Joe Klein Gets E-xcommunicated By The Left

Joe Klein is worth reading - he's partisan, but well able to call Democrats out on their stupidities. 'Stupid' certainly describes the Democrats on national security, both stupid as a practical matter, and stupid as far as politics. Klein tells the Dems in his article The Tone-Deaf Democrats that opposing FISA reform hands the Republicans a great line: that the Democrats favor a 'terrorists' bill of rights'. Opposing funding for the troops in order to wrangle withdrawal dates from Iraq, especially now that victory may be upon us, is also obviously dumb politics.

Now Glenn Greenwald is also partisan, but he is also deeply dishonest. Unfortunately, some people take him seriously, and the leftists are giving him kudos for assaulting Klein. Greenwald quotes this from Klein's article:

Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that -- Limbaugh is salivating -- would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.

Greenwald thinks he brilliantly skewers Klein, exposing Klein's a) ignorance, or b) secret blood alliance with Rush Limbaugh, by pointing out two grievous errors in Klein's analysis: that FISA applies not only to U.S. citizens, but to resident aliens as well, and more importantly, that FISA does not require warrants for calls not coming into the U.S.

The third option, that the genius Greenwald thought of but disingenuously did not mention, is that Klein did not include those details because they are completely irrelevant and beside the point. Brevity is the soul of wit, Glenn, something Klein has learned and you haven't.

Many of Greenwald's flying monkeys went to berate Klein at the Swampland armed with just as much knowledge of FISA as could be found in Greenwald's post, plus whatever they could Google in five minutes' time. Read some of the comments and see how Klein gets treated. I ask you: does the Right treat anyone like this when they say something the 'base', whatever that is, doesn't agree with them? Maybe so, but I can't think of any examples. I remember Ramesh Ponuru taking heat for claiming that bin Ladenism is driven by the West's depraved morality. Hugh Hewitt took heat over the Harriet Miers nomination - but all seems to have been forgiven and forgotten with those two.

Compare and contrast the treatment of Joe Lieberman, who has been thoroughly e-xcommunicated.

Here is what the flavor of the day had to say about this over at FirePlugPuddle:

Me, I think we need to scrap the lot. All the DC elites who supported the war and continue to cheer it on, all the misguided media shills, all the Righty screamers and know-nothing NeoCons need to be handed their pink slips and put to work in a prison laundry. Chris Matthews? Buh-bye. Tim Russert? Smell ya later! Joe Klein, Mickey Kaus, Peter “Bunny” Beinart, and Bill Effing Kristol? All of you are, like, so FIRED.

. . . and their little dog Toto, too.

Man, they don't just want to throw the rightwing under the bus, they want to throw everyone under the bus. This should give us on the Right pause for relief, for this is the Democratic base.