the case is going to need some other sort of evidence if it is to be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But it doesn’t remotely prove that the accused is innocent.
January 18, 2010, 9:01 pmJ. Aldridge says:
If she argued any other way Liberal’s might have a tough time following her.
January 18, 2010, 9:07 pmAllan Walstad says:
So are the poll numbers really about how terrible Coakley is? Or are they about how totally Obama and the Dems misinterpreted the results of ’08? The country has not swung to the left. Bush and fellow neocons soured it for the Repubs with their warmongering, big-gov programs, and deficits. McCain was a sad sack and Obama sounded reasonable. Suddenly folks realize he actually plans a takeover of medicine to go along with his outrageous “stimulus” spending of money we don’t have, and he’s not bringing the troops home either. In a bastion of collectivism like Massachusetts, granted, if Coakley were a better candidate then perhaps Brown wouldn’t have stood a chance. But these numbers are mainly about Obama. Any doubts must be removed if Coakley still loses after Obama’s campaign swing.
January 18, 2010, 9:15 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
You’d do better in countering my arguments if you restricted yourself to those things that I have said, rather than that which my alleged comrades have said.
That would be more convincing had you not gone on repeatedly just before about what “conservatives,” the “RW,” &c. cared about. You have no bloody clue what cases I’ve interested myself in. So perhaps you ought not to attribute to me what my alleged comrades have said?
And isn’t it interesting the the defendants in the Nifong case were also … <*hmmmm*gt; An interesting choice of cases you find compelling.
I am going to guess from this that the Amiraults are white. Which is a fact I neither knew nor cared about until just now.
January 18, 2010, 9:17 pmArthurKirkland says:
If this means your style doesn’t run toward bottle-blonde, barren, fornicating, mean-spirited spinsters who uses short skirts to peddle “traditional family values” to the more gullible rubes among us . . . I like your style.
January 18, 2010, 9:19 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
ArthurKirkland,
bottle-blonde, barren, fornicating, mean-spirited spinsters who use[s] short skirts to peddle “traditional family values” to the more gullible rubes among us . . .
Sir, do you routinely call childless unmarried women who have sex “barren, fornicating spinsters,” or is that a pleasure you reserve for Ann Coulter?
January 18, 2010, 9:24 pmArthurKirkland says:
Would it be substandard use of capital letters and punctuation that would puzzle those liberals?
January 18, 2010, 9:26 pmArthurKirkland says:
So far, only for Ann Coulter. If I become aware of another person of her circumstance who mercilessly derides others for insufficient concern about “family values,” the situation likely would change.
January 18, 2010, 9:29 pmjccamp says:
“If this means your style doesn’t run toward bottle-blonde, barren, fornicating, mean-spirited spinsters who uses short skirts to peddle “traditional family values” to the more gullible rubes among us…”
One of the reasons I like this place so much…even when we disagree, the comity rules.
January 18, 2010, 9:33 pmneurodoc says:
Does the “political analysis” you can’t find much to disagree with include:
If it does, can you, or someone else, explain how it will work if insurance companies are required to “accept people with pre-existing conditions” but they aren’t allowed to charge premiums sufficient to cover the costs of those individuals not previously covered, most of whom will want to opt in if they can see that they are likely to receive more in benefits than they will pay? If there is to be a disconnect between risk and premiums, then where will the necessary subsidies come from?
And how much “faith” should we have in the health care reform we would get if Coakley provides that 60th vote?
January 18, 2010, 9:36 pmhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011503319.html
Michelle Dulak Thomson says:
ArthurKirkland,
Would it be substandard use of capital letters and punctuation that would puzzle those liberals?
Look, you were the one just now talking about “mean-spirited spinsters who uses short skirts.” I don’t think you’re in any position to quibble about grammar.
January 18, 2010, 9:39 pmArthurKirkland says:
I haven’t checked, but I plead typographical error, Michelle. Whether you elect to believe me is your call.
January 18, 2010, 9:42 pmneurodoc says:
Well, if not comity, then something close to comedy.
(BTW, how does ArthurKirkland know that she is a “bottle-blonde,” and if she is, of what bearing?)
January 18, 2010, 9:43 pmArthurKirkland says:
Thank you for reminding everyone I was complimenting Laura for her style.
January 18, 2010, 9:45 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
ArthurKirkland,
I haven’t checked, but I plead typographical error, Michelle. Whether you elect to believe me is your call.
Naturally I believe you. Anyone in the throes of that sort of spittle-fest might make the same mistake ;-)
Seriously, yours was a common typo. Now, would you consider giving J. Aldridge like benefit-of-the-doubt?
January 18, 2010, 9:50 pmArthurKirkland says:
Agreed. I will even give you the choice of which of the points — the capital letter or the apostrophe — is covered by the “typo pass.” Because the writer was ridiculing millions of people for no perceptible reason, only one pass is available.
Thank you, Michelle, for suggesting that act of charity. Makes me feel good.
January 18, 2010, 9:55 pmtherut says:
Ann is no dummy. She does NOT speak well but writes well. Like Horowitz who wrote “Radical Son” is an excellent writer but poor speaker. That book opened my eyes up to communism and the working of leftists in this country. Had never heard of “Red diaper Babies” till he wrote about how he was one. Great book.
January 18, 2010, 9:55 pmjccamp says:
Ah, Arthur, you silver tongued devil.
To quote from your (obviously) favorite movie:
Sam Kirkland: “Are you a good lawyer? Honest?”
Arthur Kirkland: “Being honest doesn’t have much to do with being a lawyer.”
Actually, it’s one of my favorites, too.
January 18, 2010, 9:56 pmegd says:
Oh no, someone used hyperbole on the internet! Something must be done about this.
So voting based on a single issue is OK for a liberal, but it’s not OK for a conservative? I guess I’m confused as to how “passage of Obamacare” doesn’t count as a single issue.
The comments made by the conspirators here show an embarrassing display of petty vindictiveness on their parts. I can’t imagine what Ms. Coulter may have done to earn the wrath of a few outspoken law professors.
Also, I see that Mr. Kirkland’s inflammatory and misogynist statements are still around. This seems almost in line with what Twirip was suggesting in another comments thread.
January 18, 2010, 9:59 pmFury says:
He was eventually indicted by a grand jury for rape (among other charges) of his 23-month old niece with a hot object (perhaps a curling iron). The Boston Globe reported:
“Even then, nearly 10 months after the crime, Coakley’s office recommended that Winfield be released on personal recognizance, with no cash bail. He remained free until December 2007, when Coakley’s successor as district attorney won a conviction and two life terms.”
January 18, 2010, 10:01 pmArthurKirkland says:
Animal House, America’s greatest cinematic achievement, is probably my favorite movie. (Judged by ‘if I went back to smoking dope and the Republicans made doobie-smoking a capital offense, what movie would I request to accompany my last meal.’)
With respect to law-themed movies, And Justice for All, The Verdict and Twelve Angry Men are too close to call. My Cousin Vinny deserves mention, too, but it’s competing in a different category.
January 18, 2010, 10:02 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Enh. I don’t see how giving “liberal” a capital “L” constitutes ridicule. Especially as J. Aldridge was replying to PersonFromPorlock, who used the capital “L” him/herself. Now, the “grocer’s apostrophe”, I admit, is annoying; but (as I said before) you don’t get to pick on other people’s grammar when you’ve just scored a subject/verb agreement FAIL.
January 18, 2010, 10:03 pmArthurKirkland says:
After a life and livelihood of mean-spirited bombast — with calling Paula Jones “trailer park trash” and ripping Michele Obama for “fake pearls” in the too-mild-to-count category — Ann Coulter (like her admirers) seems to be in a poor position from which call foul on inflammation or misogyny.
January 18, 2010, 10:10 pmArthurKirkland says:
The ridicule, Michelle, involved asserting that liberals were unable to follow reasoning.
The distinction between typographical error and substandard usage is an important one.
January 18, 2010, 10:14 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
ArthurKirkland,
with calling Paula Jones “trailer park trash”
Because no one connected with the then-President ever made any kind of remark about what you’d turn up if you dragged a hundred through a trailer park.
Seriously, did anyone not a Republican take Paula Jones seriously? It seemed to me at the time that everyone thought she was telling the truth, but only the party that stood to benefit was willing to say so.
