More Bull Makes Pundit Look Dumb As A Moose

I promised myself that I would try not to pay anymore attention to Marshall Wittman, the former Christian Coalition leader and GOP operative now claiming to be a Democrat. The guy has really proven himself to be one of the most hackish, amateurish bloviators of our day. But a few people emailed me his comments from his so-called "Bull Moose Blog," and I must say, wow - the guy has really set a new standard for shooting one's mouth of while being totally uninformed.

Just look at some excerpts of his latest diatribe, this one (shocker!) basically saying President Bush should continue breaking the law by ordering warrantless searches. He first starts out by talking about the secret FISA court that President Bush has illegally ignored in ordering the domestic spying:

"The 'FISA' process, if not the authorization, was often burdensome and slow with a relatively high standard of proof."

Hmm, that's strange, considering A) its so unburdensome that an administration can actually seek a warrant from this court retroactively and B) only four warrant requests have been rejected in a quarter century.

But it doesn't stop there. Wittman breathlessly continues:

"There was a legitimate concern that an open debate about modifications in the FISA law could have alerted our enemies that their calls were detected."

Hmm, last I checked, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees often operate in closed sessions, meaning many of the debates over changing these kinds of laws can - and do - happen not out in the "open."

Finally, in a crescendo of complete, spectacular idiocy, Wittman says:

"And does anyone seriously believe that the targets of these calls were anyone else than potential security threats? There is absolutely no evidence that this was a 'Nixonian' enemies list witch hunt."

Hmm, "absolutely no evidence?" Really? Actually, no - there's plenty of evidence that should make sane, rationale, objective people "seriously believe" that the targets of these calls could have been "anyone else than potential security threats." For instance, two years ago, the New York Times reported that the administration is using the FBI to "collect extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators." Then, just a few months ago, the Times reported that the FBI "has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups." And just this past week, NBC News obtained a 400-page Pentagon document outlining the Bush administration's surveillance of anti-war peace groups. The report noted that the administration had monitored 1,500 different events (aka. anti-war protests) in just a 10-month period.

Heck, even if Wittman had bothered to even glance at today's New York Times, he would have seen the story that reported "Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief." On this last point, then, either Wittman is desperately lying, or actually arguing with a straight face that anti-war, peace, civil rights, environmental, animal cruelty and poverty relief groups are "security threats" - I'm not sure which is worse.

Here's a good idea, Marshall, if you are reading this: do your homework before shooting your mouth off. Because really - debunking this stuff is just too easy. And the more you spew this kind of bull, the more you make yourself look about as dumb as a moose.