Friday, February 03, 2006

 

Wanker of the Day: The Odious Stuart Taylor, Jr.

I listened to this man argue (Air America, 2/3, Al Franken) that it may be unconstitutional for the Congress to place any limits one the Executive's power. Specifically, the Congress allows the Executive 15 days to wiretap without a warrant in the event of a national emergency. The Odious Stuart Taylor, Jr. said that FISA may therefore be unconstitutional in limiting the ability of the Executive to defend the nation. So... if Congress had placed a limit on the president of three months of breaking the law? Six months? Six years? Taylor's argument can only be valid if he wants to argue that the Executive can wiretap without warrant forever. In other words, Taylor is arguing that the President is above the law. As an exercise in intellectual prostitution, this is more revolting than any act of sexual prostitution could ever be.


Comments:
Stewart Taylor is certainly one of the more odious of the Republican royalists. Hannah Arednt's discovery that it was in the banality and ordinariness of people who are part-time evil doers that the true measure of their moral depravity was one of the most lasting and relevant ideas of the past century. Stewart Taylor is one typical specimen of this type. I'd like to say one of the best but one of these specimens rises to a level where comparison is necessary. There is further work in studying the horrific commoness of them, with so many of these clerks of horror around.

Another depressing study is in how none of the "free press" is putting up a resistance to the death of democracy. They are more silent than the Romans were when the Republic was being killed. Freedom of the press doesn't exist when there isn't a responsible press. A press detached from the value of democracy is a press that is useless to any thing but an oligarchy.
 
Make that:

best but one of these specimens rises to a level where comparison is really necessary.
 
and make that "none of"

Back to bed for me.
 
In other words, so many wankers, so little time.

I agree with you, EPT, but Stuart Taylor Jr. belongs in the wanker elite. These are people who (a) know better, (b) have serious alternatives, and (c) are confronted with their dishonesty in a public manner, yet persist.

It's very hard to call Dan Burton a wanker. A nut, yes. But a sincere nut. It's difficult to call Armstrong Williams a wanker. Sure, he's a crook and a con man. But could he make a decent livelihood in any other manner than selling the color of his skin? I don't think so.

A guy like Stuart Taylor. Jr. could be pulling down $250,000 a year extorting money from people overwhelmed by medical bills or by defending companies that produce defective and dangerous products. He could go to Yale and teach. He can make a good livelihood through cruelty and obfuscation and pedantry. Why must he make it by lying?
 
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