January 18, 2010, 10:17 pmjccamp says:
My Cousin Vinnie gets an “A” for automotive esoterica. During my working life, I didn’t see many serious movies about the law, perhaps because they were a little too close to home.
And no, I didn’t watch much Chuck Norris either. I know you were wondering…
January 18, 2010, 10:23 pmArthurKirkland says:
No need to imagine anything — simply find a Google-compatible Intertubes apparatus and type “Ann Coulter” in the search box. If you don’t have 20 or 30 hours, refine the search with “Christian nation to perfect the Jews,” “Cleland limbs,” “convert Muslims,” “torture as televised spectator sport,” “dropping daisy cutters wantonly,” and “Timothy McVeigh New York Times Building”
January 18, 2010, 10:26 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
ArthurKirkland,
The ridicule, Michelle, involved asserting that liberals were unable to follow reasoning.
Urm. PersonFromPorlock said that Coulter’s shtick is “arguing like a [capital-L] Liberal.”
To which Aldridge said,
If she argued any other way Liberal’s might have a tough time following her.
If you take that to mean that [L]iberals are unable to follow reasoning, you’re overlaying your own interpretation. All Aldridge actually said is that were Coulter not arguing like a [L]iberal, [L]iberals would have difficulty following her.
January 18, 2010, 10:29 pmArthurKirkland says:
It is going to be difficult to incorporate Paula Jones into a defense of Ann Coulter.
Coulter (who, I am told, wears a cross, at least when she isn’t around Guccione’s kid) was a big fan of Paula Jones — calling her a ‘good Christian and nice girl,’ or something similar — until Jones did something that peeved Coulter, at which point she became “trailer park trash.”
January 18, 2010, 10:29 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
ArthurKirkland,
It is going to be difficult to incorporate Paula Jones into a defense of Ann Coulter.
No, it’s going to be difficult to incorporate Paula Jones into an indictment of Ann Coulter, because what you claim she said is what the entire Clinton Administration was saying. If she’s a misogynist for saying it, so was Carville and so was everyone else who spoke about this case and the many others. (Who was it on the Clinton team who coined “bimbo eruptions”? Did that strike you as, well, a tad sexist at the time?)
January 18, 2010, 10:38 pmArthurKirkland says:
My Cousin Vinnie had, by my taste, much more than a (fascinating and admittedly authoritative) dissertation concerning automotive transmissions. Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei as good as they get. Fred Gwynne and Lane Smith in career-best performances. Plus D-Day from Animal House. Everything but, of course, instant grits and thick-enough spectacles for Miss Constance.
A first-rate way to pass a couple of hours.
——————————————–
Vinny Gambini: Your Honor, may I have permission to treat Ms. Vito as a hostile witness?
January 18, 2010, 10:38 pmMona Lisa Vito: You think I’m hostile now, wait ’til you see me tonight.
Judge Chamberlain Haller: Do you two know each other?
Vinny Gambini: Yeah, she’s my fiancée.
Judge Chamberlain Haller: Well, that would certainly explain the hostility.
Perseus says:
If being obnoxious should disqualify someone from being cited, then Brian Leiter ought to be relegated to the citation equivalent of Siberia (but, of course, he’s not).
I’d give her points for courage in attacking the idol of egalitarian feminism.
January 18, 2010, 10:39 pmA. Zarkov says:
Now someone point me to one false statement in Coulter’s essay. It seems like a pretty good and accurate summary of what happened to Amirault family and Coakley’s role in keeping an innocent main in jail for about two years longer than necessary. If someone knows of a greater miscarriage of justice in the U.S. tell us about it. No it wasn’t the Scottsboro boys because there was at least some basis for guilt. The problem there mostly one of process and sensationalism, and that got corrected by the Supreme Court. On the other hand, Amirault got convicted of virtually impossible crimes on manipulated evidence. This kind of thing was going on all over the country. The McMartin case in California was equally if not more fantastic, but at they ultimately got acquitted. I guess there at least a few sane people in California. Perhaps if the McMartins and the Amirault only had had the Communist Party on their side like the Scottsboro boys they might have done better.
Ann Coulter makes a good living out of enraging liberals, and every time they scream her book sales go up. I don’t find her particularly insightful, but she is entertaining. If someone thinks she’s chronically mendacious then provide me with what must be a long list of her falsehoods.
January 18, 2010, 10:46 pmfrankcross says:
Perseus, you believe women should be denied the vote? What is your rationale for this? There are a variety of ways to attack feminism. Choosing this one seems very bad to me. But you disagree?
January 18, 2010, 10:47 pmOrin Kerr says:
A Zarkov:
A search for “coulter” and “falsehoods” returns 373,000 hits on Gooogle. Happy reading.
January 18, 2010, 10:52 pmzuch says:
There’s a big difference between my saying that conservatives have a general trend (particularly when I didn’t say you were a conservative, and actually don’t even know enough to speculate on that), and your saying:
Clear?
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 10:58 pmNick B says:
I doubt you’d have enough politicians to fill the the Senate if you shot all the dishonest ones. (to include federal and state senators and federal and state representatives)
January 18, 2010, 10:59 pmNick
zuch says:
I didn’t know his name. InsHannity didn’t bother to provide that in his spew. I did know the Amirault name. I think you see evil where there is none, which is an issue you need to work on.
Cheers,
January 18, 2010, 11:03 pmA. Zarkov says:
Go google “obama falsehoods” and you will get 3,420,000 hits. Happy reading to you too.
January 18, 2010, 11:03 pmleo marvin says:
Not specifically. As health care legislation goes, it just includes a general pessimism about the chances of passing anything meaningful.
January 18, 2010, 11:11 pmArthurKirkland says:
Life is too short to devote more time to Ann Coulter . . . but not to My Cousin Vinnie, and another lawyerly exchange:
———————————————–
January 18, 2010, 11:12 pmVinny Gambini: I understand you played a game of pool with Lisa for $200, which she won. I’m here to collect.
J.T.: How ’bout if I just kick your *ss?
Vinny Gambini: Oh, a counter-offer. That’s what we lawyers — I’m a lawyer — we lawyers call that a counter-offer. This is a tough decision here. Get my *ss kicked or collect $200. Let me think … I could use a good *ss-kickin’, I’ll be very honest with you … nah, I think I’ll just go with the two hundred.
J.T.: Over my dead body.
Vinny Gambini: You like to renegotiate as you go along, don’t you? Well here’s my counter-offer … Do I have to kill you? What if I were just to kick the ever loving sh*t out of you?
J.T.: In your dreams.
Vinny Gambini: Oh no, no … in reality. If I was to kick the sh*t out of you, do I get the money?
J.T.: You . . . kick the sh*t . . . out of me.
Vinny Gambini: Yeah.
J.T.: Yeah. You get the money.
Vinny Gambini: So, here are my options. Option A: I get my *ss kicked or Option B: I kick your *ss and collect the 200. I think I’m gonna go with Option B: Kickin’ your *ss and collecting $200.
[Takes off his jacket]
J.T.: We’re gonna fight now?
Vinny Gambini: Yeah. But first, show me the money.
J.T.: I have it.
Vinny Gambini: You have it? Then show it to me.
J.T.: [pause] I can get it.
Vinny Gambini: You can get it? Okay, get it. Then we’ll fight.
[Takes his jacket from Lisa]
egd says:
I wasn’t aware that the rules of the Volokh commentary was either incorporated against Ms. Coulter or dependent upon the person you’re insulting.
I look forward to a further explanation of your novel theory of applied comment thread rules.
Oh, and there’s no need to post multiple times to reply to a single post, it’s bad form.
January 18, 2010, 11:16 pmleo marvin says:
Arthur Kirkland, all good points. Here’s my rebuttal: Ralph Macchio.
January 18, 2010, 11:18 pmjccamp says:
“Judge Chamberlain Haller: ‘Well, that would certainly explain the hostility.’ “
A classic indeed. I’d forgotten.
Kind of fits here tonight, too. Think I’ll call it, as I have a 7:00 AM gym thing. Carry on, and try not to injure each other. What did someone term this earlier? “Food fight?”
I have taken unseemly pleasure in reading some of the clever give-and-take, though.
I may need to get out more…
January 18, 2010, 11:19 pmOrin Kerr says:
A. Zarkov,
You specifically asked for a long list; I gave it to you. Did you read it? I’m beginning to think that maybe you’re not interested in a list after all.
