Does Glenn Greenwald Ever Tell The Truth?

Complete rubbish from Salon's Greenwald. If Salon had any consideration for its reputation, they wouldn't permit a disingenuous and ultimately deceitful hack like Greenwald to so routinely lie, particularly when addressing, in this case, a candid and extremely thoughtful Opinion Journal piece by Harvard's Harvey C. Mansfield.

The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"

The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President is greater than "the rule of law."

The article bears this headline: The Case for the Strong Executive -- Under some circumstances, the Rule of Law must yield to the need for Energy. And it is the most explicit argument I have seen yet for vesting in the President the power to override and ignore the rule of law in order to recieve(sic) the glories of what Mansfield calls "one-man rule."

You can read Greenwald's tripe, including his not surprising fixation on (a) Little Prince via link at top. I'll cut to the chase and just give you the Opinion Journal piece honestly. Greenwald neglects to mention that the obvious impetus for Mansfield's piece is the war in Iraq. Indirectly, he is mostly engendering intelligent discussion of the Constitution in and around the concept of War Powers and the interplay between the Executive and Legislative branches. Perhaps if Greenwald read anything other than The Little Prince and his own punishing-ly verbose work, he'd comprehend the item is expressly addressing the top issue in today's news - the Iraq Supplemental debate.

This is not the first time that a strong executive has been attacked and defended, and it will not be the last. Our Constitution, as long as it continues, will suffer this debate--I would say, give rise to it, preside over and encourage it. Though I want to defend the strong executive, I mainly intend to step back from that defense to show why the debate between the strong executive and its adversary, the rule of law, is necessary, good and--under the Constitution--never-ending.

In other circumstances I could see myself defending the rule of law. Americans are fortunate to have a Constitution that accommodates different circumstances.

The tactic of mis-characterizing enlightened argument with which you may disagree is fascistic, at best. Salon should be ashamed.

Comments

[Hard Right]

BTW Marco, if you knew what you were talking about, you would have mentioned that Greenwald tried to say that Dem leaders weren't guilty of hate speech while Rep leaders were. Ooops. Pull your head out of your ass because if it goes in any further you'll diappear.

[Awesome-O]

Hey, Dumb Riehl. Read again the sentence that you bolded and read what Greenwald said.

[belle waring]

I would be interested to hear Dan Riehl's response to commenter brent, above.

[The Rest of the World]

Riehl stupid.

[Padrag]

Next up, Dan Riehl will be defending Thomas Sowell for explicitly arguing for a military coup. I'm sorry, but when "mainstream" republicans/conservatives start arguing that democracy simply doesn't work - and we now have the examples of Sowell, Masfield, and Bush's recent attempt to find a 'War Czar' to take over civilian control of the military - it's time to start taking notice.

And for the love of God, Vetter, Reagan DID sell arms to Iran in the 1980s, while that country was under embargo, during the Iran/Iraq war, while we were officially supporting Saddam's Iraq, while Saddam was gassing Kurds in Halabja, in order to raise funds for the Contras in Nicaragua, who were killing and raping nuns and peasants, despite congressional law preventing any further US support from going to the Contras. Reagan admitted as much in a speech to the nation, although he tried to downplay the severity of the problem. This is basic history - and if you are as uneducated in recent history as this, then I think I can safely assume you have no ability to analyse politics. It's not often one sees ignorance tarted up as strength - outside of an Orwell novel, that is.

[Fred Beloit]

You really shouldn't mention an Orwell novel Pennsylvania Drag. Orwell wrote a novel to warn thinking people everywhere about lefties, their elitism, their desire to control the thoughts of others, their totalitarian ideals, in short about people like you.

[Fred Beloit's Small Dick]

Liberals are in favor of totalitarianism? "Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cult, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, single-party state, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics."
Hahahahahah. You're a fucking moron, Small Dick Fred.

[Jon W]

Exactly how is Greenwald "lying"? He's just reporting what Mansfeild said, which is that the president should be above the law in certain situations.

The real problem here is that Mansfield gave too much clarity to Bush's blantant disregard for the Constitution, so the neocon drones now have to work their hardest osfucating the issue again. Because they know full well that NO ONE is going to support the type of facism that Mansfield is advocating.