Letters to the Editor
GlennGreenwald
Published Letters: 2221 Editor's Choice: 18
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Clinton firings:
[Read the article: Republicans and U.S. attorneys -- then and now]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My understanding of the ineptitude of the Clinton replacement scheme was that they didn't have a thoroughly vetted list of replacements on hand to keep things moving in the respective US Attorneys offices.
That's false. Reno asked for their resignations with the intent to replace them, but made clear they would be replaced once they had replacements.
So there was a de facto derailment of several important investigations that were ongoing at the time. This knife cuts both ways. If the numerous investigations in Arkansas had been brought to a close without finding or indictments, it might have spared the Clinton's the nagging headaches later.
That is equally false. There are career prosecutors who work on ongoing prosecutions. The U.S. attorney him/herself makes decisions about who to prosecute and where to expend resources, but the idea that replacing a U.S. attorney would "derail" an ongoing investigation is just ludicrous.
The claim they were making about Clinton was that this was being done to "derail" the Rostenkowski indictment, but Rostenkowski ended up being indicted by the predecessor U.S. attorney in DC.
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Elephantman:
[Read the article: Republicans and U.S. attorneys -- then and now]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, it all boils down to whether individual cases or investigations were politicized. So far, I haven't seen any evidence of that. In fact, I've seen NO evidence of that.
First of all, a major aspect of this story (in my view, the most important) is that the DOJ and White House both repeatedly made false statements about what happened, why they did what they did, who was responsible, etc. Lying to Congress happens to be a felony, so pretending that this part of the story doesn't exist is itself rather dishonest.
Secondly, there is a presumption in certain areas of the law that shifting explanations about what happened is, by itself, evidence that there was wrongdoing. After all, why would someone lie about what happened or constantly change stories unless they were trying to conceal wrongdoing?
Finally, there is -- contrary to the endless mantra of "no evidence" -- plenty of evidence to suggest nefarious motives with these firings. That Carol Lam, for instance, notified the DOJ of her intent to dig deeper into the CIA/Randy Cunningham connection THE DAY BEFORE the DOJ declared her termination of the highest urgency is pretty compelling evidence suggesting (though admittedly not proving) improper motives.
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Ancient Assyrian
[Read the article: Howard Kurtz, Michael Barone & Argument by Anecdote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But if you're going to take on the issue of "argument by anecdote," charity begins at home.
Please start with Salon's own Camille "Rush" Paglia, and Debra Dickerson . . . .
I've never read anything by Debra Dickerson (that I can recall), but I did try to read the two columns published on Salon by Camille Pagila since I moved my blog here, and I just can't get through them. They are so boring and predictable and they seem like archived columms from 1987 -- she traffics in ideas and issues and images that are so empty and obsolete -- like things that would have generated some controversy 15 years ago but now are just almost caricatures of themselves.
I have no involvement with any Salon decisions beyond my blog, so I can only speculate why Salon brought her back. It almost certainly has something to do with the fact that her articles receive a ton of attention. Drudge loves her and links to everything she writes, which generates enormous traffic for Salon -- I doubt there is a more powerful traffic-generating link than one from Drudge -- and lots of large right-wing sites promote her articles, too.
In principle, I don't have a problem with magazines publishing a diverse range of writers and using attention-generating considerations to make decisions, but to the extent she is anything other than completely boring, she is just lazy and cliched and I can't imagine that she's going to generate attention for much longer churning out stuff like what I've seen in the parts of the last two columns of hers that I read.
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MBF:
[Read the article: Howard Kurtz, Michael Barone & Argument by Anecdote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not just assiging attributes, it's also inventing an entire movement. There is no liberal movement, there is no progressive movement. There are peole who oppose Iraq, or various measures taken by President Bush, but this does not comprise an organized, funded, large political movement with specific goals and an infrastructure to achieve those goals.
This is a good and important point. What "the Left" has come to mean is "anyone who opposes the extremist policies of the Bush movement." The collection of people referred to as "the Left" have not really had any affirmative agenda or anything in common beyond that, because everything has been devoted to trying to limit and fight against everything from more Middle East invasions to torture and rendition to lawlessness at home. You're absolutely right that the only real movement with any discernible agenda has been the Bush-led right-wing movement, and everything else has been an attempt to fight against that or limit its reach in some way.
That's why people who probably have quite disparate political views on a whole range of matters end up as full-scale political allies -- there has been very little ability for any Bush opponents to do much of anything politically other than work against the damage they have wrought on the country.