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Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Shouldn't you be refraining from terms like "lunatic" and "frothing" and other pejoratives? If you're right on the merits, why do you engage in that sort of thing? It undercuts your argument. You're better and smarter than that.
Sorry, but your excuses for the poor state of the media boil down to Americans are too disinterested in important things for the media to make money covering them. Well, fine!! But, in the meantime, could we then tell guys like Jake Tapper to stick it when he says things like this:
"And as much as citizens who are suspect of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we're confident is the right one."
I mean honestly, if the only way to make money is covering fluff then let's just be honest and tell it like it is. They are not news. They are infotainment.
Aren't they Megan McArdle commenters by definition?
It blows my mind that your techs can't figure out how to disable the "Post" button once it's been hit. It's basic, basic javascript.
Megan - you sure do love poking at the web's lunatic hornet's nests. First the Ron Paul psychotic simpletons. Now Greenwald's deranged disciples. Quite entertaining. Maladets.
I've just come to laugh at you Megan.
Ha Ha.
Bye babe, keep up that stellar work.
DSR,
There is a reason why Greenwald has so many readers. I guess there IS an audience for people who want to read about, oh, executive power grabs or legal analysis. Certainly, not enough to be PROFITABLE for reporters and journalists, of course... but bless his heart, he covers it anyways.
Mark Kleiman has emailed asking me what I think about torture, and I suppose I should weigh in, although I doubt my contribution will be very useful. . .
To some extent, I believe in the hidden law. Which is to say, the choice that some citizens make, under some circumstances, to break the law as it is written. . . . I view torture in somewhat the same way. To see what I mean, I want you to imagine that there's a terrorist group that is threatening, not some faceless person somewhere, but your kid. . . .Now, are you going to give him back to the Feds to be sent to Gitmo in the hopes that a couple years down the road, he might tell you something -- if they haven't already gassed your child, that is? Or are you going to whip out the toolbox and get to work? . . .
And I think that our operatives are probably so tempted when they face down the evil men who seek out soft civilian targets to sow terror. I cannot entirely fault them for it. I'm not sure they should always be punished. But neither do I want to see the apparatus of the legal system turned to codifying, regulating, and normalizing torture, as Alan Dershowitz has suggested with his terror warrants. If terrorists must be tortured -- and I am unwilling to state that there is no circumstance ever under which I could condone it -- then it should happen in dark rooms, at risk to the lives and careers of the men who carry it out, so that the hidden law will only trump the written law when times are truly desperate enough to call for such desperate measures.