I find the Left terribly hypocritical.

They preach "tolerance" and "diversity" only as long as it agrees with their agenda.

Everyone else is to be shouted down and ridiculed.

>>He gave me a printout of it, and then came back to find me a couple hours later. He begged me not to blog it, because he was worried of losing his (non-tenured) position at a university. A university! A place that's supposed to be for the free exchange and debate of ideas. Right. How naive.

Amy,

There is a lot of general twitching about blogging/tweeting conference proceedings in the hard sciences too.

Not all of it is about suppressing ideas.
Some of it stems from the old school idea that talks given to colleagues at conferences have the status of "personal communications" and are not ready for semi-publication on blogs.
And there are also grumbles from both credentialed official press reps at meetings - who believe they ought to have first dibs on reporting and from the editorial writers of the major peer review journals - who dimly feel their territory is being encroached.

There's a lot of confusion negotiating the new etiquette here!

(I've just been at a bunch of evolution conferences where the organizers are trying to resist imposing rigid blogging/tweeting guidelines because it's against the spirit of open discussion. Instead, they're simply encouraging bloggers to do as you did - make sure they've got the full, personal permission of a speaker first.)

It's not that their arguments are weak, it's that their arguments aren't reasoned at all - because they HAVE no argument.

It's about control. Controlling the narrative, controlling the sheep. Hence the "Shut up, that's why" attitude so prevalent on the left.

And, finally, why don't the feminists, or anybody who disagrees with somebody presenting a point of view (short of one advocating or encouraging violence), just come to their talk and make reasoned arguments afterward?

If they were capable of doing that, they wouldn't be feminists.

Now I'm sure that some woman will pop up and state - Oh No. Feminism is about goodness and light, and equality and self actualization and ...

But it's really not. There may be individual women who pursue those goals and also call themselves Feminists. But they're not part of institutional Feminism.

Amy, are you sure he was worried his department would disapprove of the subject of his talk or his opinion about it? If he was a probationary faculty member working toward tenure, he may have wanted to revise and polish the work and submit it for publication before showing it to the personnel committee. One reason for presenting papers at conferences is to get feedback that will reveal weaknesses in the argument toward a revision.

On the other hand, evolutionary psychology does yank a lot of chains among postmodernists who think that social forces determine our identities, so if such people were in the majority in his department, maybe he had cause to worry.

In the English department I retired from, a junior faculty member who applied ev psych to literary problems would have been lauded for the contribution even by the people who disagreed with it.

If he was a probationary faculty member working toward tenure, he may have wanted to revise and polish the work and submit it for publication before showing it to the personnel committee. One reason for presenting papers at conferences is to get feedback that will reveal weaknesses in the argument toward a revision.

I've been using people's studies in my work for a long time. I'm surprised that any of you would think I'm so naive as to be clueless about researchers needing to have their work appear in journals before it appears in the press. This most certainly wasn't the case.

Furthermore, there was a session on witch hunts against researchers at the conference where Randy Thornhill or Craig T. Palmer -- think it was Craig -- reported that he'd learned how to check for car bombs.

Anyway, this researcher made it quite clear that he couldn't have people know the topic of his work, and it was totally understandable.

Thornhill and Palmer's excellent book: A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion.

Interesting. I'm tending bar this afternoon, for a friend of mine who has a catering business, at function at Yale University. She hasn't told me yet which department is sponsoring this function, but you can damn well be sure my ears will be open for the after-lecture discussions.

>>I'm surprised that any of you would think I'm so naive as to be clueless about researchers needing to have their work appear in journals before it appears in the press.

I was terribly long-winded before, Amy!
I should have said simply that blogging/tweeting is muddling what "in the press" means.

Also, knowing how fraught academia can be - I wonder if non-tenure guy was worrying about putting senior colleagues' noses out of joint by getting "coverage" - when they weren't?

If you do hang around at social events after conferences, you'll hear plenty of deliciously elegant back stabbing over the cheap chardonnay!