January 18, 2010, 11:21 pmArthurKirkland says:
I look forward to a further explanation of your novel theory of applied comment thread rules.
Instead of explaining, I will allow you more time to imagine what Ms. Coulter might have done to earn wrath. It is difficult to believe all of those relevant searches have already been completed — but if more search suggestions are desired, the supply seems nearly inexhaustible.
January 18, 2010, 11:27 pmgrog says:
I suppose I qualify as “liberal” around these parts, so I’ll state that up front and those who consider that uncivil or idiotic can properly discount me up front.
I guess I look at Coulter not so much as a political commentator like (as someone said) Mayer and more as a performance artist, like Andy Kaufman.
As many have noted, she’s not dumb, and I have to assume has at least the baseline self-awareness to understand that a lot of what she says (suggesting that Tim McVey’s error was failing to blow up the NYT, for instance) is somewhere between overheated and insane. (If you disagree, consider what the reaction would be to an environmentalist suggesting that bombing drug company HQs would be a good idea; would they be likely to be talk-show regulars with lucrative book deals?) So I sort of suspect she started doing it as something between not wanting to be a lawyer and personal therapy, and is now trapped by path-dependency.
That said, I will say that the fact that Kopel sees no problem with relying on her writings as a way of understanding what’s wrong with a Democratic hopeful does, for me at least, cause me to re-weight the value I give to his other opinions. This is simply how reputation works. I would fully expect other people to discount my opinion if I started promoting Michael Moore as a reliable commentator. (But even then, I’d note that he’s arguably less dishonest, and inarguably less free with exhortations to violence and political disenfranchisement, than she is, if you take her words at face value.)
January 18, 2010, 11:27 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
Fair enough. It was wrong of me to assume that the Duke faculty who rushed to judgment against their own students were your political compatriots. I know nothing of your politics except that they’re somewhere to the left of my own.
As for me, I’m a “conservative” only because I’m here in Marin County, CA, where you are a “conservative” if you dwell anywhere to the right of Barbara Boxer.
January 18, 2010, 11:32 pmPerseus says:
I’m not making that claim (though as a political theorist I could cite various reasons drawn from Aristotle, Rousseau, Tocqueville, et al.). Rather, Coulter’s proposal that women be denied the vote–assuming it is meant seriously–doesn’t automatically poison the well for me (which I realize is probably an unusual reaction in the U.S. today). Of course, given her predilection for bombast, it’s difficult to know how seriously one should take these sorts of arguments.
January 18, 2010, 11:32 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
I didn’t know his name. InsHannity didn’t bother to provide that in his spew. I did know the Amirault name. I think you see evil where there is none, which is an issue you need to work on.
I’ll ask you to address your own inventory, thank you very much ;-)
I found Winfield’s name by that magical tool called Google, btw. It is not so very difficult.
January 18, 2010, 11:37 pmgrog says:
Oops, my apologies on my spelling, especially of people’s names, in my last post. I’ve been writing all day in a different language (three, if you count python and Javascript as communicative languages), and can’t seem to mentally switch as quickly as some.
January 18, 2010, 11:47 pmA. Zarkov says:
You didn’t give me a list. You gave me a google search which mostly brings up Media Matters or links to them, which I don’t take seriously based on past experience.
January 18, 2010, 11:54 pmBrian G. says:
The only thing in free fall is the Republican party. No one cares about them anymore, which i why they have lost every important election since the American people realized that Bush was a war monger who shredded the Constitution at every opportunity.
Coakley has been a devoted public servant for years while Brown is nothing more than shill for Wall Street and the insurance companies. Plus, he looks like a total idiot driving around in that pickup truck. The Republians can fake all the polls they want. She will win the only one that matters, because the people of Massachusetts want the rest of the country to have the wonderful health care system they have.
A vote for Brown is a vote for Bush, Cheney, and Rove. That is why I know he will lose.
January 18, 2010, 11:56 pmDave N. says:
Ralph Macchio wasn’t a factor. Joe Pesci and Fred Gwynne made the movie. Lane Smith was very good but no good-ole-boy DA in the Deep South is going to insult the Blacks on his jury the by saying:
It is only because I spent a decade in Utah (home of the Utes) that my favorite piece of dialogue is:
I am glad I finally found something with which I can agree with Arthur Kirkland (though I also like And Justice For All)
January 19, 2010, 12:07 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Brian G,
…the people of Massachusetts want the rest of the country to have the wonderful health care system they have.
Surely that is “Massachusettes.” Yes?
Um, you do double as “blighter” on Megan McArdle’s site, right? Or are you (Heaven forfend) f’in’ serious?
January 19, 2010, 12:08 amneurodoc says:
“Meaningful” could encompass that likely to produce the most wonderful results as well as that likely to produce absolutely calamatous ones. I see little prospect of the former, while the latter seems to me all too real a possibility. (Did you read that WaPo article about the great ballyooing of the Safeway experience, which so far appears to be largely unproven?) Primum non nocere.
January 19, 2010, 12:09 amneurodoc says:
Is there a betting line on Coakley vs Brown in Vegas or somewhere else?
January 19, 2010, 12:18 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Um, Intrade. Not looking good for Coakley there.
January 19, 2010, 12:27 amIlya Somin says:
Ilya Somin: But a pivotal senate election doesn’t come down to any one issue. If you are a liberal who believes that the passage of Obamacare will provide vast benefits to millions of people and that the election of Coakley is crucial to ensuring that passage, you might reasonably support her election despite her egregious misconduct as a prosecutor.
So voting based on a single issue is OK for a liberal, but it’s not OK for a conservative? I guess I’m confused as to how “passage of Obamacare” doesn’t count as a single issue.
Obviously, I meant that you can consider both issues, but conclude that health care outweighs her record as a prosecutor. Let’s also remember that I was responding to Coulter’s comment that no moral person could possibly choose to vote for Coakley, given her prosecutorial record. I was attacking that point, not the far more reasonable view that this record should count against her, or even the view that it outweighs other issues, all things considered.
January 19, 2010, 12:29 amneurodoc says:
A Zarkhow asked if someone could “provide (him) with what must be a long list of her falsehoods. Do you have some way of knowing how many of those 373,000 Google hits for “coulter” and “falsehoods” recite falsehoods supposedly uttered by Coulter as opposed to falsehoods uttered about her or links that do not relate Coulter to falsehoods but merely contain both her name and “falsehood”? If that great number of hits for “Coulter” and “falsehoods” signifies something other than that she is a highly partisan and provocative warrior in the culture wars, please tell us what we are to make for the almost ten-fold greater number of hits for “Obama” and “falsehoods.” Should we compare number of Google hits for “Obama” and “falsehoods” to the number for “Bush” and “falsehoods” to say who is the more trustworthy, or won’t this method do, since Bush has been on the public stage for a much longer time than Obama and might be expect to have accumulated more hits? Or is this all silliness?
January 19, 2010, 12:33 amA. Zarkov says:
Exactly. Well put.
January 19, 2010, 12:45 amA. Zarkov says:
Brian is joking. He did well in an Onion kind of way.
January 19, 2010, 12:47 amOrin Kerr says:
Neurodoc,
Are you really unfamiliar with google searches? In case you’re serious, the answer is, no, you can’t know how many of the hits fit which category without reading them. You have to read them and judge for yourself, just like we all read Coulter or Kerr or Neurodoc and judge their reliability based on what they say.
But if you really think Coulter is a credible and reliable source — a voice that you personally trust — I hope you will say so.
January 19, 2010, 12:47 amhippo says:
Orin,
January 19, 2010, 12:50 amYou never answered my question. But, what the heck, I’ll try another.
Who is “out of bounds”? Maher? Andrew Sullivan? MSNBC? N.Y. Times Opinion page?
Heck, how about N.Y. Times news pages? Don’t forget Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton,
and Joe Biden. Are they out of bounds?
To answer your question to me: I’m moderately familiar with Ann’s writings.
Her reputation? She’s conservative, witty, a good polemicist and writer, and
her style involves a lot of jokes and hyperbole. She’s a lot more “in bounds”
than those I listed above.
Michelle Dulak Thomson says:
Brian is joking. He did well in an Onion kind of way.
Well, I thought he might have been; that’s why I mentioned McArdle’s “blighter,” who does a deadpan Lefty so bloody well that nearly always at least one hapless commenter replies in all seriousness.
