I’ve always loved that phrase. Much of the language that defines our country is amazingly elegant. This is one of those phrases. During the O.J. Simpson trial I had the misfortune of sharing an office with a guy who I loved like a brother but he was dumb as a brick. He’d asked if I believed “There was any possible way” O.J. didn’t do it. He confused beyond a reasonable doubt with beyond a shadow of a doubt. I’d tell him it was “possible” that space aliens came down and killed them but it wasn’t “reasonable.” He didn’t get the difference. But I’m digressing.
As you regular readers know, a few days ago, Ace and Patterico were dead convinced they had nailed Glenn Greenwald on the charge of sock puppetry in the third degree. Kevin didn’t think their evidence was completely convincing. After Ace replied but missed Kevin’s point, I tried to make it more clear.
At the end of that post I used the legal metaphor:
Since Greenwald is a lawyer -and we all love Perry Mason- let me put it in these terms:
When Ace and company found multiple names under the same IP they had enough evidence to get a search warrant. When Greenwald produced an alibi they didn’t have enough evidence to bring it to trial much less get a conviction. And unless I missed some of their evidence they still don’t.
I said that for an amazingly obvious reason. They didn’t.
Kevin and I were not alone in believing that.
I was called a heretic (and worse) for pointing it out but I called it like it was at the time. Ace then asked both Kevin and I a rather silly “open question.” When I answered it I learned in the comments section how unhinged Ace can become.
Because I’m sure Ace is in full gloat mode, I’ll remind him what I said at the time.
I hope it is all him Ace, for your blood pressure if for nothing else.
I don’t cake [care -ed] about you or GG or your petty pissing contest… My beef is piss poor logic and reasoning. (yours)
Even if GG comes out tomorrow and says it was all him that doesn’t mean you proved anything. It means you, like a stopped clock, got lucky.
And I meant it. As I said in the post and further said in emails to him, I hoped he did nail the guy. I was willing to help him to the extent I could. But that didn’t change the fact he hadn’t proven anything at that time. I also indicated in that mail that one of my problems what they they where getting ahead of the evidence instead of making a solid case.
Enter the Prosecutor
All that changed today. Patrick took the time to make the case in a way that I now believe to be beyond a reasonable doubt.
While Ace -and to a lesser degree Patrick- got offended that we didn’t believe they had made the case the first time, I will never (and I doubt Kevin will ever) apologize for being as hard on fellow conservatives as I am on liberals. We all know that had a liberal site published what was first published in this case, the conservative blogosphere would call them moonbats and try to debunk it. That’s the way life in the hyper-partisan blogosphere works.
I think it is both intellectually lazy and dishonest to hold “your side” to a lower standard than “the other side.” Your mileage may vary.
I’m not sure whether to congratulate them on a job well done or to suggest therapy because they spent waaaaay more time on this than it was worth but either way they have proven their case -in my mind- beyond a reasonable doubt.
Was it that hard? Geeze! 😉
Update: (Kevin) Ace’s meltdown is back, as is the full threat…
Update 2: (Kevin) This thread is played out, and is now closed.
You see, what I never could “get” in this whole thing was why anyone thought it was significant at all.
GiGi is well known in the blogosphere for pumping his resumé and a previous incarnation of a “supporter” who coincidentally was posting from the same IPs in Brazil as Greenwald. Old news. Anyone who accepted him as credible up until this most recent incident is a bit slow on the uptake.
I mean, you have READ the guy in the past, right? Sure, maybe Pat and Ace didn’t have enough to convince the OJ jury, but what, short of a confession, if that, WOULD have convinced them?
Now, after the successes of Clinton’s spinmeisters, the left seemed to believe that every situation should be spun into orbit, rejecting every mountain of evidence if there was any fanciful possible explanation. We don’t need to buy into that; this isn’t a courtroom, and, as you note, the standard is “reasonable” doubt, not ANY doubt. And while a jury wouldn’t be told of his previous identical offense, we all know about it.
