Although I’d rather you stayed home if you haven’t put forth a minimal effort to find out how a candidate stands on key issues. If you are looking at two names on a ballot and you don’t know jack shit about either of them, please, leave it blank.
Ashcroft did not need to clarify his remarks because his remarks were perfectly clear. According to his Senate testimony, Ashcroft said:
I mean, my God, Ashcroft specifically recognized the need for reasoned debate on these issues, in a quote curiously left out of the Nation article. How can this possibly be interpreted as anything but a slam on the Chicken Littles of the world?
I’m not a huge Ashcroft fan, but the left’s tortured reading of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee is beyond stupid.
Mr. Ashcroft declares his unswerving support for “honest, reasoned debate.” One cannot but admire his courage for another bold stand in the face of perfidy. Clearly, the man is a palladin. The suspense mounts as we await his fearless defense of “truth” and “justice”.
But, soft. If I were to post in response to you a scathing diatribe against dishonest and conniving practitioners of the law, you might well take offense. The juxtaposition of my response is as much a part as the wording of it. If I then come out and say “No, heavens no, I wasn’t referring to the redoubtable Dewey, I’m talking about those other lawyers, that half dozen or so in the legal trade who are less than punctillious” you would, quite rightly, suspect that weasel words were afoot.
So with Mr. Ashcroft. He defines the criminals by the crime, and is at liberty to define the crime as well. I could not, given my limited skills, defend undermining the Republic with “phantoms” and “pitting Americans against immigrants”.
If the Constitution may be defined as protecting right-thinking and patriotic Americans, to the exclusion of villains, and it is Mr. Ashcroft’s perogative to make such determination, then the Constitution becomes little more than an arrest warrant, signed, sealed, and stamped, with names left blank to be filled in when the need arises.
Coincidentally, there’s an editorial in today’s N Y Post regarding some war critics who turn out to have been exaggerating. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/24642.htm
elucidator, you’re backpedaling.
I’ll happily cede that some of the Ashcroft DOJ positions regarding the handling of terror suspects can be taken as unreasonable, and that reasonable minds can differ on that issue.
That is not what Ashcroft’s testimony was offered to prove. Ashcroft’s testimony was offered as an example of the Bush administration calling Paul Wellstone and other antiwar Democrats “traitors.”
I merely pointed out that the supposed “traitor” line (“Your actions only aid terrorists” etc), in context, demonstrates nothing of the sort. That line clearly was not aimed at thoughtful critics like Wellstone; indeed, Ashcroft’s specific recognition of the need for honest debate would invite dialog from the Wellstone contingent.
Again, I’m not a huge Ashcroft fan – he may not be the model of a modern attorney general (with information vegetable, animal, and mineral). But it’s dishonest to present his words as meaning something they clearly do not.
Point well taken. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence, at least to my mind, that the Bushista’s are perfectly content to exploit the reflexive patriotism that invariably arise in time of crisis, as witness Mr. Rove’s exhortations to do precisely that. The pursuit of Saddam bin Laden has little or nothing to do with the War on Terrorism, but if it is seen as such they are in no hurry to disabuse us of such a notion. And if the appointment of judges with the correct “constructionist” temperment should result from such a misperception, they will regard that with benign approval, something like “collateral benefit”.
Beside, his actions as regards abrogating the rights of American citizens speak chilling volumes, which a few avuncular words cannot, and do not, dispel.
[Aside: what a pity it is the Gilbert and Sullivan are so much ignored these days! They are the Michaelangeloes of scansion. Indeed, he is the very model of a modern Attorney General. And he has a little list, he has a little list…]
Maeglin, Dewey, Sauron, there is no possible reasonable misinterpretation of Bush’s meaning - although, to be fair, I suggested that anyone who has one provide it.
But you didn’t. As I said before, stop being silly.
Elvis, I take it you are referring back to Bush’s comments regarding Democratic support of his homeland security plans.
Sauron, Maeglin and I provided far more reasonable parsings of Bush’s statement on page 2 of this thread. It is utterly stupid of you to pretend otherwise.
Dewey it is your opinion that you have parsed these statements more “reasonably”. This does not make it fact, nor does it follow that any disagreement with your opinion is willful pretense or stupidity. I think if you reread your post and exclude the final sentence, you will see that it does not better sustain your argument than if it were absent.
:rolleyes:
If you want to debate the reasonableness of our interpretations, fine. But that’s not what Elvis said. He said we had not provided an alternate interpretation at all – a fact which is demonstrably false.
And that demonstration either is, or is not, made. In what way does the accusation of willful pretense or stupidity further that demonstration?
It’s just a statement of the obvious. If you say “you have not provided X” when in fact X has been provided just one page back, you are being stupid. RTFT (Read The Fucking Thread).
Besides, this is the Pit.