January 19, 2010, 12:54 amleo marvin says:
I love the movie, but wrong is wrong, and Ralph Macchio is wrong. If I let you get away with this bit of artistic relativism today, tomorrow you’ll tell me The Matrix couldn’t have been better with a real actor as Neo. As a great philosopher once said, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”
January 19, 2010, 12:55 amOrin Kerr says:
Hippo,
As your perspective reveals, “in bounds” is a relative concept, one that reflects a particular social group and sense of what is mainstream and what is not. So to some people, the unabomber is out of bounds; to you, elected Democratic politicians and the front section of the New York Times are the ones out of bounds.
More broadly, I think your perspective suggests that we have different understandings of civility and decency. Take Jimmy Carter. I disagree with him a great deal on a lot of things, but I tend to see him as a civil and decent person. The fact that you name him as an example of someone “out of bounds” from a civility standpoint suggests we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
January 19, 2010, 1:04 amgrog says:
Orin: Are you really unfamiliar with google searches? In case you’re serious, the answer is, no, you can’t know how many of the hits fit which category without reading them.
Just to amplify this a bit, even though it is trivia: I happen to know a bit about how search works, and Google doesn’t even know how many substring matches there are for a phrase without the search being performed. They are very quiet about their methods, but I have a strong suspicion that those “about xxx documents” numbers are the result of a low-priority background scraper that tries searches at random, and are then heavily weighted by search results actually performed by against the engine.
Of course, this has nothing to do with whether or not people are saying nice things about Coulter’s reliability as an honest commentator. But, well, life is short, we all use proxies for forming opinions, and anyone who considers her reliable loses credibility with me, and it doesn’t matter if they consider her reliable out of partisan animus or an excess of credulity; in fact, I’m not sure which would be worse.
January 19, 2010, 1:04 amleo marvin says:
No, I haven’t seen the WaPo article. I assume we start with drastically different expectations of what would produce wonderful results. Sadly we seem to agree nothing likely to pass now would meet either of our criteria.
January 19, 2010, 1:15 amAmirault was guilty says:
Amirault was found guilty and this verdict was upheld several times by both political parties. There were physical findings of abuse in the children and the children showed signs of strong sexualized behaviors after the abuse. The children as adults continue to state they were abused.
Letters to the Editor: The Real Darkness Is Child Abuse WSJ 02/24/95 Hardoon ” in Amirault, the majority of the female children who testified had some relevant physical findings, as did several female children involved in the investigation who did not participate in the trial. The findings included labial adhesions and hymenal scarring….The victims and their families in these cases have been irrevocably harmed”
http://web.archive.org/web/20010719201703/http://www.vocal-nasvo.org/hardoon.htm
Witness praises Amirault decision John Ellement, Boston Globe, 2/23/02 Hardoon…said…the quality of the investigation and the actions of prosecutors, police, and social workers working with the children were all scrutinized intensely during Gerald Amiraults? trial and still the jury convicted…Amirault supporters are focusing on 2 percent of the childrens claims that seem inexplicable and they are conveniently ignoring the 98 percent of the case that was overwhelming against Amirault.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020224045327/http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/054/metro/Witness_praises_Amirault_decision+.shtml
Swift wont free Tooky by D. Guarino, E. Beardsley Boston Herald 2/20/02 Convicted child molester Gerald Tooky Amirault…denied commutation of his sentence by…Gov. Jane M. Swift.She carefully analyzed every bit of information generated through the investigation and came to her decision that the verdict was just and the sentence was appropriate.
“All along, they’ve always told the truth,” said Harriet Dell’Anno…, whose daughter, Jamie, remains in therapy over the incidents.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020305205020/http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/swif02202002.htm
Mass. Victims Fight Commutation Plea Leslie Miller AP 8/7/01 Victims in the Fells Acres child abuse case…described their pain publicly…in hopes of keeping the last person convicted in the case behind bars…“So many times, Mr. Amirault hovered over me, touched me and hurt me and committed many disgusting acts of abuse.”
Those children, now adults, stood by their testimony…“This family raped me, molested me and totally ruined my life”
http://web.archive.org/web/20010807011330/http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010802/us/preschool_abuse_3.html
COMMONWEALTH vs. GERALD AMIRAULT. 424 Mass. 618
January 19, 2010, 1:16 am“These parents also testified to instances of extremely sexualized behavior on the part of the children including masturbation, sexualized play with dolls, boys sticking their tongues in the mouths of their mothers, and the simulation of sexual acts. Many of the children also developed generalized symptoms indicative of trauma such as bedwetting, baby talk, pain in their genital areas, headaches and stomach aches, and fearfulness.”
Amirault was guilty says:
Amirault was found guilty and this verdict was upheld several times by both political parties. There were physical findings of abuse in the children and the children showed signs of strong sexualized behaviors after the abuse. The children as adults continue to state they were abused.
Letters to the Editor: The Real Darkness Is Child Abuse WSJ 02/24/95 Hardoon ” in Amirault, the majority of the female children who testified had some relevant physical findings, as did several female children involved in the investigation who did not participate in the trial. The findings included labial adhesions and hymenal scarring….The victims and their families in these cases have been irrevocably harmed”
Witness praises Amirault decision John Ellement, Boston Globe, 2/23/02 Hardoon…said…the quality of the investigation and the actions of prosecutors, police, and social workers working with the children were all scrutinized intensely during Gerald Amiraults? trial and still the jury convicted…Amirault supporters are focusing on 2 percent of the childrens claims that seem inexplicable and they are conveniently ignoring the 98 percent of the case that was overwhelming against Amirault.
Swift wont free Tooky by D. Guarino, E. Beardsley Boston Herald 2/20/02 Convicted child molester Gerald Tooky Amirault…denied commutation of his sentence by…Gov. Jane M. Swift.She carefully analyzed every bit of information generated through the investigation and came to her decision that the verdict was just and the sentence was appropriate.
“All along, they’ve always told the truth,” said Harriet Dell’Anno…, whose daughter, Jamie, remains in therapy over the incidents.
Mass. Victims Fight Commutation Plea Leslie Miller AP 8/7/01 Victims in the Fells Acres child abuse case…described their pain publicly…in hopes of keeping the last person convicted in the case behind bars…“So many times, Mr. Amirault hovered over me, touched me and hurt me and committed many disgusting acts of abuse.”
Those children, now adults, stood by their testimony…“This family raped me, molested me and totally ruined my life”
COMMONWEALTH vs. GERALD AMIRAULT. 424 Mass. 618
January 19, 2010, 1:19 am“These parents also testified to instances of extremely sexualized behavior on the part of the children including masturbation, sexualized play with dolls, boys sticking their tongues in the mouths of their mothers, and the simulation of sexual acts. Many of the children also developed generalized symptoms indicative of trauma such as bedwetting, baby talk, pain in their genital areas, headaches and stomach aches, and fearfulness.”
Guest12345 says:
What probably happened there is that he put in “kerr” and falsehoods” and saw 149,000 results. QED.
January 19, 2010, 1:26 amDave N. says:
I agree. My point is that My Cousin Vinny is a great movie in spite of NOT because of Ralph Macchio.
January 19, 2010, 1:30 amAmirault was guilty says:
http://bit.ly/6ZOyg6
Amirault was found guilty and this verdict was upheld several times by both political parties. There were physical findings of abuse in the children and the children showed signs of strong sexualized behaviors after the abuse. The children as adults continue to state they were abused.
January 19, 2010, 1:31 amAmirault was guilty - better url says:
http://bit.ly/6ZOyg6
January 19, 2010, 1:35 amBruce Hayden says:
I would be interested in the physical findings of abuse. I do know that there were no knife wounds found in the critical area, despite the testimony that a knife was used for one of the rapes. That sort of thing.
And, yes, they may have shown signs of sexualized behavior after the alleged abuse, but that was most likely because of the coaching they had received by the state actors. The repressed memory coaching they received was heavily sexualized.
January 19, 2010, 1:45 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Considering that there were three Amiraults, oughtn’t that to be “Amiraults were guilty”? Or are you saying that Gerald was guilty, while Violet and Cheryl were innocent?
January 19, 2010, 1:45 amleo marvin says:
Here’s the first Media Matters piece from that search. Do you disagree it establishes with links and a transcript that what Coulter said was false?
