I've wondered why I bother to even occasionally look at Ann Coulter's site. There is a combination of fascination and horror that is like an intellectual train wreck. Currently, she criticizes Democrats for, in turn, criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft's policies that have resulted in the detainment of about a thousand people originally from the Middle East. After all, she argues, it was Democrats that started the Japanese interment camps during World War II. True, they did - but she failed to say whether Republicans protested or supported the measure. Perhaps Republicans rose up to denounce the action. If not, it would seem that there would be blame for all. Also, there is inherent in the argument the assumption that because a party supported a type of action at one point that uninvolved matters at latter time have no right to oppose a similar action. That is effectively saying that people cannot change their opinions - and so, does that mean that it is only right to assume that politicians, including Republicans, who once supported segregation still do?
Coulter claims that "...Ashcroft's modest, carefully tailored policies have prevented another attack for almost two years since Sept. 11, 2001." Well, perhaps is as close as you can get. If a gap in time is enough to prove that activity creates deterrence, then should we credit the Clinton administration because there was no foreign-directed terrorist attack after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993? Is it a Bush administration fault that the same building was destroyed eight years later? There is a danger in assuming causality from timing. Why not, for example, credit a lack of attack with the disruption that was the attack on Afghanistan?
As for Democrats being "short in the particulars as to how Ashcroft is trampling on anyone's rights," perhaps the question is not whether he has actually done so, but whether the Justice Department under him is supporting legislation and abilities that could signfiicantly open people to investigation and oversight on the basis of accusation, and not proof. A reading of the two Patriot Acts can shed light on this for the interested.
Aside from questionable applications of logic, there are also some statements that are factually wrong. For example, she writes: "Albasti told PBS - that's right, PBS, the television network owned, operated, and funded by the very same federal government Abasti now claims is oppressing him..." Pure rhetoric, as PBS is a non-profit corporation owned by its member stations. It does receive funds from the federal government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - which was created by Congress and which perhaps a confused Coulter really meant. Much larger amounts of its funding come from member donations, corporate underwriting, foundations, and universities. Perhaps Ms. Coulter was confused and didn't have time to check her work, as seems to often happen with her, at least in the times I've read her work.
Although she wants to claim that "the left's principal evidence of a civil-rights crisis in America consists of a one-week detention of eight Egyption immigrants," this smacks of deliberately misreading and misunderstanding what people are saying, when, indeed, she even pays attention.
She ends by saying that people claiming that there is a civil liberties crisis in the country at the moment are traitors. Unfortunately, she provides no evidence of treason: the attempt to overthrow the state. What else can you say about such a person but that she is a liar?
10:26:57 AM 
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