Sigh. Glenn Greenwald lashes back. Mr Greenwald's anger at the establishment power structure seems to be rapidly transmuting into anger at the non-Glenn-Greenwald power structure:
The "points" they make along the way are just painfully self-refuting and outright false (self-evidently so), so I'm only going briefly to address a couple of those points for illustrative purposes. I want to focus, instead, on some substantive, broader points which their mentality demonstrates.McArdle's principal point is that "Americans care more about [Obama] than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president" and that "most people don't care about minor government functionaries." Just think about that for a moment. Megan McCardle thinks that John Yoo is basically the DOJ version of Lynndie England -- just some low-level guy who went off on his own and did some isolated, unauthorized bad things in the past that our political leaders have now corrected.
She quite obviously has no idea that the memoranda John Yoo wrote -- legalizing government torture, declaring presidential omnipotence, and suspending the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. -- are not merely his opinion, but became the official position of the entire Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. She also quite obviously has no idea that he did all of that in close association with the most powerful political officials in the White House, including David Addington, Alberto Gonzales and ultimately Donald Rumsfeld, nor does she have the slightest awareness that the torture-authorizing memoranda were used to brief Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantanamo who then went to Iraq to train the commanders of American prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, nor that the theories of presidential omnipotence underlying it all remain firmly in place.
This quite takes my breath away. Because the only reason that one could possibly disagree with Glenn Greenwald about anything is that WE JUST DIDN'T UNDERSTAND HIM!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!
Obviously, I know who John Yoo was, and what he did. From the point of view of the American public, however, he is a minor government functionary, much like--oh, say, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Please try this exercise: without using Google, name the US Trade Representative. The chair of the CEA. The head of OFHEO. The other members of the Federal Reserve's FOMC. The deputy secretary of the Treasury. The head of the White House Office of Management and Budget. The current commissioners of the SEC. The Chairman of the FDIC. The leaders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I know all of their names, because that's my job. I am willing to bet that Glenn Greenwald couldn't name all of them on the spot; he might well not be able to name any of them. That's no slur. Almost no one whose professional life does not depend on the knowledge has any idea who they are.
To the great American public, these are, yes, minor government functionaries--minor functionaries whose rounding errors probably result in more lives saved or lost than could ever plausibly be attributed to John Yoo. I do not like this fact, but I do acknowledge it. Nor do I think that yelling at journalists will much change it.
I do not mean to thereby conflate torture with economic development; the former has a moral horror, even in small numbers, that even very bad development policy lacks--which is why, yes, the Holocaust is worse than the Ukrainian famine. But if torture is important enough to be front page news, so is knowing who is responsible for guiding trade policy in the world's leader on liberalisation, who will be steering us through a financial crisis that could cause economic problems around the world, and who is working on fixing the globe's deepest and broadest capital markets.
I would dearly love to see those names splashed across every front page every day--not because I write about them, but because I think Americans should know these things. But only someone delusional would claim that they are outranked by Obama's photo ops merely because journalists just aren't trying hard enough. Nor, I think, does Glenn Greenwald really believe that vital topics like mark-to-market accounting are being left out of the nation's A sections because the editors think pictures of Hillary's new hairdo have greater metaphysical importance.
And that's the point. Because we have an establishment media that completely ignores these matters in favor of chattering endlessly about how Obama bowls and the cleavage that Hillary shows, the U.S. Government, at its highest levels, can literally create a torture regime -- war crimes by any measure -- and explicitly seize lawbreaking powers. And when they do, even people like Megan McArdle -- who writes on political matters for the The Atlantic -- will remain completely ignorant of even the most basic facts about what the Government did, ignorance which won't stop her from defending it all and dismissing its significance.And she wants it that way, as she argues that the media should tell her more about Obama's bowling score than about these dreary, boring stories about DOJ memos. That's why the Government can and does continue to do what it does -- because our elite establishment opinion-makers aren't just profoundly ignorant, but happy about it, grateful for it even.
Greenwald error number two: I don't cover politics; I cover economic policy. These are not the same thing, which seems like the kind of thing that people who set themselves up as media critics should be aware of.
And given that I write about something that roughly 99% of the population considers less interesting than the newest diet fad, it's clearly ridiculous to assert that I am happy about the American public's raving disinterest in complicated policy stories. I spend much of my life whining to editors that the eight paragraphs on financial math are really interesting, dammit!
Now, is the problem that all of you really do want to know about how to calculate bond duration, and my mean stupid editors are misguided? Or is it more likely that you would skip to the next article--hey, did you realize you can lose twelve pounds in two weeks?
I am not defending John Yoo, or his memos, or the government's behavior. I am simply pointing out that when it comes to the journalistic coverage of same, Mr Greenwald has the correlation running the wrong way: the public doesn't know because it doesn't care, not because the journalists don't want to tell them. If the public did care, Mr Greenwald would have more readers.
Frankly, his assertions sound bizarre, even lunatic, to anyone who has ever met a journalist or a newspaper editor. And the later part of his rant, during which he accuses me and Dan of supporting the media establishment because it is helping us cover up our war crimes, ranges into the kind of frenzied conspiracy-theorizing that I generally associate with Ron Paul's more wild-eyed supporters. You know, the ones who tell you that when the rEVOLution comes, you'll be the first one with your back against the wall. The ones who aren't really arguing with you, but rather using you as a stand-in for everyone they've ever disagreed with, including the kids who made fun of them for wetting their pants in first grade. The ones who are filing their bizarrely capitalized missives from atop the massive stockpiles of canned goods and ammunition they have stored in an abandoned copper mine.
Now, some of my readers are arguing that we journalists have a duty to give the public what they don't particularly want. Okay, well, you really should know how to calculate a bond duration; if you have fixed income investments, as you should when you're near retirement, you'll want to know the weighted average maturity in order to balance your income across time. The mathematics for simple instruments is fairly easy; I can explain it in perhaps ten minutes of moderately involved reading, then you'll want to spend perhaps an hour or so doing excercises at home to make sure you've really nailed it. Ready?
That's ridiculous. You didn't come here to be bored by some formula you can look up if you need it; you're here to talk about foreign policy!
. . . oh hear that hollow laugh. That, my friends, is the sound of an eager young journalist's soul dying just a little bit every day.
Glenn Greenwald gets around 500 comments daily. Where do you think your ramblings figure into the scheme of things? (May your constant role as the butt of so many jokes be a comfort....)
Am I missing something when I think that the President is entirely accountable for the actions of his political appointees, like Yoo, and as such, we *should* care more about who our future President, like Obama, are then we do about past political appointees?
In other words, if Yoo's legal theories are wrong then Bush has broken the law, and therefore Bush can and should be impeached. Isn't the howling over Yoo just frusration over the inability to impeach Bush?
I cover economic policy.
. . . in between posts about your diet and liveblogging Democratic presidential debates, I guess.
"I do not mean to thereby conflate torture with economic development; the former has a moral horror, even in small numbers, that even very bad development policy lacks--which is why, yes, the Holocaust is worse than the Ukrainian famine. But if torture is important enough to be front page news, so is knowing who is responsible for guiding trade policy in the world's leader on liberalisation, who will be steering us through a financial crisis that could cause economic problems around the world, and who is working on fixing the globe's deepest and broadest capital markets."
Somebody has been shopping at Non Sequiturs R Us.
Will you teach us about Macaulay duration or modified duration or both?
I get all my retirement planning advice and vegan recipes from this site, so please don't hold back!
More seriously, Greenwald seems, uh, unhinged even if you excise his rants about a journalistic conspiracy. It very much reminds me of the '90s folks who would earnestly explain how Pres. Clinton murdered Vince Foster and Ron Brown.
You can believe that the Iraq War was wrong and that the president has claimed too much authority without falling into the cuckoo idea that we live in a "torture regime".
Am I missing something when I think that the President is entirely accountable for the actions of his political appointees, like Yoo, and as such, we *should* care more about who our future President, like Obama, will be then we do about past political appointees?
In other words, if Yoo's legal theories are wrong then Bush has broken the law, and therefore Bush can and should be impeached. Isn't the howling over Yoo just frusration over the inability to impeach Bush?
Why did you pick this fight with Greenwald in the first place, Megan? Did you think his thesis was so crazy as to deserve ridicule? Bet you're starting to regret that.
You're so wrong you should be fired for sullying the webpages of the Atlantic.
I'm not sure I have a dog in this fight. But I don't see why Megan thinks the story is so dry.
What you have in John Yoo, roughly, is the mastermind of a criminal system of torture and murder--one that operated under the authority of the United States government. Maybe that's not "ZOMG! Spitzer & Hookers!" but it isn't exactly a detailed explication of bond math.
Hundreds of likely innocent people died because of what John Yoo authorized as an officer of the United States. More were kidnapped, flown to Cuba, and tortured. Others were tortured in Iraq. John Yoo is behind all that death and violence. And now John Yoo, who is likely a criminal, holds an honored position teach law at Berkeley.
Is Megan really saying that story has no legs?
At the risk of thread-jacking, I have to disagree that the Holocaust was worse than Stalin's engineered famines, except perhaps because Stalin's kulak-killing was maybe a bit more coldly rational than Hitler's Jew-hatred. I can only quantify horrors by the degree of suffering they produced, and whether they were deliberately planned. Somehow, I don't think the starving farmer and his wife, as they gnawed the tissue off their dead child's femur, felt any less horror than the typical Holocaust victim. Of course, trying to put forth a hierarchy of horror in this realm is a bit revolting. I'd rather just say that once it reaches a certain level, there is no point in further fine judgements regarding degrees of moral depravity.
Jay:
If they fired all the wrong-headed pundits, who would be left at this website?
Reading is fundamental
You know, reading this headline, it occurs to me how often we get the "my critics don't understand what I wrote" defense from you, Megan.
Could the problem be that you just don't have the requisite skills to write a clear, concise and informative post in the first place?
>>> That, my friends, is the sound of an eager young journalist's soul dying just a little bit every day.
I wish Professor Slughorn had never taught you the secrets of Horcruxes.
megan,
you should stop before you dig a deeper hole.
you're out of your league, and the more you write, the more you try to argue and engage with greenwald - someone who can obviously run circles around you, intellectually - the DUMBER you appear.
this image comes to mind: a baby seal lying on the ice and a club raised over its bloody head.
move on. for your own sake.
Truly, a question of national significance and broad appeal.
Glenn Greenwald is trying to get you to see that journalists have a responsibility as citizens, let alone as journalists, to highlight issues of national import. Abuse of power and subversion of the Constitution are certainly more important than the question of whether vegetarians are evil.
It may be true in your mind that you only write about economics and are forced to dumb yourself down because economics is inherently boring. That says more about your inability to make boring economics interesting than it does about our desire to know about economics. The fact is that you write about a wide range of subjects, not just economics, and you write for a major publication with a national (maybe even global) readership. You DO write on political topics, even if that's not your primary "beat;" and if you are going to write about it AT ALL you have some responsibility to do so in a critical, informative manner. To the extent that you write about political issues, Glenn is criticizing your tendency to write about the frivolous; and it's not just your tendency, it's Drezner and many many others throughout the profession. You are just a convenient example.
For example: your recent post about John Yoo. You didn't approach the memo revelation from the perspective of its political significance; your post was on the matter of whether his tenure should be negated and the nature of tenure in general. Questioning the tenure system is a valid discussion to have; but in the context of John Yoo, it is impossible to separate the question of his tenure from the political facts of his actions in writing those memos. You cannot avoid it by airily proclaiming to "have no qualifications to weigh in on the legal merits of Yoo's arguments, so I won't;" the legal merits are part and parcel of the objections to Yoo and calls for his revocation of tenure. You simply MUST weigh in on them. I have no legal qualifications either, but as a somewhat intelligent person with a college education and as a citizen of the United States I have the ability to give my opinion. So do you. And as a journalist, Glenn Greenwald is asserting that you not only have the ability but the DUTY to weigh in; if you're going to talk about Yoo, you simply must address the criticisms levied against him. But you don't do that because it's too boring, and besides, the public doesn't care; why should you take the trouble to MAKE them care?
That's what Greenwald's upset about.
I can explain it in perhaps ten minutes of moderately involved reading, then you'll want to spend perhaps an hour or so doing excercises at home to make sure you've really nailed it.
You don't even know how to spell "exercises," and you're asking us if we're ready? Blogger, please.
Hell, every day in this country, people accused of crimes are intimidated with credible threats of torture, which will take place in the prisons they might be sent to, as a means of convincing the accused to either plea-bargain or otherwise cooperate. Some of our elected attorneys general and governors crack "jokes" about it. For the most part, our citizenry doesn't give a damn.
liberalrob:
No sense talking to an Objectivist about duty....might as well as your cat to take up calligraphy.
I tend to agree with Greenwald, despite his misplaced fight-picking with bloggers (wha?) and the weirdly immature form this discussion has taken on. There's got to be some sense in journalism that their editorial decisions inform and 'push' public dialogue in one direction or another. Granted, they need to cover the more celebrity-centric stories because they sell. But journalists/bloggers aren't really in it for the money - otherwise we'd just have TMZ 24/7. In other words, what's in the newspaper isn't inherently reactive to what people want to read. So why not guilt them to cover John Yoo--or at least the effect of Yoo--a little more than Barry's Big Day at Lucky Strike?
liberalrob:
No sense talking to an Objectivist about duty....might as well ask your cat to take up calligraphy.
frankie d wrote:
"you're out of your league, and the more you write, the more you try to argue and engage with greenwald - someone who can obviously run circles around you, intellectually - the DUMBER you appear."
==
liberalrob wrote:
"...Glenn Greenwald is asserting that you not only have the ability but the DUTY to weigh in; if you're going to talk about Yoo, you simply must address the criticisms levied against him."
==
Poor Megan.
Megan: master of terrible analogies. In both this post and the previous one she leans very heavily on awful analogies and false equivalencies. She can't refute the argument being made so instead she substitutes in a different argument entirely.
She does mean to conflate torture with economic development -- that's the primary point of her post, that torture is merely trivia of exactly the same importance as the name of minor government functionaries. Their names -- not what they've done, not any policy they've enacted, simply their names alone are exactly as important as torture.
And here we have another total non-sequitor. Megan didn't want to conflate torture with economic policies (cue laughter) and now she's (no doubt accidentally) conflating it with trivial formulas as well.
Why are we talking about how to calculate bond duration, a subject that has absolutely nothing to do with the original topic? Because Megan can't make her case using torture. The fact that she can't user torture in her arguments and instead has to rely on bond formulas is evidence that she does in fact see the vast difference between them.
Essentially her argument amounts to this: Americans don't care about torture, and as evidence of that I point to the fact that Americans don't care about what I ate for dinner last night either.
What?
A total reliance on strained analogies and non-sequitors is usually a great indication of a poor argument.
liberalisation
Did you all know that Megan used to write for The Economist? It's both highly regarded and British, you know!
"I tend to agree with Greenwald, despite his misplaced fight-picking with bloggers"
Greenwald's original piece was about the failings of the establishment media. It was the bloggers who ill-advisedly picked this fight.