January 19, 2010, 1:55 amRicardo says:
The comments were anti-hypocrite, not anti-female. Inflammatory? No doubt. Kind of like Coulter’s style. I don’t read Coulter but I know enough people in D.C. to know she has a reputation as a kind of party girl. If she turns out to be libertarian on social issues, then surely the accusation of hypocrisy is misplaced. But to live a libertine lifestyle while making a show of advocating family values would be a supreme act of hypocrisy and elitism. I do know she professes to be a believing Christian who thinks intelligent design should be taught in schools.
Coulter lives exactly the way so many urban-dwelling 30- and 40-something liberal feminist women are stereotyped as living by social conservatives.
January 19, 2010, 2:47 amtheobromophile says:
I knew that the “family values women are hypocrites if they don’t wear potato sacks and spend their days knitting” meme would come up, sometime.
The question isn’t whether Coulter is married or single, whether she dances on tables or sits with her legs crossed, or whether or not she abstains from alcohol. The question is whether or not she’s living as a single woman ought to live: in chastity.
Coulter would be a hypocrite if she were running around having abortions or having babies out of wedlock. She’s not, so try a different line of attack.
January 19, 2010, 3:22 amleo marvin says:
Would it be hypocritical to be promiscuously unchaste without getting pregnant?
(I know nothing about her lifestyle. I’m just pointing out the gap in your comment.)
January 19, 2010, 3:37 amRicardo says:
The usual definition of chastity is abstaining from sex until marriage, not “having abortions or having babies out of wedlock.”
Ann Coulter is currently 48 years old and has never been married although she has been engaged. If you want to believe she is still a virgin, that’s your business but I’d say that’s a pretty laughable proposition. Her age already makes it a virtual certainty that she will never have children.
I should add that if you personally think it’s perfectly OK for men and women to go through life single, childless, living in big cities and going through several different relationships over the years… well, I agree. That is most certainly not the line most real-life prominent social conservatives in the U.S. have been taking over the past several decades. Most have been quick to say that living the above lifestyle is a sign of emotional immaturity and self-absorption. Note that your local chapter of the College Republicans or all the libertarians in the Federalist Society are not always the best barometer of what real conservatives think.
January 19, 2010, 3:48 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Ricardo,
If you were to show me evidence that Ann Coulter personally has denounced “barren fornicating spinsters” (to use ArthurKirkland’s charming descriptor) whilst being one herself, you might have a point about hypocrisy. But this —
That is most certainly not the line most real-life prominent social conservatives in the U.S. have been taking over the past several decades. Most have been quick to say that living the above lifestyle is a sign of emotional immaturity and self-absorption.
— doesn’t really cut it, does it? I doubt you could prove that “most real-life prominent social conservatives” have said any such thing; I’m pretty well certain that you can’t prove Coulter herself has, otherwise you’d already have given us chapter and verse. So what is this? Passive hypocrisy, along the lines of passive smoking?
(For what it’s worth, I am not interested particularly in Coulter, apart from wondering what hideous portrait she must have stashed in her sinful fornicating-barren-spinster residence if she looks like that at 48.)
January 19, 2010, 6:57 amA. Zarkov says:
Yes I disagree. Media Matters simply quotes more opinions from generally unidentified sources. Where is the long list of the names of people who say they became terrorists solely because of the existence of a prison camp at Gitmo? Matthew Alexander is not a real name, and that seems to be one man’s opinion. Moro offers opinion and not much evidence. The McClatchy link is broken, and the excerpt offers nothing in the way of named sources. It seems to me that Media Matters is cherry picking a bunch of opinions and ignoring people who say precisely the opposite such as Marc Thiessen in his book Courting Disaster. This is typical of the way MM operates. Look at their stuff on Climategate.
January 19, 2010, 7:30 amA. Zarkov says:
Your post has much the tone of an Ann Coulterism. How do you know she fornicates? Do you speak from experience? This is the kind of thing that increases her book sales.
Coulter does not provide us with much in the way of insight or scholarly research, and for that reason I rarely read her. In my opinion, her main purpose in life is to promote her books which she does by being outrageous and wearing short shirts.
January 19, 2010, 7:43 amtheobromophile says:
Note to self: people who have no arguments themselves suddenly become top-notch grammarians and parsers of language when faced with a modicum of a response to their ridiculousness.
Hey, I fell asleep at 11, woke up at 3, and couldn’t get back to sleep. My freaking blog comment was not perfect; so sue me.
Point remains: Coulter is a lot of things, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them. Besides, she spends far too much of her time referring to herself as a sinner in need of salvation to ever really get that label thrown at her.
January 19, 2010, 8:58 amtheobromophile says:
As a natural blonde (albeit now a different hue), skirt-donning, knee-high boots wearing, unmarried traditional values woman, I sort of wonder what you have against my demographic. Or do I get a pass since I’m probably not barren and am certainly not fornicating?
January 19, 2010, 9:02 amShelbyC says:
“Amirault was guilty:” That’s right, there was not ’80′s sex abuse hysteria, no witch hunts. Nothign to see here, folks, move along…
January 19, 2010, 9:21 amegd says:
Whoa. Whoa. I take significant issue with this statement. The Matrix was good not in spite of Keanu Reeves’ inability to act his way out of a paper bag, it was good because of his inability to act his way out of a paper bag.
The epitome of Keanu Reeves’ acting career was his portrayal of Theodore “Ted” Logan. His performance there, as in the Matrix, centered around a character completely unaware of whats happening and trying his hardest to figure out whether his next step should be a righty or a lefty. Presumably, much like Mr. Reeves’ acting career.
The character Neo in the original Matrix was exactly Reeves’ type of character. He was a normal guy who found himself thrown out of his element, trying to deal with it, while realizing he has all sorts of “magical” powers that he is trying to learn.
The problem with the Matrix trilogy is that, after the first movie, Neo is supposed to be comfortable in his skin in this new world. He is supposed to be able to seamlessly deal with the Matrix and real world and be a natural at both. But here Reeves’ acting ability hampers this, and he ends up playing the same character as in the first movie.
So the Matrix Trilogy may have been better with a real actor, but Reeves’ unparalleled talent in the “Whoa” field of acting made him the most believable choice for Neo.
January 19, 2010, 9:27 amAnderson says:
Kenneth Anderson’s post fills me with horror.
How did Ann Coulter get one of Andrew Sullivan’s beagles, and what is she about to do with it?
January 19, 2010, 10:01 amneurodoc says:
Yes, I am familiar with Google searches and their limitations. And I appreciate what those limitations imply with respect to the meaningfulness of what Google searches produce, those limitations being no different whether the search couples “Coulter” with “falsehoods” or “Obama” with “falsehoods.” What is different between a search using “Coulter” and “falsehoods” and one using “Obama” and “falsehoods” is that the latter produces almost 10 times as many hits as the former. (“Bush” and “falsehoods” yields a still greater number of hits, though not very much greater despite the fact that Bush has been politically consequential for many more years than Obama.) So, if such numbers count for anything, then A. Zarkov is that far ahead in the contest you entered into with him.
Ilya Somin, the VCer who takes libertarianism to its absurd limits with his call for open borders and immigration, joined in five minutes after you to tell David Kopel that “citing Coulter for authority” is a mistake if one is trying to make their case with her help. I fully agree that if one is trying to make their case in front of a non-partisan, not stupid jury, then it is not advisable to turn to Coulter for authority. (Leo Marvin and I differ on various things, but he and I both agreed that when trying to persuade others, conservatives should avoid mention of Coulter and her ilk and liberals should avoid mention of Bill Maher, Michael Moore, and their ilk.) I don’t see Kopel‘s linking to the Coulter for a summary account of the Amirault case as “citing Coulter for authority,” though. I will allow that it can be seen as implying some endorsement by Kopel of Coulter’s “editorial” comments.
(BTW, I followed up on some of ArthurKirkland‘s search suggestions and was surprised to see just how stupid and offensive some of Coulter’s utterances have been. The ones I pursued didn’t turn up any “falsehoods,” though. If you can point me to some real “falsehoods” among those 373,000 hits you came up with for Coulter, I’d be happy to consider them. It might persuade me that she really deserves to be branded a liar, rather than just someone who amuses and provokes while often being wildly wrong and offensive, serving as an antonym for “comity.”)