It is an unfortunate trend in College today that the fems are using it to indoctrinate students to thier way of thinking.

A commencement speech given by Catharine A. MacKinnon in 1989 is the perfect example of the kind of stranglehold that the left has on our institutions of higher learning.

She said
""'Some of the proud mothers in the audience [are] sitting next to men who [have] battered them. Some of the well-dressed fathers [have] sexually abused the women who [are] now graduating.'"

Now of course there is no such thing as female on male violence and the "V-Day" celebrations that are seen at over 500 campuses show the power that they enjoy in shaping the future of our country.

if you disagree youre fired
if you question you are fired
if you challenge you are fired

Unless of course you are tenured in which case youre protected.Too many of the professors I saw in College and which many of my friends had classes with have to long been removed from the real world and are teaching based on outdated principles and climates.

Why does anyone here think that teacher are so adamant against any sort of credentialing test? doctors,nurses,contractors,truck drivers and many other professions have to certify and recertify and continue thier education in order to retain thier professional licenses/certifications.

We as parents and the students themselves pay these people to pass on the knowledge they have to our children so that they will be prepared to productive members of society...not to advance thier own social/political or personal agendas.

The Other Mike D

Here's one from Pittsburgh, in which a student just wanted to hand out flyers supporting her idea to start a chapter of concealed carry on campus to protect the students:

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/47141317.html

I think the organization F.I.R.E. is involved in this one too. If this crap went on while I was in college, I'd never have gotten a degree at all.

Where was that graduation speech given, The Other Mike D?

At my university, the Women's Studies department teaches things that are objectively, verifiably, scientifically false.

They have told me that "science is phallocentric" and doesn't represent women's ways of knowing. They have told me that they have a different standard of truth in their academic discipline.

The first time I was told this claptrap I replied with something like, "A different standard of truth? If your work is not grounded in logic, then what is going on in those Women's Studies journals? It's not scholarship. I suspect it is more like something you so with a water-based lubricant." I mean, beyond ridicule, what else can you do with an entire discipline that has rejected reason.

My advisor, an aged geometer who's also a genius in graph theory, advised moderation. Not my style, I guess. The Women's Studies faculty hate me.

@Dave Lincoln

Yale

TOMD

Just having the name "Lionel Tiger" confers him some measure of awesome in my eyes, LOL!

Oh, you mean he has interesting stuff to say, too??? AWESOME!!!

Thanks Mike D. Where I graduated, I could see a riot starting with that kind of speech. I know who'd be the one to start it, too ;-)

"Also, just this weekend, I had a lefty guy sitting near me in a coffee shop argue something along the lines of research not being helpful if it doesn't promote...whatever he thought was right."

Yes, some leftists, especially feminist ones, insist we should avoid esthetic critiques of art and literature because to do so is to impose the tastes of the dominant (i. e. dead white male) culture on subcultures whose tastes should not be denigrated, because they are at least equally good. Also esthetic commentary wastes valuable ink that could be used to "valorize" those subcultures.

My hunting buddies are literary academics who *like* the esthetic dimension. For a few minutes we stood on a hill admiring the beauty of a beaver pond ringed with alder, aspen, evergreens, and bright yellow tamaracks where we were about to hunt grouse and woodcock. Finally one friend said, "Oops, we're experiencing an esthetic response. In some way or another we must be oppressing someone."

So we worked it out: we were oppressing The Eternal Feminine, and by extension all women, with our male gaze. See, the beaver pond (note the name!) is roughly oval; in the middle it is wet and deep; and it is fringed with bushes. Our admiration of it was preparatory to rape. We intended to thrash around the edges of that pond and, responding to the flutter of wings (an age-old symbol of orgasm), discharge our guns.

We didn't tell our feminist colleagues about our analysis, because we were pretty sure they would fail to get the parody and use it seriously in their own arguments.

