Can I also say, that I really do like the name Richard, and having is sullied by the obnoxious allusions of teenagers of the word dick is really kind of annoying frankly.

I would also note that Power Line highly recommended the Steyn screed, describing it as “outstanding.” Scott at that site chose to specifically comment only on Steyn’s corollary points about Reuters, but he linked to the column not just approvingly, but glowingly.

I know xrlq and many others find it horrifying that I, Greenwald, Jon Swift and others regularly hold up Power Line commentary to scathing contempt, but there is a reason for that. John Hinderaker has approvingly linked to Harvey Mansfield’s insistence that George Bush should be above the law, that we should welcome a “prince” who ostensibly protects us from the dangers of the “rule of law.” Hinderaker has further, and repeatedly, distorted a seminal SCOTUS Opinion widely applied and endorsed even by Sam Alito and Alberto Gonzales; Hinderaker dismisses Justice Jackson’s concurrence in Youngstown as “silly.” Any competent lawyer reading Hinderaker on Youngstown would know how obtuse and misleading he was being, but Power Line’s lay readers would not. It is so dishonest, and my contempt for that is pretty boundless. Hinderaker carries on like that because he is a competent lawyer, and he knows that Jackson’s widely applied and respected Opinion is fatal to Bush’s radical theories of a lawless Executive.

If one reads Power Line, or Hugh Hewitt, with knowledge of what they are discussing, one can nearly suffer a cranial explosion. Once one understands how fundamentally dishonest they are in the service of apologizing for George Bush, everything else gets interpreted through that understanding. It does make a difference.

AL: Doing or saying what you have to in order to survive has always been the normal/natural instinct. Calling that “part of the problem” makes about as much sense as whining about the fact that the sky is blue rather than green.

AL & Anwyn: The “chickenhawk” analogy is inapt. For one thing, as the heading of this entry ought to make clear, my principal point was that Warren is a dick, not that he’s wrong on the substantive issue (which he also is, but for reasons unrelated to his hypocrisy). Suppose for argument’s sake that the guy had actually made a decent point, rather than spewing the incoherent verbal diarrhea that he did. The validity of his (purely hypothetical) point would not change the fact that he was a dick to get all self-righteous about it, especially while discussing two journalists whose very presence in the Middle East had exhibited more courage than he himself had.

This is not the “chickenhawk” argument. This is more like the Glenn Greenwald ex post facto definition of “chickenhawk,” where mere advocacy of a particular course of action becomes a substitute for the courage it would take to carry it out. At the time Greenwald floated that theory, I was confident it applied to no one, and happily wrote off as a strawtard. Apparently, I was wrong and Jon Henke was right; Greenwald’s version of the chickenhawk does indeed exist, and is still in need of a name.

By contrast, the real chickenhawk argument – don’t advocate a war unless you’ve fought one – is unaffected by this analysis. No one’s telling Warren not to advocate his own definition of bravery, only to be more circumspect while judging others who come closer to meeting his own standard than he himself ever will. Someone who has never fought in a war in the past – or, more aptly, someone who has actively avoided fighting in one – has every right to advocate one today; however, he has no right to get self-righteous toward those who are as loath to fight this one as he himself was to fight the last.