ash has no idea what makes this guy tick. He does remind readers how long he’s been around – as if that made him some kind of wise man - at every opportunity, but what experiences informed his extreme uncompassionate (and rather grouchy) conservatism she couldn’t begin to speculate. The subtext, of course, is that he’s literally a traitor who has no business writing about anything for mass consumption. But that is beside the point of her reply:
Could a time warp explain it? Are Robert Novak’s columns delayed from their release date to date of publication? Or, as I suspect, was he napping as the Republican talking points vis a vis the recent FISA ruling were dispersed for ubiquitous repetition in print and on the air, making him very late to the game?
All I know is that as I read Novak’s latest exercise in slime journalism, not one of the points in his smear on Judge Anna Taylor was news to me. In fact, I had already read numerous rebuttals to those same items, from the judge’s association with the ACLU, to her ex-husband’s legal entanglements, to her alleged difficulty with the English language (insert your ironic punchline here), none of which bore the slightest relevance to the essential question: was her ruling compatible with the law and the Constitution?
So it’s particularly telling that nowhere in Novak’s editorial did he address that salient matter. And no, “unfathomable peroration“ does not qualify as an argument; on the contrary it only makes me wonder what part of “Bush, who governs, not rules, is therefore not above the law” Mr. Novak doesn’t understand.
Furthermore, one could make a reasonable case that in criticizing Judge Taylor for plain, declarative rhetoric (as opposed to the usual lawyerly clauses and terminology that leaves the layman scratching his head), only to feign bewilderment at the summary sentence elaborating her rationale, Novak merely persuaded the reader that he contradicted himself.
Why do I get the feeling that asking Novak to reconcile lamenting the judge’s simple text with complaining about lack of clarity would be futile? Maybe it’s because, as a devoted tool and dedicated hatchet man of the Republican party, he’s not particularly adept at disguising the fact that he can’t address the substance of the issue: was it the correct ruling?