"I can't help but be shocked by the desire by some to quash opposing viewpoints"

Actually, their DESIRE is to send everyone with opposing viewpoints to labor camps in North Korea. But they don't have the power to do that (yet), so they have to settle for trying to silence them & ruin their careers.

so, Amy... d'ja ever think about ghost writing some of this stuff with these people so they can get their work out there, even if it isn't peer reviewed? It's not optimal, but might help a little.

The real issue is that the very people that could nudge colleges towards center are also people who would have a difficult time holding their tongues until they are tenured before saying anything.

And? This isn't a femme thing at all, really. In most department levels anything that smacks of conservatism, is shouted down. Ironically most of what is hated is actually closer to centrism, but when you are on one extreme or the other, everyone else is on the other side.

I think what feeds this is the simplified view of the world that most college students have, coupled with professors who have abandoned the Socratic method, IMHO anyway. Even way back I had a few like that, who were willing to promote their own POV over more abstract learning. Oddly, someone skilled can convince people to agree very subtly, but for these profs it was much more beating you over the head, and into submission.

When you convince yourself that your opponents are fascists, racists, misogynists, and evil, you don't want them to have an outlet through which to speak. You don't want them to have equal time.

Some of the proud mothers in the audience [are] sitting next to men who [have] battered them. Some of the well-dressed fathers [have] sexually abused the women who [are] now graduating.

Because female-on-male violence never happens. Just ask Phil Hartman.

Just ask Phil Hartman.

Oh wait...you can't!

I think what feeds this is the simplified view of the world that most college students have, coupled with professors who have abandoned the Socratic method, IMHO anyway. Even way back I had a few like that, who were willing to promote their own POV over more abstract learning. Oddly, someone skilled can convince people to agree very subtly, but for these profs it was much more beating you over the head, and into submission.

I loved my Poli Sci courses (my minor) simply because we would spend hours debating various topics pertinent to the world. The goal wasn't to get to you hold a certain opinion, but to think a certain way...to know how to evaluate a problem and eliminate your own preconceived notions to come to a greater understanding and evaluate your beliefs as you understood them. That is where I actually became MORE conservative on the political scale, tossing away the bastion of my republican roots for a libertarian mindset. It saddens me that current college kids won't get that experience.

Here's another example (although not in academia) of the Left's drive to shut down opposing points of view. (To their credit, some of the leftist commenters call the foul.)

@ Axman:

"we were about to hunt grouse and woodcock"

While your analysis was indeed much what a feminist would come up with, you missed the obvious by omitting how hunting "woodcock" (a phallic name) implies a phallocentric perception of nature.

Tom Fullery

> There's a lot of confusion
> negotiating the new
> etiquette here!

Kaus had some talk about this a few years ago... Saying that a guy ought to be able to go to a cocktail party, have a glass of wine, and –while staring absently down the blouse of some associate's wife– say "Y'know, maybe invading Iraq was/wasn't a good idea after all," without having to worry that his party elders will have him excommunicated. There has to be some space for tossing out ideas just to see which can fly. (Of course earlier this year, Kaus had good fun ridiculing private discussion.)

Without having followed the links here yet, I think Jody's point about academic conferences are an excellent starting place for consideration. The purpose of peer review in camera is to aggressively choke stupidities before they infect academe. That doesn't mean anyone in the field is pretending that stupidities don't exist or that errors from their discipline aren't possible.

Last year I edited a piece for an entertainment network about the Pentagon's film liason officer. And entirely competent administrator, I'm sure... But his TV interview was just hideous. He was halting and modulated, taking several pauses in each sentence to make sure nothing he said could be misconstrued. Ours was a showbiz enterprise, but he treated us like it was a grilling from the 60 Minutes investigation team, or a legal deposition. Political correctness from the company store in a factory town.

Bad things happen when people assume that truth is endlessly fractal; that every single sentence (or 140-character Tweet) from any large event must express the meaning of the whole phenomenon.

It's not true! Context matters.

Tom Fullery: Thanks! I'll mention that addition to my friends.

Crid - I think you'll find that he was that way for a reason, and it was the subject of quite a blogfight between Jeff at PW and Patterico over the whole "I hope he fails" thing.