Liberalrob, there are many, many, many important topics upon which I do not weigh in because I do not have the expertise to do so. I think it is very, very important to decide on optimal treatment protocols for diabetes, but that doesn't give me a moral obligation to make a judgement I have no basis for. The belief that one can have a "moral obligation" to make arguments unsupported by expertise or evidence is one of the reasons that economic policy is so dreadful.
I don't know anything about the law. I've already stated my position on torture: US policy should be "just say no". I have nothing to add there. But that's not a legal judgement; it's a pure moral one.
What I think policy should be and what it is are two different things; lawyers who say that the law supports a policy that I disagree with, or hell, that they disagree with, are not thereby automatically incompetent criminals. Nor do I have any way to assess how much of a role Yoo's memo actually played in various activities I strongly disapprove of.
I am willing to take other peoples' word that the memos are legal garbage. But there's no point in my repeating this, since I have no basis upon which to make this judgement other than a general trust in the people so saying.
I have an area of expertise that I think is pretty important. So I stick to that. I'm qualified to opine on the game theoretic aspects of torture, and possibly some of the cognitive science. But since I think that these are pretty much completely irrelevant, why bother? Torture=something we shouldn't do. So who cares what reward and sanction strategies might be most effective?
It's simple. This post answers the previous one.
Vegetarians aren't evil, they're just stupid.
Wow, are you kidding me?
Obviously, I know who John Yoo was, and what he did. From the point of view of the American public, however, he is a minor government functionary, much like--oh, say, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
DUH. THIS IS THE POINT. He's a nobody because the media doesn't cover him. If you think this story about an administration lawyer who teamed with big-timers in the administration to do all sorts of Really Bad Things should be ignored because "Hey, if you were to poll the public, would they know who 'John Yoo' was today?" is absolutely mind-boggling.
John Yoo is a war criminal because he wrote a couple of papers on what war crimes actually are? Wah?
Call me crazy, but how is that not ridiculous hyperbole? You eventually end up having to conflate opinions with "authorization" (As Glenn did) or weakly assert that Yoo influenced people.
Those are war crimes?
What this position of Glenn's inevitably ends up doing is treating anyone who disagrees with him about what war crimes are as a war criminal. That's really Yoo's "sin" here, and that's precisely why Glenn started in on Megan with his talk of war crimes.
Uh, no, Margalis. Greenwald asserted that McCardle wanted the media to focus on Obama's bowling score. McCardle responded that, no, she would prefer more technically-oriented economic reporting, reporting that editors forgo, judging it as being to obscure for general readership. Thus, the editors go with the bowling scores.
"so is knowing who is responsible for guiding trade policy in the world's leader on liberalisation, who will be steering us through a financial crisis that could cause economic problems around the world, and who is working on fixing the globe's deepest and broadest capital markets.
I would dearly love to see those names splashed across every front page every day--not because I write about them, but because I think Americans should know these things. But only someone delusional would claim that they are outranked by Obama's photo ops merely because journalists just aren't trying hard enough..."--MM
OMG and then you didn't even name the People and Places that you were referring to...
YHTBFK(M/U)
""so is knowing who is responsible for guiding trade policy in the world's leader on liberalisation, who will be steering us through a financial crisis that could cause economic problems around the world, and who is working on fixing the globe's deepest and broadest capital markets.
I would dearly love to see those names splashed across every front page every day..."--MM
Megan,
By all means, please, do lead, at least, set up One of the Strawmen that you, rhetorically, set up.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/rhetorically
Looks like this is what happens when outraged earnestness collides with cynical world-weariness.
Remember when Cronkite came back from Vietnam and called it "unwinnable"? That probably wasn't what his audience, or the advertisers, or the folks in CBS corporate wanted to hear that night. As the story goes, LBJ was watching and turned to aide to say "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."
I'm not saying put Glenn on the evening news, but I am looking for a drop or two of tough medicine from the mainstream media.
A couple more points:
1. The subtext of Megan's posts is that Americans are stupid and people like her cater to them. If that's her point I wish she'd just come out and say it directly.
2. Megan's argument is circular - the public doesn't know or care about something, the media doesn't inform them, therefore they don't know or care.
3. The argument that newspapers just give vapid people what they want because that is what sells doesn't seem compatible with the fact that newspaper circulation is plummeting. Clearly the formula for today isn't working.
Good point, because obviously no one -- certainly no journalist -- should post on their blog anything light or frivolous or humorous until we have ended the Bush reign of terror upon the world!
It is our DUTY to end this murderous and despotic regime and none should laugh, eat or sleep until it is accomplished.
And then we can start harranging people to not indulge in humor until the progressive utopia has been realized. In fact, there should be no focus on any of life's lighter or happier moments until we have realized the coming progressive utopia on Earth!
And of course in that blessed day when the perfect world is finally realized, there will be no need for individual joys like humour and frivolity: we shall all share in the unsurpassable joy of participating in the realization of the collective will!
Won't that be splendid.
Megan, you're trying to punch above your weight class. Even on economic issues, I've found you have little useful to say, and I suspect my academic training in the subject is equal to, or exceeds, your own.
To the great American public, these are, yes, minor government functionaries...
Thanks for reminding me why I don't have you bookmarked. You never pass up an opportunity to insult my intelligence.
Ah yes, the "you misspelled a word" argument.
Devastating.
Glorious, you might want to check out the judgements made in the war crimes trials after WW II.
Those who "just gave legal advice" which justified actions which were held to be war crimes were held to be among those responsible for said war crimes. And the tortures (or, if you prefer, "enhanced interrogation techniques") done following Yoo's legal analysis were among the actions held, there, to be war crimes.
Ergo, following legal precedent established by the United States, Yoo could be convicted of war crimes. You may not like it. You may think the judgements half a century ago were wrong, and the Nazi torturers should not have been convicted. But that's how it is.
Margalis, I suggest you go and try to round up some capital for the purpose of publishing a newspaper that prints the stories you think are important. Maybe Greenwald can help you. If you had 100 million lying around, would you truly employ it in that fashion?
Few things are more boring than people who don't have any skin in the game delivering lectures to people who are risking huge sums.
I'd like to call this one for Vegan Vacardle for showing the most wit in the comments. Really, I'd like to see some twelve-year-olds brought in to make this a little more competitive.
haha, you're such a whiny dork. Get a life.
I honestly marvel that any individual who considers their self a journalist in America does not understand why the Yoo memo is newsworthy; indeed, that it should front page in every newspaper in the country and a lead story in the tv news.
The press in this democracy is supposed to be a tool against tyrranny. It is supposed to be the people's watchdog. It is supposed to give citizens the information necessary to make informed decisions: democracy can not function properly otherwise.
To excuse the press on the grounds that people don't care about these matters is no excuse. It is an apology for the dereliction of a duty than in this nation should be viewed as something sacred.
This stuff is remedial. I would recommend obtaining and reading a copy of The Elements of Journalism
http://www.journalism.org/resources/principles
Rob:
Isn't the howling over Yoo just frusration over the inability to impeach Bush?
Well, that and the, you know, torture. That torture is almost certainly a factor here.
If only writing were fundamental too.
Actually, the key to being convicted of a war crime is to first be conquered by the party you were waging war against. For instance, if the Japanese had somehow conquered the United States, I suspect that the people Roosevelt appointed to instigate a propaganda campaign to convince American military personnel that Japanese were subhuman, on the moral level of insects, for the purpose of encouraging American military personnel to treat the Japanese soldiers they encountered with utter, and often lawless savagery, like using prisoners for target practice, or removing the gold teeth of live prisoners with a bayonet, would have been tried with war crimes. Nazi propagandists were, of course.
Superficial reporting of how the government wages war is as old as the republic.
Mmmm . . . I am in no way unhappy with the outcome of Nuremberg, but my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I'm not sure they're a great example to use.
"But only someone delusional would claim that they are outranked by Obama's photo ops merely because journalists just aren't trying hard enough."
You gotta be kidding. Clearly you haven't been paying attention to what's been going in the media over the past 20 years. You might want to read "Media Monopoly" by Ben Bagdikian.
Your argument that John Yoo's torture memos don't deserve any more ink than the normal functions of the government bureaucrats you pay attention to is truly laughable. Do you have any idea of the concept of newsworthiness?
When your head of the OFHEO implements a policy that leads the government into massive lawbreaking and fundamental violations of the constitution -- then we can talk.
Really, you should avoid media criticism. You are very, very far out of your depth.
"But only someone delusional would claim that they are outranked by Obama's photo ops merely because journalists just aren't trying hard enough."
You gotta be kidding. Clearly you haven't been paying attention to what's been going in the media over the past 20 years. You might want to read "Media Monopoly" by Ben Bagdikian.
Your argument that John Yoo's torture memos don't deserve any more ink than the normal functions of the government bureaucrats you pay attention to is truly laughable. Do you have any idea of the concept of newsworthiness?
When your head of the OFHEO implements a policy that leads the government into massive lawbreaking and fundamental violations of the constitution -- then we can talk.
Really, you should avoid media criticism. You are very, very far out of your depth.
A couple of quotes from someone who understood the sacred duty of the press
"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations." - Joseph Pulitzer, The North American Review (May 1904)
"Every issue of the paper presents an opportunity and a duty to say something courageous and true; to rise above the mediocre and conventional; to say something that will command the respect of the intelligent, the educated, the independent part of the community; to rise above fear of partisanship and fear of popular prejudice." - Joseph Pulitzer, letter to the editor of New York World (1911)
Hume, please quote McArdle where she asserted that Yoo's memos are not newsworthy.
wj:
Which judgments and legal precedents established by the U.S. are you referring to? This is not an attempt to score points. I'd really like to know.
margalis:
1. "The subtext of Megan's posts is that Americans are stupid and people like her cater to them. If that's her point I wish she'd just come out and say it directly."
You are so concerned with the subtext that you missed the text. She did say this, albeit with more tact.
2. Megan's argument is not circular. Ignorant people that are not thereafter informed remain ignorant. Entirely linear.
others:
For your apoplexy at her statement that "To the great American public, these are, yes, minor government functionaries...," why is this so controversial? Would any of you know who John Yoo is if he hadn't written the memo?
Which judgments and legal precedents established by the U.S. are you referring to?
I was wondering this to. Who are the lawyers who wrote careful legal memos to Hitler assuring him that the German Constitution lacked extraterritorial authority, or whatever?
It's possible, and I'm certianly in no position to say it's not true. But there is sooooo much crap flying around on this particular subject that I'm hesitant to take it at your word.
We're talking about the principles on which the nation (and by extension civil society) is founded. If you feel you have no moral obligation to discuss (and hopefully defend) those regardless of expertise or evidence then I guess that's that. But I reiterate, as a journalist for a national publication you are expected to present useful information in a critical and thoughtful manner. What could be more useful and important to discuss than allegations of abuse of power and subversion of our political system?
If you don't want to write about political topics because you feel unqualified or disinterested, there's nothing illegal about that; but in the opinion of some, as a writer for The Atlantic you are abdicating responsibility as an educator of "thought leaders" and facilitator of the national discourse by not doing so when political implications are intimately involved with the topics on which you DO write. Not only that, you are an exemplar of similar abdication of responsibility throughout the journalistic profession. What would the founders of The Atlantic have had to say about that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic_Monthly
Glenn is not ordering you to make a legal analysis of the Yoo memos (he and other lawyers have already done that). He's asking that you and other journalists not paper over the issues Yoo's memos bring up by focusing on tenure or endless stories about Obama's bowling scores and similar trivia (evil vegetarians? libertarian movie night?), to the exclusion of a national dialogue on the important issues surrounding Yoo. He's also trying to get you to change your attitude; if you feel unqualified, educate yourself. If you think the public is bored by the subject, educate them in an entertaining way. These are important issues; be a good journalist, and report on them.
That's apologetics, Will. She said they're newsworthy except that they're not since the public doesn't care about it. Her definition of "newsworthy" seems to have the qualification that something newsworthy only gets covered if their is an advance perception from the publisher that the public wants to see it. She is defending not making a big deal out of a memo giving the president the pseudo-legal justification to suspend the 4th amendment for all US citizens on the grounds that the public doesn't want to hear it.
I am sorry but I take it as axiomatic that the press in American must inform the American public when the rule of law and hence democracy as we know it is in danger.
Megan, I think you are mistaken in believing that it's just that Yoo is a minor functionary that stops people from wanting to read about the torture memo. I think the real reason is that the substance of the problem is actually quite complicated. Greenberg and all the other screaming voices here notwithstanding. To wit:
1. It's clear, constitutionally, that the President assumes certain extraordinary powers during wars. It's not clear, legally, how far those power go; hence, this is a matter of continued legal debate.
2. The Office of Legal Counsel in the DOJ has had a tradition of trying not to be "too" political, knowing that it's always impossible for such an office, giving advice to the President and the AG, to bee totally apolitical. Did Cheney push OLC too far? Did Yoo aid and abet too willingly in politicizing what should be a more neutral office? There's quite a debate on that one too. Bush is not the first to politicize the DOJ -- remember Janet Reno of Waco and FBI list fame? -- but he may have gone further than anyone should. Let's debate that rather than the latest famous bimbo's excursions into sexual misconduct, please.
3. If the P can authorize harsh interrogation techniques short of torture, what's allowable and what's torture? That's a pretty little discussion that lawyers must grapple with, and it can get pretty technical, and a lot less interesting than Obama's silly attempts at bowling. Greenberg can rant on this all he wants, from an emotional and preconceived basis, but that does not alter the legal substance. So be wary of his rage, it's not serious analysis of a difficult issue, however entertaining.
4. On whom can harsher interrogation techniques be afflicted? The Yoo memo says it cannot be done on US citizens or on US soil. But it can be done on terrorists, i.e., criminals on the battle field who pretend to be soldiers, but aren't under the Geneva convention. Is that a valid legal conclusion? It's worthy of a debate, don't you think? We have rules, but we also need to know the limits of the rules, otherwise the rules aren't really defined. But it gets pretty boring, after a while, right?
5. There's no doubt that there is a point at which harsher interrogation techniques become torture. It may not be torture to deprive someone of sleep for a couple of days, but for weeks on end? It may not be torture to make someone freeze for a few hours, but to ice them down for a couple of days so they die of hypothermia? It may not be torture to force someone to stand up for twelve hours of interrogation, but to tie their hands behind their backs and lift them up? Here's the point: where's the point where each coercive technique becomes torture? There is such a point, but the Bush people never defined it. Yoo didn't. Rumsfeld didn't. They left it to lower level goons to find the limit without guidance. For that, both the politicals and the goons are responsible. I think they are criminally responsible, and should be prosecuted accordingly. That is, I can accept all that Yoo wrote, as perhaps stretched legal reasoning -- inappropriate for OLC in DOJ, but certainly not criminal. The horrors inflicted on terrorist prisoners are inexcusable, but, in my opinion, are due to lax implementation of a policy that in itself may have been defensible. Excessive application of harsh techniques that may be legal under "reasonable" limits cannot be defensible even under American law. If these interrogators have been in uniform, as was the case at Abu Ghraib, they are and should be liable under the UCMJ; if civilian, under federal statutes that prohibit torture. Bush himself says he has not authorized torture, yet torture has occurred, so people have criminally broken a lawful command from the Commander in Chief.
