It's a question of priorities

Glenn Greenwald follows up on the recent NSA ruling and focuses on the complaints in a WaPo editorial that it "isn't scholarly and "complex" enough for the intellectual tastes of Fred Hiatt". So after sitting around saying nothing about BushCo's wrong-doing, the editors now decide that the issue worth complaining about is how the judge wrote her opinion, not the criminal wrong-doing. My gawd!

This Editorial, with all of its condescension and self-important open-mindedness to administration law-breaking, illustrates a common character flaw among our political and journalistic elites. In their world, the way you should how show smart and thoughtful and serious you are is to see two or more sides to everything, to treat every argument (especially from the Government) seriously and respectfully and be open to it because your great intellect and non-partisan fair-mindedness allows you to avoid the shrill, definitive conclusions in which the emotional and partisan masses traffic.

This borderline religious belief in the need to be open to every claim is enhanced -- severely -- when it comes to claims made by the Bush administration that are justified with the use of the word "terrorism." Particularly with regard to such matters, we are subjected to an endless parade of self-consciously "serious" journalists, law professors and editorialists who mistake indecision and an inability to take a definitive stand on anything -- along with acquiescence to morally and intellectually corrupt behavior as long as it masquerades under a veneer of high-minded grappling with terrorism complexities -- as a sign of moral and intellectual superiority.

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Thank you to Jon Henke for leaving this comment, which I know will be the reaction of those who fail to see the point (how can you complain that "the Washington Post insist(s) on a substantive and comprehensive legal analysis and conclusion about this vitally important legal issue"?). This was my reply:

It's an issue of priorities, Jon. If you sit on the street corner and watch 3 criminals assault a pedestrian with a gun, and the pedestrian begins screaming in a really shrill and unpleasant voice, and all you do is complain that the victim's voice is unpleasant, you will be engaged in behavior worthy of condemnation, even though what you are saying might actually be true.

Some of the issues before the court are debatable (standing and the First Amendment claims, and some would say the Fourth Amendment claim), but some issues are not debatable (the administration's violation of the law with no excuse). Some parts of the Judge's opinion are poorly reasoned even when her conclusion is right. But between Anna Diggs Taylor's opinion-writing abilities and the fact that we have a President who is systematically violating the law because he thinks he can, it is not a difficult challenge to see which is the most important problem. The Post Editorial Board and others appear incapable of making those distinctions.