When you find yourself in the position where there are active communities seeking to intentionally misrepresent your words, you have two choices: vigorously defend yourself against their malice, or attempt to speak in such a way as to deny them their practice.

The latter never works, of course. It only invites the disingenuous to try harder.

So, while context matters, so does the interpretive paradigm used by both speaker and listener. And with the bulk of the "audience" (that would be the population at large) on the sidelines, they only hear the sound bites that make it above the noise floor.

Jeff's argument (and I support it) is that those who speak must endeavor to make themselves heard above the noise and directly combat all attempts to deliberately recast discussion and commentary to suit their narrative.

The liaison officer of which you write had clearly decided that he needed to "avoid misunderstanding", rather than combat the deliberate twisting of his words by those who seek to undermine him.

The point at which feminists decided to discard logic as a means of reasoning is the point at which feminism went bad. Everything else that has happened in feminism since then is an inevitable consequence of that decision. And as much as I enjoy blaming things on the gender feminists, they didn't do this -- it was the mighty second-wavers who did. In fact, without that decision, gender feminism would not exist as a viable political movement.

> So, while context matters, so does
> the interpretive paradigm used by
> both speaker and listener.

Umm... Dude.

Sorry, Jeff's had a big impact on my thinking (and speaking) about this.

Shorter - Who decides what the meaning of an utterance is? Is it the guy being interviewed who gives his words meaning, or the person watching the interview?

The left in this country has come down on the side of the watcher. That's how they can find things in "emanations and penumbras". They can ignore the plain meaning of the document, because in their interpretive world, that meaning never even existed.

In other words, they believe that by taking a shit sandwich and calling it "reuben", they have made it so.

"Not the rabid rapists and oppressors of women they talked about in women's studies."

Amy, you misunderstand the nature and the purpose of these organizations. You think they ae asociatios of scholars. they are not. they are "safe spaces" where femiolaes who refuse to make the transistion into adoloescent and then adulthood get to pet each other over their fears of the big, bad adult world out there ruled by all those big,scary men. They construct a mythology of the Great Caring Mother (as if any mother goddess in history didn't have nine-inch fangs). That drives every word that comes off their keyboards.

"Yes, some leftists, especially feminist ones, insist we should avoid esthetic critiques of art and literature because to do so is to impose the tastes of the dominant (i. e. dead white male) culture on subcultures whose tastes should not be denigrated, because they are at least equally good."

I am quite that the notion that esthetic critiques of art are the preserve of white men woudl make 60 generations of Chinese scholars laugh so hard they would need oxygen. The Chinese fucking iINVENTED esthetic criticism of literature and art. That is one of the most damning things about these half-witted wannabes - they think they are so multi-cultural and solicitous of non-European views, when in reality they just ignore them as if theyr were nothing - in their terms they "erase" them. Cretinous hypocrites. They are illiterate, sloppy and lazy.

I've been reading Amy's blog for three years now. The people who comment here have often made me think, sometimes made me mad, sometimes made me nod my head in agreement.

When I first started reading, I never thought I'd EVER agree with Crid.

But, Brian, seriously...

"So, while context matters, so does the interpretive paradigm used by both speaker and listener."

What on earth do you mean?

> I never thought I'd EVER agree

Unimportant. The important thing is that when you first started reading, you started with me.

>>Unimportant. The important thing is that when you first started reading, you started with me.

god!!!

No... Just a blog commenter... Flesh and blood, much like yourself... But better.

vickie

But, Brian, seriously...

"So, while context matters, so does the interpretive paradigm used by both speaker and listener."

What on earth do you mean?

This

If I am understanding Jeff's argument, and I think I am because I have made a simpler and less specific argument many times when I've been deliberately misrepresented, it goes like this.

I say "Global warming is a scam". My meaning is pretty clear. At least, it is clear to anyone who honestly applies meanings to words as they are written.

