Glenn Greenwald Rips Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard has an article up, Al Qaeda's Civil Liberties Union. As Glenn Greenwald notes over at Salon, it, "...sputters with so much fact-free, impotent, and self-defeating rage that it's hard to believe it was printed."

The Standard cites the case of Moazzam Begg, who after his release from Guantanamo, they say, gave his name to a video game depicting Guantanamo prisoners blasting out of prison by killing mercenaries which the Standard reminds us are really U.S. soldiers. They also complain of an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) produced short film about Guantanamo prisons that includes Begg, and claims that the prisoners in the film are all unfairly detained.

According to the Standard, documents from the Bush Administration prove otherwise. As Glenn noted in his article,

"But what he dishonestly -- though understandably -- fails to note is that each of these individuals are available to appear in the ACLU video because they were released from Guantanamo by the Bush administration [Moazzam Begg (released 2005); Omar Deghayes (released 2007); Bisher al-Rawi (released 2007); Ruhal Ahmed (released 2004); Shafiq Rasul (released 2004)].  If, as Joscelyn claims, the ACLU are Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" for producing a video containing interviews with these individuals, what are Bush officials who released them onto the streets?"

Don't bother with the Weekly Standard, but Glenn is always worth the read.

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Don't Confuse Me With the Facts

The chattering classes on the right need to take a breath and listen to themselves. Hilzoy made an excellent point that demonstrates the circular and thus contradictory thinking in the debate over the nomination of Judge Sotomayor.

"I have read many professions of outrage about this decision, but most of them focus on whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that Frank Ricci didn't get his promotion, rather than what the law requires. This puzzled me. Many of the same people who are outraged by the decision also criticize Judge Sotomayor on the grounds that she will substitute her personal preferences for the requirements of the law as written. One might therefore expect them to consider what the law required in this case, rather than simply asking whether the outcome she affirmed was the one they preferred. Oddly enough, however, they didn't."

According to Glenn Greenwald, a Constitutional lawyer who writes at Salon,

"This happens all the time where people -- mostly self-described "conservatives" -- claim to oppose an outcome-based judiciary, yet decide if they approve of judicial opinions based on their preference for the outcome rather than legal arguments. The most obvious example was Terry Schiavo, where a conservative Florida state court judge was faithfully applying clear Florida law, but since conservatives disliked the outcome on policy grounds, they viciously criticized the judge for failing to deviate from the law in order to give them the outcome they wanted. It also happens when state courts -- such as in Iowa, California and New Jersey -- reach judicial decisions about same-sex marriage based on those state's Constitutions and the precedent applying it, and immediately, people who don't have the slightest familiarity with that state's law criticize the decision: all because they don't like the policy outcome."

As I said, don't confuse me with the facts. Just give me what I want. The new Republican motto.

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k