Tuesday
A personal communiqué
C-
If you're reading this, and I know you aren't because of your obstinate refusal to read my excellent blog, please tell Dershowitz that brutally insulting Rehnquist, not for his poor judicial reasoning (which is mentioned in only an off-hand, broad-brush way) but for Stanford being a racist and anti-Semitic institution in the 40's and 50's, and for Rehnquist taking part in this institution; and to make these points far less than twelve hours after Rehnquist's death is really inappropriate and just plain wrong. The truth of a statement is not always a sufficient justification for saying it (scroll down to the section beginning with "confusing" in bold at the link). If the justification is a desire to get a portrait of Rehnquist out with all of the accurate blemishes in place, I don't see any reason why making the same statements two weeks or a month from now wouldn't have the same effect. Perhaps, there would be fewer readers, but maximizing readers can't be the only important value.
Also, Sean Hannity and his fans being dicks who cause a net detraction from the public discourse and the amount of true information in circulation has nothing to do with Rehnquist being good or bad.
Finally, the criticism that he enforced access to voting rules in a way that is beneficial to Republicans (not as a judge, but as a political operative) is essentially criticizing him for being a Republican. Now many, many Republicans are deserving of criticism, but it's not usually simply for being a member of that party.
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If you're reading this, and I know you aren't because of your obstinate refusal to read my excellent blog, please tell Dershowitz that brutally insulting Rehnquist, not for his poor judicial reasoning (which is mentioned in only an off-hand, broad-brush way) but for Stanford being a racist and anti-Semitic institution in the 40's and 50's, and for Rehnquist taking part in this institution; and to make these points far less than twelve hours after Rehnquist's death is really inappropriate and just plain wrong. The truth of a statement is not always a sufficient justification for saying it (scroll down to the section beginning with "confusing" in bold at the link). If the justification is a desire to get a portrait of Rehnquist out with all of the accurate blemishes in place, I don't see any reason why making the same statements two weeks or a month from now wouldn't have the same effect. Perhaps, there would be fewer readers, but maximizing readers can't be the only important value.
Also, Sean Hannity and his fans being dicks who cause a net detraction from the public discourse and the amount of true information in circulation has nothing to do with Rehnquist being good or bad.
Finally, the criticism that he enforced access to voting rules in a way that is beneficial to Republicans (not as a judge, but as a political operative) is essentially criticizing him for being a Republican. Now many, many Republicans are deserving of criticism, but it's not usually simply for being a member of that party.