Greenwald was busted in the eyes of any sentient being. If you want to argue that MAYBE some mysterious, unknown commenter from the same spots in Brazil COULD have made the comments, shown to be virtually identical in poor prose style to GiGi, fine.
And monkeys could fly out of your anus tonight, too. They would probably smell better than any possible argument for Greenwald’s innocence.
>You see, what I never could “get” in this whole thing was why anyone thought it was significant at all.
That was Kevin’s sub point. Why all the effort?
Greenward isn’t going to stop blogging (or stop being a jackass) tomorrow simply because he was busted.
Look at what happened to Kos with the “screw ’em” comment. It was the most profitable post he ever made.
Perverse as it turned out to be, he got greatly rewarded for that post.
Good post Paul.
What’s a guy if not his own integrity?
What’s a guy got if not his own integrity? (dang fingers)
I dunno? Sticky fingers?
It seems fairly important to me. The list of bloggers who lie, threaten, create fake sources, or have no integrity grows. I’m unaware of many scandals perpetrated by bloggers on the right, but I’ve seen a lot committed by the left. Even if the infraction is relatively minor (GG saying GG is a swell guy), the number of these mini-scandals leaves a taint on the lefty bloggers.
It’s similar to indicting a bunch of Republicans and calling it a culture of corruption (except the blog scandals are accurate and documented). If the number of scandals gets too large, even the supporters will become disillusioned. That would be very beneficial to America in a few instances.
Egos are so brittle.
While Patterico’s presentation is wonderful, he only introduces two smaller pieces of evidence.
If you check the post, dude, half of it is “As Ace reported,” and the other half is stuff Patterico, Shawn, Dan and others already reported.
The case was proven back when we said it was. This is just a victory lap by Patterico.
True, his use of courtroom exhibits, namely, puppets, is wonderful.
But the evidence was already out there, for those who did not get their egos personally invested in a pissing match, probably trying to steal a contrarian piece of a story they didn’t have.
Anyway, once again the denigration: “too much time spent,” etc.
Whatever, Paul.
Your readers should know you have a rather long lag time on comprehending fairly simple information, and your ego will prevent you from honestly evaluating evidence.
[Note: This comment was previously deleted. It has been restored continuity sake.]
Egos are so brittle.
While Patterico’s presentation is wonderful, he only introduces two smaller pieces of evidence.
If you check the post, dude, half of it is “As Ace reported,” and the other half is stuff Patterico, Shawn, Dan and others already reported.
The case was proven back when we said it was. This is just a victory lap by Patterico.
True, his use of courtroom exhibits, namely, puppets, is wonderful.
But the evidence was already out there, for those who did not get their egos personally invested in a pissing match, probably trying to steal a contrarian piece of a story they didn’t have.
Anyway, once again the denigration: “too much time spent,” etc.
Whatever, Paul.
Your readers should know you have a rather long lag time on comprehending fairly simple information, and your ego will prevent you from honestly evaluating evidence.
[Note: This comment was previously deleted. It has been restored continuity sake.]
My characterization of Patterico’s work was far too stingy. He did in fact clean up the timeline, which was a bitch with time zone differences, and collected that all into one central narrative, and his presentation was impeccable.
However, I informed you earlier “You’re about to get smoked” when I unveiled the Nail In the Coffin evidence of “Rick Ellensburg” making a Glenn Greenwald post, in VERY similar language, the day BEFORE Glenn Greenwald did. And while he talked all about the thread “Ellensberg” posted in, and even cited one liberal poster there approvingly, for some unfathomable reason he did not note the poster there making the most sense from Glenn Greenwald’s perspective, i.e., Greenwald’s own sock-puppet Ellensberg, vigorously defending Greenwald and elaborating on his arguments with a, let us say, Greenwaldian flair. And he didn’t even bother to hat-tip “Ellensberg” for “previewing” points Greenwald would make the next day.