Now, I have waited until the morning to reply so you would be less likely to respond with the wholly unexpected, preposterous, and very uncivil suggestion that I must have been drinking when I commented on one of your fellow VCer’s threads, and I would have no occasion to retort with my Churchillian comeback, which I think was quite civil under the circumstances. Can we leave it with this and move on?
January 19, 2010, 10:24 amneurodoc says:
Yes, take Jimmy Carter, and soon please. He may be seen as a civil and decent person only if one ignores the disingenuity (e.g., his recent “apology” to Jews) and associations with and acceptance of money from the truly loathsome (e.g., Sheikh Zayed). Those who think Carter is something of a secular saint should try this Carter “sampler” for starters: http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-nordlinger101102.asp
January 19, 2010, 10:38 amneurodoc says:
I don’t know what you assume, so I can’t say whether you are right or wrong in those assumptions. I think you might be more wrong than right about them, though.
Do read the Washington Post article about the miraculous Safeway story, which it seems is very much a “story” at this point. I think it says something important about the way this health care reform legislation is being put together.
January 19, 2010, 10:44 amfrankcross says:
As for falsehoods, she’s been busted on several objectively verifiable lies about newspaper coverage, such as this one
Live by LexisNexis, die by LexisNexis. That certainly seems to be the case with Ann Coulter’s latest book, Slander. Yesterday we exposed a blatantly false statement in her book about the use of the phrase “liberal Republican” in the New York Times, and today we expose another. Here is the relevant passage, from p. 199 of Slander:
Since abortion is not the left’s proudest moment, liberals prefer to keep reminiscing about the last time they were giddily self-righteous. Like a senile old man who keeps telling you the same story over and over again, liberals babble on and on about the “heady” days of civil rights marches. Between 1995 and 2001, the New York Times alone ran more than one hundred articles on “Selma” alone. I believe we may have revisited this triumph of theirs sufficiently by now. For anyone under fifty, the “heady” days of civil rights marches are something out of a history book.
January 19, 2010, 10:54 amSo we searched the New York Times archives on LexisNexis for the word “Selma” for the years 1995-2001. This produced 776 total hits. Of these, 424 were death notices, 18 were wedding announcements, 25 were other sorts of paid notices, 5 were in photo captions, and 234 were either: a) contents listings; b) people with the name Selma; c) references to Selma, California; or d) references to Selma, Alabama that had nothing to do with civil rights (b, c, and d includes letters and op-eds as well as regular articles). Of the remaining 70 items, in our judgment only 16 were centrally concerned with historic happenings at Selma from the civil rights era. The other 54 contained brief mentions of Selma and civil rights but appeared in articles on different topics. Once again, Coulter’s dubious claim — that “between 1995 and 2001, the New York Times alone ran more than one hundred articles on ‘Selma’” — is false.
A. Zarkov says:
Is your comment in the nature of a complaint, a lament or a badge of honor?
January 19, 2010, 11:08 amjccamp says:
MDT –
“…apart from wondering what hideous portrait she must have stashed in her…residence if she looks like that at 48.”
Ha! But then, just ask some here…they will tell you that she has sold her soul.
January 19, 2010, 11:11 amTonetel says:
Amazing that you double, triple down on this. The consiprators have been reduced to snarking Ann Coulter?
BTW, I’m fairly certain that Amirault would disagree with your opinion.
January 19, 2010, 11:12 amneurodoc says:
In testing cognitive capacities, we may ask patients to explain differences. Some are pretty easy like “child” vs “midget,” some prove to be more challenging for many like “dog” vs “cat.” We expect people have no cognitive impairment to get “lie” vs “mistake.”
For “falsehood,” Merriam Webster offers: 1) an untrue statement, lie;
2) absence of truth or accuracy; 3) the practice of lying, mendacity. The second of those doesn’t imply the intention to deceive others as to the truth of a matter, but the others do. If someone is said to tell falsehoods, then I think most of us would understand that to mean they are “liars,” not professional opinionators/provocateurs who often assert things that reasonable people would dismiss as “wrong.”
If in your view political commentators saying things that are arguably “wrong,” if not clearly wrong, amounts to them telling “falsehoods,” then telling falsehoods is so commonplace as to be nothing at all remarkable. If telling “falsehoods” is understood to mean saying that which the speaker knows to be untrue with the intention of deceiving their listeners, then when a political commenter does it, it is worthy of note.
(ArthurKirkland, who scoffs at Coulter as a champion of “family values,” stopped to call out Sens. Vitter and Ensign in an aside for their personal failures in the “family values” department. I trust he sees John Edwards, a former senator and almost VP, as no less mendacious than those other solons.)
January 19, 2010, 11:25 amegd says:
You might want to check that “objectively verifiable lie” again.
If you didn’t click the link…a search for “Selma civil rights” turns up 115 hits from 1/1/95 to 12/31/01. Yes, some of them are death notices, but many of them are of otherwise unknown individuals (what citizen in New York City cares about so-and-so who died in Chattanooga, TN, except for the fact that he was somehow attached to the march in Selma).
Others are gratuitous mentions of Selma, which is the point that Coulter was making. So-and-so traveled to the middle east to meet with the Palestinian government, and marched at Selma.
The continued reference to Selma in the NYT, in stories which have nothing to do with Selma, is nothing but an incessant reminder of their heady days of self-righteousness. It’s like your grandfather asking what you want for breakfast and then reminding you that he was shot in the war.
January 19, 2010, 11:30 amzuch says:
Good. Then we can agree that I am not a defender of Nifong, and you are a “conservative” only by northern California’s rather open standards. So I stand by my comment:
Cheers,
January 19, 2010, 11:55 amneurodoc says:
OK, I have searched and come up with a Coulter falsehood in an interview with The Guardian:
On Muslims: ‘The question is not, ‘Are all Muslims terrorists?’ The question is, ‘Are all terrorists Muslims?’ The answer is yes.’
Well, there have been acts of terrorism in recent years perpetrated by Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, and those without any religious identities. So, QED: Coulter can be charged with telling a falsehood, one which she surely knows to be untrue.
Notwithstanding the fact that this particular assertion by her is clearly a falsehood, one which she surely knows to be untrue, I won’t count her a “liar” for saying it, though, because it can be seen as rather obvious exaggeration for the sake of making her point about the relative threat posed by adherents of Islam in comparison to those posed by the adherents of other major religions.
[I expect this one too is a falsehood, but I can't be 100% certain that it is:
On her Muslim ex-boyfriend: 'The relationship was complicated by his interest in committing jihad. I took away his box cutters.'
Not all that funny, but clearly she was trying to be both funny and outrageous, while not saying whether she had carnal knowledge of the ex-boyfriend before they parted ways.]
January 19, 2010, 11:59 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
I was attempting to apologize. We can take it as read that your comment was entirely accurate.
January 19, 2010, 12:15 pmfrankcross says:
egd, think about it. She said over 100 articles were about Selma alone. You get there by including gratuitous mentions, including obituaries. And you use this to defend the truth of her statement.
As with so many other defenders, you change the nature of her statement so as to make it defensible. That shows a strange desperation to defend a person.
January 19, 2010, 12:15 pmneurodoc says:
egd disputed you on “objectively verifiable lie.” Hardly a “desparate” defense, at least not one from a lawyer’s perspective.
January 19, 2010, 12:32 pmzuch says:
Thank you, then. I appreciate your graciousness. Do you still think that my motivation for using “policeman” was questionable? [FYI, a disclaimer: For various reasons, I'm not particularly fond of all policemen, and hardly hold them up as exemplars immune to criticism, doubt, or condemnation].
Cheers,
January 19, 2010, 1:34 pmegd says:
Oh come on, now you’re being deliberately obtuse.
She didn’t say that there were 100 articles on strictly the topic of Selma, she said that of the civil rights topics covered by the NYT, 100 were on Selma.
“The Volokh Conspiracy has an obsession with non-legal topics, there have been over 5 posts on bears alone.” That doesn’t mean that the bear-related topics are only about bears (some might be about grading papers, or travels to Asia), but bear topics, as distinct from other non-legal topics, constitute 5 or more posts.
January 19, 2010, 1:58 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
Do you still think that my motivation for using “policeman” was questionable?
Well, let’s just say that I think it, um, unfortunate that three people who pretty well everyone seems to think innocent are nationally renowned as convicted sex offenders, while Winfield (whom no one seems to think wrongly convicted) is not. That is why I took the trouble to find out his name and use it. It would be nice had you done the same, but I don’t think your “motivation” was anything more reprehensible than “didn’t think it was necessary.” OK?
