the terrorist rights brigade

If I wanted to write a political blog from the left and I needed ideas for posts, I could start every day by going to the Powerline blog and finding what the Nuttiest Nutjobs for Bush (TM) have to say, but... oh, wait, I do want to write a political blog from the left. And I needed an idea for my post! Thanks, Powerline.

Paul Mirengoff had a post the other day in which he started with an earlier quote of his:

Intellectual honesty [for a blogger] cannot easily be defined, ... At a minimum, however, it should preclude the use of the personal attack as a substitute for arguments. . . .And it should preclude knowingly making bad arguments. It probably also entails some obligation not knowingly to ignore good evidence and good arguments that cut against one's point of view on issues that one has elected to write about.

I think I laughed Sprite out my nose when I read this. Violating these three principles is the raison d'etre of Powerline (see, if they ever read this post, I bet you anything that instead of arguing against it they'd call me a french-speaking lefty coward). Anyway, if you read Powerline, you know their staple post does not include arguments for or against various policy proposals, but rather comparisons between left-wing American politicians and terrorists.

So the "here's what a good blogger does" setup was funny in a general sense, but it only got better when I read the specific argument that followed. As the post continues, Paul includes a clip from another writer arguing that Sens. John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham cannot be called "the terrorist-rights wing of the Republican Party." If you'll remember from a few sentences ago, not allowing personal attacks to substitute for good arguments is one hallmark of a good blogger. Apparently, using a term like "Terrorist-rights wing" does not violate this protocol, because Scott is a big fan.

Anyway, these three "moderate" Republican senators were singled out for the term because they were fighting for accused terrorists to have a little more leeway in trying to prove their innocence -- and I mean a little -- and were trying to outlaw some of the most abusive torture methods adopted by the administration. The supposed compromise that resulted pretty much gave the president what he wanted. Nonetheless, you can be sure the "Terrorist-rights wing" is still on notice from Powerline.

In my mind, the best argument against using a term like "Terrorist-rights wing" is that the very procedures being argued -- due process, access to counsel, access to evidence against you -- are the things that give us confidence to say an accused terrorist is an actual terrorist. You see, we have a trial, and evidence and arguments are presented by both sides. But we only have faith in the result (verdict) when we know that the process leading up to it has been fair and honest. Paul should understand this. He's a lawyer. Who is better equipped to understand the point of a trial, and the reasons why both sides need access to evidence, witnesses, and yes lawyers?

Yet Paul spends this page-long post dealing with muddled analogies between pro-gay rights people and pro-terrorist rights people. Yeah, no surprise there. Again, I think the best reason not to call supporters of due process "pro-terrorist rights" is that we don't know if the people they're supporting are actually terrorists. I mean, all we have to go off of is the president's word. Unless, you mean... oh, I see. That's one thing that apparently can be substitued for good arguments, at least under the Powerline code of ethics.