This is well-nigh uncontrovertable evidence, especially in accumulation with all the other evidence established (Greenwald always on the computer at the same time the sock-puppets were, instances of Greenwald and the puppets using similar verbal tics, etc.)
Any reasonable person would have admitted this days ago, but you got all wrapped up in a pissing match with me. So now you save face by saying, “Oh, now that PATTERICO mentions it, okay, geeze, that is pretty damning, isn’t it?”
For the love of God, it’s so transparent.
Again, Paul, re-read Patterico’s opening. This was a SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE ALREADY GATHERED, and all available to you, if only you’d bothered to read.
Instead, you decided to pose as some above-it-all, above-the-partisan-fray preening pony and simply ignore the incontrovertible evidence which was, yes, gathered a week ago.
[Note: This comment was previously deleted. It has been restored continuity sake.]
Shorter Paul:
I was wrong from the start, but now seems as good as time as any to pretend some recently discovered evidence dramatically changed the situation, so I will pretend that NOW is the right time to admit that Shawn, Patterico, Goldstein, Ace, etc. were right all along, and I was just doing a little posturing and ego-protecting.
[Note: This comment was previously deleted. It has been restored continuity sake.]
Oh, re-reading your answer to my “silly question” is revealing. I encourage everyone to read my “silly question” and your idiotic reply to guage the level of thinker your are.
I asked– if Greenwald is known to have read the thread in question, and Greenwald tends to respond to attacks on him, why, in this case, did he not respond in the thread itself, while “Ellison” did, making all the points Greenwald would be expected to make?
You answered: “Maybe he was busy?”
Ummm… no. See, he READ the thread, as I told you. He then COMMENTED upon a remark made in the COMMENTS of the thread on someone else’s site. So he was neither too busy to read the thread, nor all the COMMENTS in the thread, nor even to COMMENT ON THE COMMENTS on another site (Cassandra’s).
Ergo, he was not “busy” at the time, Paul.
Further, it has been established for quite a while now that Greenwald was on Patterico’s site on the morning in question; that was revealed the day the story was first reported. I reported a one hour seventeen minute gap between the Ellison post on my site and the Greenwald post on Patterico’s; ergo, he was blogging that morning, read the post in question, read the comments of the post, commented on the comments but somewhere else, etc.
Turned out my math was off; Greenwald’s comment on Patterico’s site followed the Ellison post by 17 minutes, not an hour and seventeen minutes. But that, too, was previously corrected.
And it was previously reported by me that “Rick Ellensberg” was defending Glenn Greenwald on Right Wing Nut House NINE MINUTES within Greenwald posting on his own site (and then, the next day, rebutting RWNH’s post, and mentioning the comments again, thus proving he had read the site and all of th comments, etc.) and was again, therefore, not “too busy” to comment.
He wasn’t “too busy.” He was READING the thread by his own admission.
He didn’t comment as “Glenn Greenwald” in either case because he’d already commentd, as “Ellison” in one case and “Rick Ellensberg” in another.
Again, Paul: I already TOLD you all of this. I wrote it on my blog, and then whey you got pissy-contrarian, angling for an Instalanche as an “honest broker,” I reported it to you HERE.
So don’t play this bullshit game of “If only I had been informed of all the evidence.”
You were informed, Paul. You were just being a dick. Or just being stupid.
And yeah, I know you know a lot more about this, and knew it all the way through, via a route I won’t bother mentioning, but you know what it is the same as I do.
Dude, you’re a freaking psycho. I just deleted 4 pages of spam. (and I left the first post) You get a little obsessed huh?
Let me cut to the chase before you have a meltdown.
You aren’t too good at telling time huh?
We have these things called clocks and calenders. You might get some.
The last post I made on the topic was 7/21 it is now 7/28. Think about it.
Ooopps I asked too much.
From part of the spam I clipped….
