Topic: NewsBusters
A June 12 NewsBusters post by Robert Knight led readers to a piece by Jan LaRue for the Knight-headed, MRC-operated Culture & Media Institute complaining about a Washington Post article on the Bush administration's politicization of the hiring process for immigrantion judges. In response, both Knight and LaRue cited the qualifications of a single immigration judge; Knight added, "If he’s a hack, we could use more hacks."
Knight and LaRue might want to drop an interoffice e-mail to Brent Baker, who used a June 11 NewsBusters post (and June 12 CyberAlert item) to similarly complain that network didn't note that two judges who ruled against the Bush administration's "policy of holding a sleeper cell suspect at a military brig without redress in civilian courts" were Clinton appointees.
In other words, to apply Knight and LaRue's line of reasoning, Baker is saying that all Clinton judicial appointees are hacks. But if it's OK to assume that Clinton appointees are ipso facto hacks, why isn't OK to assume that Bush appointees are as well? It's the same thought process, right?
Indeed, while Knight and LaRue were eager to detail the qualifications of a single judge in an attempt to show that the exception proves the rule, Baker pussyfoots around the qualifications of the Clinton appointees he clearly detests, linking to their bios only to show that they were indeed appointed by Clinton -- though one, Roger Gregory, was a recess appointment that President Bush renominated in 2001, which suggests by the magic Republican nomination method that he must not be a hack after all (unless a Clinton nomination stains the nominee with some sort of hackery taint that can't be removed even by the purifying power of a Bush nomination). Baker offers no evidence, other than who appointed them and issuing a ruling that contradicts a president he supports, that these judges are hacks.
So Knight and LaRue may want to have a little chat about double standards with Baker -- unless they believe that all Clinton appointees are ipso facto hacks as well.