However, to the group of people who believe that the meaning of some utterance is determined not by the writer/speaker, but by the reader/listener, my meaning is not clear. Which is why those sorts of people will often reply with "Why would you support allowing people to pollute as they see fit".

This is what is meant by "interpretive paradigm." And the paradigm that says the receiver of a communication is the one who is allowed to determine meaning is inherently dishonest. It seeks to redefine conversation in such a way as to stifle dissent, or even make it impossible.

In my example, it could be that the person making the retort is seeking to marginalize my statement by making it seem far worse than it is. It could be that they are merely attempting to get me to leave thereby ending the discussion. It could be that they are just mendoucheous cockholsters.

But in any event, so long as they remain unchallenged, they set the tone and subject of the national conversation.

This bad behavior can be seen in the left's deliberate distortion of comments made by right-wing pundits. It is also evident in the snotty backhanded dismissals of their opponents: "I won."

For whatever reason, the Republican party has decided to cede the narrative to the left, fold up, and die. This pre-emptive surrender leaves us with a de facto single party state.

I realize that some on here feel that the likes of Brian and I bang the "Left is Beyond Bad" drum a little too loudly at times. But I won't stop and I doubt he will either.

I have friends of all political stripes. Some of my very best friends are soft lefties. But pretty much without fail, these same folks are absolutely ignorant about issues & facts & news stories. Most are also in great denial about a simple fact:

The further left you are in the political spectrum, the more you believe in totalitarianism and thus the suppression of individual freedom.

To deny this is to deny reality ... and history.

Brian,
I rather enjoyed the squabble at your links - even though this "interpretive paradigm" angst is, I think, a red herring for blog comments here!

(The atmosphere here is a lot less indulgent and infinitely less precious than over at Protein Wisdom!).

The example you gave about the assertion that "global warming is a scam" being misinterpreted as "Why would you support allowing people to pollute as they see fit?" will do nicely.

The original "scam" statement has been obviously distorted to permit the listener to snark back with a (feeble) rhetorical question intended as a zinger.

There's nothing super intellectual going on here that warrants the pretentious "interpretive paradigm" discussion, is there?

Anyone simply reading the to-and-fro understands perfectly that here are two people with entrenched, opposing views who believe their opponent's opinions are based on faulty facts and political bias.

There's no need to burrow beneath the words looking for intent.

And part of the fun is when a commenter steps away from the usual ideological position - and makes a surprising comment. Or is lulled by their own certainties into making a gloriously fatuous knee-jerk comment - and thereby allowing others to pounce.

Shorter version.

The "interpretive paradigm" issue is just code for "what you say is wrong because the way you think wrong".

Which is handy for deep discussions about blinkered thinking. But becomes a bit insufferable when this sort of stuff is trotted out without humor.

Actually, Jody, the "interpretive paradigm" issue is the most important issue facing the American political system today.

The American left is actively using "reinterpretation" to find justifications for all manner of things that the Constitution simply does not support.

The shifting of meaning from writer to reader is being used to undermine the foundational documents of our nation. This does not bode well for the future of liberty.

Control what a man may say, and you control what he may think. Leftists have internalized this. They grok it in its fullness. The rest of us think it's all some kind of joke.

> There's nothing super intellectual
> going on here that warrants the
> pretentious "interpretive paradigm"
> discussion, is there?

+

Brian,
But Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are terrific examples of the right doing exactly what you describe. They are both extremely nimble at the ideological interpretive shuffle "how dare you accuse our troops of treason, sir" etc to shut down further (on air) debate.

I think it's humbug to claim it's the unique flaw of the ideology you don't like?

Crid,
I should add that I curse you for your "Dude..." comment earlier. That was really... outrageously good - I'm glad vickie picked it up.

Jody -

The difference is that O'Reilly and Hannity are assholes. They aren't judges and legislators.

We have an entire movement pushing an anti-industrial agenda based upon lies. There are politicians, judges, scientists, etc. involved in pushing this lie. They intentionally misrepresent their political opponents for the express purpose of discrediting them so they can push through their command and control agenda.

O'Reilly does it for ratings.