So why did they authorize these techniques? That has its root in Type I and Type II errors. Don't squeeze out the truth from a terrorist, and civilians and soldiers are highly likely to die. Squeeze it out with harsh techniques, and you may become a torturer. What's better? Being complicit in the death of innocents because you refused to step up or compromise your own integrity and basic values by stepping too far? Would you rather be known as a complicit murderer, having committed the sin of omission, or to be called a torturer, having committed the sin of commission? Is the line between the two so close to each other that it's impossible to find middle ground between the two? That's a more interesting discussion than whether Hillary's trade advisor was talking out of two sides of his mouth, but it's just too hard for most people to decide on, so they don't want to hear of it.
Anyway, the point is this. The emotional rants on this horrid issue notwithstanding, there are some tricky legal issues involved in every step of the way from Yoo's memo to people dying in US custody. No wonder the American people don't want to read about all this. It combines two terrible features of American culture: legalism, and public displays of crude emotion. Greenberg is so bursting of the latter that he cannot face up to the former, yet that's where we should try to have a sensible discussion.
Would I know who Yoo was if he didn't write the memo?
1. Yes.
2. He did write the memo, so your question is irrelevant.
3. When insignificant people do significant things they become significant.
Would you know who Obama was if instead of running for President he was the manager of a local Dairy Queen?
Your argument appears to be that only people with important titles are newsworthy, which is certainly a curious position.
Hume's ghost, we're not arguing about whether it was newsworthy--it's not like the story was buried. In the last month, the Washington Post has run twelve pieces on him, the New York Times six, the LA Times 3, and so forth. We're arguing which outlets should cover him how much. The question for editors is "how many pieces can I run on this story before it starts costing me readers?" My argument is that on the John Yoo story, for most papers--and remember that Glenn's results are driven in large part by a couple of stories each in a ton of regional papers, not the New York Times running eighty stories on Barack Obama bowling--the answer is "not many".
It's Greenwald, not Greenberg.
I think it's funny that some people are claiming that Megan is "out of her league" in arguing with Glenn Greenwald.
Surely you jest. Greenwald is the very definition of an intellectual lightweight, and he's quite possibly the worst writer I've ever encountered. Using big words and lots of em dashes doesn't make you smart. Can we please get a moratorium on his use of the word "vapid"?
"Hundreds of likely innocent people died because of what John Yoo authorized as an officer of the United States."
If you're going for "why Yoo is important" it might be better to start with something that would be at least reasonably agreed with. "Hundreds died in US custody" is a fairly big accusation to start with.
Margalis:
1. You're a rarity.
2. My question was relevant in the context of righteous indignation over the fact that the American public doesn't generally concern itself with middling government functionaries.
3. Thanks for that.
"Your argument appears to be that only people with important titles are newsworthy..."
Yes, it is, and this includes presumptive Democratic party nominees. Insignificant people are irrelevant newswise until, as you helpfully pointed out, they do something newsworthy. Your argument (that what Yoo did should have more play in the press) assumes its premise, which is that what Yoo did is newsworthy. I don't disagree with that premise, but the public does.
Well, a 2005 [sic!] report estimated 108 deaths in U.S. custody since GWOT began.
Report here
Now can we start talking about something besides vegetarians?
You could limit the consideration to tv - where most people get their news and the criticism would hold.
But I disagree that a paper that writes an informative and relevant story about the significance of the Yoo memo and Mukasey apparently fabricating an incident (while concomitantly lying) in order to gain more executive power will lose readers versus one that runs all the trivial stuff that was included in the Nexis search of Greenwald.
Even if the paper were not to increase its amount of coverage of those particular stories (Yoo/Mukasey) it could maintain their proportional significance by covering instead of the trivial stuff all kinds of other relevant information and actual news.
Again, I would recommend reading a copy of The Elements of Journalism. If that sounds a bit insulting, I make that recommendation to everyone I know whenever a dispute or discussion about the press arises.
You left out the real rhetorical jewel from that piece:
I used this same reasoning in arguments about my bedtime.
Glenn Greenwald is trying to get you to see that journalists have a responsibility as citizens, let alone as journalists, to highlight issues of national import.
Yes, indeed, Gleen Greenwald will require you to work! He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack, ummm, I mean Glenn Greenwald, will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
Much like the credibility gap between Popular Science and Science.
Michael B:
That "righteous indignation" is purely your invention and a convenient red-herring. I haven't seen anyone argue that the public should concern itself with middling government functionaries, certainly not Glenn. What I have seen is people arguing that the media should cover those functionaries and their actions when they are extraordinary.
You asked them?
I think it's funny that some people are claiming that Megan is "out of her league" in arguing with Glenn Greenwald.
I read the repetition of that assertion and close variants by nominally different commenters, and inexplicably I find myself thinking of sock puppets.
ted said:
I think it's funny that some people are claiming that Megan is "out of her league" in arguing with Glenn Greenwald.
Surely you jest. Greenwald is the very definition of an intellectual lightweight, and he's quite possibly the worst writer I've ever encountered. Using big words and lots of em dashes doesn't make you smart. Can we please get a moratorium on his use of the word "vapid"?
anyone who cannot tell the difference between the quality of thought that goes into greenwald's work and the lack of said quality in megan's posts deserves to keep reading this garbage on a regular basis.
greenwald has his faults - i do have to gear myself to read one of his tolstoy-length posts - but clarity of thought and using "big words" to communicate simple ideas are not among them.
he is simply one of the most thorough, courageous bloggers in the entire sphere.
on the other hand, megan has sadly distinguished herself as a truly "vapid" online presence, whose main claim to fame is the fact that she could probably post up matt y in a game of pickup basketball.
Well, strictly speaking I imagine Glenn Greenwald _still_ wets his pants....
You and he both seem to me to be wrong on something, though, to continue with the example of John Yoo. You hit the point that Americans don't care because, well, he was a minor government functionary, and Greenwald says, well, they'd care if you asked 'em to, and you both agree that they _should_ care and John Yoo and his memo should be all over everything. Well, BS. Because Yoo's memo was so egregious that if he'd submitted it to a different administration -- Clinton or Bush I -- it'd probably have been blown off. Or, more to the point, a different administration wouldn't have asked him to write it. So there might be a lot of sense, actually, in the public basically focusing on the top players here -- Yoo's important if you're a UCB prof, or a law scholar, or a politics junkie who likes to follow the inside baseball of who's with what think tank and what Senator's advisory committee -- dude, it's the guy who wrote _that memo?_ -- but it's not really a burnin' public issue.
All it really does is add to a consensus about what they guys at the top think bout torture and the rights of the President. And I don't actually think Yoo's memo changes that picture much from what we already knew, and I think we already had a lot of evidence what the attitude was/is. So, OK, this particular execrable memo is no big deal, the public, probably intelligently, just lumps it into a general impression about Bush which it does little to alter. And I think that's going to hold for a lot of your examples. Look, the President has a mess of advisors who actually do all the stuff. He's President because it largely sticks to him, and not so much to them. That's more or less as it should be.
Milk for Free:
Holy hat-rack! Did you just compare this train-wreck of a blog to a peer-reviewed journal!?
You owe me a new monitor! Mine's got coffee on it.
"What I have seen is people arguing that the media should cover those functionaries and their actions when they are extraordinary."
Agreed. I'd also like it if Yoo's significant actions were covered more than they are/were. But our definition of "extraordinary" isn't widely shared. Thus, Yoo remains middling.
"You asked them?"
Nope. I'm deferring to the individual judgments of hundreds of media editors on this one.
One of the major criticisms of the the media is that editors are out of touch with what the public wants and assume the public is interested in the same things they are interested in. Relying on their judgement and pretending it definitively establishes the facts about public interest is silly.
This is a bit tangential, but many political stories are written in a way to foster disinterest. You are no doubt familiar with the "fair" and "objective" he-said/he-said formula that is employed in nearly every hard political story that appears in major venues.
I have no doubt that most people would find that sort of story on Yoo boring. But that doesn't mean the subject matter itself is boring, or that interesting articles that engage the public couldn't be written.
Hume's Ghost bolded an important section from the Elements of Journalism above about making important stories compelling. When it comes to political reporting most writers do essentially the opposite.
On my blog I have an example of story Michael Scherer wrote about McCain, I made it twice as compelling simply by moving sentences around and putting the most dramatic stuff first.
A lot of it is simple craft. Political reporters are used to relying on a tired bland formula that makes their reporting as inoffensive and uninteresting as possible.
"I am willing to bet that Glenn Greenwald couldn't name all of them on the spot; he might well not be able to name any of them."
Did you seriously write that? Are you in third grade?
Thank you for catering to my base needs and, yes, please tell me more about John Edward's haircut -- you "reporter," you.
The issue here is, you are missing that right wing controversies - say what Obama's domestic policy advisor said in a not for attribution meeting up in Canada - get a heck of a lot more coverage, than does Yoo.
In no universe, even one run by the gossip elves, is Goolsbee getting more coverage than Yoo, make sense, when Yoo is enabling torture, and Goolsbee (am I misspelling that?) is musing.
Do you bid us good day sir!?
Someone had to say it.
frankie d: "Clarity of thought" and "Greenwald"? Excuse my while I vomit.
I understand Greenwald's arguments perfectly well; he's not always wrong, but he obviously lacks the intellectual capacity to see the world in anything other than black-and-white terms. His thinking reminds me of the way I used to think when I was an eager young law student. Greenwald has clearly not progressed beyond that point. And given his putrid writing, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that his time in law school didn't include a stint on Law Review.
I'll take Megan over Greenwald every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
Megan, you are digging yourself deeper by arguing that journalists don't cover subjects the public doesn't want to hear. Nonsense. An influential slice of the public (e.g. inside the Beltway) will pay attention to whatever the MSM tells them is important. They wouldn't have heard of Valerie Plame if the MSM hadn't decided to focus on the Wilson story, hardly a household name.
The torture story isn't about Yoo. It's about the President and his administration. You might review some of the history of Watergate. Today, the MSM wouldn't touch it.
Establishment journalists aren't writing stories about Mukasey's revelations and getting turned down by their editors. They're not writing about it because they don't care enough, because they presume the public isn't interested, and above all because they are too self-centered and lazy to dig into it.
Megan I can't agree with your reasoning that seemed to be saying that people shouldn't have taken an interest in the torture memos. The issues involved are far too serious, indeed many people see serious constitutional violations.
I agree with your arguments that it is incredibly difficult for journalists to do anything about this. Glenn I think is being far too simplistic in blaming them, but his point about news values being bizarre I think is spot on, even if it is very difficult for any individual to do anything about it, which is why we need people making a fuss about it. That said I think they will be more effective if they lay of the blame thing.
Yes Megan, reading is fundamental. You should try it sometime.
The idea that the importance or accessibility of this story turns on whether or not people recognize the name "John Yoo" -- rather than say "Abu Ghraib" or the redefining torture meme -- is just silly. If this were a story about John Yoo shoplifting or something else that involved him alone, that would be in the vicinity of a reasonable point. But of course that's not the case. Reading Greenwald should have made this clear to you, if a moment's reflection hadn't already.
And of course Greenwald was talking about two stories, as he reminds us again today. It's true -- though not particularly relevant -- that only a modest minority of Americans have heard of "John Yoo". And I suppose not many know the name "Mukasey" either. But nonetheless I'd wager a majority of Americans would still think it was a pretty interesting that the Attorney General of the United States apparently lied about the circumstances leading to 9/11. I bet many would even find it more interesting than Obama's bowling score. Or rather they would find it interesting if someone deigned to tell them.
Nihil Obstat. Glennicus Greenwald, Censor Deputatus
Imprimatur. Glenn Greenwaldicus, Vicarius Generalis
as someone who also endured law school, it amazes me that you would prefer megan's approach - however one might characterize it - to greenwald's.
yes, greenwald's approach screams that he did receive training at a law school.
but that is a good thing.
his approach is logical and clear and while one may not agree with his conclusions, he always bases them on clearly stated facts.
megan, on the other hand, can't move from point a to point b in a posting or an argument without tossing in all sorts of totally irrelevant nonsense that most times does not address the issues raised.
and if you know anything about the law, you would recognize that most times one does come to see matters in black and white. that is the starting point for any legal argument.
one states: this is my position, these are my reasons and this is how i will support my argument.
while one may note variations of grey, along the way, one always articulates a clear, "black and white" position that one supports with evidence of some sort.
that is what greenwald excells at.
if megan has ever done that, if she is even capable of thinking in such a clear fashion, i would like to see an example.
Megan, does it ever occur to you that the reason most Americans don't know who John Yoo is (even though in terms of his influence on American democracy he is arguably even more significant than even Pres. Bush himself) is precisely *because* the media doesn't write about him?
Your idea that journalists should make decisions about which news stories to cover by how entertaining the story is to readers is quite shocking considering that you are in the business yourself, and presumably know what a journalist's professional obligation is.
[John Yoo] is arguably even more significant than even Pres. Bush himself
In the sense that Nicaragua is arguably more powerful than the United States...
What I find amazing so far is that we haven't seen Thomas Ellers, Rick Ellensburg, Wilson or Ellison... Which is to say, I'm surprised we haven't seen Gleen Greenwald himself, famous sock-puppeter roaming through the quotes.
I assume actually, if you look at the commenter IP's, Glenn's will come up.
What I find amazing is how Megan's regular sycophantic defenders rely almost exclusively on personal attacks and irrelevancies to make their points.
It's almost like they know they have no legitimate argument.
Perhaps Glenn would feel better if we exhumed the bodies of the Justices of the SCOTUS that were in the majority on Dred Scott v. Sandford in order to try them in a Senate impeachment trial. The fact that they are dead and the ruling has been long ago set aside shouldn't stop us from this task, or the similiar task involving John Yoo or anyone else that Glenn has, can or will write about.
Margalis,
I don't have a dog in this fight, that's why I haven't posted. I know about John Yoo and most people who care to be informed do as well. The fact that people don't write stories about stuff I find interesting or important, is just a fact of life.
I do find Glenn Grenwald to be an intellectual lightweight who manages to be dishonest, vain AND condescending while simultaneously flying into unwarranted frenzies about WHY THE WORLD DOESN'T OPERATE ON MY DESIRES. He's basically the policy worlds version of an 8th grader.
A couple of threads dangling that people might be interested in pursuing.
It's well-accepted in Holocaust Studies that one of the most pernicious features of the Nazi regime was their meticulous legalism--Hitler's own nickname, in fact, was Adolf Legalite, at least in the early days. There was an enormous attempt to stick to the letter of the law (they were very fond of perjury traps sprung on Jews who might have slept with non-Jews) but then also rewriting the laws that had to be rewritten. Interestingly for our current debates, the main rewriting tended in the direction of arguments that the Fuhrer was the ultimate authority and legitimating principle of all law (Unitary Executive, anyone?).
The lead jurist for much of this work was named Hans Frank, and he was convicted of war crimes and hung after Nuremburg.
