Topic: NewsBusters
Another semi-prominent blogger (along with penis-obsessed Jeff Goldstein) has joined the NewsBusters stable -- Dan Riehl of Riehl World View. In an Aug. 19 post (cross-posted from his blog), Riehl attacks the New York Times and liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald for agreeing with the federal district court decision ruling that the Bush adminstration's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional because of reports that some people were "distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric." That report comes from the Times itself, which Riehl bashes elsewhere in his post as among "purportedly professional sources of anti-Bush rhetoric" and displaying "agenda driven shallowness" and "caring not a wit about what does or doesn't make good legal sense." Which makes us wonder why the Times is suddenly so trustworthy on questions about the ruling.
Riehl accuses the Times and Greenwald of ignoring the "evolution of American Law. ... What mattered was that they were reading the outcome they wanted; how our legal system went about getting there was just so much grist for the mill" (he also calls Greenwald a "superficial hack"). But that's exactly how Riehl appears to be approaching the ruling. He clearly opposes it, presumably because he is not the outcome he wanted, since it contracts a policy the Bush administration supports; he offers no reason to oppose it other than that the Times and Greenwald support it. We suspect that if the judge had upheld the surveillance program, Riehl would be praising it up and down, and if the Times had similarly reported that people were "distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric," he would be bashing it for promoting "anti-Bush rhetoric."
Riehl is no less "agenda driven" than he accuses the Times and Greenwald of being. It's not good form to attack others for allegedly engaging in the same behavior that you yourself are engaged in, as Mychal Massie has so ably demonstrated.