If you warned me -after my last post on the topic- that you had the more evidence still coming (that being his language) then clearly the case wasn’t yet proven at the time was it?
OUCH. Logic is a cruel mistress huh?
(and knock off the spam)
Hey, I forgot that Kevin Aylward posts here. Would you be able to rename my comment above so it doesn’t look like I’m putting words in his mouth?
TY in advance.
Am I reading things properly?
I just posted four posts decimating you — not with bad language or the like, but demonstrating your dishonesty and stupidity and overweening ego — and you just… DELETED them?
This is the sort of joint you’re running here, Aylward? You just let your cunt of a coblogger pull shit like this?
Well, it will be on my site, cunt. I would have let it lie here, but as you are determined to bury the evidence against you, I’ll need to give it a fuller airing.
What a fucking little shit of a cunt!
Hysterical!
No wonder you were such a big Greenwald defender, and you denigrate the discovery of flat-out lying to cover one’s ego– YOU THINK THE SAME WAY!
Of course it’s “no big deal to you” — you do the same.
What. A. Cunt.
Well…. by the way– speaking “like a lawyer,” cunt — we usually dont’ call a suspect simply saying “I didn’t do it, it was someone else” an “alibi,” as you did.
Ace, 4 different bloggers said that the case was weak on the same day.
For whatever reason you went postal on my post.
Since that time enough evidence has been uncovered (and cleanded up) that you’ve (Patrick) made the case.
That still doesn’t change the fact that 4 different (conservative) bloggers all came to the same conclusion at that snapshot in time.
I’m not sure what your problem is but you need to chill.
And yes I deleted 4 pages of crap. You can’t make your point in a reasonable fashion so you think if you throw enough words at it I won’t be able to respond.
-As I’ve shown above- some of your ramblings contradict other parts. There is simply no way to reply to 4 pages of such jibberish. And you know that, that’s why you do it.
Well, it hardly makes sense to explain to you my problem on this site as I just did that and you deleted it all.
The short story? You were dishonest through out this whole matter and got your ego wrapped up into it. All the evidence you now pronouce “beyond a reasonable doubt” was available A WEEK AGO.
And as for you “not commenting since then” — well, Paul, I told you in a post I had the final nail in the coffin the day of that idiotic post of yours, and said “I’m going to smoke you right now.” I *ASSUME* you then read that post, Paul.
And yet you chose not to acknowledge the damning nature of it.
Why was that, Paul?
Wouldn’t “logic” — something you pride yourself on, though you seem little more than egotism wrapped around hollow insecurity — demand that, having claimed one proposition, when new evidence is introduce disproving the proposition, a man of honest, objective logic should comment upon that and admit his error? Or at the very least admit that his case is strongly undermined?
Like I said in a deleted post: A man who can’t simply say “I was wrong” is not a man.
Instead you write a long explanation of how you were right when you said we were wrong, even though you were wrong, and we were wrong when we thought we were right even though we were, you know, right.
What a cunt.
Jesus. People told me you deleted posts that embarrassed you. For some weird reason I didn’t believe it.
[Note: This comment was previously deleted. It has been restored continuity sake.]
As long as we’re citing the number of bloggers standing for a particular propositon as being probative:
I’ll have a few additions of my own to the list of quotations.
Who. The Fuck. Do you think. You are?
You think you’re some big blogger that can use his big blog muscles to pull shit like this?
I think you’ve let Kevin Aylward’s success get to your head.
You’re not “Wizbang,” asshole. You’re a commenter elevated up to a co-blogger to lighten the load for Lorie, douchebag.
And yet you act like you can pull shit like this and get away with it. Because you have big traffic.
Well, you don’t, son. The misguided dope who allows you to sully his blog’s reputation has big traffic. You have a platform of which you are entirely undeserving.
[blah blah blah I got my answer. Even before I finished typing my question. Ace, If you’d like to discuss this we can. -Paul]
Ace, I deleted posts that embarrassed you.