There's a little bit of a difference there. and it's important. It's behind what Amy's friends have to deal with (by keeping their stuff hush-hush so as to deny their opponents the opportunity to build up a head of lies against them). It's behind the belief that Sarah Palin said she can see Russia from her porch.

And it's the MO of the political left.

Simply put, by continually misrepresenting what their political opponents say, they create an image of conservative-as-gnome, evil to the core, willing to sacrifice humanity on the alter of profit. And the predominant argument from the so-called right is "we need to choose our words more carefully to prevent them being taken out of context". Which is precisely the wrong lesson. The left is going to misrepresent everything that goes against their agenda. That's what they do.

They must be called out on it every single time. Period.

OK, but can you be fun about it?

>>We have an entire movement pushing an anti-industrial agenda based upon lies.

Brian,
We ALL reach self-serving conclusions about our foes.

And your side does tend to dabble in sweepingly paranoid observations like the one above. They often strike me as promoting a completely exhausting vigilance!

The difference is that O'Reilly and Hannity are assholes. They aren't judges and legislators.

We need to call out O'Reilly and Hannity (and media lefties), too. These people may not have judicial power, but they hold tremendous influence over people's ideas. And those people vote.

And your side does tend to dabble in sweepingly paranoid observations like the one above. They often strike me as promoting a completely exhausting vigilance!

Excuse me? Paranoid?

Here's what's on this administration's agenda RIGHT THE FUCK NOW:

Cap and Trade, which will raise the cost of energy, and everything else.

Regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, which will (eventually) make all forms of combustion energy essentially illegal. In the interim, they will be rendered so expensive by requirements for scrubbers and sequestration that anything resembling productivity will disappear.

If those two alone don't comprise a distinctly anti-industrial agenda, I don't know what they are.

We need to call out O'Reilly and Hannity (and media lefties), too. These people may not have judicial power, but they hold tremendous influence over people's ideas. And those people vote.

Point taken. After all, how many people voted for Barack Obama because they believed that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house.

The fact of the matter is that the bulk of the media (i.e. not Fox) is completely in the bag for the "progressive" agenda. And Fox has one foot in the bag because they wanna get invited to all the cool parties too.

Which is why it is important to never back down when someone is intentionally misrepresenting what you have said, written, or done.

Crid - I wish I could be "fun" about this. But this is as serious as a heart attack.

> they hold tremendous influence over
> people's ideas. And those
> people vote.

Worrying about perceptions of second parties by third parties is a really, really bad habit.

There's a lifetime of work in making sure your own perceptions of others are correct, and that you're making yourself clear as well. To worry about traffic beyond that is usually pointless.

This is a theme for me.

> But this is as serious as
> a heart attack.

Be sure to stress out, especially over the paradigm stuff. That shit's killer.

There's a lifetime of work in making sure your own perceptions of others are correct, and that you're making yourself clear as well. To worry about traffic beyond that is usually pointless.

I don't know if you've noticed, but we're now outnumbered by the "little people". And they want their expectations met.

>>In the interim, they will be rendered so expensive by requirements for scrubbers and sequestration that anything resembling productivity will disappear.

Brian,
This is worryingly easy - so obviously I must be wrong.

But the quote (above) is NOT what is: "on this administration's agenda RIGHT THE FUCK NOW".

That's immediately YOUR interpretation, yes?

Nowhere does this administration say: "We aim to make productivity disappear." Or have I missed this statement?

To you, this is simply the OBVIOUS outcome of policies, right? Indicated by your use of "in the interim" and the intensifying function of "so" in "so expensive..."

This isn't about MY interpretive paradigm.
It's about your (possibly plausible, possibly mistaken) interpretation in the first place?

Jody -

Here's an example for you. You are planning on hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. I can reach only two conclusions: either you want to hurt yourself, or you are too stupid to realize that hitting yourself is going to hurt.

So maybe you're right. Maybe Obama's just too stupid to understand what his own economic projections say will happen with cap & trade.