I think Megan's remark that "the Nuremburg Trials were sort of show trials, weren't they?" is fairly appalling, though of a piece with this weird technocratic bubble she seems to inhabit, at least from the evidence of these posts. It can be part of a complex, nuanced appraisal of Nuremburg to bring up the subject of "victors' justice" and so on, but it is much more important to feature in such discussions that the Nuremburg Trials were part of the first halting steps--along with the formation of the U.N. at the same time--to trying to formulate world principles of human rights.
As with the current I.C.C., you can find flaws with them easily; but they're still better than mere nation-state justice in almost all cases. Indeed, the most plausible path towards ending wars lies in perfecting those institutions, though that process is and will be resisted strenuously by those who do the most killing currently.
One more point, on GG's so-called "black and white thinking" as the sign of an inferior intellect (voiced by Ted, I believe). That point makes a significant error because it fails to distinguish between two kinds of black and white thinking, a lower kind and a higher kind.
The lower kind is familiar adolescent thinking, us against them, etc. This is a stage that needs to be outgrown, Mark Twain was amazed at how much his father learned between Mark's 18th and 25th birthdays, and so on. That is not, however, what GG does, though it might superficially resemble it.
The higher kind of b&w thinking comes *after* the "mature, moderate, shades of gray in everything and everyone" stage: this is the mature thinking of, to take the clearest example, the Shakespeare of the mature tragedies. That kind of black and white thinking says this: "In fact, all people are *not* more or less the same in motivation and the equitable variety of their views, and the truth is not just a matter of where you happen to be standing or where you come from or what your influences are. No, there's a truth beyond that, young Hamlet, so stop trying to rationalize the behavior of bad actors: that truth is that there really are evil people in the world, and they really are trying to kill you."
That's the truth GG (and Paul Krugman, another who's accused of reflexive hatred and polar thinking) is trying to cry into people's minds, like an actual prophet: these people who have hijacked the Constitution and our government really are murderous thugs, and they have to be resisted in every possible way. The media are manifestly their accomplices, even if not themselves evil (mostly); but again, for evil to flourish, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing, and for that pacification process, the modern media are an amazingly fit instrument.
I think that's what GG has been bravely pointing out: he's a great man, I think, and Megan really needs to do her homework--otherwise, she looks like one of Swift's Lilliputians, who sentenced Gulliver to death for pissing on a fire that threatened to destroy their society.
The errors of great men--and GG makes damn few--are more fruitful than the truths of ordinary ones. Or something like that--excuse my misremembered Nietzche.
Also excuse my misspelled "misremembered Nietzsche."
Megan wrote "if you have fixed income investments, as you should when you're near retirement, you'll want to know the weighted average maturity in order to balance your income across time."
Megan, please write that post.
Thank you.
What I find amazing is how Megan's regular sycophantic defenders rely almost exclusively on personal attacks and irrelevancies to make their points.
It's almost like they know they have no legitimate argument.
Or maybe it's because they don't understand the difference--they don't understand what makes an argument legitimate and why.
Come to think of it, that would also go far to explain why they're fans of Megan's writing in the first place, wouldn't it?
Some how this all reminds me of a quote by Boris Badenov.
"I can’t be tricky all the time .. I’ve got better things to think about"
It’s almost Nixonian, don’t you think (don’t have time .. I understand).
The lead jurist for much of this work was named Hans Frank, and he was convicted of war crimes and hung after Nuremburg.
According to Wikipedia (which we all know is infallible) he was convicted of committing war crimes as Governor General of occupied Poland.
John Yoo is still relatively safe by that measure.
Since when was economic policy not political?
Since when was economic policy not political?
Economic policy is political in the sense that sexuality, children's education, and nuclear physics are political -- i.e., politicians have a lot to say about those things. But it doesn't mean that a person who writes about those things must also address the possible political angles involved. Free trade, for example, is a good idea no matter how unpopular it is in Washington.
Did Glenn Greenwald just discover that the press writes vapid, sensationalist stories that sell papers and ignore really important stuff? What's next? Politicians lie? Babies poop in their diapers?
I can't wait until he discovers that the press is often partisan and fails to do basic fact-checking. He'll poop bricks.
Though in contrast, John Yoo HAS gotten press. However, he's not the only important person in the news... there are some other issues of importance to write about.
And just out of curiosity, how many people were tortured or killed as a result of John Yoo's memo? I've heard that only three people were waterboarded, for example. While this is bad, it's hardly evidence that we live in a torture regime.
the main rewriting tended in the direction of arguments that the Fuhrer was the ultimate authority and legitimating principle of all law (Unitary Executive, anyone?)
You obviously have no idea what the term "unitary executive" means.
What it means is simple: that Congress cannot create executive-branch offices that are not under the full authority of the head of the executive branch. It does NOT mean, as you ignorantly claim, that the President is "the ultimate authority" on "all law". He is merely the ultimate authority for the Executive Branch -- just like the Constitution says he is. Similarly, Congress is the ultimate authority over the Legislative branch, and the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority over the Judicial Branch.
It seems that McArdle's defense is that reporters really want to write about serious issues (such as economics), but it is the editors limit them. This may not be clearly stated in Greenwald's pieces, but editors and producers are to blame as well. Sure crappy journalists obsess over bowling, haircuts, windsurfing, cutting brush, etc, etc, but there are decent journalists out there who loose at the hand of the editors pen.
And, why oh why, Megan did you rally to the defense of the media on this? Did you think about this at all? The options were torture versus bowling and you went with the latter. Really?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Following on the heels of the old "the press is just a bunch of whores with no ethics or responsibilities" line of "defense" now we see the old "we should ignore what GG is saying because it's obviously true and common knowlege to boot!"
You are attacking him for being right, how novel.
Considering that Yoo's opinions paved the way for most of our current torture policies, including at Abu Ghraib and at black sites, the correct answer is at least dozens tortured if not a hundred plus, including people we now know were innocent. And that's just what we know of.
But of course, a regime that tortures dozens of people, including the innocent, is not a "torture regime", it's a cotton-candy and Rainbow Brite regime.
---
As far as the Unitary Executive is concerned, if you combine that with the theory that the President's powers allow him to do virtually anything in times of war and that we're always at war (with vague concepts and inanimate objects) that the President is the source of all law does directly follow.
"Conservatives" have argued for years that in times of "national emergency" we need the "energy of the executive" to superscede our traditional understanding of government.
Considering that Yoo's opinions paved the way for most of our current torture policies, including at Abu Ghraib and at black sites, the correct answer is at least dozens tortured if not a hundred plus, including people we now know were innocent. And that's just what we know of.
Names, please? You say that you know of dozens of people who were tortured -- so who were they, and what's your evidence that they got tortured at all, let alone as a result of Yoo's memo?
Oh, and when you're done you might want to explain why that would make Yoo's actions even the tiniest bit illegal.
As far as the Unitary Executive is concerned, if you combine that with the theory that the President's powers allow him to do virtually anything in times of war and that we're always at war (with vague concepts and inanimate objects) that the President is the source of all law does directly follow.
We're not "always at war". We've been at war since Congress declared it in late 2001. Prior to that, we hadn't been at war since the early 90s (although of course Clinton waged various wars illegally during that time). Congress can end the war whenever it wishes (not that they will, of course, since the Republicans don't want to and it would deprive the Democrats of something to bitch about).
Plus, of course, nobody has said that the President has the right to "do virtually anything in times of war". That part of your claim is nothing more than a lie.
I think she did all this for traffic, and that sort of makes her a whore.
Guess if you can't get by on your talent..
" You know, the ones who tell you that when the rEVOLution comes, you'll be the first one with your back against the wall. The ones who aren't really arguing with you, but rather using you as a stand-in for everyone they've ever disagreed with, including the kids who made fun of them for wetting their pants in first grade."--MM
Megan,
I'll do a Favor, on , of course, one condition; I'll play your Imagined "Ron Paul Supporter", if you, in exchange, grant that your imagined encounter with, your description, is, in fact, a Tortious interference with your Liberty. Deal?
Dan, I'd say that a look at our defense budgets as a percentage of national spending since 1946 would support the contention that, in effect, "we're always at war." And when there was a chance of a Peace Dividend in the 90s, after the fall of communism, the paltry cuts in defense were immediately decried by the Project for a New American Century (folks I assume you largely agree with) as dangerously weakening our military.
It's also hard to have it both ways here: if John McCain says that Islamofascism (or whatever those folks are called this month) is the transcendent challenge to our civilization, that sure sounds like a permanent clash of civilizations--familiarly known as "war"--to me.
If you endorse the McCain position--I don't assume that you do--it's hard to turn around and get all legalistic about whether Congress actually declared war. They tend not to in the old sense, and that's because it's very hard for politicians in the age of a superficial media (ah ha, we finally get back to the beginning of this discussion!) to explain the nuances against Swift Boat charges of hating America and voting for her destruction.
I mean, let's be real about the use of fear and slander (Max Cleland as Osama's pal!) to promote the Republican agenda in the last 8 years.
You're similarly legalistic about the Unitary Executive distinction. I'm aware of the distinction you made--I wasn't saying that Bush was Hitler, either. The parenthetical remark, a minor joke, was pointing to an authoritarian belief in strong father figures.
I'll give you credit for being a principled Constitutionalist who fervently believes in the separation of powers--even though I think Margolis correctly picks up on the tendency of the interest in a Unitary Executive to combine with the premise of perpetual war and lead to a conclusion requiring virtual dictatorship (exactly the combination the Founders worried about most profoundly, especially Madison and Washington) in others who might not be as principled as you are, and as scrupulous about the equal authority of the other two branches.
But again, it's quite telling that many prominent conservative legal scholars--Bruce Fein, Jack Goldsmith, possibly Doug Kmiec, since he's endorsing Obama--are absolutely appalled at the way this crowd has pushed the envelope of executive power, using, among other strategies, some pretty far-fetched and precedent-shattering arguments for the unitary executive.No one on the President's staff can be called to testify before Congress? (Under that rule, Nixon might still be president!) How does oversight--which is certainly a Congressional perogative--happen in that case?
First Kevin tells us Hans Franked was convicted of war crimes because of his legal work, when in actuality it was because he was the governor-general of Poland during a time in which millions of its inhabitants were murdered. He was in the SS and was directly involved.
Gee.
Then he tells us that we've been constantly at war because we spend so much money on the military.
Hm...
Now he's saying that this unitary executive theory is all far-fetched and precedent-shattering and says that executive privilege is somehow new and exciting?
Kevin, I think you need to read more and reason better.
If one of these economic bureaucrats had figured out how to screw homeowners and was funneling the money to the CEOs of the Fortune 500 (i.e., if one had figured out how to commit huge crimes), then YES, THE MEDIA SHOULD SHOUT ABOUT IT. And I would know that person's name.
It has nothing to do with Greenwald. It's your damn job.
southpaw, John Yoo didn't authorize anything. Yoo was absolutely not, in even the slightest degree, in the chain of command between the President and the military commanders.
CN, I couldn't disgree more with this sentiment of yours:
This is part of what's destroying "journalism" today, and to the extent that the practitioners really do have this attitude (rather than desiring, in Joanne Jacob's wonderful phrase, "to put out a newspaper") the sooner their institutions die off the better.Sanjay, regarding this:
Good thing you stuck with hypotheticals and didn't claim this certainty of the Clinton administration, home of Al "Go Grab His Ass" Gore.
Hey, Glorious, if you want to engage my arguments, don't mischaracterize them. (I get the sense you don't want to engage them: quote out of context, misinterpret, make a noise. That's not a debate.)
I see why I don't hang out here much: this place is full of people who reason like McArdle! One last try:
I didn't say Frank was convicted for his legal work. I said he was the chief jurist, and he propped up the specious cathedral of Nazi law; I then said that he was hung for war crimes. Look at what I actually wrote: I didn't say the legal work was what he was hung for.
Here's what I actually said:
The lead jurist for much of this work was named Hans Frank, and he was convicted of war crimes and hung after Nuremburg.
Did it ever occur to you that there might be a point to be made about a person who would do that kind of legal work and *also* participate in war crimes? It's a way of saying that there is a continuum of bad behavior going on here: some of it enables crime, some of it is the actual commission of crime.
Metaphors are difficult for literal thinkers, but let me risk one: could it be that justifying crime is the acorn that leads to the commission of crime as the oak? In Frank's case, something like that seems to have happened, despite apparent qualms and a late reversion to a Catholic conscience.
Who are you defending? Why?
I say the Cold War and the almost immediate succession of the GWOT constitutes a state of perpetual war, in spending and in social effect; to which you answer, hmmm. (I presume a sarcastic tone there.)
Well, that's a start, but it's not much of a logical rejoinder. I'm trying to imagine you on a debate stage answering my argument that way. But that's the problem with internet debates: not much accountability here.
Last of all, I didn't say that executive privilege is new and exciting; I did suggest that eminent conservative legal scholars found the Bush use of it to be appalling and unjustified.
To which you say I need to read more and reason better. That's of course true of me and of all of us, but if you just leave it at that, it's simply an ad hominem attack (very frequent on this blog).
If you can get beyond the poorly-supported insults to discuss the future of the Republic, which most people think is in some trouble, and which I worry about especially because I have students in Iraq, what other point would you like to make about the objections of Bruce Fein? Is he also ignorant of constitutional law and executive precedents?
I asked about that as a serious question: is it not significant that *conservatives* are appalled at the Bush administration? And are you happy that torture, which we used to prosecute, is something we now pursue and justify? I know some people feel that way; but you ought to make clear arguments to support the position--if you believe in reasonable debate, that is.
"First Kevin tells us Hans Franked was convicted of war crimes because of his legal work, when in actuality it was because he was the governor-general of Poland during a time in which millions of its inhabitants were murdered. He was in the SS and was directly involved."
Don't forget that we also "executed Japanese soldiers" for "war crimes" because they waterboarded our troops in WW2. Not because they shot, hung, stabbed, beheaded, dismembered, maimed through torture, drowned, starved to death, worked to death, and beat to death American soldiers. I mean, sure, they did _that_, too, but the war-crime executions were just about the waterboarding.
"And are you happy that torture, which we used to prosecute, is something we now pursue and justify?"
I'm not happy with torture. I'm also not happy with the sort of politically-motivated, intellectually dishonest comparisons of what we _do_ use to actual "torture regimes" or anything that even sniffs the idea that it might get close to thinking about trotting over to have a look at a "torture regime." If we're a "torture regime" today, I can't imagine what kind of all-out f*cking evil bestriding the earth we were in WW2 and Vietnam.
I hear there is a hot new technology all the kids are into these days. They call it "google."
http://opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110010014
Mansfield:
I eagerly await your apology. But I'm sure you'll weasel out of it and argue that ignoring the law and doing whatever he wants is somehow totally different from "doing virtually anything."
After all, while ignoring the rule of law the President is obviously still bound by...the laws of physics.
The Nazi lawyer most comparable to Yoo is Josef Alstotter who served five years solely on the basis of legal advice facilitating the operation of concentration camps.
But, given that McArdle has stated that the precedents of the Nuremberg trials are irrelevant, I think we are past worrying about this kind of thing.
As was pointed out by John Holbo a while back, the prowar movement has made the transition from "Of course we don't torture. What an outrageous slander" to "Of course we torture, and have done for your years, and will continue to do so. What a tired attempt to drag up old boring news". The post above illustrates this perfectly.