Now if you’d like me to answer this last post… I’ll be happy to.
If you’re going to post 4 more pages of crap, I don’t have time for it.
If you’ve like to discuss and or debate this reasonablly, I’ll be happy to.
If you’re going to throw page after page of nonsense up, I’ll just close the thread and get some sleep.
Are you going to take a breath?
You dishonest cunt. My posts detailed how all this evidence was available a WEEK ago, and presented to you directly (i.e., HERE, in threads), and yet you chose, for matters of ego, to remain silent and only claim NOW is it the right time to form an opinion on the matter.
They were not “spam.” They were simply decimating to you. They took apart your dishonesty and stupidity — like calling Glenn Greenwald’s mere say-so that someone else did it “an alibi” — and made you look the fool.
That’s why you delted them, Hoss. Not because they were “spam.” But because they were embarrassing to you.
What a coward.
You have let Kevin Aylward’s success get to your head.
You think people come here to read you, buddy?
They don’t.
Trust me.
[Note: This comment was previously redacted. It has been restored continuity sake.]
Yes, Paul, you deleted posts that embarrassed ME, not posts that embarrassed YOU.
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Because you’re… lookin’ out for me, huh?
We’ll talk about it, Paul.
We’ll have it all out.
As Jeff Goldstein said, I intend to make you an internet verb.
Gonna delete this again, Buddy?
See, the thing is, I can just post it on my site… and I’m not like the other bloggers you bully. See, I’ve got half of Wizbang’s traffic.
Not saying that makes me better than the people you’ve been dishonest with or ill-treated. Just saying… I can embarrass you in ways they can’t.
And I’m going to have them all in on this.
You’re my next Glenn Greenwald.
Pallie.
[Now you resort ot threats? Good Night Ace. -P]
Ace,
Thru all of this, I’ve tried to be polite and civil. You’ve been completly unhinged.
You’re the kind of guy who when he can’t win an argument screams louder. I’m not going to play that. If you’d like to discuss it we can. I’ve lost plenty of sleep but I’ll lose more.
If you’re just going to make post after post of nonsense, I’ll close the thread.
All I’m asking is for you to take a breath.
Kev you got the time stamps a bit off but close enough.
I was trying to slow him down enough to reason with him.
As his comments prove, it was a lost cause.
So typical for you to ignore rational questions Paul, accuse regular readers of being trolls and shut down comments after you get your last snarky comment in.
Hey, why all the fussin an’ a feudin? Shouldn’t you guys stop sniping at each other and focus on the real enemy? Me.
I love Glenn Greenwald, he’s the greatest! I bought one of his socks on eBay! He never left those comments, those were made up by Ace & Co. I have the proof here in my mind.
Ok, that probably won’t work. It’s sad because Ace is actually a pretty funny guy, too bad he’s such an asshole rageaholic. He’s addicted to rageahol!
Btw Ace, can I be your next Glenn Greenwald after Paul? I really want to make it onto the Ace’s Glenn Greenwalds calendar. Tool.
Hey, I’ve got an idea.
Let’s all start acting like leftist idiots!
I’m not impressed with ACE, Kevin, or Paul. Stop this nonsense. Just STFU and forget about it. EVERYONE on the friggen planet has taken a perspective too far. In this case, its both sides.
FORGET ABOUT IT. DROP IT. STOP.
To paraphrase Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz,
I’ll miss you most of all mantis.
P
II would not be just a nuffin’
My head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain
Thru all of this, I’ve tried to be polite and civil. You’ve been completly unhinged.
Uh, huh. Deleting comments or changing people’s words to read “spam spam spam” and accusing them of being trolls is such polite behavior.
Ditto Slublog.
Paul, what a bastard you are, to cut and run, and then to fall back on a pretentious claim of integrity and modesty.