Doesn't change the fact that his sycophants in the media are actively portraying anyone who points out that his plans have failed miserably elsewhere as being "against progress" or "in the pocket of big oil" or any number of other slanders.

In other words, "I hope he fails" is literally proper. Because if the agenda that Obama has proposed were to succeed, then America as we know it will have ceased to exist, and will have been replaced with something entirely different.

But to the ears of a leftist, "I hope he fails" means "I hope the economy gets worse". It means "I hope more people lose their jobs".

Because the reality that "I hope he doesn't saddle the next three generations of Americans with unsustainable debt" is not something that the left is actually capable of perceiving.

So maybe Jody's right. It's not that there's a malicious alternative interpretive paradigm here. It's just that the left is functionally retarded.

Which, as theories go is just as valid for explaining the present proposals coming from Capitol Hill.

You have a lot of nerve, brian, saying the "interpretive paradigm" problem is the folly of the left:)

And at the bottom of your musty bag of tricks, there's always the "functionally retarded" line, isn't there!

The American left is actively using "reinterpretation" to find justifications for all manner of things that the Constitution simply does not support.

Holy Crap! Can you honestly say that W. Bush didn't do this throughout the entirety of his tenure in office?

I don't think this is a 'right' or 'left' problem. I think that it is a current thinking in America problem.

-Julie

Julie - you've got a tough row to hoe with that one. I'm arguing not against Constitutional violation (which is really not the case with Bush anyhow, but that's another argument for another thread). I'm arguing against the deliberate malicious reinterpretation of a political opponent's words to alter their meaning for the purpose of demonizing and discrediting said opponent.

The Constitutional bit was just an attempt at an example of where allowing the intentional disregard for reality leads, which you completely missed. What arguments did Bush make that involved "creative reinterpretation" of the Constitution? Specifics will help here. Because I can show you examples where leftist activism has done precisely that: Roe v. Wade, Raich v. Gonzales, McConnell v. F.E.C., Kelo v. New London Development Corporation. Each of those involved finding in the plain text of the Constitution something that was simply not there.

Jody - not nerve at all. Show me where a non-pundit (i.e. politician or policy wonk) deliberately recast his opponent's words to mean the opposite of what was said.

There's a reason that they call the practice "Dowdification", and Mo isn't a right-winger.

Oh, and the "functionally retarded" thing? Not a paradigm. An insult. I don't need to take Joe Biden's words and twist them to make him look stupid, he shows his stupid all by himself. Although he fails any clinical definition of retardation, calling him "functionally retarded" is not far off the mark.

What arguments did Bush make that involved "creative reinterpretation" of the Constitution?

How about Bush (through the actions of his subordinates) looking through our phone records without search warrant and engaging in data mining with the information?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

-Julie

I see a story with a lot of "sources say". Yet no court saw fit to allow any suits to go forward for lack of evidence. I'm still not buying that it ever happened. The penalties for getting caught were just too high.

And that wasn't a "creative reinterpretation" anyhow. The letter of the law does not require a court order for blanket surveillance.

But you can ask the police officer at your next checkpoint if you don't believe me. The Supreme Court has already ruled (wrongly, natch) that so long as everybody is stopped and searched, it's perfectly legal without a warrant.

(here's where the interpretive paradigm shit comes in and you accuse me of supporting a police state or a surveillance state, neither of which was said or can be inferred from what was written.)

No, a "creative reinterpretation" is where the Supreme Court says that the intrastate restricted production of a product that is illegal at the federal level falls under federal jurisdiction because it has a theoretical material impact on interstate commerce in said illegal substance.

In other words, "Shut up, they explained."

To try to tie back to the interpretive paradigm, and at the same time add the fun back into it like Crid was asking for (insert winky icon here, Crid!), here is the proper way to handle the global warming debate example that Brian mentioned:

You: "Global warming is a scam."

Know-nothing lefty accoster: "Why would you support the right of big corporations to pollute as much as they want?"

You: "Because I damn well feel like it!"