Listen up, critics, Megan may be pathetically uninformed, tragically unfunny and intellectually dead inside ...
Actually, that's all I have.
Names, please? You say that you know of dozens of people who were tortured -- so who were they, and what's your evidence that they got tortured at all, let alone as a result of Yoo's memo?
To which Margalis responded
I hear there is a hot new technology all the kids are into these days. They call it "google."
So, Margalis, since you know about google, where is your list of names and cites? Remember, the skeptic doesn't bear the burden of proving your claims, you bear the burden of proving your claims. I too doubt your claim, but if you support your claim, I'm more than willing to admit error. But I'm not willing to believe anyone who offers only snark about google when doubted.
Considering that Yoo's opinions paved the way for most of our current torture policies, including at Abu Ghraib and at black sites, the correct answer is at least dozens tortured if not a hundred plus, including people we now know were innocent. And that's just what we know of.
Names, please? You say that you know of dozens of people who were tortured -- so who were they, and what's your evidence that they got tortured at all, let alone as a result of Yoo's memo?
Oh, and when you're done you might want to explain why that would make Yoo's actions even the tiniest bit illegal.
Posted by Dan | April 8, 2008 9:23 PM
I'm amazed that so many people are so ill informed and in their ignorance they then condescend to those who actually keep themselves informed. Where have you been?
As a result of many hard fought FOIA requests the ACLU long ago made available all kinds of the government's own documents that detail torture. They even have a log that lists the names of some of those tortured. So if someone were truly interested in this information all they would need to do is to go to the ACLU website to find it.
But judging by your condescending post my guess is that you really don't want to know, you just want to arrogantly pretend that the information doesn't exist. I guess that's the difference between people who enjoy reading Ms. McCardles' work and those who prefer Mr. Greenwald's work.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/torturefoia.html
Sorry for the double post but I accidently left off my last comment.
Considering that Yoo's opinions paved the way for most of our current torture policies, including at Abu Ghraib and at black sites, the correct answer is at least dozens tortured if not a hundred plus, including people we now know were innocent. And that's just what we know of.
Names, please? You say that you know of dozens of people who were tortured -- so who were they, and what's your evidence that they got tortured at all, let alone as a result of Yoo's memo?
Oh, and when you're done you might want to explain why that would make Yoo's actions even the tiniest bit illegal.
Posted by Dan | April 8, 2008 9:23 PM
I'm amazed that so many people are so ill informed and in their ignorance they then condescend to those who actually keep themselves informed. Where have you been?
As a result of many hard fought FOIA requests the ACLU long ago made available all kinds of the government's own documents that detail torture. They even have a log that lists the names of some of those tortured. So if someone were truly interested in this information all they would need to do is to go to the ACLU website to find it.
But judging by your condescending post my guess is that you really don't want to know, you just want to arrogantly pretend that the information doesn't exist. I guess that's the difference between people who enjoy reading Ms. McCardles' work and those who prefer Mr. Greenwald's work.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/torturefoia.html
UPDATE:
Dan, As the title of this McCardle blog entry states - "Reading is Fundamental" You should try it some time.
Still, no reference for the claim that anyone was tortured to death or that anyone other than the three people already known were waterboarded.
All the ACLU seems to have on that site are memos and legal documents.
And you entire approach is bankrupt because what happened at Abu gharaib was illegal, and that's why Graner and Frederick got like decade long sentences. It also clearly wasn't part of any US policy of torture.
You need to read some more pmorlan.
What you have in John Yoo, roughly, is the mastermind of a criminal system of torture and murder--one that operated under the authority of the United States government
Hey!! I bet you could even make a TV show about something like that.
Plenty of others I think have refuted your post. I'll add...
Obviously you now have the attention of serious news readers. Why not take advantage of that and write some stories that you think are pressing? Y'know, the kinds that your editors won't let you write? I bet you'll be surprised at how receptive the audience might be (or become).
Also, why write about HOW to calculate bond durations and instead just GIVE us a link to a calculator? Or ask you one of your readers to develop a calculator to share among your readership? It shouldn't be too hard, really. I think many journalists forget that today's readers want newer kinds of information than they did 15, 10, or even 3 years ago whether that's ways of calculating bond durations or about Yoo's advocacy of suspending the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.
BTW: A Google search brings up a bond duration calculator. http://www.finplan.com/tools/bonddura.asp
The difference between John Yoo and the leader of Freddie Mac is quite simply that one made a flimsy legal argument that enabled the government to engage in torture, and the other is simply managing a government program with no newsworthy behavior.
It is dishonest to make generalizations about what the American people care about without any data to back it up. The fact is that people will consume the information available to them. If something fails to hit the front page, fewer people read it. Thus, journalists control what people "care about." Greenwald points this out, and you conspicuously fail to quote it. You media types always point to the coverage YOU'RE pushing and claim that it's proof that "the people" don't care. Usually, we don't care about minor government functionaries (though again, you ignored the point about Yoo working with Addington and Gonzales, because after all, someone who works closely with the Attorney General isn't exactly low on the Washington totem pole). But When those functionaries COMMIT CRIMES by enabling ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, I for one want to KNOW ABOUT IT. So maybe, instead of arguing about how we don't care, you could go to your editor and tell him that he ought to put this story into the spotlight a bit and see if it doesn't catch fire. If it catches, you'll have helped the Atlantic get some readership. If it doesn't, you have a solid argument against Greenwald. Your move.
Yoo, in Chicago on Dec. 1. in a debate with Doug Cassel, long time human rights legal scholar and professor at Notre Dame:
Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty
Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President
thinks he needs to do that.
USA! USA! Woo-hoo! My country, right or wrong, or crushing the testicles of a child.
"...my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I'm not sure they're a great example to use."
Yeah, the trials that took care of the "Nuremberg defense" were clearly not that noteworthy.
And
"From the point of view of the American public, however, he is a minor government functionary..."
No doubt just as the American public views Johnny Cochrane as a minor functionary in the OJ trial.
Also, why write about HOW to calculate bond durations and instead just GIVE us a link to a calculator? Or ask you one of your readers to develop a calculator to share among your readership? It shouldn't be too hard, reall
Literally laughing out loud. She can indeed. There are no editors here. There are no space limitations. It can't hurt readership. Yglesias puts in all that crap about the NBA that you can just skip over, because he likes to write about the NBA.
Go for it Megan. Show up those numbskulls at Calculated risk. Give you readers the straight stuff.
The internet is all about the long tail, you know.
We have Will Allen to thank for reminding us that, when evaluating journalism, it all comes down to money. I am going to go out on a limb by stating that Megan McArdle earns more money than Glenn Greenwald because she knows upon which side her bread is buttered.
We also have Will Allen to thank for equating Stalin's brutal policy of agricultural collectivization with the Holocaust. Using his standard of moral relativism, Will Allen should be reminding us that the Holocaust was no worse than the treatment of Native Americans by the United States, or maybe he has a statute of limitations that cuts off moral outrage after 100 years.
Honorable mention should go to Citizen Skullberg (if that really is his/her name) for reminding us that an ad hominem argument is an excellent substitute for a logical argument. I implore Citizen Ted to submit an internet link to his law review article on torture or some other relevant subject, and congratulations to Citizen Dan for attempting to defend that which cannot be defended.
I'm missing something here, I suppose. Ms. McArdle seems to be saying that it's okay for the press to ignore Chief Justice Yoo's rewrite of the Constitution, because most people don't know who John Yoo is. I'm a little flabbergasted by that analysis. Think I'll go watch some Barack Obama bowling vids on youtube for a while; maybe it will all just go away...
Herm. Let me share my recollection of what Glenn was trying to say.
I heard him saying that you were defending the lack of attention *by the media* (i.e., not your own lack of attention) to the Yoo memo's release.
And that there is no such thing as a "minor functionary" if that person is instrumental in changing one of the most fundamental beliefs about American behavior during war. (During the Revolutionary War, Washington - that is, the general - insisted we treat prisoners humanely. So this is a tradition that extends back to our nation's infancy). That Yoo was the point man for this change elevates his importance to the point that his name should be known, and if Americans aren't interested in a man who has changed one of our founding principles, it does strongly suggest that the news folks - not necessarily you in particular - haven't been doing their job.
So what I heard was a criticism of some defense that Glenn felt you made about other people's actions... not criticism of your actions, directly.
But then, I have to admit, I'm not the one he's just been posting about, so it's easier for me to have that sense of perspective.
I should also admit that I don't know what you've said, so I can't say that Glenn was fair in his criticism. But I do strongly disagree with the implication that it's okay to blow off what Yoo accomplished - an official American policy of torture - by talking about how most folks just see Yoo as a minor functionary.
We don't care that the shooter at Virginia Tech was a troubled student at Virginia Tech... that there are troubled students at colleges is unsurprising and not newsworthy. But once he started shooting people, he became more than a troubled student. Similarly, Yoo became more than a mere "minor functionary" when he provided the key memo(s?) for changing our government's fundamental values.
The bottom line is that the press, necessarily independent of polls and study groups due to the nature of the editorial process and the nature of news, makes the decisions on what issues are important and should occupy the limelight in their respective publications. That, in turn, engenders public interest, which, if the press is attuned to public interest as a deciding factor in its editorial decisions, creates a feedback circuit. Many things are possible once that loop has been closed, but the net results on the issue of torture are clear: The public is badly informed about what the government has done with respect to torture, public interest in the government's actions is not at a level that is acceptable given the grave nature of the actions, and too many in the public fail to understand torture, its implications or its after effects. And virtually none understand the underlying international law issues involved.
The press is responsible when the public is uninformed. You, Ms. McArdle, can defend the press, or you can call for it to change, or maybe even take up the issue with an opinion in your precious economic policy space if you feel strongly about it. You obviously not only do not feel strongly about grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, you defend those who would push the issue under the rug. You cite all sorts of extraneous issues of importance to try to prove that you are better informed than Mr. Greenwald, but you are apparently underendowed with enough moral sense to really feel anything about this issue. In that respect, you represent the journalist community well. And that is why you and your community are being criticized.
Adolf Eichmann created a policy brief at Wannsee. Was he also a minor functionary, and would it have been alright if the German public worried more about diet plans? When they turned up with bits of bone and blood on their uniforms at the pub at the end of the day, would it still have been okay for editors and journalists to cover photo-ops like they were required by some state religion?
Covering issues of grave crimes is not a popularity contest. Your measures for deciding what is right and what should be covered, "If the public did care, Mr. Greenwald would have more readers," is the problem. You have allowed what is popular to be the sole determiner, making sales of your product the judge of right and wrong. As usual, you have allowed business principles to seep out of the corporate end of your business and into the decision making apparatus for the news stories and placement, where they don't belong. And when criticized, you talk down to your critics as an expert, believing that such decisions can be made no other way, and that the content and quality of your front page is determined by the low intelligence of the public, not the seemingly questionable intelligence and integrity of the journalism community.
Moral bankruptcy and cynicism may sound like expertise to the journalism community, but I assure you, your readers can tell the difference.
"[John Yoo] is a minor government functionary ..."
That wrote memoranda that the president used to justify the use of torture.
Catch your breath dullard.
well, i came here from Glenn's blog to read the "response"... ya' know, 'cause i have an open mind and all, and want to see if anyone has a coherent refutation of Greenwald's analysis. nope, nothing to see here. i can't believe this person is even allowed to write for a major publication. gawd, you are terrible. please leave these issues to the big boys, because you just don't have the capacity to begin a debate with the likes of Glenn. you have pooped a brick here and you don't seem to be aware of that.
All of a sudden your excuse is that you write about the economy, not politics? Why did you jump in to this argument then? Now criticizing what you say is off-limits?
Obviously, I know who John Yoo was, and what he did.
Then why aren't you informing the public? Shouldn't he be a household name for what he did? He can't be if you and the rest of the media don't make him a household name. Why don't you care about that? You have the platform, use it!! I am sick and tired about hearing about where Hillary was when Bill was meeting Monica, or that Obama doesn't wear a lapel pin, or that Edwards is a hypocrite for being rich and wanting to implement policies to help poor people (So I guess it's better to be rich and screw poor people?), or that Hillary laughs funny or claps "Chinese" or Obama sneaks a cigarette when he said he quit or, Edwards got a haircut, or, or, or AARRGGGHH!!!
"I don't cover politics; I cover economic policy."
Megan, I suggest you take a quick look at say... your 50 last posts.
Then apologise to Glenn and your readers.
Yoo's responsibilities at DOJ obviously made him more than a minor functionary; even apart from that, though, who seriously thinks that "minor government functionaries" go directly from their cubicle to tenured professorships at one of the top law schools in the nation?!
That career glide illuminates an important reason why some of these folks will do anything for their masters: their masters take *very* good care of them, and reward them richly for their fealty.
Megan, you can peruse these articles and they may help you clarify your thinking on all of this:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002819
and
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html
You seem like a good person, if a bit narrow in outlook. That is okay, many people are. It is what one does with new or unpleasant information that makes a difference and expands one's sense of what is important.
"the public doesn't know because it doesn't care, not because the journalists don't want to tell them. If the public did care, Mr Greenwald would have more readers."
I can't believe you seriously said that. You're supposed to be journalists. You're supposed to be a check on the entire gov't. I think it hammers Glenn's point home even more for you to suggest that its the public's fault reporters cover bowling and haircuts over war crimes. What a joke
Humor me Megan - write a couple of stories that are about torture, or political prosecutions (google Don Siegleman), or any number of topics that don't get the attention they deserve. you might even increase your readership.
btw, can anyone give us a precise WAM calculator for a busted, AAA-wrapped HELOC ABS (GMACM 2006-HE4 A1-4)?
Don't see one for that lying around on teh internets. I know some readers who might pay quite a bit for that...
This isn't about John Yoo, it's about George W. Bush, genius.
This is my first and last time reading your nonsense. Glenn Greenwald has rightly taken you to the woodshed because you're part of an infrastructure that refuses to draw basic math for the American public.
Not economics. Not complex formulations.
BASIC MATH.
John Yoo = George W. Bush's torture policy = John McCain.
No one's expecting you fools in the media to take any personal risks with your delicate careers. But the least you could do is report and explain basic connections, especially when they involve legalizing torture by a sitting president.
"I know all of their names, because that's my job. I am willing to bet that Glenn Greenwald couldn't name all of them on the spot; he might well not be able to name any of them. That's no slur. Almost no one whose professional life does not depend on the knowledge has any idea who they are."
As to the first sentence--as Dick Cheney would say, So? The bureaucrats listed haven't been instrumental in any historically disastrous policies, just the average disastrous Bush policies, unlike Woo, who facilitated a truly historic distaster for this country (i.e. we will torture when we feel like it). And as to the last sentence--many literate people, who may even read the Atlantic, know who John Woo is, because he was more than a functionary, he was the theorist behind the torture policy, which has embarrassed the U.S. and reduced its influence around the world. Which may even, you know, affect the American economy...if the unending war doesn't bankrupt it first.
Uhm sowilo, John Woo is an excellent action director.
John Yoo should be facing war crimes tribunals in the Hague.
