@William Timberman-

I'm sorry that my words come across as calculated pleading. There seems a fine line here between counterproductive insults and a politeness which evidently can sound like calculation or "holier than thou" (someone else's term). I'm not quite sure why this is "precisely the wrong place, at precisely the wrong time," since I've been reading GG make these sorts of arguments for many months now, but in any case, a) I assure you I'm just some student who had a bit more free time on a Friday than usual, posted a reply for once to a blogger I read every day, and, starting with GG's own reply, found myself in an argument about the fine points of critiquing and understanding the bad guys; and b) there's obviously nothing I can do to prove that I'm not some sort of troll-in-sheep's clothing, spending a couple hours sowing center-left discord among the discussants in a prominent lefty blog. I'm sorry there's no way to prove that I have a fairly low Daily Kos user number.

@Arne

But, on a slightly separate topic, I do wonder who the "rest of the folks out there" or the "passers-by" are that we believe are going to affected by our or even GG's arguments.

The 90% of the people that don't post. And the many people that start coming to this blog as Glenn gains visibility, and gets mentioned on Olberman and such.

The thing is, most of those 90% already agree with our positions. People who wander in from Olberman may not have heard much about Krauthammer, but they are already leftists and just add him to their list of right-wing hypocrites. The "30% dead-enders" usually refers to the die-hard Bush supporters, and having seen the bile those folks spew, I'm pretty sure none of them are around here. Whether Jack is secretly one of them or not I can't know, but I doubt it. In any case, the demographic I took to be the target of these debates was the center or center-left, people who might be tempted to give people like CK the benefit of the doubt, until GG spells out exactly how bad CK is. So it just seemed a bit perverse to attack exactly the people who might entertain any initial thoughts that CK wasn't utterly evil in this case. Independent of that, I guess, is the issue of understanding the psychology of CK, which I guess need not have any centrists as audience, since it's just folks on the left trying to understand the madness of the right. Again, though, inasmuch as I want to understand, it's not to defend it or to sow discord on the left, it's just because we have to understand radioactivity if we want to build a successful concrete containment facility, to use your metaphor.

As a matter of law, standing is of course an essential part of the US legal system. However, as a normative and practical matter, there is no deep requirement for such stringent standing requirements. I won't bother with the normative issues, but practically speaking, most European democracies, for instance, do not have strict standing requirements, and they seem to get along fine. Concluding "ought" from "is" is especially mistaken when there are so many perfectly functional counterfactuals.

The idea that judges should be able to issue binding orders even in cases where there are no disputes between the parties essentially places judges in the position of Supreme Rulers, since they can just go around resolving every political and legal question in the abstract. Some people aren't bothered by that because they think judges are elevated and wise -- usually because the judges in question agree with them politically -- but I think it's just as important to place strict limits on the powers of judges as is it to place them on the power of Presidents and Congress.

I think the Founders were wise to impose that requirement as a way of limiting judicial power. The fact that they don't have it in Europe is not, by itself, a particularly persuasive argument against it. If it were, it would mean we should repeal our First Amendment so that we can have all of those nice speech-limiting laws that Europe has (ones which -- as such laws tend to do -- are increasing in scope and number).

The fact that they don't have it in Europe is not meant to be "by itself" an argument. What makes it an argument is that a) they don't have it, and b) judges do not appear to function "in the position of Supreme Rulers" in any western European democracy that I know of.

As I recall, there are different degrees of standing required for different types of cases, but for many constitutional (or equivalent) issues, one doesn't need standing. Furthermore, the constitutional courts are more directly overseen by the parliaments in most systems, making them less, not more, like Supreme Rulers than here.

Incidentally, I think standing is an old aspect of English common law, not a creation of the Founders. Also, implying that my advocacy of one aspect of European law entails the adoption of all aspects (such as their abysmal free speech protections) is a bit silly.