>>...here's where the interpretive paradigm shit comes in and you accuse me of supporting a police state or a surveillance state, neither of which was said or can be inferred from what was written...

You should put on a one-man puppet show, brian.
You can already do all the voices yourself!

I see a story with a lot of "sources say". Yet no court saw fit to allow any suits to go forward for lack of evidence. I'm still not buying that it ever happened. The penalties for getting caught were just too high.

Assuming that it took place (which I say for your benefit since W. Bush admitted that it took place), there can be no court admissible evidence because all of the information is classified. How can you bring suit without the ability to collect further evidence? Not to mention that disclosing the evidence will likely get the person who leaked it tried for treason.

If it didn't take place, would Bush have agreed that he authorized it?

The Supreme Court has already ruled (wrongly, natch) that so long as everybody is stopped and searched, it's perfectly legal without a warrant.

What was the case? I would also argue that there is a difference between a police checkpoint to check for DUI and using data-mining to profile all phone traffic and kick out outliers (and collect evidence) before you have a warrant without reasonable cause. (Not that I agree with the checkpoint either)

(here's where the interpretive paradigm shit comes in and you accuse me of supporting a police state or a surveillance state, neither of which was said or can be inferred from what was written.)

Lol! No, you are just questioning the legitimacy of the report, and since I don't have NSA secured documents in my file cabinet, I can't prove it to you. :-) I have some family that worked in the NSA over the past few years. Once that person is cleared to speak about it, I can ask and let you know. :-)

Now you are debating and redefining the definition of 'creative interpretation', does anyone else see the irony?

-Julie

> You can already do all the voices
> yourself!

Maybe he borrows voices as needed... Serious as a heart attack is from here...

And then there's this and this....

I understand that we're all on the same planet, but it gets creepy.

Julie - You're gonna have to show me a link to Bush admitting such a thing. He admitted that they were looking at calls to/from overseas endpoints that also had an endpoint in the USA. This is something that NSA had not been doing previously on account of FISA. This was brought to the FISA court, and that court said that it was acceptable for them to do this.

And the FISA court could certainly order classified evidence for their investigation.

re: checkpoints - the decision was specific to DUI checkpoints, in which the argument was that the public interest in removing dangerous drivers from the roads outweighed fourth amendment concerns. However, there are now checkpoints to check for seatbelt usage, validity of documentation, check for contraband, etc. None of these should have been considered even remotely legal but they are and cannot be challenged.

Now you are debating and redefining the definition of 'creative interpretation', does anyone else see the irony?

I've done no such thing. You're arguing that a legal decision (that may or may not have taken place) involved "creative interpretation". I did not bring that to the party, you did.

My argument has been, from the beginning, that people are unable or unwilling to speak about certain topics because there is a group of people who will intentionally "creatively reinterpret" what they say with the express purpose of discrediting them. And that so hiding empowers them to control the direction of the narrative.

And to think that I brought up the subject because Crid mentioned an interview he edited where the subject of that interview was struggling to come up with words that could not be misinterpreted.

Crid, nice try. I got the "serious as a heart attack" bit from a boss of mine some time around 1996.

"Shut up, he explained" I've seen and heard all over the place without attribution.

"batshit insane" is certainly not my own creation, but the first reference to it I have is here and here. I've changed a few of the words in the many times I've used it. I still think the original has the best punch to it though.

Although given enough time you'll point out a link to where you or someone else used the word "the" and thereby determine that I haven't an original thought in my head.

Which takes us nicely back to the beginning.

>>Which takes us nicely back to the beginning.

Do you mean when you make up people's comments for them -e.g. "given enough time you'll point out a link to where you or..." - and then quote those comments back witheringly to prove how you're misunderstood?

uh... yeah.

"The difference is that O'Reilly and Hannity are assholes. They aren't judges and legislators."

Like Nancy Grace is any better. The left needs to clean up thier own house before worrying about the right. Ever since the duke lacrosse case I listen to nothing that comes out of her piehole on any topic.

TOMD