in today's ny times there is a "magazine preview" of a piece about jack goldsmith and his tenure in ths bush administration. it is a bit long (7 pages) and reading it requires that you subscribe to the times--but its free so why not, eh?
here's the link to the story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/ma...ewanted=1&_r=5
this piece is very interesting for a number of reasons:
it gives a relatively detailed idea of how some of the most controversial (and to my mind repellent) aspects of the administration's conception of executive power and its relationship to existing law came to be formulated. it references the bush people's position on their "war on terror" and the geneva conventions, their "expansive go-it-alone view of executive power" and outlines a number of ways in which the latter has ended up being entirely self-defeating.
it shows the tight intertwining of bureaucratic power and policy within the administration--a relation that i am sure is not unique to these people, but which in this case generated a riot of problematic outcomes.
within this, you get a portrait of how dissenting views were/are handled within this administration--and this seems the problematic area (rather than the above, which seems kinda inevitable, at one level or another)--or rather the set of relations that enables particularly problematic views to become policy.
it is also a bit of pr for goldsmith's forthcoming book. so keep that in mind.
i wonder what you make of this piece....
i know the question is terribly broad, but hopefully it will serve as a point of departure. it can be refined. feel free to do it.
aside number 1:
it is obvious that in addition to being pr for the book, it is also one of a number of post-mortems for the bush administration that originate from conservatives themselves. this is something to consider as well--the extent to which this piece (and the book) is about driving a wedge between bush-style conservatism and an actually viable form of it.
aside number 2:
of course this is in the new york times, so i expect some "well whaddya expect" type responses which i would dismiss out of hand now if i thought it possible, but which i suspect will have to be dismissed out of hand on an individual basis.
i think the caricatures of the nyt as a source from the right have largely played out and that such "bias" as there is in the piece can be easily controlled for, if you pay attention.
this is not an argument against the critical reading of sources in general (quite the contrary) but rather a proactive attempt to bypass the still-too-close-to-inevitable "but the ny times is an element of the liberal press conspiracy of fifth columnists blah blah blah" which is usually little more than an excuse not to do the work required to actually undertake a critical reading of information that happens to be presented there.
we could have a debate about the critical interpretation of press accounts in general, but it'd be another thread and so if that seems a good topic, please feel free to frame up that thread and that can get under way as well.
the conclusion is qu