This is slef-agrandizing propoganda in the extreme, and you have acted neither ethically nor honorably. You’ve screwed up and tried to cover your ass by blaming the other guy. And when you’ve had your ass handed to you, your come back has basically been, “He got me because I wanted him to get me.”
You are delusional and a fool.
Wow! I’ve been reading Wizbang for a very long time,
and I am NOT believeing my lying eyes!
Is there some kind of moonbatmadness now effecting
what has been one of the premiere blogs?
If all you have time for now is recriminations against each other, mebbe it’s time to shut the whole
“sheebang” down.
Crap like the above will not be missed, because we’ll
always have the irrational uptopian left to contend with.
Why not repost ALL the delted posts, dude?
Are we just picking and choosing?
The “threat,” idiot, was to expose you as the dishonest sack of unwarranted egotism you are.
Not that I have to. It has already duly been noted other places.
And what the eff is with Kevin threatening to out me?
Hardy-har-har. Online Integrity is all well and good, but when someone calls my coblogger dishonest, it’s time to to start some internet sleuthing!
Hey, Kev– Jason Leopold just called. He has some tips on how to stalk a blogger and spam his personal information all over the internet.
As the commercial says, “It’s the company you keep.”
Personally, I’ve never understood why bloggers delete comments (unless the comment has plagiarized an article or the comment has curse words in it, though cursing doesn’t really bother me on my blog).
It seems like a dangerous habit to get into. If someone is making threats don’t delete their comments…keep ’em online for all the world to see. Ban the commenter himself if you must, but let their stupidity (if it is, indeed, stupidity) be up front and personal so that later on people aren’t wondering what all the fuss was about.
When you delete comments you leave yourself open to criticism from others who say that you’re misrepresenting the content of the comments in question.
Just my two cents, though. Far be it for me to tell another blogger how to run his/her site.
Hello … tap … tap … tap … Is this thing on? Oh, OK. Can someone tell me where the Wizbangblog is? See I’m trying to get there and I musta turned a wrong corner and ended up here. I’m not exactly sure where I am but it looks familiar, sorta. I see EXTREMELY crude language, people measuring each others penises with micrometers, etc. This is KosKiddy Korner right? or is it DU or HuffPost? Anywho, I don’t like it here anyone got a map back to reality?
by the way, Kevin, who is now threatenig to go Jason Leopold on me–
what’s the deal with this somewhat-dishonest use of the same sitemeter on six different blogs, all with different focuses and audiences (and, I imagine, different boggers as well), falsely accumulating the traffic of all of them as is it was all just one blog?
It’s funny– sitemeter lists these five blogs of yours as usally having the exact same traffic, all tied, all in a row.
Isn’t it five blogs, dude? Isn’t it time for five different sitemeters?
the baseball blogs do this too… a dozen different blogs about a dozen different teams, all with the same sitemeter.
The traffic for any of your blogs simply isn’t as high as the cumulative, all-added-togethr number you present as your stats.
Just sayin’. It’s been annoying me for a while.
I’m very sorry to see all this happen.
Still, it gives me something to blog about. You know it’s really over when you get written up here.
Am I the only one here who doesn’t have a clue who Glenn Greenwald is or why everyone is so worked up about him?
What gets me is the extreme mindless cursing and shouting going on. I can’t respect anyone, on any side of an argument, who has to resort to that kind of kindergarten playground nonsense.
I left PoliPundit months ago when I saw nutjobs take it over, resorting to horrific namecalling – and targeting people on their “side of the aisle.”
You know, it’s sure hard to think you can trust people when you discover that they turn rabidly on you upon any disagreement.
It seems like a dangerous habit to get into.
Integrity is like virginity. Easy to lose, hard to regain.
OTOH, once one give up those quaint notions of integrity, all things become possible.
No Alex, you are not the only one.
Aa far as I can tell, ou pretty much have to be really “into” the left-o-shpere as a fan or as a detractor to “get” who he is, or really even care…
Wilson et.al. That’s your cue to come in and tell us about his best selling book etc…