Tom DeLay Doesn't Care About Libertarian People

All of those people - anonymous commenters, slightly-less anonymous e-mailers - who have maligned Reason for apparently kowtowing to liberals and Democrats may have a point. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has rolled out his blog, and Reason is nowhere to be seen on the blogroll. Nick Gillespie's ASAP debating partner Captain Ed makes the list, as does weblog awards sponsor Wizbang.

Assuming the blog isn't shut down by lack of interest (or sheer force of ridicule), I'll be expecting some amusing awkwardness DeLay's way. Recall that Daily Kos sort of hit the bigtime after creator Markos Moulitsas insulted mercenaries in Iraq and John Kerry peeled his blog off his blogroll. And remember that conservative bloggers tried to stoke a firestorm when black blogger Steve Gilliard photoshopped former Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele in blackface, and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine removed an ad from Gilliard's site. How long will it take for DeLay to explain away his link to a blogger who says something offensive or stupid? And will he care? (You'd think the deranged war whoops against members of the media would reflect poorly on Little Green Footballs from time to time, but they never really seem to.)

Comments

[mitch]

I hope I am not one of the critics being referred to as anonymous; my name really is Mitch, and I always put a legit e-mail in the Email field.

[Franklin Harris]

Who wants to be on DeLay's blogroll, anyway?

[Timothy]

I think the illiterates in the comments section reflect poorly on LGF. As does Charles Johnson.

[Sam Franklin]

The Israel versus Lebanon war of 2006 was a mistake.

[Jonathan C. Hohensee]

I have an image in my head of Delay sitting at his computer, fummbling around the keyboard trying to get it work, and once his kid comes over to explain to him how it works he posts mostly his meandering Myspace poetry and angsty journal entries about how his parents, and the DA, just doesn't "get" him.

[John]

I have a legit e-mail in the field to Mitch and I think Wiegel is the worst liberal boot licker I have ever seen. At least Kos is honest about who is.

"that Daily Kos sort of hit the bigtime after creator Markos Moulitsas insulted mercenaries in Iraq"

WTF? Technically a mercenary is someone of one nationality who agrees to fight for another nationality in return for pay. Since those guys were Americans, they would not be mercenaries by the ordinary sense of the term. By Weigel's standard everyone who ever received a paycheck and went to Iraq is a "mercenary". Perhaps that is just a new way of using the term that I am not aware of. Or, perhaps it is just a chickenshit way of throwing out a pejorative term and slandering someone without actually having to make a point or back it up. I kind of leaning towards the latter, which of course is typical Weigel.

[anonymous commenter]

It is always amusing to watch the self-important denials whenever another comment, or as in this case the post itself, references a generic commenter. If you think something is meant for you it probably isn't; it is obviously meant for me.

[R C Dean]

The Israel versus Lebanon war of 2006 was a mistake.

Two mistakes, really.

Hez should never have started it, and the Israelis shouldn't have quit halfway.

[highnumber]

Technically a mercenary is...

The word "mercenary" needs to be redefined for modern warfare. From wikipedia:

The situation during the Occupation of Iraq 2003 - shows the difficulty in defining what is a mercenary soldier. While the United States governed Iraq, any U.S. citizen working as an armed guard could not be defined a mercenary, because he was a national of a Party to the conflict (APGC77 Art 47.d). With the hand-over of power to the interim Iraqi government effected, arguably, unless they declare themselves residents in Iraq, i.e. a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict (APGC77 Art 47.d), they are mercenary soldiers. If no trial of accused mercenaries occurs, allegations evaporate in the heat of accusations and counter-accusations and denials. It should be noted that Coalition soldiers in Iraq supporting the interim Iraqi government are not mercenaries, because they either are of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict or they have been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces (APGC77 Art 47.f).

To the layman, if I may speak for the rest of us, a mercenary is any soldier in a conflict who is not a member of the armed forces. I don't think it is necessarily a pejorative.

[joshua corning]

ummmm...i think there is something in this article for me criticize...but i am unsure...is this even written in English?

[John]

Highnumber,

First, the contractors who were killed in Faluja were not armed guards. They were engineers. Second, the private security forces hired in Iraq, might well be considered mercenaries by the definition you site. Again, that wasn't the case in Falluja. Moroever, no way did Weigel think through the issue to this detail. He just threw the term out there to be an asshole.

[J sub D]

Tom Delay is a career politician, thus an enemy of liberty.

[joe]

"Hez should never have started it, and the Israelis shouldn't have quit halfway."

Yeah, they were just about to win when they were stabbed in the back.

Get used to this reasoning, folks. It's 1923 all over again.

[joe]

"Moroever, no way did Weigel think through the issue to this detail. He just threw the term out there to be an asshole."

He probably chose that term because it was the term the author used in the post in question.

[bigbigslacker]

And I quote directly, Reuters-style: "Hez should never have started it, and the Israelis would have one if they weren't stabbed in the back" - RC Dean

Yeah, what are you talking about?

[R C Dean]

So, joe, are you saying it wasn't a mistake for Hezbollah to kidnap Israeli soldiers and rocket Israeli civilians? I'm not clear which of the mistakes of the recent unpleasantness in Lebanon you are taking issue with.

Who said anything about Israel being stabbed in the back? As far as I'm concerned, that idiot Olmert managed to arrive at the worst possible place - fighting a war halfway.

Try reading the R C on your computer screen, not the one in your head.