January 19, 2010, 1:59 pmzuch says:
I explained why I did it. I’m better than many here in linking stuff, but I don’t always have the time or the motivation, particularly when the information is not particularly relevant. Here I think his name wasn’t of much importance to what I said. If there’s any “reprehensib[ility]” to that, then yes, I plead guily. But I still think you were wrong in attaching significance to my use of “policeman”.
Cheers,
January 19, 2010, 2:08 pmneurodoc says:
Good, while we wait for the Massachusetts results to come in and tell us whether Kopel was right or not (“Coakley In Free Fall”), we can discuss some things of greater moment than Ann Coulter, or even the Amirault case, like this curious ursine obsession. I don’t know what accounts for it. It is certainly real enough, though, that is to say no falsehood. My speculation is that it is an inside joke among the VC conspirators, who are secretly conspiring to pay homage to the chief conspirator’s alma mater and employer.
January 19, 2010, 2:12 pmA. Zarkov says:
Have we forgotten all about the main thread here– the Brown-Coakley race? Let’s look at Suffolk University poll reported on Jan 14. SU polled 500 people and reported the following:
Brown: 250
Coakley: 228
Kennedy: 14
Undecided: 7
Refused: 1
They report a margin of error (MOE) of 4.38% (correctly calculated) but seem to think the race is “too close to call” because Brown’s lead over Coakley is about the same as the MOE. I disagree. While poll too close to predict the eventual difference in votes, we can predict the winner. Brown simply has to get more votes in the election to win. Using a Bayesian approach, I calculate that Brown has an 82% chance of winning the election.
Coakley is in free fall.
January 19, 2010, 2:13 pmCato The Elder says:
It doesn’t matter that Brown may have the heart of the people. We’re talking Massachussetts and Boston and Democratic politics here, remember? Coakley has since mobilized Menino’s voting machine and has also brought out the “alley abortions” heavy weaponry. That stuff is catnip to the nutty liberals in Cambridge. And we all know we’re going to find evidence of dead bodies voting later. I’m slightly hopeful but history’s shown that the Democrats really know few bounds when it comes to electioneering.
January 19, 2010, 2:25 pmtheobromophile says:
A. Zarkov: None of the above; mere disinterested inquiry. Just want to see where the lines are and what principles are motivating the those who believe that Miss Coulter is a hypocrite.
January 19, 2010, 2:42 pmtheobromophile says:
neurodoc: well, Monday Bear Blogging is easier than Monday Terrapin, Beaver, Blue Jay, and/or Bulldog Blogging (although if one omits the first, there would be a nice alliteration to it all). :)
January 19, 2010, 3:02 pmleo marvin says:
January 19, 2010, 3:42 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
leo marvin,
Yep, Coulter is wrong there; obviously Guantánamo has been a recruiting tool of sorts. But what seems to me completely unsupportable (and, indeed, unsupported) is the idea that taking everyone currently in Guantánamo and moving them to Illinois, without otherwise changing their legal status in any way, will somehow lessen al Qaeda’s recruitment capabilities. So far as I can see, Obama’s current plan is methodically to preserve everything conceivably objectionable about Gitmo (most notably the indefinite-detention-without-trial part), while changing the name and the location. This does not, to me, seem very likely to dampen the enthusiasm of potential al Qaeda recruits.
Unless, of course, they’d rather be detained in Cuba than in Illinois, which (come to think of it) might be understandable. Especially this time of year.
January 19, 2010, 4:33 pmepluribus says:
Michelle Dulak Thomson says:
Michelle, do you think it would be wise for the German government to continue to use Dachau as a prison? If they did so, do you think they might be reminding non-Germans of some awful things that happened at Dachau? Even if the prisoners there today were treated just as prisoners are treated in other German prisons, don’t you think it would rub a whole lot of people the wrong way? If Obama made no effort to close Guantanamo and move the prisoners to another U.S. prison, don’t you think he would be faulted for breaking a campaign promise? From what I hear, his friends (just joking) on the right have been all over him for not keeping certain vaguely worded campaign pledges. Don’t you think they would be really inflamed if he were to abandon such an explicit promise? Do you understand why the French people destroyed the Bastille?
January 19, 2010, 5:17 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
epluribus,
My beef is that Obama doesn’t propose to change what made Guantánamo notorious in the first place. He still wants to detain people indefinitely without trial; he just wants the new notorious oubliette to be in his home state rather than in Cuba. And wants the new notorious oubliette to be named “Thomson,” of all things. You can see why this has me steamed; I didn’t sign on to be an al Qaeda recruiting tool. (Pardon the feeble humor, please.)
Indeed, Obama promised to shut down Guantánamo, and that must be his reason for continuing to want to do it; at least, everything else militates against it. He has discovered, apparently, that the people his wicked predecessor wanted to detain indefinitely without trial are people that he is not comfortable either trying or releasing himself. Some aspect of Bush Administration policy evidently turned out to have a point apart from tormenting random Muslims. Who knew?
I think, by the way, the comparison to Dachau is offensive. You could argue in this way that it was insensitive for US occupying forces to appropriate Abu Ghraib, which had been the scene of atrocities on a different scale from anything Lynndie England committed. Abu Ghraib under Saddam really did bear comparison to Dachau. But Gitmo? Seriously?
January 19, 2010, 5:51 pmwolfefan says:
Hi Nelson Lund (if you are still reading at this point- and why would you be?) –
Welcome to the VC. If you think Orin or Ilya’s reactions to Ann Coulter were somehow uncivil, I suspect you may need to spend more time on Teh Internetz.
If you think that mass conversions to Christianity at the urgings of a nation that had just conquered your own through carpet bombings are not in some way forcible, I despair for you.
January 19, 2010, 6:03 pmneurodoc says:
I’m not sure about the wisdom of closing Gitmo for the same reason Michelle Dulak Thomson cites, that is that it seems doubtful that closing it achieve much of positive nature, and because “repatriating” those held there to Illinois or elsewhere within the United States may only complicate matters further for us. But I do take your point about the fraught symbolism of Dachau no matter how the Germans would go about things there now, while rejecting the suggestion that Gitmo is anything like Dachau or those held at Gitmo are anything like those who perished at or passed through Dachau.
It is interesting that you note the storming and later destruction of the Bastille, because the symbolism was so vastly disproportionate to the reality of it at the time. I don’t imagine for a moment that any of us would have cared to spend any time as a prisoner there, but reportedly it was not the worst of French prisons in which to be incarcerated. When the crowds broke in, their principle motivation wasn’t liberation of the prisoners, of whom there were only 7(!), all common criminals rather than political ones, but to lay their hands on gunpowder and weapons.
It has been reported that it is beginning to impress upon KSM and the other four who are to be transferred to the Manhattan Detention Center for trial in a US federal district court, that it won’t be as nice there as they have had it as special customers at Guantanimo. I can’t say that troubles me.
January 19, 2010, 6:03 pmneurodoc says:
[Why does the screen keep jumping back, so I can't change that "70" below to "60," making the year 1949, during Mayor Curly's ear, rather than 1939?]
Well, I’m flattered that you remember those personal details, though you have inverted the chronologic order of the first two. Why should “bear blogging” be an easier business any day of the week than blogging about those other symbolic creatures, none of whom are extinct or exceptionally rare? And while I don’t know about the likelihood of pachyderm sightings or interest in flag rank military officers, but if it is alliteration you want, then you have it with Jumbos and Generals. :):):)
(BTW, theo, are you an MA voter these days? If so, did you happen to see any of MA’s legendary dead resurrecting for the purpose of casting ballots today? My late father was an intern at the Boston City Hospital 70 years ago, and though he never reported witnessing one of those miracles, among his stories of that fabled institution was one about ambulances arriving to take patients to the polls, then back to the hospital. I don’t know why they went to the effort, since there were so much easier ways to achieve the desired political ends, and they were regularly employed. It’s funny that there should have been a non-Kennedy Kennedy in today’s race, since that was a trick famously pulled on JFK’s behalf when he was getting started in politics. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose?)
