Glenn,

One of the phenomena of conservative argumentation that I have observed as well as experienced firsthand is that many conservatives will respond to even the most detailed, well-reasoned, well-evidenced criticism of President Bush, The Bush Administration, Republicans, and/or the policies of any or all of the aforementioned by simply responding with some variation of "You just hate Bush."

It's the Swiss Army Knife of many a conservative's rhetorical toolbox.

And so it is unsurprising to me that, despite your painstaking and time-consuming efforts to provide all available evidence to back up the claims you make and the arguments you construct, that the enforcers of conservative dogma at Red State would opt not to engage your points, but simply label this blog a "hate site" and be done with it. It's a lot less work for them that way. And apparently, it's a lot better for them that to have to perform the uncomfortable task of traveling down the path that the facts, if viewed somewhat objectively, lead to.

Some of these are the same people who express Capt. Renault-style shock - shock! - that anyone could hold the similarly detached-from-reality view that 9/11 was a big conspiracy which benefited from the involvement of the White House. Pot, meet kettle.

For the dead-enders, these are articles of faith. Saddam had WMDs. And returning to what you wrote yesterday about Krauthammer, it is also an article of faith that radical Islamists are everywhere, and that they want to kill us.

I see a great deal of similarity between these people and those who claim to see images of the Virgin Mary everywhere, from slices of pizza to patches of mold of the sides of refrigerators (apologies to Berke Breathed).

You simply can't reason with these people, because their faith that these crackpot notions are true is apparently unshakable. The only thing you can do is point out how delusional they are and hope that the "reputable" publications that continue to publish them realize how much their credibility is being shot by their continuing associations with those who peddle such harebrained stories.

...when this jerkwad is very, very close to doing time.

First, Mr. Loeb is just the latest example Glenn has found of a so-called journalist practicing the dark art of the deflective mea culpa. Mistakes are admitted, but spun in such a way as to make them appear as minor as possible. And this is usually accompanied by some sort of explanation that they'd do it the same way if they had it over to do again. To paraphrase a certain linguistically-challenged chief executive: Is our press corps learning from their mistakes? Judging from how they respond to criticism from Glenn and others, the answer is decidedly in the negative.

Second, Hinderaker is one of many right-wing practitioners of that logical loop that holds that only those who support the Bush Administration unwaveringly are credible, and anyone who expresses any criticism of the Administration, or who - god forbid! - posts to "far-left web sites," no matter who they are or how their experiences - in the case of Kevin Tillman a tour of duty in Afghanistan - inform what they have to say, is deemed to be not credible. It's a simple system constructed so that Hinderaker and those like him do not have to exert themselves responding thoughtfully to criticism of their cultlike object of worship, or even to respond to it at all. They arbitrarily create conditions which, if not met, render one not credible, worth responding to only to point out how lacking in credibility they are. As much as they believe this to be an effective tactic, it isn't too difficult to recognize that it's all bluster meant to disguise intellectual flaccidity.

Someone should ask John Derbyshire if he really and truly has no idea why many black Americans would harbor suspicions that AIDS is a product of the U.S. Government. Why is it so outrageous that they would suspect that a government responsible for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments would have a hand in creating AIDS?

Klavan got his dander up from reading a movie review of a silly comedy?

Silly me. I read his column thinking this was a guy who really, really wanted to be The Most Interesting Man in the World from those Dos Equis commercials.