Big difference.
Megan -- the frustration you are hearing from the Greenwalds of the world as well as readers in this thread is that journalists and media conglomerates love to wrap themselves up in the sacredness of the First Amendment when it is convenient for them or when under attack. However, the purpose of the First Amendment is not so that you can make a living or the media companies can make a profit, rather it is to ensure an informed populace since the legitimacy of a democracy is derived from the informed consent of the people. It is your DUTY to inform and if you can't do it in a manner which grasps the interests of the American people, then maybe you should consider another line of work. Don't be condescending and blame your failures on the very people it is your duty to inform!
Megan -- the frustration you are hearing from the Greenwalds of the world as well as readers in this thread is that journalists and media conglomerates love to wrap themselves up in the sacredness of the First Amendment when it is convenient for them or when under attack. However, the purpose of the First Amendment is not so that you can make a living or the media companies can make a profit, rather it is to ensure an informed populace since the legitimacy of a democracy is derived from the informed consent of the people. It is your DUTY to inform and if you can't do it in a manner which grasps the interests of the American people, then maybe you should consider another line of work. Don't be condescending and blame your failures on the very people it is your duty to inform!
Megan -- the frustration you are hearing from the Greenwalds of the world as well as readers in this thread is that journalists and media conglomerates love to wrap themselves up in the sacredness of the First Amendment when it is convenient for them or when under attack. However, the purpose of the First Amendment is not so that you can make a living or the media companies can make a profit, rather it is to ensure an informed populace since the legitimacy of a democracy is derived from the informed consent of the people. It is your DUTY to inform and if you can't do it in a manner which grasps the interests of the American people, then maybe you should consider another line of work. Don't be condescending and blame your failures on the very people it is your duty to inform!
Megan -- the frustration you are hearing from the Greenwalds of the world as well as readers in this thread is that journalists and media conglomerates love to wrap themselves up in the sacredness of the First Amendment when it is convenient for them or when under attack. However, the purpose of the First Amendment is not so that you can make a living or the media companies can make a profit, rather it is to ensure an informed populace since the legitimacy of a democracy is derived from the informed consent of the people. It is your DUTY to inform and if you can't do it in a manner which grasps the interests of the American people, then maybe you should consider another line of work. Don't be condescending and blame your failures on the very people it is your duty to inform!
Which is it they come {here} for Megan?
"I cover economic policy"
or
"you're here to talk about foreign policy"
We would want to know about ANY low level, high level and anyone in between who tells the President and his Administration that Torture is OK, got that!!!!
Which is it they come {here} for Megan?
"I cover economic policy"
or
"you're here to talk about foreign policy"
We would want to know about ANY low level, high level and anyone in between who tells the President and his Administration that Torture is OK, got that!!!!
Which is it they come {here} for Megan?
"I cover economic policy"
or
"you're here to talk about foreign policy"
We would want to know about ANY low level, high level and anyone in between who tells the President and his Administration that Torture is OK, got that!!!!
"but my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I'm not sure they're a great example to use."
Your understanding is, yet again, completely out-to-lunch.
As for trying to attack Glenn, you'd be better off going after someone else, as Glenn is not only %100 undeniably correct, but you are so off-base and incoherent that you'd be better suited in a highschool debate class.
Hey Megan, please remind us why you aren't in uniform fighting in your Awesome War.
Megan:
You said "Greenwald error number two: I don't cover politics; I cover economic policy. These are not the same thing, which seems like the kind of thing that people who set themselves up as media critics should be aware of."
On the contrary. You have made several posts of political, rather than economic, matters - this post being one of them.
This whole series of exchanges began when you quoted Daniel Drezner in a post. Mr. Drezner was not speaking about economic matters; why did you quote him? Please don't blame the fire for damages when you start playing with matches.
Ignorant as charged, however, if anyone of those people were behind legalizing torture, I would want to know their names. Here's where the media can step in and make a judgment call. Obama's bowling scores? Insignificant compared to the U.S. ignoring the Geneva Conventions.
If the media has any purpose other than to entertain, it must be to educate. As predicted, here's where I tell you reporting should not be just about feeding the public what you think we want to hear. And here's where I agree with you that concerns about torture outrank economic minutiae.
So what's happening? Just what Glenn says is happening: the media is failing us.
Please try this exercise: without using Google, name the US Trade Representative......
Absolutely correct i can't name any of those officials. I, on the other hand, know exectly who John Yoo is and I've known about it for a number of years now. Why? Because he did something exceedingly important!
"Am I missing something when I think that the President is entirely accountable for the actions of his political appointees, like Yoo, and as such, we *should* care more about who our future President, like Obama, are then we do about past political appointees?"
Yo, Rob. Yoo's work wouldn't be news if Bush hadn't so clearly agreed with it. I think that, perhaps, a president who has worked so hard to protect the "right" to torture is someone that we should very seriously consider as a candidate for the ol' heave-ho before future presidents take the wrong lesson from this debacle. Which, incidently, is why Gerald Ford is an idiot and has gotten entirely too much love from the press in recent years... If Bush were actually afraid of the consequences of his actions he might not engage in this horrific, unamerican, illegal behaviour.
And Megan, honestly,
"That's the point. You want to talk about foreign policy!"
Are you suggesting that Obama's bowling record is more closely related to foreign policy than our president's stance on torture?
I think that the real issue here is that you just don't find torture to be a particularly interesting subject, and you think that news looks better in lace.. you know, a little puffier.
There's nothing wrong with that, that's your opinion, but what about that type of writing do you consider to be remotely related to journalism?
"Am I missing something when I think that the President is entirely accountable for the actions of his political appointees, like Yoo, and as such, we *should* care more about who our future President, like Obama, are then we do about past political appointees?"
Yo, Rob. Yoo's work wouldn't be news if Bush hadn't so clearly agreed with it. I think that, perhaps, a president who has worked so hard to protect the "right" to torture is someone that we should very seriously consider as a candidate for the ol' heave-ho before future presidents take the wrong lesson from this debacle. Which, incidently, is why Gerald Ford is an idiot and has gotten entirely too much love from the press in recent years... If Bush were actually afraid of the consequences of his actions he might not engage in this horrific, unamerican, illegal behaviour.
And Megan, honestly,
"That's the point. You want to talk about foreign policy!"
Are you suggesting that Obama's bowling record is more closely related to foreign policy than our president's stance on torture?
I think that the real issue here is that you just don't find torture to be a particularly interesting subject, and you think that news looks better in lace.. you know, a little puffier.
There's nothing wrong with that, that's your opinion, but what about that type of writing do you consider to be remotely related to journalism?
"Am I missing something when I think that the President is entirely accountable for the actions of his political appointees, like Yoo, and as such, we *should* care more about who our future President, like Obama, are then we do about past political appointees?"
Yo, Rob. Yoo's work wouldn't be news if Bush hadn't so clearly agreed with it. I think that, perhaps, a president who has worked so hard to protect the "right" to torture is someone that we should very seriously consider as a candidate for the ol' heave-ho before future presidents take the wrong lesson from this debacle. Which, incidently, is why Gerald Ford is an idiot and has gotten entirely too much love from the press in recent years... If Bush were actually afraid of the consequences of his actions he might not engage in this horrific, unamerican, illegal behaviour.
And Megan, honestly,
"That's the point. You want to talk about foreign policy!"
Are you suggesting that Obama's bowling record is more closely related to foreign policy than our president's stance on torture?
I think that the real issue here is that you just don't find torture to be a particularly interesting subject, and you think that news looks better in lace.. you know, a little puffier.
There's nothing wrong with that, that's your opinion, but what about that type of writing do you consider to be remotely related to journalism?
"Am I missing something when I think that the President is entirely accountable for the actions of his political appointees, like Yoo, and as such, we *should* care more about who our future President, like Obama, are then we do about past political appointees?"
Yo, Rob. Yoo's work wouldn't be news if Bush hadn't so clearly agreed with it. I think that, perhaps, a president who has worked so hard to protect the "right" to torture is someone that we should very seriously consider as a candidate for the ol' heave-ho before future presidents take the wrong lesson from this debacle. Which, incidently, is why Gerald Ford is an idiot and has gotten entirely too much love from the press in recent years... If Bush were actually afraid of the consequences of his actions he might not engage in this horrific, unamerican, illegal behaviour.
And Megan, honestly,
"That's the point. You want to talk about foreign policy!"
Are you suggesting that Obama's bowling record is more closely related to foreign policy than our president's stance on torture?
I think that the real issue here is that you just don't find torture to be a particularly interesting subject, and you think that news looks better in lace.. you know, a little puffier.
There's nothing wrong with that, that's your opinion, but what about that type of writing do you consider to be remotely related to journalism?
Those of us who have been paying attention - despite the very failures of the press which Mr. Greenwald cites - have known who John Yoo is for quite some time. In fact, on my own blog, I wrote a post about Mr. Yoo entitled The Worst Constitutional Law Professor in the Country back in September 2006.
The problem is that I only knew who John Yoo was back then because of a very few mainstream writers, and because of the work done on blogs like Crooks and Liars and Glenn Greenwald's. The problem continues to be that - despite the key role John Yoo has played in assaulting the foundational principles of our nation - people like yourself would rather talk about Barack Obama's bowling than the fact that United States has become a serial violator of human rights under the current president, for whom John Yoo unquestionably worked. The problem is that the U.S. is running a human rights black hole off the coast of Florida because it is not being given adequate attention by the press and people with a bully pulpit, like yourself.
You are, in short, part of the problem, and no amount of claiming that the eminently justified pointing-out of that fact is "unhinged" or otherwise uncivil, will change that. How about growing up, doing your job, and actually being part of the solution instead?
Dan posted:
Names, please? You say that you know of dozens of people who were tortured -- so who were they, and what's your evidence that they got tortured at all, let alone as a result of Yoo's memo?
Oh, and when you're done you might want to explain why that would make Yoo's actions even the tiniest bit illegal.
________________________________________
Is that really your argument, that since a person cannot provide the names of those tortured, it must follow that the administration does not torture. Perhaps you need to peruse the definition of a non sequitur argument.
Apparently not satisfied with your traditional "one logical fallacy per post" rule, you decided another one was in order for your second argument. The positoin that Yoo's actions were illegal is a perfect example of a straw man argument. The legality or illegality of Yoo's actions, at least with respect to US laws, is completely beside the point. Glenn's main point, and I am assuming the point of the poster you were responding too, is that Yoo's memo is essentially ground zero for this administrations complete subversion of the constitution during their prosecution of the Iraq war and, as a result, the memo should have received far more play in the media.
McCardle's position is that Yoo, and consequently the memo, received less media coverage because Yoo is a "minor government functionary". As many here have pointed out, and what should have been obvious upon a moment of reflection, YOO IS NOT THE STORY! Instead, the story is the memo and its preemptory justification for Bush's assault on the constitution. The story is unmistakably connected to the administration's use of torture and domestic surveillance. McCardle ignores that connection because she has too... the argument that torture and domestic surveillance are unimportant to the public is a losing one.
Franl
Dan posted:
Names, please? You say that you know of dozens of people who were tortured -- so who were they, and what's your evidence that they got tortured at all, let alone as a result of Yoo's memo?
Oh, and when you're done you might want to explain why that would make Yoo's actions even the tiniest bit illegal.
________________________________________
Is that really your argument, that since a person cannot provide the names of those tortured, it must follow that the administration does not torture. Perhaps you need to peruse the definition of a non sequitur argument.
Apparently not satisfied with your traditional "one logical fallacy per post" rule, you decided another one was in order for your second argument. The positoin that Yoo's actions were illegal is a perfect example of a straw man argument. The legality or illegality of Yoo's actions, at least with respect to US laws, is completely beside the point. Glenn's main point, and I am assuming the point of the poster you were responding too, is that Yoo's memo is essentially ground zero for this administrations complete subversion of the constitution during their prosecution of the Iraq war and, as a result, the memo should have received far more play in the media.
McCardle's position is that Yoo, and consequently the memo, received less media coverage because Yoo is a "minor government functionary". As many here have pointed out, and what should have been obvious upon a moment of reflection, YOO IS NOT THE STORY! Instead, the story is the memo and its preemptory justification for Bush's assault on the constitution. The story is unmistakably connected to the administration's use of torture and domestic surveillance. McCardle ignores that connection because she has too... the argument that torture and domestic surveillance are unimportant to the public is a losing one.
Frank
The Fourth Estate has become more of a small summer cottage.
"I spend much of my life whining to editors that the eight paragraphs on financial math are really interesting, dammit!"
Torture is so boring, it's like financial math.
"Now, some of my readers are arguing that we journalists have a duty to give the public what they don't particularly want. "
You have the duty to report the news. Memos giving the President unbridled power to torture (to even torture children, if that doesn't shock you), I guess that's scarcely worth reporting, not when it can be compared to personality pieces.
Why are you a journalist, at all?
In the sense that Nicaragua is arguably more powerful than the United States
No, in the sense that the attorney who created the legal justification for the Bush administration to ignore the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, the Constitution, and all domestic law forbidding torture is arguably even more significant in his impact on American democracy than the president who does the ignoring. The reason the Bush administration asked John Yoo to write these memos is so they *could* detain anyone, including American citizens, indefinitely without any legal rights, without fear of prosecution because of Yoo's "legal" reading of the Constitution as permitting the president to take literally any action at all, legal or not, if he says it's necessary for national security. The reason the Bush administration asked John Yoo to write these memos is so Bush *could* order that detainees be tortured and subjected to cruel, humiliating, and degrading treatment, without having to worry about being put on trial for war crimes, because John Yoo said the president could break international and domestic laws against torture, or any other laws for that matter, because he has "inherent powers" to do so whenever he wishes.
Without John Yoo to say in writing that all these illegal acts were not illegal, that Bush had the right to do any or all of them, and that any attempt to stop him was unconstitutional, Bush and Cheney would never have taken the risk of authorizing acts that are flagrantly illegal, and that in fact are war crimes.
And that is why John Yoo is arguably more important even than Pres. Bush -- because Yoo's evil influence on everything we take for granted in this country is more direct and immediate than Bush's.
I have an area of expertise that I think is pretty important. So I stick to that.
And John Yoo and Glenn Greenwald fit in to that how?
I have an area of expertise that I think is pretty important. So I stick to that.
And John Yoo and Glenn Greenwald fit in to that how?
Good God, that was honestly painful to read. The more you write about this, Ms. McArdle, the more obvious it becomes that you have a bizarre understanding of journalism's function. I think you should just say it: You're all about infotainment.
Ms, McArdle, You remind me of the black knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Furthermore, your reasoning is absurd. If a typical American (say, my mother) has no idea who John Yoo is or his critical role in helping to destroy our country whose fault is that? Hint: it isn't my mother's. Second hint: look in a mirror. The only way in hell I'll renew my subscription to The Atlantic is if you're no longer employed by the magazine.
This post hardly seems worth the bother. To me it seems patently obvious what happened: McCardle waded out of her depth, and tried to defend the obviously indefensible (the press corps's lazy, vacuous conduct) not realizing how amateurish Greenwald would make her look. Now she's peddling circular arguments, specious analogies and non-sequiturs in the hopes she can kick up a big enough cloud of dust to obscure the issue and sidle away from the argument. If anyone brings this up tomorrow, she'll say "look, I responded to Greenwald's points." When, of course, she did no such thing.