January 19, 2010, 6:23 pmleo marvin says:
Actually I think the distinctions are finer than that. To my ear, “lie” connotes a stronger intention to deceive than “falsehood” does, and I don’t believe telling a lie qualifies one as a liar. I reserve that for people who make a practice of lying. Otherwise I suspect we’d all be liars, and the word would lose its descriptive value.
I agree, and I’d point out that in my comments to Zarkov I said Coulter’s statement was false, not a falsehood. The question is how much of what kind of evidence should be required to say someone is dishonest. I don’t know the answer, and I do think the rampant practice of calling people liars based on honestly held, but poorly thought out opinions is one of the banes of our discourse. But that doesn’t mean we can’t draw useful inferences from behavior. When someone consistently errs in favor of their self-interest or beliefs, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude they’re either knowingly deceptive or blinded by bias. Where the difficulty of distinguishing one from the other and the seriousness of mistakenly calling someone dishonest should argue for cautious analysis, too many of us allow ourselves to be guided by emotion, so I won’t claim to know which category Coulter’s inaccuracies fall under. I hope we can agree her incivility is beyond dispute.
January 19, 2010, 6:35 pmneurodoc says:
I am not clear about the “detain(ing) people indefinitely without trial” part. By “trials” do you mean something with all the procedural protections and standards of proof that they would have to be accorded in a federal district court, or do you have something closer to military tribunals in mind? Do you think all those detained must be given finite rather than indefinite sentences or released?
I am impressed by your use of the high value vocabulary word “oubliette,” which I had never encountered until very recently, and then too in connection with Guantanamo (Maureen Dowd?), but do recognize as owing to the French verb for “forget.” (Does the Supermax in Florence, CO where Moussawi is to spend the rest of his days count as an “oubliette” if we know he is there?)
January 19, 2010, 6:53 pmepluribus says:
Michelle Dulak Thomson:
I think you are confusing verbs. “Compare” is not synonymnous with “equate.” “Liken” may be an approximate equivalent, but my dictionary also says it means “to examine the character or qualities of esp. in order to discover resemblances or differences.” In my judgment, both Guantamano and Dachau were outrages, the latter admittedly on a much, much larger scale than the former. Nobody was gassed at Guantanamo, but some were tortured. The inmates at Guantanamo were not chosen because they were members of a hated religious group. So there are both resemblances and differences. Guantamano, you may recall, was originally established in the mistaken belief that American law did not apply there. It was designed to be a place without law. Bush and those who advised him specifically wanted a place where the Constitution did not apply. The Republican-dominated Supreme Court disabused them of that notion. Maybe, by your definition, I should be faulted for “comparing” Dachau and the Bastille. There are resemblances and differences between them. But both have a place in infamy, and both have been consigned to the ash heap of history. I believe that Guantanamo should be too. And, for many reasons, the prison in Illinois makes a whole lot more sense to me than one on the island of Cuba.
January 19, 2010, 7:19 pmepluribus says:
Michelle, I believe you said that you are a “Marin County conservative,” or something to that effect. Do you defend Guantanamo just because liberals in the shade of Mt. Tam condemn it, or can you think independently of them? (I lived for 20 years or so in and just out of San Francisco, so I know how smug and exasperating Bay Area liberals can be. But heck, even they are right on some issues.)
January 19, 2010, 7:30 pmneurodoc says:
Leo Marvin, you are far too temperate and reasonable. Am I to quibble over inconsequential differences in order to have something to say in response to you other than that we are in general agreement, though we may come to it from different directions?
As for Coulter, I think she can be fairly called various things, including “smart,” “theatrical,” “sharp,” “provocative,” “reckless,”
“incivil,” “amusing,” “shameless,” “outrageous,” “stimulating,” “over-the-top,” “offensive” at times, and more, but not indisputably “fair,” “admirable,” “serious,” “reliable,” “generous,”
“kind,” “exemplary” and many other things of positive nature. I don’t think “mendacious” is apt, if only because that which is “wrong” is usually transparently so, and more ideologic than factual, hence not really “falsifiable”.
Need we say more of Coulter, who is of so little consequence in and of herself?
[Did you read the WaPo Safeway piece so you might understand some of concerns about the health care legislation our elected representatives have crafted? You might also want to read what the very impressive Robert Samuelson has written about the economics of it in the WaPo. If I still had your email address, I would say more in private correspondence, but unfortunately I don't. If you still have mine, feel free to contact me.]
January 19, 2010, 7:52 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
neurodoc,
There are, as I understand it, prisoners at Guantánamo whom the Obama Administration does not want (for whatever reason) to put on trial (either civilian or military), whom it has decided it cannot release either, and whom no other nation is willing to incarcerate for us. That is, there is a population that has not in any sense been convicted of a crime in either military or civilian court, but that is to be kept locked up regardless.
That Guantánamo was the Bush Administration’s ill-thought-out method for achieving just this sort of extralegality is the whole reason the name of the place is notorious. Keeping the privilege of indefinite detention w/o trial may or may not be wise policy; but doing it while changing the scenery and calling the result “closing Guantánamo” as though that made any material difference to the inmates does not strike me as a policy calculated to win us friends.
January 19, 2010, 8:19 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
epluribus,
Michelle, I believe you said that you are a “Marin County conservative,” or something to that effect. Do you defend Guantanamo just because liberals in the shade of Mt. Tam condemn it, or can you think independently of them?
OK, lemme get something straight. I am not defending Guantánamo. I think the idea of siting a prison offshore in the hope that it would be exempt from US law was spectacularly wrongheaded.
But I do believe that in the ranks of woefully useless symbolic gestures, “remedying” that error by locking up the same people in the same legal limbo in a different location with a different sign out front practically deserves a category of its own. This rights no wrong, frees no one unjustly imprisoned, guarantees no one habeas, &c. All it does is (1) fulfill the letter of a campaign promise; and (2) throw some money and some jobs towards Illinois. I don’t especially object to it; as I’ve kept saying, it’s basically the status quo with a different name on the label. But I do strenuously object to people’s thinking that it’s a significant move, because it isn’t.
You do have a point, though; I have an ingrained habit of taking the other side of an argument purely for the sport of arguing, and of course in my current neighborhood that means I’m often arguing to the right of, as it were, my natural position. Some people just like seeing the other side of every goddamn question, and I’m one of them. (A guy on Sproul Plaza at Cal once tried to push me rightward on some issue, then tried to push me leftward, then finally gave up in disgust, calling me an “extreme moderate.” A label I rather like.)
January 19, 2010, 8:40 pmv says:
前列腺光波治疗仪
January 19, 2010, 9:56 pmepluribus says:
Anybody who qualifies as an “extreme moderate” is alright in my book.
January 19, 2010, 10:18 pmneurodoc says:
Michelle Dulak Thomson, do you see a legal distinction between “lawful” and “unlawful” combatants, and if you do, then what follows from it?
Five young Pakistani-American men suddenly disappeared from the Washington, DC area not long ago, causing their families great concern. They then turned up in Pakistan, where they were arrested by local authorities after these would-be jihadis were turned away by those they hoped to hook up with, who thought they were probably American agents. The lads acknowledged to the Pakistanis that they came in order to join up with jihadis in Afghanistan. There was some uncertainty at first about what would be done with them, with it speculated that Pakistan would expel them and they would be returned to the US. Now Pakistan says they will try these young zealots, and they may face life sentences there. Is that fair in view of the fact that they are American citizens and if returned to the US they might escape punishment altogether, since theirs would not be easy cases to prosecute? Can justice be done if the Pakistanis don’t afford them all the guarantees of a fair trial that they would have here in the US, including exclusion of probative evidence like damaging self-admissions made in the absence of Miranda warnings or denial of access to attorneys? I have no worries on their behalf, do you?
Where those non-citizens held at Guantanamo are concerned, my only issue with their continued incarceration is whether or not they were actually engaged in any way as unlawful combatants or supporters of unlawful combatants.
January 19, 2010, 11:29 pmArthurKirkland says:
Setting to the side policy decisions that generate consequences such as death, dismemberment and torture, if any public figure — including but not limited to those named — has displaced more slime at the bottom of the trough by dragging himself through it than has John Edwards, I have not noticed it.
Despair not for the professor; despair instead for the students.
January 20, 2010, 12:08 amleo marvin says:
neuro, thanks. I read the WaPo article. Not terribly surprising, unfortunately. Didn’t find the address, but a few places yet to look.
January 21, 2010, 12:13 am