Letters to the Editor
GlennGreenwald
Published Letters: 2514 Editor's Choice: 18
-
Arne:
[Read the article: Various matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But they can allege the "injury" to give them standing by saying that the very existence of the program, whether or not it is directed at them personally, is harming them.
We're pretty much in agreement on everything, but have you read the Supreme Court cases the government is relying upon for their standing argument? I haven't read them lately, but my recollection (bolstered by the discussion of those cases at the Sixth Circuit's oral argment) was that in surveillance-challenge cases, the plainitff needs to be able to allege they were subjected to the allegedly illegal surviellance, and from what I could tell, even that is not enough to confer standing, but still further allegations of injury are required.
Again, it's been too long since I read those standing cases to meaningfully discuss the state of the Supreme Court law on this issue, but that was definitely the Government's claim, no Judge on that Sixth Circuit panel had much to say against it, and I didn't hear much from the ACLU's counsel on that argument either. So it's possible that a doctrinal change is needed on standing in surveillance cases that could come from the Supreme Court.
-
Zack:
[Read the article: Various matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like Glenn, I “read” lots of blogs I find offensive. Just because “Ed” is on Glenn’s blogroll of “Blogs I read” does not imply an endorsement of anything he says. Glenn reads him because, on occasion, he has a momentary fit of honesty and disagrees with the more extreme views on the right, and the results are sometimes instructive.
Precisely. I think it's important to read a diverse range of blogs, and that is relatively informative and one of the few I can withstanding reading on a regular basis.
That said, however, I have to agree with you about his intellectual dishonesty. Take his supposedly “moderate” letter that repudiates Coulter: That’s dishonest. . . .
True, but the pool isn't exactly large. I also read, for instance, National Review's The Corner and that is far from a beacon of ongoing intellectual honesty, to put it mildly.
-
Gator
[Read the article: Various matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good heavens Glenn, all I asked you before was what exactly AIPAC or other groups had DONE which caused you to believe they were agitating for a U.S. war with Iran. You have, at long last, answered that simple question.
No, that's just not true. Other than adding a fact or two that wasn't available last time, everything I said here today in response to your inquiry I (or others) also said the last time - including the Matt Yglesias post, the references to AIPAC's promotion of the Iranian threat on its website, the NY Sun article documenting the pressure put on candidates by AIPAC. You kept insisting that there was no evidence that AIPAC was pushing the country to war and kept ignoring the very evidence that you were asking for, pretending it didn't exist.
You did the same here today. It's for that reason I reacted as I did when you showed up here today after not responding to any of that material to claim that I "refused" to answer you last time about AIPAC and refused to provide evidence ("When I asked you for specific examples of such agitation, you refused to provide any"). That just is false, which is why I concluded today that you weren't really interested in knowing the answer, but just protesting that anyone would suggest that AIPAC is agitating for war against Iran.
In any event, I don't feel like my time was wasted in responding to you today even if you want to continue to ignore that evidence or dismiss it away, because I think the evidence of AIPAC's actions with regard to Iran is important and the more people who see it, the better.
-
Signing statements
[Read the article: The FBI's lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Question: It seems to me that Bush is breaking the law. I admit I'm sure how to phrase this, but Bush's job is to enforce laws. IF he says that he will not enforce laws, isn't something illegal happening?
As I've argued before, signing statements, in and of themselves, have no meaning and no significance except that they make clear that Bush believes he has the right to ignore certain laws. They are significant not because they grant any powers to the President or even constitutes illegal acts themselves, but becasue they are clear expressions of the President's belief in his power to ignore the law.
And this is a case where the significance of the signing statement is clear -- the President decreed his power to ignore certain legal requirements, and now the FBI has ignored those very requirements.
-
Paradox/Bamage
[Read the article: The FBI's lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@paradox
Your dedication to troll bashing is admirable, and you are new here, so your attack on bamage is forgivable.
Actually, Paradox is a long-time reader of this blog and an excellent blogger himself.
For the record, since -- as Paradox points out -- people who blog on a daily basis (as opposed to writing articles for large newspapers or twice-a-week columns) do so without editors and without much time to really perfect one's prose, small typos and errors are inevitable. For that reason, I rely upon and appreciate reader corrections, large and small, and I receive many not only in the comment section, but also by e-mail.
Bamage is a fairly prolific corrector and catches many of the typos, for which I've expressed my thanks in the past. The comment about there being no typos in this post was a good-natured reference to that fact, though as often happens with online writing, the intent wasn't all that clear to someone who is unaware of all that, so an equally well-intentioned Paradox understood it to be a snide attack and responded accordingly. That's all.