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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Paid by the oversimplification?

Dickens and Tolstoy were paid by the word. (Some day, I dream I can be, too, since there's no word limit I can't blow through.) But it's clear that's not how Jessica McBride gets paid. Here's post of hers from this week, in its entirety:
They do?

New Saint Russ press release:

“Democrats support wiretapping terrorists..."

It then, predictably, goes on to oppose Congressional measures to wiretap terrorists.

What exactly has Russ Feingold ever done to support the wiretapping of terrorists? Opposing wiretapping terrorists doesn't count.
If you read Feingold's press release, you actually see that he still fully supports FISA, the law that allows the president to wiretap terrorists, in fact protesting that Arlen's Specter's "compromise" bill guts the current statute. If he opposed wiretapping terrorists, he'd be busy trying to eliminate FISA, rather than protect it. What McBride has penned here is an oversimplification of the worst kind--one that provides a false sense of what is actually going on.

What Feingold opposes is not "Congressional measures to wiretap terrorists," but rather Congressional attempts to both 1) retroactively excuse the president's violation of the plain language of the FISA law and 2) remove the administration's activity from the oversight of either the judicial or the legislative branch.

Perhaps McBride thinks that short paragraph above (me? write a short paragraph?) is too complicated for her readers so she feels the need to simplifiy it to a version that doesn't reflect reality. But that's a pretty cynical view of her and her fan base. Perhaps that short paragraph is just too complicated for McBride herself to understand. That also seems unlikely. That's why I've come down on the side of thinking that she gets a little bonus every time she writes up a misleading oversimplification.

She must be raking it in.

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