Letters to the Editor
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"ego" trolls
When the comment section becomes so unpleasant to me that I want to stop reading it, that, in my view, is a significant loss for the blog, since being able to read and interact with commenters is of great value to me.~GG
After Garry Owen’s first couple of posts, I stopped reading the comments and just left the thread, conceding defeat to Garry, knowing full well the thread would thereafter be primarily about Garry Owens – a subject that bores me intensely.
I was pleasantly surprised when I checked back in hours later to find on-topic posts and couldn’t understand it until I read further to find that Glenn had limited Garry’s posts, which explained it immediately.
That’s where I disagree with RMP. In that respect, there isn’t any difference between sugarman and Garry -- they both are intent in taking over the thread completely and making it about “them.”
We have our your basic “concern” trolls visiting here periodically, but sugerman and Owen (regardless of whatever else they are) are both “ego” trolls or “narcissist” trolls.
If regular readers like me just tune out whenever Garry (or a similar “ego” troll) attempts to take over, then soon these threads will be essentially flame wars and interesting and informative posts will diminish if not vanish.
If Glenn wants to keep his comment threads at all relevant, I don’t see that he has any choice but to limit posts from “ego” trolls.
Sorry for the now off topic post.
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Jim White...
re: that story about the decrease in violence in Iraq...
Here's a related story, one in which the WH has edited an ABC News story (by Jonathan Karl) to make it sound like "an unqualified declaration of success in Iraq."
Guess they must be hard up for PR staff who can write properly constructed sentences... so they're borrowing some. Sentences, that is.
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=politics&id=5739472
I found the link in Dan Froomkin's column today... always a great compilation of what's important.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/whbriefing
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Fascinating quote from Juan Cole today
that does not speak directly to today's post, but several commentors have mentioned the recent events in Pakistan, so I thought I'd share it. On his Informed Comment blog today, Cole writes about the imposition of martial law in Pakistan and the opinion of many that it will not be lifted soon. Then he adds,
"If Bush and Cheney are ever tempted into extreme measures in the United States, Musharraf has provided a template for how it would unfold. Maintain you are moving against terrorists and extremists, but actually move against the rule of law. Rubin has accepted the suggested term of 'lawfare' to describe this kind of warfare by executive order."
I don't believe that anything like Musharraf's actions would be possible in the U.S. today, given the strength of our traditions, but so many once-unthinkable events have taken place over the past six years, that nothing would really surprise me anymore. Still, we are witnessing a slow-motion coup that appears to be succeeding inexorably, slow enough that few appear to be alarmed. No need for a sudden coup when a gradual one works just as well, without the risk of galvanizing a response.
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CarolynC...
In fact, there was some discussion of just such a scenario happening here... on a recent thread on GG's blog. I think you may have been part of it, but I don't remember.
Part of my reaction to the events in Pakistan over the weekend was to wonder if Bush/Cheney feel chagrined that he got there before them and spilled the beans (or foreshadowed spilling the beans?), so to speak. Not only that, but Musharraf has done it all so clumsily... i.e., with an awful lot of violence, and Bush/Cheney could probably have smoothed things over for him, if only he'd been less graceless.
Or am I off my rocker?
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@CarolynC RE: Lawfare
I think it's right on topic to look at the events in Pakistan when discussing imprisonment of journalists. There and in Burma we've seen that internet access has been shut down, along with all other media. Is that even possible in the US? I suppose in those other countries web access is state-controlled, but here it's controlled by telecom companies, so how could ... oh, never mind.
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The cause of the death of old journalism
Glenn, I've asked this before and want to ask again. Is this careerism from journalists who don't want to ruin the next "get" and an offshoot of the cult of personality for journalists like Woodward? They fear loss of access? Are journalism schools not teaching the basics about anonymous sources, like how the NYTimes was played in the run-up to the war, or how all journalists are threatened by this action? Is there a basic lack of understanding of these US civics concepts, much like the high percentage of kids who can't find Iraq on a map? That is, many don't understand that it is un-American to be arrested and held without charges? A result of a lack of education? Or is it because of a misinterpretation of what pundits think Americans want to read and hear about, like how you cite surveys that contradict what pundits think Americans think? Or is this the result of a slow erosion of thought, language ("interrogation techniques" vs. torture) and therefore this happens?
Why wouldn't this be covered? Why not interview the journalist's kid and wife with touching music and tell this story? I don't get it. You'd think it would get ratings.
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Martial Law and other thoughts
I just read the post regarding Pakistan potentially providing a template for declaration of martial law in the United States. Bush and Cheney have an advantage, however, because in Pakistan the declaration came in the face of an expected adverse ruling by Pakistan's Supreme Court. Here, on the other hand, Bush and Cheney would not have to do anything to the Supreme Court because it stands ready to rubber stamp any actions by the Executive branch; this appears to be the moment that Scalia has been waiting for.
It seems strange to me that those judges and legal scholars who have argued for "original intent" and "strict construction" when it comes to "activist judges" finding new rights within the penumbra of the Constitution (e.g., privacy, abortion) now seem ready to (1) grant President Bush sweeping powers on the basis of his authority as "Commander in Chief," even though such term is vague and undefined; and (2) ignore actual provisions of the Constitution in order to provide these powers to President Bush (e.g., declaring American citizens enemy combatants, suspending habeus corpus). The goal is, and has been at least since the time of Richard Nixon, absolute power.