Patterico's Pontifications

4/30/2007

Stone’s Silly Catholicism Post Becomes Chicago Tribune Op-Ed

Filed under: Constitutional Law,Court Decisions,General,Humor,Law — Patterico @ 5:59 pm



If I write a silly blog post, can I have it made into an op-ed at a major newspaper?

I guess I could . . . if I were a law professor.

As it is, I’m a mere lawyer (one sometimes mistaken for a non-lawyer by law professors who publish op-eds based on silly blog posts), so I’m relegated to pointing out the worst flaws in the silly blog posts before they make it into the newspaper.

You’d think I might at least get a mention at the end, for having helped to edit out the falsehoods before the piece was ever submitted.

11 Responses to “Stone’s Silly Catholicism Post Becomes Chicago Tribune Op-Ed”

  1. Can’t we find something new to talk about?

    Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides — who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

    In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department’s political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

    The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

    AF (d700ef)

  2. Six minutes from post to off-topic comment.

    Patterico (5b0b7f)

  3. To more important topic…
    Just doing my job.

    AF (d700ef)

  4. This is an important topic. The title of this post says Stone is “silly,” but this kind of thing is really very dangerous and insidious. See here.

    Andrew (08ba2c)

  5. Now, now. AF was doing his job, which is to ham-fistedly work to change the subject whenever he doesn’t like what’s on tap. And since pointing out Prof. Stone’s conspiracy-mongering and bald-faced Catholophobia doesn’t fill AF with the warm fuzzies, that’s obviously a priority.

    PCachu (e072b7)

  6. This one pisses me off. Professor Stone’s article was thoroughly discredited, on the University’s own blog, and has been for a couple of weeks now. So, naturally, the proper thing for the Chicago Tribune to do is to publish it in the newspaper, where negative responses to it can be completely controlled by the editors.

    One of the greatest things about the internet is that it has removed the ability of the “gatekeepers” to control, restrict or just plain quash dissent — and that’s why Professor Stone’s original got hammered, because critics had the means to do so.

    The editors of the Tribune had to have seen the criticism — but wanted to publish it in a venue in which it could influence people who won’t see the criticism of others, and who are restricted in their ability to respond.

    Dana (3e4784)

  7. When I was a National Merit Scholar at a Chicago Catholic high school in 1956, a school counselor and Christian Brother refused to write a letter of recommendation to the University of Chicago on the grounds that it was anti-Catholic. I guess he was right. I went somewhere else anyway.

    Mike K (6d4fc3)

  8. …the court’s opinion is a hodgepodge of confusing and sometimes offensive ramblings…

    Gee, you’d think a Roe supporter wouldn’t try that particular argument.

    Kevin Murphy (805c5b)

  9. Well, this is pretty funny

    What’s going on at Ave Maria School of Law?

    We have chosen to reply as a group to repeated inquiries concerning recent events at Ave Maria School of Law (AMSL). We do so to indicate the extent of our agreement concerning the serious nature of the crisis unfolding here, the need for fundamental change if AMSL is to continue to exist and serve its Mission, and to appeal for input from our colleagues in the wider legal academy.

    Until now, the majority of the faculty has not made public the outrageous behavior of the Law School’s administration. We have remained silent in the hope of minimizing damage to our school, believing that responsible parties would set matters right, and out of fear of escalating acts of retaliation. At this point, however, we believe it is important to allow the larger legal community to know the reality of the way AMSL’s administration has abused the power with which it has been entrusted.

    Those who have not been closely following events at AMSL, nonetheless, may have heard of a number of events over the last year or so. To summarize: last spring, a substantial majority of the faculty issued a vote of “no confidence” in Dean Bernard Dobranski. The response from the AMSL Board of Governors, led by Board Chairman and AMSL’s largest funder, Thomas Monaghan, was a terse restatement of its support for the Dean. This rejection of open discussions, combined with retaliatory actions by the Dean, exclusion of the faculty from governance of the school, and serious violations of academic freedom were subjects of an investigation by an ABAfact-finder earlier this year. In the midst of this ABAprocess, the AMSL Board voted in effect to close AMSL and transfer its assets to a new law school to be located on the campus of Ave Maria University, in southwest Florida.

    continue…

    AF (d700ef)

  10. This one pisses me off. Professor Stone’s article was thoroughly discredited, on the University’s own blog, and has been for a couple of weeks now. So, naturally, the proper thing for the Chicago Tribune to do is to publish it in the newspaper, where negative responses to it can be completely controlled by the editors.

    It’s a pattern of dealing with inconvenient facts leaking out of non-MSM sources I am seeing more and more:

    1. Leftist journalist/editorialist writes/says something patently false;

    2. MSM promotes the falsehood;

    3. Conservative blogosphere investigates and disproves false statements;

    4. MSM bides its time as unchecked false statements continue to spread;

    5. Conservative blogosphere forcefully challenges MSM to admit error;

    6. After another controversy puts falsehoods on back burner, MSM grudgingly report that an alternative point-of-view exists, and all but dismissively says, “It’s just them.”

    The MSM still hasn’t had the courage to admit that Joseph Wilson did NOT “debunk” or “discredit” CIA intelligence claims Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger. As for challenging Valerie Plame’s newly minted tale of some passerby being responsible for suggesting Wilson for the Niger trip, the MSM are predictably incurious — it would have to admit that there was a reason for believing Plame had a role in the mission in the first place, which the great majority of news outlets took great pains to conceal.

    L.N. Smithee (b048eb)

  11. Might as well put this up here:

    But the organization’s vice president, Tom Minnery, said that Dobson rejoiced over the ruling “because we, and most pro-lifers, are sophisticated enough to know we’re not going to win a total victory all at once. We’re going to win piece by piece.”

    Doctors adopted the late-term procedure “out of convenience,” Minnery added. “The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling.”

    Marty Lederman has some comments and observations

    AF (4a3fa6)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0789 secs.