Dear Miss McArdle;
I gather from reading your letters that you're rather young to employed in such a responsible job. Good for you! Nothing wrong with that, as Henry Root would say. Don't take all this too seriously; I think you're doing a fine job of demonstrating that youth and enthusiasm trump knowledge and experience any day! Keep up the good work! And may I add that when you eventually reach your twenty-ninth birthday (for the first time, I mean; I know how you young ladies get!), I think all your devoted readers should chip in and buy you something appropriate - some cosmetics or a nice set of those hair-holding appliances that I believe are called barettes or something similarly foreign (not that there's anything wrong with that!)
This post hardly seems worth the bother. To me it seems patently obvious what happened: McCardle waded out of her depth, and tried to defend the obviously indefensible (the press corps's lazy, vacuous conduct) not realizing how amateurish Greenwald would make her look. Now she's peddling circular arguments, specious analogies and non-sequiturs in the hopes she can kick up a big enough cloud of dust to obscure the issue and sidle away from the argument. If anyone brings this up tomorrow, she'll say "look, I responded to Greenwald's points." When, of course, she did no such thing.
That's ridiculous. You didn't come here to be bored by some formula you can look up if you need it; you're here to talk about foreign policy!
I can't look it up if I don't know that such a thing exists, or what it's called . At least try to tell me , explain why it might be important, and let me decide if I want to "be bored" by it.
"That's ridiculous. You didn't come here to be bored by some formula you can look up if you need it; you're here to talk about foreign policy!"
I can't look it up if I don't know that such a thing exists, or what it's called . At least try to tell me , explain why it might be important, and let me decide if I want to "be bored" by it.
That is what Greenwald is on about . The media presumptively assumes that the public doesn't want to know anything beyond what fits into a simple sound-bite, so doesn't even attempt to inform us.
I wonder how many people in this thread are Glenn Greenwald.
McArdle voted for war criminal Bush twice. Obviously, she would rather not discuss Bush's crimes and the flunkies who rubber-stamped Bush's demands to torture captives. I think she has established that she is a poor judge of leadership character.
McArdle repeatedly voted for the worst President in modern American history because she thought his economic policies would favor the selfish among us. I earnestly hope that her investments are performing poorly and that the Atlantic fires her so that she will be free to air her toxic notions on me-first economics at her own expense.
How many people do you think were really intersted in the initial reporting of a small burglary at the Watergate complex in the early 1970s. Because most people weren't interested doesn't mean that the story should have been dropped, does it?
Where are the reporters who really care about our nation and who are willing to follow the dirt, corruption, greed, avarice and misdeeds that are taking us further and further from Democracy, liberty and freedom that we say we cherish but are unwilling to fight for.
rjp
Wow, Megan. GG served you up good.
I read through the ACLU documents and saw a lot of examples of humiliation and discomfort and only a few examples of torture. And those were being investigated by the military and some had resulted in court martials. In fact, even the Abu Ghraib abuses were brought to the attention of the press because the military was already investigating them.
The anti-torture hysteria is going to completely cloud any real problem by convincing everyone that whenever a Liberal screams torture, he's just talking about sleep deprivation, thermostat abuse, Koran abuse, stupid role-playing games (baptise the Muslim), strobe lights, loud music, etc... These are things that most people see as very different from bamboo under the fingernails, cigarette burns, electrocuting the testicles, etc...
I would like to see anyone who does the latter torture prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The former I'm not that worried about. If done out of malice, then the perpetrator should be prosecuted. If done to disorient a prisoner or render him susceptible to suggestion in a way that has some basis, then fine.
From what I've seen waterboarding, depending on how it's done, falls somewhere in between... it can apparently vary in severity.
Also, indefinite incarceration is not "torture"... it's indefinite incarceration. Locking up prisoners without trial and violating their civil rights is not "torture"... it's violating their civil rights. Those should be investigated and punished where appropriate, but NOT as torture. They should be treated as their own offenses.
The "torture documents" form the ACLU refer to indefinte incarceration when that should be treated separately.
Also, it is important to keep in mind that the terrorists are trained to abuse our legal system and use it against us. They are not supid. So their complaints should be heard skeptically. When a whole bunch of prisoners complain about depression and suicidal thoughts, that should be considered, but skeptically, as it is very hard to disprove and garners lots of sympathy.
Anyway... all of those confirms that the US is better than most countries with regard to torture and prisoner treatment. At least in war... our domestic prisons are probably worse than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, where at least prisoners don't have to fear being raped by their fellow inmates or having their teeth knocked out so they can be forced to perform oral sex on other prisoners.
From the John Yoo memo:
"By delimiting the legal boundaries applicable to interrogations, we of course do not express or imply any views concerning whether and when legally~permissible means of interrogation should be employed. That is a policy judgment for those conducting and directing the interrogations."
Get a grip, folks. John Yoo simply did what all good attorneys do--he researched the current law and wrote a legal memorandum.
He did NOT define "torture" or say that "torture" was legal. He used the definition that Congress passed into law. What he DID say was that the Congressional definition controlled, and not any definitions from international law.
What, you don't like that? Then write your congresscritter.
Megan:
Perhaps you should read the statement released today by the National Lawyers Guild in case you think that Yoo is just some silly, lower-rung bureaucrat who is not worth writing about:
In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. According to Yoo, the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war. […]
“John Yoo’s complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act,” said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.
Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country’s premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.
rjp
Rex... here are some additional excerpts from the Yoo memo:
If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.
Yoo also tossed this statement in as a footnote:
"...our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."
As the above excerpts clearly demonstrate, Yoo did not simply research the state of the law as it pertains to presidential powers during times of war. Instead, Yoo fashioned completely novel legal theories to give the President expansive powers which he did not previously possess. I defy you to find me the SCOTUS opinion which holds, "the fourth amendment has no application to domestic military operations". As a recent law school grad, I would assume such a case might have come up in my con law class. Alas, it did not... because it does not exist.
While Yoo's memo obviously has no effect on the applicable US law, it established the framework for the administrations utter subversion of civil liberties in this Country. It further espoused views which are in complete contradiction to controlling international law, namely the Geneva Conventions. Thus, as Glen points out, Yoo was an integral enabler of this Administration's many war crimes.
My word. Greenwald sure is deploying a lot of sock puppets on this topic.
This is the most pathetic and vapid defense I have seen anyone mount in quite a while. Most of it illustrates, rather than responds to, the points Greenwald makes about the press.
Megan says: "Because the only reason that one could possibly disagree with Glenn Greenwald about anything is that WE JUST DIDN'T UNDERSTAND HIM!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!"
Here we see the abject cynicism and amoralism of the press on display. Megan has lost the ability to even conceive of someone holding a moral position. She cannot even frame to herself the idea that maybe Greenwald's anger is directed at the moral calamity of which Yoo was one of the architects. Megan is so self-absorbed she assumes that Greenwald's passion must be similarly self-directed. (She's like the woman who wrote to Bertrand Russell expressing the view that since solipsism seemed to her obviously correct, she couldn't understand why everyone else wasnt't a solipsist, too.)
Megan says: "To the great American public, these are, yes, minor government functionaries. . . I do not like this fact, but I do acknowledge it. Nor do I think that yelling at journalists will much change it."
"Because"--I continue in the same vein on her behalf--"we journalists do not regard it as part of our job to inform the public about matters of importance. We are flatterers who aim to reflect back to the public their own tastes, opinions, and biases, however uninformed they may be. And we know what those tastes and opinions are without having to rely on evidence. We use our trusty journalistic intuition."
Megan says: "Now, some of my readers are arguing that we journalists have a duty to give the public what they don't particularly want. Okay, well, you really should know how to calculate a bond duration;" [but surely you don't want us to write about that.]
Translation: "it would be foolish for us try to cover everything that is important to everyone. Hence, it is unreasonable to demand that we cover anything that is important to anyone, even matters of the deepest moral significance that define who we are as a nation."
OMG that is such a cool argument, don't you think?
@ Greg... the tried and true ad hominem... works every time!
"...our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."
A truly radical notion: if the Army is fighting off an invading force on US soil, they don't need to get a warrant to kick in doors.
Actually, there's a whole memo behind that footnote, which I have not read, so who knows what it really says. But on its face, no big deal.
If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.
In context, this is a novel application of the defense-of-others justification. You can kill or maim to protect others, and government agents can kill or maim to protect the government, so why can't people kill or maim to prevent terrorist attacks? I think Yoo is actually quite thoroughly wrong here, because we're not talking about preventing an imminent attack by use of force to physically restrain person carrying out the attack, but rather using force to get information, which is a very different thing.
But while I think he's wrong, this isn't the wild-eyed evisceration of the Constitution in favor of a monarchical presidency that we have been repeatedly promised.
Last time I checked, soldiers kill people and destroy property with relative impunity in war. I have personally seen videos of soldiers doing things that would ordinarily get them arrested and put away for a very, very long time, if not given the death penalty.
It doesn't seem crazy to me that Congress might be limited in how it can restrain the President when waging a war. I'm not a big fan of giving the President absolute authority, but on the other hand, it doesn't seem absurd that the President would have some authority in war that might not be limited by Congress. The three parts of the Federal government are each equal to the other and each has their realm.
But then when I actually READ THE ACLU "TORTURE" DOCUMENTS, I found that most of the "torture" was no worse than stuff big brothers do to little brothers or than my friends and I did to each other as pranks. Some of the stuff that was really bad and that I would consider torture WAS BEING INVESTIGATED AND PROSECUTED by the military. Soldiers are being court-martialed for abusing prisoners.
Rob, you write:
A truly radical notion: if the Army is fighting off an invading force on US soil, they don't need to get a warrant to kick in doors.
A leap of koolaid drinking worthy of a Bush follower.
That's not what Yoo is arguing and you know it. Just like with Bush's signing statements and with the NSA law breaking, it is clear that Bush believes his actions are inherently above the law. He seeks out frauds like Yoo to write vague "legal briefs" as his justification if he's ever brought up on human rights charges. Yoo deserves disbarrment for participating in the sham, and Bush deserves impeachment, and in an ideal world, would face war crimes tribunal for his disgusting violations of everything this country stands for.
Here's a hint, legal genius: The Constitution applies to American citizens, NO MATTER WHAT. It's the law of the land, and we are a nation of laws, not monarchy.
Bush as monarch is a violation of every fiber of this country's construction. Bush as illegal torturer is simply a war crime.
Yoo engineered both, and this story should be a screaming headline in every paper in the country.
Diverting attention away from John Yoo by claiming Greenwald doesn't know the name of other functionaries is an obvious ploy. Yoo and his influence on the U.S., enabling the administration in committing war crimes, is far more significant than who represents us in a dumbshow concerning free trade with Colombia.
We have lost any moral relevance worldwide, and we have become a disgrace. Work with Greenwald and others to bring us back. Don't remain one of the enablers. You are embarrassing yourself with simplistic rhetorical devices.
That's not what Yoo is arguing and you know it.
How do I know it? And how do you know what I know? I read the footnote, and as I said, I haven't read the actual memo. But the most reasonable interpretation of Yoo's words is the one I gave.
Yoo deserves disbarrment for participating in the sham
I presume you are prepared to identify the disciplinary rule his memos violate.
Megan McArdle writes:
Obviously, I know who John Yoo was, and what he did. ... however, he is a minor government functionary, much like--oh, say,
... Adolf Eichmann ? After all, he was a fairly low ranking official in the Third Reich's hierarchy, and very few in Germany knew who he was prior or during WWII.
First, your interpretation of Yoo's position is patently ridiculous when one considers that a foreign force has yet to attempt an invasion of the lower 48 states. Further, in light of everything that the administration has done since the memo was composed, isn't it patently obvious that Yoo was referencing domestic surveillance programs and torture regimes?
You also asked if anyone was prepared to identify the displinary rule that Yoo violated by composing the memo. I have one:
Rule 1.2 Scope Of Representation And Allocation Of Authority Between Client And Lawyer
d) A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent, but a lawyer may discuss the legal consequences of any proposed course of conduct with a client and may counsel or assist a client to make a good faith effort to determine the validity, scope, meaning or application of the law.
While you will surely argue that Yoo was discussing the legal consequences of his client's actions, the reality is that Yoo fashioned novel legal theories out of whole cloth to assist (assist being the key word) a client in committing the equivalent of a "criminal act". Its hard to argue that Yoo was discussing the legal consequences of a particular action, when Yoo knew the prospective actions of the president to be illegal. If that was the case Yoo would have simply wrote, "Sorry its unconstitutional" in big block letters and called it a day. Instead, Yoo ostensibly advised his client to undertake actions which he knew to be illegal, thus placing him in violation of the rule.
Further, there was no good faith attempt by the client, in this case Bush, to determine the scope of the law. Instead, Bush specifically intended to subvert the law and asked Yoo to find him a way to do it.
"I don't cover politics; I cover economic policy."
That's funny. I seem to recall reading scads of text from you on the subject of Iraq and politics. In fact when I do a search I find something north of 1k posts by you which touch on the subject. You might want to have your head examined.
butters,
Greenwald has been nabbed multiple times interjecting sock puppets into blog comment postings. Poking fun at this current situation (i.e. - emotional, over-the-top, defensive comments in this thread) by linking to his past behavior was an attempt at humor. I think Will Allen and others have made a convincing case that effectively contrast MM's and GG's arguments' persuasive power.
YMMV - yours certainly appears to - but poking fun at foibles doesn't equate to character attacks. Unclench a bit there, buckaroo.
OMG LOL!
About what you can expect from a card carrying member of the Lucky Sperm Club... poor child does the best she can with the sense she has... not so much.
Sigh.
OMG LOL!
About what you can expect from a card carrying member of the Lucky Sperm Club... poor child does the best she can with the sense she has... not so much.
Sigh.
"My word. Greenwald sure is deploying a lot of sock puppets on this topic."
Just the kind of comment Greenwald cites as exemplary of the usual conservative argument: make a completely unverified claim as though it were true, and repeat it until it becomes broadly accepted.
I hope Ms. McArdle decides to educate herself about journalism's role in our culture as a result of this thread.
megan,
your false equivalency between the architects of torture policy and those behind economic policy is breathtaking.
either you need to understand that you come off as a sophist in raising such an argument, or you need to do a gut check on your understanding of priorities and first principles underlying a society such as ours.
all manner of authoritarian regimes could make the same argument that you evidently are.
"I wonder how many people in this thread are Glenn Greenwald."
There - feel better now? It's like trying to hold back a sneeze, isn't it.
Of course, I understand - Occam's razor would indicate that there cannot (a) be so many different people reading Megan's little notes, and that (b) so many of them would hold that the United States by law, tradition (George Washington, anybody?) and moral considerations does not and should not mistreat prisoners. I realize that this is a silly, antiquated notion in these modern times when overly simplistic 'black-and-white' thinking like "some things are simply wrong" and "the Constitution is the law" has been replaced by modern, nuanced 'shades of gray' thinking like "with us or against us", "might makes right", "Gott mit uns!" and of course "If the President does it, it is by definition legal". After all, John Yoo only did what any good Family lawyer would do - provide legal rationalization and cover for what would technically be considered "lawbreaking".
