Letters to the Editor
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re: Margalis
Be very careful telling a "GG Regular" to STFU as you are stepping over the line and into dangerous territory!
LWM is a super-duper, top-tier, decoder-ring wearing regular. Meaning: He can do no real wrong in the eyes of the other Cabal members. He can jump into the middle of threads blasting away, spewing vulgarity, calling other posters (non-Cabal members) every kind of derogatory name he can muster from his arsenal. And this can be all done with even the most slightest of provocation. It doesn't matter how overboard and odious he gets with his written vomit.
Rarely, if ever, with any of the other regulars step in to suggest that LWM might want to chill out, that the poster who prompted the attack doesn't deserve the venom being tossed his or her way.
Now, you'll notice I stated rarely above. This is due to William T's. singular post gently asking LWM to not go off half-cocked. You'll further notice that William was told to basically piss-off and that was the end of it. Nothing more was said. This was an extremely rare privilege you witnessed. Something you won't see too often.
What us newer visitors need to understand is that the Cabal believes that since they've been following Glenn from before he moved to Salon.com this grants them some kind of special status. The rules don't apply to their little group. They revere Glenn so much that they seem to believe it is only by his grace that any LTE are allowed in response to Glenn's blog postings. They don't seem to grasp the basic concept that even though Glenn has 100% total editorial control over his writings that this site is actually Salon's to do with as they please. Not Glenn's, and certainly not the Cabal's.
If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, it probably means you remember the days of Usenet and the wild west atmosphere that surrounded various groups. This LTE section is the HTTP version of that old NNTP relic from the past.
Don't want to take my word for it? Simply spend a day/night reading older posts of Glenn's and the LTE sections. You will definitely see the pattern.
Lastly, don't take LWM's insults too personal.
Consider yourself in good company.
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Again what are the rules for discovery here.
I've never heard of a case where the difficulty of discovery was a valid waver for not performing it. Never. The excuse that we don't know who is an interested party and who is not, seems like a fairly basic assumption of why you perform discovery in the first place. I'd like someone to articulate how it is the Government can get away with the excuse that 'if you don't know then we can't tell you' defense.
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@ L.W.M.
Thanks! That's the problem with language; unless specific, it can be so open to interpretation....
My reasonable expectation of privacy in my communications (both oral and written) is a factor when they are made in private: not while in someone's employ on their equipment, on their time, etc.
I'm under the impression that the dupe-and-scoop efforts by NSA would be via my residence land-line or mobile arrangement. On the written word; they've already admitted to opening our private mail sans warrant so unless I'm penning post cards I expect privacy there too.
As far as I'm concerned, the only applicable exception would be my involvement in criminal activity in which case all bets are off. The warrant-less data mining they've done is indiscriminate and non-selective. They don't even know what they've collected until it's sieved through filtering software.
On GP alone, I would join a class-action. They need to be taught a lesson and keep their mits off our stuff!
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@Anon
Be very careful telling a "GG Regular" to STFU as you are stepping over the line and into dangerous territory!
LWM is a super-duper, top-tier, decoder-ring wearing regular. Meaning: He can do no real wrong in the eyes of the other Cabal members.
Well, I'm an older member of the "cabal" than LWM is, having participated at Glenn's old blog virtually since day 1. He is fundamentally dishonest and simply fixated on hijacking threads to attack any of Glenn's libertarian readers, and has always been so. For a very long time I ignored him.
Somewhere in this thread he claims I'm a Hayekian who doesn't understand that Hayek did not oppose all safety net programs. Of course, it was I who pointed that out to him when he was insisting otherwise and attacking Hayek. He has a stockpile of endless, very long quotes and links from people he just cuts and pasts, recycling endlessly, and when I or others debunk them, he moves on to a new crop.
But for me to continue engaging his obsession means perpetuating his thread hijackings, so I am really, really trying not to do that anymore. Suffice it to say, you cannot believe a great deal of what he or his sources say about libertarians, or about me and my beliefs.
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What specificaly can Congress do?
Not being a lawyer or constitutional expert, I am wondering what kind of law the congress would need to pass to change this problem.
Of course, we can be sure that even if such a law were passed, it would be vetoed.
Seems to me we are stuck with a government who will continue illegal spying on Americans and prevent anyone from changing or challenging it until January 2009.
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If congress has the ability to bar judicial review...
Not being a lawyer or constitutional expert, I am wondering what kind of law the congress would need to pass to change this problem.
As the GOPers liked to claim (and threatened to do) then the Congress certainly has the power to rule that all American citizens have standing in any case in which the US government violates the Constitution.
That is what I would like to see. Congress simply declare (via law) that American citizens in general have a direct stake, direct interest, and 'standing' in ANY case wherein the government is violating the Constitution. Put it squarely in the lap of the Judiciary in spite of Bush appointee desires to keep it off their lap.