Letters to the Editor

Letters posted here are associated with the following article:
The true scandal here is that the Bush administration continues to obstruct any and all efforts to determine if its conduct was illegal.
The letters thread is now closed.
  • Okay, but....

    Better ideas? Well, shooter, just go look in the Other letters by WT. Those you can have for free.

    Better ideas tailored to the limitations of your reasoning processes, on the other hand, require a one-time licensing fee, and continuing royalties based on the number of times you post them here and elsewhere. (I regret having to charge for what is essentially a public service, but our libertarians have convinced me that free enterprise is the way to go, especially when there's no competitive provider for such services, and the demand for them is inelastic.)

  • Ann Althouse

    of all people, has a new blog post with hundreds and hundreds of words, maybe a couple of thousand even, and many of her sentences are over 20 words long (I dunno how much over. I refuse to honor excess verbiage by reading it. If a writer doesn't stay with short declarative statements, she's disrespecting me.)

    In her new blog post, she seems to admire Judge Gilman's dissent.

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/07/ive-read-opinion-in-6th-circuit-nsa.html

    Saturday, July 07, 2007
    I've read the opinion in the 6th Circuit NSA case.
    Gilman's discussion is circumspect and judicial in tone. Unlike the district judge, he displays a proper sense of the role of a judge, and none of the criticisms I aimed at Judge Taylor in that NYT op-ed apply to him.
    - - Ann Althouse

    If I understand Althouse, she isn't retracting anything that she wrote in August 2006 about Judge Taylor, and she still stands by everything that she wrote in that NYT op-ed, but she likes Judge Gilman's decision (though I don't think she endorsed it or said she agrees with it) and Althouse is also claiming that NONE of her criticisms of Judge Taylor apply to Judge Gilman.

    Huh?

  • Okay but...Two!

    I forget, O, yea, it was Carlos!

    You got me wanting to read "Walt Whitman" by Sir Edmond Goose.

    What's with this "silly" key-hole peeping gig?

    No allow that goofy idea as permissible, "yet!"

    How about some other rainy day?

    It is too much of a blue sky day!

    O, William.

    O, William, what is a old buzzard to think?

    O, William, what ya know, a bus leaves in a few minutes.

    O, see you soon @ The Mongoose Arizona untamed territory.

    O, see you soon @ The Retreats House for feeble minds!

    O, see you soon @ The Lefty's 'ole old age home for humans.

    O, William.

  • Conservativeslayer - OREGON case

    I see Mona brought up the islamic charity group that has documents that show it was spied on without warrants. Doesn't that give them standing? Or is the Bush administration going to get away with it because they claim the documents are classified?

    I've written about this case several times before though am not up on the detailed, latest developments.

    But Mona is right -- in that case, the plaintiffs CAN prove that they were subjected to the illegal eavesdropping, because of documents inadvertently produced by the DOJ that shows they were. I'll look further into the status of that case over the next couple days, but there, they should be able to get around the problem of standing.

  • usmlrf

    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).

  • shooter presumes

    shooter242: "Now back to the rank hypocrisy of not pursuing the leaks to the NY Times ... As always, IOKIYAD"

    shooter242 presumes that the Bush-Cheney-Gonzales administration didn't pursue the leaks to the NY Times, and he presumes that such failure is, somehow, the fault of Democrats.

  • @bebop-o

    I really enjoy thinking about what you write. It opens an uninformed portions of my life that I've never known. Or, it activates a brain cell that seems way-too long damn dormant.

    I did not know that The CATO Institute is ardently in favor of legalizing drug

    Thank you! I enjoy your prose as well. However, I am now going to ignore the obsessive compulsive disorder afflicting LWM, including his citations to sci-fi writer David Brin and whatnot, on the supposed odiousness of the Cato Institute (none of whihc have anything to do with my observations about their position on tobacco suits, or the subject of Glenn's post). It just is past time for the thread hijackings on the subject of libertarianism to stop -- or at least take a time out -- and that means not letting that person bait me.

  • William T. still does not get it ...

    WT to shooter242 ---> " Better ideas? Well, shooter, just go look in the Other letters by WT. Those you can have for free. Better ideas tailored to the limitations of your reasoning processes, on the other hand, require a one-time licensing fee, and continuing royalties based on the number of times you post them here and elsewhere. (I regret having to charge for what is essentially a public service, but our libertarians have convinced me that free enterprise is the way to go, especially when there's no competitive provider for such services, and the demand for them is inelastic.)

    What better ideas?

    You never advance any concrete opinion on a specific proposal. You are running from shooter and that says it all; if you are intimidated by shooter then you deeply need a moment of zen.

    On to my reason to write you; you need correction in your thinking. I do not have time to point out all of your numerous errors, but this one is to obvious to pass up. Libertarians believe in voluntary cooperation. The non-aggression ideas of libertarianism befuddles collectivists such as yourself, but that is life.

    Rothbard, von Mises, and all the others have written extensively on the place of charity and compassion in a world without a coercive government. You may freely share your "ideas" with shooter and no libertarian would quibble.

    See von Mises and Human Action as he explains what Praxeology is. Austrian economics is the science of understanding what makes 'man' act; i.e. social cooperation and human action. That includes giving things away if you so desire. Sometimes a man wants to reduce personal discomfort by helping others. There is nothing wrong with that. Give shooter his answer, if you can.