In any event, all this excitement about "torture" is misplaced - the recent US official re-definition of torture means that almost nothing being done by US officers or agents qualifies as torture, anyway - it is simply the sort of thing that big brothers do to their little brothers. I'm only surprised that we haven't gone to the Nietzschean ideal - if only that which kills us qualifies as torture, and that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger, than we are simply helping our prisoners to become better people - Abu Ghraib was actually more of a health and self-improvement camp run by the benevolent agents of the loving Father (if I may wax somewhat Biblical for a moment).
YAY! Frank cited to an actual law! It's a first for all of these threads!
isn't it patently obvious that Yoo was referencing domestic surveillance programs and torture regimes?
I hope you can forgive me for thinking it less than "patently obvious" that a memo about limits on military was intended to apply to the activities of a civilian spy agency. Indeed, I think such an interpretation is "patently ridiculous." And while I don't know what you mean by "torture regimes," suffice to say that torture has little to do with unreasonable searches and seizures, warrants, or probable cause.
I'm the only one here who has actually liked to copies of actual Yoo memos, the ostensible subject of the discussion. Why not join me? Dig up that 4th Amendment memo and post a link so we can see who's being ridiculous here.
The remainder of your argument assumes facts not in evidence.
Yoo fashioned novel legal theories out of whole cloth
Would it be too much to ask that you identify which of his theories are both novel and unjustified? Preferably with cites to pages of the actual memo? I've read one 6-page memo and skimmed the 81 pager. So far I've seen a lot of banal generalities that are impossible to argue with and one theory which I think is seriously wrong for reasons I explained somewhere else (the argument that torture can be justified by invoking common-law self-defense). There may be other theories which are just a dumb, but I haven't seen them yet.
to assist (assist being the key word) a client in committing the equivalent of a "criminal act".
Can you be troubled to provide the law which criminalizes whatever you're talking about? And perhaps discuss the jurisdictional issues that Yoo does (most domestic criminal statutes not having extraterritorial application, after all), and show me how you can be so certain that Yoo, even if wrong in his assesment of the law, was deliberately lying rather than just being boneheaded?
I can read ACLU press releases if I want alarmism and vagueness on specifics. Can you do better?
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/09/nationals-lawyers-guild-calls-for-yoos-disbarment/
he won't be a Professor for much longer, better get defending!
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/09/nationals-lawyers-guild-calls-for-yoos-disbarment/
he won't be a Professor for much longer or an attourney, better get defending!
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/09/nationals-lawyers-guild-calls-for-yoos-disbarment/
he won't be a Professor for much longer or an attourney, better get defending!
Right, because press releases from the partisan left-wing outfits (pardon me, "progressive civil rights" organizations) are all it takes to get someone disbarred.
I read the disciplinary notices every month--it's how I learned that having sex with a client you represent in juvenile court is a bad idea--and that particular method hasn't come up yet, but there's a first time for everything.
Reading is fundamental for you too, McArdle.
Greenwald criticized the political press for covering Obama's bowling game instead of ongoing Bush administration scandals.
You responded by defending the political press.
Since you state in this post that you are not part of the political press, your own work on financial and economic news is not pertinent to the discussion. So that wipes out roughly two-thirds of your post right off the bat. The question of whether or not the public is interested in bond duration is not relevant to the question being discussed.
If we turn instead to consideration of the political press, your argument that the public doesn't care is much weaker. The public at large may not care, but that subsection of the public that reads and watches the political press cannot automatically be said not to care. Someone looking for diet tips may not linger to read an article about Yoo. But someone who tunes into Chris Matthews' show would. Someone who is watching The Situation Room would. Someone who picks up the New York Times specifically to read political news would.
The fact that we have a political press at all speaks to the existence of a niche market that is interested in political news. And the idea that the people who make up this niche market would not be interested in this story is nonsense.
The desire of the political press to focus on personalities has little to do with the appetites of that small portion of the public that creates the market for this type of coverage, and everything to do with the agenda of the political press, and that press' incestuous relationship with the major party campaigns.
Rob Lynman, you're a hilarious example of the "long words, zero thought" frauds that make up what's left of the shrinking set of pseudo-intellectuals still clinging to their crumbling coherencies as their false constructions collapse around them.
Firstly, this discussion was never "ostensibly about Yoo," although I'm so impressed by your use of the word Ostensibly, I'd hate to interject any critical thinking into your world.
A first grader could grasp that this discussion was "ostensibly" about the failure of the national press to recognize the importance of the Yoo memo.
The issue of the memo itself is, of course, important. But it wasn't the "ostensible" point of this discussion.
Your ad hominems about the ACLU and "left" sound like standard Limbaugh/Hannity dodge/distraction story 101. Don't like the facts? The person saying it must be one of them LIBRULS. Don't like all the people who respond in this thread? They must all be FAKE ACCOUNTS and the same person.
It really does hit the root of why we're in Iraq right now.
When the facts don't work, "fix the facts to match the policy." Just like the Downing Memos. Just like John Yoo's disgraceful fraudulence.
He'll be disbarred within one year, and rightly so. The idea that lawyers can work to advise clients on how to circumvent the law is antithetical to every notion of legal professionalism. It is also an accessory to criminal action, no different than advising someone on the best way to "theoretically" work around the security system when robbing a bank.
Well, the NLG is a left-wing outfit, and the ACLU's press releases are alarmist and vague, and you, and Frank and I have been discussing the Yoo memos (I've stayed away from medial criticism entirely), and I am only one who has actually liked to them, so I don't really know what your problem is.
The idea that lawyers can work to advise clients on how to circumvent the law is antithetical to every notion of legal professionalism.
Have you ever heard of a tax opinion letter? It's an instrument designed to tell people whether or not their clever scheme to exploit a loophole is likely to work or not. It is, in essence, a legal opinion on a way to evade your taxes. And nobody gets disbarred for writing them.
clinging to their crumbling coherencies as their false constructions collapse around them.
I have no idea what this phrase means, but my 9th grade English teacher would have liked the alliteration.
It is also an accessory to criminal action, no different than advising someone on the best way to "theoretically" work around the security system when robbing a bank.
It's very, very different, because the whole point of going to a lawyer is to find out what is legal and what isn't. If the law doesn't cover the conduct in question, then 1) there is no violation of the law to prosecute, and 2) the lawyer has done nothing wrong by telling the client what is legal and what isn't.
He'll be disbarred within one year
See you back here in April '09.
I would like to state that I have just found Glenn Greenwald's site and have subscribed to his RSS feed because of this article and have told all of my friends and family about it also.
He is 100% correct about the media. I for one will never read Ms. McArdle 'newsworthy' rants. I am not a journalist, an English major, nor very articulate with our language, however, the Yoo memo was and is undeniably of utmost importance and should have been headline news. And no, I did not kno who John Yoo was before reading about his memo.
I look forward to reading Glenn's past and future articles and only pray that the MSM would begin to treat WE, THE PEOPLE intelligently and trust that we would find this information important.
Thank you to Glenn, as well as the people above who were able to put my thoughts into words far more intelligible than I could have, including liberalrob, margalis and kevin e.
Our hero, founding father - Thomas Jefferson --
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."
I would like to state that I have just found Glenn Greenwald's site and have subscribed to his RSS feed because of this article and have told all of my friends and family about it also.
He is 100% correct about the media. I for one will never read Ms. McArdle 'newsworthy' rants. I am not a journalist, an English major, nor very articulate with our language, however, the Yoo memo was and is undeniably of utmost importance and should have been headline news. And no, I did not kno who John Yoo was before reading about his memo.
I look forward to reading Glenn's past and future articles and only pray that the MSM would begin to treat WE, THE PEOPLE intelligently and trust that we would find this information important.
Thank you to Glenn, as well as the people above who were able to put my thoughts into words far more intelligible than I could have, including liberalrob, margalis and kevin e.
Our hero, founding father - Thomas Jefferson --
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."
I would like to state that I have just found Glenn Greenwald's site and have subscribed to his RSS feed because of this article and have told all of my friends and family about it also.
He is 100% correct about the media. I for one will never read Ms. McArdle 'newsworthy' rants. I am not a journalist, an English major, nor very articulate with our language, however, the Yoo memo was and is undeniably of utmost importance and should have been headline news. And no, I did not kno who John Yoo was before reading about his memo.
I look forward to reading Glenn's past and future articles and only pray that the MSM would begin to treat WE, THE PEOPLE intelligently and trust that we would find this information important.
Thank you to Glenn, as well as the people above who were able to put my thoughts into words far more intelligible than I could have, including liberalrob, margalis and kevin e.
Our hero, founding father - Thomas Jefferson --
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."
Rob, is the DOJ there to enforce the Laws of the land or put forth secret opinons as to what those Laws mean?
Rob, is the DOJ there to enforce the Laws of the land or put forth secret opinons as to what those Laws mean?
Well, both, or at least they've been doing both for a good long time. And of course enforcement requires that the enforcers know what the laws mean, does it not?
Hume's ghost, we're not arguing about whether it was newsworthy--it's not like the story was buried. In the last month, the Washington Post has run twelve pieces on him, the New York Times six, the LA Times 3, and so forth. We're arguing which outlets should cover him how much. The question for editors is "how many pieces can I run on this story before it starts costing me readers?" My argument is that on the John Yoo story, for most papers--and remember that Glenn's results are driven in large part by a couple of stories each in a ton of regional papers, not the New York Times running eighty stories on Barack Obama bowling--the answer is "not many".
Posted by Megan McArdle | April 8, 2008 2:17 PM
****
Wow, Greenwald predicted this type of weak-ass justifications, and -- ding! -- there it is, again.
Sorry, most people in the US get their news from that "ton of regional papers" you so quickly discount. And there was a ton of Obama's Balls in the Gutter stories throughout the land. (As well as the other examples.)
Additionally, Ms. McArdle should think more like a writer and less like her wrong-headed ideation of editor's concerns.
This is the calculus of any editor worth her meddle: 'how can I keep my stories interesting to keep readers interested,' not some over-arching fear of losing readers based on story count. Bad story-telling loses readers, and I'm sure Ms. McArdle's editor is gaining a sense of that fact.
For those like Dan and Glorious who don't seem to be able to navigate a web site unless it has pictures and arrows:
http://www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/21236prs20051024.html
U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq (10/24/2005)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence Personnel Implicated
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.
""There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,"" said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. ""High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal that has rocked our military.""
The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and ""OGA"" (Other Governmental Agency) -- a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA.
According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by ""strangulation,"" ""asphyxiation"" and ""blunt force injuries."" An overwhelming majority of the so-called ""natural deaths"" were attributed to ""Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.""
While newspapers have recently reported deaths of detainees in CIA custody, today's documents show that the problem is pervasive, involving Navy Seals and Military Intelligence too.
The records reveal the following facts:
* A 27-year-old Iraqi male died while being interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5, 2004, in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded, flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including the use of cold water on his body and hood. The exact cause of death was ""undetermined"" although the autopsy stated that hypothermia may have contributed to his death. Notes say he ""struggled/ interrogated/ died sleeping."" Some facts relating to this case have been previously reported. (In April 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the use of ""environmental manipulation"" as an interrogation technique in Guantánamo Bay. In September 2003, Lt. Gen. Sanchez also authorized this technique for use in Iraq. Although Lt. Gen. Sanchez later rescinded the September 2003 techniques, he authorized ""changes in environmental quality"" in October 2003.)
* An Iraqi detainee (also described as a white male) died on January 9, 2004, in Al Asad, Iraq, while being interrogated by ""OGA."" He was standing, shackled to the top of a door frame with a gag in his mouth at the time he died. The cause of death was asphyxia and blunt force injuries. Notes summarizing the autopsies record the circumstances of death as ""Q by OGA, gagged in standing restraint."" (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Abdul Jaleel.)
* A detainee was smothered to death during an interrogation by Military Intelligence on November 26, 2003, in Al Qaim, Iraq. A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of General Mowhoush, lists ""asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression"" as the cause of death and cites bruises from the impact with a blunt object. New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as ""Q by MI, died during interrogation.""
* A detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison, captured by Navy Seal Team number seven, died on November 4, 2003, during an interrogation by Navy Seals and ""OGA."" A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of Manadel Al Jamadi, shows that the cause of his death was ""blunt force injury complicated by compromised respiration."" New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as ""Q by OGA and NSWT died during interrogation.""
* An Afghan civilian died from ""multiple blunt force injuries to head, torso and extremities"" on November 6, 2003, at a Forward Operating Base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Abdul Wahid.)
* A 52-year-old male Iraqi was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility on June 6, 2003, in Nasiriyah, Iraq. His autopsy also revealed bone and rib fractures, and multiple bruises on his body. (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Nagm Sadoon Hatab.)
The ACLU has previously released autopsy reports for two detainees who were tortured by U.S. forces in Bagram, Afghanistan, believed to be Mullah Habibullah and an Afghan man known as Dilawar.
""These documents present irrefutable evidence that U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations,"" said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. ""The public has a right to know who authorized the use of torture techniques and why these deaths have been covered up.""
The documents were released by the Department of Defense in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.
As part of the FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU, a federal judge recently ordered the Defense Department to turn over photographs and videotapes depicting the abuse of prisoners held by the United States at Abu Ghraib. That decision has been stayed until October 26. The government has not yet indicated whether it is going to appeal the court's decision.
The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Singh, Jameel Jaffer, and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
To date, more than 77,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia.
The documents released today are available online at http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/
---------------
For the Afghan named Dilawar mentioned above, see now the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0854678/
And knock it off with the "there's no evidence anyone has been tortured" crap.
McArdle:
"Greenwald error number two: I don't cover politics; I cover economic policy. These are not the same thing, which seems like the kind of thing that people who set themselves up as media critics should be aware of.
"And given that I write about something that roughly 99% of the population considers less interesting than the newest diet fad, it's clearly ridiculous to assert that I am happy about the American public's raving disinterest in complicated policy stories. I spend much of my life whining to editors that the eight paragraphs on financial math are really interesting, dammit!"
If your beat is economics, then why the hell did you comment on Glenn's postings in the first place? Can't have it both ways.
I don't want to be mean by piling on here, but I have to agree that Greenwald is running circles around you. Your arguments just aren't coherent or convincing, and frankly I find them dangerous. You should stick to your strengths.
Folks:
The more you write about this uninformed blowhard, the more she goes to her editor and says, "See, I'm controversial, isn't that cool?" Ignore her please and let her take her rightful place in the dustbin of history just below Monica Lewinsky.
Folks:
The more you write about this uninformed blowhard, the more she goes to her editor and says, "See, I'm controversial, isn't that cool?" Ignore her please and let her take her rightful place in the dustbin of history just below Monica Lewinsky.
Folks:
The more you write about this uninformed blowhard, the more she goes to her editor and says, "See, I'm controversial, isn't that cool?" Ignore her please and let her take her rightful place in the dustbin of history just below Monica Lewinsky.