BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft

Subject: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 10:00 AM

Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times on June 15, offers this
resounding condemnation of John Ashcroft:

"No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in
history "

A

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: GUEST,Hugh Jampton
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 12:01 PM

Apparently his diatribe was in response to Ashcroft`s criticism of Krugman when he described him as a "lightweight scribbler who couldn`t spell".

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 12:16 PM

I would suggest you confine yourself to speaking to the facts, sir. The facts listed in the linked article are quite sufficient to support Krugman's characterization of Ashcroft.

A

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 09:03 PM

John Ashcroft is so inept, his own state decided to elect a dead guy to the Senate rather than see Ashcroft get the job. They all thought they had seen the last of the slimy SOB, then he gets appointed to the top cop job and starts whitling away at all of our constitutional rights. What a bozo. One more significant reason to trim the Shrubery from the White House in November.

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: DougR
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 01:38 PM

At least they are in Amos' opinion. Everbody has a right to their own of course.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: Nerd
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 02:13 PM

Uh, I can't find any evidence that Ashcroft ever said anything like that about Paul Krugman. Care to give some, Hugh Jampton?

Krugman, by the way, is a Princeton professor of Economics. To describe him as "a lightweight scribbler" would merely show the accuser's ignorance.

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 09:24 PM

A fesity discussion ensued on the list this first came from, of which this is the latest:


Yesterday, Michelle Malkin argues that Paul Krugman is entitled to his own opinion about Ashcroft, but not to his own set of facts about terrorist prosecutions. To make her point, she excerpts part of an earlier Krugman column (May 11, 2004))
in which he again complains that Ashcroft has not convicted any actual
terrorists. Of course, she left out of her excerpt his next sentence
which read, "(Look at the actual trials of what Dahlia Lithwick
of Slate
calls "disaffected bozos who watch cheesy training videos," and you'll
see what I mean.)." Since he was not unaware of these prosecutions,
Krugman was expressing an opinion about what constituted 'actual'
terrorists. The list of convicted terrorists that Malkin offers to
rebuke Krugman, if one takes the time to try to even remember who they
were, actually makes Krugman's point, that these were 'disaffected
bozos,' not actual, competent terrorists. No doubt they represented a
problem that needed cleaning up, but not something which merits
boasting about.

One might disagree with Krugman's assessment of the importance of these
cases, but that is his opinion which Malkin asserts he is entitled to.
Yet, instead of taking on Krugman's opinion, Malkin tries to subvert it
by pretending he was simply ignorant of facts. This is contumelious and
typical of what David Brock documents in "The Republican Noise Machine:
Right Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy."

Subject: RE: BS: NYTimes Slams Ashcroft
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 11:30 PM

Inept? probably not.

Facist? UnAmerican? Well, yeah.

But, hey, if you look around the Bush administration there are no shortage of these folks...

Bobert