Hypocritical Ed Brayton outdoes himself

Glib Fortuna of the Stop the ACLU (STACLU) organization hit the nail right on the head in ridiculing Ed "It's My Way or the Highway" Brayton's treatment of the recent ACLU v. NSA surveillance decision:

Hypocrisy at a rolling boil — in the very post that he accuses others of judging court rulings based solely on the result, he giddily does just that EVEN after admitting how atrocious this one is.(emphasis in original)

Here is what Ed -- who has added a smirking mugshot of himself to his blog -- said in that "very post":

Taylor, a Federal judge in Michigan's eastern district, has granted the plaintiffs' request for an injunction against the NSA's warrantless surveillance programs. That, of course, will mean she will immediately be branded a judicial activist, a liberal ideologue, and a terrorist sympathizer by the STACLU crowd (without any actual legal analysis of the opinion, of course; the mere fact that she did something they don't like is all the proof they need, facts and legal reality be damned) . . . . . . I'm just beginning to read the ruling now, so I'll have more analysis later.(emphasis added)

-- and in the very same post, Ed says,

Will the ruling stand up? Frankly, I doubt it. I think it should, but I don't think it will. It will be immediately appealed to the 6th circuit court of appeals, where I think that even if the court agrees with her on the basic premise, they will probably knock the case down on the basis of standing.

So there it is -- Ed said that he thinks the ruling "should" stand up not because he thinks that the reasoning is sound (he had not even read the decision when he made this statement), but because he likes the result. He did just what he accuses others of doing.

In other posts, Ed said much the same thing:

Here's Jack Balkin's analysis of Judge Taylor's ruling in the NSA warrantless wiretapping lawsuit. He likes the outcome, doesn't like the rationale and isn't sure it will survive an appeal. I tend to agree with him.(emphasis added)

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It is pointless and absurd to scream about how wonderful a ruling is because you like the outcome if the result is that its weak reasoning gets it easily overturned on appeal, which is exactly what I predict will happen. We can certainly make the case that the result reached is a good result, and I've done so. But all of that does no good if it gets overturned.

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I said it was a "fascinating" decision, and it certainly was. I said that her handling of the state secrets privilege was both "creative" and "clever", and indeed it was.

These examples are taken from here, here, and here

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Well, Ed, you didn't think that there was anything "fascinating," "creative" or "clever" about my literal interpretation of Rule 12 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In fact, you kicked me off your blog permanently because of that interpretation, which you never denied was literal -- you disliked my interpretation only because it differed from your preconceived notion of what Rule 12 is supposed to mean. Since then, you and your followers have taken cowardly potshots at me from the safety of your blog, even devoting entire posts and threads to attacking me and my ideas.

Ed has also repeatedly claimed that the only reason people could possibly have for disagreeing with the Kitzmiller v. Dover ID decision is that they don't like the result.

Ed, you are a hypocrite, liar, bigot, ignoramus, scoundrel, and general all-around worthless piece of crap, and words are hardly adequate to describe my contempt for you.

BTW, I happen to agree with the ACLU v. NSA decision, and one of my reasons is that I disagree with the federal rules of judicial standing, which have no express constitutional basis. I will discuss this in another article.