Dewey, I asked for a reasonable interpretation - a fact which is demonstrably true. You didn’t provide one, just some desperately transparent spin attempts. You surely know what Bush was trying to insinuate, and an attempt at a zealous representation of your “client” doesn’t change what a reasonable person would know to be true.
Now, I’ll say again, stop being silly. I’ll also add, stop pouting, stop ascribing evil motives to anyone with the temerity to disagree with you, and drop arguments that don’t work. Life will be much easier for you, and, I suggest, your legal career will be more successful as well. That last point is, of course, debatable.
Please. To restate:
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Saying an opponent doesn’t care enough about Very Important Issue X is par for the political course. If saying that implies that one’s opponents are traitors, then virtually every politician in America has accused his opponents of treason.
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The treason interpretation doesn’t even follow from an abolutely literal reading of the quote. To suggest that someone does not care sufficiently about national security issues is not to say they are a traitor; it only means their priorities are out of whack.
If you find those interpretations unreasonable, please by all means tell us why. And be specific – no hand-waving dismissals, no unsupported statements that they are just “desperately transparent spin.” If it’s so transparent, surely you can explain why that explanation is untrue.
I think the fact that three reasonably well-regarded posters on this board provided essentially the same explanations make those explanations prima facie reasonable. If you think them unreasonable, it is incumbent on you to explain why. Will you?
I didn’t describe you or your motives as evil. I described them as stupid. There is a difference.
Considering that I’m the one that offered Ashcroft’s testimony, allow me to disagree. I explicitly offered it as evidence that Ashcroft had called people traitors. Implicitly, I offered it as evidence that Ashcroft had called some civil libertarians traitors.
A couple of points about this:
-Language about “giving ammunition to the enemy” is about as direct an accusation of treason as you can make.
-While Ashcroft conceivably could have been directing his diatribe at only certain members of the civil libertarian community, the clear effect of his words is to have a chilling effect on anyone raising civil liberties objections to the Justice Department’s policies. If they do so, will they be accused of treason?
The simple truth is that intelligent, honest people can have a disagreement about whether the Justice Department was overstepping its bounds in pursuing terrorism. His statement made an intelligent, honest debate more difficult. The fact that he said he wanted an honest debate is immaterial if he goes on to demonize his opponents in the same debate.
In case you missed it the first time, though, I did not agree with Degrance’s original assertion that Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft had called their opponents traitors; I can only find evidence that Ashcroft did so.
Daniel
DCH - saying ‘not caring sufficiently about issue X’ is indeed par for the course in politics. However, we here at the SDMB took mr. Ashcrofts comments listed above, as saying those who questioned his actions were being traitorous. (see pit threads from the time).
‘giving aid to the terrorists’ ? It’d be just as nasty/slanderous coming from House Seat Seeker John Doe, but from the man in charge of the Justice Department, it did cause quite a stir IIRC. rightfully so.
question for you: if it was meant as benignly as you claim, then why has he not repeated it? it was, after all, such a catchy piece. Could it be, perhaps, that yes, indeed quite a few folks took it to mean that disagreement w/Ashcroft’s actions were treasonous?? Or even that he recognized that it was overkill?
Well said, Dan’l. Quite right.
I would emphasize and underline that Mr. Ashcroft’s statements were not corrected nor modified by the Bushistas. It is perfectly reasonable to presume that he speaks for the Administration. If no effort is made to modify or correct those statements, it is no stretch to presume that he speaks for them.
Case in point: in the Senate race in Georgia, Max Cleland was smeared by his opponent as regards his patriotism (I won’t go into the details, this is a family Pit). Zell Miller, a Republican, rose to his defense and soundly rebuked Mr. Chambliss. Thus, it is shown, that Mr. Chambliss does not speak for Republicans.
Mr. Ashcroft left himself a trap door of deniability (“I wasn’t talking about the good, sincere traitors, just the bad ones”). But “you can’t polish a turd, Beavis”.
This is not complicated. At the time Ashcroft made his statement, there were people running around LYING about the treatment of people held at Gitmo. People essentially making up stories about the treatment of terror suspects here at home. People fabricating tales with no effort to ascertain the actual facts.
Those people DO hinder national security efforts, and they DO, in essence, aid America’s enemies. And, as a matter of fact, they hinder the thoughtful civil libertarians critiquing Ashcroft’s DOJ. Ashcroft was right to call them out.
If you can’t see the difference between thoughtful criticism and MAKING SHIT UP, then you’re a lost cause.
Ashcroft made that distinction in his testimony. That his testimony was quoted without that distinction in the pages of The Nation is not Ashcroft’s fault.
“people fabricating”??
Really. As I recall it, one of the major issues at the time was that no one was allowed there to check on them. So, perhaps you could submit a cite in which these dastardly lies were made?