>…while you say, “I’m not attacking basic conservative principals, many of which I share.”, I have to observe that you also don’t seem to speak too loudly in DEFENSE of those principles when the Left makes ad hominem attacks on them based on scandals.

I suspect your failure to remember examples of my bashing the left is a product of how the human brain works. We tend not to remember things that are pleasant or agreeable as much as things that annoy us. If you will recall, I’ve gone nuts over left’s erroneous interpretations of Geneva, defended Bush from charges of ill-intentions on the Gulf War (”He lied, people died” is asinine. I think the problem was one of cognitive processing rather than deliberate warmongering), defended the pure motivations of (non-violent) pro-lifers, made the case that no reasonable person doubted Saddam’s possession of WMD, and taken issue with claims that we acted unilaterally in the Iraq war (nevermind all the allies who helped, symbolically or not). I have advocated the confirmation of Roberts and Alito. These examples don’t come to mind because we agree. The human brain is designed to find differences, not similarities.

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em>As for torture, you claim that the RIGHT is “Redefining” it, yet the same argument can be made from the other side — a big part of the problem is that our opponents attempt to define too broadly what constitutes torture. Definition of terms IS important, otherwise we can’t be sure we’re even arguing the merits of the same thing.

I’m not aware of any serious person who has tried to change the deinition of torture to include silly stuff. There are silly people out there who have tried, but no one takes Moveon seriously (sorry, MoP). When it comes to people that matter, oh, like say, goverenment officials, the redefition of torture was actual policy. Witness Gonzalez making toture mean only permanent organ failure. Waterboarding, for instance, has been defended as nontorture by Cheney when there is legal precedent that it is indeed torture (we have succesffully prosecuted folks under UMCJ). And I would think that you would agree that waterboarding is torture. Saying that the redefintion is happening on the left is Orwellian. I am not particularly concerned about the rights of illegal combatants - I think they ought to be shot. But I am concerned about the rule of law. And, although it is unrelated to this context, am concerned about the wisdom of the folks who thought this was a good idea, revealing their fundamental misunderstandings of human nature: the unreliability of torture-extracted information, international response, and impact of Americans’ support for what needs to be done.

Back to Brian:

As for your reference to the Plame affair, you have proven yourself on multiple occasions to be all to willing to accept without question the explanation of events as described by the administration’s critics, including what happened and why. I’ve tried to raise the question of whether or not your description of the events is accurate or not, and you did not respond. The more you persist in holding to that view uncritically and beating the drum that it’s proof of Republican calumny, the more it sounds like a straw man and you sound like the drink mix imbiber.

The administration hasn’t provided any alternate theory. In fact, the administration, as well as Scooter and Rove’s legal defense, all play to the technical definition of Plame’s status. Rove and Libby’s revelation of her identity (though Rove clung for a while that he mentioning the wife without giving her name was not the same as naming her, at least prior to discovering an e-mail that jogged his memory) to reporters is not disputed. Can you think of any other reason to disclose her than to discredit Wilson (whose report on Niger turned out to be right, by the way)? What’s to assess critically here? The very disciplined nature of two simultaneous leaks of the same information by two highly placed, professional political operatives can very reasonably be seen as intentional coordination. Random, unmotivated verbal diarhea while talking to the fourth estate? Rove and Libby are too talented to have dropped that information unintentionally. That said, a conspiracy to do this is legally unprovable. Rove and Libby have essentially ceded this by focusing their defense on her status. If they weren’t the source of the leaks, her status would be immaterial, no? The law itself is vague, so the prosecution of Libby may founder upon bad lawmaking. But the disregard for the rule of law is still evident. They certainly believed that there was a good chance that they were breaking the law - why consistently deny that they were the souce of the leak and then “forget” crucial information while being deposed? Why would Bush, through his spokesman, have promised to fire anyone involved in the leak? Why didn’t they step forward and admit they were the sources when reporters went to prison to shield the leakers’ anonymity? Why, in Rove’s case, frantically negotiate to avoid an indictment? There is no doubt that there was consciousness of guilt. To restate: Although it may not be convictable, Libby and Rove knew that there were, at the very minimum, risking prosecution (if discovered) for purely political reasons.

You wound me with the “uncritical” charge. I’m open to changing my mind based on new evidence. If you have presented new evidence, I missed it. I would have hoped that our months of crossing swords would have at least earned your respect for my intellectual integrity.

As to strawman, I’m a farmer. I’d nver waste straw on the farm or in cyberspace. As for drink mixes, the MoP is the one drinking those fruity, umbrella-decorated beverages. I’m a beer from the bottle kind of guy.

Regarding the wiretaps: Please see my comments in The Maximum Leader’s post on this. FISA is intended to provide the means of obtaining a warrant in an emergency. But if the situation doesn’t and shouldn’t require a warrant, I fail to see how that is a violation of the law.

I just went back into the archives to read your comments. Your interpretation of the Supreme Court’s stance on this does not jibe with conservative law professor Eugene Volokh. In an earlier post I directed folks to the Volokh Conspiracy’s running commentary on FISA. I think your cases are wrong, but have not read them myself. I wouldn’t trust my own interpretation of the cases to be as lucid or valid as Volokh’s so will defer to authority. I’m reasonably confident that Volokh is an honest broker and considers the law rather than partisanship.

If we expand the scope of our inquiry, the disregard for the law isn’t the only troubling thing about FISA. Since FISA had only turned down one of thousands of requests, and Bush had requested of Congress, and been given, a 72 hour emergency exemption (in emergency situations, wiretapping could go on for 72 hours without a warrant), one wonders why they needed to avoid getting warrants. If you can do what you want to do by simply meeting the legal requirements, why disregard the law purposelessly? Like the Plame affair, this raises questions about the judgment of the players involved (just as the Monica situation raised troubling questions about Clinton’s judgment).

Furthermore, I find your argument to be a bit inconsistent. In your comments regarding torture, you say, “I’m concerned here with meeting the letter of the law.” but in the Plame comment, your criticism is, “We can argue that, technically, no law was broken, “. So if your concern is with the letter of the law, and no law was broken, what’s your beef? Pick your poison.

My position is consistent. My concern is respecting the rule of law (actually, the current lack thereof). In the statement about the Plame affair, I was acknowledging that the technical legal defense of Libby’s actions may have some merit due to the poorly worded law. The potential weaseling on this technicality doesn’t remove the fact that he acted in a way that he believed at the time to be against the law, or at least suspected could and would be interpreted as illegal. I also note that the legalistic defense was not raised until it became very clear that there was clear evidence of Libby and Rove’s argument. The intitial White House pledge to investigate never raised the issue of Plame’s status as an undercover agent. If the White House didn’t consider her to be covered by the law at the beginning of the investigation, there would never have been an investigation.

There are emergency situations where bad laws must be broken to prevent an even greater evil from happening, and the consequences faced later. I’m not saying that’s the case in any of the situations above, but I refuse to be pigenholed as someone who unquestioningly obeys every law no matter how heinous just because, well, it’s the law, and I’m a Conservative, and that’s just how we roll. maybe we have more of an ability to see in shades of grey than a “Progressive” like yourself wants to give us credit for.

I highly doubt that the Elephant Echo chamber is really looking at shades of grey. Comparing the right and left’s reaction to Clinton’s transgressions and the reaction to Bush’s transgressions is like night and day. People simply flip sides. I have hopes that many Republicans are beginning to see that a culture of lawbreaking is not conservative: DeLay did not give up his post selflessly. He was pushed off the ledge by congressmen who want to redeem their image prior to the election. It is just unfortuante that ittook the spectre of electoral consequences to turn on their moral radar.

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em>While the law should be obeyed in all but the direst of circumstances, there’s plenty of grey area in politics where things are done that are not illegal, but are definitely less than on the up-and-up. One would have to be a fool to think that any side is completely dove-white innocent. The question becomes, how strenuously does one object to such activities? Our argument (or at least mine) is that there is no easy answer to that question. One has to weigh the negative implications of such means against the ends they accomplish. The reason that many of us on the right are scornful of the Left is not because they pl;ay the game, because we have to admit we play it too, our scorn has to do with the perception we have that their means are all out of proportion with their ends.

If we accept the fact that conservatives are willing to put up with extralegal means to achieve necessary ends (at least as long as the extralegal means are “proportionate” to those conservative ends), I think we have to ask ourselves: what conservative ends have been achieved?

Bush has shanked the pro-lifers with the Roberts-Alito appointments. Government spending is bloated. Earmarks are at an all time high. Domestic spending has increased at a faster rate than it did under Lyndon Johnson. A fiscally reckless Medicare program has massively expanded the welfare state. Federal involvement in local education has increased. Gaybashing yields electoral dividends but a constitutional amendment is an impossibility. The war in Iraq has been badly mismanaged.

What conservative ends have been achieved?

Are they proportionate to the damage DeLay and his crew have done to the wall between lobbyists and lobbyees?

Are they proportionate to the damage to the public’s already low opinion of our political leaders?

In the case of torture, are they proprtionate to the damage to our ability to win hearts and minds of Iraqis and the maintenance of homefront morale?

UPDATE: I will grant that capital gains and estate taxes have been cut. So a small proportion of the conservative agenda has been achieved. Was it worth the rest? Proportionally, I mean.